Guess Biden Was Too Busy…

Nice story. Outside of the de rigueur insults that accompany stories on Biden.
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“Mr. Biden’s reputation for windiness, self-regard and unrestrained ambition have long prompted some degree of eye-rolling around him and probably always will.”
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Depending on the accuracy of the piece it appears he is very much the “old wise man” for BHO.

P-NNTO: Think that’s the point of the story–they value his brain, even though it doesn’t always connect well with his mouth.

Okay KT. I took the piece to be more of a “this is what Vice-President Biden does within the administration” with the cracks about him thrown in gratuitously.
Most people who will take the time to read the story are well aware of his reputation. No big deal.

Disagree. I see it as a glimpse into how they are trying to capitalize on his strengths and neutralize his weaknesses. In that sense, a telling look at how Obama manages.

One thing, by the way, that was left out was how they are using him to deal with the Hill. Was at a reporters breakfast on Friday with Harry Reid, who was saying that Biden calls him frequently and asks which Senators Reid would like him to work on, and then reports back. Reid indicated Biden has been quite useful in keeping Dems in line.

have updated post. thanks, p-nnto, for keeping me thinking about this.

Thanks for the new information KT.

It really fascinates me that a calm, even-keeled guy like Obama knows how to get good value out of such temperamentally contrary guys like Biden and Rahm Emanuel. I wish I had 1/100th of his management skills.

Thank you so much for responding to commentary, and the updated information, KT.
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In light of his lobbying moderate Republicans on the Hill for the stimulus bill, what do you expect his role may be in future negotiations over Health Care Reform?

“But they helped make others available to testify on his behalf”
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Was this an interview or a court-martial?

P-nnto, and Dan Quayle didn’t routinely get that kind of coverage? And his gaffes were not the equal of Biden’s. And at least Dan Quayle was a “C” student in law school on his own merit. Now that I think about it, what is it about Dem Senators and plagiarism? Biden, Kennedy . . . .
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For libs to complain about Biden getting “de rigeur” treatment is quite rich. Had McCain picked a VP candidate who (a) cheated in school, (b) lifted his life history from a speech from a British MP, (c) advocated dividing Iraq in Caesarian fashion (gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres) and (d) talked about Indians and 7-11s, the press criticism would have been withering and constant. Now that I think of it, speaking of “lifting” things, someone may wanna go back
and check out Kerry’s Christmas in Cambodia tall tale (you know, the one that was “seared” in his memory)–”We’re going up river about 75 klicks above the Do Lung bridge.” and Kerry’s story about the French not needing to see the pictures during the Cuban Missile Crisis:
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“In the dark days of the Cuban missile crisis, President kennedy sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to Europe to build support. Acheson explained the situation to French President de Gaulle. Then he offered to show him highly classified satellite photos as proof. De Gaulle waved him away saying the word of the President of the United States is good enough for me. How many world leaders have that same trust in America’s president today?”

Where did he get that from?
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/004/786cyypg.asp

Wonder when the Ashley Biden brouhaha will hit . . . .

Here is my thing, and K Tizzle I know you will defend this but I still would like for you to go back and reread it, every time the writer refers to a good quality of Joe Biden’s then he gives us a specific instance to back it up but when they refer to the bad qualities no examples are forth coming.. You keep getting all these references of him being “undisciplined” but no actual examples. Now I am sure if they wanted to they could point to the Justice Roberts joke which I still don’t believe were as big a deal as the media out to be but other than that one moment of levity what else has Joe Biden said or done that might be percieved as a gaffe? Now mind you I understand that any story about Joe Biden is going to have references to gaffes in it because nobody is original enough to write a story about him that doesn’t include it. However this was an article basicially premised on the strengths and weaknesses of his ability to speak his mind (orignal!) and yet other than broad generalities they don’t even examine the weaknesses of him speaking his mind. Thats what is really frustrating to me. Its that anybody writing about Joe Biden just feels like they HAVE to refer to gaffes at some point in the story. If you don’t believe me try to find a substantive story about Joe that doesn’t make those references, most of them without giving specific examples.

SZ
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Still think its just a matter of being uninformed?

stuart_z, just wanted to let you know that I did read and appreciate very much your detailed response to my question the other day. Unfortunately I only have about 30 minutes of internet access per day, on a good day, so I don’t have enough time to keep up with everything going on. So thanks again for your excellent posts!

Oh I am about to stir the hornets nest
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/28/AR2009032802066.html
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Detainee’s Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots
Waterboarding, Rough Interrogation of Abu Zubaida Produced False Leads, Officials Say

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>When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.
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The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.
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In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida — chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates — was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

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snip
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As weeks passed after the capture without significant new confessions, the Bush White House and some at the CIA became convinced that tougher measures had to be tried.
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The pressure from upper levels of the government was “tremendous,” driven in part by the routine of daily meetings in which policymakers would press for updates, one official remembered.
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“They couldn’t stand the idea that there wasn’t anything new,” the official said. “They’d say, ‘You aren’t working hard enough.’ There was both a disbelief in what he was saying and also a desire for retribution — a feeling that ‘He’s going to talk, and if he doesn’t talk, we’ll do whatever.’ “
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The application of techniques such as waterboarding — a form of simulated drowning that U.S. officials had previously deemed a crime — prompted a sudden torrent of names and facts. Abu Zubaida began unspooling the details of various al-Qaeda plots, including plans to unleash weapons of mass destruction.
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Abu Zubaida’s revelations triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms. The interrogations led directly to the arrest of Jose Padilla, the man Abu Zubaida identified as heading an effort to explode a radiological “dirty bomb” in an American city. Padilla was held in a naval brig for 3 1/2 years on the allegation but was never charged in any such plot. Every other lead ultimately dissolved into smoke and shadow, according to high-ranking former U.S. officials with access to classified reports.
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“We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms,” one former intelligence official said.

