OMG, Please read Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.'s wikipedia article.
So, recently, Joe Biden allegedly "slipped" to let voters know--but, conveniently, letting them know without triggering FEC rules--that he, like many Democrats, has long been is may soon be--oh, be still, my heart--running for President of the United States. (Remember when Democrats heading toward coronations of re-electing Obama and not electing Hillary would liken a field of many Presidential hopefuls to a "clown car?")
Amid an audience that had been conveniently, "spontaneously" chanting, "Run, Joe, run" just before this archetypical Biden-style "gaffe." Giving him an opportunity to "spontaneously" cross himself over this "slip" while on national television. And so Joe let audiences know early on, à la Hillary and her surrogates in 2016, that Joe Biden was not a Jew nor an unelectible atheist nor a holder of some kind of "spiritual" belief about the nature of God, but a proper Christian, after the order of Melchisedeck U.S. Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Kavanaugh and Sotomayor, most of whom were even nominated by Republican Presidents. Of course, Joe was also letting us know that he is the most "progressive" candidate person who should "would" (might?) run for President 2020. OT: Everyone who believed this series of events was unintentional, please private message me ASAP: I am proud to be authorized international bridge dealer with a portfolio of wonderful properties for sale at shockingly low prices.
No doubt, we are all shocked, shocked, to learn that Biden wants to be President. After all, he's run only twice before. (My speculation: and would have run a third time in 2016, but for a Faustian deal that Obama, Joe and other powerful Democrats made just before the 2008 Democratic primary belatedly ended.)
Strongly in Biden's favor is that Joe is the proverbial (mythical?) genuine, down-to-earth Presidential hopeful with whom even the humblest American would enjoy a beer, amirite? So much so that Joe was invited to the Beer Summit among Professor Henry Gates and LEO JIM CROWley, when Obama had to backpedal on his initial criticism of police behavior with respect to Obama's erstwhile Harvard prof, who was caught returning to his own home while black.
Knowing, as do we all, that Joe had become a U.S. Senator at an early age, I wanted to write something about Joe's reputation for being the pol with whom any "Joe Six Pack" or a "Jill Six Pack" would be comfortable having a beer. I mean, we don't even use his full first name, much less refer to him as the not-at-all blue collar resonant, Former Vice President and former long-time U.S. Senator from Delaware, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. No. He's just Joe!
Ennnnyyywaayyyy...I wanted to check the exact age at which this allegedly "just like one of us plebes" pol was elected one November to the august Senate of the United States of America. After all, the U.S. Senate is the office, playground and money changing cum charnel house of the most powerful group in the country--most powerful by design of the Framers, with their aversion to the "rabble" to whom the Framers would grudgingly grant the power to elect members of the U.S. House of Representatives directly. (Okay, there may be more powerful groups, including those whose members are subject to RICO prosecutions, if and when anyone cared to prosecute them. However, the US Senate is de jure legit, as in, constituted by the Constitution of the United States, the Supreme Law of the United States, legit. De facto, however, may be another story. And those other groups can enact legislation only through the favor of the U.S. Congress. But, youse pain in the ass innocent bystanders didn't hear that from me, capisce?) Anyway, to wiki I turned, as I so often have.
OMG, having been elected a US Senator at age 29 is only the very tippety toppety tip of the Joementum Joeberg! Because the ways in which the facts of life of Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. vary from his "regular Joe" image defy fair use excerpting (hattip to Joe Shikspack, a Joe to whom I can actually relate), I urge everyone to read the entire wikipedia article of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., including the facts of his life prior to his election to the U.S. Senate. Nonetheless, I can't keep myself from mentioning a fact or two (or four, or more: Terse, I ain't.)
Yes, Biden's father did lose his money at some point before the birth of former Vice President and U.S. Senator Biden. However, Biden Senior later became, wait for it--a successful used car salesman back in the heyday of used car salesmen. Nonetheless, Joe was no stranger to affluenza. The wiki account of his early years reminded me somewhat of wiki's account of Kerry's early years. Kerry's mother was a Forbes, but she did not marry a man with Forbes kind of money. (Yes, the "F" in John F. Kerry stands for Forbes, a six-letter word.) So, a relative of mumsy's had to pay for "Army brat" John's boarding schools. THAT kind of old-time working class "poverty." But, I digress: back to the wiki of Joseph Robinette, Jr.
