The race card

Sending Cheney out to pasture and naming Condi Rice as the new VP makes perfect sense for the GOP, and I'm not entirely surprised to be hearing the rumors. President Bush has a slim chance of turning Iraq around before the 2008 election, if by slim I mean practically no chance at all. In all fairness, I suppose the Iranian people could rise up and depose the homophobic, end-times loving head cases that run their government, and install a pro-western, secular parliamentary system that takes as its first order of business reconciliation with Iraqi Sunnis. But then Bush would have to recognize what an opportunity that would be for our national security, and screw it up.

But Shrub has a slightly greater chance of salvaging his party's chances in the 2008 election. Dumping Cheney, preferably in a plastic shredder, and naming Rice as the first African-American veep in our history, would be a good start. Sure, Rice was a terrible national security advisor, and she lacks the spine to stand up to her boss as Secretary of State. But she's cute and well spoken and did I mention that she's a black Repubican?

The Republican National Committee has to be worried about Obama, whose gravity is sucking up all campaign cash in its path. Obama has street cred among the anti-war crowd, currently numbered at two out of every three citizens. He's being called a rock star, but I think that's an understatement - his public appearances are drawing grey haired grannies who wouldn't know Bono from The Big Bopper.

I like Obama, but have deep reservations about an early run for the White House. We don't know enough about him, and he's even less experienced in national government than George Bush, the former two term governor of Texas was when he ran in 2000. I know - Lincoln was a one term senator when he ran in 1860, but the Great Emancipator didn't have Roger Ailes to deal with, the John Wilkes Booth of our day. Better that Obama finishes his senate term, maybe even take a turn as Governor of Illinois before he makes the leap. I'd hate to see a quality pol like Barack turn into this generation's Harold Stassen.