Bruce alerts me to a tweet from Michael Johns, “Remember when Biden said they used to call @joncorzine for advice?”

“The reason why we called Jon,” the Vice President said (at about 0:44 above), “is that we knew he knew about the economy, about world markets, about how we had to respond unlike anyone we knew.”  Later, the Delaware Democrat reports (at 2:00) that they talked with Corzine a “long time about what the elements of a national package should be.”

Indeed, Biden wanted to start a mantra about where “Jon was right.”  Doesn’t look like the defeated Democrat of a pretty blue state was right about this: MF Global Trustee Says Shortfall Could Exceed $1.2 Billion. According to the New York Times,

The amount of customer money missing from the collapsed trading firm MF Global may be more than $1.2 billion — double previous estimates — the trustee dismantling the firm’s brokerage unit said on Monday.

. . . .

Regulators currently suspect that MF Global — at the time run by Jon S. Corzine, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey — improperly used customer money for its own purposes in the days before filing for Chapter 11 protection on Oct. 31.

Well, $1 billion is chump change to the Obama-Biden Democrats whose failed “stimulus” cost the country about 800 times that.   Can you imagine how much coverage the above clip would get if a top Republican had said this about a fellow partisan who led his company into a (possibly) billion-dollar bankruptcy?

Well, now we’re getting a better idea of what the “stimulus” failed; just look at the economic knowhow of some of the folk who designed it.

In a post today on PJmedia, Alexis Garcia notes how in all the media hullabaloo over the Cain kerfuffle, “we’re losing focus on the narrative.” (Well, maybe that’s the point.)  She lists several issues raising issues related to the administration’s actual record in office that have not received the same scrutiny this “scandal” without specifics has generated

Two of the items on Miss Garcia’s list parallel issues on my list of questions for Politico (to see how much attention they devoted to scandals involving Democrats).  Since posting that piece, I’ve begun to wonder about other issues which the left-leaning journal has all but ignored, say, Joe Biden’s fabrications in the 2008 vice presidential debate.  Did Politico address those (some commentators identified those fabrications)–and inquire into the then-36-year Washington veteran’s pattern of making things up?

Now, today, the lawyer of one of the woman accusing Mr. Cain has come forward to tell us that he won’t tell us anything, leading Stacy McCain to quip that “Lawyer ethics” meanings holding “a press conference to announce that you don’t want to discuss your smear-job against your client’s former boss.”  As Jim Geraghty puts it, the lawyer in refusing to specify the charges, “is arguing, ’I won’t say what he did, but trust me, he’s guilty of wrongdoing.’“

This is one heckuva way to run a witch hunt.

From the National Restaurant Association (NRA), we learn two (very) salient facts:

1. “Mr. Herman Cain disputed the allegations in the complaint.”
2. “The Association and Mr. Bennett’s client subsequently entered into an agreement to resolve the matter, without any admission of liability. Mr. Cain was not a party to that agreement.”

So, we’ve got Cain disputing the allegations, the lawyer for the accuser refusing to specify the allegations and confirmation that Mr. Cain was not party to the agreement, suggesting the NRA was more interested in resolving the matter than in disciplining its then-employee.

Even without specifics, Politico has run 90 stories on the kerfuffle. (more…)

Earlier this month, Tina Korbe blogged at Hot Air that the White House was “irked by rumors Obama plans to drop Biden“.  You gotta wonder why the president wants to keep ol’ Joe on the job.  He doesn’t shore up his base as Dan Quayle helped George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) with conservatives, particularly social conservative in 1992.

He is not well regarded for his intellect.  If a Republican put his foot in his mouth as often as does the Delaware Democrat, he’d become the favorite punching bag of a great number of TV hosts as well as the poster boy for conservative incompetence.

But, their Joe is, well, used to fawning attention from the Beltway media that he bristles at the type of questioning prominent Republicans deal with on a regular basis.  As he did the 2008 campaign when he “lambasted” a reporter’s “questions as ‘combative and woefully uninformed about simple facts’”, now he’s whining that journalist Jason Mattera asked him if he regretted “using a rape reference to describe Republican opposition to the president’s bill“:

Joe Biden’s office has complained to the Senate press gallery about a confrontation the vice president had with a conservative journalist last week on Capitol Hill.

