On CNN, the gang was discussing and chuckling over one of Joe Biden’s lesser gaffes, not that the same gaffe wouldn’t have had them screaming and shaking their fists if, say, Chris Christie had spoken similarly. In this case (with Biden, gaffes should be given case numbers; I’m guessing this one would be about #6,782,304), Biden used the uncivil term “bitch” when referring to the role of Vice President. This provoked Chris Cuomo to express his affection for Lunch Bucket Joe, saying…
“I still love Biden for what he is. I just do. I think his candor is refreshing – and when he is insensitive to something, he owns it. What more can you ask for? Perfection?”
What does this even mean? Let me rephrase that. What the hell does this even mean? “For what he is”? Does Chris mean “an ongoing embarrassment”? A gaffe machine a heartbeat away from the Presidency? An unapologetic clown in a position of high responsibility and influence? You know what Chris really means, don’t you? He means nothing more nor less than, “I love Joe Biden because I love liberal Democrats, even silly, inept, dumb ones.”
Is that an admission that we should take lightly? Does it matter? Yes, I think it matters.
“His candor is refreshing?” Funny, I don’t recall Chris praising Mitt Romney’s candor for correctly pointing out the 47% of the public is so dependent on government largesse that they don’t consider anything else when deciding who to vote for. Why wasn’t that refreshing, and since when is vulgarity the equivalent of “candor”?
“When he’s insensitive to something, he owns it?” The media is now excusing insensitivity as long as the official who is insensitive is unapologetic or too dense to know better? That’s not how I recall it. It’s not how I recall the media treating Romney, Earl Butz, James Watt, Joe (“You Lie!”) Wilson—talk about “owning it”—Todd Akin, Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and dozens of Republicans who have uttered an insensitive or stupid things that the news media worked overtime to try to make a career-ender. And if you put all of their worst gaffes together, I doubt they would surpass Joe’s all-time record, for he is the Hank Aaron of gaffes.
Of course, Biden has said so many worse things recently than “bitch.” He used the anti-Semitic term shylock, for example. (Joe said it “was a poor choice of words,” and everyone forgave him. Joe should use nigger some day, just to test my theory that nothing he says will ever provoke the media or his progressive enablers to turn on him. Just say, “Wrong choice of words again!”, Joe. That should be enough. Oh–and own it.) Hey, no big deal—Shylock is a Shakespeare character, after all—-but imagine if Dick Cheney has said that.
The Veep just told a Missouri crowd that the Joplin, Missouri, tornado took 161,ooo lives, when the real total was, uh, 161. (Hey, but Joe owned it, and that’s what matters, right, Chris?) Then he provoked an international incident by telling a Kennedy School audience that the President of Turkey—“an old friend,” Joe said—had confided in Joe that Turkey’s misclaculations helped fuel the growth of ISIS. Joe’s old friend denied that he had said anything of the sort, and demanded an apology. Joe also fingered the United Arab Emerites in his remarks (Joe doesn’t quite get the internet yet), which responded by saying that Biden’s remarks.were “far from the truth, especially with relation to the UAE’s role in confronting extremism and terrorism and its clear and advanced position in recognizing the dangers, including the danger of financing terrorism and terrorist groups.”
It is because the news media gives Biden a pass that he continues to stick his foot in his mouth, in his ear, his nose, in every other orifice imaginable, because he is never held accountable, and whether it is a partisan double standard or custom-made standard just for Joe, it is based on the fact that the news media gives every bit of slack possible to liberal Democrats. Chris Cuomo, if he is to have any credibility as an objective, fair and rational news analysts and journalist, may not love Joe Biden, because to love Joe Biden is to say that the Vice President of the United States embarrassing his office, his party, the nation, the President on a regular basis by saying intemperate, insensitive, uncivil (he is the only President or Vice President to utter the word “fuck” in public—but he owned it!) careless, reckless, and often stupid things doesn’t matter. It does matter, and it matters that U.S. journalists don’t think so.
There are too many smoking guns to count that prove the left-wing media bias, but Chris Cuomo’s words are definitive.
Ethics Alarms 
I still think Biden would be a better President than Obama, because after all, “What more can you ask for? Perfection?”
I, on the other hand, do not support any impeachment idea because then we would have Joe. Which is worse, a do-nothing, incompetent or an active, incompetent boob that does the wrong thing EVERY TIME?
On utilitarian terms I’d agree. But if Obama were truly conducting impeachable actions, then worry about a successor is not a legitimate deterrent…
On the bright side, in a grand two-fer, after Obama is gone, you could be guaranteed that in President Biden’s first speech he would do no less than 4 impeachable things himself and we could chuck the rat out also.