Joe Biden is a man who speaks his mind.
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Joe Biden can’t help shooting his mouth off.
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I think those are two different and legitimate ways of describing him. Each expresses a judgement about an aspect of his character that is widely regarded to be as described. You can’t expect a groundbreaking new biography of the guy every time someone writes about him.
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But it looks like spooge’s mom has let him out of his crib. Bye-bye thread.

nhautamaki:
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stuart_z, just wanted to let you know that I did read…
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My pleasure conversing with you as well.

Don’t worry about the hornets. You know when Kerry’s name pops out of nowhere that someone’s just flinging poo and hoping something sticks…..

Just a side note:
“I had an infinite number of ideas, because they had been stored up,” says Snowe, a Maine Republican who never got that kind of treatment when her party controlled the White House. “Now somebody was listening.”
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This Republican Senator, who couldn’t get anyone to listen to her while her own party had the White House (maybe she should have raised her voice above a mewl), who now has the home phone number of the Vice President and exercises an undue amount of influence with the President of another party, Olly Snowe last week told Democrats they should find the “spine” to stand up to Obama, even though he’s a Democrat.

OT, but here’s a refreshing example of reality-based conservatism from Canadian PM Stephen Harper: “It is right to say, ‘Let’s have less regulation in principal and less intervention in the marketplace.’ But where has that led us in many countries? It has led us to a situation where the government is in fact intervening massively as a consequence of under-regulation and where you now have effectively in many countries nationalization of the financial system,” said Harper.
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“I know in Canada there have been some criticisms in the past that we were perhaps too activist, intervening too much – but we’re emerging from this with probably the only truly free-market financial system in the world.
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“So a happy medium of regulation is probably the way to go.”
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http://www.thestar.com/World/Columnist/article/610188

The first comment in this thread was about how Biden was getting the shiv in the article. I responded to that. Biden’s gaffes make Quayle look like a rank amateur. And yet the press treated Quayle far far worse than the kid glove treatment that Biden receives. Any GOP politician with Biden’s history would be a complete and utter joke in the press. I mean, really, is there any universe in which a GOP pol could cheat in law school, inflate his academic record, be caught on tape haranguing some guy about their relative intelligence and not have the press filet him for it on a regular basis? And this is to ignore the many many other Biden gaffes.

As for Kerry, well, I just had a stream of consciousness moment. You know, in 2008, we had a member of the Dem ticket who like to, ahem, embellish things (his bio, term papers etc.), and in 2004 we had a member of the Dem ticket do the same thing. Now in 2004, Kerry appeared to be lifting his life story from Apocalypse Now and history from Thirteen Days, and not much in the press. In 2004, Bush got attacked with “phony but accurate” documents. And libs whine about media bias.

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Just a little rich.

Remember “All the President’s Men”? The classic movie about the intrepid Washington journalists who did nothing but snark and whine about not getting enough access?

hellslittleangel:

Joe Biden is a long-lived gasbag with diarrhea of the mouth. A veritable Gratiano of the 21st century. It’s what passes for gravitas on the Dem side of the aisle.

In which I live-tweet this Sunday’s atrocious Meet The Press.

least one aspect of Biden’s role that it does not highlight
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Perhaps because so much of the article seems spoon-fed, they didn’t want to highlight the fact that Obama doesn’t have nearly the amount of control over Congress as he’d like. Old fashioned arm-twisting is not exactly “a new kind of politics.”

For all his flaws, none of them earthshaking, Biden has turned out to be a good back room player. There is a lot of fp and congressional experience and Pres Obama is using it. I wonder about the point of the article.

Rose 83: good point about Canada’s banking system: regulation and oversight is well above average and no Canadian bank has any significant exposure in the sub-prime world. Even the international biggies e.g. HSBC and Barclays were kept under check and not to multiply.

“But it looks like spooge’s mom has let him out of his crib. Bye-bye thread.”

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Well, let’s look at the history here. Remember the AIG bonus threads? I was the one who asked the unanswerable question about the propriety of the government making its investment in Sept. 2008, accepting the benefits of these people’s work for five months and then in March, altering the deal.
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Or we can look at the Rahm Emanuel thread–where no one could seem to defend Obama’s hypocrisy–outrage at private citizens actually working getting paid–but no outrage about his chief of staff who got paid by Freddie for a no show job, er board seat, and who failed to see any of the huge accounting issues, which, of course, was a contibuting factor in the current mess in which we find ourselves.
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Oh, and I forgot, we were helpfully told by Obama that he likes to think before he talks. Ok. So he thought about it, and then fanned the flames of demagogy and showed himself as a hypocrite. Well, I guess that’s a little better than being an ex-Con Law professor, lecturer whatever and opening your yap about the Senate being able to block Burris. (I guess Obama missed the day in law school when they taught Powell v. McCormack.)

Gee spob,
If Biden’s such a gaffe factory, how is it you know about it?
What?
It was reported in the press?
Imagine that.
I guess if we’re looking for dishonest embellishment from a habitual liar, we need travel no further than this very thread.

