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Oct 28, 2008, 14:58 GMT
PROFILE: Joe Biden, political heavyweight with loose tongue
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Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, a Republican, endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president on Friday, citing the senator's good judgment, 'deep sense of calm' and 'first-class political temperament.'
Weld said he has never endorsed a Democrat for president before, but in the last six weeks or so, it became 'close to a no-brainer.'
...a perfect example of the gushing b.s. the liberal press proiduces. Not a single mention of his speech plagerizing.
Nor has anything been brougnt out about McCain's disasterous piloting - five aircraft lost. Four were accidents, one in battle. A few expensive mistakes I would think. Just a little more serious than claiming a few quotes from another while in college.
'Nor has anything been brougnt out about McCain's disasterous piloting -'
Obama doesn't have to worry about anyone calling him a bad 'pilot'. He never served anything other then his own self internists.
In fact, decade after decade and on important issue after important issue, Mr. Biden's judgment has been deeply flawed.
In the 1970s, Mr. Biden opposed giving aid to the South Vietnamese government in its war against the North. Congress's cut-off of funds contributed to the fall of an American ally, helped communism advance, and led to mass death throughout the region. Mr. Biden also advocated defense cuts so massive that both Edmund Muskie and Walter Mondale, both leading liberal Democrats at the time, opposed them.
In the early 1980s, the U.S. was engaged in a debate over funding the Contras, a group of Nicaraguan freedom fighters attempting to overthrow the Communist regime of Daniel Ortega. Mr. Biden was a leading opponent of President Ronald Reagan's efforts to fund the Contras. He also opposed Reagan's efforts to send military assistance to the pro-American government in El Salvador, which at the time was battling the FMLN, a Soviet-supported Marxist group.
Throughout his career, Mr. Biden has consistently opposed modernization of our strategic nuclear forces. He was a fierce opponent of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Mr. Biden voted against funding SDI, saying, 'The president's continued adherence to [SDI] constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.' Mr. Biden has remained a consistent critic of missile defense and even opposed the U.S. dropping out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty after the collapse of the Soviet Union (which was the co-signatory to the ABM Treaty) and the end of the Cold War.
In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and, we later learned, was much closer to attaining a nuclear weapon than we had believed. President George H.W. Bush sought war authorization from Congress. Mr. Biden voted against the first Gulf War, asking: 'What vital interests of the United States justify sending Americans to their deaths in the sands of Saudi Arabia?'
In 2006, after having voted three years earlier to authorize President George W. Bush's war to liberate Iraq, Mr. Biden argued for the partition of Iraq, which would have led to its crack-up. Then in 2007, Mr. Biden opposed President Bush's troop surge in Iraq, calling it a 'tragic mistake.' It turned out to be quite the opposite. Without the surge, the Iraq war would have been lost, giving jihadists their most important victory ever.
On many of the most important and controversial issues of the last four decades, Mr. Biden has built a record based on bad assumptions, misguided analyses and flawed judgments. If he had his way, America would be significantly weaker, allies under siege would routinely be cut loose, and the enemies of the U.S. would be stronger.
There are few members of Congress whose record on national security matters can be judged, with the benefit of hindsight, to be as consistently bad as Joseph Biden's. It's true that Sarah Palin has precious little experience in national security affairs. But in this instance, no record beats a manifestly bad one.
TURNER: The Biden Doctrine
The conventional wisdom seems to be that, by selecting the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - a veteran of more than 35 years as a Washington insider - as his vice-presidential running mate, Sen. Barack Obama has more than adequately compensated for his own total lack of foreign policy and national security experience. I have been waiting patiently but in vain for two months on the assumption the media would investigate and report on Sen. Joe Biden's record, but it hasn't happened.
The conduct of our foreign relations and the command of our military are among the most important functions entrusted to the president under our Constitution, and Mr. Biden's record in these areas is abysmal. From his first year in the Senate in 1973, he was a consistent foe of the American military.
When the Armed Services Committee recommended money for the Trident submarine, the B-1 bomber, and the MX missile (three critical upgrades to our strategic nuclear deterrent triad), Mr. Biden voted against all three - as well as against every effort by our military to protect the American people against nuclear missile attack. When the Senate voted to provide our troops with superior equipment like the M-1 Abrams tank, Joe Biden regularly voted 'nay.' He even voted to make all covert operations illegal (and to prohibit all intelligence collection inside foreign countries where local laws prohibited foreign espionage) and in 1986 bragged he had personally undermined Reagan administration covert operations while a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee by simply threatening to 'leak' them.