Yeah, but then we’d have John Boehner. At least he knows when to keep his mouth shut, but is still a boob.
I was on that “other hand” with you all along, d_d. My use of “better” was sarcasm, and my use of the quoted statement was mockery.
I kinda figured, Lucky. I was replying to Tex, primarily because I wanted to get a dig in on Boehner. Not real fond of him.
My wife’s theory. This is why she thinks Biden was chosen, but more as a hedge against assassination than impeachment.
And it’s a good one. I hadn’t thought of it, but next to Biden, even Obama looks…well…acceptable.
Some have suggested that job securitt was why Sarah Palin was chosen. There was a legitimate question whether John McCain was legally qualified to serve as President, owing to a quirk in the law pointed out ably in the Michigan Law Review. http://www.michiganlawreview.org/articles/why-senator-john-mccain-cannot-be-president-eleven-months-and-a-hundred-yards-short-of-citizenship But as the remedy would have been “President Palin,” no sane person would have challenged him.
If you think that was a legitimate challenge, you must love the birthers. It was crap, and that was a “get McCain” screed.
Plain might well have been a better President than McCain, who would have been just awful. Better than Obama, certainly, but still stinky-poo.
A LOT of people have voiced that opinion, Jack!
I refer to that concept of Biden as Obama’s “health insurance”.
Ugh. I hope the grassroots starts coming to it’s senses with a quickness and decides it is in everyone’s best interest to act on those awakened senses…
Some things I left out, more or less to keep it short:
1. Perfection? PERFECTION???
2. I wonder how many votes Obama would have lost in 2012 if the media pushed Biden’s shocking ineptitude with a fraction of the diligence with which it hammered Sarah Palin. Picking a dolt once for VP is bad, but twice? Terrible judgment—and, of course, those late to the party now know how bad.
Yet how many who “showed up late” don’t think it’s that big of a deal for Biden to be utterly inept?
Oh, they don’t, because big, charismatic media doofuses like Cuomo keep laughing and telling them that it’s no big deal when a VP talks like Bluto in “Animal House.” Compare how often SNL has mined Biden for laughs as opposed to Palin…and he’s the one who’s in office.
On the video, which I had never seen, young Biden makes the statement that is signature significance for a dummy—he actually says his IQ is higher than someone else’s. Wow. I have literally never known a non-idiot to say that. How embarrassing. I wouldn’t vote for a Presidential candidate who picked someone as VP who said that even once in his life.
Hey! Don’t insult Bluto! After all he was on a roll when he declared, “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!” Even though got the country wrong, his heart was in the right place. Sheez. Such sticklers for professionalism.
jvb
“we will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice — because hell is where they will reside. Hell is where they will reside!!!!!! Blither blather slobber!!!”
Criticize Biden like they criticized Palin? As they claimed that Palin was unqualified for the VP spot, they would have had to acknowledge that she was still better qualified than Obama to be president. I also disliked Palin as the VP candidate (I thought McCain should have gone with his gut and asked Joe Lieberman), but I continually found the complete lack of any coverage of who Obama was or Biden’s background frustrating from a voter research standpoint.
I have heard that President Obama doesn’t feel he really need the Secret Service because he has Biden. Incidents like this do nothing to dispel this idea.
Lieberman is Gene McCarthy without the charisma, wit, guts, edge, integrity or brains. I’d vote for a noodle before I’d vote for Lieberman….who, in a typical move, garnered praise for criticizing Clinton’s lies and sexual disgraces, then voted with his party to shove it all under the rug. I’m not sure I wouldn’t trust Palin as a leader before that Joe…though I’d probably move to Borneo first.
McCain was running even with Obama before the economy crashed and doomed his chances. His choice of VP would not have saved him, in fact nothing would have.
Exactly.
Jack,
I catch myself arguing with you too often lately. I don’t like that. I think you over-rate Gene McCarthy and under-rate Joe Lieberman (although I think neither were suited to serve as President, I give a sizable edge to Lieberman if the choices were him and McCarthy). What you say about McCarthy seems like an application of a bias to a politician of old that fighter pilots (and some baseball players) know well about themselves, as they tell their war stories: “The older we get, the better we were.” I think if you were who you are today in the time of Gene McCarthy, you’d vote for a noodle before you’d vote for him.
Oh, I wouldn’t VOTE for McCarthy—he ran for President but didn’t want to be President, and reluctant Presidents are lousy Presidents. I did know him a little bit, and he was all the things I say he was, even though I agreed with him politically on just about nothing, including the Vietnam War.