His paternal grandparents, Mary Elizabeth (Robinette) and Joseph Harry Biden, an oil businessman from Baltimore, Maryland, were of English, French, and Irish ancestry.[13][14] His paternal great-great-great grandfather, William Biden, was born in Sussex, England, and immigrated to the United States. His maternal great-grandfather, Edward Francis Blewitt,[15] was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate.
Omigosh. Another Democratic quintessentially Irish politician who isn't quite quintessentially Irish, after all. (Again like Kerry, though not quite: Kerry was a WASP on his mom's side and an Austro-Hungarian Jew on his father's, although Kerry quietly "passed" for Irish in heavily-Irish Boston/Massachusetts politics. That ended once Kerry ran for President and his actual hertitage became more widely-known.) Good to know good ole regular guy Joe has something in common with the Koch brothers, too, isn't it?--A relatively near ancestor in the oil bidness (to borrow a neologism from the great Molly Ivins, though I am not worthy so to do)! Keeping calm and carrying on...
Our Joe attended a private prep school and spent his spring break from Syracuse University in the Bahamas. Kids of regular Joe Six Packs don't spend spring breaks in the Bahamas, but prepare for them by trying to get a job to earn some extra money. Joe plagiarized "liberally" in college, as he did as a politician, too. In college, his excuse was not knowing the rules of citation. (Handsy Dude, please: A lot of room exists between citing your source incorrectly, or even not at all, and regurgitating word for word.)
Began his adult political career as a Republican. Gee, a lot of that going around in Democratic Presidential hopeful circles--Biden, Hillary, Warren--who else? Being a former Republican is another thing that Biden has in common with the "self-avowed" (rightist) Libertarian David Koch.
Joe became a corporate lawyer allegedly because criminal law didn't pay enough. (As if nothing exists between corporate law and criminal law.) Joe switched to Democrat after he went to work for a Democratic lawyer. Reminds me a bit of Warren, who switched from Republican only after former Democratic Leadership Council President, Bubba, became POTUS, and she decided that Democrats were better than Republicans for "the markets," after all. (Doncha just love Democrats who switched from Republican to the "party of the people" for financial reasons?) And that's when regular Joe was somehow elected Democratic U.S. Senator from big business-loving Delaware when he was only 29.
The wiki explanation of this remarkable election seems innocent. Such facts as wiki gives may be correct, but I am not buying the innocent framing. A DuPont Republican wanted the seat, but "to avoid a primary battle," Nixon persuaded the incumbent Republican, who was eager to retire to run again, anyway; and the Republican barely campaigned against Joe. Why was Nixon that afraid of a Republican primary battle over a Senate seat being vacated by a Republican?
Please indulge me in a pause for personal reflection: As I was about to be graduated from a very inexpensive college, in which I had learned next to nothing about anything, I was somehow awarded--without knowing a thing about it in advance--a grand, all-expense paid scholarship to Syracuse University for seminar of two-weeks' duration during the summer immediately following my graduation. Some years later, I also lunched once in the Senate dining room (with no US Senators present, other than my host). Both locations seemed "quite lovely," in the U.S. Brahmin sense of the term. I encountered zero Joe or Jill Six Packs in those locations. And Biden's the one Obama trots out to speak with 'cause working people can relate to Joe Biden (and vice versa) better than they can relate to Obama, who, with his mom, was was once on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, aka "welfare" in Hawaii? Are you kidding me? Joe da Joe is more blueblood and Blue Dog than blue collar. But, again, I digress (maybe).
