Joe Biden's Many Feet...in His Mouth

Wonderful column by James Lileks detailing the numerous gaffes (when someone is this dumb, do we continue called them gaffes?) of Vice President Biden.

Yes. Vice President Biden. Remember when we were all told how evil, crafty, and manipulative Vice President Cheney was? Back in the good ol' days--or maybe they were the bad ol' days, it's so hard to remember the latest version of the past--we were concerned that a vice president held too much power and influence with the President. Thank God we don't have to worry about that anymore. Now we have a vice president whose chief responsibility seems to be backtracking on his past statements. Of course, given that his boss is a serial flip-flopper, having to eat one's words seems to come with the territory.

We now have an executive branch which has spent more money in six months that any administration in history with fewer results to show for it. We have a president who trots around the world apologizing for America's supposed arrogance and brutality, who is treated--unsurprisingly--with contempt and churlishness. We have a vice president who can't make a single statement without embarrassing himself and us. And we have a government that wants to take over large segments of the economy without discussion or debate. What's not to like?

Ah, I miss the good ol', bad ol' days.

Now for Something Different

No Card Check

This is good news for everyone who doesn't want to have to work for a union.

Didn't Take Too Long

The Great Awakening

Something has changed over the course of the last five weeks. Barack Obama, who seemed politically invincible to his supporters and many media commentators, now seems vulnerable. His approval ratings are dropping, public concern is rising, the debt is exploding, and the economy is, in many respects, worsening...

The money from the stimulus package is being spent far slower than we were told (less than 8 percent has gone out the door) — and the money that has been spent has been badly targeted. The legislation itself is bloated and filled with pork, exactly the kind of incoherent product one expects when a chief executive defers almost completely to committee chairmen. The stimulus package, which the Obama administration itself said should have made things better by now, has made things worse.

This would be damaging enough to any president, but it is particularly damaging to Obama. The reason is that this represents the first significant crack in his image. Obama, we were told, is the man with the golden touch, a person of Socratic wisdom and piercing intellect, the next Lincoln, a “sort of God.” He is, we were assured, a man in command of both facts and theories, at once competent and curious, urbane and sophisticated, free of dogma and drawn to experts, a public official who can see things few others do and solve problems in ways few others can. Obama’s administration, in turn, has been stocked with the best and the brightest, people of Ivy League educations and dazzling intellects. They would show us how to govern in ways that would inspire admiration, and even awe. So it is quite damaging that the one piece of legislation which, at this early date, we can make a preliminary judgment on — the stimulus package — has been an utter failure.

The faithful are still trying to blame it on George W. Bush, but everyone else knows better.

Putting a Face on Obamacare

For everyone who thinks Obamacare will be wonderful, it's time to put a face on the price tag.

One of the most egregious parts of Obamacare is the requirement that any company making $250,000 per year have health insurance for all employees or face an 8% tax to cover the expenses of putting those people in the public cesspool option.

It seems that $250,000 is a magic number for Democrats. That's when "the rich" kicks in. But there's a big difference between an individual who makes $250k per year and a company that does. You don't have to do a lot to make $250k as a company. Just have five to nine employees making $25,000 per year and you'll hit that limit quickly. Which is why Democrats put the limit so low. No more of that "50 employees" stuff. They want every hobby store owner, every restaurant owner, every person with a successful small business to prop up Obamacare.

But here are some real faces:

Consider Company A, which employs seven people: a manager, an assistant manager, and five workers. The owner pays himself a salary of $70,000 per year (about $35/hour), the manager $52,000 ($25/hour), the assistant manager $35,000 ($20/hour), and the five employees $21,000 (about $10/hour). That makes a payroll of $262,000. Now, the article doesn't say how much the fine for a payroll that size would be, so I'll assume either 6 percent ($15,720) or 4 percent ($10,480). The lowest total, as you can see, is more than half the salary of one of the worker bees and the higher figure is even worse. If I were running that business, I'd say the easiest way to solve my problem would be to fire one of the worker bees. That would reduce my payroll to escape the fine and it would leave me with more money as well. Sure, my business would be less productive, but it's not terribly difficult to get make up for that one lost employee by having my other six work a little bit harder.

In a bad economy, lots of businesses are laying off employees and making the others work overtime to make up the revenue. And other companies are reducing the number of hours employees work to as little as 33 hours per week in order to reduce payrolls.

