Sometime in the next 1 – 200 hours, most of us that read this site will be getting a text message. We all have opinions, some stronger than others, about what the name in that message should/must be. One thing we can all agree on is that Senator Obama and his staff have spent far more time and effort thinking about all the possible permutations than any of us. They have more resources and more information than any of us to decide on who the running mate should be. The decision they make will be a hard one, but they will have made every possible effort to make sure it’s the best one.

If you had told me a month ago - hell, probably a day ago - that I would suggest what I am about to suggest, I would have told you that you were crazy, but here it is anyway:

I think Hillary Clinton would be a solid running mate.

I can hear the complaints already.  Hillary is the DLC wing, she is everything we've worked to defeat, she is the personification of the middle-of-the-road bumbling that helped bury this party for 40 years, she goes against the Change theme, etc., etc.

But hear me out - or read me out, anyway.

Today's USA Election Poll results show that Vermont leads all 50 states in support for Senator Obama's candidacy at 63%, and ranks as one of the lowest in its support for McSame, revealing that Vermont is blessed with only 29% of the sort of folks who still drink the koolaid.

Vermont has the lowest McSame support in the nation.

WhooHoo.........

Yes - I'm calling out Pastor Rick Warren.  Because last night, on Larry King Live, Warren dismissed as "bogus"  concerns about McCain having prior knowledge of specific questions.  He asserted that there's no chance that McCain could have gotten questions during his drive to the forum because "the  Secret Service would have reported it". Why are Warren and many in the media assiduously ignoring very clear evidence that John McCain knew at least one of the questions ahead of time?  Do they expect us to believe them or should we believe our lying eyes?

h/t to jbalazs for the excellent video
Let's make it viral.

[transcripts plus video from Warren's appearance on Larry King Live after the jump]

When they speak of the term Appalachia, people are usually thinking of West Virginia, Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee. But the culture and economic conditions of the Appalachian region extend well into western Pennsylvania and southeastern sections of Ohio. All agree that these two states are important in this year’s presidential election. Under many scenarios the voter outcome in Ohio could either give or deny the White House to Barack Obama.

The 2004 election illustrates the importance of Ohio. In 2004 George W. Bush won the state of Ohio by 119,000 votes. Had John Kerry defeated Bush in Ohio, Kerry would have won the presidency.

They sure have to do a lot of clarifying in the McCain campaign, don't they?

McCain set off a firestorm last week when he suggested that the 86 year old agreement that allocates the scarce resource of the Colorado River among the seven states of the Colorado Basin "obviously needs to be renegotiated" because of "new realities of high growth, of greater demands on a scarcer resource," he didn't mean it should, you know, be renegotiated, really, to make sure that the high growth states of California, Nevada, and Arizona got more of that scarce resource. But that's sure how it sounded to the people of Colorado.

So here comes the McCain campaign with what he "really" meant:

Tom Kise, the McCain campaign's Colorado spokesman, said McCain was not proposing that the 2007 agreement be reopened or any immediate talks on the compact.

"He's talking about ongoing conversations, conversations that happen this year, next year, 10, 20, 30 years down the road," Kise said.

Kise said McCain knows global warming is changing water conditions in the West, and that means the states need to talk. "As long as water is going to be an issue in the West, there should be an open conversation among all parties," Kise said.

Ah, so the states need to talk, that's all he was saying. Only problem is: they have been.

Considering he's a Senator from one of those seven states in the compact, you think he'd have somewhat of a better grasp of the actual policy making on the issue in his state. See, the seven states' governors came together last year to address current changing water conditions. In fact, they came up with an agreement:

The agreement was signed April 23 in Las Vegas by representatives of the Colorado River basin states of Colorado, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The agreement proposes reducing deliveries of Colorado River water to Arizona and Nevada when storage in Lake Mead drops below certain set levels, thus reducing the risk of shortages in Colorado. The agreement would reduce the risk of shortages in the lower Colorado River by coordinating Hoover and Glen Canyon dam operations. The agreement also proposes a system for storing in Lake Mead water saved through conservation efforts or the development of new water sources.

In addition to resolving current Colorado River disputes, the agreement reduces the likelihood of future litigation among the seven Colorado River basin states by encouraging cooperation and consultation between the states. "Litigation pitting state against state over the Colorado River would cost taxpayers millions, and the likely result would not please anyone," said Colorado Attorney General John Suthers. "Thanks to the hard work of the parties involved, we can now work with - not against - other states to resolve our water disputes."

Into the middle of all this stumbles McCain, ignoring--or completely ignorant of--the fact that the seven governors (including California's, Nevada's, and Arizona's) decided that those states needed to work on how to find some of their own water, ignoring the fact that this was a complex and difficult set of negotiations.

Between this and his long support of using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump, McCain's shown that he's pretty much completely out of touch with what is going on in the West. He's just not much of a westerner anymore.

How do we get Jack to run for POTUS???  He definitely DOES NOT beat around the bush:

Read his commentary here:  

http://www.cnn.com/...

Continued from http://www.dailykos.com/...

DOOD. WR is grn rm?

in bak

wht bak? this plc has like 10 baks. its fn huge

its a MEGA chrch

k found it. its nt grn, but full of jzsfrks. must be rght plc.

thts it.

Yesterday I posted a mopey diary, to clean out the McNastiness that accumulated in my brain over the weekend. But after several joyous events in the past 24 hours, I'm starting to feel something remarkably like . . . HOPE.

1. Ben Smith used the phrase "playing the POW card" to describe McShame's post-Saddleback shenanigans, and others have used that phrase here. This should be our rallying cry. Say it loud, say it proud, and say it often. We need to get that phrase mainstreamed. It's not only a pithy soundbite, it has the distinction of being true, and in fact encapsulating the most egregious sins flaws of the McCain campaign.

