The effects of local pollution cannot just be extrapolated to a global scale. The only worthwhile comparison you've made with the atmosphere is the oceans. And in half a million years of mucking about, mankind has affected them not one iota.
WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama has chosen Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware to be his running-mate, turning to a leading authority on foreign policy and a longtime Washington hand to fill out the Democratic ticket, people told of the decision said.
Mr. Obama’s selection ended a two-month search that was conducted almost entirely in secret. It reflected a critical strategic choice by Mr. Obama: To go with a running-mate who could reassure voters about gaps in his resume, rather than to pick someone who could deliver a state or reinforce Mr. Obama’s message of change.
Mr. Biden is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and is familiar with foreign leaders and diplomats around the world. Although he initially voted to authorize the war in Iraq — Mr. Obama opposed it from the start — Mr. Biden became a persistent critic of President Bush’s policies in Iraq.
The selection was disclosed as Mr. Obama moves into a critical part of his campaign, preparing for the party’s four-day convention in Denver starting on Monday. Mr. Obama’s aides viewed the introduction of his vice presidential choice– including an afternoon rally Saturday at the old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., the same place where Mr. Obama announced his candidacy on a freezing winter morning almost two years ago, and a tour of swing states – as the beginning of a week-long stretch in which Mr. Obama hopes to dominate the stage and position himself for the fall campaign.
Word of Mr. Obama’s decision leaked out hours before his campaign was scheduled to inform supporters via text and e-mail messages, and hours after informing two other top contenders for the vice presidential nomination – Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia – that they had not been chosen.
As the selection process moved to an end, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who Mr. Obama had defeated in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, had slipped out of contention -- to the degree that Mr. Obama had ever seriously considered her.
Mr. Biden is Roman Catholic, giving him appeal to that important voting bloc, though he favors abortion rights. He was born in a working class family in Scranton, Pa., a swing state where he remains well-known. Mr. Biden is up for re-election to the Senate this year and he would presumably run simultaneously for both seats.
Mr. Biden is known for being both talkative and prone to making the kind of statements that get him in trouble. In 2007, when he was competing for Mr. Obama for the presidential nomination, he declared that Mr. Obama was “not yet ready” for the presidency, a line certain to show up in Republican attack ads.
Although Mr. Biden is not exactly a household name, he is probably the best known of all the Democrats who were in contention for the spot, given his political and personal history (not to mention his regular appearances on the Sunday morning television news shows.) He first ran for the Senate from Delaware when he was just 29 years old.
Mr. Biden has run twice for the presidency himself, once in 1988 and again in 2008, dropping out early in both cases. He was also the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during two of the most contentious Supreme Court nomination battles of the past 50 years: the confirmation proceedings for Robert H. Bork, who was defeated, and Clarence Thomas, who was confirmed after an explosive hearing in which Anita Hill accused Mr. Thomas of sexual harassment. Mr. Biden led the opposition to both nominations, though he came under criticism from some feminists for not immediately disclosing what were at first Ms. Hill’s closed-door accusations against Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Obama’s choice of Mr. Biden suggested some of the weaknesses the Obama campaign is trying to address at a time when at a time when national polls suggest that his race with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is tightening. Chief among Mr. Biden’s strengths is his familiarity with foreign policy and national security issues, highlighted just this past weekend with the invitation he received from the embattled president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, to visit Georgia in the midst of its tense faceoff with Russia. From the moment he dropped out of the presidential race, he had been mentioned as a potential Secretary of State should either Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton win the election.
He is also something of a fixture in Washington, and would bring to the campaign – and the White House – a familiarity with the way the city and Congress works that Mr. Obama can not match after his relatively short stint in Washington.
At 65 years old, he adds a few years and gray hair to a ticket that otherwise might seem a bit young (Mr. Obama is 47). He is, as Mr. Obama’s advisers were quick to argue, someone who appears by every measure prepared to take over as president, setting a standard that appears intended to at least somewhat hamstring Mr. McCain should he be tempted to go for a more adventurous choice for No. 2. He has a long history of making statements that get him in trouble. He was forced to apologize to Mr. Obama almost the moment he entered the race for president after he was quoted as describing Mr. Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” a remark that drew criticism for being racially insensitive. While campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr. Biden said that ”you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
Mr. Biden quit the presidential race this year after a barely making a mark; he came in fifth place in Iowa. He was forced to quit the 1988 presidential race in the face of accusations that he had plagiarized part of a speech from a Neil Kinnock, the British Labor Party leader. Shortly afterward, he was found to have suffered two aneurysms.
He is also, at least arguably, a Washington insider, having worked there for so long, though he still commutes home to Wilmington every night by train.
