NY23 Press Corps Motto: 'When We Grow Up, We Want to Be Like John McCormack'

He's only 24 years old, but already this cub reporter for the Weekly Standard is followed everywhere in the 23rd District by adoring journalism groupies. McCormack is to would-be reporters what Joe Jonas is to middle-school girls -- the fantasy consummation of their fondest desires. By daring to ask Dede Scozzafava a few questions, young Johnny has accomplished the life's ambition of every j-school undergrad: He has "made a difference."

McCormack files yet another exclusive report from today's Bidenpalooza in Watertown, where Secret Service agents were reportedly under orders to tase him if he tried to ask the VP a question.

Other reporters at the Biden event -- including Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent -- struggle to keep pace with the brilliant blues riffs of "Johnny Lightning" McCormack, who also plays a mean bottleneck-slide guitar.

A Syracuse TV reporter cleverly seats himself between Kerry Picket and Kara Rowland of The Washington Times. Life is good, until his wife sees this photo.

Feisty, colorful Democratic State Party Chairwoman June O'Neill (left, in ill-fitting brown pantsuit) engages in shameless pre-Election Day demagoguery, to the horror of local schoolchildren and their parents (right).

Network TV cameras wait for opportunity to add new footage for your "Joe Biden's Greatest Gaffes" DVD collection. Attacking the Wall Street Journal? Classic!

Home-schooled children get a civics lesson, protesting the Biden/Owens/Pelosi/ACORN agenda while hoping to catch a glimpse of their hero, "Johnny Lightning" McCormack.

Having despaired of getting any big scoops at the Biden rally, I walked outside and posed for a photo with local Palinista "Sapwolf," who crushed my ego by asking, "Hey, can you introduce me to John McCormack?"

Sunday night supper in Watertown hotel where we staged last night's blogger conference call.

The National Desk, Watertown, N.Y., noon today.

NY23: Biden brings Joe-mentum to Watertown; media flock to see him

Just left the Bidenmania rally eight blocks from my hotel. The star of the show, really, was N.Y. Democratic Party State Chairwoman June O’Neill, a diminuitive fireball of liberal demagoguery.

O'Neill warned of "right-wing extremists who have brought their hate-mongering tactics to this district." (Unless I was mistaken, this must have been a reference to John McCormack of the Weekly Standard, who was at the event and being closely watched by local police, lest he start asking Biden questions.)

"We have to stop the madness," O'Neill told a crowd of about 200 Democrats who turned out for an event covered by about 30 reporters, including seven TV crews. "We cannot afford to let the right-wing extremists make a point in this district. . . . The right wing is not right."

O'Neill named Rush Limbaugh ("boo!"), Sean Hannity ("boo!") and Glenn Beck ("boo!") among the out-of-town right-wingers whom she accused of attempting to impose themselves on the defenseless citizenry of the 23rd Distict.

O'Neill was introduced by state Sen. Darrel Aubertine, who was offered the Democratic Party nomination and turned it down, thus forcing the Dems to go with Bill Owens, a Plattsburgh lawyer. Owens seems to be a nice guy, but he has zero name-ID in most of the 23rd District.

Hoffman continues to lead in the latest Siena poll and, at this point, the "undecided" poll respondents should be told to stay home. If you don't know whether you're a Democrat or a "right-wing extremist," you're too dumb to be allowed to vote.

Did Joe Biden make another gaffe in today's speech? I don't know. I didn't stick around for the whole thing. Unlike big-shot media types who have state-of-the-art Internet communication gear provided to them by wealthy publishers, all I had with me was some old-fashioned stuff called "notes" written on the back of a press release. (Somehow lost my pen and had to borrow a ballpoint from another reporter.)

Anyway, I figured I'd better get back here to the hotel lobby and poach their computer to file this, before I got totally scooped. C'est la guerre!

UPDATE: See my report at The American Spectator. Also, we're linked by that right-wing extremist Gateway Pundit, and I have posted exclusive photos from the rally. Hey, I'm no John McCormack, but I try . . .

