I think it's safe to say that Joe Biden did not have a very good day today... And that's on top of what wasn't a great day yesterday either!



Keep in mind that John McCain and Barack Obama are fighting over Ohio and Pennsylvania, both states have lots of coal. Ohio's current Democratic governor came from coal country and was elected in part on a platform of support for the coal industry.

So Biden up and says "No more coal plants in America." Ouch! Also, he seems to be taking that Obama comment about "getting in their faces" a little too seriously. And of course Republicans wasted no time jumping on it, and Obama wasted no time sending out the cleanup crew.

"Senator Biden's point is that China is building coal plants with outdated technology every day, and the United States needs to lead by developing clean coal technologies," said Obama campaign spokesman David Wade.

Har! That's not what everyone else heard, but we do understand the reason for the cleanup and the quick release. And this from a campaign who is complaining about Sarah Palin's lack of access to the media? Perhaps they should consider adopting that policy for Joe Biden, because that's only one of many:

From Roger Simon.

First there's the flip-flop on AIG, which seems to have caught his running mate's attention, and now there's the senior moment of senior moments, implying FDR was President when the stock market crashed in '29 and went on television (???) to calm the public. [I thought McCain was the geezer candidate.-ed. It's all in the mind... or mind-less.] If Palin had said something like that, the MSM would have sent her back to Alaska and frozen her in an iceberg with the wooly mammoths. So what's going on here? Is Biden trying to sabotage Obama?

And we're supposed to be wringing our hands over whether Sarah Palin is up to speed on this stuff? I would think that as of about now, Biden should be losing his ability to go offscript at anytime for any reason.

Obama was trying to make some inroads, or at least cut his losses in coal country, where he lost to Hillary Clinton in the primaries by sometimes up to 4-1. He can't afford margins like that in November or he loses both PA and OH. Remember the first rule of VP selections: "do no harm".

In presidential campaigns, candidates can get carried away with the promises they make to the country. To hear them tell it, if they -- and they alone -- are elected, all the world's troubles will magically disappear, and we'll all live happily ever after.

Well, in that kind of pie-in-the-sky atmosphere, realistic statements like this are refreshing:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in an interview aired Tuesday that the cost of the mortgage bailout plan may rein in his ambitious plans for health care, energy, education and infrastructure.

As Ken Layne wrote earlier today, the consequences of the banking/housing/financial services/insurance market meltdown will mean that our next president is looking at a country vastly different than the one he set out to lead back when the campaign started. More from Obama:

Obama told NBC's Matt Lauer on the "Today" show that he doesn't expect the mortgage plan to cost the full $700 billion right away, and all the money won't be lost.

"Does that mean that I can do everything that I've called for in this campaign right away?" Obama said. "Probably not. I think we're going to have to phase it in. And a lot of it's going to depend on what our tax revenues look like."

Given that we'll be pouring such an unprecedented amount of money into this bailout, while continuing to fight two wars, will John McCain amend his plan to give huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans? Does he have the honesty to level with the American people about how the financial landscape has changed, and what that might mean for his policies?

George Will is on target about who is, and who is not, presidential material:

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain , because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

And you thought nothing exciting happened at the Interior Department.

Members of Congress are delving into reports of a "fraternity house atmosphere" at the department's Denver branch of the Minerals Management Service, responsible for marketing oil and natural gas that energy companies barter to the government in lieu of cash royalty payments for drilling on federal land.

Government officials in both Denver and Washington who deal with billions of dollars in oil royalties apparently partied, had sex with and accepted golf and ski outings from employees of energy companies they did business with. Oh, and one staffer of the Denver office allegedly passed out business cards for her sex toy business at work.

So on Wednesday, House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., sent a letter to Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney, ahead of the Interior official's testimony before the committee Thursday (the panel's sixth hearing on the matter), which will focus on the role of Chevron, Shell, Hess, and Gary Williams Energy Corporation in giving improper gifts of all sorts to one-third of the MMS officials in Denver.

Waxman's letter requests more information on the role of the oil companies in the abuses documented.

Democrats in the House passed an energy bill today that will provide limited drilling expansion off small areas of the U.S. coast. The bill will open up drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf off the coasts of four states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico off Florida. But drilling would be confined to an area no closer than 50 miles to the coast and no further than 100 miles. The bill also continues prohibitions on increased exploration in Alaska's North Slope, and the interior Mountain West.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) praised the bill, saying, "The American taxpayers have been ripped off for years on offshore drilling. This bill changes that." Republicans, who spent the summer recess protesting Congress' failure to pass an energy bill to deal with high gasoline prices, lambasted the Democrats for passing what they called a "hoax," an echo of comments Pelosi herself made when President Bush lifted the Executive Branch moratorium on offshore drilling. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) vowed to make Democrats pay in the November elections.

"[W]e were outraged that Democratic leaders denied us the opportunity to have a full debate and honest vote on our plan. But the Democrats' 'no energy' bill delivers just the opposite. It's closer to 'none of the above' than it is to 'all of the above.'