In the most recent book (that we know of) by Disgraceful Donna Brazile, which, btw, is implausible as to her "concern" about the Hillary's DNC cheating Sanders, Disgraceful claimed that Disgraceful considered replacing Hillary with Biden when Disgraceful saw Hillary's numbers dropping. I don't believe that, any more than I believe that Disgraceful didn't know about Hillary's ownership of the DNC until September, 2016. However, I do believe that Disgraceful had a reason for mentioning Biden in the context of the Presidency, in a book published not long after What Happened in November 2016 on the way to Hillary's coronation inauguration. (This paragraph is based upon excerpts of Disgraceful's book that I read online, without putting a penny into the capacious pockets of either Disgraceful or her publisher.)
But wait....there's more!!11! The same guy who awarded President Bush the Slicker a Medal of Freedom (and treated him as a mentor) also awarded a Medal of Freedom to the man who was his very own pick for Vice President of the United States of America, Biden. And the same guy who called Hillary Clinton the best-qualified candidate for POTUS in US history (causing George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln and both Presidents Roosevelt, among others, to LOL in their graves) also dubbed good ole Joe the best Vice President in U.S. history (causing John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman, among others, to LOL in their graves). Hyperbolic praise for both a member of the Bush Crime Family and a member of the Clinton Crime Family Foundation. Such discerning taste!
I'm not sure what it means to be the best holder of an office that one of FDR's Vice Presidents evaluated as being the worst thing that ever happened to him and also evaluated as not being worth some kind of container or other of some kind of warm liquid or other. Anyway, if you loved Her 2016, you'll no doubt want to work your heart out for Himself 2020!
Recommended reading on this topic for when you are lying on the beach during your upcoming spring break at the Bahamas or the French Riviera or Waikato, or wherever the current coolest Spring break place for not-so-regular Joes and Jills may be:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/03/11/here-comes-joe-biden-and-i... (hattip, snoopydawg: https://caucus99percent.com/content/mini-ebs-news-roundup)
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/joe-biden-2020-democratic-pr...
But, first, seriously, read the entire wikipedia article of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
[video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gx1Pv02w3Q]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry3Q1wFClu8]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRsZ5ZwMNGE]
Also not a regular Joe, at least not after he became a highly-paid and widely-idolized Yankee: Joltin' Joe da Joe DiMaggio
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JVPdb6Urhw]
Speaking of hyperbole, I hoped this song had been written about Jackass Joe McCarthy, but wikipedia informed me that it was about Josef Stalin. Even I acknowledge that posting it in this essay is therefore overkill. But, my erstwhile stepfather once told me thatI should really listen to Hank Williams if I wanted to hear classical music. That was but one of temporary stepdad's many unintentionally funny comments. Besides, how often can you do the Lindy Hop or a Jitterbug while giving a dead Ruskie dictator what for? So, what the hell: This one's for you, M.G., wherever you are.
Comments
I wonder if we could find all of the Joe Biden cheerleaders
and unionize them? Cheering on Joe Biden ought to pay well.
“Those who make Bernie Sanders impossible will make Luigi Mangione inevitable." - Dan Berger
Good one
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I have no doubt that the leaders of the cheers were trusted
people who do very well, whether or not specifically paid to cheer at that event. Long-time pols like Joe know better than to do what Trump did when he announced. Then again, Joe didn't really announce. *exaggerated, conspiratorial wink*
It's like the Hillary playbook
For blatant hucksterism infected his team of handlers.
Egads, creepy Joe should compliment the Hairball's moral compass nicely. Ack!
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
The Trump incident confirmed for me what I have suspected for
years: That audiences at political events have been seeded with applauders, cheer-ers and boo-ers, along with plants asking questions that the pol wants to answer.
I would bet the deed to my home that the woman who asked McCain about Obama's being a Muslim was one such plant. Establishment media's giving that question and McCain's reply such coverage, citing it as an example of class in politics, only increased my suspicion.
With less conviction, I also wonder about the question or catcall to JFK when he was campaigning for POTUS, about Catholics having to take orders from the Pope. I've seen it on TV a couple of times, in montages of famous and/or pivotal moments from campaigns.
