I got an e-mail, I'd say it's a lock.

Much rather have him then Bayh.

Text message and email: it's Biden. :)

What a stupid way to announce who the VP is going to be. And at around 5 in the morning, or at least after 3 am and before 8 am...

I agree. Yesterday the Obama camp was saying the texts would come while the "nation was wake" Umm, what nation? China?

"Katie bar the door" ... it's Biden (Biden says that a lot)

Some interesting statements by Joe Biden regarding Obama...

"The idea of nominating someone without unimpeachable credentials on national security and foreign policy would be a tragic mistake." Biden said during a radio interview in August 2007

"Would I make a blanket commitment to meet unconditionally with the leaders of each of those countries? Absolutely, positively, no." Biden asked in August 2007, referring to Sen. Obama's reported willingness to meet with leaders of rogue states.

"The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training."
From the candidate debate in August 2007, when Sen. Biden was asked about his previous criticism of Sen. Obama.

I wonder what changed Senator Joe Biden's mind... perhaps dreams of "Vice President" Joe Biden.

The good news is that Biden also said: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy... I mean, that's a storybook, man."

This all brings to mind some saying regarding strange bed-fellows.

Here's McCain's response



ouch

Sorta like GHW Bush's statements about Reagan during that primary...or Edwards statements about Kerry during the primary...or go all the way back to LBJ's statements about JFK.

Nothing new..when a candidate selects someone who was in the primaries.

But, I'm sure we will hear every Biden comment about Obama..again and again and again (and we will see the same if McCain happens to select Romney)

IMO, Biden is a good pick...experienced, respected and he can be very aggressive when necessary.

Yeah I don't see this as a problem. If the story doesn't just die (which it probably will) Biden just needs to say I have got to know Obama and his possitions better and I was wrong in the past.

If being wrong in the past is a major issue i'm sure the dems can point to McCains statements about us needing to attack Iraq days after 9/11 or the fact that McCain said Iraq would be easy (pararphased).

Yes... and we should also point to all the Democratic and Republican Senators and Representatives that said similar things about Iraq after 9/11 (Obama was only a State Senator at the time) as we examine who to send or replace in Congress this Fall.

What do you think you are? You think Obama is "the most liberal member of the US senate....or....you believe he is "the candidate for change".

Obama stated that household income above $250,000, is wealthy, yet in the NYC metro area, one of the wealthiest in the US, only 5 percent of households even have income above $200,000.....and the average household income there....above average compared to the national average, is less than $47,000.

$250,000 annual income is "enjoyed" by less than the top 5 percent of US households, indeed, the 2006 census shows 3,020,284 households in the "New York city, NY, New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area", with only about 5 percent of those households.... 156,621, with income above $200,000.

If you think Obama is "too liberal", or that he will "bring change".....consider what he says.....consider his choice for his running mate, and consider that you might be right of center in your political leanings, and not even realize it yet.

Is it unreasonable to think that your view is out of touch? The 2007 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances release is delayed....until after the election, because the 2004 survey showed that the top ten percent owned 70 percent of all US wealth, and the bottom 50 percent owned just 2-1/2 percent. The latest survey will show an even wider disparity between haves and have nots. Hence, it is better to conceal the 2007 SCF stats until after a candidate for NO CHANGE, either Obiden or McSame, wins in November.

People....the GINI coefficient wasn't much higher in Venezuala when Hugo Chavez gained the backing of the poor, than it is now, in the US. In some countries the elite are pragmatic enough and less corrupted by greed to know enough that, at some point, the sheeple will discover that they are sheeple, and then they get angry and sometimes, even violent.

Saying someone is the most liberal Senator is like saying that someone is the tallest person who was born with dwarfism.

Biden isn't an unreasonable choice, but he's not the choice I would have made. Despite my personal objections, it's clear that anyone or anything running against McCain deserves my consideration.

host, the change you seek just isn't going to happen without violence.