Flinging poo…..

Paul D., you know, snark doesn’t really pass for erudition. Biden’s gaffes are sooooooo bad that they had to be reported. The issue is whether the press carried water. A GOP pol with the same history would simply be laughed at by the press, as Dan Quayle was. And no way would a GOP pol with that kind of record be a VP candidate for the simple reason that the press would simply filet him every chance it got. There would be constant questions about the message it sends to have a law school cheat on a presidential ticket.

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I’ll give you an example that encapsulates press bias. Do you remember Ronnie White? Ronnie White was a Clinton judicial nominee whose rejection by the Senate engendered a huge brouhaha when Ashcroft was nominated for AG. Did a single press person ask any Dem Senator whether Ronnie White’s lousy academic record and bar failure made him a good candidate for a federal judgeship. In fact, WaPo’s editorial page went so far as to say that White should be renominated by Bush, but conveniently left out the fact that white had failed the bar and was on academic probation during law school. Think a GOP nominee who failed the bar would be treated so easily by the press?

As I am one with sgw, here’s a bit more thread stirring. Seems Petraeus thinks American values are important, and doesn’t agree with Cheney.

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Imagine that.

spob: A GOP pol with the same history would simply be laughed at by the press, as Dan Quayle was.
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Yes, that is precisely how I remember the press’ coverage of the 2000 campaign, just laughter all around at all the Bush gaffes, so much bad press that Gore beat him by a vast margin and became our most successful President. 9/11 never happened, our budget is balanced and we are paying down the national debt, we’re respected in the world, significant progress was made on curbing carbon emissions.
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Oh wait:
CARLSON (10/10/00): Gore’s fabrications may be inconsequential—I mean, they’re about his life. Bush’s fabrications are about our life, and what he’s going to do. Bush’s should matter more but they don’t, because Gore’s we can disprove right here and now…You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and get out your calculator or you look at his record in Texas. But it’s really easy, and it’s fun, to disprove Gore.
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CARLSON: I actually happen to know people who need government and so they would care more about the programs, and less about the things we kind of make fun of…But as sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us. And we can disprove it in a way we can’t disprove these other things.

spob: Are you looking for an argument?

wvng: steady on, old chap. You can’t say nasty and truthful things about Margaret “Emptyhead” Carlson. It will get you into trouble with the Villagers, and Fred Thompson.

Margaret Carlson is a degenerate, parasitic, execrable sponge.

7 – I will never forgive Carlson. She is the embodiment of the beltway “kool kidz” disease that gave us Bush and nearly destroyed our nation. She is one among many, true, but the exchange I highlighted above still makes me furious.
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And I keep seeing her on my teevee.

sz – true. Perhaps we could dedicate the rest of this thread to saying bad things about her?

Rose 83: good point about Canada’s banking system: regulation and oversight is well above average and no Canadian bank has any significant exposure in the sub-prime world. Even the international biggies e.g. HSBC and Barclays were kept under check and not to multiply.
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bitterpill8, the whole interview is worth watching, but I didn’t want to link to Fox. I don’t know if it’s on YouTube yet. I’ve been talking about the lack of a coherent conservative perspective, so it was interesting to see the contrast between Harper and Wallace. Wallace kept setting Harper up for Palin-style comebacks, which Harper kept quietly declining.
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As a progressive, I never would have thought of Harper’s conservative justifications for banking regulation. Which is not suprising. But clearly those justifications had never occurred to Wallace either. Obviously reality-based conservatism is almost as foreign to Wallace as liberalism.

wvng:
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I keep seeing her on my teevee.
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Perhaps we could dedicate the rest of this thread to saying bad things about her?
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But if we were to do that, then we’d have to talk about how unbelievably, insultingly stupid our new liberal teebee stars have become:
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Margaret Carlson had a feeling/Or, we’re all Ann Coulter now
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…Olbermann had one more miserable guest to throw at his viewers this evening. It doesn’t get worse than Margaret Carlson—but all through the hour, Olbermann kept suggesting that Carlson had some “breaking news” to offer us about the Blair House matter. Here’s how he previewed Carlson’s appearance, right at the top of the program:
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OLBERMANN (1/6/09): Two weeks to O-Day. Inauguration plans finalizing, 10 inaugural balls, and breaking news from Margaret Carlson about one last incredible insult from the president to the president-elect.

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Wow! Carlson had “breaking news” about an “incredible insult!” We know—you’ve never seen the terms “Margaret Carlson” and “breaking news” in the same sentence! But as the evening proceeded, Olbermann kept throwing raw, red meat to us, his liberal rubes:
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OLBERMANN: An unexpected twist to that happy picture of the Obama family staying in a Washington hotel, because the Bush administration said that the traditional temporary residence of the incoming-president was booked until the 15th. It ain’t. Ugly details ahead. You are watching Countdown on MSNBC.
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OLBERMANN: As the plans for the inauguration come together, word of a final diss from the 43rd president to the 44th. These stories ahead.
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OLBERMANN: Two weeks to the inauguration. The polite term for what President Bush has done to the president-elect is “ungracious.” The impolite term is “petty.” Margaret Carlson with a stunner.
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OLBERMANN: The story about the president-elect having to stay in a hotel rather than Blair House may be exactly that, a story to cover what turns out to be an insult from the out-going commander-in-chief to his successor. That’s next, but first, time for Countdown’s number two-story, tonight’s “Worst persons in the world!”

