Biden confirms 2008 run

My letter to WDSU describes one despairing change in the New Orleans lineup of Sunday morning talking head programs:

First, check your 201-WDSU line. The navigation system isn't working in order to leave comments - but maybe that's the way you like it.

Second, you're not "building WDSU around me" by changing the broadcast time for Meet the Press. How dare you fill the Sunday 9-10 AM time slot with a repeat of how people feel about the summer heat every ten minutes. That's programming for idiots. Sunday morning is the time when viewers have an opportunity to find out how events are getting spun inside the beltway, and Meet the Press has always been the best of the lot of these programs.

Your decision is all the more reprehensible because it allows Fox to run the most politically-biased interview program without a competitive alternative.

Your momma otta slap you silly for such a stupid idea!

Notable in Fox (at least before I had to turn it off) - nothing. Cindy Sheehan is in the news, but neither Chris Wallace nor John McCain could figure out why. John McCain sold his soul to the devil for the Bush administration, and all he got was...nothing. Oh yeah, Rupert Murdoch is the devil in case anyone forgot. He's just one more friend of the Bush administration taking a free ride on American taxpayers.

Meet the Press began with today's disconcerting Washington Post lead story describing the Bush administration now downgrading the achievable progress in Iraq:

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

Senator Joseph Biden (D-De) agreed, "They have squandered about every opportunity to get it right."

On the NY Times story about how American troops in Iraq have been taking the flak, literally, for the the Bush administration's failure to get them some updated body armor that actually works, Biden said:

I don't understand how it happens. Imagine if Secretary Rumsfeld was the CEO of a corporation. These guys talk about how they came from business backgrounds. He'd be fired by now. The idea that we are at this moment, with this headline saying "U.S. Struggles to Get Soldiers Updated Armor," is absolutely irresponsible. And I realize all the problems. If you read the article, it goes back two and a half years and the mistakes consistently being made.

I've said a lot about Donald Rumsfeld elsewhere in PGR.
On Bush's comments that he's pleased with the training of Iraqi troops, Biden said:

I can tell you with absolute certainty that the number of troops that we have trained out of 100 battalions that are in uniform--and battalions make 300 to 800 people in each battalion. These are Iraqi battalions. We have fully trained fewer than 3,000. Fully trained meaning they can take the place of an American troop. We have another probably 20 to 30 battalions out there that, with embedded U.S. military, are able to do a serious, positive job. After that, it falls off the cliff.

If we have 178,000 troops that are already trained, Andrea, why do we need 130,000 American troops which would get you over 300,000 people in Iraq, with the body counts going up, with the insurgency gaining strength? And the president continues to say he is pleased with the training schedule. I don't know any military man or woman in Iraq who's pleased with that schedule.

Will Biden run for president in 2008, as he suggested he would in June?

Well, yes. I'm out there. I've spent a lot of time in the red states, Andrea, trying to find out if there's anybody but me that thinks I should run for president of the United States of America.

I can't wait to vote!

There isn't anyone out there who can stand up against Biden. He's a no-nonsense speaker who can talk himself out of any situation and come out on top.

Who to run with? Here are a few suggestions off the top of my head:

Biden-Feingold: It's obvious isn't it. He's from Wisconsin. He fights for blue collar Americans. He's capably filled the shoes that my favorite senator Paul Wellstone left behind (R.I.P.). Hands down - my favorite choice.

Biden-Blanco: She's the centrist Louisiana Governor who has demonstrated, by locking up the cajun vote, her ability to appeal to a "broad" base. She's also proven herself to be extremely shrewd as a negotiator with business interests.

Biden-Landrieu: She's not "my" Senator, even though she does represent me, but she's positioned herself as a centrist, and she has the benefit of being a southerner.

Update: Earlier errors in which I mistakenly attributed quotes to McCain have been corrected to show that they were instead made by Biden.