PrintSeptember 24, 2008
Obama's choice of Biden an albatross (updated)
It would be electoral malpractice for the McCain campaign and its supporters to let Joe Biden's remarkable demonstration of cluelessness go unremarked. The man supposed to bring experience to the Democrat ticket has an uncertain grasp of history and reality. Speaking to Katie Couric on September 23, in reference to the current turmoil on wall Street, Joe Biden said :
"Part of what a leader does is to instill confidence, to demonstrate that he or she knows what they're (sic) talking about .... stock market crash, Franklin Roosevelt got on television and didn't just talk about, you know, the princes of greed, he said, "Look, here's what happened..."
The Biden bloviation contains at least two howlers:
The 1929 stock market crash occurred in 1929, when Roosevelt was more than three years away from the Presidency. So "President" Roosevelt never talked to the American people about the 1929 stock market crash as President, via any medium of communication.
Second, and even more revealing of a yawning gap where Biden's store of historical information should be, Roosevelt couldn't have "got on television" in 1929 if he HAD been President then, because there wasn't any television in 1929. Nor did President Roosevelt EVER "[get] on television" because --once again, sorry Joe -- there still wasn't any, during Roosevelt's entire three terms in office (1933-1945).
And by the way, Joe, Lincoln did not fly to Gettysburg for that speech.
Now lots of Americans don't have a clear idea of when certain major technological developments began, but those Americans, unlike Joe Biden, are not claiming to be stupendously better informed than Sarah Palin about everything pertinent to being America's President.
What other historical confusion does the learned Senator from Delaware suffer from? Scary to ask.
At least Sarah Palin has the good sense to sit down and listen to respected experts when the opportunities present themselves (e.g., meeting for two days with Henry Kissinger). She will learn quickly with these habits.
Listening, on the other hand, has never been Biden's strong suit. Reading American history, too, seems to have taken a back seat to talking during Biden's thirty-five year Senate tenure.
We can only imagine how many tens of millions of voters would be chuckling now if Sarah Palin had stepped in these misinformation cow pies, all courtesy of the mainstream media.
We are sure the mainstreams will be all over Joe Biden about this astonishing display of laughable historical ignorance, and that they will immediately stop describing Biden as better informed, more knowledgeable and, generally, more prepared to be President, than Sarah Palin.
Just in case they don't I suggest T Shirts for all McCain supporters: Front and Back: "Joe Biden: 'Roosevelt got on television.' And he's their experienced guy."
Update from Ed Lasky:
Don't miss this Joe Biden Gaffe Clock. Check back often, as it will soon be updated with Biden's next attack of foot-in-mouth disease.
Update -- reader Rob McClain writes:
Either we adults, we the people, we who drive the economic engine the world envies, either we wrest control from the fringe Left, either we slap the faces of all the Little Skippy Newsboys out there who mock us…
Update from Ed Lasky:
Don't miss this Joe Biden Gaffe Clock. Check back often, as it will soon be updated with Biden's next attack of foot-in-mouth disease.
Update -- reader Rob McClain writes:
If Sarah Palin had said FDR showed leadership by addressing the nation on television after the stock market crash in 1929, the media would be in high dungeon. Members of the press and the opposition party would point out that her gaffe was prima facie evidence that she is too inexperienced to be Veep. If John McCain had uttered that gem, proof positive that he was too old.
Because Joe Biden misspoke, however, not a peep. Surely Senator Biden knows Herbert Hoover was president in '29 and that television was still a decade or more in the future. But the media ignores his gaffes, and Obama's. Let Obama make a gaffe on national television by mentioning his Muslim religion, and Little Skippy Newsboy nearly swallows his tongue. "Oh great Messiah, don't you mean your Christian religion?"
The social and political elites around the world have succumbed to PDS. The spectacle reminds me of Mel Brooks playing King Louis in History of the World, Part I.
"Sire, the peasants are revolting!"
"Yes, I know."
"No, Sire, I mean they're rebelling."
The hatred for Palin, and for the people in flyover country, the people who make this nation prosper, has become utterly ridiculous. One half of this electorate seems to be made up of the Woodstock Nation, hippies who turned in their threads for suits, cut their hair, but remain perpetual adolescents. What passed for humor then remains side-splittingly funny to these middle-aged children. "Your mother (fill in the blank)".
John Lennon, in his song Working Class Hero, said of these idiots, "You think you're so clever and classless and free, but you're still (expletive) peasants as far as I can see."
I would like to remind such fools as Sarah Bernhard, Woody Allen, Matt Damon, Pamela Anderson, Al Franken, and far too many others to include here, that Karl Marx had something completely different in mind when he envisioned a classless society.
The lunatic Left has no class. Everything in society must be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Art becomes pornography. Romance becomes sex. Parenthood merely means increasing one's circle of friends.
In one sense, these leftist adolescents could almost be pitied. As the nation collectively turns their backs on them, as even the New York Times flounders over the loss of advertisers and readers, as shows like the Emmys suffer the lowest ratings in history, the idiots only get louder and angrier.
Talk about biting the hands that fed them all these years. Like ungrateful children who curse their parents then accuse Mummy and Daddy of being mean because they won't send the next monthly stipend.
Either we adults, we the people, we who drive the economic engine the world envies, either we wrest control from the fringe Left, either we slap the faces of all the Little Skippy Newsboys out there who mock us…
All I can do is sigh at the consequences. Not sure I want to live in the Village of the Damned.
Think of all the blood, sweat, and tears shed to make this the greatest nation ever, and to keep it free from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Will we rational, hardworking American adults allow the irrational, excuse-making, blame-shifting juvenile delinquents to destroy what so many died to defend?
We have to forget partisan politics this year. We have to forget what party our grandparents belonged to. The divide in America is between grownups and middle-age nitwits who've resisted adulthood for thirty years. It's time for some tough love. I, for one, can't wait for the temper tantrums on the Left to begin.
That's assuming there are enough adults left to force the kiddies to mind us.
