Woe to those who would hide their plans too deep for the LORD! Who work in the dark, saying, "Who sees us, or who knows us?"
[Isaiah 29:15]

It's midnight in the District of Columbia, and...

IT'S BIDEN!!!!


Yes, the Obamaniacs have been hard at work in the dark of night, and Dems, you got yourself a Veepsteak.

Oh, and if you're one of the loyal acolytes who signed up to be the "First to Know" via text or email from Barack Obama (still on offer at the Obama website), you are so S.O.L., my friends -- your message should arrive some time tomorrow morning, but the Really Important People (the press) were the Real First To Know, and they beat you by hours. Perhaps you didn't read the fine print at the bottom of the page, that says you have to cough up money or perform some other act of service for the campaign in order to get what you thought was offered to you freely. (See convention tickets, etc.)

Delaware Senator Joe Biden --
just five years younger than John McCain, elected to the Senate when Barry Obama was 10 years old -- has been chosen to be the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate. Once infamous for having plagiarized a speech (not to mention plagiarizing his forehead hair from some other part of his body), Biden is now much more famous for his own words -- by the score. His chronic oral diarrhea has made an ass of him in more forums than one can count, most memorably in the confirmation hearings of Republican-nominated Supreme Court Justices.

Political humorist Andy Borowitz predicted a few days ago that, anticipating the nod, Biden had already "prepared a 50,000 word acceptance speech" to begin on Wednesday and close on Thursday.

Jonah Goldberg at NationalReviewOnline calls the choice "an outright terrible decision," and reminds us that "Biden is such a gasbag he makes the Hindenburg look like a sack of rocks." Not content to gift us with this new bon mot, Goldberg resurrects his September '05 assessment of the man (whom he actually kind of likes):

He says interesting things, from time to time. I think he makes a fair point here and there...What's fascinating — and what might be distracting some folks from seeing his underlying-yet-occassional smarts — is that he lets his ego and vanity get in the way. The man loves his voice so much, you'd expect him to be following it around in a grey Buick, in defiance of restraining order, as it walks home from school. He seems to think his teeth are some kind of hypnotic punctuation marks which can momentarily disorient the listener and absolve him from any of Western civilization's usual imperatives to stop talking.

Listening to him speechify is like playing an intellectual game of whack-a-mole where every now and then the fuzzy head of a good point pops up from the tundra but before you can pin it down, he starts talking about how he went to the store and saw a squirrel on the way and it was brown which brings to mind Brown V. Board of Ed which most people don't understand because [TEETH FLASH] he taught Brown in his law school course and [TEETH FLASH] Mr. Chairman I'm going to get right to it and besides these aren't the droids you're looking for...

[hat-tip, Obiwan Kenobi -- emphases: mine]

But while we're all chuckling at the prospect of two hot air balloons trying to occupy the same platform, it's worth remembering that two years ago Biden proposed a "solution" to the strife in Iraq which was manifestly disastrous, and he's still being treated like it was a serious proposal -- in fact, even in the past half-hour there have already been suggestions that the hard-won resolutions arrived at this year in Iraq actually bear some resemblance to the three-way religio/ethnic ghetto-izing Biden had recommended. Dennis Byrne of the Chicago Tribune summed it up pretty well at the time-- money quote:

Just as the Iraqis were finally putting together a unity government, along comes Sen. Joseph Biden with a "detailed plan" to unravel it.

Brilliant.

As brilliant as Abraham Lincoln preparing a detailed plan to end the Civil War upon the fall of Vicksburg.

Just like Sara Lee, it seems that nobody doesn't like Joe Biden. But he is nevertheless dangerously dumb where smartness is required for survival. Many a Republican/conservative considers this choice (and the blabbering dumbness) of Biden a gift in this election cycle, and happily say "Bring it on." If the survival of the species were not dependent on these things, this could be nothing but fun. The Democratic ticket could be the gaffe that keeps on gaffing.

Anyway, Biden should enjoy himself as he runs for office on the promise of "CHANGE" (having spent 36 years in Washington), hand-in-glove with that fella he once admired for being "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy -- I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Kinda gets ya'-- rightcheer.

On the other hand, Jim Geraghty at NRO has a revealing round-up of some of Biden's less-than-complimentary assessments of his new running mate, now on record. F'rinstance, in December of '07, Joe was heard to opine: “When this campaign is over, political slogans like ‘experience’ and ‘change’ will mean absolutely nothing. The next president has to act.” [hat-tip YidWithLid]

Well, this is as close as Ol' Joe is ever gonna get to the West Wing office. This team is not gonna get the gold-- and not because their opponents are underage!!!!