Links in bold.
Of Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy wrote: “Every word she writes is a lie, including the words ‘and’ and ‘the.”
She repeated this on the Dick Cavett show on January 25, 1980, in response to a question. I remember watching the show. The audience burst into spontaneous, raucous laughter, as I did at home. Hellman responded by suing McCarthy.
That is how I feel about Biden. Every word he says is a lie, including the words ‘and’ and ‘the.’ I’m not important enough to be sued — I hope.
I never paid much attention to Biden because his political career coincided with a prolonged time with my head in the sand (2002—2021). He was just one of a hundred bloviating, blustering Senators, and from an unimportant state at that. Of course, I paid a little attention to the scene outside my bubble, but since Joe wasn’t a compelling figure like Obama or as annoying as Hillary, I ignored him.
So I knew very little about Biden until after the Afghanistan disengagement which, as I’ve repeated here to an almost tiresome degree, occasioned a Rip Van Winkle wake-up. I supported the disengagement and defended Biden from what I thought were unjust criticisms from people well outside the arena. Heavy is the head, and so on.
Since then, after reading and reflecting, 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.
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,
September 11… gosh, that date wouldn’t have symbolic significance, would it?
It was becoming clear that Biden was far worse than a hack-machine Democrat. Then I read Laptop From Hell. That was a rude awakening. But let’s not get into the weeds.
The delay obviously emboldened the Taliban, of which this statement is proof.
Of course, the delay gave the Taliban the opportunity to take over the country with relatively little bloodshed, whereupon we were kicked out ignominiously and anything that was tainted with our presence was a death sentence. Talk about telegraphing your punches.
Any disengagement would have been a bitter pill, but the way it happened was disgraceful.
The Trump Administration negotiated the agreement and Biden carried it out in a way to ensure the easiest possible win for the Taliban and the worst possible exit for the US as a power.
This is habit Biden has: everything is for show. Biden delayed the disengagement for the sake of appearances. Disaster followed.
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.”1
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’ve always hated Frontline: that gloomy music, the pompous voice-over, the appearance of giving information while you end up as confused as ever…. 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 proof that Biden overcame a stutter. I watched it. Biden sounds remarkably coherent, far 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 background and put all the factors together, you are left with the disquieting feeling that he is not a triumphant survivor, as many great men are, 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.
You take one look at him 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.
Whenever Joe comes up against people who push back against him, who are not impressed by the fact that he’s The Big Guy, disaster ensues.
His Senatorial career was distinguished by vengeful war mongering (archive link here).
Looking at a random sample of YouTube videos, it’s clear he relishes dehumanizing people.
Here he is, in characteristic style, advocating bombing Serbia with passionate enthusiasm. Years later a much diminished Biden offered the Serbs (fake) condolences.
You don’t have to love Scott Ritter to think that a Senator ought not humiliate a private citizen in a staged piece of political theater. Biden’s attack on Ritter has become notorious. However, I think that it’s been distorted and retconned. It’s important to set the record straight because truth, and because it’s a key to understanding Biden’s warped personality.
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 and that offended his sense of professional dignity. He publicly criticized then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for this.
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.
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.2
Abe Rosenthal, long-dead and now forgotten neocon, loved Ritter for the latter’s incorruptibility .
It was wrong for Biden to publicly humiliate and brutalize an American citizen just doing his duty, even if he might have overstepped the bounds a bit. 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 was 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.3 Juxtapose that with use of the bizarre phrase “come to our milk” which remains undefined. I've never come across it in my life. I googled it; all roads come back to Biden.
Also, note that Biden’s speech patterns are forceful and show no signs of a stutter.
Joe Biden is a bankrupt, empty human being who is leading us to disaster. He has no idea how to govern or build anything. He is a wholly destructive presence. As I age, the fear of God enters me through strange vessels. Joe Biden is one of them.
I think Ronald Reagan came from a somewhat strapped background, but he never made a show of that, which I find interesting.
A few years later, Ritter did an abrupt about-face about Saddam and WMDs. He’s an enigma.
“One -- and I hope that at the end of the day -- not literally this day, but the end of the debate and the political gain and loss that falls out from your appearance and the things you've raised -- I hope at the end of the day”