Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Gee, can’t find any shots of Biden on the AP/Yahoo political wire today. Had to go to Google. Here’s Joe talking to some a them very foreigners in preparation for his speech. Hindus, or “Dot Niggers”, as he’s fond of calling them.

Politico:

First, what the candidates are doing overall today -

John McCain: The Republican presidential nominee joins his running mate in New York City, where she spent Tuesday meeting with foreign leaders at the United Nations. Working as a pair, they meet with an A-list group of dignitaries, including Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – and Bono. Palin will do solo meetings with Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan, and Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq. It’s a day of activities designed to shape the nation’s perception of Palin, even if it lacks the rallies and town halls typical of the ticket’s schedule.

And if the United Nations isn’t a big enough stage for the Republican duo, at night McCain drops by Letterman’s show and an interview with Palin airs on the CBS Evening News at 6:30PM. Will Katie Couric question Palin as aggressively as ABC’s Charlie Gibson did?

Barack Obama: Obama spends another day mostly focused on preparing for his Friday debate with McCain, but at 1:00 p.m. he makes time for a big rally in Dunedin, Fla. With polls showing the Illinois senator on the uptick in Florida, Obama’s going to keep making the most of his down time there.

The centerpiece of Joe Biden’s Wednesday schedule is a speech in Cincinnati that’s being billed as a major address on foreign policy. This will give Biden a chance to get away from his missteps of the last few days – and possibly to provide a contrast with the United Nations meet-and-greet that’s filling McCain-Palin’s day. The vice presidential nominee will also visit Jeffersonville, Ind., to court a usually red state that seems to be wavering.

Biden’s Major Attack On McCain:

CINCINNATI, OH - Barack Obama will debate John McCain on foreign policy later this week, but his running mate is already taking on the Republican nominee.

In what the campaign is billing as a “major speech,” Biden will say that only Obama has the foreign policy judgment to take the United States in the right direction — and that his good friend John McCain would be a disaster.

“The policies he would pursue as president would be wrong for America – nowhere more so than with our security and standing in the world,” Biden will say, according to prepared remarks distributed by the campaign. “Time and again, on the most critical national security issues of our time, John McCain’s judgment was wrong.”

Coming in for criticism: McCain’s position on Iran, Russia, and homeland security. But nowhere are the attacks stronger than on Iraq and Afghanistan.

“In the run up to the war in Iraq, John insisted that we would be greeted as liberators… that we didn’t need a lot of troops… that victory was imminent,” Biden’s expected to say. “Then, he said he wasn’t worried about Afghanistan… that we would “muddle through”… and he declared Afghanistan to be “a remarkable success.”

“And John McCain continues to insist, against all the evidence and all the facts, that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism… and not the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan where the people who actually attacked us on 9-11 reside and are regrouping.”

“John is more than wrong — he is dangerously wrong. On a question so basic, so fundamental, so critical to our nation’s security, we can’t afford a Commander-in Chief so divorced from reality and from America’s most basic national interests,” Biden will say.

In response, the RNC points out that Biden voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq himself in 2002 - though Biden’s speech on the Senate floor at the time made clear he thought the vote would pressure the UN into a stronger mandate for inspections in Iraq and decrease the chances of war.

While making the case against McCain, Biden’s also expected to tout the wisdom at the top of the Democratic ticket. “Barack Obama understands that strength and wisdom go hand in hand… that the power of our example is as important and the example of our power… and that its only leadership when others join us in the struggle for freedom, security, prosperity, and progress,” Biden will say.

“Barack Obama will keep our citizens safe. He will keep our country secure. And he will answer the yearning, at home and around the world, for an American foreign policy that is once again as good and strong as the American people.”

Biden’s speech today is a companion to one delivered last Monday in Battle Creek, MI on John McCain’s domestic agenda.

As for today’s foreign policy attacks, Biden delivered many of the same hits on McCain’s judgment abroad in a speech to the National Guard in Baltimore on Monday, but also deviated wildly from his prepared remarks — so while the sentiment of the above text will likely come through in the speech, it’s unclear whether the actual words will be the same.

- Fox Embeds Blog

UPDATE; AP Reports On The Speech, with video here:

CINCINNATI (AP) — Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden on Wednesday questioned John McCain’s judgment to be commander in chief, arguing that the Republican presidential candidate would keep digging the United States into a hole of isolation and insecurity.

“Our country is less secure and more isolated than it has been at any time in recent history,” Biden said in remarks prepared for a speech to supporters. “This administration has dug America into a very deep hole around the world at a time our leadership is needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”

Biden said a central question for the election is which candidate can get the U.S. out of that hole, and he said it is Democrat Barack Obama.

“Nothing is more important than judgment,” Biden said in his remarks. “But time and again, on the most critical national security issues of our time, John McCain’s judgment was wrong.”

The speech offered some of the Obama campaign’s strongest criticism to date about McCain’s leadership abilities. It was scheduled two days before the first presidential debate, which will focus on foreign policy, and was billed by the campaign as a major speech on foreign policy by the veteran chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Biden was scheduled to speak at the Cincinnati Museum Center, where President Bush made the case for attacking Iraq.

“Mark my words: If, God forbid, there is another major attack on America, it will not come from Iraq,” Biden said. “It will almost certainly come from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border — where the Bush-McCain approach let down our guard and let our enemies off the hook.

“And unlike John McCain — who opposed Barack Obama’s call to take out the high-level terrorist targets in Pakistan and called it ‘bombing our ally’ — we will not tolerate a terrorist sanctuary in Pakistan.”

The speech gave Biden a chance to display his policy experience after a recent run of verbal miscues, such as comments to CBS News about Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt going on television after the stock market crash — although Republican Herbert Hoover was president during 1929 crash, which predated television.