Biden aides asked whether Senate rules were broken in the wake of the contentious exchange between the vice president and the reporter.

Why is it that so many Democrats get so upset when reporters ask them tough questions?

As Michelle Malkin observed

Biden’s crude response to Mattera’s challenge — “Don’t screw around with me” — is par for the Beltway Bubble Boy’s course. This entitled blowhard has long sought to bully reporters and ordinary citizens who question Bidenrhhea of the mouth. . . .

Anything less than total sycophancy from the Obamedia is considered “combative,” you see. Biden then cracked the brass knuckles and punished the Florida television station by canceling a previously scheduled interview with his wife.

Guess these folks have forgotten how a celebrated Democrat countered a politician who complained about harsh rhetoric on the campaign trail.   “If you can’t stand the heat,” Harry S Truman used to say, “stay out of the kitchen.”

RELATED:  Recall how Katie Couric tossed softballs to Joe when he was the Democratic vice presidential nominee while asking tougher questions of his Republican rival in 2008?  Seems he and his ilk have come to expect deferential treatment from the media.

Much hubbub over Vice President Biden’s latest foot-in-mouth buffoonery, this time delivered on the soil of our landlord. (When, btw, can we all agree he makes a bigger fool of himself and more often than Dan Quayle ever could have even tried to?)

If you haven’t seen his despicable (and, no I can’t think of a more appropriate way to describe his words) comments, hold your nose and press play:

Of course the most disgusting and blatantly offensive thing he says is that he “fully understand[s]” and is “not second-guessing” the brutal and vile and perverted One Child Policy and its ancillary of forced abortions and sterilizations in that Communist (and, by government dictate, godless) nation.

But as with his boss, look beyond his characteristically poorly chosen extemporaneous words and you’ll see a philosophy that drives him and the rest of the Left:

It isn’t that, as a practicing Roman Catholic, the Vice President finds abortion to be an abomination. It isn’t that he sees forced sterilizations and abortions to be an egregious trampling of civil rights. It isn’t that such policies and disrespect for innocent human life leads to a coarsening of society and therefore an overall degradation of its moral quality. Nah, in the face of those factors, Mr. Biden is not “second-guessing”.

The criticism of the policy Biden musters—and hopes, from which “maybe we can learn together”—is that they’re “in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people: Not sustainable.”

When faced with the evil of China’s One Child Policy, to people like Biden, the greatest flaw is that it won’t sustain a welfare state as he’d like to see it.

So much for rendering unto Caesar.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

I’m LOVING the “new civility,”, aren’t you?

Last Friday, the 47th Vice-President of the United F’ing States, Joseph Robinette “Joe” Biden, Jr., openly and unabashedly said the following at a Teamsters convention in Las Vegas:

“And don’t any of you, by the way, any of you guys vote Republican,” Biden said. “I’m not supposed to say, this isn’t political. …don’t come to me if you do! You’re on your own, Jack!”

Breathtaking, isn’t it? Remember the good old days when the worst thing a VP did was misspell “potato?”

This should pretty much clear up any lingering doubts we may have about the Democrat’s view of the majority of this country after last November. They were ushered into office in 2008 like the Second Coming, only to be stomped like narcs at a biker rally, so of course, no reasonable conservative ever really believed they’d learned anything other than bloody constraint.

That said, to call this man’s outburst a textbook example of petulant impertinence is an understatement. Yes, Biden has a long, notorious history of over-exuberant, emotional outbursts and impulsive rhetoric, but for the life of me, I cannot recall a single instance where an elected official of such stature has so blatantly informed the public that if they dare oppose him, they can go kick rocks.

“Audacious” isn’t nearly the right word for these people. Halperin nailed it…he just needed to widen his target.