The audience began booing, but stopped immediately upon JFK's "No, no, let him speak." Or words to that effect. The reason that I suspected it is that, shortly before I saw the tape of that, I'd seen something very similar involving President Obama. Some shout from the audience, followed by booing, with Obama quieting the boo-ers and responding to the alleged disrupter. Usually, these days, anyway, the audience is cherry-picked and disrupters are immediately hauled out of the venue by security--assuming they somehow managed to get in in the first place.
Had my viewing of the two events not been so close in time, I might not have suspected that crap like that had begun so early. Then again, the Kennedy campaign was one of the first (that we know of) as to which Hollywood, the land of make believe, consulted.
A "self-avowed" admirer of JFK, Bill Clinton, of course, also consulted heavily with Hollywood, both for his campaign and for his handling of the Lewinsky scandal, including the writers of the TV series, Designing Women. Supposedly, they told him to look straight into the camera and deny the rumors. Hence, "I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." Supposedly, when they gave that advice, they believed Bubba to be innocent.
former CIA Director William Casey*
*
https://www.quora.com/Did-CIA-Director-William-Casey-really-say-Well-kno...
Great comment
You brought up lot of interesting points...
A bit sobering when you begin to see patterns and then wonder if any of it was ever real?
I actually don't find it that hard to believe that he lied to everyone. Betraying your friends trust? No problem for a guy like Bill Clinton. Ugh. I can't believe I was actually happy when he won.
This is gut wrenching to read. Disgusting actually. How futile it feels be one of the few who know when there are so many around me who don't. Double ugh.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
As a civil war era historian, zoebear, you may be
interested to know that it may have started relatively innocently, but still with the purpose of presenting the public with something different than stark reality: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-one-mathew-br...
Probably started earlier though. Media didn't really start reporting on the seamier side of top level politicians until relatively recently and historians were hagiographers. Look how long it took for the Sally Hemmings story to become public. And the extent of FDR's relationship with his wife's former secretary, not to mention Eleanor's private life.
There is a story of the meeting between Churchill and FDR on a ship. Photogs eagerly awaited the arrival of FDR with their cameras poised to photograph him the second he arrived. However, when the FDR was carried aboard "like a sack of potatoes," every one of them lowered his camera.
The stories of JFK's liaisons were well-known to media at the time. They even sent cub reporters out to different hotels to see if they could catch him at it. One naif returned breathlessly to report that he had seen JFK and a woman in a hotel elevator and was going to write the story.
The person who sent him out said, "Are you out of your mind? We're not going to publish that."
Bewildered, the naif asked, "Then why did you send me to investigate?"
"For laughs," came the reply. Of course, those were also the days when newspapers were a lot more flush than they are now.
I also once read that the excesses of Jim Crow and the earliest civil rights movements were kept quiet until Selma, March, 1965. At that point, some media decided it could no longer be silent or minimize. They began reporting the incidents as they actually were. Supposedly, that is when media got the reputation of having a "liberal" bias. If so, I imagine it would have been Southern Democrats who came up with that concept. Rightist Democrats, punching left for centuries. But, perhaps that is my bias?
Anyway, I guess I'm trying to say that we went incrementally from selective media silence, hagiography and relatively innocent image improvement to the Big Lie, Casey and Wag the Dog. As the technologies of P.R., image-making, propaganda, etc. improved, politicians used the best money could buy.
Wonderful article
And a great resource. Ah, yes. The Cooper Union Speech. Didn't know about the photograph that went with it. Makes sense though. Kinda makes me wonder if even cave paintings had a "media effect". Lol.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Portrait painters always tried to flatter their subjects some.
Why not artists who drew on cave walls?
I'm sure the buffalo appreciate it. Lol
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Oh joe,, you and your gaffes
Lotsa people are begging him to run and save the country....
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
I heard heads of state called Joe
and begged him to run to save the US. Maduro and Trump, to be specific. (-;
According to tweeter Joshua Zietz, the Obama administration has the most progressive record? And (implied) it would be somehow appropriate for Biden to claim Obama's actions and laws passed during the Obama administration as his own and run for POTUS on them, even though Biden was neither POTUS nor a member of the House or Senate during that time? (I am so tempted to use Kathy Griffin's term for tweeting.)
