I'd like consideration of John Kasich as Vice Presidential running mate for Sen. McCain.

Former Congressman Kasich has a stellar resume as to governmental budgeting and spending. Eight terms in the Congress, ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee and then Chairman of the House Budget Committee, former congressman Kasich has the resume in finance and governmental affairs to warrant his inclusion on the ticket.

John Kasich’s knowledge of U.S. history and the nation’s foreign policy have oft been displayed during his eight terms in the House and repeatedly during his time in the public eye.

His warm personality and respect for civility are accompanied by a strong personal ethic and he is from the salient state of Ohio where he remains a man of origin and respect. He could step into the role of Chief Executive if required.

Possessed of a youthful maturity, Mr. Kasich can speak and think standing on his feet and would be a devastating exponent for the party and the ticket.  He could stand and deliver against any nominee for Vice President that the Democrats would advance as Sen. Obama’s running mate.

John Kasich’s blue collar empathy, honed from working class origins, will bring voters from key states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, along with his State of Ohio, magnetic appeal. 

Americans will run to the polls to validate John McCain on Election Day. If John Kasich is on the ticket, they will do so with a smile.

Yep, the nominee has no clothes.

If you've any question who triumphed at Saddleback, look at how Huffington Post has buried coverage of the event.  Nothing on the home page.  Small blurb on the political page.

Generally, Huffington Post puts any negative story and coverage they can about Sen. McCain front and center on the Huffington home page.

This complete abandonment of coverage tells us how scared the left is of both how well Sen. McCain showed at Saddleback and how clumsily a speaker, thinker and politician Sen. Obama demonstrated himself to be at the Saddleback forum.

For Sen. Obama, to wind those inelegant sentences up and down his ham-handed responses was painful. 

When Sen. Obama gave his "beyond my pay grade" reply, the world saw his ineptitude for the Presidency and frankly, the current office he holds.

The Presidency is the highest pay grade.  If Sen. Obama cannot reconcile the competing theological and 'scientific' issues underlying the abortion, right to life, pro-choice debate then why does he think he's qualified to take the oath for this job.

The buck stops here Sen. Obama.

It was also somewhat unseemly to have him use a cliché about 'pay grade' for an intellectual question that has to do with life and our constitutional scheme.  We are not reduced in this society to being tawdry 'managers' of great issues, casting off responsibilities to the next person on the scale.  Each real person makes a choice or is reduced to being a mere voyeur or also ran in the great debates of our time.

Sen. Obama is at his core a man given to the cliché.  In that, Saddleback revealed him to be a mere vulgarian.

Small wonder Huffington Post pretends Saddleback didn't happen.  

One wouldn't have to do too much voir dire on him in a witness box to learn that his range of knowledge and depth on foreign policy and 20th century history is marginal.

Does anyone think that he really has been fascinated for his entire life with issues of history, military craft, and statecraft?  Could anyone reasonably expect Sen. Obama to articulate a cogent understanding of 'ost-politik.'  Would Sen. Obama be able to recount the great historical and political movements associated with Adenauer, Brandt, Schmidt and Kohl?

Now his handlers can prepare him for questions but the inner man cannot come to code after a lifetime of inattention to matters that are foundational to one that would be versed in the history of the west.

 It's more than naiveté.  There are pitfalls awaiting Sen. Obama that will reduce him in the eyes of the voters to the soufflé candidate.

Media needs to push this White House hard in the remaining months to set the national psyche in gear toward a new fossil fuel ethos.

For decades, Americans have become intellectually alien from oil resources, the oil patch and the business of refining and sale of oil products. All this while going through commercial periods of buying more and more consumer goods that were the outcome of petro/refinement.

The reasons for this intellectual estrangement from oil and its exploration culture originate in oil spills of the late 1960's and 70's and the visceral repulsion that has attended the association of oil with the Arab Middle East and the conspicuous consumption of the potentates.

Since the early 1970's, oil and war and terror and OPEC and shady meetings in nice hotels have dominated the public’s view of what surrounds the production of oil and petroleum.

Couple this helix of oil association and Middle East and other desperados with the passive view of land and coastal use entertained by the Democratic Party and you have generations of Americans that have no love or respect for fossil fuel and its extraction.

We need a new mind set. Conservative Radio, Cable News, (The ever improving Mr. Dobbs included) will need to teach the public that oil is their friend. It may seem counter intuitive but it can be done.

Feelings are hard to overcome but lessons learned at the pump may be just the right instructional device.