Klytus---good one.

Except geez, if you think about it, Billy Dee in "Lady Sings the Blues" was the *good guy* who tried to keep Billie Holiday off the drugs (a habit foisted upon her by white club owners and agents for their own fiscal good, while she was touring and couldn't use anything but the "colored" toilets and couldn't eat in the diners, amongst other worse and many just plain wrong, yet then common, affronts to humanity). Billy Dee also played legendary football great Gale Sayres in "Brian's Song"--is there really a person alive who wouldn't be moved by that true-story movie, not just for the tragic ending leading to kleenex galore, but for the story of one of the first

(if not the first) NFL pairings of a black & a white roommate during away games, a pairing that grew into a deep friendship ultimately unmired by race? Billy Dee also had those Star Wars moments. And he is a prolific painter! (Oops, that might lead some people into saying: "But so was Hitler!")

I know: Billy Dee is an actor and his roles shouldn't be confused with the man. It's the image to which you alluded.

In any case, I'd vote for Billy Dee Williams--the actor and the man--over McCain any day of the week! But I'd much rather vote for Obama. Go figure. (Who knows? Maybe Billy Dee is voting Green!?)

Big important inspiring speeches with 200,000+ in attendance aside, has anyone seem him interviewed? Read his position papers? He does have policies, plans, logic, astute strategic skills, an ability to choose the right people and run a campaign quite effectively (hmmmm, that could be something relevant to running a White House), pragmatic tendencies (which is NOT stupid), an understanding that "citizens of the world" must unite if things are going to change.......ETC. We, the USA, are not in a position to do this by ourselves. He'll be back next week and attend to what he has already said (anybody read AP stories today?) must be attended to---the economy, the housing crisis, health care, education......ETC. I liked his reception by the world community. And I count on his attention to the major domestic problems we face in the USA.

McCain's cutely-defined "gaffes" are inexcusable. They aren't getting sufficient media play (and likely no play at all on Faux News) and such gaffes would be fatal if uttered by Obama. But they weren't uttered by Obama. Shouldn't that count for something? Sigh.

You said: "We are witnessing something truly phenomenal in this man Barak Obama. I pray, as he did at the wailing wall for the safety of him and his family. I pray that out there is a fifth "lone nut" who would be a much of a lone nut as Oswald and the rest were."

I heartily agree with your first two sentences above. But didn't you mean to say that you pray there is NOT a fifth "lone nut" out there......?????

I thought so! And you are very welcome!!!

Now I totally agree with you!

Personally, I ditched the OTC antacids and headed straight to my Rx anti-anxiety pills.

Anyway, good post on several levels.

I liked SpaceLobbyist's list better -- Wesley Clark, Chris Dodd, or Ed Rendell -- especially Dodd or Clark. I'd go for Janet Napolitano over Sebelius any day of the week, but I really don't think a non-Hillary female choice would fly well, plus the PERCEPTION of having a "token" woman on the ticket is a risk (in some ways, rather insulting actually), plus, though I hate to say it, I agree with others who doubt that the country on the whole is ready for a black president and a female VP (as one poster put it: "too much change" -- I'm still hoping voters can truly absorb/embrace the first part of such a ticket).

Anyway, among the mostly uninspiring so-called final four, I can only get behind Biden -- great foreign policy experience, name recognition, can hold his own with debates, the press, etc., and despite his occasional gaffes, at least they're due to "foot in mouth" vs. sheer ignorance (McCain has the latter category of gaffes down to an art form!) I'm not crazy about Bayh for various reasons, but he brings diverse governing experience. Kaine--who?!--plus his positions worry me. And Sebelius has some good credentials, but I defer to what I said above.

So, if I HADDA rank those four, I'd say:

1. Biden

2. Bayh

3. Kaine

4. Sebelius