Safe to say gun control will be a big issue in Colorado’s elections in 2014:

Sounding more like he was running for governor, House Minority Leader Mark Waller announced his bid Monday to succeed John Suthers as attorney general.

In his announcement made at the University of Denver School of Law, the Colorado Springs Republican talked about the state’s unemployment rate, federal mandates and the Legislature’s approval of controversial gun measures as part of his reasons for seeking the office.

Waller criticized Democratic legislators for accepting telephone calls while on the House floor from Vice President Joe Biden, who was encouraging them to approve two gun measures that went into effect Monday.

At the time, lawmakers were discussing bills to require background checks on all gun purchases and limit the size of gun magazines.

“It was incredibly disappointing in the Legislature this year to see East Coast politicians drive our agenda,” Waller said.

Waller will face Cynthia Coffman, chief deputy attorney general, in a primary; the winner “will face Democrat Don Quick, who was the Adams County district attorney until term limits prevented him from running again last year.”

Coffman, too, will be running against the state’s newly passed gun-control measures:

In the wake of tragic shootings in Newton [sic], Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado, the General Assembly reacted by passing a trio of bills this session impacting gun purchasers and owners. If I’d had the opportunity as a member of the legislature, I would have voted against all three bills. It is admirable to want to stop future tragedies. However, this package of legislation does nothing to address the causes of such horrifying mass shootings. Simple answers elude us when we fail to recognize the complexity of the questions we should be asking. Law-abiding Coloradans have the right to possess guns for protection of their families as well for hunting and sport. I will do my part as Attorney General to preserve those rights.

We may scoff that Obama writing a check to the U.S. Treasury for $1,666 a month is a meaningless gesture designed to fool those who can’t do math that he’s making a significant sacrifice in the Age of the Sequester . . . but I suppose there are more objectionable approaches for a lawmaker to take:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she opposes a cut in congressional pay because it would diminish the dignity of lawmakers’ jobs.

“I don’t think we should do it; I think we should respect the work we do,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. “I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”

The comments were made in the context of the looming sequester, which would force across-the-board cuts affecting most federal offices, including Congress.

As House minority leader, Pelosi is slated to make $193,400 this year; most members of Congress make $174,000.

Pelosi’s net worth is estimated to be $26.4 million, which reflects her husband’s real-estate investments.

Also unmentioned in the coverage: will Vice President Joe Biden be writing a check for 5 percent of his salary as well?

Above, Nancy Pelosi at a May 2012 ceremony where Middle Drive East in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park was renamed “Nancy Pelosi Drive.” Naturally, the road heads south and bends to the left.

When the president or vice president travels, each one travels with a lot of support staff and security staff. Traveling to foreign countries and meeting with foreign leaders is part of the job for these offices, so fiscal conservatives can’t label the trips as waste.

But necessary as the trips may be, they cost a pretty penny. If you’ve ever wondered just how much a standard presidential or vice-presidential visit costs, a recent contract disclosure sheds some light. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to London in February required 136 rooms and 893 room nights (meaning some or most of the 136 rooms were booked for several nights).

The hotel was the Hyatt Regency London the Churchill.

The U.S. State Department does not have the time to shop around for the best hotel that can meet the security needs of a vice-presidential visit:

Security concerns prohibit sufficient advanced notification of VIP travel to allow for sufficient time to conduct full and open competition. . . . They have an extremely short turnaround time when authorization has been granted for negotiations to commence and site selections to be finalized with both the local vendors and Posts before the actual Presidential visit occurs.

Total cost of the hotel rooms for Biden’s London stay: $459,338.65. Mind you, that’s just the cost of the hotel rooms for the president, his advance staff, security personnel, etc., not transportation or any other costs.

Biden was in London for one night.

This was, of course, before the sequester took effect.

“Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?” — Vice President Joe Biden to Charles Woods, grieving father of slain Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, during a memorial service at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

Any comment here would be superfluous.

This is certain to be a busy week, and the week’s first Morning Jolt notices a poll result down in Florida…

Show Joe Biden This Poll Result, and He Might Just Stop Laughing

A reader sent me this poll result and asked, “who gets the last laugh?”

Proper caveats: The sample is only of the Tampa area, and only 13 percent of this sample of debate watchers changed their mind, which amounts to about 92 people.

1,000 Tampa area adults were interviewed by SurveyUSA about last night’s Vice Presidential debate. Of the adults, 704 watched the debate. Results of debate watchers:

* 38% say Joe Biden clearly won the debate.

* 42% say Paul Ryan clearly won the debate.

* 20% say there was no clear winner.

* 13% say they changed which candidate for President they support as a result of the debate.

Of those who tell SurveyUSA they changed their mind:

* 44% switched from the Obama ticket to the Romney ticket.

* 29% switched from undecided to the Romney ticket.

* A total of 73% switched to the Romney ticket.

* 18% switched from the Romney ticket to the Obama ticket.

* 6% switched from undecided to the Obama ticket.

* A total of 24% switched to the Obama ticket.

* 49% say Biden is ready to be President, if needed.

* 51% say Ryan is ready to be President, if needed.

Still, in any amount, if three folks shifted to Romney for every one who shifted to Obama, this is good news for Republicans (and suggests that the gut reaction that Biden came across as an insufferably snide blowhard isn’t just our partisan instincts).

As Ed Morrissey notices, “13% is around the level of undecided/soft voters nationally.”

