just a regular guy

9-3-08

In some breaking news that has been reported and repeated several times over the last few days, Sarah Palin’s husband Todd Palin, was arrested 22 years ago for a driving under the influence offense.

Todd Palin, the husband of John McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin, was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol in 1986, CBS News confirms……

Palin was 22 years old at the time of his arrest.

Not to be too picky but as far as I can tell and with the information I have been able to find being arrested and being convicted are two different things. It is possible he was convicted of the charge but all of the articles I can find simply refer to “his arrest.” Like this really matters in the 2008 election.

Now let’s take a look at something that was happening back around the time the 22 year old Todd Palin was arrested for the DUI offense that actually does have an impact on the current election shall we?

Sponsors article continues below...

Ladies and gentlemen let’s take a stroll backwards just a bit to what Joe Biden was up to when he was Sarah Palin’s age shall we?
From the New York Times.

According to the people familiar with the record of the 44-year-old Senator from Delaware, he was called before the disciplinary body at the law school during his first year because of charges that he had committed plagiarism on a paper. Mr. Biden entered the school in 1965 and graduated in 1968…..

CBS News tonight quoted an aide to Mr. Biden as saying he had been exonerated. However, an academic official said Mr. Biden had been found guilty, ”threw himself on the mercy of the board” and promised not to repeat the offense. This, according to the official, persuaded the board to drop the matter and allow Mr. Biden to remain in law school. Mr. Biden’s office declined to clarify the circumstances surrounding the case, saying the Senator had insisted on handling the matter himself at the news conference……

In a television commercial during the British election campaign last spring, Mr. Kinnock asked, “Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?” Pointing to his wife, he asked, “Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?”……

In closing remarks at a debate at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 23, Mr. Biden asked,”Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?” Further, he asked, “Why is it that my wife, who is sitting out there in the audience, is the first in her family to ever go to college?”……

Political professionals, including those working for rival Democratic campaigns, were divided over the impact of the reports of speech-lifting…..

Some said it would be particularly damaging because Mr. Biden’s campaign had emphasized his oratorical skills and capacity for ”inspirational leadership.”……

”He, in one sense, created the standard by which he was to be judged,” said Harrison Hickman, a Democratic poll taker. ”He has said consistently that the next President must be the one who can motivate the American public. And if you’re going to make that argument, it seems a fair test to ask whether Joe Biden is a visionary or is Joe Biden a good speaker.”……

Geoffrey Garin, another poll taker, said, ”This controversy plays into the case his opponents would like to make against him: that he is a person of style rather than substance.”……

Other professionals said that in a campaign in which character was already an issue, dating from Gary Hart’s withdrawal in May, incidents like those that have dogged Mr. Biden in recent days were certain to be damaging.

From the New York Times.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. issued a formal statement today acknowledging that he had misstated several facts about his past last April in a campaign appearance in New Hampshire…..

But the Delaware Democrat insisted today, as he had Sunday night in an interview with The New York Times, that some of the disputed statements were true and that his misstatements were the product of a faulty memory and the fact that he lost his temper…..

Mr. Biden, whose Presidential campaign has been shaken by news reports about his unattributed use of speeches from other politicians and a plagiarism incident while he was in law school, said in The Times interview that he was ”frustrated” and ”angry as hell” over the reports……

He then went on to say that he “went to law school on a full academic scholarship – the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship,” Mr. Biden said. He also said that he “ended up in the top half” of his class and won a prize in an international moot court competition. In college, Mr. Biden said in the appearance, he was “the outstanding student in the political science department” and “graduated with three degrees from college.”……

In his statement today, Mr. Biden, who attended the Syracuse College of Law and graduated 76th in a class of 85, acknowledged: “I did not graduate in the top half of my class at law school and my recollection of this was inaccurate.”……

Most of Mr. Biden’s statement was in response to a report in this week’s issue of Newsweek magazine on a tape recording made by the C-SPAN network of an appearance by Mr. Biden at a home in Claremont, N.H., on April 3. It was a typical coffee-klatch style appearance before a small group. The network regularly records and broadcasts such events as part of its coverage of the Presidential campaign……

The tape, which was made available by C-SPAN in response to a reporter’s request, showed a testy exchange in response to a question about his law school record from a man identified only as “Frank.” Mr. Biden looked at his questioner and said: “I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do.”……

Mr. Biden acknowledged that in the testy exchange in New Hampshire, he had lost his temper. “I exaggerate when I’m angry,” Mr. Biden said, “but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.” Mr. Biden’s questioner had made the query in a mild tone, but provoked an explosive response from Mr. Biden.

From the New York Times.

Today, Mr. Biden joined Mr. Hart in questioning the system of electing Presidents that drove both of them from the contest before a single ballot was cast…..

“Although it’s awfully clear to me what choice I have to make, I have to tell you honestly, I do it with incredible reluctance, and it makes me angry,” said Mr. Biden as his wife, Jill, stood at his side, her face a study in dejection…..

“I’m angry at myself for having been put in the position – put myself in the position – of having to make this choice,” Mr. Biden said in a firm, clear voice. “And I am no less frustrated for the environment of Presidential politics that makes it so difficult to let the American people measure the whole Joe Biden and not just misstatements I have made.”……

Mr. Biden said that “the exaggerated shadow” of his mistakes had “begun to obscure the essence of my candidacy and the essence of Joe Biden.”

From the New York Times.

Most of the candidates, to begin with, are little known to the broad voting public, so they have at best a tenuous hold on the affections of their supporters. In the early stages of a courtship, transgressions can be fatal, but in a well-rooted marriage, they may be quickly forgiven; so it is in politics. Almost the first things many voters learned about Mr. Biden, aside from his good looks and articulateness, was that he had done things that most people consider a bit questionable at best…..

A New York Times/CBS News poll taken in early May showed that more than a third of those interviewed thought that any one of six problems would be enough to persuade them to vote against a candidate. One who used cocaine (such as Mr. Obama notice how it is just dismissed by this liberal site as “it makes him more human”), for example, would lose 91 percent of the public, according to the poll; one who had cheated on his income tax would lose 65 percent; one who was guilty of drunk driving would lose 39 percent……

Two decades ago, Mr. Hart’s indiscretions might well have been ignored by the press and television. A decade ago, Mr. Biden’s misrepresentations could not have been dramatized as they were. It was not so much the original newspaper articles that cost him dear; it was television, the tapes pulled from vast libraries showing him aping Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labor Party in Britain, without credit, and making misstatements about his educational accomplishments in an exchange in a New Hampshire living room. The Big Eye is everywhere.

And a little more recently….

From thehill.com

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) — whose garrulous ways have led to a number of verbal gaffes over the years — has revised a dramatic comment that he was “shot at” in the Green Zone during a trip to Iraq……

When asked for a detailed account of the experience, Biden described three incidents on two separate Iraq trips in which he felt that he was shot at or might have been shot at. Only one of them took place inside the Green Zone, he said, and involved a “shot” landing outside the building where he and other senators were staying. He added that the vehicle he was traveling in the day before might also have been hit.

Biden said the incident happened in the morning while he and at least one other senator were shaving. Although he said it shook the building, he wasn’t rattled enough to duck and cover.

“No one got up and ran from the room—it wasn’t that kind of thing,” he said. “…It’s not like I had someone holding a gun to my head.”

Thinking about it now, he said, a more accurate comment would have been: “I was near where a shot landed.”……

Patrick Campbell, legislative director for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said Biden should be careful about how he describes his experiences, especially when making political points.

“Veterans don’t like it when people mischaracterize their service, people who overstate what happens to them,” he said. “We have names for them.”

Campbell also said the word “shot at” implies that “someone with an AK-47 pops up and is taking shots at you.” He thought Biden was more likely referring to mortars or rockets that insurgents periodically launch into the Green Zone but are more random in nature, as his aides later described.

For Stephen Hess, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University and a longtime political observer, Biden’s comment about being “shot at” simply reaffirms his reputation as loose-lipped and long-winded.

“There he goes again, as Ronald Reagan would say,” Hess remarked. “Unfortunately, it fits into his profile, and that’s exactly why he should be terribly careful about statements that may not quite parse out or deconstruct under scrutiny.”

So here we have a man who admits he can’t control himself, which he is well known for, and has a tendency to exaggerate his accomplishments when he gets angry. We have a man that is a proven liar, plagiarist and grating windbag who is embarrassingly way too full of himself.

I’m wondering (but glad) why Obama would chose a running mate that came in so far behind the pack (what was Biden’s final vote count in the primaries, less than the number of residents in that small town where Palin was mayor?) when he had a chance to pick someone that had nearly as many votes as he did and carried the important states of CA, TX, NY, FL and AZ, Hillary Clinton?

Can this country afford the racist loose cannon Biden:

Keep in mind that Obama has zero foreign policy experience, in fact he hasn’t a single day as manager behind the counter of a Dunkin Donuts shop under his belt! The reality is Biden will be “the president” if this ticket is elected because it is apparent that even simple questions are above Obama’s “pay grade.”

Now we are constantly hearing about John McCain’s age with the liberals (dissing yet another group of voters, the senior citizens of this country) claiming they are terrified of the thought he could drop dead the minute he steps into the oval office and we’ll be stuck with a newbie Sarah Palin at the helm. Well the last time I checked it wasn’t McCain that had to undergo brain surgery for the second time, it was Joe Biden.

A community activist at the top of the Democrat ticket and an off the cuff loose cannon with some serious medical issues in his background at the bottom who will actually be running the show. That right there should give some serious pause to anybody concerned about the future of this country not some 22 year old DUI charge against someone that isn’t even running for the top office in the land.

Tags: dui, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John McCain, Obama, plagiarist, Todd Palin