You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Senator Joe Biden’ category.
Stumbled across this and thought it deserves being passed on because ultimately YOU are the solution (and not each candidate in who it appears must lie because that is the only way they can possibly be taken seriously enough to win… )
Knowledge is power and when you know how YOU think, you can sometimes second guess yourself out of making those wrong decisions which your first instinct is to jump into with both feet…
So why do they lie? Those of us who have made the Internet their home must wonder over the audacity or ignorance of these upstarts who think their lies simply will go unchecked forever… So why then would they lie and why would anyone follow someone who lies so much?
According to one human scientist, Jim Taylor (Phd), there are many reasons and here briefly are the top six.
Many politicians are narcissists. … Most would agree. “Narcissists are arrogant, self-important, see themselves as special, require excessive admiration, have a sense of entitlement, and are exploitative, ” which, like it or not, causes them to believe that they are right and, even if they are not, they think they’re too smart to be ensnared inside any consequences.
Politicians know their followers will believe them, even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Here, Facebook, blogs, and journalistic comment sections have certainly confirmed this to be true. One reading through their comment streams can readily see how supporters flat out refuse to look at any evidence remotely throwing shade upon their candidate.
People don’t want to hear the truth… “no one wants to hear things that threaten their existence, their beliefs, or that will make them uncomfortable. It is decidedly better for politicians to tell people what makes them feel comfortable. Why should politicians be the purveyors of bad news (and decrease the likelihood of getting people’s votes) when they can tell fairy tales with happy endings (which, of course, everyone wants) and come out the victor.” When ones entire livelihood depends solely on people liking you more than they do someone else, deliberately putting salt in someone’s wound is not a good technique for self survival..
The Internet never forgets. We tell this to our children to keep them from posting images they later regret. But that adage cuts both ways… Whereas the truth is always out there when you do wrong, so are those lies always following you close each time you do right. Unlike human reasoning, nothing ever gets settled on the Internet…Someone can stumble across and false flag without seeing all the evidence pointing it out as such, and BAM! That controversy starts all over again; it’s become the 21st Century equivalent of a “sucker being born every minute…”
Cognitive biases. “The human mind engages in many cognitive tricks to help people be more efficient, reduce confusion and anxiety, and keep life simple and coherent”. Across our evolutionary survival we developed the overall tendency to reinforce what we perceived as having always worked for us, instead of rushing down every new alternative path opening up our way. The very valid fact that we are still here as a species, is pretty damning evidence to its effectiveness…
If a lie is told enough times, people will assume it is true. “People expect that lies will be disproved and fade away. So if the lies continue to be heard (over and over and over) people assume they must be true.” “If there is smoke, there must be fire” Prior to the technical age, there were physical limits on a lie’s speed and reach. One could only talk to a limited number of impressionable people per day… and often many would retort back with contrary evidence dispelling the lie immediately upon its hearing. Now, lies reach millions in a second, drowning out those individual replies dispelling them. Checking out each statement’s validity has become tediously time consuming, during which multiple repetitions of the same lie continue, making its effectiveness all the more believable…
=======
With knowledge now stored as 1’s and 0’s we enter a new age in which our age old defenses against mis-information are no longer valid. Hence charts like that at the top of this post become very important… All it means is that “someone” out there checked and rated each of these candidates on issues ranging from “truth” to “pants on fire”…. and made this determination… something we are no longer capable of doing ourselves.
As always, your best bet is to go with those who won’t steer you wrong… That is lesson true in life, as it is in politics….
Gate’s Slams Biden the headline read… In it the paper went directly to the money quote by Bob Gates: “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Four decades is a long time. Going back from today it would begin in 1974.
Of course making decisions invites controversy. In any decision, there are those who agree, those who don’t. The only effective judge of any action plan, is how it stands up historically. One can be on the least popular side, and be proven right as perhaps one considers those who protested the Vietnam War in the 60’s and 70’s for example. Or one can be on the more popular side and be proven wrong, such as our move into the War in Iraq in 2003.
I quickly found an account that outlined Biden’s foreign policy over 4 decades and simply listed what was forthcoming. You can judge for yourself, the right and wrong choices Biden made… I predict you will find that unless you yourself are one who consistently chooses wrong when it comes to our nation’s future (as in Conservative), you will find that Gate’s exaggeration is a bit overblown….
