In an effort to support the launch of PonderPost, I wrote an article that I would usually publish on Ponderstorm so I wanted to tell Ponderstorm readers about it. Entitled The Obama & Biden Gaffe Machine, this post discusses a top ten list of gaffes committed by our President and Vice President as compiled by a British journalist at the Telegraph. Special emphasis is placed on Obama’s recent gifting fiasco with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Obama’s Special Olympics joke last night on the Jay Leno show that offended many. There are two embedded videos.

Senator Joe Biden has been overshadowed by Governor Sarah Palin of late. Maybe he’s looking for something, anything, to get himself back in the news. I don’t think his latest comments were the kind of news he wanted, though.

Watch the following statement Biden made to CBS Evening News’ Katie Couric and see if you notice anything wrong with them. Hint: the stock market crash he was referring to occurred in October 1929.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In case you missed the gaffes, here’s a transcript of Biden’s statements in this video:

Part of what being a leader does is to instill confidence, is demonstrate that he or she knows what they’re talking about and to communicates to people. If you listed to me and follow what I’m suggesting we can fix this. When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, “Look, here’s what happened.”

So Biden’s instilling confidence, right? Let’s go back in history. Who was President in 1929? If you answered Herbert Hoover you would be correct (FDR wasn’t elected until 1932).

Now about FDR getting on television . . . let’s research that. Philo Farnsworth made the world’s first working television system. He first demonstrated it to news media on September 1, 1928 and later to the public at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on August 25, 1934. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t 1934 come after 1929?

But I guess we can say that’s leadership Biden-style. Stay tuned for the next episode of the Biden Gaffe Machine, which, thanks to the marvel of television, will be coming to a screen near you. I wonder what he’ll say next?

The Obama campaign likes to say that John McCain “votes with George W. Bush” 90% of the time. For one thing, they never, to my knowledge, tell us where that 90% figure came from. And secondly, how does a Senator vote with the President when the President has no vote in the Senate? That’s simply a bogus issue.

I read a very interesting article today at Obama2.com entitled Barack Obama Votes with President Bush that brought up this and some other great points. In this article the author assumes that voting “with Bush” means the Senator voted on the same side of a position clearly taken by the Bush administration before the Senate vote took place.  Using that definition and estimates from the Congressional Quarterly, the author points out that Senator Obama actually voted “with Bush” 40% of them time and Senator Biden 52% of the time. (No percentage is given for Senator McCain.) The estimates used covered yes or no votes only since other votes are calculated as not voting (“NV” means not voting, excused, absent, or present).

The Obama2.com article points out another thing that is very telling about Senator Obama and his “leadership skills.”  According to a Project Vote Smart study of Senator Obama’s voting record in the Senate since he has been there, Obama didn’t vote 228 out of 568 times (that amounts to skipping or passing on more than 40% of all his “votes”). But the particular issues he skips gets even more interesting as you’ll see below. I quote from the above referenced Obama2.com article:

Based on the Project Vote Smart records, some areas where Obama likes to avoid having an opinion:

• Abortion Issues – 75% NV
• Agriculture Issues – 86% NV
• Budget, Spending and Taxes – 54% NV
• Business and Consumers – 47% NV
• Civil Liberties and Civil Rights – 44% NV
• Defense – 29% NV
• Education – 55% NV
• Energy Issues – 35% NV
• Environmental Issues – 64% NV
• Family and Children Issues – 50% NV
• Foreign Aid and Policy Issues – 56% NV
• Gun Issues – 25% NV
• Health Issues – 67% NV
• Housing and Property Issues – 100% NV
• National Security Issues – 39% NV
• Reproductive Issues – 75% NV
• Technology and Communication – 33% NV
• Trade Issues – 38% NV
• Transportation Issues – 63% NV
• Veterans Issues – 34% NV
• Welfare and Poverty – 64% NV
• Women’s Issues – 67% NV

So much for Senator Obama showing us he can make the tough decisions that good leadership requires. That’s an appalling record and demonstrates how a Senator can skirt the tough issues that a mayor or a governor cannot by virtue of their executive role.  Let’s debate the experience, not-ready-to-lead question some more and see who comes up on top. Hands down the Republican ticket wins this one.

I’m sure this shocked many on the left and many in the mainstream media, but the Republican convention was more watched than the Democratic convention AP Television Writer David Bauder reported today. He writes: “The Republican convention was the most-watched convention on television ever, beating a standard set by the Democrats a week earlier.” Also interesting is that John McCain and Barack Obama both were tied at 42.4 million viewers each for their respective party nomination speeches.

Overall, “more than 40 million people watched political speeches on three nights by Obama, McCain and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin,” Bauder reports. “Three times in two weeks, political speeches were watched by more people than the ‘American Idol’ finale, the Academy Awards and the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics this year.” Interestingly, speeches by Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton didn’t achieve these numbers.

According to Nielsen Media Research there were an average of 34.5 million people watching the GOP convention over three days. Nielsen suggested that “proved people are becoming more interested in what the Republicans have to say.” Nielsen reported that the Democrats had an average audience of 30.2 million over their convention’s four days. That’s more than 4 million viewers for the Republican convention.

Interesting numbers and interesting times. I think these latest numbers show a reinvigorated Republican Party due in large part to the inclusion of Sarah Palin on the ticket with John McCain.

Honestly, I’m still surprised that the champion of change Barack Obama would choose Washington-insider Joseph Biden as his running mate. It seems puzzling that Obama would go for another Senator with essentially nothing but Senate-learned experience. And to top that off, Biden was caught in the late 1980s plagiarizing an anti-American British MP. Furthermore, the “clean and articulate” Biden has recently said some very unflattering things of Obama and insulted Indian American immigrants in his home state. Biden has a reputation of shooting from the hip and thinking later.

I think we’re seeing the beginning of the end of Obama’s image as the champion of change and freshness. He’s lashed himself to the old guard in Washington and it will taint him.