I like Biden. I wish he would have done better during the primaries. If only I could snap my fingers and flip the ticket.
IT's OFFICIAL: Joe Biden is Obama's VP Pick...
by zeroday 30 Replies latest jw friends
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SixofNine
At this point, Beau’s speech replayed the events surrounding the tragic accident in 1972, which took the life of Beau’s 14-month old sister and his mother, Neilia, when the car they were riding in was struck by a tractor-trailer truck. Beau and Hunter were also in the car and Beau was hospitalized after the accident. On Dec. 18 of that year, just as the newly elected Sen. Joe Biden was about to take office for the first time, he got a phone call from home about the accident back home. “My dad left Washington that day thinking he would never return, telling the Sen. Majority leader Mike Mansfield that Delaware can get another senator, but my boys can’t get another dad.”
“He came back to Wilmington and stayed at my bedside until January 3rd the following year, when he was to be sworn in in Washington. He refused to go to Washington,” Beau continued. “Men like Hubert Humphrey and Ted Kennedy, me who had been tested in their own right, convinced him to give a shot for sixth months. The next day they sent the secretary of the senate and my dad was sworn in at my bedside.”
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Warlock
Seems to me that is exactly the kind of "change" people are looking for.
If people REALLY wanted change they would vote AOTRD, AnyoneOtherThanRepublicanorDemocrat.
People want the same old, same old.
Other than that, Biden seems like a nice enough guy.
Warlock
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SixofNine
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0827/p01s07-uspo.html?pag...
<SNIP>
In the Biden family, children were taught to respect the habit, but not necessarily the person in it. As a boy, Biden took endless ribbing from classmates for a stutter he later overcame. Much of the time, the nuns tried to help. But when a seventh-grade teacher mimicked Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-Biden's stutter in front of the class, his mother, Jean, demanded a meeting with the principal and the offending nun. "If you ever speak to my son like that again, I'll come back and rip that bonnet off your head," she said. Later, when then-Senator Biden told her he was going to visit the pope, she said: "Don't you kiss his ring."
<SNIP>
Biden was one of the first Catholic politicians of the Vatican II generation. From 1962 to 1965, the Vatican Council II produced documents that opened the door to ecumenical dialogue, freedom of religion and conscience, and greater involvement of the laity in affairs of the church, including saying the mass in English and more emphasis on individual Bible study.
"I was raised at a time when the Catholic Church was fertile with new ideas and open discussion about some of the basic social teaching of the Catholic Church," Biden says. "Questioning was not criticized; it was encouraged."
He recalls a question in a ninth-grade theology class at Archmere. "How many of you questioned the doctrine of transubstantiation?" the teacher asked, referring to the teaching that the bread and wine change into the body and blood of Christ during the Eucharist. No hands were raised. Finally, Biden raised his. "Well, we have one bright man, at least," the teacher said.
The teacher didn't say criticizing the church was good. "He led me to see that if you cannot defend your faith to reason, then you have a problem," Biden says.
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BurnTheShips
I’ll let Clarence Thomas tell the story, via his powerful memoir, My Grandfather’s Son:
Senator Biden was the first questioner. Instead of the softball questions he’d promised to ask, he threw a beanball straight at my head, quoting from a speech that I’d given four years earlier at the Pacific Legal Foundation and challenging me to defend what I’d said: “ ‘I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo, who defend an activist Supreme Court that would . . . strike down laws restricting property right.’ ” That caught me off guard, and I had no recollection of making so atypical a statement, which shook me up even more. “Now, it would seem to me what you were talking about,” Senator Biden went on to say, “is you find attractive the fact that they are activists and they would like to strike down existing laws that impact on restricting the use of property rights, because you know, that is what they write about.”
Since I didn’t remember making the statement in the first place, I didn’t know how to respond to it. All I could say in reply was that “it has been quite some time since I have read Professor Macedo. . . . But I don’t believe that in my writings I have indicated that we should have an activist Supreme Court or that we should have any form of activism on the Supreme Court.” It was, I knew, a weak answer. Fortunately, though, the young lawyers who had helped prepare me for the hearings had loaded all of my speeches into a computer, and at the first break in the proceedings they looked this one up. The senator, they found, had wrenched my words out of context. I looked at the text of my speech and saw that the passage he’d read out loud had been immediately followed by two other sentences: “But the libertarian argument overlooks the place of the Supreme Court in a scheme of separation of powers. One does not strengthen self-government and the rule of law by having the non-democratic branch of the government make policy.” The point I’d been making was the opposite of the one that Senator Biden claimed I had made.
