Israel:

And does Obama score brownie points with having Biden as his running mate with the Jewish voters? Following are some reactions from Israel.

Naked Israeli's Weblog is stoked.

I am totally stoked that Obama’s Vice President is Senator Joseph Biden…Biden has been a good friend to Israel and the Soviet Jewry movement. That should quell the Jewish critics of Obama. He is not perfect on abortion but okay. He did establish the 1994 Violence Against Women Act.

Patriot Missive, from Israel, links to an interview with Shalom TV in which Biden confesses that he is a Zionist. She notes:

Obama’s choice in a veep is more calculating than I suspected. Does this mean they actually have a chance with the Jewish vote?
Don’t count on it

In another post, Ms Missive says it is only a matter of time before Biden grabs the headlines with scandals of his own.

I’m guessing it’ll be less than 48 hours before scandals or scrutinies (real or imaginary) of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Biden are jammed into our faces.

Among them are:

Military service record: At the height of the Vietnam war in 1968, Biden was prime for the draft at 26 years old but was rejected for “medical reasons“. I’m sure details of his rejection will become clearer in the following weeks. It should be noted that his son, Beau Biden, has orders to deploy to Iraq on October 3rd, 2008 with his Delaware National Guard JAG unit. Will his son bring a balance for the senior Biden’s lack of military record?
Biden supported the Bush Administration post 9/11and voted in favor of the Iraq invasion. Flip-flopping. Our favorite campaign hyphenation.
In 1988, Bidden was caught plagiarizing several lines from the speech of Neil Kinnock, then British Labor party leader.

And still in Israel, Simply Jews warns:

Joe Biden, Beau Biden, Jill Biden, Ashley Biden, …
Now watch the tabloids. It has started…

Iran:

Meanwhile, Iranian Omid Memarian, who lives in the US, says Biden's Foreign Policy experience speaks for itself as being different from McCain's.

Finally Barack Obama, announced his VP last night, a man who is well known mostly for his credentials in foreign policy. Although, Senator McCain and Senator Biden, both embrace a long time involvement in FP issues, they do have separate and fundamentally different styles.

Turkey:

Turkey Talk agrees that Biden has been selected thanks to his massive foreign policy experience. The blogger, who voices his concern about Biden's stance towards Turkey and the Armenian genocide, adds:

Delaware Senator Joe Biden will be Barack Obama's running mate. That's all we need, another senator. No Governors (the Executive Branch remember???) yet…
For the first time in a long time, both of the presidential candidates are senators.

Among Turkey Talk's other concerns are:

… but Biden comes across as an arrogant SOB whenever I've seen him chair his committee and ask questions of witnesses whose very presence he dislikes, obviously always playing to the cameras . . . he's not someone who takes a back seat very easily . . . and he may overshadow the ticket . . .

Cuba:

Writing at the Review of Cuban-American Blog, Manuel A. Tellechea is at a loss as to why Biden was selected. He writes:

It would have made no sense for Barack Obama to pick an even bigger political lightweight as his vice presidential running mate (if such a creature could be found). Joe Biden has been in the senate since Barack Obama was 11 years old. His 36 years of experience there dwarfs Obama's 3. To say that this ticket is the most lopsided in American history is to put it mildly. If Biden had been the nominee it is doubtful that he would have picked Obama as his vice president. No Democratic senator except Hillary Clinton has been as vociferous in pointing out Obama's lack of qualifications for the presidency. Even when Biden tried to say something nice about the junior senator from Illinois, this is the best that he could manage: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook man.”

Telechea further describes Biden as a ‘loose cannon':

He is the Democratic Party's biggest loose cannon and seems congenitally incapable of opening his mouth without demeaning himself or his party. Even more than Obama, Biden is in love with his own words. But, unlike Obama, he doesn't need to have words spoonfed to him by a teleprompter. He is as naturally loquacious as Obama is inarticulate. Speaking gibberish has served Obama in good stead by concealing his very real vacuousness. The last thing that Obama needs is for someone like Biden to set lyrics to his tune.

Croatia:

Croatian Bojan, who lives in Canada also wonders what Biden brings to the table. He writes:

So far, I have refrained from commenting on the foolishness that is the American presidential primary season, but I see that Obama (who I liked) has picked himself an old white guy for a running mate. Way to usher in the age of change and hope.

