Posted on 09/24/2008 8:32:15 AM PDT by jazusamo
If Gov. Sarah Palin had ever looked at her first grade teacher cross-eyed, that would be a front-page story in the newspapers of the dishonest, fraudulent and biased mainstream media. Papers like that include The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer. However, if you're running on the Democratic side of the ticket, you can have a long record suggesting you're stupid, arrogant and dishonest and that will be ignored by the mainstream media.
Take the case of Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for vice president. Most people remember his famous plagiarism of a British politician that forced him out of his first run for the presidency in 1988. Fewer probably know, as The Washington Post reported, there was "the discovery of other quotations in Biden's speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians."
At least he steals from his own party. Fewer people probably know it was revealed he had a history of plagiarism going back to his law school days at Syracuse. But there's more, and it raises questions, as there seems to be a pattern of exaggeration and lying that went on even during his campaigning.
During the 1988 campaign, a reporter asked him about his law school record. Sen. Biden responded by saying he has a higher IQ than the reporter, and then proceeded to brag about his academic record. The only problem is that his claims are a series of lies:
* He said he "went to law school on a full academic scholarship." * He said he was the only one in his class to have such a scholarship. * He said he "ended up in the top half of his class." * He said he was "the outstanding student in the political science department." * He said he "graduated with three degrees from college."
Later he had to admit this was all wrong. You can decide for yourself whether you think he's lying. But in a statement at the time, Sen. Biden finally admitted, "I did not graduate in the top half of my class at law school and my recollection of this was inaccurate." He graduated 76th in a class of 85, dangerously close to the bottom. May I suggest this statement was stupid on more than one count.
First, why would anyone brag about graduating in the top half of your class. I can understand someone saying he was in the Top 10 percent or some such, but being in the top half is not exactly something to write home about. The second count of stupidity is that unless you're a total fool, you don't lie about or misrepresent your class standing, as it is something likely to be checked.
Third, he was trying to prove he had a higher IQ than a reporter, which was a stupid argument to get into in the first place. Fourth, being in the top half of a law school class certainly doesn't prove you've got a high IQ, as perhaps Sen. Biden so beautifully but unintentionally demonstrated. Fifth in the stupidity count, if you're running for the presidency and you have to bolster your ego by bragging about your law school class rank, you're running for the wrong office.
He was also wrong about receiving "three degrees" from his undergraduate university. He only received one degree. He also claims he meant to refer to the number of his majors, something entirely different than number of degrees. It turns out he was also wrong about the number of majors he had on his record. It was not three as claimed but only two. He had a single bachelor's degree with majors in history and political science (perhaps he should be given a third for exaggerating and lying). I might believe he may have just been mistaken in his recollection, if he wasn't boasting about so many things, and being wrong about all of them.
Did he really forget his law school rank? Did he really forget how many degrees he received? Did he really forget the number of his majors? We can all make up our own mind - but students work too hard to get their majors, their undergraduate degree and their law degree to then forget. If he did indeed forget all that it suggests stupidity. If he remembered and was lying, it suggests dishonesty and stupidity as well. Take your choice. And there's more.
On another of his boasts, he said, "With regard to my being the outstanding student in the political science department ... my name was put up for the award by David Ingersoll, who is still at the University of Delaware." So to his Walter Mitty imagination, Sen. Biden suggests being nominated for an award is the equivalent of being given the award. Maybe someone better tell him that certainly doesn't apply at the University of Delaware and it doesn't apply to presidential elections.
Finally, it turns out he did not go to Syracuse on a full scholarship, but received a half scholarship based on financial need. On the claim of a full scholarship, he said he doesn't recall paying any money to the law school, but "I'd have to confirm this." He also said that the law school "arranged for my first year's room and board by placing me as an assistant resident adviser in the undergraduate school." That also indicates he was not on a full scholarship as claimed.
But it gets still better as the Sen. Biden saga proceeds. He acknowledged in the testy exchange about his relative IQ that he was angry.
"I exaggerate when I'm angry, but I've never gone around telling people things that aren't true about me," he said. He just told a lie when he said he doesn't lie. Or maybe he meant to say I only lie when I'm angry.
In addition to habitual lying or exaggerating, every observer agrees Mr. Biden talks too much and says too little. The Web site, neveryetmelted.com says many think his loose talk often reflects muddled thinking and that he doesn't know what he thinks until he says it. One observer said in a Senate speech to explain his opposition to a bill, by the time he had finished speaking he seemed to have talked himself out of his original position.
Gaffe Machine Off To A Good Start
Sen. Biden has been labeled a gaffe machine, as the above account would suggest. He's off to a good start in the 2008 campaign. But if you would prefer to stick to the issues, recall he was selected because of his foreign policy experience. If you look at that experience, you find it is lengthy, but his main claim is he has a long and distinguished record of almost always being wrong on important foreign policy issues.
He was wrong on the war in Vietnam, voting against aid to the Vietnamese so they could defend themselves after we abandoned them; he was wrong on President Reagan's overwhelming success in fighting and winning the cold war; he was wrong in opposing the first Gulf War after Iraq had invaded and conquered Kuwait and he was wrong on the surge. The only thing he was right on was a vote in favor of the second Gulf War.