Auguries of Economic Apocalypse

Last week was an excellent week for gloom and doom, not least because idiots were optimistic, a topic addressed in my latest American Spectator column:

Six months into a stock-market rally, Wall Street apparently saw more good news last week when a Labor Department report showed employment had jumped to 9.7 percent in August. Exactly why Friday's news -- joblessness at a 26-year high -- produced a 97-point gain in the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a good question, but if the stock market were perfectly predictable, we'd all be rich. . . .
First the Bush administration and now the Obama administration have pumped hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars into the system, justifying the stimulus-and-bailout policy as necessary to avert a financial cataclysm. Yet the augurs who study the entrails of the economy are muttering darkly about the inauspicious omens.
Last week, Vice President Joe Biden gave a happy-talk presentation -- "Rainbows! Unicorns! Recovery!" -- about the miraculous effects of the $787 billion stimulus package that President Obama rammed through Congress in February. Once more trotting out the administration's rhetoric about jobs "saved or created" (pick a number, any number), Biden declared, "In 200 days, the president's Recovery and Reinvestment Act isn't just working . . . it's working toward something: It's working toward a more resilient, more transformative economy."
Surely, many economists greeted this declaration with arched eyebrows. What, exactly, is a "transformative economy," and in what sense is it "more resilient"? Never mind. Being liberal means never having to define one's terms.
Biden showed himself adept at the art of ambiguity when he proclaimed to his Brookings Institution audience: "The Recovery Act has played a significant role in changing the trajectory of our economy, in changing the conversation about the economy in this country. Instead of talking about the beginning of a depression, we're talking about the end of a recession eight months after taking office."
Well, who is "we"? It is by no means universally agreed that the U.S. economy is now bound for the sunlit uplands of prosperity, and many of the financial augurs perceive that we may be approaching an economic abyss. . . .

Read the whole gloomy thing. And expect further omens of catastrophic Obamanomics at NTCNews.com. The revolution will not be televised, but the apocalypse will be blogged.

UPDATE: Doug Ross anticipates Zimbabwe USA.

UPDATE II: Taxpayers get screwed:

The federal government is unlikely to recoup all of the billions of dollars that it has invested in General Motors and Chrysler, according to a new congressional oversight report assessing the automakers' rescue.
The report said that a $5.4 billion portion of the $10.5 billion owed by Chrysler is "highly unlikely" to be repaid, while full recovery of the $50 billion sunk into GM would require the company's stock to reach unprecedented heights.
"Although taxpayers may recover some portion of their investment in Chrysler and GM, it is unlikely they will recover the entire amount," according to the report . . .

In other words, the auto bailout was a taxpayer-funded swindle, cheating the legitimate stakeholders on behalf of the UAW bosses. Oh, and here's some more cheerful news: Inflation's back!

UPDATE III: Read Max Baucus's lips: More New Taxes!

What the Baucus proposal means in real terms is that a family of four with a household income above $66,150 would face a tax of $3,800 if they do not obtain health care, while an individual with income above $32,490 would face a tax of $950.

Meanwhile, Cato's Andrew J. Coulson explains how Obama's stimulus spending on public schools is actually hurting the economy. Man, this is turning out to be a great day for gloom and doom!

VP at Shenendehowa High School

by Smitty (h/t Lucianne)

Vice President Biden was in New York state, creating a stir today:

The excitement about today's visit drew hundreds of people who lined up and then waited hours on Wednesday for a chance at a ticket to see the Democrat.

Opening act Spinal Tap almost whipped those hundreds of fans into a near froth prior to the VP's remarks about the virtual economic recovery that Smolderin' Joe's cunning plan has just about fomented.

Old School Ties UPDATE: Lobbyist?

Yesterday, the question was asked, "Who Is Eleanor Acheson?" The answer is that she's the Amtrak vice president and legal counsel whose name is relevant to last week's unexpected retirement of Amtrak inspector general Fred Wiederhold.

Acheson ("Eldie," to her friends) was also Hillary Rodham Clinton's college roommate and . . .

