Random Musings of a Ramblin' Fool VII

Realpolitik
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Obama-Biden 2008

Democratic Presidential "presumptive-nominee" Senator Barack Obama officially announced and introduced Senator Joseph Biden as his Vice Presidential running mate yesterday although the choice was known late the previous night. This came as no surprise given that Biden was his best choice out of the list available to him.

There was little if any chance Hillary Rodham Clinton would end up as the veep for the obvious reasons to wit, the personal animus between the Clintons and Obama's camp not to mention that her own negative rating across the nation could hurt Obama who has a lower negative rating.

The reasons for Obama tapping Biden for the job are also fairly obvious, to wit, Obama absolutely must be paired with an older guy to counter the youthful inexperience charge and related to that Obama absolutely must be paired with a Washington Insider to counter not only the perception during the campaign but also the reality after taking office, if he wins, of his having too little experience and not enough connections Inside the Beltway to effectively govern.
Additionally, Obama absolutely must be paired with a white person to counter the residual anti-black feelings some Americans hold and Obama absolutely must be paired with a man and not a woman as the margin for error in getting by with pushing through a new boundary is limited to one so either the ticket has one black or one woman but there can't be both.

Win or lose, this ticket will push the envelope of our nation's racial tolerance boundaries and hopefully pave the way for a Powell or Rice Administration someday.

McCain-Powell 2008?

Yep, I heard of this rumor for for the first time yesterday.
I hope it is more than just a rumor.
I'm absolutely certain McCain has been courting Powell.
Therefore, the only barrier to this happening would be Powell and his wife I'm fairly certain.
If this pairing occurs it would be a brilliant master-stroke by McCain, much better than Obama's choice even though that was Obama's best possible play.

It is true that Powell left the Bush 43 Administration with a bitter taste in his mouth from Bush-ites and Neo-Cons (no, I'm using that expression in a non-conspiracy theory rant-sort-of-way). However, McCain was a political adversary of Bush 43 for the past several years even if that was tempered by the political expediency of being nominally on the same side of the aisle. Nonetheless, McCain got Bush-whacked in South Carolina in 2000 and surely Powell feels similarly by being set up to appear discredited after taking what later turned out to be incorrect intelligence before the UN in the course of carrying Bush's water leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Consequently, they have some commonality there and both are moderate Republicans who are militarily hawkish Vietnam vets with Purple Hearts but also socially more moderate than Bush and are not Evangelical Christians.

On a side-note to that last sentence, Bush 43 turned out to be a poser of an Evangelical Christian as he was a phony fiscal Reagan Republican.

Realpolitik - Geopolitik
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2008 Beijing Summer Olympics

I have not been able to get with the Olympics this time around I regret to report.
Too much more important stuff going on in my life, most of it negative, unfortunately.
Part of it I suspect is also my antipathy for the repressive regime controlling China.
I love the Chinese people who are some of the sweetest people on Earth.
However, I feel there has been a lot of white-washing the sins of the regime there by the IOC and other outside and inside interests and this has turned me off of the games this time around.
I look forward to the next Summer Games to be held in London in 2012.

Last night I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning watching the Gold Medal Game for Men's Basketball. It was a hoot and well worth staying up for although a bit less relaxing than I'd have liked given the spirited play of Silver Medalist Spain and the poor defensive performance by the USA. As it turned out it didn't matter as our NBA players held off a ferocious effort by Spain, 118-107, although that score doesn't reflect how close the game was for most of the way.
It was and is nice to see the U.S. Men looking good in basketball once again for the first time since 2000. Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and DWayne Wade controlled things for the USA while the rest of the NBA stars kept order when those three were on the bench with foul trouble.
Our boys represented our nation very well this time around in contrast to four years ago.

Lisa Leslie earned her fourth Olympic Gold Medal captaining the USA women's basketball team concluding her Olympic career as a winner to go along with being a class act as a human being.
Our WNBA girls continue to represent our nation well by not only winning Olympics after Olympics but doing it with class and style.

The USA won the most medals of any nation (110) but the Chinese won the most gold medals (51).

On a side-note I found this article about sex at the Olympics quite interesting.

Geopolitik
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U.S. Military Now in Georgia

A U.S. warship has now entered a Georgian port. There is now the potential for a mistake to occur with very serious implications, to wit, we mistakenly fire on them or they on us or Russians attack Georgians under our nose and we intercede or Russians and Georgians are fighting and we feel the Russians attacked us and we fire back, etc.

Oh, did I mention there are 15,000 nuclear warheads between the two nations?

You get the idea.

What Iraq War?

I'm still hearing references to the Iraq War. Do they refer to the recently concluded one?
On a related note, I'm really curious why I'm not hearing more from the media and Democrats about the rather dramatic improvement in Iraq this year with the complete collapse of Al Qaeda-in-Iraq as well as the defection of the Sunni tribes to our side as well as the on-going splintering and collapse of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and his exile in Iran and the level of murder and mayhem per capita is now probably better than in many large cities in the U.S.

Things have now even gotten to the point that the leader of Iraq is now seriously discussing timetables for our withdrawal and we are discussing seeking remuneration from Iraqi oil profits.

Things seem to be moving along great now.

Afghanistan/Pakistan Mess

Things have really heated up in Afghanistan this year with the refocus of Al Qaeda switching back from Iraq where they were utterly humiliated. Folks should view the increase in violence as an improvement in our geopolitical situation given that fact.

The other day an incident occurred where depending upon whom you listen to we either killed a bunch of ladies and babies or we slaughtered a bunch of Taliban fighters.

I'm guessing both are true as it was a social gathering in a Taliban area.

War is hell!

In Pakistan Pervez Musharraf resigned as President which opens the way for both deterioration and improvement in that troubled land which has a collective choice now of which path to take.

By the way, I found this clip of Musharraf's resignation speech on my favorite new website, but be warned! Pervez has a potty-mouth!

The U.S. has just finallized a security

Kimmer