There is no way that Barack would choose Hillary as V-P.

No way.

It will not happen.

(Better to have her as a friendly Senator, anyway.)

2 Interesting Obama-related Op-Eds in today's NYT
 

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/opinion/11friedman.html]NYT | Thomas Friedman: Obama on the Nile[/url]
[quote]I have had a chance to observe several U.S. elections from abroad, but it has been unusually revealing to be in Egypt as Barack Hussein Obama became the Democrats’ nominee for president of the United States.

While Obama, who was raised a Christian, is constantly assuring Americans that he is not a Muslim, Egyptians are amazed, excited and agog that America might elect a black man whose father’s family was of Muslim heritage. They don’t really understand Obama’s family tree, but what they do know is that if America — despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 — were to elect as its president some guy with the middle name “Hussein,” it would mark a sea change in America-Muslim world relations.

Every interview seems to end with the person I was interviewing asking me: “Now, can I ask you a question? Obama? Do you think they will let him win?” (It’s always “let him win” not just “win.”)

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Democrats’ nomination of Obama as their candidate for president has done more to improve America’s image abroad — an image dented by the Iraq war, President Bush’s invocation of a post-9/11 “crusade,” Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the xenophobic opposition to Dubai Ports World managing U.S. harbors — than the entire Bush public diplomacy effort for seven years.

Of course, Egyptians still have their grievances with America, and will in the future no matter who is president — and we’ve got a few grievances with them, too. But every once in a while, America does something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old, encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary “brand” overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned.

I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his children as asking: “Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?” And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, “no.” It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.[/quote]

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/opinion/11dowd.html]NYT | Maureen Dowd: Mincing Up Michelle[/url]
[quote]It’s good news for Obama that Hillary’s out of the race. But it’s also bad news. Now Republicans can turn their full attention to demonizing Michelle Obama. Mrs. Obama is the new, unwilling contestant in Round Two of the sulfurous national game of “Kill the witch.”[/quote]

[quote=ewmayer;135722][URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/opinion/11friedman.html"]NYT | Thomas Friedman: Obama on the Nile[/URL]
[/quote]Gotta love Tom Friedman... excellent, insightful writer.

A bit less than 50 years ago, there was a similar hurdle (and attendant trepidation) for a Catholic to be elected President of this country.

Fifty years seems like a long time to go from where we were then to where we are now in terms of who is electable, but it's a mere blink of an eye compared to the entrenched cultures in many of these other countries.

[quote=cheesehead;135339](Better to have her as a friendly Senator, anyway.)[/quote]... or, as Maureen Dowd reminds us, a Supreme Court justice!

Wouldn't the right-wingers hate that! A lifetime appointment of a Clinton (not two -- relinquishment of one's law license wouldn't help one's confirmation) to the high court could keep them in froth for decades.

Remember the Keating Five?
 

While doing my daily finance-story perusal for the [i]Subprime[/i] thread, I happened across the following interesting snippet in a recent interview [url=http://us1.institutionalriskanalytics.com/pub/IRAstory.asp?tag=287]Institutional Risk Analytics[/url] had with longtime columnist and man-of-many-talents [currently Guest Scholar in economic studies at The Brookings Institution] Martin Mayer [no relation, AFAIK]. The quote is from a part of the discussion featuring crony capitalism during the late-80s S&L crisis:
[quote]Mayer: Well, the SEC under George Bush and Chris Cox has been a disaster. I testified before the House Banking Committee when Cox was a congressman. It was in the days of Charles Keating and American Financial Corporation.

The IRA: Ah yes. [b]I wonder how many people remember that John McCain (R-AZ) was one of the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five]Keating Five[/url]?[/b] Keating paid millions to Senators Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), Alan Cranston (D_CA), John Glenn (D-OH), Don Riegle (D-MI) and McCain. And Keating spent four years in prison.

Mayer: Well, one of the things I pointed out about Keating was that American Financial was not his first scam. He had sold lobby notes. He’d done that earlier with a bank in Cincinnati. This was an invitation to fraud and it was something that he had a record of doing. And Cox said that he could not see what was wrong with it. And I thought to myself; this guy is a congressman. He represents Orange County, a community that was really victimized by Keating. Lincoln was the largest lender in Orange County and as soon as Keating took it over he moved the whole lending operation to AZ. He kept the deposits in CA but he moved the lending to AZ. You’d think that a congressman like Cox or even Senator Alan Cranston would be annoyed with Keating for taking assets out of the state, but no, no, he was never criticized.[/quote]
...Perhaps the lack of criticism has sdomething to do with Arizona being the home state of one of the other Five, a certain Sen. John McCain? We'll probably never know.

In the wake of the Keating scandal, McCain probably did what all honorable men do under such circumstances -- switch to having their ultrarich wives fund their campaigns. ;)


[QUOTE=Prime95;133876]And we voted the Republicans out because they were no better than the Democrats. Republicans ran on a smaller government agenda and then spent like drunken sailors. Bush couldn't find a single spending resolution to veto as Republicans sent bill after pork-laden bill to his desk.