But Sen. Obama can't even claim that as his running mate sees that as almost a disqualification for high office. And I'm sure that Sen. Obama wouldn't be concerned with a little plagiarism by his running mate, as he's a practitioner of plagiarism himself. He borrowed many of his lines from his friend, Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. His defense was that he had permission to do so. But it is still plagiarism if you pass someone else's work as your own, with or without permission to do so.
Much of the mainstream media seems to be willing to forget his plagiarism, his exaggerations and his lies. But I'm absolutely sure they would not be so generous and forgiving if he were a Republican candidate for high office. And I'd stay with my conclusion: If a guy who is running for high office doesn't have enough sense not to lie about and exaggerate his own record he is clearly too stupid, and perhaps too dishonest, to be president.
But whether you buy these arguments about Sen. Biden, the more important matter relates to the mainstream media and its attempt to campaign for and sell Sens. Obama and Biden, without regard to their record and without vetting them or criticizing them in any way. As far as I'm concerned the Democratic ticket this year is Sen. Obama plus the mainstream media, in a elaborate maneuver to defraud the public into voting for a totally untested, untried, unvetted and unfit candidate, Barack Obama.
I'd like you to consider one other example of how far the mainstream media goes to put Sen. Obama in a good light and Sen. John McCain in a bad light. What they are doing represents one of the most outrageous and dangerous pieces of journalistic malfeasance in history.
Time Gets It Wrong
Consider the Sept. 29 cover of Time with the full page headline, "How Wall Street Sold Out America: They had a party. Now you're going to pay." I thought in this most ambitious presentation, they would not have the gall to totally ignore one side of the story that favors Sen. McCain. After all, they assigned two of their top editors and writers for this piece with 65 years of writing about business between them.
The two authors of the article are Andy Serwer, managing editor of Fortune, and Alan Sloan, a senior editor at large of Time. Yet I find that they slanted the article to tell the opposite of the truth and to make Sen. Obama look good and Sen. McCain bad. The article includes a picture of Sen. Obama with this boldface statement from him: "John McCain has been in Washington for 26 years and hasn't lifted a finger to reform the regulations that could've prevented this crisis."
The correct things should have been that Sen. Obama has been in Washington for less than one term, but hasn't lifted a finger to reform the regulations that could've prevented this crisis, even when Sen. McCain put such reforms on the table.
Time totally ignores the fact that Sen. McCain proposed legislation to prevent the excesses at Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac that are at the heart of the present mortgage crisis. He proposed the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 to correct the existing problems. He had precisely identified the problem and precisely outlined needed measures to correct the problem.
In his statement about that bill, he said, "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole."
Sen. McCain's reforms were defeated. Why? One reason is that the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., was the leader in campaign contributions coming from FannieMae/FreddyMac people. Those two institutions had become a lobbying, campaign and job center for Democrats, and were pumping millions into lobbying and into campaign contributions to prevent reform. Sen. Dodd received $133,900 in the period from 1989 to 2008. Close behind was Sen. Obama with $105,840.
But Sen. Obama has to be considered the real leader in contributions from these two organizations at the heart of the crisis. That's because Sen. Dodd has been in the Senate for many years, and Sen. Obama has almost caught up with him in less than his first term. Sen. Obama blamed the problem on crony capitalism, but he's in the middle of that crony capitalism.
Also in the top five of friends of Fannie and Freddie are Sen. John Kerry, the last Democratic nominee for president; Sen. Hillary Clinton; and Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa. Among the top 25 friends of Fannie and Freddie include Democratic Party leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif; Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill.; and Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. It's all one big happy family with plenty of money and influence for all.
The authors of the Time piece omitted another key element. It was President Clinton and the Democratic leadership, which pressured for lower mortgage standards to increase home ownership. But they pushed their plan too far, resulting in mortgages without down payments and with homebuyers without the income to support the mortgages being granted.
The authors of the Time piece also omit that one of Sen. Obama's most important advisers is Jim Johnson, a former head of Fannie Mae.
In fact, Mr. Johnson headed the original committee appointed by Sen. Obama to find a vice-president. When the Fannie Mae scandal broke, he was removed from the position and made an adviser on economics. Another Sen. Obama adviser is Franklin Raines, another former head of Fannie Mae. Both of these advisers were on board at Fannie Mae as accounting irregularities and other abuses went down that in turn led to the present crisis. They both took tens of millions of compensation.
The bottom line is that Time puts two of its top writers to work to produce the cover story on the crisis and they tell only half the story, the half that makes Sen. McCain look bad and Sen. Obama look good. When the whole story is told, Sen. McCain looks like he was years ahead, looks like the maverick that put his country first and politics last, and looks like a prophet who saw the problem before others and had the right analysis and right solution. Sen. Obama looks like the speechmaker without substance that he is. He did nothing, but now Sen. Obama makes speeches trying to blame the very man who deserves the most credit for getting it right years before anyone else.
So the crisis we face can best be traced to Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, to a greedy and negligent Wall Street, to politicians like Sens. Obama and Dodd who were asleep at the switch and even resisted needed reforms when they were placed on the legislative table. The mainstream media now tries to distort the truth in an apparent effort to elect a totally unqualified man to the highest office of the land.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
Yep, and we’ll see this from the enemedia on a daily basis. Thanks for linking.
Herb Denenberg does his homework and writes very good pieces, consistently.
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