Throughout my life I’ve often found truth embedded in the lyrics of my favorite records. At Yale, for example, I’d listened often to “Smiling Faces Sometimes,” a song by the Undisputed Truth that warns of the dangers of trusting the hypocrites who “pretend to be your friend” while secretly planning to do you wrong. Now I knew I’d met one of them: Senator Biden’s smooth, insincere promises that he would treat me fairly were nothing but talk. Instead of relaxing, I’d have to keep my guard up.Later in My Grandfather’s Son, Justice Thomas relays:
Ken Duberstein, a Washington lobbyist who had volunteered to help steer me through the confirmation process, called the next morning to say that Joe Biden wanted to talk to me before the vote. I called the Judiciary Committee cloakroom, and after a brief wait, Senator Biden came on the line. I held the receiver sideways so that Virginia could hear him speak as we stood together in the kitchen. The senator said that he was torn over his decision and had actually brought two statements with him to the committee meeting that day, one for me and the other against. He had decided to oppose me. He’d voted to confirm Justice Scalia, he explained, and now regretted it; he thought it was possible that I might turn out like Justice Scalia, so he couldn’t vote for me.
“That’s fine,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me whether I’m confirmed or not. But I entered this process with a good name, and I want to have it at the end.”
“Judge, I know you don’t believe me,” he replied, “but if any of these last two matters come up, I will be your biggest defender.” (The other matter to which he was referring was the leak of my draft opinion.)
He was right about one thing: I didn’t believe him.Do “Smooth, insincere promises” fit alongside Obama’s “change you can believe in”?
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Octarine Prince
Nice song!
Do you vote in the best liar, or the worst liar? -
sammielee24
Who trusts any politician?
The republicans will decimate what's left of the country..a guy who doesn't know how many houses he owns...well, I'd say that speaks to the thought process of the party when a few million people going out to work every day and being forclosed on can tell you exactly what they don't own.
I predict that things are going to get pretty nasty for the Obama supporters though. One of the democrats own filed a lawsuit against Obama on Friday because there still remain questions about his eligibility to run for President. Republicans are known for running dirty races so I figure they are waiting for the real action to begin before they start dredging up all sorts of dirty stuff. I don't generally listen to Rush Limbaugh but since there was nothing on the radio for a few hundred miles I had him tuned in on Thursday. Already he was going full guns on Obamas half brother in Kenya who (as he was poking fun at) lives in a hut and so on.
I'm all for unions and higher wages and bringing back manufacturing jobs...and regulation on banks and investments and higher taxes on hedge funds .....all that good stuff....go Dems go..! sammieswife.
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Octarine Prince
Well, the thing about Obama's half brother is true.
He is living in a shanty town in Kenya on about the equivalent of one dollar a month. He says when people ask him if he is related to Barack, he lies, because he is ashamed of his situation.
I don't know what happened to get him into that situation, or what substances he uses, or anything.
That all being said -- Obama-Biden '08. -
Fangorn
Biden is a blowhard and a loose canon. He has made remarks that are offensive to pretty much every minority in the country. Should be interesting.
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sammielee24
As opposed to the candidate that bought their home with a convicted felon? Or the wealthy candidate whose brother lives in a hut, yet he won't throw him a bone? The candidate that wants to "save" America yet won't use his own ample means to save his own siblings from poverty?
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.. Yep.
I don't see politicians as particularly honest or ethical and the Republicans aka Bushie and buddies are prime examples of this so weighing the lesser of two evils and the fact that the USA econimically and financially is splashing around in the toilet bowl as a result of Republican policies ....the Democrats can't be any more corrupt and one can only hope they will be less corrupt.
I think Rezko will come back as a shadow for Obama...kind of like McCains first wife came back to haunt him. Obama keeps saying he is not elitist...I would disagree which is why he has a hard time getting a lot of Hillary supporters to switch over...then again, McCain is euber elite...hmmmmm...do I feel like jetting to my condo in Phoenix today..naw..think I'll hit my house in San Diego....oh heck...let's just go to the ranch in Sedona and hit some links...hey Cindy can I have an increase in my allowance now that you've hit the 100 million mark? Pretty please?
By the way...his 'brother' is a half brother from one of his fathers 4 wives so why would he be obligated to help him? The fact that the man lives in a hut isn't a big issue to me and even though it's a fact, it is a non issue. A lot of people have half and step relatives that they might meet once or twice but other than that there is no relationship....doesn't mean you have to support them all does it? I met my grandmother one time in my life, she gave birth to my father but other than that had no place in his life having abandoned her kids - being blood doesn't necessarily mean being obligated does it? If so, there's a whole whack of sperm donars out there who need to pay up....sammieswife.