Biden His Time

It's been a few days since Barack Hussein Obama announced his choice of running mate in the classic media blackout zone.  I figured the passage of time, in which my family and I undertook its annual end-of-summer minivacation getaway weekend, would suggest to me some substantive justification for False Messiah's pick, not unlike time away from a difficult puzzle or conundrum affords the subconscious the chance to chew over the problem when the waking mind is focused on other, lighter things.  Overeat and ride the waterslides enough, and the "epiphany" would come like the "light out of the sky," informing me of why Joe was dubbed by Barack.

Sorry.  No dice.  I still don't get this pick any more now than I did before the weekend.

And no, this isn't cover for a re-hash of how badly Barry screwed up by not getting on bended knee before Hillary.  I'm seriously trying to fathom the two word question, "Why Biden?"

Purportedly the reasons are twofold: experience and foreign policy expertise, two Obama weaknesses amongst a legion of them.  But wasn't not being part of the Beltway good ol' boy's network (i.e. INexperience) one of the foundational gimmicks of "hopeandchange"?  That the Chicago Cherubim was a fresh-faced "outsider" who would "bring a new kind of politics" to Washington?  How does a senator who has been in Washington for three and a half decades and both looks and sounds like it square with that image?

As to Slow Joe's foreign policy "expertise," here's a telling example of it:

At the Tuesday-morning meeting with committee staffers, Biden launches into a stream-of-consciousness monologue about what his committee should be doing, before he finally admits the obvious: “I’m groping here.” Then he hits on an idea: America needs to show the Arab world that we’re not bent on its destruction. “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran,” Biden declares. He surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a How do ya like that? look on his face.

The staffers sit in silence. Finally somebody ventures a response: “I think they’d send it back.” Then another aide speaks up delicately: “The thing I would worry about is that it would almost look like a publicity stunt.” Still another reminds Biden that an Iranian delegation is in Moscow that very day to discuss a $300 million arms deal with Vladimir Putin that the United States has strongly condemned. But Joe Biden is barely listening anymore. He’s already moved on to something else.

Understand that this was a discussion on how the United States should respond to the 9/11 attacks.  Sure, Iranians (Persians) aren't Arabs, a gaffe that one would expect the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be able to avoid without spraining a lobe.  But even if they were one and the same, what kind of....well, foreign policy judgment is evinced by such a glib suggestion of volunteer ransom-paying?  That actually manages to exceed the appalling-quotient of Obama's pledged global groveling tour in its sheer nausea-induction.

The only conceivable alternative intepretation is that Senator Hairplugs was just being a smartass, a degree of sheer frivolousness that is JUST what we want in the individual one heart-beat away from the presidency.

Then there was Rogaine's whiz-bang scheme to partition Iraq into ethnic enclaves, an idea so harebrained that it ironically managed to unify all the factions in their loathing of it - as well as his choice to be Lucifer's #2:

Across racial and religious boundaries, Iraqi politicians on Saturday bemoaned Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama’s choice of running mate, known in Iraq as the author of a 2006 plan to divide the country into ethnic and sectarian enclaves…

Ezzet al-Shabender, a member of parliament from the secularist Iraqi List of former prime minister Ayad Allawi, actually credited the broad-based disgust triggered by Biden’s proposal for helping Iraqi politicians bury their differences.

“His project was the reason behind the unity of many political blocs that once differed in viewpoints,” he said, comparing it to the Balfour Declaration, a 1917 British note that backed the creation of Israel and is regarded across the Arab world as the ultimate colonial injustice.

“Such a person, if he would assume the vice-presidency post, would not serve to improve Iraq-USA relations.”

"Ah," I can hear the Kool-Aid crowd exclaiming, "but Senator Biden was simply using reverse psychology on those - Arabs?  Yes, Arabs.  While Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld were drowning in the Iraqi chaos they themselves had seeded, Biden brought the Iraqi factions together by giving them a common object of contempt - himself!  See how BRILLIANT he is?"

Yup, brilliant.  But not brilliant enough to support the "Surge".  Which probably helps explain why BO picked him, but not why it was anything but a mediocre at best choice.

What of the traditional criteria for a veep?  Why would Our Mr. Hussein need an "attack dog" when he has already personally tried to smear McCain as a racist on two separate occasions?  Does Biden put a "red" state in play?  Nope.  Indeed, if Obama needs Biden to shore up the big, fat, three navy-"blue" Electoral Votes of Delaware, he ought to concede the election today.  Does he compensate for (i.e. highlight) any other of Barry's weaknesses?  Hard to see it.  To the contrary, the "wizard of Wilmington" exacerbates several of them, such as Obama's arrogance, propensity for gaffes, and his newfound fondness for big-time lobbyists:

Not just frolicing with lobbyists, but also nepotistic conflicts of interest AND embarrassing links to the very business sectors (housing and credit) that The One has been ritualistically harping on the most self-righteously.

And speaking of housing....

Biden has described himself as a thirty-year friend of a key figure in the [Tony] Rezko trial who’s pleaded guilty to a federal extortion charge in Chicago and is awaiting sentencing.

When the Delaware senator began contemplating his own 2008 presidential run, he initially was helped by Chicago lawyer Joseph Cari Jr., who also served as Biden’s Midwest field director in his failed 1988 bid for president.

In 2005, Cari admitted to taking part in an $850,000 kickback scheme that prosecutors say was part of a larger political fund-raising operation for [Illinois] Governor Blagojevich overseen by Rezko, who was convicted in June of wide-ranging corruption involving state deals.

On the day Cari’s name first surfaced in the federal probe of the state Teachers Retirement System, the former finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee and for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was to have hosted a Biden fund-raiser in Chicago. Cari was a no-show at that July 25, 2005, event.

Offering Cari a vote of confidence at the time, Biden said, “All I know is Joe Cari is a friend, and he’s an honorable guy, but I don’t know anything beyond that.”

Call me loopy, but I think I've just had that epiphany I was referring to earlier.  Why did Barack Hussein Obama think and ponder and consider and weigh and evaluate and agonize over the space of months, come down to the last possible moment, and then come up with....Slow Joe Biden?

Ensign Ed provides the inspiration for the coup de grace:

Obama had a convicted corrupt fixer raising money for him throughout almost all of his political career, and Biden had an admitted extortionist running and advising him on two different campaigns.

In short, "Birds of a feather, flock together."

Joe Biden is Barack Obama twenty years from now: a slimy, corrupt, conceited senatorial jackass with (at least) a failed presidential run in his past.  No wonder Team Sith is already referring to Rogaine as Messiah's newest "mentor."