Biden in the beginning focused on arms control issues. In response to the refusal of Congress to pass the SALT II, Biden took the initiative to meet the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, educated him about American concerns and interests, and secured several changes to address objections of the Foreign Relations Committee.
When the Reagan administration wanted to interpret the 1972 SALT I Treaty too loosely in order to allow the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) to proceed, Biden was who argued for strict adherence to the treaty’s terms.
Biden clashed again with the Reagan administration in 1986 over economic sanctions against South Africa. Reagan was against them. Biden for.
Biden can be classified generally as a liberal internationalist in foreign policy; he collaborated effectively with important Republican Senate figures such as Richard Lugar and Jesse Helms and sometimes went against elements of his own party
Biden was co-chair of the NATO Observer Group in the Senate. Biden met with some 150 leaders from nearly 60 countries and international organizations; three times he chaired the Subcommittee on European Affairs..
Once the Bosnian War broke out, Biden was among the first to call for the “lift and strike” policy of lifting the arms embargo, training Bosnian Muslims, and supporting them with NATO air strikes, and investigating war crimes.
In 1999, during the Kosovo War, Biden supported the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia and Montenegro,and co-sponsored with his friend John McCain the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, which called on President Clinton to use all necessary force, including ground troops, to confront Milosevic over Serbian actions in Kosovo…
In 1998, Congressional Quarterly named Biden one of “Twelve Who Made a Difference” for playing a lead role in several foreign policy matters, including NATO enlargement and the successful passage of bills to streamline foreign affairs agencies and punish religious persecution overseas…
Biden had voted against authorization for the Gulf War in 1991 siding with 45 of the 55 Democratic senators
Biden was a strong supporter of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, saying “Whatever it takes, we should do it.”
The Bush administration rejected an effort Biden undertook with Senator Richard Lugar to pass a resolution authorizing military action only after the exhaustion of diplomatic efforts before the Bush invasion of 2003.
Biden argued repeatedly that the Iraqi war should be internationalized, that more soldiers were needed, and that the Bush administration should “level with the American people” about the cost and length of the conflict.
Biden’s stance had shifted, and Biden opposed the troop surge of 2007, saying General David Petraeus was “dead, flat wrong” in believing the surge could work….
Biden was a leading advocate for dividing Iraq into a loose federation of three ethnic states…. similar to how the US is formed.
Biden lost an internal debate to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton regarding his opposition to sending 21,000 new troops to the war in Afghanistan.
Joe Biden became the administration’s point man in delivering messages to Iraqi leadership about expected progress in the country.
Biden’s January 2010 visit to Iraq in the midst of turmoil over banned candidates from the upcoming Iraqi parliamentary election resulted in 59 of those candidates being reinstated by the Iraqi government two days later.
In a controversy arising over how much influence Russia still had on a global scale, Secretary of State Clinton quickly disavowed Biden’s remarks disparaging Russia as a power.
Biden led the successful administration effort to gain Senate approval for the New START treaty.
===
So what was your score? By my count and it should differ by each person’s outtake and priorities, I count him wrong on five out of the list of the above. (and even two of them were very hard choices)
So …. why the contrarian role announced by Gates? This may well be the reason.
Biden’s most important role within the administration has been to question assumptions and playing a contrarian role. Obama said that, “The best thing about Joe is that when we get everybody together, he really forces people to think and defend their positions, to look at things from every angle, and that is very valuable for me.” Another senior Obama advisor said Biden “is always prepared to be the skunk at the family picnic to make sure we are as intellectually honest as possible.”
Simply based on an apolitical history across his lifetime, it now seems obvious that when someone in ignorance makes a disparagement over the effectiveness of one former Senator and current Vice-President Joe Biden , what they are really saying, is a rather negative commentary about a lack of their own astuteness, and not a disparagement about the real Joe Biden….
That is probably the biggest take-away historians will keep when they use today’s fiscal crises in future civic’s lessons across this country, precisely in order to teach students just how well put together this nation’s govermnent is…..
I have long blamed the filibustering Senate for intransigence. Whenever we have an emergency, the House passes legislation quickly, and the Senate takes it’s time. Things just s l o w down in the Senate.
I have also blamed that in part upon the old age of Senators, and the cliques that evolve from spending 20 to 30 years together… Senators are more worried about upsetting the feelings of Joe So-and-So instead of quickly passing the House’s legislation. Legislation also gets tabled as a favor to Ms. La-La-La, for a favor she extended 15 odd years ago…
But it is precisely these negatives that allowed the Senate to take up the fiscal cliff legislation that was all-but-dead on arrival in the House….