Democrats run on a platform of a bigger, bloated, invasive government and then they deliver. So what's the difference?[/QUOTE]
Maybe a peek at the way the 2 candidates manage their personal finances could be revealing:

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/us/politics/14disclosure.html]NY Times | Disclosures Give Look at Candidates’ Personal Finances[/url][quote]Senators John McCain and Barack Obama released their Senate financial disclosure statements on Friday, revealing that Mr. McCain and his wife had at least $225,000 in credit card debt and that Mr. Obama and his wife had put more than $200,000 into college funds for their daughters.[/quote]
Interestingly, the bulk of that McCain CC debt is at 0% interest - perhaps another "Friends of Angelo"-style perquisite? - but the rest [roughly $20,000] is at a whopping 26% - if you have a virtually unlimited Zero-interest line of credit, why on earth would you pay that kind of interest on any of your obligations? I'm tempted to suggest "Beacuse your wife is loaded to the gills" [note I'm referring to personal wealth, not alcohol consumption ;)], but that begs the question of "Why carry any debt to begin with?"

Maybe the Zero-interest credit line is simply handy for those "day to day essentials" which can so easily run into the hundreds of thousands, and Cindy McCain is rich enough to not carry about whether some smallish chunk of a few $10K is racking up big interest. But anyway it struck me as a curious "Are the people even paying attention?" kind of anomaly.

[quote=ewmayer;136008]Interestingly, the bulk of that McCain CC debt is at 0% interest - perhaps another "Friends of Angelo"-style perquisite? - but the rest [roughly $20,000] is at a whopping 26% - if you have a virtually unlimited Zero-interest line of credit, why on earth would you pay that kind of interest on any of your obligations?[/quote]The 0% interest debt is a sort of game that can be played with the credit card companies -- moving debt around as 0% offers are proferred from time to time by different card issuers... but when the game is up with any given lender, the rates go through the roof. If you have a dry spell of 0% offers, one may need to carry a portion of debt at a high rate until the next sucker.... ermmm... creditor comes along with a sweet (and temporary) offer.

I have no idea why McCain would need to engage in that 3-card Monte approach, but I've done it for years and it has served well when there were no other alternatives. I don't think there is anything even remotely shady about McCain's finances in this regard -- it's pretty common these days to manage debt in this way.

[QUOTE=tallguy;136040]The 0% interest debt is a sort of game that can be played with the credit card companies -- moving debt around as 0% offers are proferred from time to time by different card issuers... but when the game is up with any given lender, the rates go through the roof. If you have a dry spell of 0% offers, one may need to carry a portion of debt at a high rate until the next sucker.... ermmm... creditor comes along with a sweet (and temporary) offer.

I have no idea why McCain would need to engage in that 3-card Monte approach, but I've done it for years and it has served well when there were no other alternatives. I don't think there is anything even remotely shady about McCain's finances in this regard -- it's pretty common these days to manage debt in this way.[/QUOTE]

I don't know if it's still the case, but a few years ago we found out that moving debt around like this too often really hurts your credit rating, which then affects the credit cards or even mortgage rates you qualify for. Though I don't remember it, the credit companies even had a specific name for it. So, all else being equal, you hurt your credit standing by accepting offers from the credit companies (even if you always pay on time, etc. etc. as we did).

Norm

Just now on the Charlie Rose show, a prediction by an experienced conservative campaign consultant:

"If Obama doesn't choose a woman for Vice-President[-ial candidate], McCain will."

Same guy said that (a) self-identified independents will be a larger percentage of the voters this year than in any other year since 1976 and (b) women will constitute 60 percent of those independent voters.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;136211]Just now on the Charlie Rose show, a prediction by an experienced conservative campaign consultant:

"If Obama doesn't choose a woman for Vice-President[-ial candidate], McCain will."

Same guy said that (a) self-identified independents will be a larger percentage of the voters this year than in any other year since 1976 and (b) women will constitute 60 percent of those independent voters.[/QUOTE]

McCain choosing a female running mate would be nothing more than the VP-choice equivalent of the proposed "gas tax holiday" - blatant political pandering. I expect most women would be insulted. I also don't believe this idea [probably being busily spun by the GOP] that significant numbers of Hillary supporters will switch to McCain if Obama doesn't pick Hillary as his running mate. Pure delusional fantasy. Hispanic and young voters are going to be lopsidely pro-Obama - it appears that Hillary's support amongst the former was mostly a carryover from their loyalty to her husband. Now that she's out of the race, they're switching their support to Obama more or less [i]en bloc[/i].

With this latest "why drive a more fuel-efficient vehicle when you can drill the crap out of our coasts and the ANWR and boost the profits of Big Oil while doing zilch to lower oil prices" flip-flop, I've lost the last shred of respect for the man. It would be so incredibly easy for Americans to cut their fuel consumption by 25% or more - but that might involve giving up the ol' 3-ton behemoth sitting in the driveway of the McMansion, which to the GOP seems about as popular an idea as gun control.

I've heard the talk that he might pick ex-Lucent, ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina - like my sister said about that, "Well, she helped run 2 major companies pretty much into the ground - yep, that's precisely what the country needs." A female right-wing moron is still a right-wing moron.

Dick Morris thinks Condi is the obvious choice for McCains VP, although she may not accept it. Further down he says "There is no clear standout choice among GOP female senators or governors." Carly didn't even make Dick's list.


[url]http://www.newsmax.com/morris/obama_mccain_vp/2008/06/12/104111.html[/url]

[QUOTE=wblipp;136255]Dick Morris thinks Condi is the obvious choice for McCains VP, although she may not accept it. Further down he says "There is no clear standout choice among GOP female senators or governors." Carly didn't even make Dick's list.[/QUOTE]There is too much negative sentiment around Rice for McCain to seriously accept. If he were to choose her, he would further polarize the race.