Keep in mind the audience for the vice-presidential debate was significantly lower than the Romney-Obama debate: “Final Nielsen ratings data on Friday showed that the vice presidential match-up on issues ranging from the economy to foreign policy and abortion, was seen by 51.4 million Americans across 12 cable and broadcast networks.The October 3 debate between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney drew a TV audience of 67.2 million, putting it among the 10 most-watched debates of the past 30 years.”

Still, at the thought that Joe Biden’s constant cackling cost his ticket votes, I’m just left with this image of a recurring, recorded laugh, after we’ve witnessed an outlandish personality, once on top of the world, plummet to defeat . . .

Besides the laughing, grinning, interrupting, and so on, this may be one of the more consequential Biden statements of the night:

“Well, we weren’t told they wanted more security there. We did not know they wanted more security again.”

That remark is remarkably incongruous with everything we know about communications from diplomatic staff in Libya, as well as this report from CBS News this morning:

The regional security office for the U.S. Embassy in Libya compiled a running list of 230 security incidents through July 2012 in a memo that ultimately concluded that “the risk of U.S. Mission personnel, private U.S. citizens, or businesspersons encountering an isolating event as a result of militia or political violence is HIGH.”

The document, obtained by CBS News, is the latest piece of evidence suggesting security in the country was tenuous ahead of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.

Since the attack, there have been increasing questions about whether the State Department did enough to safeguard its diplomatic personnel in Libya, with some security officers for the mission claiming that repeated requests for additional security were ignored by officials in Washington.

In an email to congressional investigators dated Oct. 1, Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom said he sent similar lists of security incidents to superiors as a “significant part of (diplomatic post’s) and my argument for maintaining” Diplomatic Security and Defense Department assets in Libya through October because the Libyan government “was overwhelmed and could not guarantee our protection.”

The final Morning Jolt of the week, which leads off with my reaction to last night’s debate:

Joe Biden’s Debate Slogan: Why So Serious?

It was a weird debate, in that one candidate’s personality so totally dominated the proceedings, that your reaction to the debate will be decided almost entirely by what you think of Joe Biden when unplugged.

It will not surprise you that I am not really a fan of Joe Biden, and in fact periodically have a hard time getting my head around the fact that he is a heartbeat away from being entrusted with the launch codes for the United States nuclear arsenal.

So it’s kind of hard to grade the debate by the traditional methods.

Q: Which candidate do you think won the debate?

Jim: Am I the only person in Washington who fears that the vice president is mentally unstable, and/or on some sort of intense, mood-altering medication?

Thursday night’s debate did nothing to dissuade me of the notion that Barack Obama rise to the presidency is exponentially less surprising and unexpected than the fact that Joe Biden is our vice president. I am less concerned about the lack of a broad bipartisan consensus that Biden lost the debate than the lack of a broad bipartisan consensus that Biden lost his marbles.

Undoubtedly, one of the big story lines will be “The Democrats are charged up again!” Of course, if this were gymnastics, we would have to assign a low degree of difficulty to that goal. If you’re a national politician with a pulse, stirring up your base is one of the basic tasks you’re expected to be able to achieve on a regular basis. It’s like tackling for a linebacker.

The vice president appeared to prepare for this debate by inhaling nitrous oxide and sticking a fork in an electrical socket.

Four years ago, Biden was on a short leash, determined to not lose any women voters by coming across as smug or dismissive of Sarah Palin. But years of watching the Delaware senator reveal that when fully unleashed, Biden is loud, condescending, obnoxious, full of himself, not nearly as well-informed as he thinks he is, and sometimes weird to the point of creepy. Clearly, Biden believes that when his opponent says something he disagrees with, the right thing to do is smile or maybe laugh. He thinks this is disarming; instead he comes across like the Joker. The RNC quickly arranged a nice montage here.

So, no matter the topic — the deaths of U.S. diplomatic personnel in Benghazi, the Iranian nuclear program, the continuing economic hard times for millions of Americans, the slaughter of civilians in Syria — Cheery Joe responded to Paul Ryan’s points with a grin that Willem Dafoe would find unnerving and chilling. Perhaps it was a bold but failed strategy to try to get Ryan to suddenly exclaim, “What the hell is wrong with you, man?”

David Harmer, who ran the closest race of any California Republican House candidate in 2010, sends along this message of his particular disdain for Vice President Biden, and his challenge to Romney donors.

I don’t mind stupid people. It’s stupid people who think they’re smart that aggravate me — which goes a long way toward explaining my profound and enduring antipathy to Vice President Joe Biden, the most vapid gasbag ever to hold the office.

Back when I was young and frisky and counsel to a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I routinely had to sit just a few feet behind and over from that insufferable blowhard. His chairmanship of Senate Judiciary was notable for two, and only two, things: his world-class logorrhea, and his serial character assassination of honorable men and women whose nominations he torpedoed for the crime of holding conservative convictions and taking the Constitution seriously. For someone with an intellect as shallow as Biden’s (76th out of 85 in his class at a law school that U.S. News ranks as 96th out of 200) — and who was a mendacious plagiarist to boot (see, e.g., Why Biden’s plagiarism shouldn’t be forgotten) — to question the qualifications and character of jurists like Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas required a veritable Everest of chutzpah.

In 2008, the mainstream media widely regarded Biden as adding “gravitas” to the Democratic ticket. Whether that says more about the shallowness of Barack Obama or the shallowness of his acolytes in the press is hard to say. Either way, I’m anticipating tonight’s debate with unseemly eagerness, indeed relish. Unlike Biden, Paul Ryan is a gentleman, so Slow Joe won’t get a taste of his own medicine. But next to the earnest, informed, disciplined, and precise Ryan, Biden can’t possibly go 90 minutes without exposing himself as a five-star buffoon.