The choice by Mr. Obama in some ways mirrors the choice by Mr. Bush of Dick Cheney as his running mate in 2000; at 65, it appears unlikely that Mr. Biden would be in a position to run for president, should Mr. Obama win and serve two terms. Shorn of any remaining ambition to run for president on his own, he could find himself in a less complex political relationship with Mr. Obama than most vice president have with their presidents.
Mr. Biden was born in Scranton, , grew up in the suburbs of Wilmington, Del., and went to Syracuse Law School. He also was, as a young man, in the center of a gripping family drama: barely a month after he was elected to the Senate, his wife and their three children were in a car accident with a drunken driver resulted in the death of his wife and daughter. His two sons survived and Mr. Biden remarried five years later.
A bit more on Biden for those who have heard little about him:
Quote:
WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama told everyone he wanted a running mate who will challenge his thinking, and now he's got one. Joe Biden's tendency to speak his own mind -- and speak and speak -- is entwined in his DNA.
The loquacious Delaware senator brings more than verbiage to Obama's side. Biden is a foreign policy heavyweight with a decade longer in the Senate than the seasoned Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. That's almost three more decades of experience than his new boss.
In Washington, Biden, 65, is known as a collegial figure even when he's competitive -- one who can spin flowery praise one moment and biting fulmination the next.
His second presidential campaign faltered early on, just one of the Democrats shunted to the sidelines as the bracing contest between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton sucked the air out of the rest of the field.
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden is one of the most influential foreign policy voices in Congress. An internationalist and strong supporter of the United Nations, he is a leading critic of what he sees as the vague, unilateralist approach of President Bush.
Biden voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq invasion, which Obama opposed from the start. Since then, he's become a firm critic of the conflict and pushed through a resolution last year declaring that Bush's troop increase -- now considered a military success -- was ''not in the national interest.''
One of the youngest politicians ever elected to the Senate -- he was 29 -- Biden entered the 1988 Democratic presidential primary promising to ''rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.'' He reluctantly quit the race three months later after he was caught lifting lines from a speech by a British Labour Party leader.
In his latest effort, Biden proved to be a cheerful campaigner who mixed easily with voters, got along with rivals and displayed a self-deprecating sense of humor that leavened debates and speeches. When he was asked in one debate whether he's much too wordy, he drew laughs with a one-word answer, ''No.''
Obama jumped in to defend him on another occasion when he was asked if he had a problem with minorities.
The question was rooted in Biden's occasional gaffes. He had apologized earlier for describing Obama as ''articulate'' and ''clean'' in one unguarded episode that was taken by some to have a racial overtone. And he'd had to defend his remark that ''you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.''
Biden confronted tragedy five weeks after his first election. In 1972, his first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed when a tractor-trailer broad-sided her station wagon as she drove home with a family Christmas tree. His sons Beau and Hunt were badly hurt.
He was sworn in from the hospital bedside of one his sons and still won't work on Dec. 18, the date of the accident.
In 1977, Biden married Jill Tracy Jacobs. They have a daughter, Ashley. Both of his sons are lawyers, and the elder son, Beau, was elected state attorney general of Delaware in November.
Biden himself had a close brush with death in February 1988, when he was hospitalized for two brain aneurysms. It was seven months before he could return to the Senate.
First comment I have read on his selection went along the following lines:
Before winning election to the Senate over 35 years ago, Biden practiced law for three years. That's it. Three years of fresh-out-of-law school practice represents the sum and total of his profession experience before joining the Senate.
Obama-Biden? A candidate with an painfully thin professional background - 2-3 years community service to establish a political base in Chicago before winning a seat and a part-time lecturer in law school - has just chosen as his running mate another lawyer with even less experience of the real world than he has...
Recently we've tried a general, a few good (congress)men, a nukelur scientist, an actor, somebody who wasn't a crook, former CIA director and honorable man , his MBA son and a couple of philanthropists. (sp ?) All with mixed results.
Makes me wonder if a couple of mediocre attorneys could cut the mustard.
Where hides the statesman, the learned or a good haberdasher when you need one?
FROM MEMRI TV: Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi: Obama Suffers Inferiority Complex That Might Make Him Behave "Whiter Than the White." He Should Be Proud of His African, Muslim Identity. Ben-Gurion Gave the Green Light for the Killing of JFK
Following are excerpts from a public address delivered by Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi marking the anniversary of the U.S. air raid on Libya. The address aired on Al-Jazeera TV on June 11, 2008: Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi: "There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama. All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency."
Has anybody any idea who and how much has been contributed by the Arab and Islamic and African World??
AS a guess, and personal opinion only, I would say many, many , many millions, and no doubt a return is expected.
Texting of the announcement of Obama's VP running mate.
It truly has become an American Idol/Pop Star world.
I have got to buy my own self-sufficient island, find a means to remove it from the world's navigation charts/atlases, and find a way to selectively jam the GPS/radar satellites, then live happily ever after.