John Boehner, was forced to give up his lead and capitulate, when his caucus voted down giving even billionaires a tax increase. His caucus had too many Tea Partiers, who were still green behind their ears, and put their own personal principals, … over top the rest of the financial world’s welfare, including the USA….
John couldn’t control his caucus. Why was that? Because the founding fathers wanted the House to be reelected every 2 years. The idea was that these people who were invested with the responsibility of spending the “people’s” money, needed to be directly responsible to those back home, who’s money they were spending! As a result, the Tea Party contingent, whose home-spun philosophy plays well on country porches, has no idea of how things work. We don’t let two year olds drive cars for a reason.
But,…. who did solve the crises and bring both sides into agreement?
The top two members of the Senate, … The Vice President and Mitch McConnell, a Louisville Cardnals fan.
For both, a deal was necessary and they crafted one that would sell. It definitely sold the Senate… 89 to 8…. It sold the problem House of Boehner as well: 257-167 including….. with more Democrats voting for it… 172 than Republicans voted against it… 167.
85 House Republicans voted in support of this McConnell-Biden adaptation, keeping us from going over the cliff before the markets opened up in Asia…. (which at time of print are all up between .6% and 2.2%)..
Through a personal relationship based on a long history of dealing with each other in a non adversarial fashion, a deal was struck. We were clued in two weeks ago that the $400,000 level would be the floor. No surprise there.
But, now it is clear that Social Security will no longer be on the chopping block in two months. Medicare will no longer be on the chopping block in two months. Unemployment compensation (for those dismissed by their corporate employers for working too many hours under Obamacare), now will still dribble some cash to get by. The Earned Income Credit, the best part of the year for anyone earning less than $30,000, is no longer on the chopping block!
For this, the increases in additional taxes on income, estates, and investments, were softened a bit. Even though there will now be less movement of cash from the private sector to the Treasury than occurred under the boom years under Clinton, but… as long as the economy takes off, we can worry about that later.
For that, is why this bill was passed. Signs are encouraging that the economy is getting better, now that the world KNOWS no Republican (whether he really wanted to be president or not) will run the country.
To nix that up, and again, hurt those who were most hurt before, is unconscionable.
For most Americans, working and living and dying in our towns, this is what is important. It never could have happened under the dynamics of the House of Representatives. Only in the Senate, could such an agreement even be possible….
Only there buried within the term of 6 years, is enough distance available to exercise good judgment on what is necessarily right for this country, then have time to deal and fix the political repercussions back home… Only there is an opponent also a dear friend, one you take seriously and trust, causing you to give up a little more on both sides.
Only there. Once again, we see the great wisdom possessed in those we call The Founding Fathers…. Who could have known?
This is post number 2000.
The only real significance is it is 150 posts more than where Tommywonk stopped exactly one year and fifteen days ago…
If some future historian looks back, I can only guess they may kindly make some note of the quality of thought that underlies these efforts, but my guess, is no one will ever notice…
Irregardless, as long as the urge to put thoughts down for others continues, we will go on. As usual, with no goal, no direction, and no ulterior motive. Probably upon reflection, my biggest surprise, right here, right now … is that I still enjoy it so much, and can’t wait to jot my thoughts down, click the button, and send them off to where ever cyberspace and the vast internet ocean, lets them drift….
For each of you who have become regular over the years, … thank you friend…
Image direct result caused by actions of the stupid fools impersonating a US Congress
This Wednesday, on January 18th 2012, we too will be participating in SOPA Blackout Day… I encourage every true American patriot left, to do likewise.
In today’s political world, the embattled progressives are ironically in the same position American forces found themselves in Afghanistan around the time Obama was sworn in………
Things do not seem to be going well at all….
They did not get the Bush tax cuts off the books. Those tax cuts are still sending jobs overseas. They did not get single payer health care; insurers still limit health care. And now, many of the federal programs supporting the economies in their districts, are about to be eradicated….
“If only” Obama had stood tough!.. “If only” Democrats were better negotiators and didn’t give up everything at the drop of the hat… “If only” the Democrats worked harder last December to get the Bush tax cuts not reinstated. “If only” Democrats hadn’t lost the House last election, things would be different. “If only” Obama hadn’t sold us out! “If only” Obama had a spine. “If only” Democrats hadn’t caved and given Republicans 100% of what they want…“If only” the media would educate the public. “If only” truth was allowed on the airwaves….