Last week the American people restored my waning faith in their good sense by declaring Mitt Romney the victor in his debate by a three-to-one margin. Tonight’s contest should be even more lopsided.

No doubt conservatives across the country will augment the debate’s entertainment value with drinking contests. As a teetotaling Mormon, I can’t join that kind of fun — but I’m hereby challenging you to a more productive variant. Every time Biden says any of the following words or phrases . . . instead of taking a shot, donate $5 to the Romney-Ryan campaign!

Literally

Come on, man

Millionaires and billionaires

Bin Laden’s dead and GM’s alive

Keep a running tally, then contribute here. When you do, please click the box that says, “I know my referrer’s information” (between Payment Information and Employment Information). That lets the campaign credit your contribution toward the amount I’ve committed to help raise ($311,187 so far, shooting for $500k).

Thank you, and happy viewing!

Harmer may call Biden stupid, but I’ll bet that Biden would disarm him with his trademarked declaration of humility, “I’ll bet that I have a much higher I.Q. than you.”

My source Middle Cheese checks in, with the latest he’s hearing from the Big Cheeses over at the Romney campaign:

Abortion: The liberal media is hoping Mitt’s comment to the Des Moines Register that the pro-life legislation isn’t “part of my agenda” will cause an uproar in the pro-life community. Believe me, it won’t because we pro-lifers (I am a card-carrying member of the National Right to Life) know that Romney was referring to his legislative agenda for jobs and the economy in the first 100 days. And as Romney said himself, one of his first acts as president will be to issue an Executive Order reinstating Reagan’s “Mexico City Policy” banning U.S. funding of international family planning groups that provide abortion services. Romney will also repeal Obamacare, which mandates coverage of contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs by religious organizations. Sorry liberals, but the pro-life community remains energized for Romney.

Hispanics: Mitt’s strong debate performance is having the same positive impact on Hispanic voters that it has had with the general electorate. My sources on Team Romney say their post-debate internal polling shows improvement for Romney among Hispanics nationally, and growing support in Florida and Colorado. In Florida, Mitt is moving up and Obama is polling below what he got in 2008 among Hispanics (57 percent).

Benghazi: Look for Team Romney to turn up the heat on Obama for his actions (or lack thereof) to secure our consulate in Libya prior to the 9/11 murders of our Ambassador and three Americans, and his Administration’s conflicting and confusing explanations of what happened in the aftermath of what we now know was a terrorist attack.

VP debate: I won’t play the expectations game, but the fact is that Joe Biden has done 18 Presidential or Vice Presidential debates and Paul Ryan has done zero. Unlike Obama, Joe Biden is going to throw the kitchen sink at the Romney-Ryan ticket — “Big Bird,” “47 percent,” “tax returns,” “$5 trillion tax cut,” and of course “voucherizing Medicare.” Expect Ryan to counter Biden’s negative attacks with the facts, but then to quickly return to overarching theme of the “big choice” in this election and how a Romney-Ryan Administration would solve the big problems.

For much of today, there has been some grumbling on the right about Martha Raddatz, the ABC News senior correspondent who is moderating the vice-presidential debate. In 1991, Barack Obama attended her wedding. This is rather weak tea as far as evidence of bias; she has since divorced and remarried. (Wonder what Obama got her as a gift . . . a cassette tape of his speeches?) If anything, this story coming up might make her a little more determined to appear to be playing it down the middle.

But take a look at her recent work, and we may have a good sense of the likely topics:

Martha Raddatz was named Senior Foreign Affairs correspondent for ABC News in November 2008, after serving as White House correspondent during the last term of President George W. Bush’s administration. In addition to covering the day-to-day foreign and domestic stories from the White House, Raddatz has traveled from Haiti to Yemen to the Mideast and through south Asia.

Raddatz has traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan dozens of times, and to Iraq 21 times to cover the ongoing conflict. She was on the last convoy out of Iraq and is the only television reporter allowed to cover a combat mission over Afghanistan in an F15 fighter jet, spending nearly 10 hours in the air on two separate missions. In the early hours of June 8, 2006, she was the first correspondent to report that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, had been killed in a U.S. air strike north of Baghdad. In 2011 she reported exclusive details on the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. That same year she had an exclusive interview on the USS Kearsage off the coast of Libya with the Marines who helped rescue two American pilots who had gone down in Libya. In 2012, Raddatz was on a USS destroyer as it made its way through the Strait of Hormuz.

Libya’s a certainty, and some related or separate question on the status of al-Qaeda and U.S. efforts against that group. Afghanistan and our draw-down of troops is also almost certain. Expect at least one question on Iran and its nuclear program. Sequestration and its impact on the defense budget is another very likely topic.

The format is “nine 10-minute segments, each candidate will have two minutes to respond to an opening question. The moderator will then lead a discussion.” Libya, al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, Iran, and sequestration would make five topics; the remaining four would be on domestic policy and would probably focus heavily on the economy. With Ryan on stage, the debt and his budgetary proposals are almost certain to get their own segment.

The last time Joe Biden stepped onto a vice-presidential debate stage, he faced a challenge only George H. W. Walker had dealt with before: debating a woman in a nationally-televised debate.