2. KO ripped McCain several new ones in an absolutely KICK-ASS Special Comment that gave eloquent voice to nearly all strands of the pent-up frustration I've been feeling lately. And he and Rachel M shredded McKingOfTheWorld for basically accusing Obama of treason in his VFW speech Monday.

3. I watched a video of Barack's July 2nd "Call to Service" speech in Colorado Springs.

More happy times below . . .

When I wrote the diary concerning the uncanny resemblance between John McCain's Christmas story and the story of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet gulags, I had no idea about the response it would really generate.  I figured that people would see it as an interesting "gotcha" story, and that maybe people would be interested enough in it to place my diary on the rec list.  Well, I can honestly say that I GREATLY underestimated the interest and I underestimated the feedback, both positive and negative, that it has generated.

Josh Marshall says:

On the other hand, wholly separate from the cosmetics and electioneering calculus, I think he'd be a good choice. On substance, maybe a really good choice. Most senators grasp of foreign policy is fairly thin -- and it tends to be heavily influenced by whatever lobbyists or power players are in their orbit. But Biden has a pretty deep knowledge of pretty much every big foreign policy question. And his ideas and judgment strike me as fundamentally sane.

Judgment? Biden voted for the Iraq war. But beyond that, even if we stipulate that he has foreign policy chops, how does that make him a good veep choice? It strikes me that any pick designed to cover up a "flaw" in Obama (i.e. "lack of foreign policy credentials") only accentuates those flaws. Make him secretary of state.

Sure, compared to Bayh and Kaine, Biden looks almost passable, but that's a low hurdle to pass. I'd rather not have to choose my poison. I'd rather have candy.

I'm already assuming disappointment on Obama's pick, so I won't belabor one bad choice or another. But I'd love to see him pick a fresh face in politics who reinforces Obama's message of change. Biden doesn't. Clinton doesn't. Bayh certainly doesn't. If holding out for Sebelius is too much to ask for, and if Obama is going to pick a guy that has been around for decades, then pick Kerry. Or even Daschle.

But the senator from MBNA? That choice would be exciting to perhaps two audiences -- the Broderites and the credit card industry.

So where did Andrea Mitchell get the cojones to say on Meet the Press that "cone of silence" may not have been so silent?

Her statement was;

The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that -- what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.

Well...according to right wing blogger Noel Sheppard in Newsbusters.com she probably based her insight from reading DailyKos;

So where did Mitchell get this idea from? Might it have been a Daily Kos blog posted at 9:22 PM PDT Saturday entitled McCain cheated? proof he knew the questions ahead of time:

It was jbalazs diary.

Saturday Night’s Political Forum hosted by Pastor Rick Warren was one of the most interesting campaign events this year.    It was nice to hear someone from the right argue that it is essential that Americans (both conservative & liberal) learn to argue their viewpoints WITHOUT demonizing the other side.    In coming to terms with the idea that we are all Americans (even when we disagree) we build upon the idea that we are greater as a nation together than we are as the sum of our separate ideologies.

John McCain and Barack Obama testified before a large audience of Southern Baptists at the Saddleback Church in Orange County, California. They also used up a large chunk of prime time television.

It's not the debate that irks me a little; it's the idea that somebody's religious views are pertinent to the kind of leadership the country needs to get over the unholy mess created by our born-again President.

How about settling first on what's important in making a person "religious?" In the same way wearing a flag pin doesn't make someone patriotic, believing abortion is a sin doesn't make somebody Christian. After all, the views of fundamental Muslims and fundamental Christians regarding drinking are identical, as are the prohibitions on pork by Muslims and Jews.

I propose leaving religious debates to religious leaders and their followers and allowing the TV producers and their anchors to concentrate on the truly important rapes, murders and sporting events by which they uplift and enlighten our lives.

While everyone in the Netroots and the Mainstream Media obsessed on Barack Obama's performance at the Saddleback Faith Fakery, everyone continues to ignore the fact that the Christian Evangelical base of the Republican Party is cracking and showing intense disinterest in Grandpa McSame.

A disinterest so intense that even reliable mouthpieces of the Religious Right like the American Family Association's propaganda orifice, OneNewsNow, remarks on the McCain malaise in a piece headlined, "Evangelical Vote Flounders".

To fulfill the "must talk about VP talk," Obama said he "Loves Richardson" in an interview with a local TV station.

Oh, and more pics at my Flickr set on the event.

I left my house at 10:00 am just to see Barack Obama at Rio Grande High School, a 45 minute drive from my house down in the heavily Hispanic South Valley.  I got back to my house at about 4:00 after battling traffic and my need for a stuffed sopapilla from Stufy’s (try the #8s if you ever go to Stufy’s).  Was it worth it?  Yeah.

Obama showed up at Rio Grande High School Monday for a town hall meeting, with hundreds of supporters cheering him on.  Included were some Democratic big-hitters, including Gov. Bill Richardson and Senate candidate Tom Udall.

Before Obama arrived, some New Mexico Democratic candidates and elected officials received attention from the gathering crowd in the sweltering gymnasium.  

All of the turmoil about "Questiongate" has centered around McDick having an audio feed or something in his green room, or how he was leaving the Sizzler Buffet (senior night, woot woot!) in his motorcade. Guess what? Cell phones/Blackberries work in motorcades and green rooms!

More below the fold.

Why didn't he just say "No, we didn't hear anything?"

When asked if McCain overheard anything, Charlie Black, a McCain adviser who was with him at the time, told CNN: "We were in motorcade until 5:30 p.m. ET; then a holding room in another building with no TV."

CNN

Has the McCain camp denied getting information, or are they still sticking with the bizarro-world assertion that information cannot penetrate a secret service motorcade?