Why Joe Biden is a huge ass.

With all the media attention focused on the Palin, let's not overlook Obama's VP.

This guy could be a heartbeat away?

God help us...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/11/america/biden.php

While the media obsesses over every move made and every sentence uttered by Sarah Palin, the bumbling and stumbling Joe Biden gets a virtual free pass for sticking his foot in his mouth on seemingly an hourly basis.

The media theme is Palin is unprepared and has zero knowledge of foreign affairs while Biden has decades of experience. So why does Biden sound like a complete idiot?

CINCINNATI, OH " Big, long, dense speech from Joe Biden on McCain’s foreign policy today, which I’ll parse a little more in depth soon. But first, one face-off between Biden and the facts that, once again, the facts seem to have won.

Over the last week, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden -- the Democrats' vice presidential nominee -- has made national news for the following events:

• Telling CBS's Katie Couric that an ad hitting John McCain on his lack of computer literacy was "terrible"

• Being scolded by Obama

• Asking a reporter for the Washington Post whether he had ever played football and then, when learning said reporter had not played football, telling him he needed to work on his "pecs."

• Seemingly flip-flopping on his support/opposition for clean coal technology

Big, long, dense speech from Joe Biden on McCain’s foreign policy today, which I’ll parse a little more in depth soon. But first, one face-off between Biden and the facts that, once again, the facts seem to have won.

Criticizing McCain for opposing negotiations with Iran, Biden said even the Bush administration now favors such talks " which Obama has long supported.

“After seven years, in which our senior diplomatic personnel were not allowed to make a single contact with Iranians, the Bush administration realized the absurdity of its own policy and sent our leading diplomat to Iran,” he said. “The Assistant Secretary of State as he went to Tehran, sat down at the instruction of the President of the United States.”

It sounds great for Obama and Biden that the president came around to something so close to their position on talks with Iran; trouble is, the event Biden described never actually happened.

The McCain Campaign is chuckling over this exchange from Sunday:

CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "He [Joe Biden] was on the Today Show. He opposed the bailout of AIG and then the Obama campaign the next day said there was no choice. Did Joe Biden make the same mistake that John McCain made?"

Austan Goolsbee: "Well, I would " we don't have the transcript here, but I have read it and I would disagree a little bit. It was clear from the entire paragraph that Joe Biden was not saying he was opposing a bailout. What he was saying was that it's not their first choice along the lines of where John McCain ended up and where Senator Obama was all along."

Blitzer: "It was a pretty clear. I watched it that morning. It was pretty clear. He opposed the bailout, too, although, as you say, the position of the Obama campaign seemed to change based " assuming that Joe Biden speaks for the Obama campaign " it changed the next day, as well."

Because they went back to the transcript:


NBC'S MEREDITH VIEIRA: "But now we have this mess, Senator. Do you think that AIG should be bailed out by the federal government?"

BIDEN: "No, I don't think they should be bailed out by the federal government. I'll tell you what we should do. We should try to correct the problems that caused this. And what's caused this is the profligate tax cuts to the very, very wealthy that John wants to continue." (NBC's "Today," 9/16/08)

So yes, Goolsbee's "these words do not mean what everyone thinks they mean" argument is worth a chuckle. But how about Biden's assertion that "the problem that caused this" is "tax cuts to the wealthy"? In what economics textbook does it say, "if you cut taxes on the wealthy, you will prompt one of the world's largest companies to overvalue subprime mortgage-backed securities, causing a liquidity crisis"?

Why does Biden have the "wise man" reputation that he does? If you asked Biden why his oatmeal was cold, would he blame tax cuts for the wealthy?

UPDATE: In light of Biden's comments, wouldn't it be fair for Charlie Gibson to ask, "Senator Biden, are you on a mission from God to raise taxes?"