And Sarah Palin proved an even bigger, more sudden, more dynamic political phenomenon than Geraldine Ferraro was in 1984. Since her debut, Obama’s allies had attacked Palin relentlessly, and the Alaska Governor had run into trouble after her interview with Katie Couric. Palin was a largely unknown quantity headed into the debate, and the only thing most Americans knew was that she was a mother of five and feisty. The expectations were heavy for Biden; he had been in the Senate for decades and spent his life arguing and talking; Palin had never been under such a withering, relentless spotlight.

The last thing Biden needed to do was come across as condescending, or snide, or obnoxious. Bush had run into a little trouble back in 1984, after he had been recorded saying, “I think we did kick a little ass last night.” (Bush and Ferraro discussed their debate in 2008; he said he had been warned about the dangers of inadvertently appearing overbearing or rude.)

So Biden, by and large, kept it simple. He didn’t go on the attack much. However, he described some alternate-universe history that almost no one in the press called him out on, because of the ongoing Palin obsession at that moment. Michael Totten wrote:

“When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” [Emphasis added.]

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

The media’ obsession with all facets of Palin helped obscure Biden’s weak spots last time around. He won’t be able to count on it this time, not because the press is any less hostile to Republicans but because Paul Ryan consumes much less media oxygen.

Some Democrats may want Biden to come out of the blocks attacking relentlessly Thursday night. The Obama campaign brain trust may feel that their base has been left so shaken by Obama’s performance last week, that it needs to see a Democrat tearing apart his opponent as cruel, heartless, reckless, and so on.

But if Biden’s the designated attack dog of the Obama campaign, he’s also proven, time and again, to be a high-risk one. “Gonna put y’all back in chains!” “The middle class that’s been buried the last four years!” “How in the Lord’s name can they justify raising their taxes with these tax cuts?”

Obama has – or had? – deep reserves of favorability and personal likeability to help him weather the storms of daily politics. Judging from his favorable ratings, Biden doesn’t have it, and may never have had it. And as with the Lebanon hallucination above, Biden may… let’s say, misremember some of the finer points of the policies he’s defending or attacking. Sarah Palin, trying to get up to speed on every national issue under the sun, wasn’t going to call out Biden on getting past foreign policy wrong. But Paul Ryan might do just that if given the opportunity. And for the 69-year-old six-term senator to get corrected by the young guy… well, that would reinforce a whole lot of negative perceptions about Joe Biden – perhaps even serious questions as to whether Biden really is the right man to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

While the Obama campaign can ride out a contentious, tied Biden-Ryan debate or a boring Biden-Ryan debate, a bad Biden-Ryan debate would reinforce the suddenly pervasive perception of an incumbent campaign in a tailspin.

Biden can’t save Obama from the problems created by the first debate; only Obama can save himself – meaning there’s limited upside, and enormous downside, for the vice president to go out on that stage convinced he has to make magic happen, determined to swing for the fences.

The strange dynamic of Obama’s debate pratfall is that it can really only be addressed, and fixed, in his own two forthcoming debate performances. Voters feeling iffy, or newly skeptical about President Obama aren’t going to jump back on the bandwagon because the president has good rallies or a good commercials. Some significant chunk of the 70 million watched President Obama and recoiled, sensing that the president wasn’t all that interested in making the case for himself, his record, and his policies, seeming to believe the entire debate process was beneath him.

From the first Morning Jolt of the week:

Joe Biden: Born to Be Wild!

With metronomic regularity, we find ourselves asking, “Okay, joke’s over. Who’s the real Vice President of the United States? Is it Hillary? Some blank slate indistinguishable from any of the other middle-aged men in suits in Washington, like Tom Vilsack? Because we really, really, really can’t have this guy a heartbeat away from the presidency.”

Everything about this picture is perfect: Her expression, his expression, her attire, the looks on the two bikers on either side, her hands gently resting in an almost-provocative fashion, the fact that we can’t see Biden’s hands…

Without the Secret Service, Sheriff Joe gets stomped like a NARC at a Hell’s Angel’s rally.

The Hill tries to make sense of this:

Vice President Joe Biden got caught in a stunning photo with a female biker sitting on his lap.

The Associated Press snapped the shot at Cruisers Diner in Seaman, Ohio on Sunday.

A White House pool report says the bikers may be part of a group called the “Shaddowmen.” No details were available on their real names or what discussion led to the lap incident.

Protein Wisdom suggests a caption: “I may be the Vice President, but I’m just a working-class guy and I’ve got a wrench in my pocket to prove it.”

Like with his marriage proposal, Joe Biden had to ask the biker to sit on his lap five times before she agreed.

Sonny Bunch: “The next season of Sons of Anarchy should involve a subplot in which the Sons plot to take out a VP who macks on one of their old ladies.”

Okay, so maybe Biden gets the second-string Secret Service guys. Maybe they’re not quick enough to prevent some chick from moving in and sitting on the Vice President’s lap, but at least Obama’s staff is quick, silent, always watching the crowd for anyone who wants to reach out to the president and . . .

. . . and what the heck happened here? What, were there some Cartagena prostitutes distracting you? Come on, fellas, we were one body slam away from having Vice President Johnny Strabler calling the shots.

From the final Morning Jolt until Tuesday morning…

How Loud Will the ‘Dump Biden’ Whispers Get?

I doubt the White House looks to Sarah Palin for advice, but you figure quite a few folks are thinking along the same lines these days:

In what might seem an ironic piece of advice considering the source, Sarah Palin says President Barack Obama should dump Vice President Joe Biden and put Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket because Biden’s tendency to make “outrageous” statements could be “the nail in the coffin” of the Obama presidency. 