ADDENDUM (from Dan):  Imagine if, as part of his official duties, a Republican vice president said when, speaking to an NRA meeting as part of his official duties (i.e., not a campaign function) and said, “And don’t any of you, by the way, any of you guys vote Democrat.”

Remember when that those who would try to waste the federal “stimulus” money ladled out in massive spoonfuls were warned not to mess with Joe [Biden]?  The president designated him “The Sheriff” overseeing the stimulus, “because,” the president quipped, “if you’re misusing taxpayer money, you’ll have to answer to him.”

Commenting on his role as “chief overseer of the government’s stimulus plan,” the Delaware Democrat said he would

. . . use his broad oversight role “to make sure people know where the money’s going” and will meet with Cabinet secretaries frequently, starting this morning, and speak regularly with governors and mayors as well. . . .

Biden said he will work with a team of oversight officials, including former Interior Department inspector general Earl Devaney, to track stimulus spending. Extensive information about how money is allocated and spent will be posted on the government Web site Recovery.gov, he said, in an effort to be as transparent as possible.

“I’m going to be moving to let people know exactly what’s going on and when,” Biden told CBS’s “Early Show.” If money is misspent, he said, “I will literally come on your show. I will be on television saying that, ‘We’re disappointed. This is what happened. The money was supposed to be spent for this; it got spent for that.’ “

Looks like he should be make a few television appearances.  ”Tax cheats,” the AP reports, are “among recipients of stimulus money“: (more…)

Just caught this in Ed Morrissey’s piece on Vice President Joe Biden’s surprise floating of “the prospect of his succeeding President Barack Obama in the White House.”  Biden, the 2010 CPAC Blogger of the year, quipped, “hasn’t exactly set the world on fire as a VP“:

He’s been put in charge of the Porkulus program, which turned into an expensive flop.  Does anyone know what the unemployment rate should be now, according to the administration’s estimate if the stimulus package passed?  6.7%.  Thanks to his months-long blather last year about “Recovery Summer,” no one takes Biden seriously any longer on economic matters.

Italics added.  Bold in original.  So, in order to push through an $800 billion spending plan, the administration promised us an unemployment rate of 6.7% — still higher than the average of the George W. Bush years.  And we’re at 9% now, with the most recent report from the Conference Board showing leading economic indicators slipping.

No wonder no one takes Biden seriously on economic matters, with many having similar thoughts about his boss.

Can you imagine how much media this would have gotten had the most pro-gay Vice President in U.S. history done this: Vice President’s staff lock journalist in a closet for hours during a fundraiser to stop him talking to guests:

The White House website proudly says ‘President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history.’

But try telling Vice President Joe Biden’s staff that, after they held a local reporter in a closet for hours after he was invited to cover a Florida political fundraiser because they did not want him talking with the guests.

As the unaware $500-a-head invitees dined on caprese crostini with oven-dried mozzarella and basil, rosemary flatbread with grapes honey and gorgonzola cheese, grilled chicken Caesar and garden vegetable wraps, veteran reporter Scott Powers was locked away.

Doug Powers reminds us that it “wasn’t even two weeks ago that White House spokesman Jay Carney said journalists should be protected and allowed to do their work.”

Sometimes following Joe Biden’s logic is like trying to find a coherent thread in the ramblings of a man who’s had one too many glasses of gin.  At a Philadelphia fundraiser in Philadelphia Friday, the 38-year Washington veteran “compared Republicans in Congress to people who excuse rapists by blaming their victims“:

“When a woman got raped, blame her because she was wearing a skirt too short, she looked the wrong way or she wasn’t home in time to make the dinner,” Biden said.

“We’ve gotten by that,” he said. “But it’s amazing how these Republicans, the right wing of this party – whose philosophy threw us into this God-awful hole we’re in, gave us the tremendous deficit we’ve inherited – that they’re  now using, now attempting to use, the very economic condition they have created to blame the victim – whether it’s organized labor or ordinary middle-class working men and women. It’s bizarre. It’s bizarre.”

If a Republican had said this, it would lead the evening news.  Oh yeah, I know .  That’s been said before.

