In what is often called political stupidity VP nominee Joe Biden had a fit of honesty at a recent fund raising rally:

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy… I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate,” Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities…”

Why test Obama? I dismiss the “young” theories, but he is extremely inexperienced and all over the map on his foreign policy (half the time we’re unsure he’s aware which nations are currently our allies).  Now the trend amidst his wide array of FP comments seem to be more talking with our current enemies, distancing ourselves from our allies, and pulling back our military as much as possible.  Which could be why the Military support McCain over Obama 68 to 23.  Sen. Biden went on to say:

And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you – not financially to help him – we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

…Senate Foreign Relations chairman said of Obama. “This guy has it. But he’s gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?’

Wait, so we’re going to make tough decisions to respond in foreign affairs in unpopular ways… but we need to do it because in the long run its a good idea??? For a party that claims to hate G. W. Bush above all else, you could swear VP Nominee Joe Biden was channeling him.

• ABC News.com
• You Tube audio of speech

Republican Giuliani responded to Biden on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program:

GIULIANI:  My reaction is, maybe we could elect a president that will not tempt the world to test them because of their inexperience.  If Joe Biden is suggesting this, it seems to me that we could elect someone more like Ronald Reagan, who has experience, who the rest of the world has a pretty good idea how he would react and what he would do in the way he would defend America.  I can’t imagine why Joe Biden would want to raise this, but since he’s raised it, it seems to me we should answer…

GIULIANI:  I find the remark very puzzling.  And exactly why he did it and what motivated it only Joe Biden can explain.  I do know that if he’s predicting that the president he’s supporting is going to somehow motivate an attack on the United States, it would seem to me he’s doing it for a reason.  I guess the reason is, the lack of experience that Senator Obama has.  I think he went on to say, “Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis to test the mettle of this guy.”

GIULIANI:  Well, I think it would be far better off to have a president that wouldn’t tempt people to want to test his mettle the way Joe Biden is talking about, and it is true that at least history records that that’s what happened with John Kennedy, that Khrushchev tested him and believed that he was flaunting and then went ahead and Cuban missile crisis, other things happened.  But that didn’t happen with Ronald Reagan.  No one tested John Kerry’s mettle.  In fact, they released the hostages as he was being sworn in as president of the United States, if I recall correctly.

RUSH:  Mr. Giuliani, do you realize how many times Bill Clinton was tested by Al-Qaeda, starting in 1993 through Mogadishu to the USS Cole, and every time Clinton was tested, he failed, and that’s why they tested Bush on 9/11… And we haven’t been hit since.

GIULIANI:  I think if we had raised this, there would be all kinds of criticisms that we were trying to frighten people.  But it seems to me that Joe Biden has raised it, and it is a very good point to just ask, well, is there a way to avoid this testing, and maybe if we elect someone with the kind of experience and background that John McCain has, no one knows exactly what’s going to happen, but don’t we give ourselves a better chance as we did with Ronald Reagan, we can avoid this?

RUSH:  Well, look, I agree. I think by definition he was saying there would not be an attack if McCain was elected.

GIULIANI:  I am not sure.  I think we’re going to have to ask Joe Biden this.  But, you know, typical of when Joe does something like this, makes one of these comments, they then hide him for about a week and nobody can get to him to find out what he means. – Transcript Rush Limbaugh

Rudy was certainly right about one thing, Biden hasn’t been seen or heard since this story broke.

Seriously, this is for real:

Park department staff is recommending reducing bonfires at the two beaches this summer and possibly banning them altogether next year.

The park board will hear the recommendation Thursday, and the city plans to run public-service announcements and hand out brochures later this month about the effects of bonfires on global warming.

According to a memo to the park board from the staff released Thursday, “The overall policy question for the Board is whether it is good policy for Seattle Parks to continue public beach fires when the carbon … emissions produced by thousands of beach fires per year contributes to global warming.”

Under the proposal, the department in July would reduce the number of fire rings at Alki from six currently to three and at Golden Gardens from 12 to seven.

Then later this year, the department would consider banning bonfires or requiring fees and permits to reduce the number of bonfires next year.

Now if you’re not either screaming at the computer screen or laughing hysterically right now, you have no idea what is going on.  First the laughing: a bonfire has about the the global environmental impact of a butterfly fart.  I’m sorry but this really needs to be put into perspective for those of you that didn’t pay attention in science class.  If small fires could wipe out the climate on this planet – we wouldn’t have even made it to the industrial revolution.  (wow think of the eco-sins we could have avoided then!)  Also all of the bonfires in the entire state of Washington over the last 20 years combined into one Texas A&M style bonfire it would still be insignificant compared to a single forest fire.

The screaming: this is not an honest attempt to stop the hoax of global warming! This is an attack on personal freedom.  Anyone with actual scientific knowledge would concede the fact that a bonfire is near the bottom of any list of polluters.  A bomb delivered to a single factory in China would offset the carbon emissions of all the bonfires in America for the next 100 years or so.  Its not about pollution its about control.

Also of note: the Park Service is taking no steps to ban wild fires in the area.  But since that neither grows government power nor chips away at personal rights – no ban was really expected.

• Beach bonfires may be banned – They fuel global warming, parks department says