Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Tryng to decide who's the worst Democrat is a constant source of frustration; they keep outdoing each other in squalor. I've decided it needs to be a rotating office, like the Security Council chairmanship: Vilest Democrat of the Day, or Reptile Du Jour.

Today, it's all about Joe Biden, who is not only awful but really, really stupid:

"U.S. Sen. Joe Biden yesterday said Iraq should be subdivided into a loosely federated republic, with each of the country's warring factions given its own area to control.

Biden said the republic would not be a democracy, but it would not be a threat to its neighbors or a haven for terrorists."

Translation: Israel might generously deign to accept this "solution," and allow us to withdraw some of our troops. But it gets better:

"[Biden] played up his hawkish credentials yesterday, saying he convinced former President Bill Clinton to go to war in the Balkans and said he would put 2,000 U.S. troops in Darfur under NATO command if he were president.

Were the United States to pull out of Iraq with the situation unresolved, the result would be chaos, a regional war and oil at $120 a barrel, he said.

'If we leave Iraq, and if we trade a dictator for chaos, we will pay the price for generations,' Biden said....

'The only mistake I made,' Biden said, 'was underestimating how ridiculously incompetent these guys [i.e. Bush & co. -- Ed.] would be.'"

Biden is not content with redrawing the map of the Middle East, and claiming credit for Clinton's Balkan Guernica; he has some ideas for the home front too:

"We are a nation at war," Biden said. "That makes it all the more incomprehensible that, five years after 9/11, [Bush] has failed to mobilize the American public for the struggle. There is no national energy policy, no national service, no real sacrifice except from our soldiers ... and their families."

At home, [Biden] said he would tighten security at ports and chemical plants and on public transit, hire 1,000 new FBI agents and 50,000 new police officers....

He also pledged to repeal most of Bush's upper-income tax cuts and said he would put those revenues into a fund -- which he estimated would come to $10 billion a year -- for homeland security measures.

Kind of a novel revision of the Robin Hoood schtick -- take from the rich and give to the Sheriff of Nottingham.

John Mack, Morgan Stan ley’s chief executive, is to invite senior staff to a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on Monday, in a pointed endorsement of the Democratic presidential hopeful from an important backer of President George W. Bush in 2004.

Mrs Clinton, a New York senator, is scheduled to appear at the fundraiser on the 41st floor of Morgan Stanley’s headquarters in Times Square.

The minimum donation for the event is $1,000 (€726, £492) per person but Mr Mack urged those attending to give $4,600, the maximum for the 2008 presidential campaign.

Mr Mack surprised many on Wall Street in the spring when he said he and his wife, Christy, would support Mrs Clinton’s 2008 bid. The announcement was made after heavy courting by Mrs Clinton, who raised $27m in the second quarter.

FT article

Senator Clinton has a better understanding of lean manufacturing and the just-in-time logistics of neoliberalism than any of the other candidates. The country has gotten slack and resentful during Bush the Lesser's presidency. What's needed is some managerial expertise to straighten it out. It takes a company town to raise many children and Maggie Thatcher Senator Clinton knows how to do it.