Company A could be any nail salon, restaurant or convenience store in your neighborhood. The owner/manager isn't rich--he's making $70,000 per year. But the government has decided that running a successful small business makes you John D. Rockefeller.

The link has more examples, all businesses that we use or pass by every day. Dry cleaners. Fast food outlets. Veterinarians. Doughnut shops. Obamacare isn't just going to hurt those businesses. It will crush them.

This is not a healthcare solution we can afford, but the only way to stop it is for everybody to contact their representatives and tell them "no" now. Regardless of how you think current health care is run, the alternative Democrats want to give you is far, far worse.

Quote of the Day

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."

--James Madison, National Gazette Essay, March 27, 1792

Canadian Health Care

What does Canadian health care look like? Try this:

Work-Life Balance

Balancing home life and work life seems particularly tough for women because the expectations placed on us are different from men. I've often wondered if men spent time at their desks looking at their family pictures and wondering what the kids were doing now, or how much the baby would change by the time they got home. I think a lot of men do, in fact, worry about such things, but that society at large has made it easier for men to justify not being home.

For women, particularly well-educated women, it's a tighter rope to balance. We excuse women in poverty for not being home with their kids, since the money is necessary to sustain the family. But, it seems like, once you reach middle income, and, particularly, upper incomes, women receive less support for the myriad decisions they must reach on a daily basis. To work or not to work? What kind of work? Part-time or full-time? Contract? Freelance? The decisions seem endless and daunting, and no matter which path you choose, there will be those who disagree (sometimes strongly) with the path you chose.

I thought about all this while reading this post on Jack Welch's statement, "There is no work-life balance, only work-life choices." The statement is blunt and harsh and angers many women, who feel torn between the halves of their lives, but I think there's a lot of truth to it. Do we want companies to be more accommodating to employees' needs? Sure, but the company isn't in place to accommodate your family; that's something you have to do. And maybe that's where looking for the right fit is better than trying to force a fit.

Shift in Independents

Contrary to what many liberals would have you believe, independents aren't unhappy because Obama isn't liberal enough. But they definitely are unhappy.

Independents prefer smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes. Overwhelming majorities of Independents (70%) and Republicans (90%) agree compared to Democrats (49%).

Independents have concerns about the size of President Obama’s budget and the deficit it will create. Majorities of Independents (56%) and Republicans (87%) are somewhat or strongly opposed compared to Democrats (70%) who somewhat or strongly support the President’s budget.

Independents believe that big spending programs create few private sector jobs. By a +13 margin, Independents hold this opinion over the idea that the federal government has to do more during times of economic crisis, and spending by the government stimulates the economy and creates jobs.

Independents have serious reservations about the costs of a cap-and-trade program. By a +17 margin, Independents believe raising taxes on energy while the economy is in recession far outweighs any benefits from companies that may lower energy consumption and rely on more alternative fuels.

Independents believe the “harsh interrogation of detainees” was justified. Independents (53%) believe the “harsh interrogation of detainees” was justified, while the majority of Democrats (57%) believe it was not justified.

Independents do not want a criminal investigation into harsh interrogation techniques. Two out of every three Independents (66%) agree that a criminal investigation will divide the country, criminalize policy disagreements, and have a negative impact on future efforts to keep America safe.

Independents favor a health care system where most Americans receive private insurance versus federal government coverage. Majorities of Independents (61%) and Republicans (87%) prefer a private insurance system, while a majority of Democrats (52%) prefer a federal government system.

Independents do not want health care reform to increase taxes or the deficit. Majorities of Independents (62%) and Republicans (75%) agree with the statement “reforming health care is important, but it should be done without raising taxes or increasing the deficit,” while only 38% of Democrats agreed (versus 57% of Democrats who agreed instead that “reforming health care is so important that the government should invest new resources to make sure it is done right”).

Independents sound more like Republicans every day.

Contrary to Democrat Talking Points, The Recession Isn't Over

It's so fun throwing their own words at them, but here is a guy--an economist!--who can do it better.

Here are five reasons to think the recession is not over and, contrary to Achuthan, GDP has further to fall:

UNEMPLOYMENT: Consumers won’t start shopping again in earnest as long as the unemployment rate is at 9.5% and threatening to break into double digits. People who are out of work can’t spend, and people who fear being out of work won’t spend.

SPARE CAPACITY: Companies won’t hire or buy equipment as long as they have lots of slack. Today’s industrial production report revealed that the U.S. industrial capacity utilization rate fell in June to 68%, the lowest since recordkeeping began in 1967. World Bank Chief Economist Justin Lin said today in South Africa that unless global overcapacity is reduced, “we will face a deflationary spiral and the crisis will become protracted,” according to Bloomberg.

