By: Joel Gaines
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Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona is leading a charge in the senate over yet another high priority issue of the Obama administration – this one involving Russia.
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We talked last week about the unplanned visit VP Biden made to soothe our allies that the Obama administration threw under the bus recently. This is about the missile defense plan which was trashed, then recreated by the Obama administration. They’ve run into some problems with the new plan.
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A couple items on healthcare today – including a statement by Joe Lieberman that might surprise you.
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Dem Senator Baucus took a look at the senate’s global warming bill and said he had serious reservations about backing it – even as President Obama praised the bill – what’s the rift?
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The question is being asked – when will President Obama visit Afghanistan or Iraq?
By: Joel Gaines
Presidential Candidate Barak Obama made the single most significant move to ensure he will not be elected President in 2008. He chose Senator Joe Biden as his running mate.
Now, Joe Biden is supposed to bring the experience to the Obama campaign that Senator Obama himself lacks, particularly in the foreign policy arena. This is the man, a Senator since 1973, who told America that Barack Obama is not ready to be president – the same thing Joe Liebermann is being threatened for saying. Joe Biden also stated that the Presidency is not a place for On the job training – again referring to the total national policy experience of Senator Obama of 3 ½ years – during which Senator Obama has written not one memorable speech or significant piece of legislation.
Senator Biden is supposed to ground the Obama campaign in experience and foreign policy credentials. But we are talking about a Senator who says things like we need a surge in Afghanistan because the surge in Iraq didn’t work. Who says that just because Anbar province is now only as safe as south central Los Angeles on a given night, that the Iraqis are not making the kind of progress that shows they are ready to stand up for themselves. That the Sunni’s and Shia are engaged in a civil war, and that a strong central government is a bad idea in Iraq – that they should have a loose central government, with strong provincial governments. This is laughable, when you look at the democratic party policies which seek to drive a over-arching strong, central government, involved in every aspect of American lives.
Only Joe Biden can turn Gen Patreus’ statement that things have gotten much better since the surge into a statement that shows how it is now working. Only Joe Biden can tell Ambassador Crocker that the Awakening movement by the Sunnis in Iraq is an insignificant political accomplishment. Only Joe Biden can make a racist comment about needing “a slight Indian accent” to go into any dunkin donuts or gas station quick mart in Delaware.” Joe Biden, who qualifies his ability to campaign in the south and not be seen as a typical Northeastern Liberal with the reply that Delaware was a slave state, so he can campaign just fine in South Carolina – thank you very much.
Joe Biden is a blessing to the 2008 presidential elections – he is capable of telling us that Barack Obama is much more experienced this month than he was last month. He is capable of telling the American people that he would be proud to run either with or against John McCain one month and that McCain is Bush III another.
Joe Biden is going to bring 25 years of risk to the Democratic party. 25 years of policy statements that show exactly how far left he is. He is one of the few Senators – like Senator Obama – to vote against the Iraq resolution. He tells us that Pakistan is a bigger threat to the US than Iran because Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. He says we should not be worried about Iran because they will not be able to produce nearly the amount of nuclear material that Pakistan has. This is his logic. A nuclear Iran – determined to wipe Israel off of the map – is not nearly the threat that Pakistan is. We should work for a stable Pakistan and Ignore Iran. Senator Biden, why can’t we help stabilize Pakistan AND prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons? Is Barack Obama only capable of one foreign policy interaction at a time?
Now, Joe Biden does have several differences with Senator Obama – things that make them unlikely partners, except politics makes for strange bedfellows as they say. Senator Biden is against partial birth abortion. Senator Biden believes life begins at conception. But, then he goes back to the liberal Democratic Party line –
should a parent know if their minor child is going to get an abortion? No.
Should those who harm an unborn fetus during the commission of a crime be penalized for that? No.
Voted YES on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. (Apr 2007)
Voted NO on prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion. (Mar 2008)
Human cloning? That’s just fine with Senator Biden
• Civil unions ok; gay marriage is probably inevitable. (Apr 2007) – a position counter to Biden’s supposed deep religious convictions.
• Voted YES on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002) and we have seen what “prosecuting hate crimes” have done in America. Absolutely nothing. There is no crime under this stupid, stupid legislation that is not prosecutable under another law. Hate Crimes legislation is about thought control. It is about political correctness and nothing more.
• Hire more teachers and pay them for smaller classes. (Dec 2007) – how about we go a step further than this. Why don’t we actually professionalize the teaching vocation? Why don’t we invest in our teachers before they become teachers? Why not have teachers go through an educational experience much like doctors do? Pay teachers a salary that is commensurate with their benefit to American society. We throw billions of dollars at education and rarely does that money get to the teachers or the classrooms.
• For longer school day & school year, & 16-year minimum. (Oct 2007) – My kids are exhausted by the time they get home from school and by the end of the year, not only are the kids done in, but so are the teachers. This is not going to produce more productive learning – it will create less productive environments.
• Sent kids to private school after death of their mother. (Jul 2007)
Voted for NCLB
• The energy challenge take sacrifice and is a moral crusade. (Dec 2007)
• FactCheck: Oil did not jump $18/bbl due to Iran Resolution. (Dec 2007)
• Supports cap-and-trade for greenhouse gases. (Nov 2007) – this basically creates a penalty system for pollution. So, if I exceed the emissions set by some government organization, I get penalized in dollars. However, if I want to exceed these standards, all I have to do is pay for a permit to emit at a higher rate at some price set by the permits market. So, basically, we are setting up a means to bargain with the emissions without a necessity for actually DOING anything about them, as long as we pay off the government. That’s right. The cap and trade system benefits no one except the government who has their fingers in anything that is regulatory or with the word PERMIT in it.
• Voted YES on tax incentives for energy production and conservation. (Jun 2008)
• Voted YES on removing oil & gas exploration subsidies. (Jun 2007)
• Voted YES on factoring global warming into federal project planning. (May 2007)
• Voted YES on disallowing an oil leasing program in Alaska’s ANWR. (Nov 2005)
• Voted YES on banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Mar 2005)
• Voted YES on Bush Administration Energy Policy. (Jul 2003)
Joe Biden is the perfect candidate to run with Barack Obama. Joe Biden is a study in opposites. He opposes his own positions on a regular basis and he opposes many of the positions of his own running mate. They are opposites on enough issues that questions are going to arise on two fronts:
1) Barack Obama has 3 ½ years of policy experience and Joe Biden has 25 – who will really be running the country, if they are elected?
2) Barack Obama and Joe Biden disagree so markedly on several really important issues – what comes out of that?
Now, Joe Biden is a dynamic speaker. He comes ready-made to pound out statements about his knowledge and deep understanding of certain topics. If you listen to him, you’ll feel this too. But I am here to tell you, he has been fact-checked as much as anyone else in the past 2 years and a lot of his “facts” are figments of his own imagination. And that is exactly what we are dealing with here, America – Imagination. The imagined Presidential candidate – made from whole cloth as the Democratic party messiah is paired up with a VP candidate who could not gain the interest of the American people in 1988. He did not gain the interest of the American people as presidential candidate this year. I do not see Joe Biden energizing the American people as VP to a pretender.
