The attached video is brought to you compliments of The BoBo Files.  The person in the video (“Joe American”) lays out a very good proposal on how the presidential candidates can be leaders on our energy problem in conjunction with the Iraq war.  Definitely worth the nine minutes to watch.

As we zero in on the conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties, the ever-growing question is “Whom will they choose as VP?” There has been many names from both sides tossed around; some are credible, others are “fantasy.” So let’s take a moment to see who seem to be in the running and those that could/should be considered.

Democrats:

Hillary Clinton – Some view her as the obvious choice. She carries with her nearly half of the delegates, so joining with her could symbolically join the two sides of the Democratic Party together after a long, rough primary. However, she brings with her the former President who could be seen as overshadowing Obama on the ticket, plus leading to the speculation of a joint Presidency.

Bill Richardson – A former UN Ambassador and cabinet secretary, Richardson brings some much-needed international credibility to the young candidate’s portfolio. He also brings executive experience as Governor to a ticket in need. Unfortunately, the sight of two “minorities” on one ticket may be too much of a “change” for enough voters to make a significant impact on the election, leading to a McCain victory.

Al Gore – Nearly equal on the “rock star” scale in the Democratic Party, Al Gore brings a level of influence than none of the other candidates can bring. Not only is he a former VP under Bill Clinton, he has become the face of global warming on the international scene. However, his failure to win the election in 2000 lead to a low point in our country which people are trying to forget. Additionally, his presence might overshadow him on the ticket, just as Bill Clinton would.

Evan Bayh – Probably the best pick as VP for any of the first and second-tier presidential candidates, Bayh is a charming yet qualified executive from a relatively strong Republican state. Other than a lack of national name recognition, there isn’t much of a drawback that he brings to a Democratic ticket.

Joe Biden – Mr. Foreign relations. Senator Biden was the most “qualified” of the presidential candidates this primary season after his decades of service in the Senate, primarily on the Foreign Relations committee. Unfortunately, he has a tendency of getting himself in trouble, be it plagiarism or less than tactful comments.

John Edwards – The champion of the poor, Edwards adds credibility with the democratic base that champions welfare expansion. Though he has two presidential runs and being the VP pick for John Kerry in 2004, Edwards does not bring much to the ticket that Obama already has.

Chuck Hagel – “The Republican.” While he has been working with Obama during his presidential campaign, it is highly unlikely that Obama would risk alienating key members of the Democratic delegate by tapping a Republican to run on the ticket. In addition, Obama’s biggest claim is that he was against the war in Iraq from the start. However, Hagel voted for it. If Hagel is worthy of being VP even though he voted for the war, it weakens his claim that McCain isn’t worthy of being President because he voted for the war.

Tim Kaine – For those that do not recognize Tim Kaine, some might remember his response to the State of the Union address a few years ago when he repeatedly say, “There is a better way.” Being governor of a Republican state like Virginia, there is the chance that he could put Virginia in play. The draw back would that the governorship would be handed over to the Republican Lt. Governor, altering the balance of power in the state; one which the democrats have worked hard in obtaining.

Sam Nunn – The former Senator would bring two decades of experience to the ticket, including being chairman of the Armed Services committee. He would help draw the attention of some of the older voters who feel that Obama is too young and experienced, however, it would weaken Obama’s side campaign (the one ran by outside groups) that McCain is too old, as Nunn and McCain are similar in age.

Kathleen Sebelius – The alternative to Hillary, Sebelius would help strength his support among the Hillary supporters who have stated that they stay home or vote for McCain. Coming from the Republican state of Kansas, this governor would bring needed executive experience while possibly causing McCain to spend his limited resources in an otherwise safe state.

Of the ones listed above, I believe Bayh and Biden are the best two picks for Obama. One provides the international experience he lacks, while the other provides the executive leadership that he lacks.

At what point does an op-ed piece qualify to be printed? I don’t know. I’ve never submitted on to the New York Times, however, John McCain has. And as it turns out, his piece does not qualify, according to editor David Shipley. His justification for rejecting McCain’s submission (a week after they ran Barack Obama’s article) is as follows:

The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information (it appeared before his speech); while Senator Obama discussed Senator McCain, he also went into detail about his own plans.

It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq.

Interesting. The last time I checked, op-ed pieces were not a point/counter-point style of discussions. Flipping through today’s Washington Post (since I do not have a New York Times paper with me), I see an article by Senator Joseph Lieberman discussing DC school school reforms, an article by Robert Novak discussing Obama’s trip to Iraq, and one by Rep. Peter Hoekstra about the Democratic Party’s position in Baghdad. None of these articles are in response to a prior article, but rather sharing their point of view on a particular issue. How is this different than the submission by McCain? To me, there is no difference.

So, in the heart of being ‘fair and balanced,’ we’ll let you determine if the articles (both Obama’s and McCain’s) should have been run in the newspapers.  Tell me, who is right?

Obama’s submission:

The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.

McCain’s submission:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Related articles:
First Door on the Left – “Why I love the New York Times”
The New York Times – “The Times and the McCain Op-Ed”
TVNewser – “Cablers Cover Rejected McCain Op-Ed”

Sorry folks if you have experienced any problems with the site today. Seems that both the EntreCard widget and the SezWho community programs both have errors today. As a result, I’ve disabled the SezWho options (kept causing a “Stack Overflow” for each avatar it displayed) so the site will load properly. As for EntreCard, the widget doesn’t seem to be impacting the load-time or operation of the website. It just won’t show the card for the person who is advertising on the page (it is currently displaying a “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable” error at the moment). Once SezWho fixes their problem, I’ll reactivate the service. I’ve put in a request for them to allow the user to disable the avatar option, since it isn’t needed on this site. That way, if a similar problem happens in the future, it won’t impact you as well.

(Video linked at the bottom of the homepage.)

This is a few days old, but I thought it was worth posting just to highlight how silly political correctness can be sometimes. It all takes place down in Dallas County, Texas during a meeting of city officials. Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield was discussing the issue of unpaid traffic tickets when he stated:

Central Collections has become a black hole.

Now, as all of you know, a black hole is an extreme gravitational field (possibly formed by a collapsing star) that has such a pull that even light cannot escape. So in other words, things go into a black hole and are not seen again. This sounds like a decent example to use when describing the issue with Central Collections, according to Mayfield. However, one of his fellow Commissioners, John Wiley Price, took exception to that term by shouting “Excuse me!  Become a what?  Become a what?” repeatedly. His justification for his outrage:

So if it’s ‘angel food cake,’ it’s white. If it’s ‘devil’s food cake,’ it’s black. If you’re the ‘black sheep of the family,’ then you gotta be bad, you know. ‘White sheep,’ you’re okay. You know?

Yes, that’s right, the term “black hole” is racist, just as angel food cake, black sheep, and anything else that has the words white or black used in it.

Can someone please provide Mr. Price a copy of Steven Hawking’s book “The Big Bang and Black Holes” so he can understand where the origin of the term comes from and can stop making a fool of himself? Seriously, some people are so PC when it comes to racial sensitivity that they go far out of their way to discover racist comments where none exist.

Related articles:
Nashville Daily News – “The black hole of exteme political correctness”
FOX News – “Texas County Official Sees Race in Term ‘Black Hole’”
Pegasus News – “Dallas County commissioner John Wiley Price’s lack of understanding of space phenomena is now national news”
BlogCritics Magazine – “Black Holes are Racist? Reinventing the Color Wheel”
American Thinker – “Dallas Co. Commissioner Takes Race Sensitivity to Outer Space”
Reject Society – “Racism Overreactions”