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You’re right! With the use of that little world “may,” Olbermann had already scaled back the promise he’d been making—the promise that Carlson would present “breaking news,” and “ugly details,” about an “incredible insult.” By now, he no longer seemed completely sure about the truth of Carlson’s story. But, when Carlson finally arrived, it was much as you might have expected. Carlson had no “news” or “reporting” to offer at all, though she herself used the latter term. She didn’t offer any new facts about this lingering story. Instead, Margaret Carlson “had a feeling”—and that was plainly all she had. We offer you the full exchange, the “breaking news” Keith had been pimping:
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OLBERMANN: The spit in the punch bowl—the Bush administration`s claim that Blair House was unavailable to the Obamas until January 15th due to prior bookings. Let’s turn now to Bloomberg News political columnist and the Washington editor of The Week magazine, Margaret Carlson. Good evening, Margaret.
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CARLSON: Good evening, Keith.
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OLBERMANN: So the Obamas are in a hotel for now, admittedly a lovely hotel, for another nine days because the Bush administration says Blair House is unavailable. As I have been hinting, you have information that suggests that’s not entirely correct?

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Please understand: In 1999 and 2000, Carlson endlessly ridiculed Gore on CNN, thereby helping put Bush in the White House. Now, she’s just extremely upset by all the vast harm he has done.
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Why couldn’t the Obamas stay at Blair House? We don’t know—but Carlson had no information that wasn’t made public all the way back in mid-December. There was no sign that she’d done any “reporting;” she had no “breaking news” at all. (The fact that Howard would spend one night at Blair House had been released by the White House.) What she did have was “a feeling”—a feeling that didn’t exactly make sense. Let’s look again at the pitiful way these hacks throw sweet hay to their herd:
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CARLSON: I have a feeling they asked him to come and stay, so that there might be some plausible reason for not letting the Obamas stay there.

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Interesting! As it happens, we have a feeling that Carlson’s from Neptune. Might we go on Countdown tonight and have this promoted as “news?”

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…And if we talked badly about Our Team’s star players, well –some people would get upset, and think that we’re trying to sabotage the game, and all. They might get worried about losing in the big tournament! They wouldn’t be able to hold their head up high with pride in Our wonderful, always honest, perpetually correct Team, would they?
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Any discussion of Margaret Carlson’s role in the degeneration of our discourse wouldn’t be complete without touching on which teebee stars’ copy she’s recently been called in to professionally and mindlessly confirm, don’t you think, wvng?

I have never been impressed with Biden one way or the other. To me, just a typical run of he mill fluffy hair politician. If Obama values him somehow, that’s ok with me too. He can certainly speak to old values, especially in his advocacy of long term failed foreign policy.

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He is mostly a return to the traditional vice presidential role described by John Nance Garner as not being worth a bucket of warm piss. And after the revolting Chaney, who could argue with that, other than spob?
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While I haven’t learned anything new here about Biden, the turn of the thread to a defense of failed repubs such as little Bush, and the big Bush vp is more than I care to read. Even certified batnutty repubs don’t defend these creaps anymore, spob aside.

KT, who will Time send to the G20 conference? That should make for more interesting blogs next week, maybe?

Is Time magazine working on obtaining the video of the hair-plugged buffoon’s daughter snorting cheap cocaine with a straw in her favorite crack house? http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2009/03/exclusive-biden-cocaine-scandal-video-shot-hidden-camera-lawyer-quits

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How many dozens of stories would Time magazine have done by now on this coke head if her father were Dick Cheney and not the hair-plugged buffoon and Soviet useful idiot? If her mother were Sarah Palin can you imagine the hysterical, orgasmic joy that would exist among the political activists at Time and other advocacy groups of the Washington press corps?

Obama and Blair House: There are times when I find KeithO a bit too over the top. I saw the “Carlson has got the goods” build up and it was really idiotic of KO to mislead his viewers.

We hope, of course, that the private lives of the Pres and Vice President would not be fair game. Of course, that hasnt been the rule for the Bush daughters or for Cheney’s daughter–given that Edwards brought her private life to the fore in a VP debate.

You have to be very very careful reading the dailyhowler because Somersby has kinda lost it a little bit. I am not a fan of Carlson’s at all, but Somersby himself was misleading in his own post about Olberman being misleading. Carlson DID report something that night, it just wasn’t what Sommersby bolded.
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CARLSON: Well, I reported, but also the Washington Post reported on December 11th and 12th that there were no foreign dignitaries booked into Blair House during that period of time. It turns out that a former prime minister of Australia is going to be staying there overnight soon.

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Now mind you I don’t know that it was earth shattering news, however nobody had reported up until that point that the former prime minister of Australia was going to be staying in the Blair House. Now Carlson was definitely just speculating as to the motivations for that and she is a firmly ingrained Villager but on this point it was Sommersby who was wrong.
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Now the thing about it is most of the time he is right, but you notice that he focuses basically on all the same people and the commonality is that most of them “did Gore wrong”. Because of that he misses a lot of other more egregious errors in the “librul media” and he, on occasion, perpetrates the same kind of journalism as the subjects of his screeds.
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Beware the focus on bolded passages in Sommersby’s posts, thats all I am saying.