By sheerest coincidence, yesterday the State Department held its annual commemoration of "Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month," at which the remarks were given by the department's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills:

First, on behalf of Secretary Clinton, I am honored to be here today and to celebrate LGBT Pride Month . . .
It is my great pleasure now to introduce a woman who has spent years serving the American people at Amtrak, at the Justice Department, at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. She is a dear friend of Secretary Clinton, and she has been a wonderful public servant model and friend to me, Eldie Acheson.

NTTAWWT.

UPDATE: Ah, but there might be something wrong with this: Dan Riehl has discovered that, as recently as December 2008, Acheson was listed on a lobbyist disclosure form.

So, dear old Joe Biden gets $1.3 billion in "stimulus" money for Acheson's Amtrak, and they don't need no stinkin' IG sniffing around.

But wait a minute, there's more. As Michelle Malkin points out, Biden's all abou Amtrak. Suppose that Biden's fingerprints were discovered on some shenanigans at Amtrak, so that there was a real scandal? If dear old Joe had to resign . . .

Vice President Hillary? OK, that's far-fetched. But did anybody else notice that Hillary's now got Sidney Blumenthal working for her over at State Department?

Obama's popularity is starting to fade, Obama backstabs the gays, now all sorts of scandal talk is starting to swirl and is it really a conspiracy theory to ask, Cui bono?

C'mon, folks. Andrew Sullivan blogs kookier stuff than that every day. Question the timing!

Why Joe Biden hates beauty queens

Barbara West of WFTV in Orlando, Fla., is a former Miss Vermont who went onto an incredible career as a television reporter, covering such stories as the Chernobyl meltdown. So guess who decides to go for "viral video immortality" in her Joe Biden interview?

Michelle Malkin calls it "the best interview of Joe Biden ever," but the O'Biden campaign obviously disagrees. It's hard to choose a favorite question, but this one is definitely a standout:

You may recognize this famous quote: 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.' That's from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist, if he intends to 'spread the wealth around'?

That ought to get her a free lifetime subscription to The New American.

Biden: Losing the bigot vote?

Democrats say the darnedest things at San Francisco fundraisers:

As Election Day looms just over two weeks away, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said Saturday that with Republicans firing "vicious" and "dangerous" attacks at Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voters are "having a difficult time" opting for the man who would become the nation's first African American
president.
"Undecided people are having a difficult time just culturally making the change, making the move for the first African American president in the history of the United States of America," the Democratic vice-presidential nominee said at a San Francisco fundraiser Saturday evening. "So we need to respond. We need to respond at the moment, immediately, not wait, not hang around, not assume any of this won't stick."

(Via Jack M. at AOSHQ.) The Obama campaign hoovered up $150 million last month, they're outspending McCain as much as 4-to-1 in TV advertising, and Biden goes to San Francisco to whine, "Give us more money, because undecided voters are a bunch of racist crackers."

Biden, botoxed

So obvious, even the MSM can't ignore it:

Karen Bradley, a University of Maryland professor who studies politicians' body movement and what it conveys to voters, says it's "a little strange that nothing moves from his eyes on up" -- since she otherwise finds Biden a compelling communicator who powerfully telegraphs his conviction on a topic via other body language.
Barry Cohen, a Rockville plastic surgeon, is more blunt. "He clearly has had Botox," the doctor, a Republican, told us. "The lines are gone on his forehead. . . .
"Completely untrue, completely unsubstantiated," said Biden spokesman David Wade. "A lot of Americans will have fewer worry lines on their faces" when George Bush is out office, he added.

Hakuna matata!

DOES JOE BIDEN HAVE A LOVE CHILD?

Just asking. I was thinking of how convincing Joe was with the class-warfare rhetoric Thursday night, and something clicked: "Two Americas!"

The National Enquirer should start staking out Biden immediately, because he's just too good a class warrior not to have a flaky astrology-loving bimbo girlfriend stashed somewhere.

Joe "Silky Hairplugs" Biden!

Obligatory VP debate thread

UPDATED & BUMPED: After that debate, I think there can be no doubt which candidate America most wants to see in a bikini.

