Obama Picks Corporate Imperialist to Be His VP

It's hard to know where to begin with Biden.

There's his racist remarks: "You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent."

Then there's his racist remark about Obama: "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and, and clean and a nice-looking guy." I guess he thinks Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, two others who ran for the Democratic nomination, were either all of the above and not mainstream or were mainstream but not too bright, dirty, and ugly. I suppose it could've been worse - he could've said that Obama was only getting the lazy black vote like Hillary did.

Then there's Biden's vote for to invade Iraq, which he thought was a good idea back in 1998. In 2002-2003, as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he said the U.S. would "probably" invade Iraq on August 4, 2002 and echoed the Bush administration's hysterical propaganda campaign about WMD. Aping Bush (or was Bush aping him?), he declared: "One thing is clear: These weapons must be must be dislodged from Saddam, or Saddam must be dislodged from power." He refused to call former weapons inspector Scott Ritter to testify before Congress because he wasn't even remotely interested in finding out the truth about Iraq's WMD. Instead, he stole a play from Rove and called on "experts" who agreed with him that Hussein had WMD.

The rest, as they say, was history - along with over 4,000+ American and almost 1 million Iraqi lives, a de facto genocide in a country of about 30 million.

Then there's the fact that Biden is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the credit card giant MBNA, which has given him a whopping $214,000 since 1990. His son was on their payroll as a lobbyist, raking in $100,000 and Biden sold his house to one of their execs for a cool $1.2 million. No wonder he, along with his Republican colleagues, voted for the credit card companies' dream bill known as the Bankruptcy Reform Act in 2005.

Biden not only voted for it, he blocked amendments exempting those whose financial problems caused by serious medical problems from the law's provisions, he voted against protecting troops and veterans from bankruptcies caused by predatory lenders, and he made sure that no low-income elderly people would be protected from losing their homes. Apparently he didn't see why the sick, elderly, active-duty troops or veterans should get any protection against the guys Jesus threw out of the temple. Judging by his record, Biden would've clear the temple of the old, the sick, and victimized veterans and put a big "open for business" sign out front.

Oh, and Biden voted to tighten the sanctions on Cuba.

With the selection of his running mate, Obama has deprived himself of important lines of attack against McCain. Obama can't make the "judgement is more important than experience" argument. He can't say that "the McCain's campaign is tied to lobbyists." Well, maybe me can say those things, but it's tough to slam the other guy as a corrupt Washington insider with bad judgement and when you picked a corrupt Washington insider with bad judgement as your right-hand man.

From plagiarizing in law school and from a British reform socialist during his presidential bid to supporting the invasion and pushing for the Bosnia-style division of Iraq into three racially-based mini-states, Biden is of the few people who could single-handedly cost Obama the election. I'm not only talking about his penchant for big, stupid (racist) gaffes, but his foreign policy positions and his ties to the financial industry. If the sheriff shows up to your grandma's door to kick her out even though she filed for bankruptcy, knowing that Joe Biden denied her any legal protection whatsoever is not exactly a strong motivation to vote for him and Obama on election day. And the Democrats can't figure out why the hell they haven't gotten higher voter turnout over the last 30 years and lost tons of elections to the Republicans.

If Obama had good judgement, foresight, or a political spine, he wouldn't have picked this creature of the credit card industry to be his right-hand man. Then again, Obama's pick makes perfect sense, given that Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street titans are his top donors. Birds of a feather...

Maybe on Thursday when Obama makes his historic acceptance speech at Invesco Field (gotta love the corporate venue), he'll announce that "change we can believe in" is being scrapped for his new slogan: "profits and bailouts you can bank on." But don't hold your breath if you're waiting for Obama to develop a penchant for honesty.