I feel like I've entered the twilight zone. This racist tool is actually defending his "uppity" remarks under the guise that he's never heard it used in a "racially deragotary sense." From his own filthy mouth:

Westmoreland, who is contemplating a 2010 run for governor, released the following statement:

"I've never heard that term used in a racially derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of `uppity' is `affecting an air of inflated self-esteem --- snobbish.' That's what we meant by uppity when we used it in the mill village where I grew up."

"Violent Islamic Extremists," as Giuliani et al. call them, don't scare me. So, unlike Rudi, Sarah and Mitt, I was quite pleased that the speakers at the DNC did not obsess over them ad nauseam. Being an Israeli-American, though, I am very afraid.

The Violent Christian Extremists terrify me. A popular member of this Christian Jihadist movement, who has a strong record of associating with anti-semitic hate mongers, recently heightened my fear:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a "task that is from God."

In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it "God's will."

Palin asked the students to pray for the troops in Iraq, and noted that her eldest son, Track, was expected to be deployed there.

"Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

Although Violent Islamic and Christian Extremists share identical rhetoric (i.e. "on a mission from G-d"), methods (violence) and end-game (that whole Armageddon thing), the Violent Christian Extremists have been far more successful in their execution. This is not surprising given that one of their leading, most violent Mujahadeen is the US President. Like his Al Queda analogs, he claims to receive his marching orders directly from G-d:

Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egpytian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."

Mr Bush went on: "And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it."

Violent Islamic Extremists, while capable of horrible violence, are clearly outmatched by their Christian counterparts, who have the strength of the world's most powerful nation-state behind them. The results are indeed horror-inducing:

*4000+ American Dead, tens of thousands maimed
*Tens of thousands (or, more likely, hundreds of thousands) of civilian dead
*Perpetual war and an infinite potential for expanding the magnitude of the current conflicts and the resulting impact to civilian populations

I lifted the following article almost entirely from an actual Associated Press piece detailing Palin's association with the Alaskan Independence Party. I made minor changes to illustrate how said article would read if the tables were turned. Read it. When you're finished, imagine the seizures and convulsions the media would be having had the secessionist shoe been on Obama's foot.

Obama camp: Questions on Obama's party a 'smear'

By FRANKLIN P. BLEAUXHAARD- 30 minutes ago

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Barack Obama's campaign said Tuesday that rival John McCain's campaign was spreading "smears" about the Illinois Senator's past political affiliations. Yet, some of Obama's previous political activities are a matter of dispute.

At issue are claims by members of the Pan African Nationalist Party that Obama was once associated with it. The party, some of whose members have advocated unification of native Africans and those of the African diaspora as part of a "global African community."

The Obama campaign released voter registration documents Tuesday dating to 1990 in which Obama lists himself as a Democrat. Campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama has been a registered Democrat since 1982, and has never been a member of the Pan African Nationalist Party.

Obama addressed the Pan African Nationalist Party's state convention by video earlier this year, welcoming the party to Chicago. He gave no indication of a current or past connection to the party.

"Your party plays an important role in our state's politics," he said in the video, which is posted on the party's Web site. "I've always said that competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well."

Lynette Ture, the chairman of the PANP, told ABC News that Obama and his wife, Michelle, belonged to the party in 1994. Mark Chryson, chairman of the Party from 1995 to 2002, told the network that Obama attended the party's convention in 1994. He said he was not certain if he was a party member, and party records do not date back that far.

Keep in mind that being a member of a Pan African movement, which Obama is not and never was, is hardly the act of anti-Americanism that joining a secessionist party constitutes. So I want to see pundits heads imploding. I want to see steam coming out of Pat Buchanan's ears, Lou Dobbs melting....melting and Neil Cavuto self-combust. Because that is exactly the reaction we'd be witnessing if Sarah Palin was Barack Obama.

Let's tour through the tempestuous life of a young McCain. As we make this journey, we'll keep in mind Obama's more familiar biography.

