Sure, I don't want Donald Trump again, but do I want a "Kinder,
Gentler Democratic version?
According to presidential candidate Joe Biden, "I was in a caucus with
James O. Eastland. He never called me 'boy.' He always
called me 'son.'" And Biden told this story with a southern accent.
Seriously. It apparently never occurred to him that Eastland never called
him "boy" because he was white.
Looks to me as if Joe Biden dreams of the same old "Great Days" that
Donald Trump sings about. Those days when we all got along together
and spoke with respect...as long as we were White and lived on the
right side of the tracks.
Those were the same, "Good Old Days", when my assistant in the drapery
factory was called "Boy", by the "Men" working in the Produce Houses.
Those were the days when my first father in law referred to basketball
players as, Jigaboos, and NFL football players as Jungle Bunnies and
Spooks. I wonder if old Uncle Joe Biden was ever called any of those
names? Good old days my ass! Open discrimination is what it
was...and still is! If Joe Biden can't get that message through his
Southern Senator Loving head, then I sure don't want him representing
me and mine.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/21/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Biden Has No Idea What He Did Wrong
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
21 June 19
Joe Biden says some dumb things. He admits to it. He once told reporters,
"I've done some dumb things. And I'll do dumb things again." He sure has.
Biden's "dumb things" can be divided into two categories. First, he often
says things that just simply aren't true. He embellishes his stories and,
indeed, he sometimes just makes them up out of whole cloth. His plagiarized
speech in 1987, when he essentially stole the life story of former UK
Labour
Party leader Neil Kinnock, forced him to drop out of the race. More on that
in a minute. At least nobody gets hurt when Biden starts riffing.
Second, and more troubling, Biden is often wrong on the issues - really,
seriously wrong - at least where progressives are concerned. And his
knee-jerk reaction is to double down before finally admitting his mistake
and hoping that people just forget about it.
Earlier this week, Biden felt compelled to defend himself against
accusations that he may be too "old fashioned" for today's Democratic
Party.
He tried to turn that into a positive, saying that his old traditionalism
harkened back to a better era, where gentility reigned in the US Senate.
That wasn't good enough, though. Biden felt compelled to give an example.
And so he said, with a completely straight face, that when he was first
elected to the Senate in 1972 he became friendly with two of the most rabid
segregationists in the body - Senators James O. Eastland (D-Miss.) and
("the
meanest man I ever met") Herman Tallmadge (D-Ga.). According to a reporter
for The New York Times who heard the words directly from Biden's mouth, "I
was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me 'boy.' He always
called me 'son.'" And Biden told this story with a southern accent.
Seriously. It apparently never occurred to him that Eastland never called
him "boy" because he was white.
As New York Mayor Bill de Blasio remarked on Twitter the next day, "It's
2019 & @JoeBiden is longing for the good old days of 'civility' typified by
James Eastland. Eastland thought my multiracial family should be illegal
and
that whites were entitled to 'the pursuit of dead n**gers." Biden has no
idea what he did wrong.
How could Biden work with the likes of Eastland and Tallmadge, let alone
wax
poetic about their relationship? What could they possibly have in common?
Well, as he has repeatedly told reporters, "Delaware was a slave state."
Race aside, Biden has been tone-deaf on a number of issues of major
importance to progressive voters. He supported and repeatedly voted to fund
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He attacked and humiliated Anita Hill
during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings. He
supported
and voted for the Hyde Amendment, which blocked the use of Medicaid to pay
for abortions. He wrote the federal government's civil asset forfeiture law
along with another of his segregationist pals, Senator Strom Thurmond
(R-S.C.)
Biden also has something of a reputation as a liar. His lies are relatively
minor - entertaining, even. But they're lies nonetheless. Why would
somebody
who has accomplished as much as Joe Biden has lie about his background?
Isn't that what we criticize Donald Trump for doing?
Take this wonderful Biden quote from The New York Times: "When I marched in
the civil rights movement, I did not march with a 12-point program. I
marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes. And we
changed
attitudes!" That's great, except that Joe Biden never marched in the civil
rights movement. Never. His aides, according to the Times, have "gently
reminded him" that the story simply isn't true. But he keeps telling it
anyway.
This penchant for hyperbole and weakness for plagiarizing the work of
others
has caught up with Biden in the past. He had to drop out of the 1988 race
for president after a Dukakis campaign staff member gave a Washington Post
reporter a videotape showing UK Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and Biden
side-by-side. Kinnock said, "Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand
generations to be able to get to university?" Then referring to his
ancestors, some of whom worked in the coal mines, he said, "Was it because
all our predecessors were thick? Those people who could sing and play and
recite and write poetry? Those people who could work eight hours
underground
and then come up and play football?"
Biden, in his own speech, said, "Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in
his family ever to go to a university? Is it because I'm the first Biden in
a thousand generations to get a college and graduate degree? That I was
smarter than the rest? Those same people who read poetry and wrote poetry
and taught me how to sing verse? Is it because they didn't work hard? My
ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would
come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours?"
Besides stealing the language from Kinnock, Biden never had any relatives
who worked in the coal mines.
2020 marks the third time Joe Biden has run for president. He
self-destructed in the Kinnock affair in 1987. In 2008, he dropped out the
day after the Iowa caucuses after coming in fifth and securing less than
one
percent of the vote. Now, in 2019, after having been Vice President of the
United States for eight years, he can only muster 32 percent in the latest
polls. That's not a ringing endorsement.
The truth of the matter, at least in my view, is that the country doesn't
want a "President Joe Biden." We've tested him out over the past 31 years
and we've decided that we just don't like this model. Biden is no longer
the
young firebrand from the 70s. He's become the senior statesman that he
always campaigned against. It's just that he doesn't yet see that his time
has passed. It's time for a change.
Email This Page
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior
investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the
sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the
Espionage
Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a
result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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