Lillian Hellman sued Mary McCarthy for saying this: “Every word she [Hellman] writes is a lie, including the words ‘and’ and ‘the.’” Regrettably, I wasn’t in the studio audience to hear this gem, cheerfully rendered. But I remember the telecast.
That is how I feel about Biden. Every word he says is a lie, including the words ‘and’ and ‘the.’ I’ll say it because I’m not important enough to be sued—I hope.
I never paid much attention to Biden, probably because his political career coincided with my prolonged stay with my head in the sand (2002—2021). He was just one of a hundred Senatorial bloviators. Of course, I paid some attention to the scene outside my bubble, since but Joe wasn’t a compelling figure like Obama, or as annoying as Hillary, I ignored him. I roused out of hibernation as a result of the rise of Trump—but Joe wasn’t in the picture then.
But I knew very little about Biden until I read Laptop From Hell. I read the book after the Afghanistan disengagement, after my rude awakening. It didn’t change my opinion about the disengagement. I supported Biden then.
However, since then, I’ve done some reading and reflecting, and I’ve concluded that the disengagement was a debacle but not for the oft-cited reasons (Baghram, the terrorist attack, etc.) It was a debacle because Biden put it off past the due date. The agreement stipulated an American disengagement by May, because May was Ramadan, and the Taliban would (in theory) have been restrained by that.
BTW, Biden lied about even that, here:
In April, I made the decision to end this war.
/facepalm/
Biden delayed the full withdrawal until September 11:
In response to Biden’s decision to delay full withdrawal until Sept. 11,
I can’t fathom why he chose that date. The reason is difficult for a trusting soul like me to figure out. (Not!)
It obviously enraged and emboldened the Taliban:
The Taliban releases a statement that says failure to complete the withdrawal by May 1 “opens the way for [the Taliban] to take every necessary countermeasure, hence the American side will be held responsible for all future consequences.”
Of course, the delay only gave the Taliban the opportunity to take over the country and kick us out ignominiously. Any disengagement would have been a bitter pill, but the way it happened was disgraceful.
Whenever Joe comes up against people who push back against him, who are not impressed by the fact that he’s JOE BIDEN AMERICAN SENATOR PRESIDENT BIG GUY, disaster ensues. This is a man who is completely cut off from the harsh realities of life.
Biden delayed the disengagement for the sake of appearances.
That’s what Joe Biden’s career is: appearances. He appears to be Presidential. He sounded like a Senator. But it all adds up to nothing. There is no substance.
Even his stutter is fake.
American politicians have to present themselves as rising above adversity. In the case of Roosevelt, the hardship was quite real: his polio, and in every bio it is presented as the pivotal life event that made the American prince understand suffering. Lincoln hailed from the truly poor. Jackson had a hardscrabble childhood. Truman, “the little haberdasher.”
I think that’s about it. Other than those four, the vast majority of American presidents have come from the favored classes, so something has to be created and especially after the great leveling experience of two World Wars. Before the Great War, it was OK to be of the upper classes. Now we have to make up some fiction that the candidate is One Of Us.
In Biden’s case, it’s his childhood stutter.
Frontline did one of their ridiculous, pseudo-serious documentaries about this. I had to laugh. I’ve always hated Frontline: that gloomy music, the portentous, pompous voice-over, but this one was a corker. It was coordinated with a public relations piece in The Atlantic, written by a man with a genuine stutter. Listening to the guy with the real stutter, who was interviewed by Frontline, it’s obvious that Biden’s claim to have been a stutterer is bogus. (
The Atlantic article links to a YouTube exchange between Biden and Harris on medical coverage, which Hendrickson claims is. I watched it. Biden sounds remarkably coherent, better than he does now.
There are many YouTube videos of Biden during his long career in the senate. Not one of them shows the slightest trace of a stutter. On the contrary: he’s fluent to the point of glibness, especially when he’s on the attack.
The only evidence that Biden had a stutter comes from interested parties who claim to have seen him stumble over his words as a kid while public speaking.
This is not a stutter, it’s fear of public speaking, and that’s hardly a disability. It’s quite common.
Why make something like this up?
It’s a feint. As I said, all American politicians need a sob story and in Biden’s case, the truth is that his father was an alcoholic. Why not just be honest and present this as Biden’s origin story? No fair-minded person would stigmatize someone because of what his father did, would they?
Depends. When you examine all the facts of Joe Biden’s upbringing and family backgrond and put all the factors together, you are left with the disquieting feeling that he is not a triumphant survivor, like many great men, but a piece of damaged goods with terrible demons. Joe Biden isn’t a great achiever, healer, leader, war hero. He’s a thin-skinned political hack with a history of lying, deceit, and lashing out.
That’s the kind of guy who you look at and say, “Damaged child of an alcoholic.”
