On Meet the Press, Sen. Graham flopped on his original positions on off shore drilling in his neck of the woods and Sen. Biden laughs at his phony argument at about the 2:40 mark of the clip and cuts his flipped positions into itty, bitty pieces. Most of us know that we can’t drill our way out of the problem, but McCain and Graham are turning into Wall Street Zombies that now believe ANWR and off shore drilling will be the answer.
MR. WILLIAMS: Senator Graham, this is what people are talking about. Myrtle Beach Sun News, “The Senate … may consider lifting bans on exploring for oil and natural gas along the East and West coasts of the [U.S.] … `I feel terrible about that,’ Graham said. `The worst thing we can do as a nation is taking the easy way out. … If you start opening up offshore drilling, then you are buying time and you are not addressing the fundamental problem with fossil fuels.’” So you see the argument, you made it.
Biden: hahaha
Goober Graham says that the price increases on oil and gas have changed his mind and position. Why should it? Before he didn’t want to take the “easy way out” on our energy crisis, but know….well…McCain needs his help. The prices reflect badly on conservative principles that have governed our country under Bush. Since Graham is a co-conspirator to the Bush administration—why should we even consider his views on energy and oil at all? They have no credibility and should be ignored. At least they should be challenged by the media instead of having two different camps debating about it. Change in leadership and political philosophy is needed not Lawrence Kudlow talking points.
If only the media would take the time to explain the issues to the peeps instead of reading press releases. As Biden said—it’ll take ten years to even begin getting any oil. And why didn’t Williams ask Graham to explain himself after Biden’s answer? He went to another topic. Full transcript below the fold via MSNBC:
One of the traditional roles for a presidential running mate is a willingness — and ideally, a propensity — to be an “attack dog,” going after the rival party and saying the things the candidate would say, if he or she wasn’t trying to appear above the fray.
It’s probably too soon to talk too seriously about Joe Biden’s chances of making the ticket, but if he’s auditioning for the part, and hoping to prove himself as a sufficiently aggressive pugilist, I think he’s doing an awfully good job.
We learned this week, for example, that John McCain has completely reversed course on the White House’s authority to conduct warrantless searches of Americans’ phone calls and emails. Six months ago, asked specifically whether federal statutes trumped a president’s war-time authority, McCain said, “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law.” Now, McCain has apparently given up on this, and embraced the Bush administration’s “sweeping theories of executive authority.”
Biden, not willing to let opportunities like these pass him by, pounced. (via mcjoan)
Joe Biden was going to be John Kerry’s secretary of State. “That was what we were led to believe” before Kerry lost to George W. Bush in ‘04, says an aide to the Delaware senator, who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Now Biden, who has been to foreign policy in the Senate what Ted Kennedy has been to domestic policy (almost anyway!), is emerging as a major consigliere to Barack Obama—perhaps with his eye on State once again. Among the top items on Biden’s agenda: making sure that Obama has better luck in November than Kerry did. That means, first, relentlessly attacking and counterattacking the Republicans on the campaign trail, especially on national-security issues. And, second, relentlessly defining John McCain as “joined at the hip” to Bush, as Biden put it in a speech in Washington on Tuesday. Read more…
Sen. Joe Biden was on ABC’s THIS WEEK and took President Bush and John McCain to the woodshed over their latest attacks on the entire Democratic Party including Barack Obama over their negotiating in any form with Iran. He busts Bush for being a complete hypocrite. Wow, who knew? Bush asked Biden to negotiate with Gaddafi and he did. And I think it turned out pretty good. And since Gates and Condi want to talk with Iran too, what does Biden think about that? Fire those appeasers now! I’m sure McCain will agree.
STEPHANOPOULOS: It sounds like you’re calling it hypocrisy.