The Democrats' 'no energy' bill blocks real exploration of the Outer Continental Shelf, Alaska's North Slope, and the Inter-Mountain West. It includes no emissions-free nuclear or clean coal-to-liquids technology. And it builds no new refineries, depriving our economy of the countless new jobs that would go along with it. Stressed-out families, seniors, and small businesses deserve better than this hoax. With Republicans by their side, we'll hold every Democrat who voted against lower gas prices accountable."

Pelosi and House Democrats were scrambling to relieve the pressure being placed on them to do something about gas prices. But in passing their energy bill, they may have only invited more pressure even closer to the election. Had the Democrats done nothing, the Congressional moratorium on offshore drilling would have expired at the end of the fiscal year just two weeks from now. That would have opened up the entire coastline to drilling. In limiting the areas in which more domestic oil can be produced, Democrats will now have to answer why a little drilling, which they once vehemently opposed, is a solution to high oil prices, while more drilling is not.

House Democrats said Wednesday that they were open to a vote on a Republican oil drilling measure, reversing their stand against the legislation. Republicans called that a victory in their summer-long efforts to get the House to vote on increased domestic production of oil as a means of lowering gasoline prices. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi steadfastly refused to bring up the Republicans' American Energy Act throughout June and July. But after an August recess in which many Republicans remained in Washington holding informal sessions on the House floor highlighting what they called Democrats' inaction on the energy front, and receiving good press for their efforts, Pelosi agreed to allow the vote under the regular order. In other words, the bill will be offered as a substitute to the Democrats' own energy legislation and will only need a majority to pass.

In her statement announcing the decision, Pelosi credited Republicans with forcing her hand.

"If [Republicans] want to drill offshore, we'll say, 'OK, You want to drill in the outer continental shelf? Let's have a discussion and a change of the relationship between our oil, which is owned by the American people, the desire of Big Oil for us to subsidize their drilling, and...the American people not getting the benefit of the profits.'"

Republicans call the Democrats' proposal on drilling a gimmick, noting that it would limit offshore to only those areas of the coast off of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and the Gulf Coast of Florida more than 50 miles offshore. The Democrats' bill also would not open up access to the oil shale deposits in the Rocky Mountains and oil fields in the North Slope of Alaska. "Speaker Pelosi's so-called 'energy' bill will do nothing to help our energy crisis," said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) "It will multiply red tape and make it almost impossible to lower already skyrocketing oil costs."

The irony here for Democrats is that unless they do something to prevent it, the Congressional prohibition on offshore oil drilling will expire in less than three weeks on September 30th, at the end of the current fiscal year. Democrats want to address the issue of rising gas prices, but are loathe to cross their environmentalist base. They could accomplish both ends by simply doing nothing and allowing the ban to quietly expire. Republicans, however, have skillfully drawn Democrats into a debate on their ground, more domestic production. Now Democrats will have to explain why they propose to expand drilling as a solution to high gas prices, and why more drilling is not more of a solution.

What can you say? He is who he is. And if anyone is wondering if he can come close to soaring oratory of Obama or the directness of Sarah Palin, the answer to that is no.

But first the prelims, and let me ask, what the hell the GOP is thinking? Tom Ridge? Lindsey Graham? Surely they could have spared one guy from the A squad last night to warm up the crowd for McCain: a Romney, Giuliani, or even Huckabee would have worked wonders here. With Cindy McCain's intro, let me just say it did nothing to convince me that the tradition shouldn't be shot ASAP. Unless the plan was to make McCain look good by comparison.

He's not a natural speechifier. His style is slow, monotone and plodding. But I think the handlers worked with that and did what they could. They let McCain be McCain and tried to turn what is a liability (his lack of natural speech skills) into an asset by making him more "real" in comparison. That may have helped, how much we don't know yet.

As an example: When he said he'll veto the first pork barrel bill that comes across his desk "and you will know their names!"... damn if you didn't believe he meant it.

The speech was full of the stuff you would expect. Maverickness, Vietnam, struggles, lifelong effort, and the now-familiar contrast of doing versus talking. All good stuff, but what particularly struck out for me was a section where he went completely and frankly honest to this Republican crowd:

I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.

We're going to change that. We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.

That really needed to be said. With that line he wins over a large section of Republicans who have become disheartened over what their party has become. In his favor is that he's usually been on the opposite side of his party and that helps here. Also, this speech may be aimed at moderates and as such just doesn't work on folks like me. Very possible. I will be curious as to how it plays around the nation.

Bottom line, McCain is going to run on reform and change, a direct challenge to Obama, but with more resume and much less oratory skill. This is going to be interesting.

He also ended with strong words about keeping fighting and closed very strong. So I think he didn't kill the energy that Palin built up last night, but she clearly is the rock star and he is the grizzled veteran. On that note they also played heart's "Barracuda" Heh.

Tomorrow it's on and McCain has his party behind him.

Forget the charges of inexperience, the earmarks, the suppression of an ongoing investigation, the fondness for the AIP, the lack of foreign policy knowledge. All that matters to some is that Sarah Palin loves Jesus, and that she's a woman.

In fact, newly released video of the governor shows just how easily she mingles religion with politics. God's will, in her eyes, is something we can use to further our political ambition. Here she is on the building of a new natural gas pipeline:

"I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get the gas line built, so pray for that."