Reacting to Biden’s remark Tuesday that Republican policies would put Americans “back in chains,” Palin told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that his “disgusting comment” made to a Virginia audience that was half African-American was unacceptable and would likely turn out to be “the nail in the coffin, really,” of Obama’s re-election bid.

“The strategists there in the Obama campaign have got to look at a diplomatic way of replacing Joe Biden on the ticket with Hillary,” the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee said.

Of course, a sudden Biden departure won’t happen and can’t happen, for a couple of reasons. First, it would require President Obama to admit a mistake. Secondly, it would de facto concede that the critics who deride Biden as an ill-informed, tactless, often obnoxious, loudmouthed, bloviating rhetorical time-bomb have been right all along. Thirdly, no one would believe the “sudden health crisis” or other story put forth to explain the switch. Fourth, there’s no automatic slam-dunk replacement. Think Hillary Clinton wants to jump in two months before Election Day to help save Obama from his own bad decisions?

John Fund is skeptical:

The White House has to worry that for the next 82 days Joe Biden will be under tremendous scrutiny — especially given the fact that Paul Ryan has become such a media-attention magnet. Everyone is anticipating the October 11 debate between Biden and Ryan. Biden’s penchant for off-the-cuff remarks doesn’t inspire confidence that he won’t unintentionally blurt something out when facing Ryan. For example, he embarrassed the Obama administration recently by prematurely revealing he was “comfortable” with gay marriage — forcing his boss to suddenly endorse gay marriage on a timetable not of his choosing.

Biden’s erratic statements certainly should make Team Obama nervous. I’ve no doubt that some Democratic strategists would love for Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to swap jobs and bolster the Democratic ticket with a little Clinton magic. But there’s no evidence that Hillary would take that deal. If she wants to run, she is already the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination and would gain no advantage by being yoked to Obama, her old adversary, for the next three months if they lost or the next four years if they won.

As someone said a few years ago, “the fact that Barack Obama became President of the United States is almost as shocking as the fact that Joe Biden became Vice President of the United States.”

We have our answer to what the Romney-Ryan ticket will have to offer, and how President Obama and Vice President Biden will respond:

Paul Ryan, on the stump today: “Without a doubt, President Obama inherited a difficult situation. Here is the problem: he made it worse. We have seen a failure of leadership, a failure of leadership to get the economy growing, to create jobs, to get our spending and debt and deficit under control. What Mitt Romney and I are offering, the Romney/Ryan plan for a stronger middle class, is designed to get people back to work. It is designed to create jobs. If we get this economy growing like we know we can, we can create 12 million jobs in four years. Among those solutions we’re offering, our number one, make sure that we use our own energy because we have our own energy in this country. all of it. you have it all here in Colorado…. Last week when I was filling my truck up, it cost $100, and the only reason it cost $100 is because the pump cut me off at $100 because of the gas tank. Enough. We have our own oil and gas. We have nuclear, we have all of the above, winds, solar, coal, let’s use it. Let’s make our energy independence. Let’s create jobs. Let’s stop sending jobs overseas by buying oil overseas. You have the technology here, the wherewithal here, the oil and gas here.”

Joe Biden, on the stump today: “THEY’RE GOING TO PUT Y’ALL BACK IN CHAINS!”

Mitt Romney, on the stump today: “He’s for all the sources of energy that come from above the ground, none of the sources below the ground, like oil and coal and gas. I’m for all of the above, whether it comes from above the ground or below the ground. We’re going to take advantage of our energy resources to save your jobs, create more jobs, and, by the way, when we use our plentiful energy resources, our inexpensive carbon-based resources, you’re going to see manufacturing come back to America.”

Barack Obama, on the stump today: “Governor Romney even explained his energy policy this way: ‘You can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.’ That’s what he said about wind power. ‘You can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.’ I wonder if he actually tried that. I know he’s tied other things to his car.”

Ha-ha! A Seamus joke! Man, I’m sure the 23 million who are unemployed, working part-time because they can’t find work, or who have stopped looking for work will be laughing at that one for a long time.

This is your choice, America: an approach that Obama’s own debt commission co-chair calls “sensible, straightforward, honest and  serious” … or dog-on-the-roof jokes and an accusation of a return to slavery.

The great Avik Roy makes the argument that the traditional “Mediscare” attacks won’t work, because the Ryan plan preserves the program for those most focused on the issue (those 55 years and older), because those who denounce Ryan must ignore that Obamacare will reduce Medicare spending by approximately $743 billion, and because Paul Ryan understands the issue so thoroughly.

Allow me to offer even more basic points that need to be brought in response to the “Mediscare” attacks: Medicare currently covers roughly 40 million elderly Americans. Medicare is paid for by taxes on 162 million Americans. Medicare is broken into different parts that cover different aspects of health care; Medicare Part A covers hospital costs. As you hear how horrific and radical Ryan is, keep in mind that Medicare Part A started seeing costs outpacing revenue in 2008; the government has made up the shortfall by shifting funds from other accounts. The future is now.

From the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees 2012 report:

The Disability Insurance Trust Fund fails the short-range test because its projected trust fund ratio falls to 83 percent by the beginning of 2013, followed by exhaustion of assets in 2016.

From that same report: “The long-run actuarial deficits of the Social Security and Medicare programs worsened in 2012… Both Medicare and Social Security cannot sustain projected long-run program costs under currently scheduled financing, and legislative modifications are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers.”