Ummm…SG:
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The “breaking news” that Olbermann kept pimping wasn’t that the PM of our staunch Iraq war ally Australia would stay in that place, it was “huge insult from Bush to Obama”.
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To suggest that it’s misleading of Somerby to claim that there was no original reporting regarding the supposed grave insult beyond Margaret Carlson’s intuitions is bizarre.
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That Obama wasn’t going to be staying there was old news –that’s not in dispute.
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The worst critique of Somerby is that he’s tedious to read month after month, and that he connects the press’ current misdeeds to the 2000 campaign a little too tenuously.
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But since we’re actually discussing in this thread the despicable conduct of Margaret Carlson during campaign 2000, it’s entirely relevant to bring Somerby’s linkage between her previous discredit and carnie-barker Olbermann’s current misappropriations of it.
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on this point it was Sommersby who was wrong
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No, I believe that you’ve missed Somerby’s point slightly, SG, and even if it could be interpreted to be literally, semantically wrong, it’s incredibly irrelevant to his (correct) fundamental argument.

SZ
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No, you’re wrong. Everyone always knew it was an insult. Then in December everyone found out no dignitaries were going to be staying there. Now KO was wrong to pump it up as being earth shattering but Carlson DID report something that night which had not been previously reported which was the fact that the former prime minister of Australia was going to be saying there. And that is precisely what Sommersby said she didn’t do. It WAS misleading of Sommersby and in fact it was a lie when you boil it down. That Sommersby personally didn’t find it a big deal has nothing to do with it. Here is his exact quote.
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She didn’t offer any new facts about this lingering story. Instead, Margaret Carlson “had a feeling”—and that was plainly all she had.
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That is false, a lie, a mischaracterization or any other word you want to insert for “Sommersby got it wrong”. If not then try to find a story about the former prime minister staying there BEFORE her appearance on KO. And the fact that he bolded only the part of her statement that he wanted to use to prove his point was misleading.
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It is what it is.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTEzMjc3YWU3ZmJiNzA3NThhNjdiMmY4MDkzNjRlMDY=

A take down of the WaPo article re: interrogation.

SG:
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Oh for God’s sake!
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“this lingering story” was the “insult story”!
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The fact that Australia’s PM was the newly discovered occupant is not relevant in the slightest.
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I truly think you’re being weirdly obtuse.
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Somerby says:
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She didn’t offer any new facts about this lingering story. Instead, Margaret Carlson “had a feeling”—and that was plainly all she had.
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…and this is most definitely a true statement, because she didn’t offer any new facts about the supposed insult to the Obamas, she just used her “feeling” to connect the PM’s stay to that supposed slight.
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The story is not the occupants nor the place, SG. The story –the one that Olbermann pimped endlessly leading into the Carlson segment– was exactly what Somerby says: “Obamas insulted by Bushes on the way out”.
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This isn’t new reporting with respect to how we know for sure that there was an offense deliberately offered. It’s maybe reporting having to do with the occupants of the Blair House, but not having to do with any intended insult.
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Aren’t you focusing on the wrong thing, SG?

err..sorry about the poor formatting.
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SG:
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Oh for God’s sake!
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“this lingering story” was the “insult story”!
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The fact that Australia’s PM was the newly discovered occupant is not relevant in the slightest.
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I truly think you’re being weirdly obtuse.
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Somerby says:
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She didn’t offer any new facts about this lingering story. Instead, Margaret Carlson “had a feeling”—and that was plainly all she had.</blockquote
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…and this is most definitely a true statement, because she didn’t offer any new facts about the supposed insult to the Obamas, she just used her “feeling” to connect the PM’s stay to that supposed slight.
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The story is not the occupants nor the place, SG. The story –the one that Olbermann pimped endlessly leading into the Carlson segment– was exactly what Somerby says: “Obamas insulted by Bushes on the way out”.
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This isn’t new reporting with respect to how we know for sure that there was an offense deliberately offered. It’s maybe reporting having to do with the occupants of the Blair House, but not having to do with any intended insult.
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Aren’t you focusing on the wrong thing, SG?

well…you get the idea…

SZ
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Thats called rationalizing. Sommersby was wrong. Period. I can come up with 100 different ways to rationalize that KO and Carlson were right too if I were so inclined but I am not. They were wrong to hype it up but Sommersby was also wrong to claim she didn’t have any new facts. Again it is what it is.

SG:
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He didn’t “claim she didn’t have new facts” about the occupants of the Blair House, he correctly pointed out that she didn’t have any new facts that confirmed the deliberate insult to the Obamas.
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We’ll agree to disagree, SG.
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You can have the last word, if you’d like.

[...] Here is the original post: Biden’s Unsung Role in the White House (Time Magazine) [...]

I’m waiting for Spob to get more outrageous, since SZ and SG are patently ignoring him (for what it’s worth I am too). Of course turning to petty gossip tends to do that.
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But while I’m at it…
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What does the possible cocaine use of Joe Biden’s daughter have to do with Joe Biden? Other than a possible private family issue that he and Jill will have to address should this indeed be an addicition.

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What does the possible cocaine use of Joe Biden’s daughter have to do with Joe Biden? Other than a possible private family issue that he and Jill will have to address should this indeed be an addicition.
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Am no more interested in that than I was about the alleged over drinking and other behavior of the Bush twins. All are family matters.

I didn’t mean to imply it mattered to me either. But it’s important to Spob goshdarnit, so it needs to be talked about!

More obscure still, what was spob’s point about UK declaring war on Finland in 1941? I wasn’t following closely, but saw the point a few times and wondered what that was about. Anybody?