You and I were similarly young then, and I saw wit and edge in McCarthy, yet honestly didn’t feel ANY charisma. I liked Humphrey, but my Dad’s presence and influence in my life at that time was more a mix of Nixon and Wallace – more Wallace, less Nixon (but he confessed he voted for Nixon). Curtis LeMay thoroughly scared me away from Wallace (as if I needed that excuse). Though I liked Humphrey, I feared that he would fail to correct course from LBJ sufficiently, so I ended up siding reluctantly with Nixon.
I broke with Clean Gene when he sulked in his hotel suite rather than speak to his following during the 1968 Convention, a betrayal and a breach of trust that I couldn’t forgive, and still don’t.
MR: ” they would have had to acknowledge that [Palin] was still better qualified than Obama to be president.”
Partyism, on steroids.
Steve Schmidt doesn’t seem to share your opinion, and it is not like he is infected with partisan bias.
I don’t care about Steve Schmidt. She was clearly better qualified by any objective standard. She had actually run something. Since Obama has a flat line learning curve regarding leadership, I’m not sure she still isn’t better qualified, though we’re comparing rotten apples with moldy oranges.
Running a lemonade stand would qualify under your reasoning then. Obama is a Harvard-educated attorney Jack — and could lap Palin on intelligence while intoxicated, blindfolded, and juggling swords.
Look — I was EXCITED when McCain picked Palin. Then I did some independent research and watched her bomb the softest of softball questions. And even if you want to damn the media — her performance since then has been laughable — and she’s done that all on her own.
Obama isn’t my favorite president either, but every single person I know is more qualified than Palin.
Not to be excessively harsh, but he’s a likely affirmative action case who refuses to share his transcript. I don’t judge intelligence on tricks, learned skills like oratory, and credentials. He was not a successful lawyer. His grasp of Constitutional law, which he supposedly taught, seems shockingly weak. His logic and decision-making skills are fatally flawed. His world view appears to be in defiance of reality. His neglect of oversight of his “signature accomplishment,” knowing that the knives would be out for the ACA, may have been the dumbest thing I have ever seen any President do. I wouldn’t be so sure he could lap Palin on intelligence at all. Why do you assume that? I have seldom seen—or read about– any public figure making more mistakes and terrible decisions.
And he’s a probable narcissist, which is a mental disorder, often disabling. I don’t think its a lead pip cinch that Obama COULD run a lemonade stand. Palin wasn’t a bad governor, even with its crazy ethics laws making her a constant target of politically trumped up complaints. There is literally nothing one can offer to claim Obama is competent, so saying he can lap Palin is logically impossible. The best case would be a zero-zero tie.
And I don’t even like or particularly respect Palin.
I recall an old Mad Magazine jingle, back in the day: “Change your direction, don’t look for perfection and Vote for Neuman! Vote for Neuman!”
As for Biden’s alleged ineptitude, like it or not, American politicians are graded on a curve. When the only viable alternative is Romney-Ryan, Obama-Biden doesn’t look half-bad. But if the Dems were looking at 2016, replacing Biden with Hillary would have made enormous strategic sense.
Maybe you grade on a curve (stop with the curve, already!), but I don’t, and a lawn chair and a pogo stick would have been a viable alternative to a demonstrably failed leader and a glibly asinine Vice.
Oh, no doubt. That, and the fact that he was the most awkward, bumbling candidate since Alf Landon. I am pretty sure that Palin was a net plus at the polls, but her savaging in the press was the worst example of media bias and brutally unfair partisan journalism that I have ever seen.
You know the rules, Jack. Put blood in the water, and the sharks will circle. Politics is blood sport, and always has been.
I thought she was treated fairly, but wasn’t ready for the job interview. When someone asks you what newspapers you read, you had better have a coherent answer. Once she stumbled there, she was toast.
If SP had survived two full terms as Alaska’s governor, and taken some time to get up to speed on the rest of the world (anyone who has been up there knows that it is its own little world), she might have been a credible candidate for VP in 2016. Her problem was timing: she came too early.
I would agree that she was treated fairly, if her treatment wasn’t so absurdly at odds with the kid gloves treatment of Obama (who had less experience than Palin, and has shown why that should have been examined by the media) and Biden (who makes Pail look like Stephen Hawking) on the same weaknesses they savaged Palin for relentlessly. As it was, it was a double standard. She had a lot of tools that could have made her an effective political leader: she is lazy and greedy, essentially. She was handed a great opportunity, and blew it, at least as far as doing anything really productive is concerned.
She was asked what newspapers she read that shaped her worldview, which is a distinctly different question. None is the only appropriate response. She still flubbed the response, but shortening the nature of the question is one of the many examples of media bias from the era.