It would be too kind to say that his career as a senator was undistinguished. I think it was quite distinguished: by its exhibitionism, theatricality, cruelty, showiness, histrionics, and hollowness. When putting criminals behind bars was the thing, he was all for it. When “racist” mass incarceration became the thing, he was against it. Trans rights are today’s most urgent civil rights matter. No one has ever asked him to define the question: “What is a woman?” because he’s carefully shielded from all true public scrutiny.
He believes nothing, except displays of American “power”—that is, killing people. After the terrorist attack on the airport in Afghanistan, he vowed, a la Clint Eastwood: “We will hunt you down.” I cringed, knowing that something bad was going to happen.
WASHINGTON — None of the military personnel involved in a botched drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 10 civilians will face any kind of punishment, the Pentagon said on Monday.
The Pentagon acknowledged in September that the last U.S. drone strike before American troops withdrew from Afghanistan the previous month was a tragic mistake that killed the civilians, including seven children, after initially saying it had been necessary to prevent an Islamic State attack on troops….
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, who had left the final word on any administrative action, such as reprimands or demotions, to two senior commanders, approved their recommendation not to punish anyone.
His Senatorial career was distinguished by vengeful war mongering. Looking at a random sample of videos, it’s clear he relishes dehumanizing people. On Serbia:
Biden’s attack on Scott Ritter has become notorious. However, I think that it’s been distorted and retconned. It’s important to set the record straight because it’s a key to his warped mentality.
When Scott Ritter testified at a joint hearing of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations on September 3, 1998, a week after resigning from UNSCOM, he was a hardline Saddam opponent. His reason for resigning was that the Clinton administration had interfered with the weapons inspection process. He had publicly criticized then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
The hearings took place in an atmosphere of extreme partisan rancor; the Republicans had pushed the hearings against the wishes of the Democrats. Biden was designated as the attack dog. His line of attack was that Ritter had overstepped his bounds:
Senate Democrats mounted a careful counterattack today against the American who resigned in protest last month from the weapons inspection team in Iraq.
The senior inspector, William Scott Ritter Jr., repeated his charges today that the Clinton Administration had blocked efforts by United Nations inspectors to ferret out Iraq's clandestine biological, chemical, nuclear and missile programs, even as Washington publicly supported the inspections.
At a rare joint Senate hearing, Democrats praised Mr. Ritter's dedication and candor, and even agreed with his frustration over the Administration decision to seek a diplomatic resolution rather than confront Iraq when Baghdad stymied inspectors.
But Democrats also said using military force to compel Iraq to allow the inspections was a complicated political and diplomatic decision that was not up to Mr. Ritter.
''That responsibility to take the nation to war is above your pay grade,'' said Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.
I’m well aware that a lot goes on that a little person like me doesn’t know about, but if Clinton’s goal was to pursue diplomatic channels to reign Saddam in, then good for him. Perhaps Ritter stepped over the line in criticizing Albright publicly in his resignation letter.
Good old Trotskyite World Socialist Website sums up the events that led to the hearings clearly.
At that point, Ritter was not the Daniel Ellsberg-type whistleblower he has since portrayed himself as being. He was a member of the gang who thought they were going soft.
Abe Rosenthal, long-dead and forgotten warmonger, loved Ritter.
Nevertheless, it was wrong for Biden to humiliate and brutalize an American citizen in public. It takes a peculiar talent to hold a strong hand and throw it away. His abuse of Ritter came in for across-the-board condemnation, and inadvertently drew attention to something the Democrats would rather have seen buried and forgotten. Biden’s heavy-handedness turned Ritter into a martyr. Ironically, it strengthened the hand of the people who thought Saddam was bluffing and that he did have WMDs. This was to have disastrous consequences down the line.
Accusing Ritter of fantasizing that he had the authority to declare war on Saddam is, in a word, sick.
Joe can’t just make a point and move on. He needs to dominate, subjugate, and brutalize any opponent, even if it makes him look bad. Biden is a sore winner who alienates even his allies. Think about that in the current context of war with Russia. And we are at war with Russia.
Here is the whole thing on video. Here is a transcript, which really must be read to appreciate what a petty tyrant Biden is.
A verbose petty tyrant. At one point Biden actually interrupts himself to define what the commonly-used phrase “at the end of the day” means. It’s in the midst of a sentence that rambles on and on and ends abruptly with no conclusion. Juxtapose that with use of the undefined term, “come to our milk” which I have never in all my years on earth have heard.
Also, note that Biden’s speech patterns are forceful and show no signs of a stutter.
A few years later, Ritter did an abrupt about-face about Saddam and WMDs. He’s an enigma.
Create your profile
Only paid subscribers can comment on this post
Check your email
For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.
Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.