And what cheek for Biden to blame the Republican for giving us this tremendous deficit they’ve “inherited.”  The deficit, after increasing in the first three years of the Bush Administration was declining until Biden’s Democrats recaptured Congress in 2006.  And then increased even more rapidly when Biden’s ticket won the White House.  As per Allahpundit:

And so, two years and two months into The One’s presidency, with the new Republican House desperate to get him to slash spending and reform entitlements, somehow even the unfathomably huge deficits he’s running are an intractable problem he’s inherited from the GOP.

So, if Republican are like those who attempt to blame the victim for a rape, what’s Biden doing?  Eschewing blame for himself and his party?   (more…)

If you have three gay men (one in costume) bypassing the biggest celebration in West Hollywood to join phone bank for Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina on Hallowe’en, something is gong on among Republicans.  While Republicans across the country are enthusiastic about our candidates, Democrats in California are scrambling for volunteers.  One career politician even resorted to begging school children to help out.

And now comes word that the day before the mid-terms, Vice President Joe Biden will be “visiting Vermont“, a state Obama won just two years ago with more than two-thirds of the vote.

Ace, who alerted me to the visit, notes that his cobloggers are “are wondering, well, is Vermont in play?”

At the close of the campaign, the party in power does tend to send the president and vice president to states with tight races where their visits can swing a few last-minute votes.

“Vice President Biden will campaign for controversial Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) next week in Florida.”

Of all the places to dispatch ol’ Joe . . .

Of all the incumbents the Administration is trying to protect. . .

If they held Joe Biden to the Sarah Palin standard, new casts would begin every hour on the hour, with details of his latest gaffe.  And now we have him calling an audience dull.  That’s a sure way to get them out to vote next month:

“You’re the dullest audience I’ve ever spoken to,” at which point he got applause and laughs. “Do you realize how many jobs Wisconsin lost? It’s staggering!”

Until we see the tape, we won’t be able to tell if they’re laughing with him — or at him.  Still, can you imagine what the talking heads would be saying if Sarah Palin said such a thing — even in jest?

Long before Barack Obama took office last January, critics (and haters) of the GOP have acted as if the party of Lincoln and Reagan had no new ideas.   And to be sure, given the record of the immediate past Republican president, on domestic issues, one could forgive their ignorance.

But, outside the Bush Administration, in many Republican congressional offices, think tanks and other right-of-center “policy shops,” a great variety of conservatives, including many who dubbed themselves Republicans, were busy crafting reform packages that relied on reducing regulation and cutting government in order to keep our economy humming and improve our health care system.

Yet, with Democrats putting forward far more sweeping reforms, further increasing federal involvement in our lives, our businesses and our health care decisions, they behave as if those plans for cutting government aren’t plans at all–as if to favor doing something, you have to favor the government doing acting more aggressively.  

The latest to join his voice to this cacophonous chorus is a 36-year veteran of the United States Senate, Vice President Joe Biden:

I know what the Republicans are against. I have no notion of what they’re for. Now, I’m not being facetious now. I don’t know what their answer is, when they talk about taking down health care. Well, what are they for? I’ve gone into almost 70 races so far to campaign for Democrats — governor, Senate, Congress etc.

Via Washington Examiner.  Now, I mention Biden’s thirty-six years in the Senate for a reason.  For roughly half of his tenure, he was part of the minority with Republicans in charge and using their majority to push ideas for reform, many of which Biden’s caucus worked double-time (and often successfully) to obstruct.

As to health care, if the Vice President paid any attention to legislation introduced in both houses, ideas discussed on conservative editorial pages and blogs as well as the work of the various think tanks in Washington, he would be aware of the great variety of answers (to borrow his term) Republicans (and conservatives) have been proposing to reform health care.

His response indicates either his ignorance of or indifference to ideas not increasing the government role in health care.  Or his just plain obliviousness to the reforms his political opponents have been proposing.