As for those alleged savings from enacting Obamacare, those “cost saving[s are] attributable to a reduction in the annual payment updates for most Medicare services (other than physicians’ services and drugs) by total economy multifactor productivity growth, which the Trustees project will average 1.1 percent per year. The report notes that sustaining these payment reductions indefinitely will require unprecedented efficiency-enhancing innovations in health care payment and delivery systems that are by no means certain. In addition, the Trustees assume an almost 31-percent reduction in Medicare payment rates for physician services will be implemented in 2013 as required by current law, which is also highly uncertain.”

We all know the basics of our entitlement program problems: Too many collecting benefits, not enough paying in. A system that was endangered by the Baby Boomers retiring is greatly exacerbated of four years of recession, high unemployment, millions of Americans working part-time instead of full-time, etc.

So Paul Ryan puts forth a plan to raise the eligibility age by two months per year until it reaches 67. For those 55 and older, no change to the program. For everyone else, you get an $8,000 voucher. If you’re in the wealthiest 8 percent, you get less; if you’re in the wealthiest 2 percent, you get much less. Payments would be adjusted for inflation based on the consumer price index.

Is that radical? Not nearly as radical as doing nothing. President Obama and Joe Biden have had four years to address this issue and they have done what Democrats have always done: act as if the current system is fine and demonize anyone who puts forth a plan. They are the antithesis of hope and change.

Maybe you’ll first hear the name of Mitt Romney’s running mate from the Romney campaign’s downloadable app. But it’s also pretty likely that the identity of the running mate will break in one of three other ways:

1) The campaign will want its official plane to feature the name of the running mate, and someone will see the name being added to the fuselage at the airport.

From an Aviation web site chat board (great sourcing, I know): Kerry’s plane is being painted with decals that say Edwards.

2) The campaign plane will make an unexpected stop, or the campaign will charter a flight from a particular location to a campaign event in a swing state.

Another rumor has a chartered plane from Alaska landing a while ago near Dayton, Ohio. If true, that could mean McCain’s selection could be an outside-the-box game-changer: picking Alaska’s first female governor, Sarah Palin, a 44-year-old mother of five and political maverick in her own right, who went against her state’s GOP establishment in recent years to drive a series of reforms through.

3) The Secret Service will show up at the house of the running mate.

The United States Secret Service has dispatched a protective detail to assume the immediate protection of Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., a source tells ABC News, indicating in all likelihood that Biden has been officially notified that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, has selected him to be his running mate.

These are unavoidable logistical decisions that are pretty tough to hide from the eyes of a curious public.

A reminder…

I’d like to believe that any Republican official in the running to be Mitt Romney’s running mate would not lie about it… but there is precedent for this sort of thing, just four years ago.

Joe Biden to reporters, three days before he was announced as Obama’s running mate: “I’m not the guy, see ya.”

I wrote at the time:

Unless Team Obama told him he was out, and then changed their mind, Biden began his role as Obama’s running mate by lying to the press. I realize he’s in a tough spot, probably sworn to secrecy, but most figures in his position in the past have offered evasive or coy responses– “You’ll have to wait for the text message,” “I’ve got nothing new to tell you,” or “you know, I hear Tim Kaine’s lawn is a lot nicer.” Instead, Biden said he wasn’t the choice. (He later adjusted his response to a more appropriately evasive, “I haven’t talked to anyone.”) I wonder if any other journalists feel like Biden crossed the line by giving a flat denial when he presumably knew he was still under consideration.

Four years later, we have our answer: No journalist really pays much attention to what Joe Biden says.

Whomever Mitt Romney picks as his running mate, I hope that person understands the need to come out of the gate as a fighter. The language of the first appearance and convention address doesn’t need to be snarling or angry, but right now, millions of Republicans and independents feel like the world has gone crazy, and no one seems intent upon setting it right.

• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is basically making things up, claiming that “a number of people” have told him about felony-level tax evasion by Mitt Romney. (Technically, zero is a number.)
• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi declares, “it is a fact” in response to Reid’s charges and his unnamed sources, and labeling the opposition party, “the E. Coli club.”
• A new ad from President Obama’s SuperPAC declares, “Mitt Romney killed my wife.” (The man’s wife died seven years after Romney left Bain Capital.)
• The Obama “Truth Team” distributes a charge that Romney’s ad hitting Obama for changing the work requirements for welfare “has racial overtones.”
• The attacks on Romney have gotten so insane that Joe Biden looks relatively normal lately.

If, God forbid, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, or Joe Biden were to be struck by genuine neurological dementia, how would we be able to tell?

For whatever reason, Mitt Romney has chosen to not respond in kind; it is left to RNC Chair Reince Priebus to declare Reid a “dirty liar.” But Reid, Pelosi, the president, his campaign, and his allies continue to throw out weapons-grade nonsense into the media environment with absolutely no consequence whatsoever.

There was a time, not long ago, when if the Senate Majority Leader was going to accuse his opponents of a crime, he had to at least point to some evidence, lest he be derided as a McCarthyite, a demagogue, a liar and a toxic influence to public discourse. There was a time when presidential campaigns did not casually accuse their opponent of murder. There was a time when not every criticism of an opponent’s policy triggered a knee-jerk accusation of “racism!”