India:

Indian Sunny, writing at Pickled Politics, says Biden is a good choice for Obama. He explains:

Biden will be a good attack-dog, he has strong foreign-policy credentials, and he’s a strong Democrat. He’s also older and a Catholic which, according to Michael Tomasky, will help with those constituencies. Who am I to disagree?

Thailand:

From Thailand, Jotman is happy with the nomination. He writes:

In my estimation, Barack Obama could not have picked a better running mate in his bid for the American presidency.

Not that Joe Biden himself is temperamentally qualified to be president. He is the Democratic Party's biggest loose cannon and seems congenitally incapable of opening his mouth without demeaning himself or his party. Even more than Obama, Biden is in love with his own words. But, unlike Obama, he doesn't need to have words spoonfed to him by a teleprompter. He is as naturally loquacious as Obama is inarticulate. Speaking gibberish has served Obama in good stead by concealing his very real vacuousness. The last thing that Obama needs is for someone like Biden to set lyrics to his tune.

I don't know what Joe Biden brings to the Democratic ticket that would actually help it to win in November, but he's at least made McCain's age irrelevant as an issue in this campaign. Obama's choice will also alienate Hillary Clinton's supporters who had hoped that stealing the nomination from her would not prevent him from offering her the consolation price.

When he ran for president in 1988, Biden made a bold bid for Southern support by stressing the fact that Delaware was a Border State where slavery was legal at the time of the Civil War. Speaking to the South Carolina Rotary Club, Biden noted that Delaware was a “slave state that fought beside the North. That’s only because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the South. There were a couple of states in the way.” The point of all this was to imply that, unlike Dukakis, he was a “good ole boy” with all the usual trappings (except the Confederate flag on the hood of his car). It will be amusing to see if Biden again presents himself as the South's last hope north of the Mason-Dixon line.

POSTSCRIPT:

Biden does have something in common with Obama besides his hard-left politics: he never let personal qualifications stand in the way of personal ambitions. In 1970, Biden was elected a councilman in New Castle County, Delaware. Two years later, at age 29, he ran for the Senate and won by one percentage point. Biden was the least qualified senator ever elected in U.S. history. Even Obama had served 7 years in the Illinois legislature before running for the Senate. However, Biden had been in the Senate 16 years before he first ran for president in 1988. Obama had barely served one year in the Senate before announcing his candidacy for president. When it comes to hubris, they are both well-matched.

A few reporters admitted they knew of the candidate’s infidelities with a videographer long before John Edwards provided proof in a recent statement from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In fact, the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer had been reporting the story for nearly a year. Now that it has proven true, at least some members of the mainstream media establishment are soul searching and shockedthat they sat on it for so long, especially when papers such as the New York Times reported on the alleged affairs of presumptive Republican nominee for President John McCain.

For reid (1053), a commentator at Kiwiblog, not reporting the story doesn’t prove the impotence of the mainstream press in the United States. Rather, holding “scandals” over candidates’ heads anoints the media as kingmakers.

The media have got enough to screw either McCain or Obama and it just depends which one those who control the agenda want to become POTUS. I said in Jan/Feb that the media will hold the dirt on Obama until about 4 weeks before the vote when it’s too late to do anything about it. (I imagine that homosexual trysts fueled by cocaine will be enough to prevent the first black candidate from being elected.)

At present that prediction still stands but as Adolf has pointed out on No Minister, Shillary hasn’t released her delegates and that’s an interesting wild card. Note though that there’s dirt on her too.

I find it amusing that some people really seem to think the US elections are free and open. They’re anything but.

One of the reasons the story stayed in the news — at least the supermarket press — is that Reille Hunter, the object of Edward’s affection, became pregnant out of wedlock. (Hunter gave birth to a daughter on February 27, 2008.) Edwards, once a Senator from North Carolina, said he is not the father of the child.

A minor debate in the blogosphere targets the fallen image of John Edwards, who was once seen as a charismatic politician who this election cycle helped push working-class poverty to a more prominent place in the political debate.

Shiloh Musings, a blog in Israel, writes:

I remember how upset people were when it was revealed that JFK (and the other men in the family) weren't loyal to their wives. It's so hard to keep one's illusions, to believe what we see. I feel sorry for the young.