* (more…)

In what has become a reliable pattern, the Vice President has tipped the hand of the Obama Administration (to those who didn’t already know) and inadvertently, in a moment of candor, told America (if they’ll hear it) what Teh One’s plan is.

In an interview for ABC News with Jake Tapper, the VP is asked how he’s working to gain votes of wavering Democrats in the House. As part of his answer, he reassures them:

And my response is, hey, man, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’m telling you, you know, pre-existing, they’re going to be covered. You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

Wow…with the master plot so laid out for the American people, shouldn’t it be obvious to us all what they’re after? Oh that’s right, it is obvious. That explains our continual and consistant disdain for it. Too bad nobody in Washington is listening.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

Ever since I reviewed the “news” segments where Katie Couric accorded different treatment to the Democratic and Republican nominees for Vice President last fall, I have been wondering if the reason the CBSNews anchor chose to include the clip of Joe Biden telling us how Franklin Roosevelt went on television right after the market crash (you know the one that, in combination with increased government intervention in the economy precipitated the Great Depression) was because, like the misinformed Democrat, she too was ignorant of American history.

If she had known that back in 1929, presidents didn’t go on television and that, well, FDR wasn’t then president (the market crashed more than three years before that Democrat’s election and longer still before his inauguration), she would have certainly asked a followup. (Okay, okay she may well have done that, but just edited it out–so we have another argument for her to release the raw footage of her interview.) 

Given that her segment was very favorable to the Delaware Democrat, it seems she wouldn’t have included the bit where Biden demonstrates his ignorance of American history.  So, maybe she too is ignorant of American history.  She didn’t know he got his facts wrong.

And if she did not that he was wrong—and didn’t press him on that, well, then we have another piece of evidence of her incredible bias.  Any good reporter would have asked a politician to follow up on such a strange statement.

That is, if she knew it to be strange.

As Jim Hoft, who alerted me to the cover below put it:  You Know You’re the Punchline When They Start Reporting You’re No Joke

Maybe this cover is a joke.

Jennifer Rubin, who has a more honest evaluation of the Vice President (than the MSM who fawn over anything Obama, including his appointees), considered what might happen should the President and Secretary of Defense back the McChrystal approach to Afghanistan:

. . . it would be one more indication that perhaps the worst personnel decision Obama ever made was selecting Biden. Exactly what value has he added? Maybe he’ll make the president (if he rejects Biden’s counsel) look wise — and that’s a critical function for any vice president.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s the reason, the then-presumptive Democratic nominee chose the then-Delaware Senator.  Obama makes himself look wise by comparison to the man who had spent over half his life in Washington when the Illinoisan started serving with him (in 2005).

With Biden, the President would have a Vice President who had, when in the Senate, almost never taken a course independent of his party.  He likely assumed predicated that once ensconced at the Naval Observatory (Washington home to all Vice Presidents since Mondale), the gaffe-prone sexagenarian would easily to fall into line with all of the president’s initiatives.  And Biden ever eager to get along and go along, wouldn’t raise a ruckus, or let it be leaked, if things didn’t go his way, because well, things always seemed to go his way within the Democratic caucus ’cause he always went the way of the caucus.

No one really expects the President to turn to Biden for advice.  And let’s hope he doesn’t when it comes time to make a decision on Afghanistan.

Can you imagine that in the dark days of the Bush Administration, AP had ran an article on how the Vice President was redefining the role of his office and primarily interviewed political aides to the then-President and their supporters and read like it had been drafted in the West Wing, with one critical quote added in for “balance.”

Well, take a gander at this puff piece on Joe Biden which lead the news on Yahoo!’s main page Wednesday night.  Here’s the toughest criticism of the Delaware Democrat we get.

South Carolina Comptroller Richard Eckstrom, who oversees stimulus spending in his state, says Biden may be “giving it all he’s got,” but states haven’t been given the tools they need to meet federal requirements, in particular reporting rules that arrived without money to help states meet them.

“Nebulous Washington didn’t think this one through very well,” Eckstrom said.