I was more interested in the last paragraph about the courtship of Senator Snowe. She said “Now somebody was listening”. She’s a moderate in wingnut land. They ignore her. Steele said he was thinking of withholding RNC funds from Spector in 2010 for not following marching orders to vote no. Why wait until 2010 to get 60 votes in the senate? Those three (Snowe, Dukakis, Spector) aren’t much different than our own blue dog democrats. Let’s go after them now. They don’t even have to switch to being registered democrats. They can become Independents. Obama should realize by now that the wingnuts only agenda is to stop his administration from implementing it’s policies. Bipartisanship only works if both parties have some chance of working together. It’s obvious that the conservatives aren’t interested. The republicans are going to primary Arlen. We should give him some incentive to switch. Offer cash, a committee post and support from a popular president president that took the state by a wide margin. The republicans seem intent on committing suicide. Let’s assist. It’s the humane thing to do.

About the best I could find on Google was about the circumstances surrounding the declaration (Finland wanted some military muscle after losing the Winter War) and Finland’s alliance with Germany causing it. What that has to do with the price of tea in China I guess only ol’ Spob can bother to explain.

Sacred, I think that comes to a head at Snowe’s re-election. If she’s still in the Republican wilderness she may just say screw it and dump her party affiliation entirely if Steele et al decide not to back her. And she is an institution in the Senate (heck I was trying to remember a time when she WASN’T a Senator and couldn’t do it), if they royally f*ck her she will return that in spades I have zero doubt about that.

yutsano, thanks, I learned what you did, too, but as you say, what it has to do with anything here recently, only spob can explain. I should have asked when I saw it.

I actually don’t care about Ashley Biden. But then again, I thought Edwards’ repulsive foray into Mary Cheney’s personal life in the debate repulsive.

I saw some sort of explanation on a previous thread, (something about purity being impossible) but it was unfathomable to me…

yutsano, I think their treatment of Spector may be the tipping point. He’s the most conservative of the three. If they can’t support him, the other two may be easier to flip. BTW, I enjoy your posts. I don’t agree with many of them but you present your arguments very well.

I also have no idea what the Finland reference was about. I’m actually curious now.
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SG and stuart, if this were a LSAT/GRE reading comprehension question, the correct answer would be that KO was implying Carlson had new information about the supposed snub, not about the Blair House’s guest list. The fact that Somerby spelled it out by specifying that Carlson didn’t have any new facts about this “lingering story” also makes the grounds of his complaint very clear. The only way you can argue that Somerby was wrong/lying is if you argue that he used the phrase “lingering story” to refer to the Blair House guest list. Which is obviously not the case.

spob, since you are here, I agree with you about Edwards reference to Mary Cheney, it was cheap and unnecessary. What was your point about the UK-Finland?

BTW, I enjoy your posts. I don’t agree with many of them but you present your arguments very well.
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One of the reasons I requested instructions from SZ regarding HTML was simply that I didn’t want it to look like I was making things up out of whole cloth. I also appreciate how SZ articulates his arguments, if by his example I become a better blogger I guess that counts as this whole mess counting for something.

I think SZ missed his calling. He should have been an investigative journalist. The comments on the threads here at Swampland usually are much more informative than the stories themselves. I’ve only been here since around election time and could kick myelf for not getting involved earlier. I hope SZ is feeling better.

Thanks Rose.
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I would have been just as grateful if you had pointed out the flaw in my argument, btw.
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Sometimes I think that I’m not communicating well enough…

…and thank you folks for being patient enough to get through my commentary, for your compliments, and for your concerns about my health –which is improving, believe it or not!

Jewish penicillin SZ, Jewish penicllin! If I need to I’ll post a recipe dagburnit!

I raised the English declaration of war on Finland to show that perfection in defense of the nation cannot be expected nor demanded. England was “wrong” to declare war on Finland, but we don’t think that their cause was wrong. We may or may not be “wrong” in waterboarding–I want it done though, of course, in very restricted circumstances.
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As Bill Clinton said, we need to have a policy against torture. And guys, if you think Barack Obama would not order this stuff done if he thought it necessary to stop a serious terrorist attack, you’re nuts. If a major terrorist attack happens on his watch, I don’t care how much Joe Klein blames it on Bush, it’s ballgame over.

Torture: Good when we do it; bad when the Khmer Rouge did it.
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Thank you moral relativism!

No sz, and you’re better than that. Nobody’s perfect. Not us. But that doesn’t mean we’re not a hell of a lot better than most. Nations sometimes have to look out for number 1. And if that means KSM gets waterboarded, well, that’s what it means.

spob:
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It’s not that we’re not perfect. It’s not that we kill people’s kids sometimes when we bomb or shell or launch rockets against the bad guys when they’re hiding amongst civilians. That’s an example of something that we minimize, but that we don’t do on purpose, right? We don’t actually terrorize civilians as a matter of policy –we make mistakes, and we unintentionally do evil things, despite our best efforts.
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Creating a system for torturing people is deliberate evil. It manufactures evil from the goodness that is our nation. I’m able to call evil by its name because I know what evil is. I know that the people who flew planes into our buildings were evil. I know that the Khmer Rouge were evil.
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The establishment of a KGB-like torture program, with bureaucrats and equipment, facilities and physicians, legal teams and clean-up/disposal crews –however rationalized by their designers– is evil. You know this, spob. If it were any other nation in the world, you would call it for what it is.
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We aren’t perfect, but we are good. America is good. Our great country cannot continue to be the instrument of morality in the world if we allow this cancerous tumor to pervert our fundamental goodness.
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If my future son were to rape and murder a four-year old little girl upon reaching adulthood, I believe that I would be capable of demanding justice for the little girl’s family, in spite of my obvious loyalty to my blood. It’s kind of like that, spob. I love my country, but my loyalty can’t prevent me from knowing what is good and what is evil.
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There are no exceptions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. A deliberate program –a bureaucratic system– of state-sanctioned torture is worthy of some 20th century totalitarian dictatorship, not the United States of America.
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I think that you know these things, spob. I think that you can tell the difference between “not perfect” and “deliberate evil”.