DEBT: As I’ve written, household debt soared from two-thirds of GDP in the early 1990s to 100% at the end of 2008. Simply getting debt back to three-quarters of GDP, the level of 2001, would require paying off 25% of all outstanding household debt, $3.5 trillion worth. Paying down debt gets even harder when GDP is falling—that’s Keynes’s paradox of thrift.

BOND VIGILANTES: If fixed-income investors get nervous that the government’s massive deficit spending will push up inflation, they will sell bonds and drive up interest rates. That would be a huge setback for homebuying, car sales, and other rate-sensitive sectors.

DOUBLE DIP: Even if the gross domestic product rises in the current July-September quarter—and it might—output could very well fall again in the fourth as the effects of the stimulus tax cuts begin to fade.

It's your economy, Democrats. Every. Last. Bit of it.

The Truth about Obamacare: Slow Euthenasia and Forced Participation

Peter Singer, the philosopher who told us killing handicapped children should be permissible, has yanked one of the worst skeletons out of the Obamacare closet and, once again, sees nothing wrong with it.

Why We Must Ration Health Care

Singer is quite blunt: we can't afford to give everyone the health care they want, so we need to prevent them from having it. The marketplace called the government should have the option of deciding who lives, who dies, and who gets which care along the way.

Rationing health care means getting value for the billions we are spending by setting limits on which treatments should be paid for from the public purse. If we ration we won’t be writing blank checks to pharmaceutical companies for their patented drugs, nor paying for whatever procedures doctors choose to recommend. When public funds subsidize health care or provide it directly, it is crazy not to try to get value for money. The debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable. Then we can ask, What is the best way to do it?

Emphasis mine.

These are the parts of Obamacare that concern doctors, nurses and patients. Doctors don't just pull treatments out of thin air. They prescribe treatments that they think will best solve your problem. Singer is dismissing the idea that a doctor actually knows better than the government what procedure best helps you. And he accepts the idea that of course we should ration health care. Because your insurance rations it already.

Well, not quite.

It's true that insurance companies refuse to pay for procedures it considers too costly or not effective. But you also have the option of paying more in premiums to have other coverage. That option is unavailable under Obamacare, since the health care bill out of the House essentially outlaws private insurance.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.



It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

This is precisely the poisoned pill we were told we wouldn't be expected to swallow. President Obama stated that you would be able to keep your insurance and keep your own doctor.



This is a hollow promise if the bill signed into law forces Americans into the public plan, but that's what Democrats have wanted all along. Of course, Americans want the impossible.

--84% are satisfied with their current health care.

--53% agree that health care is a human right.

--But only 39% would be willing to pay any more in taxes to insure every American. Opinion is split on whether taxes should be increased on families earning more than $250,000 per year as a way to accomplish that goal.

--People also oppose cost-cutting measures such as rationing expensive care, increasing deductibles and co-pays, raising the age for Medicare from 65 to 66 and decreasing payments to doctors and hospitals.

--Americans are closely split on the need to expand government's role in health care provision, with 48% opposed and 44% in favor.

--So, it follows that the public is also split on the need for a public plan "to keep the insurance companies honest," with 46% in favor and 45% opposed. Also, by 59% to 28%, people say a federal plan could undermine private insurance companies.

--A plurality opposes requiring everyone to purchase health insurance, with assistance for those who cannot afford it, by a 48% to 42% margin.

--However, when asked to rate the importance of insuring all, reducing costs or improving care, insuring all had the highest percentage of first-choice rankings with 42%. For both the other two, 28% ranked them first.

--Taxing employee health benefits for those who have expensive plans is very unpopular, with 52% saying it's a poor idea and just 7% saying it's an excellent one.

Quote of the Day

"[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." --Thomas Jefferson

A Tale of Two (Hispanic) Judges

Oh, the difference political affiliation makes:

In many ways, Mr. Estrada and Judge Sotomayor have similar backgrounds, but Mr. Estrada might have better "street cred." He was 17 and spoke little English when he and his mother came to the United States from Honduras. By contrast, Judge Sotomayor, whose family hails from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, had the advantage of growing up in New York City. As a result, Mr. Estrada speaks both Spanish and English fluently while Judge Sotomayor is merely conversant in Spanish, according to the Hispanic Leadership Fund. They both went on to graduate from Ivy League universities and law schools.