Joe Biden's denunciation of his own campaign's ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed," Biden told Couric. "He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

As Reason's Jesse Walker footnotes it: "And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, 'Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'"

Joe Biden isn't backing down from his startling claim last week that raising taxes on the rich is the "patriotic" thing to do. On Thursday he upped the ante, thundering that he also has Jesus in his corner. "Catholic social doctrine as I was taught it is, you take care of people who need the help the most," Mr. Biden preached to a group of union supporters on Thursday.

"Catholic social doctrine as I was taught it is, you take care of people who need the help the most," Mr. Biden preached

McGentrix wrote:

"Catholic social doctrine as I was taught it is, you take care of people who need the help the most," Mr. Biden preached

Is there anything remotely controversial about this statement? Am I missing something?

I read the Iraq Constitution immediately after it was approved and thought the three federalism provinces concept would go along way in resolving the religious and enthic conflicts. The three federal provinces are the basis on which the Iraq oil profits distribution are based.

When Senator Biden announced his proposal, I immediately recognized it from my earlier reading of the constitution.

I suggest you read the entire constitution. You may find it fascinating. You will also find the federalism concept.

Yep.

McGentrix wrote:

Yep.

OK, enlighten me. What part of observing that the notion that "you take care of people who need the help the most" is part of "Catholic social doctrine" is controversial?

Biden's Fantasy World

Sarah Palin may not know as much about the world, but at least most of what she knows is true.

In the popular media wisdom, Sarah Palin is the neophyte who knows nothing about foreign policy while Joe Biden is the savvy diplomatic pro. Then what are we to make of Mr. Biden's fantastic debate voyage last week when he made factual claims that would have got Mrs. Palin mocked from New York to Los Angeles?

Start with Lebanon, where Mr. Biden asserted that "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."

The U.S. never kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, and no one else has either. Perhaps Mr. Biden meant to say Syria, except that the U.S. also didn't do that. The Lebanese ousted Syria's military in 2005. As for NATO, Messrs. Biden and Obama may have proposed sending alliance troops in, but if they did that was also a fantasy. The U.S. has had all it can handle trying to convince NATO countries to deploy to Afghanistan.

Speaking of which, Mr. Biden also averred that "Our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan." In trying to correct him, Mrs. Palin mispronounced the general's name -- saying "General McClellan" instead of General David McKiernan. But Mr. Biden's claim was the bigger error, because General McKiernan said that while "Afghanistan is not Iraq," he also said a "sustained commitment" to counterinsurgency would be required. That is consistent with Mr. McCain's point that the "surge principles" of Iraq could work in Afghanistan.

Then there's the Senator's astonishing claim that Mr. Obama "did not say he'd sit down with Ahmadinejad" without preconditions. Yet Mr. Biden himself criticized Mr. Obama on this point in 2007 at the National Press Club: "Would I make a blanket commitment to meet unconditionally with the leaders of each of those countries within the first year I was elected President? Absolutely, positively no."

Or how about his rewriting of Bosnia history to assert that John McCain didn't support President Clinton in the 1990s. "My recommendations on Bosnia, I admit I was the first one to recommend it. They saved tens of thousands of lives. And initially John McCain opposed it along with a lot of other people. But the end result was it worked." Mr. Biden's immodesty aside, Mr. McCain supported Mr. Clinton on Bosnia, as did Bob Dole even as he was running against him for President in 1996 -- in contrast to the way Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders have tried to undermine President Bush on Iraq.

Closer to home, the Delaware blarney stone also invited Americans to join him at "Katie's restaurant" in Wilmington to witness middle-class struggles. Just one problem: Katie's closed in the 1980s. The mistake is more than a memory lapse because it exposes how phony is Mr. Biden's attempt to pose for this campaign as Lunchbucket Joe.

We think the word "lie" is overused in politics today, having become a favorite of the blogosphere and at the New York Times. So we won't say Mr. Biden was deliberately making events up when he made these and other false statements. Perhaps he merely misspoke. In any case, Mrs. Palin may not know as much about the world as Mr. Biden does, but at least most of what she knows is true.