if I’m following Spob’s thought process SZ, waterboarding/torture is a false equivalence to what was done on 9/11. In other words, our evil is better than their evil, although he would have to come up with a HUGE justification as to why any evil is “better” than another.

If my future son
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Am I looking into this too much, or is Loving Bride expecting?

Do you mean Lovely Bride? No, she’s not! LOL I have to go tell her!

Oh! “future son” I meant way in the future! LOL

Oh! “future son” I meant way in the future! LOL
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No scoop for KT I guess!

And guys, if you think Barack Obama would not order this stuff done if he thought it necessary to stop a serious terrorist attack, you’re nuts. If a major terrorist attack happens on his watch, I don’t care how much Joe Klein blames it on Bush, it’s ballgame over.
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spob, you’re contradicting yourself there.
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I raised the English declaration of war on Finland to show that perfection in defense of the nation cannot be expected nor demanded. England was “wrong” to declare war on Finland, but we don’t think that their cause was wrong.
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Sorry, but I’m still not getting it. If you have time to post a link explaining why Britain was wrong to declare war on Finland that would be great. I really am curious. From what I’ve read it was justified.
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yutsano, of course he wouldn’t use that particular hypothetical if Lovely Bride were actually expecting!

I don’t get how England was “wrong” to declare war on Finland. As part of that war declaration they also included Hungary and Romania who also chose at that time to ally with Germany against Stalin. They were acting in their national interests as was England. It was hardly “wrong” for any of the actors to act as they did. If that is Spob’s point (that nations in pursuit of their own national interests are never “wrong” even if the morals are suspect) well, that’s an apples-to-oranges argument. The Finnish weren’t torturing English citizens nor were the English flying planes into buildings in Helsinki. It’s also very Nixonian if you think about it.

Spob:

England declaring war on Finland was not wrong. Finland was at war with Russia, and when Russia allied with England, that automatically meant England was at war with Finland too. However the English certainly did not view the Finnish as direct enemies. They were enemies by technicality. To the best of my knowledge, which is pretty good when it comes to World War 2, English and Finnish armed forces never once engaged in direct combat.

Furthermore, the argument against torture that it is ‘evil’ strikes me as a rather childish and unconvincing argument. ‘Evil’ is a term meant to be used in fairy tales and fantasy stories, and the fact that it is used by adults in today’s America to me is very representative of the immaturity of discourse in current American politics. It’s one of the appeals of Obama; he appeared, especially during the Rick Warren ‘conversation’ to be trying to add a little nuance to the term ‘evil’, and generally did not seem nearly so comfortable wielding such a childish piece of terminology as Republicans typically do.

No, the argument against torture is that it is not only inneffective, it is in fact counter-productive. Suspicion of the usage of torture is enough to tarnish the name of an entire nation. Outright justification and defence of the usage of torture, as the US has done in the last few years, just paints a giant target on the whole country and says ‘we are morally bankrupt, so you have a green light to hate us’.

Conservatives like to say that one thing we can never take away from Bush/Cheney is that the terrorists did not attack American soil again, so their policies to protect America must have been effective.

I have another theory. I’d say the terrorists never attacked America again because they won after the first strike. In a boxing match, if you knock the opponent out after your first punch, you don’t bother throwing any more. And the ‘terrorists’, make no mistake about it, knew they had won after the first strike. Just take a moment to think about it logically; look at all they have accomplished as a direct result of 9/11.

1) Terrorize Americans: mission accomplished
2) Hurt America’s economy: mission accomplished big time
3) Reduce Americans’ freedoms (‘Because they hate out freedoms’ Bush’s own ridiculous words): the Patriot Act passed; mission accomplished
4) Reduce America’s influence in the world: mission accomplished
5) Reduce the global trend of secularization: mission accomplished, for a time. In the minds of many, the conflict with Islamic terrorists was seen as a holy war of Christians vs Muslims. Another Crusade. Religious extremists of both cultures gained a lot of power, though thankfully they mostly seem to be losing it again.
6) Remove a secular dictator in a key Arab and Muslim state: mission accomplished.
7) Prove to the world that America is the ‘bad guy’. Mission almost accomplished. America did itself a huge favour by electing Obama, and now basically because of that one act, and because of a history of past greatness, has a chance to clean the slate and start fresh in the world’s eyes as the ‘good guy’, but it was a damn near thing to America permanently discrediting itself as a second-rate imperialist super-power that needs to be contained for the good of the global community.