What sets them apart is how they were treated by Democratic senators. In 2003, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, said: "The White House continues to obstruct any progress toward resolving this matter by its unprecedented refusal to turn over documents requested to determine whether or not Miguel Estrada should sit on the second highest court in the land, for life. Mr. Estrada's nomination is apparently being sacrificed by the administration for its own partisan, political purposes."

The Democrats were requesting confidential memorandums drafted by Mr. Estrada while at the Office of the Solicitor General. This request was unprecedented. All seven living former solicitors general, Republican and Democrat alike, agreed with Mr. Estrada.

And before some Democrat screams that only Republicans oppose nominees based on race:

Democrats were forthright in their opposition to Mr. Estrada precisely because he is Hispanic. A staff memo to Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin on Nov. 7, 2001, referred to liberal concern that Mr. Estrada was "especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment."

Then-Rep. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who now represents the Garden State as a cigar-chomping U.S. senator, said he did not consider Mr. Estrada to be the right kind of Latino. "Being Hispanic for us means much more than having a surname," Mr. Menendez said in February 2003. It means being a predictable liberal.

We've been told repeatedly (see Jeromy Brown's comments) that opposition to Sotomayor will be seen as racism by Hispanics, alienating them and preventing them from voting for Republicans. Why then, was the blatant racism of Democratic opposition to Miguel Estrada not a hindrance for Hispanics?

Patrick Leahy lies about Estrada here.

Now for Something Different

Sometimes we forget to show the same patience for our parents that we do for our children.

And If The State of The Economy Isn't Depressing You Already...

Read this. That 9.5% unemployment is a fig leaf on the Obama administration's pathetic domestic economic policy.

We Don't Hear Much About How the World Is Gonna Respect Us More with Obama in the White House

And maybe it's because of things like this:



Not shaking hands with Teh One? How do they dare do that after He kissed Putin's feet and agreed to reduce our nuclear arsenal? What more could they want?

This foreign policy thing must be much tougher than Obama thought. Maybe that's why Obama's approval numbers are slipping.

H/T: Gateway Pundit.

Free Republic Racism, Amanda Marcotte and a Flashback

The hysteria today on leftwing blogs about Free Republic commenters' nasty comments about Malia Obama are sad, amusing, but predictable.

Here's the story in a nutshell:

Chris Parry, a reporter for the Vancouver Sun, wrote a story about some nasty comments Freepers made over a picture of Malia Obama. The comments he highlighted are atrocious and deserve the ridicule and condemnation they've received.

But Parry is no innocent bystander, asn the Gawker story notes.

Chris Parry, it appears, has advocated on his Daily Kos blog any number of egregious offenses, among them: posting hate speech on sites like Free Republic and blaming it on conservatives. Parry posted under the name "hollywoodoz" on Daily Kos, where his signature was "Fool me once, I'll punch you in the fucking head." Parry outed himself as hollywoodoz here, where he discloses the company he helped start. In essence: Parry, the journalist, found his story right where he'd been circling it for a very long time, and reported it as news. Sigh.

This isn't the first time that people have been accused of planting stories or inflammtory comments on blogs, either lef to right. During the campaign last year, many bloggers voiced concern about "plants" in the comments sections, comments designed to make both the blogger and the followers of whichever candidate was supported look racist/sexist, etc.

What I found interesting about Parry's story was that it reminded me of my very first post about Amanda Marcotte and Pandagon, highlighting the outrageous remarks made by her commenters about abortion. The post got me significant traffic from Pandagonistas outraged that I would point out that their opinions were the faces of abortion support hidden by the likes of NOW and NARAL. And, more significantly, they excoriated me for pointing out the outrageous and disgusting nature of their remarks.

I see little difference between the nasty remarks about Malia Obama and the disgusting remarks made by the Pandagonistas. Both sets are about innocent victims used as pawns in a bigger gambit. What's worse, though, is that there's probably a sizable number of Malia Obama supporters who didn't mind at all the nastiness directed at Trig Palin.

The Sotomayor Hearings...

start today.

E.J. Dionne admits that there's no chance Sotomayor will not be confirmed, but then launches into a temper tantrum that the "real radicals" are from the Right. Really, E.J.? Really?