A look at his actions when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 is instructive. Just hours after the Aug. 2 invasion, Joe Biden declared on the Senate floor that Saddam was 'the world's most belligerent dictator' who, in recent months, had 'boldly continued his drive for nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.' He declared the United States 'must act, and we must act forcefully. ... History will not forgive us if we do not do everything in our power to stop Saddam Hussein.'
Two months later, his courage had apparently waned, as Mr. Biden cautioned that the United States should not engage in a 'pre-emptive strike.' (One wonders if he would have characterize the D-Day landing at Normandy to liberate Europe as 'pre-emptive' as well.) Still, Mr. Biden declared he would support the use of military force if authorized by 'a decision by the U.N. Security Council' - which occurred Nov. 29 with Resolution 678.
However, when it came time to actually take a stand against blatant international aggression and to help the Security Council enforce the United Nations Charter, Mr. Biden decided the world community should instead rely on 'sanctions.' Just before the Jan. 12, 1991, Senate vote, Mr. Biden declared to his colleagues that 'the principle of collective security' was really 'not a vital interest' of the United States. Who needs things like NATO? America can go it alone.
As for his earlier concerns about Saddam's quest for nuclear weapons and Iraq's other weapons of mass destruction programs, Mr. Biden actually speculated to his colleagues that perhaps, if we just left him alone for five years, Saddam might be 'struck by lightning,' eliminating any need to deal seriously with the problem. Thus we have the 'Biden Doctrine' - gut the military, appease aggressors, and then pray anxiously for lightning to preserve world peace!
Fewer than 150 Americans died as a result of enemy action during Operation Desert Storm. But, in fairness to Mr. Biden, had the Congress followed his lead and voted to deny our military Abrams tanks, long-range cruise missiles (and destroyers from which to launch them), Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft, F-14 'Tomcat' fighters, Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, SAM-D (Patriot) missiles, and the other sophisticated weapons that kept our casualties so low - all of them weapons Mr. Biden voted against over the years - we might well have lost the tens- to hundreds-of-thousands of American lives liberating Kuwait that Mr. Biden had confidently predicted.
In part because of the incredible superiority of the Abrams tank, by the time the war ended coalition forces had destroyed an estimated 4,000 Iraqi tanks without having had a single Abrams destroyed by hostile fire.
When Desert Storm began, Iraq had the third-largest army in the world (the United States was fifth). Without the critically important weapons Mr. Biden had sought to deny our troops, we might well have paid for his frugality with the lives of large numbers of brave American men and women in uniform.
Although Joe Biden was of military age throughout the Vietnam War, he managed to secure numerous educational draft deferments and then found a doctor to certify he had suffered from asthma as a child. His disdain for the welfare of our military was evident not solely by his votes to deny them virtually every major modern weapons system they requested; he even voted to deny funds for commissaries where our underpaid troops could purchase food for their families.
Apparently having learned from experience, in 2002 Mr. Biden voted in favor of going to war in Iraq. (As late as April 2003, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll reported 79 percent of Americans still thought the Iraq war was justified). But when public opinion shifted, Mr. Biden quickly reverted to form, declared his vote was a 'mistake,' and tried to sabotage the president's conduct of the war (and thus guarantee victory for our enemies, as he had done in Indochina in May 1973). [..]
Today, few Senate Democrats can match Joe Biden's experience in the field of foreign affairs. He has a long track record dating back 35 years - a record Mr. Obama obviously admires. But it is a record of appeasement, weakness, vacillation and incredibly poor judgment. It is a record of usurping the constitutional powers of the president, undermining and trying to cripple our intelligence community, and in the process betraying the brave sacrifices of millions of our men and women in uniform. I have testified at hearings chaired by Mr. Biden time and again over many years, and I've always found him fair, gracious, and often charming and personable. But the thought that his views may soon become the foreign and defense policies of this great nation genuinely frightens me.
where were everyone's brains when they voted Bush in for 2 terms? Talk about someone who was not capable for the job, and then these people voted him in again - guess they liked to torture themselves. If anyone feels like Biden isn't good for the job of VP, then Palin wouldn't be good for chambermaid.
This was preventable.Sep 21st, 2008 - 01:59:13
John McCain predicted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crises, pushed 2005 legislation to prevent trouble:
The 'FEDERAL HOUSING ENTERPRISE REGULATORY REFORM ACT OF 2005' would have headed this off but it was killed in the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs by Chris Dodd who recieved the most money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
President Bush sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie in 2003.
The Democratic response to Bush in 2003:
“These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
“I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.
wow - go inform yourself
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