The McCain family feared that his frequent unruliness was already threatening to derail his future. Sometimes Jack McCain visited the academy and reprimanded him for his transgressions, hopeful that his lectures would keep his boy on track toward a stellar naval career

In contrast to McCain's hard knock life, Obama had the advantage of growing up fatherless. Unencumbered by the challenges of a parental babysitter, Obama took the easy route in school and flourished academically.

Capt. R.G. Hunt, a Naval Academy graduate a decade earlier, told several midshipmen that McCain's inattentiveness to his appearance, his classes and the rigors of academy life marked him as unworthy of being a midshipman, and that he was deserving of being booted if a case could be made against him. His academic struggles left him near the bottom of his class, and he had accumulated demerits for everything from failed tasks to his slovenly appearance. Expulsion was within the realm of possibility, particularly if he was caught scaling the wall. "He didn't have a death wish, I don't think," Ryan recalls. "But he skirted pretty close to the edge."

Conversely, Obama dodged underachievement. Without consulting his father's guidance or clinging to his coattails, Obama privileged himself to the most prestigious law school post available--President of the Harvard Law Review.

Without cliques of his own, bereft of established friends, he developed a habit of fighting to get respect, raising his fists "at the drop of a hat," as he later put it.

Obama, on the other hand, took the ordinary path to gaining respect--he earned it.

John wasn't at ease at repelling people in verbal situations. Instead of throwing off people with a smile and a quick comeback, he would get testy. Some people thought it was feistiness. I thought it was more awkwardness. He'd insult somebody terribly, and afterward you'd say, 'Oh, Mac, why did you say that?' "

Tangled in nuance, Obama preferred a less forceful approach to problem solving. As a young adult, he saw manufacturers betray the local workforce. Rather than standing his ground with an assertive "fucking jerk," Obama retreated. He would not tackle the employers head-on. Instead, he callously organized the displaced workers so they could provide for a brighter future.

As Richey remembers, he and McCain spotted a couple of older girls near Arlington and called out to them, asking if they wanted company. The girls laughed. Insulted, McCain leaned across the driver's-side window and shouted an expletive at them. "Our feelings were hurt. They unveiled our masks and revealed us for the boys we were," Richey says.

Eschewing the Plastered and Scary Fratboy School of Game, Obama never outgrew his habit of treating women with dignity.

Minutes later, a car stopped them on the road. Police were called, and McCain and Richey were ticketed for what Richey remembers as public nuisance and profanity. Soon they were standing in an Arlington court, with Richey hoping that McCain would tell the truth: that he alone, not Richey, had shouted the profanity at the girls. As Richey recalls, McCain said nothing -- explaining to Richey later that he didn't know what good it would have done to speak up.

"I was annoyed for a little while with John, I guess," Richey recounts. "But I understood his not talking -- we were both paralyzed. What I remember most about the day is the humiliation. John's mother was really upset. I don't even remember if John's father was there. I just remember his mother, and how angry she was."

Obama's young biography is conspicuously bereft of such under-the-bus moments that would define McCain's rise to Republican nominee.

"Consequences didn't scare him," Gamboa remembers.

Obama was more superstitious about consequences. He would demonstrate this later with his blindly sensible opposition to the Iraq war.

Not everyone in the 17th Company was comfortable around a classmate so often involved in heated confrontations. "His personality annoyed some people," Hamrick says. "Some people perceived that he thought he was special because of his grandfather and father, and that he thought he could do whatever he wanted."

Obama, not so much...

McCain had a much better time away from the officers' club. Often he went into town and drank at a popular bar and strip joint called Trader John's, where he began dating a stripper named Marie, who was known as "The Flame of Florida." On other nights, he went to the dog track, played poker, and cruised with Larson around Pensacola in his new silver Corvette or Larson's new Austin Healey, making the rounds of bars. When closing hour arrived and the mood struck them, Larson remembers, he and McCain drove across the state line into Alabama, where their partying resumed.

Obama, instead, flunked out of Playboy 101. This forced him to settle for a traditional family life and a conventional path to the White House.