Yeah, you're darn right I changed the subject! Because America needs some straight talk from a maverick blogger about who's the sexiest candidate for vice president.

Gettin' things done! Main Street! Wasilla! Bikini pictures!

SERIOUS ANALYSIS: Joe Biden did not lose the election tonight. That's the most important thing. He might have lied through his teeth, but he's got very nice teeth, doesn't he?

Sarah Palin did better in her debate than John McCain did in his. She obviously dodged some questions, talking taxes when Biden raised the issue of regulation, and talking energy policy -- darn right! -- whenever she felt like it.

Biden was very sharp and very confident, and very repetitive. If you wanted to hear class-warfare talk about how the middle class is getting screwed over by the super-wealthy, tonight must have been heaven for you, since Palin also jumped onto the let's-bash-greedy-corrupt-Big-Business bandwagon.

Palin would be a much better candidate, I think, if she wasn't chained to Maverick. It was in defending McCain, and repeating the slogans and soundbites McCain's advisors had fed her, that she was least convincing.

Palin's best line was, "How long have I been at this? Like, five weeks?" That was good. I don't know if that was spontaneous, or something she'd practiced, but it was very good.

Biden's worst line was when he talked about a plan to "adjust the principle you owe" on your mortgage. Holy freaking crap! Good-bye, rule of law! Adjusting the principle? You paid $300,000 for a house in 2005, took out a loan for $270,000 and now, because it's not worth what you paid for it, the government is going to force the lender to mark down the principle to $200,000? That's not reform, that's larceny.

Jimmie at Sundries Shack links with a debate roundup -- thanks. In comments, Smitty just said he thought Gwen Ifill did an excellent job as moderator and I agree. Before the debate, there were accusations of bias, since Ifill's written (or is writing) a supposedly pro-Obama book. But in terms of her performance as moderator, Ifill seemed to me to be quite fair.

UPDATE: Team Maverick claims victory. Well, not "victory," perhaps, but she's "ready to lead," blahblahblah. I'm telling you, they're just going through the motions over at Maverick HQ these days. Working on their resumes and updating their LinkedIn pages, trying to look busy while watching the clock (is it lunch yet?) and thinking about playing golf Sunday.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin is ecstatic:

Sarah Palin is the real deal. Five weeks on the campaign trail, thrust onto the national stage, she rocked tonight’s debate.
She was warm, fresh, funny, confident, energetic, personable, relentless, and on message. . . .
McCain has not done many things right. But Sarah Palin proved tonight that the VP risk he took was worth it. . . .
She matched -- and trumped several times -- a man who has spent his entire adult life on the political stage, run for president twice, and as he mentioned several times, chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

And a man who, in fact, is the next vice president, since Maverick's poll numbers are heading south faster than that midnight train to Georgia. (Cue the Pips!) I think Michelle's enthusiastic response to tonight's debate isn't about Nov. 4, it's about . . .

PALIN 2012!

PREVIOUSLY: Not that it matters anymore, but tonight Sarah Palin squares off against Joe Biden and I just watched Karl Rove trying to spin the possibility that this might somehow avert the now-inevitable Obama administration.

While I henceforth refuse to believe that Maverick can win on Nov. 4, if Biden blurts out a confession to computer porn addiction tonight, it might prevent a 47-state sweep for the Democrats, so I'm obligated to pretend I care.

Hot Air has a live debate chat thread. Allah has a separate comment thread. Or you may want to play Biden Bingo.

UPDATE: Ace tries to put the jinx on, suggests that a Biden blurt might yet doom the Democrats, and will have an open debate thread where you can say the f-word as often as you'd like.

