Milbank writes: "There is no surer way to convince people you are going nuts than to stand in front of a crowd and announce that you are not going nuts."
Joe Biden. (photo: Michael Dwyer/AP)
If This Is the Democrats Best Hope, They Better Start Praying
29 August 19
This opinion piece by Dana Milbank at the Washington Post really illustrates how serious Biden's gaffe and misstatements problems are. The case can be made that Biden is not as bad as Trump, but that's a super low bar. The case cannot be made that Joe Biden is a stellar candidate. This is a very real problem. - MA/RSN
here is no surer way to convince people you are going nuts than to stand in front of a crowd and announce that you are not going nuts.
�I want to be clear: I�m not going nuts,� Joe Biden declared at a campaign stop Friday as he struggled to identify the location of a speech he had just given.
Nothing is more likely to raise doubts about your mental acuity than to misidentify the state you are in. �What�s not to like about Vermont?� Biden asked on Saturday � in New Hampshire. He previously confused Burlington, Iowa, with Burlington, Vt.
And nothing will get your relatives to demand power of attorney more rapidly than misplacing a decade. �Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King had been assassinated in the �70s, the late �70s, when I got engaged,� Biden said last week.
Oh, God love me! What is this malarkey?
The former vice president has admitted to being a �gaffe machine.� That�s false modesty. He is the Lamborghini of gaffes.
He announced that �poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.� He located the El Paso and Dayton mass-shootings in �Houston� and �Michigan.� He recalled a visit with survivors of the 2018 Parkland shooting � before the shooting happened.
He confused �Margaret Thatcher� with Theresa May and Angela Merkel, referred to the Second Amendment as the First, tripled the number of casualties of the 1970 Kent State shooting and mixed up his campaign website with a text-message code. At the Iowa State Fair, he thundered: �We choose truth over facts!�
Less felicitously, he also joked about gay waiters, entitled millennials and his too-tactile ways � and praised a segregationist�s �civility.� Things got so bad that Biden�s neurologist offered a virtual doctor�s note, telling Politico that he�s �as sharp as he was 31 years ago.�
True. Biden has been churning out malapropisms since 1987, when he was still delivering Neil Kinnock�s speeches.
This is the man who claimed �I�ve known eight presidents, three of them intimately.� Even with such intimate knowledge, he later confided: �I�d rather be at home making love to my wife while my children are asleep.�
He proclaimed Barack Obama �the first African American in the history of the United States.� During a rally, he called attention to �a three-letter word: jobs.� He once introduced his running mate as �Barack America.�
Some say it�s unfair to draw attention to Biden when President Trump is the most mendacious politician ever. I disagree: Biden�s gaffes are to be celebrated, for they make him exciting. When he opens his mouth, nobody knows what is going to come out � least of all Biden.
Biden once said to a paralyzed man in a wheelchair: �Stand up, Chuck.� He mourned one woman (�God rest her soul�) who hadn�t died. He described Obama as �the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.�
He disclosed that Franklin D.�Roosevelt went on television in 1929, before TV existed. He predicted that if Obama were elected, �we�re going to have an international crisis.� He declared that Hillary Clinton �might have been a better pick than me� for vice president. He reported that �you cannot go to a 7-Eleven .?.?. unless you have a slight Indian accent.� He frankly told one audience: �You all look dull as hell.�
Who can forget him saying �this is a big f---ing deal� after Obamacare�s passage? Or admitting, as he tried to sell the stimulus, �There�s still a 30 percent chance we�re going to get it wrong�?
I am so certain that Biden�s gaffes will propel him to victory that I have written him a draft acceptance speech, based on actual Bidenisms, for the Democratic convention in Milwaukee:
Hello, Memphis! Ladies, gentlemen and other genders � there are at least three! � I say: This is a big f---ing deal! I see poor kids in the arena and I see white kids. I see Grandpa Finnegan, God rest his soul!
I would not be here in Manchester accepting your nomination without the support of articulate, clean black people. And you disabled veterans � stand up! I have known you intimately. And so I say: I would rather be making love to my wife! You are a dull audience.
Fellow Democrats, there is a 30 percent chance everything I do will be wrong. Bernie, Elizabeth, Kamala and the others would have been better picks than me. But I am here because of a three-letter word: TRUTH. We choose truth over facts! If elected, I promise: We will have an international crisis. Let me be clear: I am not going nuts! So go to my website number and help me. Vote for Joe America! Good night, Montgomery!
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Just as the scholar athlete was a sad, sick fiction by the year 1900 so has the notion of an upright sports figure been a sham. The team owners and the NFL, NBA and all the other money makers protect the cash flow stream and throw human bodies and lives under the nearest bus whenever it becomes necessary and convenient.
spoken like someone who has never been raped. WTF Are you saying here? are you like the "friend" i had who, when i spoke about the effects of a brutal assault and rape where i had been drugged, told me to just get over it. i did. i stuffed it down and twelve years later could barely hold a job i was such a mess. IT IS Serious.
and men who are raped, while a smalles percentage, suffer terribly as well. my brother was raped at 14 and after a lifetime of drugs and depression finally at the age of 52, told someone and Finally began to heal.
take their dicks too seriously? naa. we should just take their dicks. castrate the rapists.
I DID take rapes (4 of them) too personally, too seriously until I stopped being a victim and subliminally, at least, took back my victimhood though humor and "MADE" (at least virtually) my rapists impotent! Now I say to all men: "Instead of HAVING YOUR DICK, YOUR "DICK" HAS YOU!" Only rapists and/or potential rapists, men who use strength, weapons, etc., to take women by force, etc., become defensive upon hearing, reading this. Real men have intent to make love with women who are willing partners.
You need to seek treatment and get clarity as soon as possible for what strength, sexuality, death, fantasy.... and a what a man actually is. I would suggest talk therapy as soon as possible.
Thank you for suggesting a brand new (fantasy) genre for my writing: "You have created a violent narrative for rape victims...an endless cycle of surviving vioence without result..." Do you want to be my editor? Or do you want to be my talk therapist, or do you want to provide "...(C)larity.. .for what strength, sexuality, death, fantasy... and what a man actually is"? lmao
They say Aaron Hernandez was able to compartmentaliz e his life to lead a 'double life' of gangster violence and NFL. The opposites is true: he DIDN'T compartmentaliz e - his whole life is a unity of aggression. It is the rest of the NFL cult that are compartmentaliz ing. Nice law abiding citizens for 6 days and blood thirsty brutes on Sunday. The supposed Sabbath for these deluded millions.
Social Darwinism and wanton violence as entertainment.
Social Darwinism and domestic violence when the compartmentaliz ing breaks down.
My last job was crushed by a "manager" who once stood before all of us and told us our MBA students "needed a good beating." He then seemed to brag that "my grandmother used to beat us a lot, and would make us go into the woods and get a switch for the beating, and if it wasn't big enough she would send us back."
He shifted our entire program from one of positive, cooperative faculty and student relations to cutthroat, selfish, backstabbing attitudes. He divided us. And tried to bully us--I and a few others would not tolerate it.
The Adrian Peterson case finally woke me up. I realized one reason the manager and I were so different was because my parents never beat me--they shared highly effective reasoning to teach and guide me and my siblings--and I shared the same leadership with my daughter. The manager had several kids, and odds are he beat them.
Management science needs to study this. I believe it has huge workplace implications.
This info indicts the sport as having more guilt on the issue as the violence is spread outside of the team members and across to the fan base. Maybe the fault is in the sport as an industry itself.