So here we are… almost. Sarah Palin — the supremely unqualified one — is set to make her long-awaited and much-ballyhooed prime-time appearance at the Republican Convention in about an hour. I’m not as pessimistic as Libby Spencer, who predicts, among other things, that “Palin will give a great speech,” that “[t]he GOP base will go wild,” and that the punditocracy will call her pick “a gamechanger,” but I do think she has a lot going for...

TNR’s John Judis, in the Twin Cities for the GOP convention, explains Palin’s appeal, and how McCain has sold out to the theocrats: The convention’s first two days have been a conservative love-fest for McCain’s vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. McCain’s handlers have also allowed social conservatives free reign in writing this year’s Republican platform. McCain strategists have tried to explain Palin’s nomination as an attempt to secure discontented Democrats...

Poor Cindy McCain. It must be so hard to be a wealthy heiress: Democrats’ attacks on her family’s wealth are unfair and offensive, Cindy McCain said today… on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” For nearly two weeks, Democrats have repeatedly hit Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for saying he is unaware of how many houses he owns, calling the presumptive Republican presidential nominee out of touch with everyday Americans. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention...

As here at TMV, we’ve been all over the Palin pick at The Reaction, and our reaction was essentially this: what a pathetic pick. As our associate editor, Creature, put it, McCain “laid a big fat egg.” Surely that’s clear. Right? Well, not necessarily. I was listening to Buffalo sports radio — call me pathetic, if you must (I much prefer Toronto sports radio) — on my way home from work Friday afternoon. The two hosts, one of whom stressed that he wasn’t terribly...

Unconventional, and surprising. As I wrote recently, I think this a year (and perhaps an age) for big-name, national-celebrity politics. Look at who ran for both parties in the primaries. For the most part they were all big names: Hillary, Obama, Edwards, Biden, Richardson, McCain, Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, etc…Huckabee and perhaps Dodd were the major exceptions. Which is why I thought Obama would go with Biden or perhaps Bayh, not Kaine or Sebelius, and why I thought McCain would go with...

I continue to go back and forth on Hillary’s speech last night. It was, on the whole, rather impressive. As I put it last night, she did what she needed to do for Obama, for the Democratic Party, and, perhaps first and foremost, for herself and her political future. Regarding that last point, I didn’t care for all the gratuitous self-promotion, but, of course, such self-promotion is what her more ardent supporters wanted. They still think she deserves the nomination, after all, and, watching...

From yesterday’s Boston Globe: Romney: McCain earned his homes; Obama didn’t Yes, Romney really is a twisted partisan fool. In a speech yesterday in Denver — of course! — he claimed that while McCain deserved all his houses because of his and his family’s “hard work,” Obama “got a special deal from a convicted felon.” That “convicted felon” is Tony Rezko — and the GOP Smear Machine, of which Romney is a willing part, is playing...

Lost somewhere in the wall-to-wall coverage of the Democratic Convention is an interesting development coming out of Iraq: Iraq and the United States have agreed that a planned security pact will require all U.S. troops to leave by the end of 2011, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday, while Washington said no final deal had been reached. “There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date, which is the end of 2011, to end any foreign presence on...

I’m being facetious, of course. But she’s apparently on her way to war-torn Georgia, if she isn’t there already. “McCain has been a staunch supporter of Georgia in that country’s clash with Russia, and sending his wife there underscores his commitment,” notes the AP. “It also could deflect attention from Michelle Obama’s convention speech in Denver as the Obama campaign seeks to introduce the family to voters.” Really. McCain may be a staunch...

In China, it seems, Olympics or no Olympics, capitalism or no capitalism, it’s probably best not to protest, not to challenge the totalitarians who run and rape the place: BEIJING — Two elderly Chinese women have been sentenced to a year of “re-education through labor” after they repeatedly sought a permit to demonstrate in one of the official Olympic protest areas, according to family members and human rights advocates. The women, Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, had made...

I was away on vacation in Prince Edward Island for almost three weeks and, since my Monday return, have spent the past few days re-obsessing myself with the presidential race, including the whole Veepstakes saga, about which I’ve written extensively, some here and more over at my place. An announcement from Obama could come at any moment. For what they’re worth, which isn’t much, here are my predictions: Obama — Biden McCain — Romney But there are those nagging doubts....

Poll-wise, the news hasn’t been good for Obama in recent weeks — and it seems to be getting worse. Although he still leads in most national polls, the gap has generally been narrowing. And the media, which love the tension that comes from high electoral drama, have dutifully (and thoughtlessly) been in full sensationalization mode. Consider the headline of Joe’s post from yesterday: Poll: McCain Overtakes Obama With Five Point Lead Amid Other Polls Showing Obama Weakening The poll...

For all the talk about “the conditions on the ground,” as McCain put it the other day, about timetables, about how the situation there is not quite as bad as it was, say, a couple of years ago, and about whether the Surge has been a success or not, Iraq is still an incredibly violent and bloody place. As we were reminded once again yesterday: All told, at least 61 people were killed and 238 wounded, nearly all of them Kurdish political protesters in Kirkuk and Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad....

