What a week for Democrats and what a typically irresponsible political stunt the Republicans just pulled...

I still can’t believe this election is going to be remotely close, there's way too much at stake to risk letting those crooked republicans getting their hands on power again.

Let's face it, they're entire campaign is focused purely on pleading with us not to vote for the scary black dude. Instead they want us to trust them again, we just have to hope the Republicans are telling us the truth this time. If we just let them have another 8 years (on top of all the years they've already spent fucking everything up) they promise to get it right next time. They promise to change everything, make it all hunk-dory again.....Man, it's fucking pathetic.

I firmly believe this election is a matter of life and death, there's no doubt in my mind that innocent people will lose their lives if the Republicans retain power in November.

John McCain's campaign has been crawling along the gutter, recently, disingenuously suggesting that Barack Obama would be happy to lose a war in order to win an election. It's all well and good for a dishonourable man to make a statement like this, but it actually doesn’t make any sense. The Republicans have never been able to tell us what victory in Iraq looks like, and without victory being defined, how the fuck can a war be ‘won or lost’? Of course, this nuance is lost on most of the US electorate, but the inference won't be. McCain claims that Obama will do anything in his power to win this election, but isn’t that exactly what McCain has been doing throughout this campaign?

After tying up his nomination in February it took bumbling McCain until last week to decide on a running mate. He's obviously not a decisive man, having to wait to see who his opponent selects before making a decision of his own. Still, when he does he insults the nation by selecting an anti-abortion, creationist, beauty pageant queen, and ex-mayor of a village in Alaska.

McCain is 72 years old and has suffered from cancer, if he were to win, his life expectancy doesn’t reach the end of his presidency. There’s a very genuine chance that shoul he win, his VP will become president during his term, and his choice? He's happy to put the nation’s security and stability into the hands of an unknown 'hockey mom'. Does he really believe that this woman, who they don't even trust to be interviewed by the media, will have the gravitas and, judgment to lead the most powerful nation on earth. Or, is it that the Republicans already understand that the nation will be ran by shadowy Rovian figures? Could the nation fall into the hands of the very same ultra-right wing Christian evangelicals who have all but destroyed everything our forefathers have worked for?

Either way this is a terrible decision, clearly one that has been made to have the maximum impact on the presidential race, and not with the best interests of the American people at heart. Obama is the antithesis, making a sensible decision, based on the key consideration that the VP has to be ready to be president on day 2.

Oh, what has McCain done?

McCain is risking everything in pursuit of the presidency, and a man that would risk all to become president is not who this country needs as president. I fear for all Americans.

In addition, if this was somehow aimed at attracting a few seriously misguided ex-Clinton supporters, they couldn't have got it more wrong. By anyone’s standard Hillary Clinton is a genuine political heavyweight, and to have the Republicans choose such a lightweight candidate to appeal to her base is nothing more than an insult. It smacks of Rovian vengeance at work to me.

The thing will ultimately back fire for Republicans. Where they may have previously hoped for a passive Hillary ultimately costing Obama the election, I can’t imagine they could’ve done more to galvanize the Clintons into action. If Hillary holds any ambition still to be president, she knows it's now an eight year wait, four years doesn’t work in the plan anymore, as that relies on a Republican presidency, and now there's a female on the ticket. So her best hope is to do all in her power to stop McCain and Plain (ooops) getting into office.

Though happy that this will act as a major motivation for the Clintons I still feel sorry for Hillary, that her great campaign has been upstaged in such a shallow manner.

Another ‘friend’ of McCain’s who has been effected by this decision is Joe Biden, who now has to face the humiliation of debating the Republican choice. Who now has the embarrassment of actually being compared to Palin, that their pictures and bios appear on opposite sides of the same page, is enough in itself to galvanize the Democratic base as much as it has galvanized the ultra-right wing evangelical base of the Republicans.

Finally, the Republicans driven by desperation have been irresponsible enough to try to make their own history, throwing in an unprepared, unqualified pageant queen into the mix believing that their lightweight can match Obama. That the man who has changed the face of American politics for ever, the man that has moved an entire generation to action, the intelligent, composed, honest, considered and unflappable Obama now has to stand at the crossroads of history with the Republican’s Alaskan maid standing just behind him, is a humiliation for all of America.