BIDEN: Well, I should — I’m trying to be more polite, but I shouldn’t be. It was ridiculous. This is president — this is pure, unadulterated politics. And the last point I’ll make — maybe the president doesn’t know — I’ll be a smart guy, here –maybe he doesn’t know what’s going on in his own administration. But as soon as he gets back, he should fire, as appeasers, Gates…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Secretary of defense? BIDEN: … and Rice — secretary of defense and secretary of state.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Why? BIDEN: Because they both — Gates as recently as a week ago –said, we’ve got to sit down and talk with the Iranian directly.
Senator Joe Biden quickly responded to President Bush’s calculated and idiotic attacks in Jerusalem.
“This is bulls**t. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement,”
Democrats on Thursday condemned President Bush’s insinuation that they would be appeasing terrorist states by holding talks, with one going so far as to call his remarks “bulls**t
Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that if the president disagrees so strongly with the idea of talking to Iran, then he needs to fire his secretaries of state and defense, both of whom Biden said have pushed to sit down with the Iranians.
Senator Joe Biden appeared on This Week today and made his positions on the CIA torture tape scandal very clear. Biden says he he not only thinks the destruction of the CIA tapes constitutes obstruction of justice, he believes the scandal goes straight to the White House. He also makes it clear that he doesn’t trust Attorney General Michael Mukasey and calls for an independent special prosecutor to take over the case.
Senator Biden also lays out some truth about Bush’s rhetoric on Iran and their now-defunct nuclear weapons program. Links for that video below.
On Tuesday’s Hardball, Senator Joe Biden appeared with Chris Matthews and talked about the new NIE report that showed Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Biden said last week that if the president chose to bypass Congress and invade Iran he would immediately call for his impeachment.
Biden stood behind those comments today, saying they were a warning to President Bush and that he has no constitutional authority to take us to war without congressional approval.
Sen. Joe Biden said in an interview at the New Hampshire Union Leader this afternoon that too many Democrats, including the frontrunners for the presidential nomination, do not have faith in the American people.
“We’ve got to trust the American people more,” Biden said.
“I think they’ve really lost faith in the American people in terms of leveling with them,” he said of his leading rivals.
When he asks groups of Democrats if they think the American people are stupid because they elected George W. Bush twice, most respond that, yes, they do, he said. He said he thinks that attitude is a real problem for the Democrats, who fail to understand how smart and pragmatic the American people really are.
So far, so good. I don’t think that many of us would disagree that the current bunch of Democratic candidates do seem to be underestimating the American people. Certainly, they could do a much better job of recognizing that we’re looking for people who won’t be afraid to stand up and say what needs to be said, rather than triangulate and be careful.
But then, Joe has to go slip into his typical Bidenness and go into wanker territory. *sigh* Joe, Joe, Joe..
He said Democrats would do better if they stopped dividing the electorate by playing to their base and instead brought people together. He criticized the left wing of his party for demonizing the rich and Republicans.
“Rich folks are as patriotic as poor folks, but we don’t talk that way,” he said.[..]
What to think about this tough talk about his own party? He was talking with the publisher and editorial writer of the New Hampshire Union Leader, as well as our chief political reporter, so perhaps he was playing to the crowd. But he knew the interview was on the record and was being recorded, and he certainly wasn’t afraid that it would come back to bite him later. He acknowledged that such comments get him into trouble with liberals, but he expressed what seemed to be genuine frustration with what he saw as missed opportunities to broaden the party’s appeal.
Nothing like buying into Republican framing there, Joe.
Joe Biden says the U.S. should consider Pat Leahy’s proposal that “U.S. aid to the Musharraf government should stop until constitutional order, civil liberties and judicial independence are restored, until political prisoners are released, and until free and fair elections are allowed.” That’s probably not a bad idea, especially seeing as how we’re just finding out that “the great bulk of the more than $10 billion we’ve given to Pakistan since 9/11 has been in the form of unsupervised and unaudited cash transfers” with which Musharraf has been free to do whatever he wants. He then sums up what we’re facing in Pakistan right now about as well as anyone:
Blitzer: How worried are you Senator about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal: the security of those nuclear bombs?