According to Marc Ambinder, Obama’s veep vetters are focusing on four contenders: Even Bayh; Joe Biden; Tim Kaine; and Kathleen Sebelius. “Based on discussions with high-level Obama aides, I do not get the impression that Obama has made up his mind yet. These aides do say that Obama is narrowing his choices.” According to Ambinder, Kaine and Sebelius are about governing, not campaigning, while Bayh and Biden are about legislating. The first two are outsiders, the second two are...

So McCain — understandably, perhaps, given how little attention he’s getting these days — dumped on Obama’s speech in Berlin yesterday: “I would rather speak at a rally or a political gathering any place outside of the country after I am president of the United States,” he said. In other words, presidential candidates should stay at home, in the U.S., where the voters are, and not travel around the world giving speeches (like, to thousands and thousands of Germans). “However,”...

There are, of course, many factors that go into picking a running mate, and the game for us junkies isn’t just about picking a name or ranking names but trying to figure out what factors are most important to a candidate. Take McCain: It doesn’t seem to make all that much sense for him to pick someone like himself, that is, old, with a military background, and experienced in the ways of Washington. So, instead, will he go with someone with whom he has a close personal connection, like...

I don’t always agree with its priorities, nor with its methods and tactics, but, in general, as a proponent of animal rights, I applaud PETA for the work it does to bring attention to, and to fight, the rampant and horrific abuse of animals in our “civilized” society. This full-page ad — see above — appeared in yesterday’s Washington Post. It features Andrew Von Eschenbach, the head of the FDA (Federal Dog Abuse). Here’s how PETA puts it at its Stop Animal...

With the exception of posts on Hillary Clinton and Bobby Jindal, I haven’t really waded into the Veepstakes game. I don’t see much point to it unless you have access to insider campaign information, or are a conduit for leaks, but that’s not to say that I haven’t been paying close attention to it. The choice of running mate, after all, may not make or break a presidential bid — Bush I didn’t lose in ’88 because of Quayle; Clinton didn’t win in ’92...

As you must know by now, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has publicly endorsed Obama’s plan for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. How is that playing in Republican circles? Er, not well… Allahpundit at Hot Air: “So discombobulated is Team Maverick that they seem to be spinning in two different directions (while partially redeeming themselves by the pointed use of the term ‘inartful’ to describe Maliki’s comments). Even so, McCain starts off well here by turning the discussion...

It’s all part of the Republican Smear Machine’s ongoing efforts to brand/label Obama. Hillary helped out during the primaries, desperately trying to make the case that he isn’t ready to be president, but the Republicans are on to the next stage of the game. The Rev. Wright story had some staying power, though Obama diffused it both with his brilliant speech on race and by effectively distancing himself from his former pastor. With McCain running on his experience, as if being around...

As if it weren’t enough that some in the media are turning the election into a referendum on Obama, thereby sparing McCain anything resembling serious scrutiny, and that the media are generally: – holding Obama to a much higher standard than they are McCain, emphasizing Obama’s nuanced policy shifts (and calling them opportunistic flip-flops) while letting McCain get away with flipping and flopping all over the place, pandering to different audiences, on issues like Iraq and immigration,...

Well, not quite. He was a small-time investor, not a mogul, but, if nothing else, as Max Blumenthal recounted at HuffPo the other day, Gramm’s forays into the porn industry in the ’70s were rather amusing. Back in 1973, he tried to invest $15,000 in a soft-core movie called Truck Stop Women (“No Rig Was Too Big For Them To Handle”). With that oversold, he eventually put his money in Beauty Queens (about pageant judges and contestants). When that fell through, he “contributed...

I have asserted on numerous occasions that Hillary will not be Obama’s running mate. And yet… It’s not like any of the other apparent contenders are obvious choices (or would be perfect picks). One can make compelling, if not convincing, cases for the likes of Biden, Dodd, and Nunn, for example, but one can also make compelling cases against pretty much all of them. Even, I suppose, against Gore and Edwards — the former was my preference for the top spot all along, the former...

Syrian President Bashar Assad is in Paris to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. And, as the BBC is reporting, the two are getting along rather well. Sarkozy is set to host a meeting between Assad and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, a meeting that could lead to renewed diplomatic ties between Syria and Lebanon. Meanwhile, Sarkozy has announced that he will visit Syria later this year. All in all, “[t]he Paris visit is a big boost for [Assad], helping Syria to break out of its diplomatic...

Because both Russia and China can use their veto power as permanent members of the Security Council to block anything and everything they want, even overriding decisive majorities. And they’ve both vetoed U.S.- and U.K.-backed sanctions on Mugabe’s illegitimate regime in Zimbabwe. And why did they do that? Because China, for one, does business with Mugabe, and because neither Russia nor China wants the U.N. to challenge undemocratic regimes. Here’s how the Russian ambassador put...