After the excesses of the Warren and Burger courts, it seems at least hypocritical for any liberal to argue that moving the court back from the left is "activist." Cries that this or that precedent has been around for 20 years and is therefore sacrosanct--after watching the SCOTUS "discover" rights never before seen--is truly stage craft. What are these people thinking? When Roe v. Wade spawned the modern pro-life movement, it was clear that the judiciary had overstepped its boundaries. When Miranda altered the entire framework of police investigation (and I'm not saying for the worse, btw), that could properly be called "activism." Finding rights that have never before been seen in the Constitution should be classified as activism. Narrowing those outlandish decisions is not.

More Sotomayor roundup:

What Sotomayor should be asked, as opposed to what she will be asked.

Swooning and fawning over the brave, wise Latina who thinks her skin color is more important than brain power.

Jeff Sessions notes that men and women should be able to reach the same legal decisions regardless of sex organs. What an antiquated concept! Must be racism to think one's race shouldn't be a consideration in legal cases.

Thanks to Memeorandum.

Sotomayor Supporters Urge Reporters to Investigate Fire Fighter

In a case of attacking the wrong person--not exactly a bystander, but certainly not the proper person--supporters of Sonia Sotomayor are attacking the the Connecticut fire fighter whose case has raised new questions about Obama's SCOTUS pick's qualifications for the highest court in the land.

On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of firefighter Frank Ricci...

On Friday, citing in an e-mail "Frank Ricci's troubled and litigious work history," the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way drew reporters' attention to Ricci's past. Other advocates for Sotomayor have discreetly urged journalists to pursue similar story lines.

Specifically, the advocates have zeroed in on an earlier 1995 lawsuit Ricci filed claiming the city of New Haven discriminated against him because he's dyslexic. The advocates cite other Hartford Courant stories from the same era recounting how Ricci was fired by a fire department in Middletown, Conn., allegedly, Ricci said at the time, because of safety concerns he raised.

What the hell is wrong with these people? Sotomayor gets overturned by the Supreme Court and the smear merchants want to blame the plaintiff? Liberals argued that Anita Hill was crucified for her controversial testimony that then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas was a sexual harasser. Of course, liberals don't care about sexual harassment anymore, at least, when a Democrat is involved. Now, a dyslexic guy who manages to succeed in his career is the object. What a morally bankrupt position. And remember: Frank Ricci is no Anita Hill.

"We Took Sides, Plain and Simple" Against Sarah Palin

So says White House reporter Carl Cannon.

In the 2008 election, we took sides, straight and simple, particularly with regard to the vice presidential race. I don't know that we played a decisive role in that campaign, and I'm not saying the better side lost. What I am saying is that we simply didn't hold Joe Biden to the same standard as Sarah Palin, and for me, the real loser in this sordid tale is my chosen profession.

Cannon catalogues the sins of the press in amazing detail, starting with the tabloid-style reporting that begain shortly after John McCain announced Palin was his veep pick. And, just as Violet Socks observed about feminists and their unaccountable hatred of Palin, female reporters were equally repulsed by the Alaskan governor and determined to portray her as unworthy of high office (unlike Hillary Clinton).

A plain-speaking, moose-hunting, Bible-thumping, pro-life, self-described "hockey mom" with five children and movie star looks with only a passing interest in foreign policy -- that wasn't the woman journalism's reigning feminists had envisioned for the glass ceiling-breaking role of First Female President (or Vice President). Hillary Rodham Clinton was more like what they had in mind – and Sarah, well, she was the un-Hillary...

The first thing reporters and commentators seemed to have noticed about Gov. Palin was her physical beauty. The second was that she had a bunch of kids, the last one born with Down's syndrome in spring 2008. For some reason, these two facts infuriated many Democratic activists and bloggers – and some liberal journalists.

Plenty of Palin critics have tried to argue that the problem with Sarah isn't her physical appeal, her kids, and her moose hunting, but rather, that she "lied" about a variety of issues (and lots of non-issues in there, as well) and that she knew so little about national and international affairs. There's certainly some legitimacy to this argument, as Cannon points out. Palin was obviously unprepared for the sorts of questions she was asked in interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, and while Gibson clearly asked Palin more difficult questions than he asked of Teh One, Palin should have made it a point to learn enough about different issues to perform better than she did.

Liberals like to tell us that there is no media bias, and certainly no liberal media bias, yet Cannon gives a detailed list of the mistakes Joe Biden made during the vice presidential debate that the press completely ignored.

The good senator from Delaware warmed up slowly, erroneously claiming that McCain voted with Obama on a budget resolution, and asserting wrongly that Obama wanted to return to the Reagan-era marginal income tax rates. He also embarked on an appallingly wrongheaded monologue about the constitutional history of the vice presidency. But when the talk turned to national security, presumably Biden's purported area of expertise, he went completely off the grid.