The change others are seeking is much more incremental and has more to do with different flavours of ice cream.

To continue the analogy, while most are looking for a different flavour of ice cream, you would like to reinvent mealtime as we know it. This is why few understand where you are coming from.

revolutions do not simply happen---they involve (and express) a political vision of an alternate arrangement---if you can say that the history of the political left came out of the french revolution without repeating it, the difference lay in the understanding that the french revolution effectively ate itself, that what motored this eating of itself was a series of groups which came to power each of which claimed to locate or embody the revolution.

in the present, there is no coherent viewpoint that looks forward. there is no revolutionary politics. there is not even a coherent notion of what revolution might mean. such is the pulverized state of affairs which confronts folk who see in the existing order mostly a farce, a brutal, tragic idiotic farce and imagine that the only way forward is forward.
there are legion viewpoints that run away from the present: to reinforce this very american tendency to substitute past for present, there are many options, most one or another variant of hyper-nationalism, more therefore one or another variant of fascism--some heavier, some more lite.

i see more a process of structural breakdown coming with a main experiential correlate in a sense of suffocation: the inhabitants of a building watch television footage of their building burning so they can "know what's happening"
mediated in this fashion, the present is already the past.
mediated in this fashion, there's no possibility of radically altering what is because (a) the features of the existing order which are ideological are collapsed onto features of objects in the world because there is no making of the world, only a reception.
mediated in this fashion, the present is already the past.
the room is taped shut: windows locked, doors bolted.
we'll sit in chairs until the smoke comes and we drift off to sleep.

so people prefer incremental change because they see on television and read in the papers that incremental change is change itself. if they believe that, then it's true, yes?

incremental change in a situation of incoherence gets you what exactly?

well, it's hard to say, isn't it?
but the reverse, which is refusing even that, seems a bad idea: we have the history of the ideological war on america waged by the right since the late 1970s to demonstrate that.

if there's to be a more radical possibility, it has to be built.
building that possibility is not going to happen on a messageboard.
this is not the world.
this is a fragment of the world.

===============
i am not surprised that biden is obama's running mate.
despite everything said above, i think obama is preferable to another republican administration. maybe it's no more than prefering a slower mounting of smoke in the room to a faster one.
but there is the possibility that the present is open, that the future can be otherwise, and that on it's own makes me think that slower mounting smoke is preferable.

Biden is a very good pick..... won't change my vote, but I do like Biden and think he would make a good president or VP.

I think in some ways it is a strong pick that can help Obama with some voters but..... ummm .... Otto's posting of McCain's ad pretty much shows it will probably hurt Obama more.

Surely, the Obama camp isn't stupid, they'd have have to known that ad would be coming. That ad will hurt him far more than putting Biden on the ticket will help him.

I truly wonder if he is trying to lose before he gets nominated.

The ad will be old news by next week..... particularly if McCain picks Romney and the Democrats respond with the same silly "gotcha" game.

While Obama focues on his pollicy agenda, Biden will be the pitbull out on the stump every day reminding the undecideds how McCain voted with Bush over 95% of the time....and he has the credibility to make it stick.

how important are adverts in shaping your viewpoint?

Yeah Rush, Fox and an endless supply of right wing blogs will provide the right leaning folks with talking points. This would have happened regardless of who was tapped.

Air America, Olbermann and the left wing blogs will do the same when McCain announces his pick.

I think in the end these types of ads have little effect on the average voter.

Election time really is silly season time in the US.

Yeah elections have turned into a football game where people picked their sides a long long time ago and the only thing that matters is betting the other side any way you can. The worst of it in politics it seems like there are a lot more of those rowdy fans who cheer when an opposing player gets hurt. The US political system is very close to breaking and in my opinion in its current state it only divides the public and makes them think that their neighbor is their enemy. Its all a bit Orwealian.

For me not much at all, but that ad is funny and I think it will be effective for some. Will it decide the election? No, but it will affect a few votes.