Coulter on Biden

Some advice for Sarah Palin:

Shockingly, Sen. Joe Biden was one of only five senators to vote against the first Alaskan pipeline bill in 1973. This is like having been a Nazi sympathizer during World War II. If Sarah Palin does nothing else, she has got to tie that idiotic pipeline vote around Biden's neck.
The Senate passed the 1973 Alaskan pipeline bill by an overwhelming 80-5 vote. Only five senators voted against the pipeline on final passage. Sen. Biden is the only one who is still in the Senate -- the other four having been confined to mental institutions long ago.
The stakes were clear: This was in the midst of the first Arab oil embargo. . . . But Biden cast one of only five votes against the pipeline that has produced more than 15 billion barrels of oil, supplied nearly 20 percent of this nation's oil, created tens of thousands of jobs, added hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and reduced money transfers to the nation's enemies by about the same amount.
The only argument against the pipeline was that it would harm the caribou, an argument that was both trivial and wrong. The caribou population near the pipeline increased from 5,000 in the 1970s to 32,000 by 2002.
It would have been bad enough to vote against the pipeline bill even if it had hurt the caribou. A sane person would still say: Our enemies have us in a vice grip. Sorry, caribou, you've got to take one for the team. But when the pipeline goes through and the caribou population sextuples in the next 20 years, you really look like a moron.

The moron debates Sarah Palin tonight, and everybody's worried about Palin making a gaffe?

Biden's beach bridge

(Via Hot Air.) Joe Biden and Barack Obama both voted twice for Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere." Kudos to CNN for doing their due diligence here.

Bidenism

"Part of what a leader does is to instill confidence and demonstrate that he or she knows what they're talking about . . ." Great leadership, Joe! (Via Hot Air, and just in case there are idiot liberals reading this: 1. Franklin Roosevelt wasn't president in 1929; 2. TV wasn't invented until 1939 and didn't become widely available until the late 1940s.)

This morning, "Fox & Friends" did a thing about Joe Biden's gaffe-a-day campaign and showed the "stand up, Chuck" line, but didn't explain it. My wife hadn't heard about that, so I explained to her that Chuck --Missouri State Sen. Chuck Graham -- is in a wheelchair.

"God love ya! What am I talking about?"

Joe Cheapskate

Tax Prof Blog:

[T]he returns show that the Bidens have been amazingly tight-fisted when it comes to their charitable giving. Despite income ranging from $210,432 - $321,379 over the ten-year period, the Bidens have given only $120 - $995 per year to charity, which amounts to 0.06% - 0.31% of their income.

Jennifer Rubin:

I’m sure this isn’t what the Obama camp had in mind when they refashioned the man who spent three decades in Washington riding to and from home on taxpayer subsidized Amtrak into A Man of The People.

Man of the Cheaple!

Biden: Chicks don't dig him

Of course, Obama's got enough surplus sexy to cover Joe's deficit, but still:

Women are notably less enthusiastic than men -- 33% of women say Biden was the right choice while 27% disagreed. Men, by a 46% to 24% margin, said that Obama made the right choice. . . . He earns favorable reviews from 52% of men and 45% of women.
Just 16% of women have a Very Favorable opinion of Biden while 19% have a Very Unfavorable view. . . .
Not surprisingly, Democrats were more supportive of Obama’s decision than anybody else -- 52% of those in his party agreed with his pick while 19% disagreed. However, just 43% of Democratic women said the presumptive nominee made the best pick while 23% disagreed.

So even if Biden's no Tom Eagleton, he doesn't seem to be the kind of unalloyed asset Obama needed. Maybe chicks don't dig Joe because he's such an overbearing braggart?

At any rate: Feel the burn, PUMAs!

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey on the poll:

Not only has Biden not helped Obama, it looks like he’s actually damaging the ticket with his addition. He certainly hasn’t added any enthusiasm to the Democratic offering. Did Team Obama do any serious research on Biden and his effect before making this selection?

Also not digging Joe? Free-weeders:

Biden has sponsored more damaging drug war legislation than any Democrat in Congress. Hate the way federal prosecutors use RICO laws to take aim at drug offenders? Thank Biden. How about the abomination that is federal asset forfeiture laws? Thank Biden. Think federal prosecutors have too much power in drug cases? Thank Biden. Think the title of a "Drug Czar" is sanctimonious and silly? Thank Biden, who helped create the position (and still considers it an accomplishment worth boasting about).

And Tommy Chong says Biden's a narc, man.

