Reason Magazine
- reason.com
- reason.tv
- reason.org
- Donate
- Site Search:
Reason on Facebook
Reason on Twitter
Reason on YouTube
Reason RSSGet Reason E-mail Updates!
Manage your Reason e-mail list subscriptionsadvertisements
One More Reason To Fear the Stimulus Package: Joe Biden, Computer Illiterate and Gaffemeister Extraordinaire, Is In Charge of It All
Fox News delivers the bad news:
President Obama has turned to his own vice president to oversee implementation of the $787 billion economic stimulus package, part of which will be available this week for state Medicaid programs.
Vice President Joe Biden, in his new role, would meet regularly with key members of the Cabinet, governors and mayor to make sure their efforts are speedy and effective. He is expected to make regular reports to the president that will be posted online at www.recovery.gov.
The idea of Joe Biden—the feller who created the position of the drug czar; plagiarized from Robert Kennedy and British pol Neil Kinnock; called Barack Obama "clean" and "articulate" the day he announced he (Biden) was running for president; voted in favor of both Gulf Wars; and more and more—being in charge of anything other than a card game on the Acela club car is pretty disturbing. To have overseeing the implementation of nearly $800 billion in government loot boggles the mind. It's like Jimmy Stewart turning over his bank's money to Uncle Billy for safekeeping in It's a Wonderful Life. Especially when, as Wonkette has pointed out, Biden can't even get his site's URL correct:
|2.23.09 @ 11:30AM|#
I have been on the Joe Biden has a room temperature IQ bandwagon since last summer. But honestly after a month in office, what evidence is there President "I screwed up" "Can't I just eat my waffle" is any smarter? I sure don't see any.
|2.23.09 @ 11:43AM|#
But Obama has instructed everyone to spend their StimulusBux
wisely.
Everything's gonna be fine!
Joe Biden|2.23.09 @ 11:50AM|#
My job is to take the message from the mayors to the
president.
Ive got people skills!
|2.23.09 @ 11:51AM|#
Obama is going to one thing for race relations in this country. By the end of his term, it will be perfectly acceptable to question a black politician's intelligence in polite company.
|2.23.09 @ 11:51AM|#
Weren't we promised that Joe Biden would be an olde schoole VP, with no responsibility beyond the occasional state funeral?
BDB|2.23.09 @ 11:52AM|#
"voted in favor of both Gulf Wars"
Believe it or not, he actually voted against GW I and for
GW II.
He sure got that one ass-backwards.
|2.23.09 @ 11:53AM|#
Wow, he's just like everyone else I know over the age of 50 that confuses org, com, net, whatever.
|2.23.09 @ 11:54AM|#
no responsibility beyond the occasional state
funeral?
We can only bury him once, right?
Oh, wait.
Never mind.
BDB|2.23.09 @ 11:55AM|#
He wanted to pick Tim Kaine, but couldn't because Putin invaded Georgia that week.
|2.23.09 @ 11:59AM|#
"He wanted to pick Tim Kaine, but couldn't because Putin invaded
Georgia that week."
He could have picked Jesus himself and it wouldn't have mattered.
We would still have a shallow, vacuous, narcissist whose actual IQ
is about 50 points lower than his perceived IQ as President. At
this point bitching about Joe Biden seems a bit pointless.
|2.23.09 @ 11:59AM|#
I think we are not even remotely understanding the pain that will be Joe Biden over the next 4 years.
BDB|2.23.09 @ 12:00PM|#
Think about it. Remove Obama, you get Biden. Remove both, you
get Pelosi. Remove all three and you STILL get Robert
Byrd!
You have to remove FOUR people and then you still get Hillary
Clinton!
Warty|2.23.09 @ 12:00PM|#
Can I get my money back, since I don't trust them with an unprecedented amount of money?
BDB|2.23.09 @ 12:03PM|#
"robc | February 23, 2009, 12:02pm | #
West Virginia would be gold plated by the end of a Byrd
administration."
Hell, he'd probably move the federal capital to Harpers Ferry just
for the pork money.
|2.23.09 @ 12:03PM|#
"You have to remove FOUR people and then you still get Hillary
Clinton!"
At this point, that might be an improvement. What is she going to
do, pass a 1 trillion dollar generation theft bill that does
nothing but fund Dem interest groups and the give away a couple of
trillion dollars of ours and our children's money to dead beat
homeowners and wall street thieves? Honestly, the country could
have elected Bernie Sanders and probably gotten a better
President.
|2.23.09 @ 12:05PM|#
There you go BDB. Everyone, except BO it seems, have some kind of redeaming quality.
BDB|2.23.09 @ 12:08PM|#
Seriously they need to remove the Senate President Pro Tempore
of the Senate from the line of succession, though.
The last three people to hold that title have been Robert Byrd, Ted
Stevens, and Strom Thurmond.
|2.23.09 @ 12:16PM|#
Giving these idiots money makes handing a stack of crisp new hundred dollar bills to the bums panhandling on the off-ramps in Bozeman seem like a wise investment.
|2.23.09 @ 12:22PM|#
"The idea of Joe Biden ... being in charge of anything other
than a card game on the Acela club car is pretty
disturbing."
I'd find even that pretty disturbing if I was one of the
players.
|2.23.09 @ 12:26PM|#
During the Terror, political prisoners used to write letters to Stalin detailing their plight thinking that if only Stalin knew what was going on and what his underlings were doing, he would stop it. I sense a little bit of that kind of logic among BO's supporters. As his supporters find it harder and harder to defend his administration, they start to say how BO is being screwed by the Dems in Congress and almost always by the evil Clintons. Putting Joe Biden in charge of the stimulus will just encourage that kind of thinking. When the stimulus fails, which it will, Biden and the governors will be convient scapegoats for BO and his more dedicated supporters.
Warty|2.23.09 @ 12:29PM|#
Giving these idiots money is like giving chimpanzees cake. YOU JUST DON'T DO IT.
|2.23.09 @ 12:36PM|#
They all want cake, Warty.
"Hi. This is Wilford Brimley. Welcome to Retardation: A
Celebration. Now, hopefully with this book, I'm gonna dispel a
few myths, a few rumors. First off, the retarded don't rule the
night. They don't rule it. Nobody does. And they don't run in
packs. And while they may not be as strong as apes, don't lock eyes
with 'em, don't do it. Puts 'em on edge. They might go into
berzerker mode; come at you like a whirling dervish, all fists and
elbows. You might be screaming 'No, no, no' and all they hear is
'Who wants cake?' Let me tell you something: They all do. They all
want cake."
|2.23.09 @ 12:40PM|#
Episiarch,
I have a mentally handicapped older sister. She has never once in
my life insulted my intelligence, lied to me, or pissed on me and
told me it was raining.
I am a very good sport about the whole "retard joke" genra. But
when you start comparing the mentally handicapped to the Obama
administration, you sir have gone too far.
|2.23.09 @ 1:12PM|#
you sir have gone too far
John, did you just admit to being related to a retard?
|2.23.09 @ 1:16PM|#
"you sir have gone too far
John, did you just admit to being related to a retard?"
Yes, but fortuneately I am not related to anyone who voted for
Obama.
Warty|2.23.09 @ 1:20PM|#
I guess hybrids are the closest thing Cylons have to retards. What happens if you give them cake?
|2.23.09 @ 1:43PM|#
BDB | February 23, 2009, 11:52am | #
Believe it or not, he actually voted against GW I and for GW
II.
He sure got that one ass-backwards.
Actually, that is how I would probably vote also.
|2.23.09 @ 2:18PM|#
Before the election, whenever one of the Obamanauts started
going off on Palin and how awful she was, I would just look at them
and ask, "But what about President Biden?"
They would shudder a little and pretend we never had that
conversation.
|2.23.09 @ 2:53PM|#
RULE #1 OF MANAGEMENT
Never give a crucial, important job to someone you cannot fire. So,
this is either smart move by a smart executive to give a worthless
position to an unfireable person, or a dumb move by an
inexperienced manager.
YOU MAKE THE CALL!
|2.23.09 @ 2:59PM|#
"When the stimulus fails, which it will, Biden and the governors
will be convient scapegoats for BO and his more dedicated
supporters."
That's right.
The odds of Biden being on the ticket in 2012 were long anyway, but
they just got longer.
|2.23.09 @ 3:11PM|#
"Look everybody it's Bear Sterns, hey Bear, stand up let 'em see you, oh geez, ah bless ya Bear, hey everyone stand up for Bear..."
Trickyvikki|2.23.09 @ 3:27PM|#
Every day it seems Obama does another dumb thing. I thought that
he was smarter than that.
We just all have to put forth more effort to make sure he doesn't
get re-elected. I am so sick of him, and don't know if I can stand
the rest of his term.
If he got impeached, we would be no better off. I wish that Nancy
Pelosi could be voted out of office.
BDB|2.23.09 @ 3:29PM|#
kwais--
you would vote against a war with a clearly defined and realistic
goal with the backing of, oh, the entire fucking
world but vote for invading a country for a bogus
reason with the support of three other countries? Uh, ok.
|2.23.09 @ 3:46PM|#
BDB,
Generally the world is WRONG. And specifically in that case, if the
whole world really wants Iraq out of Kuwait, why do we need to get
involved?
I mean yeah the rich Sheikhs are friends with our politicians, but
we didn't have a treaty with Kuwait, and it wasn't really our
business.
Also, I am not really sure that we should get involved in a war
based on how easy it is going to be. The hardest most impossible
war might be the most justified, and it might be the most right,
and maybe it is the war we should fight. The revolution wasn't that
easy.
|2.23.09 @ 3:49PM|#
As Candide said, there wouldn't be GW2 without GW1.
If I were president before 9/11 I would have pulled our troops out
of the area (hindsight of course), let them build WMD's, again not
our business. and maybe 9/11 doesn't happen.
After 9/11, yep, I go into Iraq. Probably would have done some
things differently (again hindsight). Yeah, Iraq didn't attack us,
but we did get attacked because of Iraq.
|2.23.09 @ 4:19PM|#
We spent the entire decade of the 90s with thousands of troops in Saudi Arabia and didn't do much else in the region but fuck with and antagonize Muslims. Kwis makes a good point that the containment of Saddam didn't not help our image in the Middle East. We would have been better off letting him have Kuwait than doing what we did. Bush I didn't kick his ass completely because he was worried about what invading and occupying Iraq would do to our relations there. It was a legitimate concern. But, what both he and Clinton didn't think about was what 10 years of having troops in the Muslim holy land and letting Saddam starve his people and blame it on the UN sanctions would do to our relations there.
|2.23.09 @ 4:36PM|#
That money looks clean, if not articulate, God love ya. Hey, everybody order the crabcakes!
Andrew_M_Garland|2.23.09 @ 5:00PM|#
Here is a view of the Stimulus Plan from the bottom up. What it
means for an individual to be told that the government wants to
spend more. Funny, if it weren't true.
The
Department of GDP
The stimulus plan from the bottom up.
You can spend, or government will do it for you.
Excerpt:
Official: Good. (flips through manila folder) Now, I see that you don't go to restaurants enough. Why is that?
Joe: My wife is a great cook. We eat at home most of the time. I even like cooking with her sometimes, and the kids help too.
Official: Yes, that comes up a lot. People are denying themselves the pleasures of fine dining. You can see how this decreases employment and GDP. From now on, you will dine out at least twice per week, with the kids please.
Rationalitate|2.23.09 @ 5:09PM|#
It looks like because of Biden's gaffe, someone went ahead and bought recovery.com and redirected it to recovery.gov...weird.
|2.23.09 @ 5:28PM|#
I cannot believe some of you people. Joe Biden is one of the brightest people in government. He will do a bang up job as head of this program. He will likely be your president in the future, so you had better learn to love him.
Rummy|2.23.09 @ 6:44PM|#
vote for invading a country for a bogus reason with the
support of three other countries? Uh, ok.
I think you forgot Poland.
|2.23.09 @ 6:45PM|#
Weren't we promised that Joe Biden would be an olde schoole
VP, with no responsibility beyond the occasional state
funeral?
No shit. I remember thinking that it would be better if Obama broke
all of his campaign promises, given how horrid 95% of them would be
if kept. Unfortunately he only seems to be breaking the ones I
liked.
|2.23.09 @ 7:31PM|#
The Feds must have stepped in and taken the web addresses from the private company. Probably threatened them with not being able to access any of the pork. If you enter either recovery.com or recovery.org you are now directed to recovery.gov
Kolohe|2.23.09 @ 8:42PM|#
when kwais and John agree on a geo-political decsion, I better
spend some time re-evaluating my own premises.
Offhand, though, I agree with BDB.
|2.24.09 @ 10:20AM|#
I've wished O'Vomits plane would be hit by a rogue missile but then we'd have Biden and Pelosi. America is so truly fucked.
Site comments/questions:
Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions:
(310) 367-6109
Editorial & Production Offices:
3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
Suite 400
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 391-2245