No one wonders why our political class is so disappointing. It’s because no sane person would want to step into the BS maelstrom that is modern politics. No one wants to deal with a world where people believe that having the right view entitles you to berate restaurant drive-through attendants. Why participate in public debate, if you’re guaranteed to be demonized and denounced as among the worst of humanity?

Our political culture has gone insane. Millions of us want something better, and perhaps Romney thinks he can embody this by taking the high road. Perhaps he is correct that it’s impossible to argue that you’ll be something better if you’re “punching back twice as hard,” as the president’s top strategist once pledged. But somebody has to call out this nonsense for what it is – and I think many, many Republicans are waiting, with growing impatience, for someone to do that.

Today is one of those rare days when I’ll post the entire Morning Jolt here, as it is basically one long examination of the dominant topic of the campaign in recent weeks… So if you aren’t subscribed already, do so.

A Gaffe-tastic Morning Jolt!

We need a better, more specific term for the statements our current political journalism calls “gaffes.”

Because a lot of different statements are being thrown together under this category, and wildly contrary interpretations of candidate’s statements have become the premiere battleground of the 2012 campaign. Perhaps this is an inevitable result of a general election season that began in April or so – we’ve already hashed out the candidate’s agendas and records and ideas and vision; all that’s left is to go over each day’s unscripted comments like they’re the Dead Sea Scrolls.

For example, take then-candidate Obama’s statement, “I’ve now been in fifty-seven states, I think one left to go.”

Now, does anyone actually believe that President Obama thinks there are 57 states? He’s presumably tired, he’s thinking the number forty-seven, and his mouth is just running away from him. Happens to people all the time. He definitely sounds silly – as someone noted, “how many states are there?” is the sort of question they ask you after a concussion – but no one should draw any serious conclusions about Obama from this statement. (Then why do Republicans love the “57 states” statement so much? Because it is a lovely reminder that the candidate touted as the greatest orator since Cicero can sound dumb on his off days, too.)

Does Mitt Romney make some gaffes that deserve some criticism or mockery? Sure. “I’m not concerned about the very poor” comes to mind, or the strange description of himself as “severely conservative,” or joking to those looking for jobs, “I’m also unemployed.” Sometimes there’s this Zen surrealism to his off-the-cuff statements, like, “I love this state. The trees are the right height.” (Tell me you can’t picture Special Agent Dale Cooper making that statement in Twin Peaks.)

But to judge from the coverage of the past week or so, Romney makes a “gaffe” every time he speaks  – and the media, obsessed with advancing a “narrative”, now applies the word “gaffe” to very deliberate statements. What the term gaffe now means is, “a statement that someone, somewhere, doesn’t like.”

Of course, as Romney left the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw, Poland this week, some journalistic genius bellowed at the candidate, “what about your gaffes?!?”

Well, what about them? The alleged gaffe of London was Romney accurately mentioning two widely-covered stories in an even-tempered, casual tone in response to an unanswerable question: Is London ready for the games? The apoplectic reaction of the British press and Mayor Boris Johnson says more about them than it does about Romney.

Then another alleged “gaffe” is Romney’s comment about the cultural differences between the Israelis and Palestinians. Is there anyone in America who wants to argue that the culture within the Palestinian territories – where Hamas runs the show, where there is no free press, where kids are taught to glorify suicide bombers, and where vast sums of foreign aid get sucked into rulers’ coffers – is a superior culture to Israel’s? Go ahead. I’m all ears. Enough of this blame-the-embargo crap. Israelis don’t make Palestinians steal foreign aid. Israelis don’t make Palestinians teach kids that the noblest calling is to blow themselves up in a pizzeria. Israelis don’t make Fatah and Hamas subject Palestinian journalists to  harassment, detentions, assaults, and restrictions.

Helpful hint: Any time your culture is dominated by organizations that have a “political wing” and some other not-political wing that often carries rifles and wears masks, you’re going to have some serious problems. Society can only hash out its differences in an orderly manner when the political wing is the organization as a whole.

Some, like Dave Weigel, are convinced that Obama’s recent “gaffes” are routine slips of the tongue or unclear verbiage and that Republicans are making a ridiculous stink over them – but that Romney’s statement in London is a legitimate story. It will not surprise you that I think precisely the opposite – but perhaps the newsworthiness and significance of a gaffe is going to be in the eye of the beholder.

The term “gaffe” now applies to…

Verbal misstatements and grammatical errors: “57 states,” Joe Biden calling his running mate “Barack America”, etc.

Brain freezes: Rick Perry in the debate. Of course this looks bad during a moment in the spotlight, but anyone who has never had this happen to them, raise your hand. Uh-huh. Didn’t think so.

Honest statements that are admissions against self-interest: President Obama declaring during a meeting of his Jobs Council, “Shovel-ready was not as … uh .. shovel-ready as we expected.”

Unusual ideas: Newt Gingrich’s pay-kids-to-be-janitors idea.

Genuinely harmful erroneous statements: Joe Biden saying, “I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” in an appearance designed to reassure the public about swine flu, or Michelle Bachmann repeating a mother’s claim that Gardasil causes retardation.

Controversial or unpopular points: See Romney’s Olympics and Palestinian statements above.

The only thing that these types of statements have in common is that they are “off-script,” or unpredicted. The same press corps that whines that candidates are cookie-cutter, stiff, scripted, sticking to predictable talking points, etc., loves to tear apart candidates for spontaneity, speaking casually, thinking out loud, and having things come out a little garbled.

