The early, early morning, that is.

Obama chooses 2 a.m. Central Time to announce Joe Biden as his vice-presidential pick.  At least, I woke up in the middle of the night, turned on the radio, and the 3 AM newscast said he'd sent out the text message "an hour ago."

I guess I would too.

Although I wonder how many Obama true believers and others Obama woke up.

Two a.m. text messages--change you can believe in.

AP/Yahoo News story.

Read for yourself.  Oddly enough, the word "Clinton" appears nowhere in the story.  Curious, isn't it?

Gorilla, hanging on to its dead baby.
Monkey on the loose in a Tokyo train station.
Sasquatch was a guy in a rubber gorilla suit.

Thomas Sowell, writing at Townhall.com on why centrally planned economies (like, for instance, the current U.S. education system) never, ever work:

One easy to understand reason is that central planners in the days of the Soviet Union had to set over 24 million prices. Nobody is capable of setting and changing 24 million prices in a way that will direct resources and output in an efficient manner.

For that, each of the 24 million prices would have to be weighed and set against each of the other 24 million prices. in order to provide incentives for resources to go where they were most in demand by producers and output to go where it was most in demand by consumers.

In a market economy, however, nobody has to take on such an impossible task. Each producer and each consumer need only be concerned with the relatively few prices relevant to their own decisions, with coordination of the economy being left to supply and demand.

Central planning of economic activities is NEVER as efficient or as advantageous to regular folks as free market systems are.  Never.

And pretty much every thing human beings do is an economic activity.  Health care.  Education.  Filling up the gas tank.  Buying groceries.  Finding an apartment and paying the rent.  Taking out a home loan.  Pretty much everything.

I was in Toastmasters for a while--if you don't know, that's an organization that basically brings ordinary people together to give speeches to each other.  Then they grade out and critique the speaking style.  The purpose is to improve the public speaking ability of its participants.

One of the most effective things the Toastmasters do, in my opinion, is that they always have somebody doing an "um" count of all of the speakers.  When all speakers are done, they award a joke award to the speaker with the most ums.  The purpose, of course, is to encourage their members to reduce the use of that annoying verbal tic.

As to it's applicability to Barack Obama, I'm just sayin'.

A thought just came to me . . . it's probably time for President Bush to go to Europe for personal consultations with the leaders of our allied countries.  He should go now.  He should visit:

London
Paris
Bonn
Rome
Warsaw
Bucharest
Ankara
and then T'Blisi.

Maybe even squeeze in a state visit to Moscow for a get-together and some borscht with Pootie-Poot.

The latter stages of the trip just might happen to coincide with the Democratic National Convention.  But Bush is a lame-duck.  He's not running for anything.  And it's his job to manage our international affairs.

He can come back and report his findings to the nation, maybe in St. Paul.

I can just hear the howls of the media/Left now . . . heh heh heh.

From the Knoxville News:  Man's shoe found in bear's stomach.

Bears will do what bears will do.  Words to live by.

"I don't have to run faster than the bear.  I just have to run faster than you."  More words to live by.

Reuters:  Russia promises to "crush" future aggressors

Er . . . what?

This, remarkably, from the Washington Bureau of McClatchy Newspapers (owner of the the Kansas City Star among others):

Russian politicians and their partners in Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region South Ossetia, said that when Georgian forces tried to seize control of the city and the surrounding area, the physical damage was comparable to Stalingrad and the killings similar to the Holocaust.

But a trip to the city on Sunday, without official escorts, revealed a very different picture. While it was clear there had been heavy fighting — missiles knocked holes in walls, and bombs tore away rooftops — almost all of the buildings seen in an afternoon driving around Tskhinvali were still standing.

. . .

Russian troops have kept tight control on access to Tskhinvali, often bringing reporters in on coordinated trips. A McClatchy journalist was stopped at a checkpoint on the way out of Tskhinvali and directed back to a Russian outpost, where officers demanded to know where the journalist had been and whom he'd interviewed. In addition to Russian soldiers, South Ossetian militia fighters roamed the streets. One of them, drunk, walked up and showed off a shiny watch. "I got it from the body of a Georgian soldier," he said with a smile.

On the other hand, comes this fascinating analysis from a commenter whose nom-de-blog is RAH on the non-mainstream media Pajamas Media Belmont Club blog:

Russian President Medeyev was Gazprom President. In his new position he is buying contracts from other countries. Venezuela sells oil to Russia; Libya just signed a contract with Medeyev and Gazprom. I believe that they got the contracts from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Saudi Arabia provides oil to the US as well as Kuwait and they are our client countries.

They have been trying to secure outside sources for oil and gas. They recently this spring went to the artic to lay claim to the sources that may be there. Both Sweden and Finland are contesting those areas. Canada also has interest in the artic. The sea ice in the artic actually has changed and the melt has been prominent in the Russian area. The Canadian ice has been getting thicker. The Russia took advantage of the open sea to explore and lay claim. Russia has been the primary interest in the PARS field in Iran that the French company just pulled out.

So Gazprom has known about the need to get more sources since this is Medeyev’s obsession. The clash for oil sources will be the 21st century issue for some time to come. The fools who decry no oil for blood are clueless about how seriously nations will get to secure their energy. Energy is really the life and blood of a nations economy.

After the Soviet fall the Communist and Marxists groups and agitators went into the Green Movement. The Green Movement and the global warming scare have been targeted at Europe. Now it is curious that Russia has been from the 1990’s trying to become Europe’s energy supplier as the Green movement has insisted that power generation be only from natural gas and not coal that Germany has in abundance. Also they forced Germany under Schroeder to phase out the nuclear power generators. Later Schroeder went and worked for Medeyev’s Gazprom.

There is a true collusion from the promoters of Global Warming and the Green Movement that has been strangling Europe to work against its own national interests.
The vociferous attack against those that speak out about global warming as a product of human produced CO2 has been very strong and picked up by the liberal left and almost accepted doctrine in the West. Now we are just starting to show the cracks in that movement and science with bad methodology and sensors and cook algorithms.
Now what would be a good idea is to look at the funding of these groups and see if they have been funded or a disinformation campaign by Russia. The timing is right and the interests do coincide.

Russia never stopped working against the US and since we are their competitor on the world stage it is not surprising. Russia has fomented terrorism in Libya from the 1970’s and then in Syria and Iraq and Iran. They are also working in South America with Venezuela and Bolivia. So Russia has never stopped the Cold War it just went in different direction and form.

Two very different sources, both with the ring of truth.

Germany says Georgia is on track to join NATO.

Ukraine and Poland both rapidly agree to join the U.S. anti-missile network--the one Russia has adamantly opposed for years.

The calls to deny their entry into the World Trade Organization, toss Russia out of the G8, and otherwise make international life more difficult for the Russians get louder.

People are even starting to wonder out loud about kicking the Russians off of the United Nations Security Council.

Heckofa job, Putie.