Sometimes you need to ask for a little help from the man upstairs, and sometimes you simply follow His clearly laid out plan:

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's will."

Like President Bush, Palin employs the holy spirit to justify her policy positions. If it's something you want, like an oil pipeline, you pray He'll help you get it built. If it's a badly mismanaged war (McCain's words) then it's all part of God's plan, be patient.

To recap why the religious right is so excited about Palin, she wants to: Ban all abortion. Teach creationism in public schools. Abolish sex education. And fight wars that are "God's will."

We may already have a clue as to why Palin and her husband like the AIP so much: It's an offshoot of a larger organization that wants to see the constitution re-written so as to conform to biblical law. What about Palin? Maybe once she's allowed to hold an honest-to-God press conference, we can ask her.

H/T Andrew Sullivan.

This is what happens when a Democrat embraces domestic energy production. In what was considered by most (including myself) as the most vulnerable senate seat in the country, Mary Landrieu has opened up a 16 point lead. Part of this is a big problem on the part of the Republicans to capitalize on an opportunity, but Rasmussen suggests another possibility.

At the same time, Landrieu has been one of the few Democrats to openly support calls for lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling. That issue is very popular with voters nationwide and in Louisiana. Last month's poll found that 75% of Louisiana voters favored offshore drilling.When "leaners" are included in the current polling, it's Landrieu 56% Kennedy 39%. Landrieu is seeking her third six-year term.

So while Daily Kos is crowing about their senate opportunities, they still are apparently oblivious to the reason that their most vulnerable Democrat is flying high. Stop and think what this election would look like if the Democrats jettisoned the environmental lobby and started campaigning on domestic energy, domestic energy jobs, and domestic energy production... in all shapes and sizes including oil.

The Republicans would be sunk. Good thing for them it won't happen.

If I may take a break from talking about "cross in the dirt" stories, McCain visited an oil rig today:

McCain rode a helicopter about 150 miles (241 kilometres) off the state of Louisiana's coast to visit the Genesis oil rig.

Jointly owned by Chevron and Exxon Mobil, the rig represents an environmental risk great enough that the US coast guard has set up a "safety zone" around its perimeter to prevent accidents.

"It is time for America to get serious about energy independence, and that means we need to start drilling offshore at advanced oil rigs like this," the Republican nominee said in his prepared remarks.

McCain and the rest of the GOP are still hammering away on this issue, and rightly so, because the left is giving every indication that they have no stomach for this fight. As was predicted by myself and many others, an election year, pocketbook issues come together to concentrate the mind of many a politician.

Even the hardcore are signalling that this is not the hill they are willing to die on:

That's the game, right there. The floodgates will open because they have to open. There's no way on God's green earth to find veto-proof majorities to re-up that ban, and no bill George W. Bush won't veto to stop it. Not a defense bill. Not a continuing resolution to keep the government running. Not a National Motherhood and Apple Pie Day bill. Nothing.

There will be a significant change in the Federal drilling policy within 30 days. Either the GOP will hold firm and get everything they want by default, or they will fold early and get some of what they want with a few bonuses like nuclear plants and subsidies and such. The Democrats are crossing their fingers and hoping for the latter.

It's not a flip yet, but it does show McCain could bring even more pressure on the Democrats over domestic energy issues:

In an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD aboard his campaign plane last week, McCain made clear he has not ruled out a change in his position--to one that endorses drilling in ANWR. "I continue to examine it," he said. So does his staff. McCain's campaign has been quietly studying the ANWR issue and discussing the potential consequences--good and bad--of a policy change.

But in our conversation on August 13, McCain added a new wrinkle. When I asked him if he had consulted Palin about ANWR, he said that he had not yet done so. He added, "I probably should," he said. "I will."

So I called Palin to ask what McCain can expect to hear. The answer is that Palin, who has been mentioned as a possible McCain running mate but has not been vetted, will make a straightforward case for drilling in ANWR. She says McCain's willingness to take another look at ANWR is "very encouraging."

Like Obama's recent flips on drilling, this flip would be toward a position that is much more popular with the public. But unlike the Dem side, McCain's move will make him more popular with his party, while Obama's flips dismay his own side.

Except of course for those who believe it was done for crass political reasons, that Obama is not serious about the current position. In other words, those guys think Obama is pandering, and they support him pandering because they think the true position is a political loser. Not exactly the strongest position for a politician to be in!

But McCain's willingness to move on ANWR is heartening for two reasons, one because drilling in ANWR is the right thing to do, it will create American jobs, help our trade deficit (oh and get us some more oil as well). And it won't hurt the environment, or even despoil scenic vistas, as the tundra drilling proposed is not scenic and no one goes there anyway. The biggest worry of the park rangers is that the Caribou might get too tame!

The second reason is that from the first I have had McCain pegged as one stubborn old man. Once he took a position however wrong, you could not make him see the light of day. That can be a good thing of course, but more often than not, McCain has dug in on positions that are diametrically opposed to what most Republicans want, immigration being a prominent example, but ANWR is another one. Maybe he can change his mind after all, although an impending election certainly appears to help.