What Obama has achieved in these past three years is worthy of a place in history, he has defined the race, he has been defining it all the way along. His presence made the Republicans pick McCain and his pick of Joe Biden, brilliant as it was, left the Republicans staring defeat squarely in the face. So panicked were they, that they throw the kitchen sink and Palin, not at Obama, but at the American people.

I hope Americans see this for the political stunt it is, and as we stand at one of the most challenging times in our country’s history, understand just how irresponsible the Republican’s are being with this choice.

The Republicans pick is even under an ethics investigation. Although I have no doubt the investigation will fail to find a single piece of incriminating evidence, as Rove would’ve got into that long before any Washington Post journos. But ultimately, their attempts to reinvent her short history will catch up with them.

Her very first public/press announcement with John McCain included a bare-faced lie: She told us that she's a reformer, a Washington outsider, who was against the ‘bridge to nowhere’, and went on to tell us that she told Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’. Nice, but an absolute lie. Not only is she lightweight, but she's already showing extremely bad judgment by taking public speaking advice from McCain himself.

She’s obviously taken up his mantra of lie, lie, and lie, then keep lying some more. He must of told her that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done or said, the day or week before, it doesn’t matter if your 180 degree switch is on camera or tape or in print keep on lying, because the US media will never say a bad thing about us. Also, he must’ve taught her the one lesson republicans have learned in their eight long miserable years in power, that the American electorate are stupid.

The Republicans rely on this factor, even if the odd media man/woman highlights an about turn, or outright lie about something they did, or didn’t do. Even if it's printed and talked about, nothing will happen, they'll never have to suffer any consequences because they fundamentally believe the American electorate don‘t pay attention, unless you say 9/11, or terrorists loudly at the beginning of your sentence. Maybe they're right, after all the proof of the US electorate's stupidity is right before our eyes; they re-elected the worst president in the country’s history, and the majority are very close to giving the same Republican cronies another shot at it, unbelievable!

Both Joe Biden and Barack Obama are embodiments of the American dream, both their lives have been spent in service to their communities, and country. But, the republicans have a candidate born with a silver spoon in his mouth who holds up the fact that he got shot down and crashed loads of planes, and came bottom of a class of a thousand cadets, and consequently was a POW, as a reason why he should not be held accountable for any error of judgment he makes. And a VP who holds up her baby as evidence of how far she‘ll go to support her belief of anti-abortion, as if her baby had burdened her in some way! The very inference is disgusting.

In fact it’s almost as disgusting as the GOP using the hurricane to gain political advantage and clearing the most unpopular president and vice president in history off their convention stage. They have the gall to feign concern for the people of New Orleans, three years after they sat together eating cake as thousands perished, but of course there was no political advantage to be made then.

This week was an amazing week for the Democrats, speech after speech filled with substance. The Dems had a strong showing of unity, like never before, made all the more remarkable by the environment they entered the convention. With the irresponsible mainstream media desperate to focus on any slight sound of descent or disunity, where the media gave more time to a group that couldn’t fill a small restaurant in Denver, than they did to the 84,000 people that crammed into a massive arena to watch and listen to who they hoped would be their next president give one of the greatest political speeches of all time. Reminding all before him, that although both original candidates had been of the very highest quality the party had picked the right one.

Obama’s speech which will go down in history as one of the greatest convention/political speeches of all time, but it is a clear damming of the US media that his amazing speech could be embarrassingly upstaged by a beauty pageant queen from a village in Alaska, only in America would that be possible.

If this week had happened in Europe, the papers would’ve been filled with the substance not the celebrity of an ex-beauty pageant queen and TV sports presenter entering the race for president. They would’ve been filled with debate about the substance of Obama’s speech. Importantly they would’ve understood what happened the day after, and would’ve called it for what it was, a political stunt by a desperate republican party, but that’s Europe, not America.

Just thought I'd leave you with McCain making a sick joke about Katrina, what an unsuitable candidate this man is:-