A New Hope...
Right Joe, because running on Obama's record will be such a winner with the youngsters.
Not exactly Luke Skywalker is he?
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Help us Obie Joenobi!
yeah I’m sure that’ll make ‘em forget this: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbpxx8/biden-trashes-millennials-in-h...
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
*
https://www.facebook.com/StarWarsArchives/videos/carrie-fisher-on-snl/62...
...featuring Al Franken (as himself).
The guy was always such a highbrow comedian.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Shepherd Fairey:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey
I am impressed by Fairey's activism and charitable works, as described in his wiki.
Maybe we should have elected the portrait's artist, rather than the subject.
*No offense to wiki editors, but citing the name of a television broadcast and the date it aired IS a citation.
No, Biden is no Luke Skywalker. He can be almost as creepy as Skywalker, Sr., though.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy07yHAgM4E]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkFPtwb2kMk]
^^^ THIS ^^^
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
OMG, soooo much Biden....
I can't believe how many days of this we have to go.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I KNOW, right? At least the countdown of
shopping days until Christmas ends every year on December 25. We're now enmired in Presidential elections all year, every year.
I remember Shrum and Shields on MSNBC talking about Hillary's getting the 2016 Presidential nomination "if she wants it" (Ha Ha Ha!) before Obama got re-elected.
Meanwhile, the country seems to be going backwards. Either that or the internet keeps the public better informed about the underbelly than the msm did. Not having access to an alternative universe in which the internet never existed, I cannot tell which is the case.
Biden will get much of the IdPol vote
. . . especially if he does indeed, as has been reported, announce that he will be running with Stacey Abrams as his choice for VP.
I can see all the hacks from the sinking ships of other campaigns swimming towards his boat real quick.
Yesterday, I read a recent interview with Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates and aside from a few shots at Bernie, he didn't really blast Biden. In fact, he remarked that there was a lot of support for Biden in the Black community. Everybody's friends need jobs. It was tough for Dem operatives to lose DC.
To add to the carnage...
Joe also thinks Cheney is an OK and upstanding dude. At least according to tweets today with the quotes. Yeah, not on my side.
It's a big club and you (and I) ain't in it.
For years, Democratic politicians behaved as though Bush not only had invented the war for which Biden, Hillary, Dodd, Kerry, et al. had all voted, but had invented the very concept of war. Obama ran as though he were running against Bush, more than Hillary or McCain. His campaign slogan, "Hope and Change" were about Bush. Then, he, Michelle and little Georgie have trouble keeping a straight face at a funeral for five Dallas police, as though they were eight years old.
Even though I didn't know the joke that made them lose their struggle to keep a straight face, I got that it was on us. Not to mention that, as Shepherd Fairey observed, sometimes the change Obama wrought was outdoing Bush evil, as with increasing serial drone killings exponentially, including at funerals.
For decades, rank and file Democrats have blamed Reagan for so many things, as thought sixteen years of Clinton and Obama had never existed. Hillary (very belatedly) claimed that George Bush had misled her into voting for a war that did horrendous things to our troops, the troops of the "coalition of the willing" and to Iraqi civilians. Not to mention the financial aspect,supposedly a reason Americans can't have nice things.
If someone had misled me into voting for that disaster, I hesitate to imagine my reaction. But, Hillary, bless whatever passes for her heart, paid a clueless homage to the Reagan administration, where she enjoys a big hug from a grinning Georgie. Not to mention that she was for Trump before she was against him, to borrow from the 2004 Cheney Edwards debate. On the "bright" side, the votes taken during the Bush administration are still being relied upon to wage perennial war against brown people all over the Middle East.
Speaking of Biden's special friend, Hollywood gave us zombie Abraham Lincoln. Cheney gave us zombie Darth Vader, but without the warmth and charm.
Funeral service for five Dallas police officers
Prediction: Hillary will smile at Trump with genuine warmth again.
And they're coming for your Social Security.
[video:https://youtu.be/kXhZyAOuyhE?t=9]