The Progressives should not base their future strategy on “what-ifs” and “if only’s” as Progressives (especially here in Delaware) are prone to do. Such an approach is not “reality-based.”
It is instead, “hope-based”, which is to say in reality … “illusion-based”…
The illusion persists that Obama can “make” Republicans do what Progressive want. It equals the illusion that the US, can “make” the government of Karzai, do what everything we want…
In both cases, both progressives and the US, can’t force the issue. Instead, what they have to do, is out-argue, snuggle-up, and win the battle of the minds; they have to convince the respective populations that if they follow their way, the population will be better off.
With this bill, we now have a “reality” to assist with that convincing…
The core of all the arguing, is the hypothesis that America needs to tax it’s wealthy a little more.
When American’s go to the polls in 2012, they will have begun to feel the effects on the economy of what happens when one cuts $100 billion a year. Just like the balanced budget deficit bill of 1937 pushed America back into depression, so will this bill.
Progressives need to be out there saying, “We told you this would happen; see? We were right all along; all you have to do is tax the wealthy and this all goes away…..”
Unfortunately (or rather fortunately), there will not be a World War III to pull us out of this next upcoming depression… We will just have to spend Federal Dollars as if there was one. Which means, we have to return to the top marginal tax rates of 1941 – 1945…
So yes, there are no new revenues in this bill. Had there been, the reality would be that the House would have allowed a default.
But the argument can now begin… anew,… starting tomorrow! That increases in taxes cause an increase in jobs….. Had another default issue been allowed to occur again before the election, that argument would have been held hostage once again…
Now, it can’t… It can’t…. The argument of “good taxation” will get out there. This future election will be all about job creation…..
The Tea Party and Progressives both make the same error. They feel that holding another side hostage to get their way, is acceptable. That is not how America works. Often we fail, to remember that America is the one who put the Republicans into the position they did. Likewise, it was the Americans who put Democrats in the same position, two years earlier.
This argument needs to be played out over the course of an election cycle. The Americans themselves need to weigh in on this argument. Each side must argue their case.
It comes down to Clinton’s way… versus Bush’s…..
Start changing minds.
“This poll has all the ear-markings of an electorate that has reached an opinion that Barack Obama would be a good president…The uncertainties [about Obama] that were so prevalent early in the year have just melted away.” WSJ
Yep,… that’s about it.
I just passed the WAWA near the Maryland border of Route 40, and found the cheapest gas….ever….. or so it seems…. My local station was stuck at $2.39 which I was grateful to pay…having come down from $2.59 a week ago…. It’s wonderful!
Wait a minute…. It still costs the same to drill, to refine, to store, to transport, to distribute, to dispense, and you know that no one is selling gas and losing money in the process…. They are comfortable with the money they are making now…..
So, in truth, despite all the bullshit, we were being fleeced $2.00 a gallon back when gas climbed over $4.12….It’s so obvious…. Those damn fat cat Republicans were skimming off two dollars for every gallon of gas… Two ‘effin dollars!
All that bullshit about changing environmental laws… about building nuclear power, about drilling off shore, was a smokescreen to cover the fact that huge amounts of oil were being hedged off-shore….
Remember when it cost $100 dollars to fill your tank? $50 of that went to fat cat Republicans…. Remember when you had to pass on the paying of some of your bills last summer, just because you needed $250 dollars more a month than the previous summer, just to go to work? Remember those huge profits comprised by those Republican supporting oil companies…Chevron (Condoleezza Rice) Exxon- Mobile? Halliburton? Cheney’s BBQ with Big Oil in 2000 paid off really big, didn’t it?
Remember McCain wants to give those same oil companies an additional tax break?
So what changed? Those Republican fat cats needed to sell of the oil they were hoarding for liquidity. That’s all. We were being robbed by the off-shore oil hedge funds that were allowed by Phil Gramm’s end run around Congressional oversight….. And he is first in line to become McCain’s Secretary of Treasury..!
$2.00 for every gallon!… for nothing!… DOESN’T THAT JUST REALLY PISS YOU OFF?
Well, guess what… America can return the favor on November 4th……..
Republican fat cats…. Meet Obama-Biden…..
kavips 