PREVIOUSLY:
8/23: Bidenfreude?
8/23: D Minus-2: Gonzo on Veeps
8/23: BIDEN VP WTF ROTFLMAO

Pity Obama

Ron Rosenbaum:

As Joe says "It's a journey." Right, and for poor Barack it’s going to be like he’s Steve Martin and Biden is John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. What was he thinking?

Indeed.

Video: Biden in 1988

Via Hot Air:



Next time somebody accuses me of being a loudmouthed, arrogant smart-aleck -- man, that's leadership!

Bidenfreude?

Bidenfreude (n.) The joy Republicans feel at Democratic despondency over Obama's vice presidential choice.

Anita Thompson is a wonderful person. I should feel no pleasure at her glum reaction to Old Pluggy as Barack Obama's running-mate pick. Then again, I recall no sympathy from my liberal friends when Maverick somehow foisted himself on the GOP.

Besides, as Philip Klein reports from Denver, many Democrats in the Hyatt Bar think Joe's just dandy:

I struck up a conversation with an Obama volunteer from Portland, Oregon, and told him who I write for. After the speech, he came over and confidently said, "you guys are in trouble."
Though he acknowledged that Biden could be a "loose cannon," he thinks he's a known quantity who will bring experience to the ticket.
He was also convinced that Obama was not going to be like John Kerry, but would be prepared to fight back against Republican attacks -- especially because he took on the Clinton Machine. "That's like taking on the frickin' mafia," he exclaimed.

So cheer up, Anita: Obama's disciples believe the Messiah can do no wrong, including picking a veep candidate who comes complete with an extensive GOP oppo-research dossier.

D Minus-2: Gonzo on Veeps

I had been without sleep for two or three days at the time, and my temper was close to the surface. Beyond that, I had spent the past five or six days brooding angrily over the list of vice-presidential possibilities that McGovern had floated in the New York Times several days before the convention even started. I recall telling Mankiewicz in the coffee shop on Friday night that I had never seen so many bums and hacks listed in a single paragraph in any publication for any reason. . . .
But Frank assured me that my wrath was premature. "Don't worry," he said. "I think you'll be pleasantly surprised." . . .
So there was nothing personal in my loud objections to Eagleton a week later. It struck me as a cheap and unncessary concession to the pieced-off ward-heeler syndrom that McGovern had been fighting all along. Tom Eagleton was exactly the kind of VP candidate that Muskie or Humphrey would have chosen: a harmless, Catholic, neo-liberal Rotarian nebbish from one of the border states who presumably wouldn't make any waves.
-- Hunter S. Thompson,
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

For some reason, the late Dr. G0nzo's words keep haunting me this year. While so many of the circumstances in this year's election are unprecedented ("vuja de," as George Carlin would say), Team Obama keeps making moves that recall the absurd overconfidence of the McGovern campaign in 1972, when Mankiewicz, Hart & Co. seriously believed that the unpopularity of Nixon and the Vietnam war would guarantee the election of whoever won the Democratic Party nomination.

Obama's choice of Joe Biden strikes me as eerily similar to McGovern's pick of Tom Eagleton 36 years ago. Unlike Eagleton -- a young nobody in '72 when he was tapped for the No. 2 spot -- Biden is a known quantity, and all of Biden's scandals are old news. While there may be some undiscovered conflict-of-interest scandal lurking in Joe's closet, we're unlikely to be shocked (pardon the pun) by any revelation of secret treatment for mental illness.

Yet Biden is definitely a concession to the Old Guard, "the Ultimate Washington Insider," as Patrick Ruffini says, and exactly the sort of Establishment figure that HST would have denounced as a "bum" and a "hack."

Beyond that, naming the choice in the wee hours Saturday completely undercuts the obstensible purpose of the text-message announcement idea. When this idea was originally announced, you could see its brilliance: About 11 a.m. on a weekday, for instance, the text message would go out, everybody would get it on their cellphones or Blackberries, and the name of the nominee would spread via word-of-mouth buzz in the workplace. Supporters would have the exciting memory of one of those "I remember exactly where I was" moments.