In that light, how should we assess President Obama’s “the private sector is doing fine”, “if you have a business, you didn’t build that” and “our plan worked”? The argument from the president’s defenders is that each one is literally true and only sounds odd to those who don’t understand the context – that the private sector is creating jobs while state and local governments cut back, the “that” refers to roads and bridges, not the business itself, and the plan refers to Bill Clinton’s tax hikes, not Obama’s enacted policies. The problem is that all of these explanations aren’t as exculpatory as his fans think:

A)     If 80,000 or so jobs per month – not enough to keep up with workforce additions –  is your idea of “doing fine,” you’re setting the bar too low.

B)      Even if President Obama was talking about ‘roads and bridges,” business owners did indeed pay for that, through income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and business taxes.

C)      Even if Obama meant Clinton’s tax hikes when he said our plan “worked,” he’s crediting the Clinton tax hikes are the cause of the 1990s economic boom – not the rise of the Internet in American life, the dot-com bubble, etc. “Our plan worked” contends we’re just one big tax hike away from restoring four percent annual GDP growth. Except that the tax hikes were enacted in 1993, and the boom didn’t start until 1996-1997.

The argument from Obama’s critics would be that the “gaffes” aren’t misstatements but signals of what Obama really thinks – that the private sector’s current growth rate really is “fine,” that he thinks businessmen smugly give themselves too much credit for their success and not enough credit to government, and that tax hikes are good for the economy. Perhaps Republicans read too much into these remarks … but perhaps not.

Anyway, carping that the press makes a big deal out of Republican gaffes and ignores Democrat ones is an old, well-founded, and tired complaint. But what’s striking is that the result of this culture of within the press corps is that at least three of the highest figures in the Democratic Party today are among those most prone to making statements that range from the bizarre to the outrageous to the unhinged… and they pay no discernible price for these habits. No matter what they say, the labels “dumb” or “foolish” never seem to stick to them.

Exhibit A: Vice President Joe Biden. “Big [blank]ing deal.” “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television…” “You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent…. I’m not joking.” “The president has a big stick. I promise you.” “John’s last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs.”

Exhibit B: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “The CIA misleads us all the time.” “We have to pass the bill so you can see what’s in it.” “Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs.”

Exhibit C: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “You could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol.” Barack Obama would be helped by being a “light-skinned” African-American with “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” “Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.” “We in the Senate refer to Sen. Gillibrand as the hottest member.” “Chris Coons, everybody knows him in the Democratic caucus. He’s my pet. He’s my favorite candidate.”

I mention all this because Harry Reid is at it again.

Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.

“Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying. “He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?”

Hey, a Nevadan told me Harry Reid runs an underground dungeon of hookers and gladiatorial games. Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain.

ADDENDA: Lori Ziganto offers the emphatic phrase of the week: “You can quote me on that, but attribute it to Bob Dylan.”

Vice President Biden, today: “When we took office, let me remind, there was virtually no international pressure on Iran. We were the problem,” the vice president said. “We were diplomatically isolated in the world, in the region, in Europe.”

Of course, the facts are that the United Nations Security Council passed five resolutions against Iran between July 2006 and September 2008, banning the import of nuclear-related materials, freezing assets, expanding the freeze of assets, calling for the search of Iranian ships and planes, and so on.

Then, of course, throughout President Bush’s final year in office, diplomatic efforts generated new levels of pressure on Tehran.

March 2008: “The UN security council today approved a third round of sanctions against Iran with near unanimous support, sending a strong signal to Tehran that its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment is unacceptable and becoming increasingly costly. For the first time, the resolution bans trade with Iran in goods that have both civilian and military uses. It also authorises inspections of shipments to and from Iran by sea and air that are suspected of carrying banned items.”

June 2008: “Even as Bush won new support from the Europeans, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran responded by mocking attempts to rein in his country’s nuclear program, which Iran maintains is for peaceful development of nuclear energy.”

June 23, 2008: “European Union states agreed on June 23 to impose new sanctions on Iran, including an asset freeze on its biggest bank, over its refusal to meet demands to curb its nuclear programme.”

In August 2008: “The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany have agreed to seek further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program after the Islamic state missed a deadline to respond to council incentives, the State Department said Monday.”

And then in October 2008, “Australia has imposed targeted autonomous sanctions in relation to Iran’s proliferation sensitive nuclear and missile programs and efforts to contravene United Nations Security Council sanctions.”

So besides the ugly, knee-jerk claim that until President Obama took office, the United States was “the problem” in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, Biden is just plain wrong on the facts.

But hey, at least Obama can tout the tough new sanctions in place today, and how his diplomacy has unified the world on cutting off Iran… oh, wait, what’s that on foreign television?

Ah, an Iranian trade delegation visiting Indian officials in New Dehli, discussing ways to “overcome U.S. and European sanctions.”

Then again, Jeanne Kirkpatrick warned us about Biden’s type: “They always blame America first.”

UPDATE: The Romney campaign distributes Policy Director Lanhee Chen on Vice President Biden’s comments on Iran that “we were the problem.”

“All too often, President Obama and his administration have sought to blame America first, yet Vice President Biden’s reckless statement today blaming America for – of all things – the progress of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, has reached a new low. The problem is not America.  It is the ayatollahs who oppress their people, threaten their neighbors, and are pursuing nuclear weapons. President Obama’s naïve approach to Iran has given the regime valuable time to get closer than ever before to a nuclear weapons capability. Vice President Biden’s comments are wrong and completely inappropriate. Mitt Romney will stand up for America and our allies, and he will not apologize for America’s leadership role in the world.”