It wouldn't be his last mishap while on air duty. After completing flight training and being deployed to the Mediterranean, he was flying over southern Spain one day when he decided to have some fun. He dropped very low, engaged in "daredevil clowning," as he later described it. Unable to see power lines ahead, he knocked them down, cutting off electricity to homes in the area and creating "a small international incident," he later wrote.

He seemed to be going nowhere. Among his peers, he became known as a charming underachiever. During the early 1960s, stationed in Norfolk while serving on the carriers Intrepid and Enterprise, he lived in a beach house with a few other pilots who shared his zest for after-hours life. Dubbed "The House on 37th Street" by Navy partygoers, McCain's Virginia Beach pad, as he later wrote, "enjoyed a reputation for hosting the most raucous and longest beach parties of any squadron in the Navy."

And yet his career seemed to be stuck, McCain told people. Like others from his academy class, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant commander, but he wasn't receiving the high-profile assignments of other grads, particularly his class's stars.

Devoid of the ambition to underachieve, Obama's familiar, less mavericky story is punctuated by hard work, decency and an obsession with public service and helping others.

The theme of the Republican convention, "Not Ready '08" (presumably directed at Obama), was established prior to McCain's erratic VP choice. Now that this theme is tinged with more than a little irony, it's no wonder the Republican operatives are scrambling to revise it:

Republican officials said that though they had time to collect surface-level material on Ms. Palin and her husband, they had done no examination of the rest of her family.

Beyond that, Republican organizers said the convention aides in charge of reviewing every speech delivered from the lectern are now on the watch for blunt attacks on Mr. Obama's readiness to lead, and reviewing how much to emphasize what had been the convention theme: "Not Ready '08." They are aware that such criticism in a high-profile setting would provide an opportunity for Democrats to make the same charge against Ms. Palin, who has almost no foreign policy experience and has been governor for just 20 months.

It's standard operating procedure for McCain to play the POW victim card in an effort to deflect tough (and easy) questions. According to one report, he's been doing this since 1982:

Running for Congress from Arizona in 1982, John McCain was repeatedly assailed as a carpetbagger, which he pretty much was.

At a candidates forum when the matter was brought up yet again, McCain responded abruptly, telling his rival, "Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi."

Yeah, I said it. And I'm not just saying  it because I live in the far awesomer SE portion of Pennsylvania (where, incidentally, Joe Biden is proudly considered our third Senator).

I say FRACK SCRANTON for the following two reasons:

Reason 1: The dread I'm feeling about the prospect of having to endure two more months of inane media blather about "scrappy," "Scranton" and "hard working/white."

This narrative is so last March, and data has since convincingly demonstrated that Scranton does not have a monopoly on scrappy, hard-working, blue collar or white. Plus, these themes have no place in a discussion of Obama's merits. McCain, on the other hand, has done a great job proving that he could never relate to people (hardworking, scrappy, white or otherwise) living in Scranton, Boise and pretty much anywhere else outside of"The Hills."

So, to you bobbing idiots on FOX, CNN and even MSNBC: unless you want to talk about how unpalatable mega-rich, uber-pampered diva freaks like McCain are to ordinary people like me, STFU ABOUT SCRANTON! You don't know s### about Scranton!

Reason 2: Scranton does not equal PA.

Obama has overwhelming support in the Pittsburgh area. In addition, Philadelphia (now featuring city money)-->the entire Southeast-->Lancaster-->Harrisburg -->PSU Country=OBAMA COUNTRY. And on the heels of the hotly-contested primary, the ground game will be off the mother fracking chain.

Translation: FRACK SCRANTON; Appalachia will not save McCain from the voters of this state!

To summarize:

1. Biden=great pick overall, a local hero and sure to swing some PA votes.
   
2. FRACK SCRANTON!
   

UPDATE: John King is now swearing on his sources that Obama has offered the VP slot to Biden. King said "this is incredibly sensitive" and acknowledged that the source was not supposed to reveal the information. John King can suck a fat one.

From The Page:

ABC: SECRET SERVICE HEADED TO BIDEN'S

Friday, August 22nd,

The network says a protective detail has been dispatched to the Senator's Delaware home- "indicating in all likelihood that Biden has been officially notified that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, has selected him to be his running mate."