Biden: I’m very concerned about it, not immediately but over the next year to two years. Look Wolf, Pakistan is bigger than Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea combined. There’s 156 million people. They have 24 to 55 nuclear weapons. They have not only the bomb, the thermonuclear device, they have the missile that can couple with the bomb and it can fly all the way to the Mediterranean.
I mean, here we’re fixating on Iran and here you have a country that in fact if you don’t get some accommodation for the vast middle of that country, I worry that over time you wind up with a situation like you had with the Shah of Iran 30 years ago. The moderates got so frustrated, they joined with the extremists. What happened? The Shah got overthrown, then the moderates got crushed by the extremists. This is not an easy thing. This requires a policy, an overall policy including an Afghan policy which affects what’s going on in Pakistan.
A visibly emotional Sen. Joe Biden and Chris Matthews discuss the ramifications of Gen. Petraeus’s surprisingly unvarnished answer that he couldn’t say that our presence in Iraq was making us any safer.
MATTHEWS: But if the commander over there can’t justify the deaths of these soldiers, because it serves a national purpose and makes us safer then what the hell are we doing there? [..]
BIDEN: …This is…this is heartwrenching. They refer to every one of those bodies as a fallen angel. They put six fallen angels on that aircraft. And you know, Chris, um…what do you say? Why did they fall? What do you say? What do you say to their parents? What do you say to those, those troops? And you know what? They’re incredible, Chris. I’m not one of these guys that gets on every time and talks about “I love the military” and the rest. But let me tell you something, Chris: I’ve been over there 8 times. These kids are brave. They get in these vehicles every damn day. They ride out on those roads, some of them having been hit already, knowing that their chance to get blown away is overwhelming and they do it every day.
Dodd is out of the Fox News/CBC debate joining Obama, Edwards and Richardson. Chris joined FDL/Blue America for a live blogging session a little while ago…MoveOn is calling on readers to ask Biden why he's still involved. "Joe Biden for President: 302-574-2008"
On yesterday's "Hardball" Chris Matthews was in rare form and fired up about Iraq, Immigration and fact-free Republican Presidential candidates. During his interview with Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) he slams President Bush for his Iraq rhetoric and playing the terror card when it suits him, but his main target was Republican Presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani. Matthews questions why Giuliani has been allowed to spout off the wall , fact-freetalking points and nobody has stepped up to challenge him. I think this quote to Biden after watching a clip of Giuliani says it all:
Clearly having had enough of Republican colleagues putting their blind loyalty to George W. Bush ahead of American opinion and the lives of our troops, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) gave a powerful speech on the Senate floor Wednesday in which he ripped the GOP for their failure to lead and fulfill their duties to our country.
Saying "our troops don't lose wars, bad polices, bad leadership loses wars," Biden, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, let loose during comments before the vote to even open debate on the Democratic proposal to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by this time next year.
Joe Biden's presidential campaign may be over before it started: Here's the unbelievably stupid thing that the Delaware Democrat said about Barack Obama, in an interview published today:
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
He probably doesn't even realize what he said was offensive. Should he be given the benefit of the doubt?
On Meet the Press, Sen. Graham flopped on his original positions on off shore drilling in his neck of the woods and Sen. Biden laughs at his phony argument at about the 2:40 mark of the clip and cuts his flipped positions into itty, bitty pieces. Most of us know that we can’t drill our way out of the problem, but McCain and Graham are turning into Wall Street Zombies that now believe ANWR and off shore drilling will be the answer. 
Download | Play 
Download | Play (h/t Heather)
Newsweek’s Michael Hirsch is 
A visibly emotional Sen. Joe Biden and Chris Matthews discuss the ramifications of Gen. Petraeus’s surprisingly unvarnished answer that he couldn’t say that our presence in Iraq was making us any safer.
On yesterday's "Hardball" Chris Matthews was in rare form and fired up about Iraq, Immigration and fact-free Republican Presidential candidates. During his interview with Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) he slams President Bush for his Iraq rhetoric and playing the terror card when it suits him, but his main target was Republican Presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani. Matthews questions why Giuliani has been allowed to spout 
It seems Joe has a slight ethnic problem.