"Has anybody any idea who and how much has been contributed by the Arab and Islamic and African World??"
Is there a way to find out? I would have thought it was political dynamite if it is true.
This has been going around the internet for the last few days.
Quote:
Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, became a columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page in 1995 after having served as a correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau since 1986. She has covered four presidential campaigns and served as White House correspondent. She also wrote a column, "On Washington," for The New York Times Magazine.
Ms. Dowd joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter in 1983. She began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for The Washington Star, where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter and feature writer. When the Star closed in 1981, she went to Time magazine.
Born in Washington D.C., Ms. Dowd received a B.A. degree in English literature from Catholic University (Washington, D.C.) in 1973.
WHERE DID OBAMA’S MONEY COME FROM???????
Subject: New York Times Editorial
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: June 29, 2008
Go to Columnist Page »
Certainly the most interesting and potentially devastating
OBAMA’S TROUBLING INTERNET FUND RAISING
Certainly the most interesting and potentially devastating phone call I have received during this election cycle came this week from one of the Obama’s campaign internet geeks. These are the staffers who devised Obama’s internet fund raising campaign which raised in the neighborhood of $200 million so far. That is more then twice the total funds raised by any candidate in history – and this was all from the internet campaign.
What I learned from this insider was shocking but I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that when it comes to fund raising there simply are no rules that can’t be broken and no ethics that prevail.
Obama’s internet campaign started out innocently enough with basic e-mail networking , lists saved from previous party campaigns and from supporters who visited any of the Obama campaign web sites.
Small contributions came in from these sources and the internet campaign staff were more than pleased by the results.
Then, about two months into the campaign the daily contribution intake multiplied. Where was it coming from? One of the web site security monitors began to notice the bulk of the contributions were clearly coming in from overseas internet service providers and at the rate and frequency of transmission it was clear these donations were “programmed” by a very sophisticated user.
While the security people were not able to track most of the sources due to firewalls and other blocking devices put on these contributions they were able to collate the number of contributions that were coming in seemingly from individuals but the funds were from only a few credit card accounts and bank electronic funds transfers. The internet service providers (ISP) they were able to trace were from Saudi Arabia , Iran , and other Middle Eastern countries. One of the banks used for fund transfers was also located in Saudi Arabia .
Another concentrated group of donations was traced to a Chinese ISP with a similar pattern of limited credit card charges.
It became clear that these donations were very likely coming from sources other than American voters. This was discussed at length within the campaign and the decision was made that none of these donations violated campaign financing laws.
It was also decided that it was not the responsibility of the campaign to audit these millions of contributions as to the actual source (specific credit card number or bank transfer account numbers) to insure that none of these internet contributors exceeded the legal maximum donation on a cumulative basis of many small donations. They also found the record keeping was not complete enough to do it anyway.
This is a shocking revelation.
We have been concerned about the legality of “bundling” contributions after the recent exposure of illegal bundlers but now it appears we may have an even greater problem.
I guess we should have been somewhat suspicious when the numbers started to come out. We were told (no proof offered) that the Obama internet contributions were from $10.00 to $25.00 or so.
If the $200,000,000 is right, and the average contribution was $15.00, that would mean over 13 million individuals made contributions? That would also be 13 million contributions would need to be processed. How did all that happen?
I believe the Obama campaign’s internet fund raising needs a serious, in depth investigation and audit. It also appears the whole question of internet fund raising needs investigation by the legislature and perhaps new laws to insure it complies not only with the letter of these laws but the spirit as well.
IS IT RIGHT FOR FOREIGN COUNTRIES TO HAVE AN INVESTMENT IN WHO BECOMES OUR NEXT PRESIDENT???
IF YOU ARE IN AGREEMENT WITH THIS, PLEASE PASS IT ON.
The fact that the NY Times allowed this to be printed is amazing in itself.
Barit1....the DNC is hypocrisy at its finest (typical) and Hillary must have her worst "I'm sucking on a lemon" scowl on. (personally, I'm doing a happy dance just thinking about it!)
VAPilot...the qualified statesman you seek for our nation's leader has been replaced by charisma and rhetoric. The fact that a campaign can be won on the words "change & hope", is a sad commentary. But then again, I'm not to pleased with the legacy my current adminstration is leaving, so rhetoric and snake oil went flying off the shelves and Obama brought in records contributions.
I do hope an investigation is forthcoming in light of Maureen Dowd's findings. The article raises too many questions and concerns.
The irony of it...a three a.m. text message. Another swipe at Hillary.
Wow, Dowd managed to pull her nose out of a Democrats ass long enough to see her journalism degree on the wall. Must have had 10 thousand words due and fresh out of Bush bashing material.
All with mixed results.
Linear Mode