The terrorists got everything they wanted and more. That’s the sad reality of the first decade of the 21st century. If Osama had a crystal ball and looked into the future to see the results of 9/11, he’d be absolutely thrilled to order those attacks. A second attack on the American heartland would have been totally counter-productive for him, because once America invaded Iraq without justification, and started torturing prisoners, many of whom they had almost no evidence against (watch ‘Taxi to the Dark Side’–an innocent taxi driver gets fingered by an informant with a quota to fill, or maybe just a beef with the guy, and gets brutally beaten to death by American guards over the course of a week while in an American ‘illegal combatant’ facility in Afghanistan), America gave up all claim to the moral high ground. A second attack would have put international sympathy back with America, and that’s the last thing Al Qaida wanted.

Spob, what I’m trying to say is that the terrorists WANT you to think the way you are thinking. They want you to make yourself into the bad guy, so that they can turn around and say ‘Look how bad they are! You must fight against them! They are evil! They torture people! They invade innocent countries! They practice economic imperialism and when that fails they practice military imperialism! Death to the great American Satan!’ You are playing right into their hands. The best thing Americans could be doing to fight against Al Qaida, and what they should have done right after 9/11, is to dismiss them as a threat. 9/11 should have been downplayed. The terrorists should have been laughed at. The invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban was justifiable and defensible, but the passage of the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, and the decision to circumvent the Geneva conventions; that’s where America lost the world’s sympathy. That’s where the terrorists got new justification for the hatred of America.

Make no mistake about it; no matter what America does, there will always be people who see personal gain in demonising you. But what America does DOES determine how much support those people can get. The worst thing you can do to Osama Bin Laden and people like him is to ignore them and go on being the good guys. Make it impossible for rational people to hate you. That’s the only way to put the hate mongers out of business.

How in the world was the English declaration of war on Finland justified on moral grounds? The Russians attacked Finland in 1939 and took a considerable amount of Finnish territory when the war ended in 1940. When the Germans attacked the Soviet Union, the Finns declared war on Russia to get their territory back, which was, of course, perfectly justified, given what had just happened to the Finns. Did the Brits have any “right” to retaliate against Finland for this? No.
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As for comparing waterboarding to the Khmer Rouge, we’ll just leave that where it is.

The Khmer Rouge waterboarded, too. It’s not a comparison –it’s a common practice with evil totalitarian regimes.

spob, as you may but probably have not noticed, I am of Finnish descent, nevertheless the Finns’ decision to throw their lot in with Hitler in order to get back at the Russians was certainly moral justification for England declaring war on them as part and parcel with allying with Russia.

Moreover, as I already said, the English did nothing beyond declaring war on Finland. They never once attacked them, and neither did the Finns attack England or any other ally besides Russia. They were at war with the English only by technicality.

Well, Mr. Hautamaki, I;ve read that Pechenga was attacked by the English, which used to be Petsamo. In any event, saying that your country threw in its lot with Hitler is a little bit unfair, given the substantial restrictions the Finns placed on German operations, especially during the siege of Leningrad. Moreover, it’s not like the Soviet Union was somehow better than Nazi Germany. And certainly the English declaration of war on Finland could have given the Soviets the excuse to extract far more from the Finns after the war ended. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
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In any event, the bottom line is that the English declared war on a free nation that had every right to “get back” at the USSR. That legitimized the Soviet land grab in 1940. That didn’t really matter since the USSR did pretty well against the Nazis and were in a position to hold onto their ill-gotten gains. But in December 1941, it was by no means clear that the Soviets would be able to hold onto those gains. Had the matter been up for debate, the Soviets would have been able to point to the British declaration of war.

I’ve noticed you have a very interesting debate tactic of throwing people off the trail by focussing totally on a non-sequiter. You’ve totally ignored the main thrust of my arguments to get into a historical debate about the moral uprightness of England declaring war on Finland. I suppose your point is that England was wrong to declare war on the enemy of its ally because that enemy had done nothing to England, and anyways that ally wasn’t such hot stuff either? So I suppose your point is that England would have been morally better to say to Russia “Sorry, we’d love to ally with you against Hitler, but there’s the small matter of Finland. We don’t believe you ought to have attacked them, so we’re afraid we cannot ally with you. We’d rather have you as a second enemy party than an ally.”
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No, your point is that sometimes countries make morally grey decisions in self-interest. Comparing the British decision to declare war on Finland to the Bush administration decision to torture captives is laughable and wouldn’t get you 20 seconds of talking time in a university classroom, but that’s still beside the point of 90% of my original post, which was to point out that regardless of the moral arguments for and against torture, the argument from rational self interest also states that you should be against torture. Arguing about Finland and England and WW2 just makes it seem like you have no answer to my real points, but it’s a good strategy because me changing the subject back to my real points makes it seem like I want to concede the point which I certainly do not. Declaring war on the enemy of your ally in a time of total war, regardless of the circumstances of doing so, is not in any way comparable to santioning torture. There’s a reason there’s a Geneva Convention article regarding one and not the other.

So now, Mr. Hautamaki, the Geneva Conventions are now the arbiter of just war theory? Moreover, I didn’t say that England was responsible to attack the USSR over Finland, just that it was obligated not to harm Finland’s position by declaring war on it. And make no mistake about it, England’s declaration of war did harm Finland and it could have made things a lot worse than it did.

In any event, I think you’ve proven my point. You are comparing the so-called torture of a few guys (with the avowed purpose of getting info re terrorism) to the bolstering of the Soviet conquest of a lot of territory and the forcible eviction of thousands from their homes and livelihoods. That should get you laughed at in a college classroom, as should the argument that we’re as bad as the terrorists because we waterboarded a few of them.