Over at the Cuban-American blog babalú, there’s plenty of talk about two-faced Democrats, who have now gown through two major infidelity scandals in the past decade: “Good old liberals….every hair in place during TV speeches…But after 5:30 PM, some R&R.”

On the other hand, Egypt’s own Rantings of a Sandmonkey considers himself an Edwards fan, stating “ I like my politicians the way I like my lawyers- scummy, fake, manipulative and pretty.”

Sandmonkey, however, holds out no compassion for Elizabeth Edwards, who after the 2004 election, learned she had breast cancer.

But before you feel bad for his wife, please take a minute and chill. Don't think she is a victim. Ok, so she has cancer, that makes her a cancer victim, but come on, u get the idea. She knew of the affair in 2006, and still supported his running for office in 2008, knowing full well that if that thing exploded around general election time- and of lookie, it just did- the chances of the Dems winning the presidency would've been close to nill. But she went ahead anyway, aware of the affair, and keeping her mouth shut, defending him, appearing everywhere, using her cancer to guilt people into donating to their campaign and most recently to get herself a speaking gig at the convention- in order to get that coveted female terminal cancer victims whose husbands cheated on them demographic, it's soo important- and a Think Tank job. The woman's ambition and complicity puts Hillary's to shame, and now that Hillary knows that, she is probably glad that Elizabeth has cancer.

http://globalvoicesonline.org/?p=48514 Child of the Revolution reports that “newly-released figures confirm what many of us have known for some time” - that the US trade restrictions on Cuba are really “not much of an embargo”.

Mandatory volunteerism.

Cut that cane for Obama!

Venceremos!

The Enquirer scooped everybody on this story because it paid for it. The so-called professionals scoff at The Enquirer because it pays its sources, which supposedly violates a journalistic canon which is nowhere to be found in the annals of journalism and which all great editors and reporters have “violated” both before and after the dissemination of news became some kind of vocation. They expect, of course, to be paid themselves for what they report but are loathe to pay anyone else. Can anything be more hilarious than the churlishness of Woodruff and Bernstein when Deep Throat finally emerged from the shadows to outscoop them and collect a long overdue pay day (which would have been theirs had they been left to disclose his identity posthumously)? Money is a less toxic motivation than most. Hatred, envy, the desire to wreak vengeance — all these can disfigure the truth more and are less reliable than the profit motive. Yet informants with the basest motives can pass muster so long as they do not expect to be compensated for their information while those with the most transparent motive of all are shunted aside as mercenary. None of it makes any sense unless one regards newsgathering as the exclusive domain of journalists, or, rather, their own monopoly. That, of course, would be very foolish indeed.

Something else distinguishes The Enquirer from its mainsteam competition. Although decidedly conservative in its defense of family values — because it publishes sleeze does not mean that it is on the side of the sleezeballs — The National Enquirer is not a right-wing or even a politically-driven publication. If I remember correctly it was also the first to expose Newt Gingrich's infidelities. Gingrich went a step farther than Edwards when he asked his cancer-stricken wife on her deathbed for a divorce so he could marry his mistress. Well, maybe Edwards is working his way up to that.

When the MSM finally reported the Edwards story it repeatedly asked in mock indignation: “What would have happened if Edwards had been the Democratic nominee instead of Obama?” Having crowned Obama as the nominee long before he had secured the nomination, and even when Hillary's overwhelming lead in super delegates made it unlikely that he would be the nominee if the Michigan and Florida delegates were seated, the media's speculation about a “what if Edwards?” is the most lackadaisical of all hypotheticals. And it begs a response: “What if any of the stories which The Enquirer has published about Barack Obama over the last year proves as devastatingly accurate as its reportage on Edwards?”

What if?

Meet Gloria La Riva, US Presidential Canditate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation. A political party, I should add, that proudly displays the image of Che Guevara on the header of its website.

The platform of this party is a simple one: George W. Bush is a terrorist, and Cuba's dictatorial regime is a model America should be emulating. If elected, Ms. La Riva promises to stop the biological weapons attacks America's imperialistic policies have been launching against Cuba, which she says has killed thousands of innocent Cubans.

And with all the hullabaloo over Obama's oratory prowess, Ms. La Riva–as you can see from this video of a mercifully short speech she gave last year–is quite an orator herself.

With all these alternative choices, it's going to be tough to make a decision this November.