No mention of how his comments on jobs* being created are at odds with increasing job losses across the country.  No mention of fraud in the distribution the “stimulus” funds he oversees.  Only that one mention above of delays in the distribution of transportation funds. An attempt to downplay his gaffes as if they’re just representative of his honesty and bluntness.

No mention of how he’s gotten nearly every foreign policy issue wrong (not to mention most domestic ones) over the course of his 36-year tenure in the seat.  No tough questions asking if he’s learned from his mistakes.  Instead, we just learn that “Biden’s vice presidency is shaping up as a mix of his two Democratic predecessors, two of the most influential vice presidents after Cheney.”

Guess if your name isn’t Cheney and you serve under Obama, then there’s no need for tough criticism.

————–

*You  know that “three-letter word” about “the number one job facing the middle class.”

UPDATE:  This piece makes me wonder if the AP functions as the research and communications arm of the Obama White House (to borrow an expression from the President’s Communications Director).

Health and safety concerns.

On Tuesday, when I was identified Children’s Hospital/Los Angeles as one my charitable donations to my tax guy, he, recalling my past returns, commented that I always support that international leader in pediatrics.  I always support them, I replied, because of the institution’s sterling reputation.

He then related how when his nephew was suffering from a complicated respiratory problem, he was airlifted there and received extraordinary care.  He’s doing fine today.  It made me feel good to hear an example of the good work that one of “my” charities does.

Because I would be getting back a little more from the feds than I had anticipated, when I returned home to find a solicitation from the hospital in my pile of mail to be sorted, I instantly cut them a check.  I’m sure I’m not alone.  I’m sure countless other Americans, when getting money back, are equally generous.  If not more so.

Unless of course they’re the Vice President of the United States.  On Tuesday, I gave more to Children’s Hospital than the total amount Joe Biden gave to charitable organizations in 1998 or 1999 on an adjusted gross income considerably less than his (via Volokh via Glenn).

You’d think somebody so generous with other people’s money would be more generous with his own.

While Biden has given more in recent year than he has in years past, he gave less than $2,000 last year on an income greater than $250,000.  According to the New York Times, “the White House said the Bidens have made additional donations to charity not listed on the returns.“  And the White House hosted a Fiscal Responsibility Summit only days after the president signed a near-trillion dollar “stimulus,” further boosting the deficit he derided on the campaign trail.

There are many causes worthy of our support, particularly in these tough times.  I hope you’ll join me in supporting Children’s Hospital/Los Angeles.  And when you do so, maybe write the Vice President and ask him to support this great facility as well, without dipping into our tax dollars to do so.

ADDENDUM:  This is not the first time I blogged on this.  The last time I did so, several of our readers commented that they too gave more in charity than does the Vice President.

I can’t remember where it was, nor the exact key words to use in a search, but I recall once reading about the “truth in a lie.”  That the words (of a lie) may not be true, but they reveal a truth about the person speaking them and/or the situation he is facing.

Someone in Hollywood who lies about her age understands a truth about the town’s main industry that people here prize youth over experience.  Someone who lies about working out (saying he does when he doesn’t) reveals an insecurity about his mostly sedentary status.  Or, as in the case, of one guy with whom I was fixed up, an intention to work out (or so he claimed).

With that in mind, we could have a field day investigating the Vice President’s fabrications. As you may recall (something the MSM ignored), Bush Administration officials denied claims by Joe Biden that, in private meetings earlier this decade with the then-President Bush, the then-Delaware Senator castigated the Republican.

The truth in his lies?

Well, we can see the Vice President’s sense of self-importance, making himself out to be a bold man who speaks truth to power.  

And we all see a truth about our media-political culture; Biden thought he could score points by bashing Bush.  You can still ingratiate yourself to some in political polite society by attacking the former President.

And of course, we have one more example of officials of this Administration trashing the previous one, particularly the man who led it.  I’m still waiting for our critics to provide examples of either then-President Bush or then-Vice President Cheney personally trashing the Clintons (or the Gores) in their first three months in office.

So, Biden’s lies are really revealing, about himself, the prevailing culture in Washington and his Administration.