Instead, the campaign dawdled so long that (a) there could not possibly be any word-of-mouth factor, and (b) the MSM beat them to the punch. As Ed Morrissey says:

I’m not sure a political campaign could possibly screw up a running-mate announcement as badly as Team Obama.

Well, it could be done, Ed: McGovern waited until 4 p.m. on the Thursday of the convention before making the call to Eagleton. Still, as in '72, the disappointment of many on the Left is palpable, especially among Hillary's supporters like Jeralyn Merritt (who is "underwhelmed and greatly disappointed") and Big Tent Democrat, who says, "Hell of a rollout. Not."

Enough of that. My flight for Denver leaves tomorrow, and between now and then I've got two articles to write, including about 1,400 words of print-only reporting that will require me to transcribe audio (my least favorite job in the world). So I've got to stop blogging and start writing, and you can't expect many updates from me until I've at least made some headway on that stuff.

UPDATE: 350 words into writing the first of two pieces, I take a break to note Michael Goldfarb's observation:

But what's with holding the text message until 3 a.m. for Joe Biden? The only explanation that makes any sense is that Team Obama just couldn't resist one last dig at Hillary.

Allahpundit disagrees:

A likelier explanation: They meant to send it out this morning, but the networks scooped them by confirming the pick around midnight so they had to push it out ahead of schedule to save as much face as possible.

Either way, they've pushed it into the Saturday news cycle and blown whatever word-of-mouth buzz factor they might have gotten by sending the message in the middle of a weekday.

UPDATE II: Linked by Memorandum, Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft, Moe Lane at Red State, and Stephen Green at Vodka Pundit. Thanks all. And hey, Tommy Chong says Joe Biden's a narc -- pass it on, man!

UPDATE III: Ed Driscoll links with "The Enharshening of the Mellow." Wow. Heavy, man.

BIDEN VP WTF ROTFLMAO

The text message heard 'round the world.

Why did they wait until after midnight? What was the thinking there?

PJM has a quick rundown of blog reaction. I'll add more after I drink a cup of coffee.

UPDATE: OK, the straight news from Associated Press:

Barack Obama named Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware as his vice presidential running mate early Saturday, balancing his ticket with a seasoned congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues.
Obama announced the pick on his Web site with a photo of the two men and an appeal for donations. A text message went out shortly afterward that said, "Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee."
Biden, 65, has twice sought the White House, and is a Catholic with blue-collar roots, a generally liberal voting record and a reputation as a long-winded orator.

You can say that again. And again.

UPDATE II: Man, that was quick:

UPDATE II: Something tells me the graphics department at Obama HQ wasn't very excited about having to work late Friday night on this announcement.

VodkaPundit's got the slogan:

Change you can believe in -- because it's been in Washington since 1973 already.

Yeah. That works.

UPDATE III: Michelle Malkin dubs it the "Smarmy & Smirky" ticket, probably because "Ren & Stimpy" was already taken.

Linking the story of Biden's notorious plagiarism, Ed Morrissey says:

Now Obama, who supposedly represents a new brand of politics, has instead hitched his wagon to an old-time pol who has trouble coming up with his own words when he campaigns. That’s desperation, and what’s more, it’s obvious desperation. And in politics, just as in dating, desperation is not an aphrodisiac.

Bridget Johnson of the Rocky Mountain News:

Joe Biden, change?? Biden, the sixth-longest-serving and notoriously long-winded senator? Biden, who was named a Face for the Future by Time magazine in his freshman senatorial year -- in 1974, before I was even born? Biden, who withdrew from the 1988 presidential race after speech-plagiarizing and school-grade-exaggerating scandals? Biden, who snagged a whopping 1% of Iowa delegates in January?

But, but, but ... Biden is so beloved by the "progressive netroots community"!

UPDATE IV: Gonzo on Veeps.

UPDATE IV: Linked by Fausta. Thanks.

UPDATE V: Linked by Dad29, who offers what is likely to be a common reaction of Catholic traditionalists to Obama's pick of a pro-choice "Catholic."