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Some quick quips about Sarah Palin:

- "Between Biden, Obama and McCain, Palin is the only one who can spell 'energy.' The rest of these guys are completely clueless," says David Pursell, an analyst with Houston-based Tudor Pickering Holt & Co., an energy investment and research firm.

- "She has shown an independent streak and has been anything but a patsy in dealing with the oil industry in Alaska," says Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

- Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy fellow at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, says Palin represents a departure from past Alaskan politicians in how she has motivated the oil industry. "She's taken much more of a 'knocking-heads' approach," Jaffe said. "She has stood up to the big players when she didn't like the process."

At first blush, many thought Palin's pick for VP was simply a counterpoint to Hillary Clinton.

It is not.

This woman brings much more to the election than simply being female. Over the next 65 days I think that will be recognized.

jimmy wrote:IMO, Gov. Palin is an outstanding choice for VP. She's smart, principled (and her principles are in the right place), and she's real, not a posturing, ego-driven, Washington phony. I doubt if McCain could have chosen better. I'm for her and earnestly hope she and McCain win in November.

Thank you, Jimmy, for a substantive post.

Considering what we face this election, this has been a pretty messy Topic. From fantasy cabinets to hottie ratings to "What a joke."

I'm baffled.

Obama/Biden is, arguably, just about the worst possible ticket for the Second Amendment. Maybe Pelosi/McCarthy would be worse, but it might be a close call.

I know die-hard Ron Paul supporters will be staging "Ronstock '08" in defiance of the GOP ticket. To me, that's pulling a Ralph Nader. I respect your opinions, but read Sun Tzu: you have to understand how retreating from a battle can ultimately win the war.

Let's not hand this election to Barrack Obama and Joe Biden on a silver platter.

Let's not make our belief in the right to keep and bear arms a paper tiger.

Let's all work--and work hard--for a Republican victory in November.

From the NRA-ILA, posted on its Website yesterday, August 29:

Even before this week, the difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was clear. For one, McCain joined more than 300 other members of Congress in signing a "friend of the court" brief, in District of Columbia v. Heller, urging the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the Second Amendment and against D.C.'s handgun ban.

Obama refused to sign the Heller brief, and supports reinstituting the Clinton gun and magazine ban. He also supports Ted Kennedy's bill to ban semi-automatic handguns in the guise of "micro-stamping," and supports banning inexpensive handguns as "junk guns."

But now that each candidate has chosen his running mate, the difference is even clearer than before. And when it comes to guns, the two prospective vice-presidents are as far apart as the states from which they hail.

Sen. McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is a NRA Life Member and hunter who says, "I support our Constitutional right to bear arms and am a proponent of gun safety programs for Alaska's youth," adding "I have always strongly supported the personal use of fish and game by Alaskans. I grew up hunting and fishing in Alaska, and I am proud to raise my children with this same uniquely Alaskan heritage."

NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox says "Governor Palin doesn't just talk about supporting the Second Amendment, it's part of her life, and she did her part to vindicate the Second Amendment for all Americans when Alaska joined 30 other states in signing a legal brief supporting Heller's challenge to the D.C. gun-ban."

As for Joe Biden, from Delaware, the Brady Campaign sums it up in a straightforward enough fashion, saying, "Senator Biden has been a consistent supporter of the Brady Campaign," and "Senator Biden was a key player in the fight for the federal assault weapons ban that passed in 1994. He also worked hard for passage of the Brady Law (sic)."

In fact, Biden introduced an "assault weapons" ban in Congress five years before the Clinton gun and magazine ban was imposed. In 1989, Biden's Senate Bill 1970 proposed to ban the Colt AR-15 and eight similar firearms as "assault weapons," and authorize the Secretary of the Treasury (in reality, BATF) and the Attorney General to recommend to Congress any other firearms, regardless of type, to be banned as "additional assault weapons."

As lead sponsor of the Senate crime bill to which the Feinstein gun ban amendment was attached, Biden was instrumental in the passage of the 1994 Clinton gun and magazine ban. Biden reiterated his support for the ban—and, in fact, took credit for authoring it—in response to a question at the CNN/YouTube debate earlier this year [I've inserted the video clip below].

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=nkavwuWE5eQ[/youtube]

Biden voted for the ban on a stand-alone vote in 1993, and voted to extend the ban in 2004 as an amendment to the "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act." He also included a renewal of the ban in his crime bill last year, along with gun show restrictions.

Currently, Biden's S. 2237 proposes to renew the Clinton ban on roughly 200 makes and models of semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and handguns on the basis of things like the shape of their grips, and on ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, regardless of the kind of firearm in which they are used.

As if that's not enough, Biden voted against the law that prohibits lawsuits designed to bankrupt law-abiding firearm manufacturers and dealers. He also refused to sign the Congressional brief in Heller, and voted to confirm only one of the five justices who ruled in favor of the Second Amendment in Heller, yet he voted to confirm all four justices who voted against the Second Amendment in that case.

To put it simply, Gov. Sarah Palin would be one of the most pro-gun vice-presidents in American history, and Joe Biden would definitely be the most anti-gun.

Nicely summarized, Mr. The Annoyed Man.

I'm excited about the convention. I wasn't yesterday.

Nicolai wrote:We may even watch the vice presidential debates.

I think the VP debates now become must-see TV. Biden has had a history of letting his mouth run, failing to always think before he speaks. Remember in '88 when he had to face the accusation that the content of one of the stump speeches he made when (unsuccessfully) running for president had been plagiarized? Actually, I have a feeling the two most evenly matched debates might be McCain-Biden, and Palin-Obama.

The big hit against Palin that we're already hearing is that McCain blasts Obama for lack of experience, then picks a VP that has "even less" experience. I put that in quotation marks becasue what we can't forget is that it's extremely rare to see two senators battling for POTUS. In fact, I can't recall offhand when that last happened. Governors are, generally speaking, more electable...because they have executive experience, not legislative. Governors run their states, and that executive experience translates better to the executive role in the oval office. Biden has been a senator since Obama was 11 years old, and neither he nor Obama have any significant private- or public-sector executive experience that I know of.

I predict Palin will sway a lot of people over the next 67 days. I considered her a way long long-shot (a Palin for VP Website was brought live a few months ago), but she may just complement McCain in many of the right areas. For one thing that's not so minor to us, as Skip said, she and her husband are NRA lifers. I'm a lot more excited now than I would have been with a couple of others that were considered to be on the short list.

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