• "John McCain voted against a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that every Republican has supported," Biden stated. (Actually, in a 1999 vote in Congress, McCain sided with 50 other Republicans to kill the treaty. Only four joined the Democrats.)

• "Pakistan already has deployed nuclear weapons," Biden said. "Pakistan's weapons can already hit Israel and the Mediterranean." (Pakistan has no known intercontinental missiles. The range of its weapons is thought to be 1,000 miles – halfway to Israel.)

• "When we kicked--along with France--we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, 'Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't...Hezbollah will control it.'" Biden recalled. "Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel." (Except that the U.S. never kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon or anywhere else. They've been entrenched in Lebanon since 1982. Actually, Hezbollah, insofar as it was responsible for the 1983 suicide bombing at the Marine barracks that killed 241 U.S. servicemen, kicked America out of Lebanon, not the other way around.)

• "The president...insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, 'Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them.' What happened? Hamas won," Biden said. (Only the last two words of Biden's strange soliloquy are true. The rest are false. For one thing, Fatah controls the West Bank. Biden was thinking of Gaza. Secondly, neither Biden nor Obama predicted the 2006 victory for Hamas in Gaza's legislative elections. Third, McCain and Obama – but not Biden -- signed a letter urging the president to pressure Palestinians to require that candidates adhere to democratic principles before being allowed to run for office. Fourth, Biden served as an election observer and later wrote an article expressing high praise for Bush's actions. To sum up: One factual error and three fibs in only 31 words. Pretty impressive, in its way.)

• "With Afghanistan, facts matter...we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spend on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan. Let me say that again..." (He did say it again, but that didn't make it true. It's wildly and weirdly off the mark. Yes, facts matter. The facts here were that at the time Biden was speaking, the U.S. had spent $172 billion in Afghanistan. The Iraq War consumes between $7 billion and $8 billion every three weeks. Biden's math was off by 2,000 percent.)

• "Can I clarify this? This is simply not true about Barack Obama. He did not say (he'd) sit down with Ahmadinejad." (He most certainly did. And among those who criticized him at the time for it was Joe Biden, who told Byron York of National Review that the idea of a president meeting with the likes of the Iranian president or Hugo Chavez was "naïve.")

Those were alarming mistakes. To me Biden's most discordant claims concerned his Animal House-like history lecture about the office of the vice president. It came while Biden was dressing down Dick Cheney, who was not present, for supposedly being unfamiliar with the Constitution. "The idea (that) he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States – that's the executive branch – he works in the executive branch," Biden said. "He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. And the primary role of the vice president of the United States is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and, as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit....He has no authority relative to the Congress.

The idea he's part of the legislative branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive, and look where it has gotten us."
Lord, would Tina Fey have had fun with this jumble of misinformation – if only Palin had said it! Article I defines the legislative, not executive, branch. The vice president is, indeed, mentioned there. What Biden finds "explicit," hasn't been so to previous vice presidents or to most constitutional scholars. Prior to the 20th century, vice presidents didn't even have offices at the White House compound – they were housed in the Capitol. The notion that a veep's constitutional authority is to provide advice to a president springs from Biden's brow; it certainly isn't mentioned, or even contemplated, in the Constitution, which doesn't even say whether the vice president should receive a salary.

Should Joe Biden have known this stuff? Since he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, you'd hope so. But even if he didn't, you'd think it would be news when he unleashed a veritable fount of misinformation to impugn Palin's knowledge of the federal system while attacking a sitting vice president. It barely rated a mention in the collective mainstream media.

We heard endlessly about Palin winking for the camera, and how Joe Biden won the debate.

Joe Biden came ready, and without rudeness or condescension, drove home reality again and again. Palin was unable to respond to any of his rebuttals with anything other than repeating her initial charges. Well, guess what, Mrs. Palin? Children learn to say, “Nuh-uh” around the age of 2. Those in the White House need to do a little better than that.

Joe Biden had the facts, the judgment, and he had the middle class appeal.

Really? Apparently, at least some reporters disagree with that assessment. Of course, it's months too late to make a difference, and that's probably why Biden's numerous gaffes get little play, while a Palin gaffe gets far more play.

It's so hard to remember, but Joe Biden is a heartbeat away from the presidency. Which is ok, since the press will just keep focusing on those not in power.