Sarah Palin?

For once, Democratic strategist/media opportunist Paul Begala got it right with his initial response to John McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate:

“What was McCain thinking?” was the headline on Begala’s first-day blog.

I’ve spent this weekend reading, listening, researching, and thinking about the selection. I still can’t figure out what he was thinking.

For certain, this ought to neutralize the “Too inexperienced to lead” campaign slogan we’ve been hearing for months. McCain can’t talk about Barack Obama and raise that issue without raising the same doubts about his vice presidential running mate. And Democrats would be foolish to raise the experience issue when talking about Palin for fear of reviving the lingering concerns about Obama.

McCain’s selection DOES raise questions about judgment, about whether the best person has been selected for the ticket, and whether he forgot his pledge of just a few months ago that the person he picks for vice president would be able to step in on Day One and take over, if need be.

Clearly, the only criteria McCain cared about in the end was finding a running mate acceptable to the right-wing activists in the GOP.

The fanatics who threatened to “tear apart” the convention if McCain had picked a pro-choice supporter like Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge are today flooding the blogosphere with laughable arguments about Palin being the absolutely best choice for vice president.

It’s troubling to me, and I hope to others, that McCain has only known Palin for about six months, and that they only had one brief phone conversation before selecting her to be his running mate.  Does she know where he stands on top issues of the day? Does he know her position on major issues? Does he really care?

More than anything, this should raise new concerns about whether John McCain should be answering that 3 a.m. phone call.

Who is McCain listening to about Georgia?

It’s hard to believe Sen. John McCain’s campaign can deny a conflict-of-interest involving his chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann.

It’s Scheunemann whio has been advising McCain to take a get-tough approach toward Russia, and to strongly affirm U.S. ties to Georgia.

Oh, and it’s also Scheunemann whose two-man lobbying firm, has since 2004 been paid $800,000 by the government of Georgia to lobby members of Congress.

Scheunemann sure earned his money: He reported lobbying McCain or his staff on 49 separate occasions during the time he was a paid representative for the former Soviet republic.

He also lobbied McCain or his staff nearly 50 times on behalf of the governments of Taiwan and Macedonia, each of which paid Scheunemann’s company, Orion Strategies, over a half-million dollars, and Romania, which paid Orion over $400,000, and Latvia, which paid Orion nearly $250,000.

And how can the McCain campiagn say there’s no conflict? Because for the past three months Scheunemann has taken a leave of absence from the lobbying firm and is only collecting a consulting fee from the McCain campaign for his foreign policy expertise.

Between Jan. 1, 2007, and May 15, 2008, Scheunemann has been paid nearly $70,000 for his work on the McCain campaign.

The mainstream media is starting to take a closer look at Scheunemann and his cozy working relationships with McCain and the government of Georgia.

They would do well to take a closer look at Scheunemann’s politics.

Scheunemann, who also was a foreign policy adviser in McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, is one of the group of hardliners who pushed hard for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Scheunemann operated a group known as the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which was set up in late 2002 to bolster U.S. public support for the invasion of Iraq — an invasion predicated on fabricated evidence about Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction and the “threat” he posed to the West.

Earlier, Scheunemann was a signatory on the report from the Project for the New American Century which suggested just days after the attack on the World Trade Center that Iraq had ties to the Sept. 11 terrorists.

Who else besides Scheunemann signed the PNAC letter? There were about three dozen well-known neocon fanatics, including William Kristol and Richard Perle, who lobbied President Bush into a war we never had to start.

In the 1990s he also was an aide to then-GOP Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

Scheunemann’s politics are downright scary. That McCain is listening to, and following, his advice in formulating foreign policy positions — and in his saber-ratting threats toward Russia — is even more frightening.

John Edwards…

John Edwards…is a sleaze.

John Edwards … is a liar.

John Edwards … is a disgrace, to his family, to his supporters, to the Democratic Party.

And, I regret to say, John Edwards is one of the few contemporary politicians I used to respect.

McCain disrespects his wife…again!

Where is the outrage from feminists, or anyone with a sense of decency, after watching John McCain literally pimping out his wife this week to bikers at the huge motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D.?

How could McCain not have known what he was saying when he told the crowd he had encouraged Cindy McCain to enter the “Miss Buffalo Chip” pageant?

Some pageant. Sort of a cross between a wet T-shirt contest and an episode of “Girls Gone Wild.” Film clips of last year’s contest show competitors willing to bare their chests — or even bare it all — to move up into the finals. And how about the “talent competition” as the women show off their skills with a banana, pickles and other phallic menu selections?

Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe it was just an innocent yet insensitive comment while his wife was onstage at the Sturgis event, watching her husband acting like an ass.

But it’s not the first time McCain has publicly humiliated his wife.  Author Cliff Schechter’s book, “The Real McCain,” recalls a nasty exchange between McCain and his wife back in 1992 — witnessed by others — when he referred to her as “a c*nt” and suggested she “plastered on the makeup like a trollop.”

He makes Obama look better and better every day.

Novak illness leaves a political void

I’ve never been a fan of right-wing commentator Robert Novak. Still, you can’t help but be saddened by the veteran political analyst’s retirement today as he focuses on battling a malignant brain tumor.

Published report say Novak has described his prognosis as “dire.”

I’ve watched — and disagreed with — Novak’s outspoken conservative views ever since he was paired with liberal commentator Roland Evans back in the 1970s.

I enjoyed watching his daily appearances on CNN “Crossfire” — especially when his arguments were effectively shredded by the deft comments of Bill Press, Michael Kinsley and others.

But I cringed when his journalistic standards came into question by cooperating with the White House efforts to “out” covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, all in an apparent retaliatory campaign against her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had the courage to speak up and challenge the Bush administration’s run-up to war in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein shopping for “yellow cake” in Niger to develop nuclear weapons that he could use against the West? Sheer folly.

And yet, there’s a degree of sadness in knowing that Novak has made his last appearance on TV as a political pundit, written his last newspaper column, and probably waged his last effort to tear down Barak Obama in his presidential election season.

I didn’t care much for what he said; I’ll always defend his right to say it. My thoughts and prayers go out to Robert Novak and his family.