Joe Biden: Official Mascot of the Democrat Party

 After watching last night’s vice presidential debate between Paul Ryan and Joe Biden, all I can say of Joe Biden is this:  what a jackass.  No wonder the donkey is the mascot of the Democrat party.  What a jerk.

He was rude, smarmy, arrogant, condescending, snarky, mocking, disrespectful, and wrong about so much.  He was said to have interrupted Paul Ryan between 80 and 90 times during the 90 minute debate.  That would be just about every minute.

The funny thing is, Biden might have won the debate if he’d just followed the rules of courtesy, instead of hee-hawing like a provincial schoolboy.  Independents would have been in agreement with him about the cost of the wars in the Middle East, although he was wrong about the expense scale:  our highest budget item is social entitlements.

The Independents would probably agree with him that Afghanistan should fight its own wars.  Period.  (That was another problem with Biden; it wasn’t his place to decide when a debate was over).  If the reason for our being in Afghanistan was the ostensible, public argument:  to get Bin Laden (who was actually in Pakistan), his argument might have been valid.  But the real reason for our being in Afghanistan was to doing China’s dirty work in clearing out the Taliban, to make rare-mineral mining easier for the Chinese.  What he should have said was, “Let China fight her own wars.”

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan missed some opportunities, though in general his arguments were clear, concise, considered and well-delivered.  He must have been coached on Biden’s provocative attempts to draw him into an angry debate.  However, he could have easily answered Biden’s charge that he voted for Medicare D under the Bush Administration by pointing out that so did Biden.

Where Biden then charged Ryan with supporting the Medicare (and Social Security) programs the GOP opposed, Ryan could have even more easily pointed out that it was the Democrats who first got the American people addicted to these costly programs, leaving the Republicans with the task of finding a way to pay for it and phase it out without hurting the workers who had paid for these programs through their income taxes and were naturally expecting the pay-out they were promised.  Ryan needn’t have feared Biden’s wrath; he would have sounded compassionate and sensible.

Ryan is young and not as experienced at taking on snakes like Biden, although he was well aware of Biden’s reputation in the Senate for his nastiness.  Biden harped on Ryan in every statement, complaining that Ryan was taking more than his allotted time.  That was the one time Ryan did come back at him, reminding Biden the reason for the extra time was because he kept interrupting.  This one come-back resulted in the bickering exchange that Ryan’s coaches probably warned him about, and why he avoided making them.

When Biden wasn’t interrupting Ryan directly, he was talking to himself, cackling, shaking his head, gesturing, and performing every distraction in the book to interrupt Ryan’s train of thought and the audience’s attention on what Ryan was saying.  Ryan, to his credit, soldiered on.  Someone must have gestured to Biden to knock it off, because towards the end, he began to behave himself a little better.  He resorted to quietly sulking, instead.

Substantively, Biden had a rather ridiculous argument about Iran’s stockpiling of uranium.  They have the ore, but not the means to develop it.  Iran doesn’t but North Korea, China and Russia do have the guidance systems necessary to deliver the bombs.  We shouldn’t take Biden’s word for it that they don’t have it any more than his claim that the Administration didn’t know that the Libyan embassy needed more security.  Even Humphrey Bogart – with a little help from Katherine Hepburn – was able to fashion a torpedo out of some oxygen takes in The African Queen.  A nuclear guidance system is a bit more sophisticated, but Iran should be able to find one in a government garage sale in Russia.  An older version perhaps, but it’ll get the job done. 

We already know they’ve been testing weapons and submarines in the Mediterranean.  When the moderator, Martha Raddatz, questioned him on this claim, Biden backed off, saying, “Oh I didn’t say that.”  Yes, he did.  Then he had the nerve to say that the facts mattered and later, “Let’s keep our eye on the ball.”  Except, of course, when Ryan was trying to speak.

“Let’s all calm down here,” Biden magnanimously urged, even though he was the candidate doing all the shouting, pointing, gesticulating, and fist-pounding.  His hypocrisy was on plain display for all of America to witness.  He accused Ryan of supporting cuts to embassy “security” yet balked at not cutting defense spending. 

He went on to attack Ryan about cutting $300 million embassy security in his budget.  We would need proof of that before taking Biden’s word on it.  Was it $300 million in security or was it $300 million in other expenses, such as extravagant dinner parties and posh homes for the ambassadors?  Was it because Ryan suggested private contractors could do the job better?  Ryan should have been prepared for this allegation and answered it.

If we take the Shakespearean analysis of the debate and begin with the first and last words of each, we find Biden making promises he can’t keep.  “We will find and bring to justice the men who did this.”  And probably let them go if they’re found to be affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. 

"Whatever mistakes were made will not be made again.”

Four men were murdered due to our government’s negligence.  America should take those words as their own solemn oath and not make the mistake, again, of electing president a man who clearly does not have America’s best interests, to say nothing of her national security and certainly not that of her allies, at heart. 

Biden’s first words:

BIDEN:  What is was, it was a tragedy, Martha. It — Chris Stevens was one of our best. We lost three other brave Americans.  I can make absolutely two commitments to you and all the American people tonight. One, we will find and bring to justice the men who did this. And secondly, we will get to the bottom of it, and whatever — wherever the facts lead us, wherever they lead us, we will make clear to the American public, because whatever mistakes were made will not be made again.
Biden accused Mitt Romney of being an irresponsible liar for talking about the video before anyone knew the facts.  But the facts proved Romney right.  Why did it take Obama two weeks to come to the conclusion that it was a terrorist attack?  Shouldn’t a President of the United States be just a little better informed?  Even the Libyan president asserted that the attack had nothing to do with that video.

In contrast, these were Ryan’s first words:

RYAN:  We mourn the loss of these four Americans who were murdered.  When you take a look at what has happened just in the last few weeks, they sent the U.N. ambassador out to say that this was because of a protest and a YouTube video. It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack.  He went to the U.N. and in his speech at the U.N. he said six times — he talked about the YouTube video.  Look, if we’re hit by terrorists we’re going to call it for what it is, a terrorist attack. Our ambassador in Paris has a Marine detachment guarding him. Shouldn’t we have a Marine detachment guarding our ambassador in Benghazi, a place where we knew that there was an Al Qaida cell with arms?

These were Biden’s last words in the debate:

BIDEN:  All they’re [the American people] looking for, Martha, all they’re looking for is an even shot. Whenever you give them the shot, they’ve done it. They’ve done it. Whenever you’ve leveled the playing field, they’ve been able to move.   And they want a little bit of peace of mind.
And the president and I are not going to rest until that playing field is leveled, they, in fact, have a clear shot, and they have peace of mind, until they can turn to their kid and say with a degree of confidence, “Honey, it’s going to be OK. It’s going to be OK.” That’s what this is all about.

If leveling the playing field is “what this is all about,” then America is in serious trouble.  It’s never been what America is all about – taking from the taxpayers and giving to the poor.  As Ryan correctly pointed out (as pundits have done before him), that taxing all the millionaires in the country at 100 percent still wouldn’t solve the plight of the poor.  Redistribution of wealth will never solve the plight of the poor.

Ryan’s last words, in contrast, were:

RYAN:  We face a very big choice. What kind of country are we going to be? What kind of country are we going to give our kids? President Obama, he had his chance. He made his choices. His economic agenda, more spending, more borrowing, higher taxes, a government takeover of health care. It’s not working. It’s failed to create the jobs we need.

Twenty-three million Americans are struggling for work today. Fifteen percent of Americans are in poverty. This is not what a real recovery looks like. You deserve better. Mitt Romney and I want to earn your support. We’re offering real reforms for a real recovery for every American.

Mitt Romney — his experience, his ideas, his solutions — is uniquely qualified to get this job done. At a time when we have a jobs crisis in America, wouldn’t it be nice to have a job-creator in the White House?

The choice is clear: a stagnant economy that promotes more government dependency or a dynamic, growing economy that promotes opportunity and jobs. Mitt Romney and I will not duck the tough issues, and we will not blame others for the next four years. We will take responsibility. And we will not try to replace our founding principles. We will reapply our founding principles.

Last night’s debate illustrates how absolutely vital it is to have a strong vice president standing ready to take the reins in the event of some unfortunate occurrence.  You have to be able to depend upon the man who takes that chair, that he has the best interests of the country.  You have to have as much confidence in him, and he has to be as fully vetted as the man elected president so you can rely on your next commander-in-chief.  You know who he is where he came from, who he is, and you know his heart.  Last night was an example of the poor vetting of the pair who occupy the highest offices in the land currently.

Libya proves that Obama was not running things.  He was in Las Vegas, campaigning.  So who was running the show?  We need a commander-in-chief, not a campaigner-in-chief.  Nor do we need a nasty joker standing in the wings in case something happens to him, making a jackass of himself and our country.