Time To Get Serious?

We're pretty much done with travelling for the summer, so maybe it's time to get serious about the political scene. After all, the party conventions are just a few weeks away (remember all that wasted blather--including here--about deadlocked conventions?) and Veep talk fills the air.

Still, it's not even August. Everyone's leaving town. Other than trying to hit a major highway on a Friday afternoon, you can even get around the D.C. metro area without too much trouble.

So, it's difficult to get too serious about the presidential race just yet.

But we'll try. First off, there was Obama's foreign tour. Really, it was a big success, regardless of what the pundits say. You just know there are high level folks over at the McCain campaign saying "why didn't we think of that?" [Of course, McCain would look pretty silly now in Germany surrounded by 5o people--he just doesn't have Obama's drawing power.]

Indeed, it was so successful that the McCain campaign had to manufacture a fake story about Obama shunning hospitalized vets because they wouldn't let the media in. See the Washington Post story on McCain's fabrication--widely picked up by the MSM--here.

Then there's the Veepstakes. Again, just to get some space on the news, the McCain campaign kept leaking false reports last week that the former Straight Talker was about to name his Veep pick. We're still waiting.

On the Obama side, Kaine-mania is sweeping the Old Dominion. We love Tim Kaine, but we don't think Obama will make Virginia's governor his running mate. Kaine is as inexperienced as Obama, and while he's a "moderate" Democrat, his profile is far lower than that of say, Mark Warner or Jim Webb.

In any event, why speculate? August is a slow news month, and both campaigns will seek to generate some coverage by naming their VP picks pretty soon.

We also have Goodling-gate: the Justice Dept. report that it is shocked, just shocked, to learn that Monica Goodling and other Bush/Rove Kommisars were enforcing a political standard for hiring of career lawyers at DOJ. We got news for you: everyone knew this, and it wasn't limited to DOJ. Why do you think our government has been so darned incompetent for the past 7 years?

Finally, here's a little straight talking video of a double-talking John McCain, courtesy of our friend CH: