In 2024, a presidential election year, facts still matter in America. Despite how much Joe Biden consistently lies about his own life and voting record, serially misrepresenting it in a sad, pathetic attempt to place himself in the center of everything that matters or has has value in the USA, and its history since WWII, to appeal to people whom his own staff and supporters mock. Biden's false face and lies aren't fooling anyone! Compare Biden's lies about saving lives as a lifeguard with Ronald Reagan's actual reality as a teenager in the 1920's.Yes, I've got some thoughts!

In 2024, a presidential election year, facts still matter in America. Despite how much Joe Biden consistently lies about his own life and voting record, serially misrepresenting it in a sad, pathetic attempt to place himself in the center of everything that matters or has has value in the USA, and its history since WWII, to appeal to people whom his own staff and supporters mock. Biden's false face and lies aren't fooling anyone! 

Compare Biden's lies about saving lives as a lifeguard with Ronald Reagan's actual reality as a teenager in the 1920's. Yes, I've got some thoughts!

I bring this up today because there has been YET another attempt to reinvent Joe Biden and make him something he has never been or ever was, and I use as my jumping off point this tweet of Greg Price, below, https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1783900381346410512

It immediately set off alarms in my head, especially when Biden makes false claims about saving people's lives as a lifeguard.

Having had several friends in the past who were , in fact, real life guards who saved REAL LIVES, including along often-crazy Lake Michigan when I lived in Evanston and Wilmette, Illinois, in the latter case, but two blocks away from Lake Michigan...

It also made me recall what I'd seen in a great episode of the one series on PBS American Experience, that tends to be both the most honest factually and the one most down-the-middle politically, without the usual liberal cant and chic propaganda embedded into it that gets into almsot every other PBS program of the past 20 years. Unfortunately!

By the way, in case you want to read in its entirety the AP's 2005 article about then-New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and his willful deception about his amateur baseball career, it's here

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gov-admits-baseball-tale-untrue/#

He was someone I spoke to quite a few times in Washington DC when I lived and worked there from 1988-2003, when Richardson was first a New mexico congressman and later the U.N. Ambassador, before becoming governor.

I greatly admired him and his background, epsecially his serious foreign policy whehn he was just out of college and worked at the State Dept, then parlayed that into a very impressive career.

Then came news of his involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal, which seemed to paint a worse picture of him at first. Every subsequent bit of news was EVEN WORSE, which is where things stoodf when he died last September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Richardson

Gov. Admits Baseball Tale Untrue 

November 25, 2005 / 8:58 AM EST / AP

You can see the following tweet thread in its entirety at https://x.com/hbbtruth/status/1783928222914150685

Video is at: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7gbhw0

----

Dave

David Bruce Smith

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bruce-smith-b945b376/

Instagram: @hbbtruth https://www.instagram.com/hbbtruth/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidSmith0215

ICYMI: Glenn Beck's lively, informative and no-holds-barred podcast interview with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. August 2022

The Glenn Beck Podcast, Episode 150. Ron DeSantis vs. Everyone: The Governor Who BROKE the Media. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. 57 minutes. Recorded August 13, 2022.

https://megaphone.link/BMDC3630676026

Corporate media hate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. These days, that’s a badge of honor. They love to accuse him of tyranny and authoritarianism, to scaremonger about how he wants to "destroy" democracy. But he’s unafraid to call out their lies and keep Florida on the front lines for freedom. When Disney tried to protest his Parental Rights in Education law, he stood his ground — and won. He did the same with CRT and woke prosecutors and has an exciting announcement about taking on ESG. Gov. DeSantis joins Glenn to break down his growing collection of wins, why he isn’t slowing down, and his advice for Republicans hoping to make a difference in their states.  

Edited filmed version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyTp4RK0Ksw

Even with his 57 states, Wash. Post says O is the loner president -'Beyond the economy, the wars and the polls, President Obama has a problem: People'

While we were busy dodging downpours of rain on Friday in South Florida, trying NOT to get drenched walking from a parking lot to wherever we needed to be, or NOT get blindsided on the local, often-poorly lit roads by one of the LARGE NUMBER of South Florida drivers who DON'T believe in using their headlights when it rains -a higher percentage in HB, it goes without saying- the Washington Post was running White House correspondent Scott Wilson's latest piece, and it's devastating.

It's one of the most insightful and persuasive articles of the year, detailing how President Obama's own personality comes into conflict with what he needs to do on a practical level in order to be successful with his own supporters on Capitol Hill, let alone, House Speaker John Boehner and the Hill Republicans and the nation at large.

The Washington Post

Obama, the loner president

By Scott Wilson

October 7, 2011

Beyond the economy, the wars and the polls, President Obama has a problem: people.

This president endures with little joy the small talk and back-slapping of retail politics, rarely spends more than a few minutes on a rope line, refuses to coddle even his biggest donors. His relationship with Democrats on Capitol Hill is frosty, to be generous. Personal lobbying on behalf of legislation? He prefers to leave that to Vice President Biden, an old-school political charmer.

Obama’s circle of close advisers is as small as the cluster of personal friends that predates his presidency. There is no entourage, no Friends of Barack to explain or defend a politician who has confounded many supporters with his cool personality and penchant for compromise.

Read the rest of the article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-the-loner-president/2011/10/03/gIQAHFcSTL_story.html

WaPo reader comments at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-the-loner-president/2011/10/03/gIQAHFcSTL_allComments.html?ctab=all_&#comments

2,830 comments as of Sunday the 9th at 2:10 p.m.

But who's counting?

re Sarah Palin's appeal and Katty Kay's FINALLY being right

As to Senator McCain's selection of Sarah Palin... as a DLC Democrat who'll definitely be voting for John McCain in November, I think it's a fantastic and bold pick!
But not for the reasons I keep reading about online or in the newspapers.

One of my reasons is because I think that it will be very interesting to see the very same insider reporters who tried to sell us on the idea of narrative as resume in Obama's case, suddenly now split hairs and say but not for Palin.
But, as usual, they won't be able to help themselves as we've already seen, and that can't but help McCain and Palin.

Frankly, I'm practically giddy at the prospect of Frank Rich's first lacerating attack against her, using that big brain and vocabulary of his to attack her like she's some poor schlub understudy from Alaska who's not quite ready for the big time of Broadway. As has been his wont so often away from Broadway, he'll reach too far, be too clever by half and in the end, be hoisted on his own petard, even as liberals cheer his columns but wonder why they aren't persuasive to the rest of the country.

But history is replete with examples of people who rose to the occasion -or didn't, like John Kerry four years ago- and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that Palin is, in fact, such a person, since the consistency of her record is in marked contrast to most of what passes for serious policy analysis in Washington: she says what she means and she means what she says.

Fifteen years of being around Capitol Hill and K Street taught me that much.

How crazy is it that this is considered "maverick" behavior in the Year 2008?

The compelling narrative of Palin's track record, of personal integrity and feistiness above party, will prove especially popular and endearing in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan that
Obama has to win, but each of whom has been riven with political corruption fairly recently.

You don't have to be Michael Barone or Mickey Kaus or John Harwood to know the country is emotionally fatigued after years and years of the same Washington insiders and career politicians
forever fighting the last political war and trying to get even.
Though I personally like Joe Biden, let's not forget that he is yet another career senator with a son who's a Washington lobbyist, and while I think it's commendable that his son is an Amtrak Board member, let's not kid ourselves that he is there but for the influence of... whom?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0207/2672.html
For the most part, as Gilbert and Sullivan might have put it, R. Hunter Biden is the very model of a modern major lobbyist. He has an office near K Street, a blue-ribbon roster of clients, and his firm, Oldaker Biden & Belair, made $1.76 million in lobbying revenue in the first half of 2006...

I think that there are plenty of people who are tired of having to pretend that alternating party crews in Washington have been getting the kind of positive tangible results that are necessary, when it's perfectly clear they're really just running in place.

And given Palin's clear distaste for GOP royalty and familial over-reaching -Murkowski family-it's one of the reasons she was elected governor in the first place. Voters could see it was a visceral dislike, not a come-on.

Why do you suppose Teddy Roosevelt had such maverick appeal when he ran for president as an independent?

You can see the evidence all around you of what putting off hard choices has gotten this country, where Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is actually afraid to schedule a vote on the House floor on off-shore oil drilling because she knows that it will actually pass now, with moderate Democrats from competitive congressional districts abandoning Pelosi in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately for the country, as she has with so many other issues, Pelosi much prefers to have an issue she can manage and strangle, than she wants practical results and solutions that will result in more energy production for the country.

Naturally, here in the Sunshine State, there is no solar, wind or tidal energy facilities to speak of that anyone can point to with anything resembling pride or hope. It's so embarrassing in the year 2008!

One of my next posts will give a good example of this sort of political gamesmanship, writ large, where the interests of the country and people's safety and welfare are clearly placed second to party loyalty, and the offender is none other than local South Florida pol for life, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

And you know how I loathe her!

------------------------

Do you suppose this is the kind of Obama 'change' or leadership we can come to expect in the future, when he can't even prevent the Illinois Demcratic Party from engaging in the very activities he continually decries?

It sounds like old-school corporate influence-peddling to me

ABC News Reporter Arrested in Denver Aug. 27, 2008
DNC Money Trail Aug. 25, 2008 PHOTOS: On the Money Trail at the DNC http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=5670682

ABC News Chief Investigator Brian Ross is on the job!
DNC Money Trail Aug. 25, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=5652779

You can tell how much the political axis moved with this selection of Sarah Palin because of how intensely the media people and pols who are always wrong -aka the usual drive-bys- are saying that it's a bad choice, or, condescendingly poo-poohing it.

Case in point: E.J Dionne and his crazy belief that Biden's Catholicism will somehow prove stronger in Pennsylvania than his actual voting record and reputation.

Now as I've stated here before, for many different reasons, I personally like Biden, as I wrote last Saturday, August 23rd,
2 Hillary Visits in South Florida, 3 Different Media Views; Biden anecdotes
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/2-hillary-visits-in-south-florida-3.html but there are PLENTY of people who live there who'll tell you that rather than the blue-collar brother-in-law you love spending time with on weekends, barbecuing and watching Eagles games with, he's the know-it-all boss who never stops talking.

The sort of person in your life whose voice you hear when you can't go to sleep and who causes you to grind your teeth.

For the next few months I'm afraid we'll be hearing more than we ever wanted to from MSNBC's Chris Matthews about the subject of Catholicism and PA voting trends.
Except for the fact that as much as Matthews says he admires Jack Murtha, he's a chip-off-the-old-block, etc., Matthews would never ever want to live in a small town in Murtha's congressional district.
------------------------------
Did you happen to hear the condescending NPR coverage of the Sarah Palin announcement?

Even for them it was amazing. I turned to NPR while watching a muted FOX News, just to hear how elitist they'd be, and as usual, they didn't disappoint.

Condescending and patronizing now, yet within weeks, I strongly suspect that she'll be catnip to voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, WV and Michigan, and the NPR reporters will act like their remarks were never uttered.

And they'll do that as they describe the enthusiastic family crowds that turn out for Palin, and get interview after interview with ex-Hillary voters who say they're going to give Obama the big thumbs down.

It just reminded me all over again how tinny NPR's internal vibes have been for years, given that the night the U.S. invaded Iraq, and I was listening to WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C., NPR's first story on All Things Considered was about a teenage murderer who was imprisoned in the Midwest -who used poetry to cope with his unique situation.

They never spoke about the victim's family.

Some things never change.

When I was living and working in D.C., partly because of being in an office downtown so much, I listened to NPR for about 6-9 hours a day, but now that I'm in South Florida, just Diane Rehm, and only if she has a good guest, plus the Friday round-ups of domestic and international news. http://wamu.org/programs/dr/

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, that Obama's campaign people immediately and rather foolishly thought to downplay and mock Palin's small-town roots, only plays into the lingering suspicion among many Americans that regardless of what he says, Obama and his crowd are thoroughly elitist and phony to a fair-thee-well.

In America, but not of it.

It only makes one recall Obama's much earlier and much-maligned comments at a San Francisco fund raiser, when he launched his full-throated attack on people who used to be the backbone of the Democratic Party, saying that Pennsylvania voters "cling to guns or religion or antipathy" out of political frustration." http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/04/11/Obama_Some_Pennsylvania_voters_bitter/UPI-66831207967499/

All these pieces of the puzzle begin to add up after a while.

Sometimes I can't help but wonder if among the most passionate of the Obama campaign staffers, the ones who really thought that attacking small-town America was the route to go in their initial public stink bomb attack against Palin, that their favorite part of It's a Wonderful Life was actually when Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey character tried desperately to leave the small town of Bedford Falls behind, and instead become a sophisticated person who traveled the world.

Not the part when he stayed and helped the town survive. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/
Seriously, I really wouldn't doubt it.

Frankly, I was hoping McCain would pick Palin a few weeks ago, but felt that he might succumb to pressure from some of his trusted aides, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham to pick Joe Lieberman, or select a more conventional pick like Minn. Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

I'm VERY pleased and think this show of political courage and faith by McCain in what he thinks he's hearing from American voters, will help cement McCain's victory in November, even though I disagree with him on a whole host of issues.

Most notable among those issues, of course, was his strong support for the ridiculously lenient illegal immigration policy -amnesty- proposed by President Bush, Sen. Kennedy and himself, which nearly ended his political career prematurely after it proved so unpopular with American voters.
He says he learned his lesson.
We'll see.

In case you're late coming to the Hallandale Beach Blog/South Beach Hoosier party, I voted for McCain in 2000 when there was no Democratic primary in Virginia, and as a matter of fact, much to my surprise, sat next to and spoke with McCain's sister-in-law for just under an hour at a McCain Straight Talk Express rally in Old Town (Alexandria) while we waited for the bus to show up.

I'll definitely be voting for him again in November.
----------------------------------
Future headlines: Oprah to be dispatched by Dems for cross-country trip to explain Obama loss to disheartened minorities and Lib Dems.
Maybe she'd boil it all down to this: tough love.

"I guess when people were saying that they simply didn't think Obama was experienced enough to be president, and some of you said that they were just being racist, you were wrong, huh?
Those voters told you exactly what they thought and why they were voting the way they were -and you chose not to believe them.
That's on you, not them."

Which is my oblique way of bringing up the fact that despite my longtime antipathy to her over the years, well-known to my friends in D.C., as I've commented here before, it's time for me to give the devil her due. In this case, the devil being the BBC's Washington correspondent, Katty Kay.
She's FINALLY right about something!

She's someone whom I've rightfully disparaged in the past for good reason -her chronic lack of knowledge about facts, concepts, phrases and theories which someone in her position ought to know. But -quite maddeningly- doesn't!

That, of course, hasn't prevented her from trying to be the authoritative voice of U.K. sophisticated sobriety when she's spoken on myriad American public policy programs, most notably, the Diane Rehm Show on NPR, as both guest and guest host.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/biographies/biogs/bbc_world/kattykay.shtml

Eventually, over time, my friends finally caught on that I was right about what I said about Kay, because of the mounting amount of evidence.

It became sort of a parlor game among us to catch her on radio or TV saying something perfectly absurdly with her customary serious voice.
I'm not joking.

We actually got to the point where at parties or get-togethers, like the Oscars, Super Bowl or Final Four Weekend, 4-5 of us could, upon request, actually recite a favorite Kay declaration.

When we were in public somewhere together, like a ballgame or outside at a park, whenever we'd
hear someone say something factually wrong but doggedly insistent on their righteousness, we'd look each other in the eye and mouth the words, "Katty Kay."

More recently, thru plain old American persistence, I've come close to converting two Herald reporters into believers of the Katty Kay Syndrome.
But it wasn't easy.

Now by wrong, I'm not talking about personal opinions, since Kay is free to be as dopey or mis-informed in her personal opinions or private life as anyone who's a chronic caller to radio talk shows.
Or, the sad folks who, like obsessive compulsive serial criminals, return over and over to the same newspaper website comments sections to share their invective, rants and nonsense, like so many people in Broward County who seem to practically live on the Herald and Sun-Sentinel reader comment forums, a matter which is readily apparent when you read them.

No, here I'm talking about rather concrete things Kay's said in the past that were directly contradicted by reality or the BBC's own news reports and website. Like, well, to choose but one subject off the top-of-my-head, the actual background of the British prime minister, Gordon Brown.

How about this letter to the Editors of the BBC blog that I found?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/06/audience_off_the_mark.html
on 29 Jun 2007:
I am suspect when Katy Kay gets her facts absolutely wrong. In her report last night she said that a small minority did not approve of the immigration bill. The Gallup Poll reported 47 Against and 30 In Favor. To make matters worse the only guest she had on discussing the matter was a far left immigration activist. I don't know if I should chalk it up to bias or ignorance, probably both are to blame. Why not give fact based journalism a try and an even handed discussion?

More recently, there was this comment to the Newsnight blog: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/fromthewebteam/2008/08/thursday_21_august_2008.html
on 21 Aug 2008:
Katy Kay's piece tonight was shockingly lopsided and well below my usual expectations for a Newsnight segment. Having just spent two and a half months in America, it was quite clear to me that the 'smear' campaigns were not exclusive to conservatives, as Kay's piece strongly implied. Both sides have been thoroughly engaged in back-channel internet attacks. The obligatory mention of liberal smear tactics does not in itself create a balanced report when one spends roughly 90% of the segment obsessing over conservative e-mails and cartoons. Surely Katy Kay is cognizant of that? It was a good choice (on several levels) to place it last, but, unfortunately, a few of us do enjoy staying up for the entire programme. I adore Newsnight, but this was one of the most imbalanced reports I've seen from one of your contributors. Deeply disappointing.

That sort of makes her, what, the poor man's U.K. Andrea Mitchell, to name but another D.C. insider justly infamous around town among colleagues of mine for her faux pas, faux facts and big-footing.
Plus, there's Mitchell's whole reluctance to always report news she knows, like the way she avoided naming the U.S. senators whom she said never read the pre-war NIE report.
She loved to talk about the story on the NBC family of outlets, esp. MSNBC -up to the point where she'd actually have to name the members she claimed never read it.
Is that journalism?

But I'm getting off on a tangent, and I should confine my comments here to momentarily praising Kay.

On the BBC-TV this past Thursday night, immediately prior to Obama's acceptance speech, Kay alone among the army of big-footing campaign reporters in Denver made a point that I've long suspected would prove to be true, much as some will try to ignore it.

Trust me, when Katy Kay and I both agree on something, that's what noted New York philosopher George Costanza meant when he said 'worlds collide!'

For my purposes, it means that it must be true!

Kay said -and I'm paraphrasing here, because I didn't have a videotape running at the time and have not been able to find a recording of her comments yet- that based on what she's seen and heard for herself, among both the Obama campaign staff (and assorted hangers-on) and ordinary Democratic voters she's dealt with in various states throughout the country, especially Hillary Clinton supporters, there was ample evidence of a growing party cleavage that would prove very difficult to heal in the future.

Per my hypothetical words above in Oprah's mouth, a sharp divide that the Obama supporters
were ignoring, perhaps because they can't quite imagine that their own personal narrative and that of Obama's will be one where he actually loses the race, when it may well have been within his grasp.

So, on the one hand you have Obama supporters who think that any white Democrat who votes for McCain is doing so almost entirely because of core racism.
They won't accept any other explanation but that one, because that one neatly fits their world view.

On the other hand, of course, were those moderate and conservative Dems who said that regardless of Obama's soaring oratory or charisma, he still lacked the kind of tangible political abilities or experience they wanted in a potential president: someone who had a track record of
actually accomplishing something in Washington that the average person has heard of or could point to as proof, much less, constructively worked across the aisle to get results.
Obama has done neither.

There's a reason that The National Journal rated Obama as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate -he was.
There are a lot of voters in this country who don't want the "Most" anything senator to be in The White House, and I'm one of them.

And as someone who was actually around Washington at the time to attend the Foreign Relations hearings, enough of the Obama supporters' name-dropping of Hoosier Richard Lugar.
It's embarrassing, already!
Lugar was already doing the Nunn-Lugar shuffle with the Russians when Obama was just out of Harvard Law School.

For once, momentarily, Katy Kay is 100% right

See the BBC's US Election 2008 webpage -http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/usa/default.stm
-----------------------------------
Though I'll still be voting for McCain, I wanted to draw your attention to this web site as it's what led me to originally watching the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials online a few weeks before the Olympics.
I was mesmerized!

Well, I received a phone call on Friday from another DLC friend up in D.C. telling me that the Barack Obama acceptance speech would be on Microsoft Silverlight, and that I should watch it at some point after first seeing the speech on TV. He's right.

I did that late Friday night and it's absolutely amazing to see the way everything looks!
It looks better than life-like!

I suppose it'd be too much to think that they'll also be doing that for the RNC in St. Paul, where Hallandale Beach resident and former Rudy Giuliani supporter Ed Napolitano will be this week.
http://gallery1.demconvention.com/
________________________________
Microsoft Silverlight homepage is at http://silverlight.net/

Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. By using Expression Studio and Visual Studio, designers and developers can collaborate more effectively using the skills they have today to light up the Web of tomorrow.

2 Hillary Visits in South Florida, 3 Different Media Views; Biden anecdotes

Saturday August 23rd, 2008 2 a.m.

When I saw the three news headlines below, I thought back to those little nuggets I used to love seeing in The New Republic in the early '90's -back when they were riding the waves of so many interesting stories before anyone else in Washington- showing wildly varying headlines for the same story.

That was back when I used to read TNR cover-to-cover and would run into Ruth Shalit all the time as she made her way up TNR's masthead, yet still used her Princeton ID card to write checks at the Borders Books on 18th and L Street, N.W., where I worked in the evenings during the week after my day job.

In retrospect, as I've written here before, I think I had a bit of a crush on her, because she could turn on the wit and charm in a nano-second, and could draw you out almost against your will.

See my previous post on Ruth Shalit from South Beach Hoosier on February 17th, NBC's David Gregory's Super Tuesday brain fart; Michelle Cottle the bore; Ruth Shalit is a charmer!http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2008/02/david-gregorys-super-tuesday-brain-fart.html

Having lived in Chicago and Evanston for a few years not too long before I met Shalit, whom I'd constantly run into all over D.C., esp. between K Street and Dupont Circle, I found her 1993 TNR cover story on one-and-done Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun devastatingly accurate!

Other reporters I knew in Washington, esp. those assigned to Capitol Hill, told me at the time that they marveled at the column's power, sweeping away all the senator's alibis and excuses so deliciously and completely.

Many of them were pre-disposed to like her, but they found her so un-prepared for office that it shook them up that someone like her could become a senator for a big state like Chicago.

See Shalit's interesting essay on pp. 38-43 of POLITICIANS AND ETHICS
http://www.apubb.ro/Documents/Ringsmuth/Cozic_Politicians_and_Ethics.pdf

(Since I mentioned the bookstore, I should say here publicly that by far THE friendliest media personality who was a frequent Borders customer was the late Jack Smith of ABC News, son of the legendary Howard K. Smith. He was very un-assuming and couldn't have been nicer! I was very sad at the time to hear that he'd died of pancreatic cancer, just as NFLPA head Gene Upshaw did on Wednesday. http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jpsmith.htm )

New York Times, August 21, 2008
At Rally, Finding Clinton's Aid to Obama Too Tepid
By Damien Cave
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/us/politics/22clinton.html

South Florida Sun-Sentinel, August 21, 2008
headline above newspaper masthead: Hillary Clinton fires up Democrats in South Florida
headline on story, front page of local section: Stumping for Obama, Clinton calls for unity
By Mark Hollis and Lisa Huriash
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-flbclinton0822xsbaug22,0,3207003.story

7th paragraph from above reads as follow: (my emphasis in red)
"Obama campaigners were looking to sway minds at Thursday's events. But in characterizing her party as steadfast for Obama, Clinton came across to some of her supporters as overly optimistic. Several said after Clinton's speeches that they know many local Democrats and independents who aren't convinced Obama has the credentials they demand in a president."

So which is it, tepid or overly optimistic?

Miami Herald, August 21, 2008 headline on page 5A: Clinton stumps for Obama in South Florida by Beth Reinhard http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/652652.html

Meanwhile, at midnight, the lead headline at the Herald's website,
http://www.miamiherald.com/ is Democrats on the verge of a sharp turn to left
http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/654325.html

I could prove to be wrong -though I doubt it- but I'd be willing to bet that the headline in the actual newspaper will be different in a few hours.
The Herald typically only uses the word "left" in their stories or headlines about Latin America. That's the list!

By the way, pre-Neil innock, I was a Joe Biden supporter in '87, after having written a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Robert Bork confirmation hearings and being surprised to receive a note from him.
Later I received a printed copy of the hearings, which were great to re-read Bork's brilliant points, even the ones I disagreed with.

Over the years that I lived in Washington, I eventually wound up with a complete copy of all the Judiciary Committee SCOTUS nomination hearings from Bork onwards towards 2003.
That included the questionnaire they had to answer, which were fascinating reading on morning Metro rides into downtown D.C.!

To set the scene the day I left on Super Tuesday 1988, let me quote from my January 12th, 2008 South Beach Hoosier post:

http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2008/01/on-heels-of-jim-leyritz-arrest-another.html
As it happens, back in the days when he was talking and acting more like a DLC Democrat than the person he's become since then, in 1988 I defied South Florida's supposed Democratic CW (conventional wisdom) about the electability of Michael Dukakis and voted for Al Gore during the FL primary on Super Tuesday, March 8th. (Gore's senior thesis at Harvard was on "The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency.")

After voting, I promptly drove up to Washington, listening to election returns on the radio throughout the South on my drive up, which had been my game plan all along. Lots and lots of Charlotte's WBT and Nashville's flamethrower, WLAC, as well as many smaller stations reporting local races with just as much drama, intrigue and backbiting as farther up on the ballot. Lots of talk about whether Gore would be able to win in northern states!

Mostly, they were the very same radio stations I'd always listened to for American Top 40 with Casey Kasem (AT40) during its heyday, so I was a veritable walking-talking Billboard hit list by the time my drive north ended, just as I'd been on my drives down here and back from Indiana for spring break. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Top_40 and http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/index.jsp )

(jingle and lines that are always in my head on long droves by myself)

"Casey's Coast-to-Coast!"

"Hi, I'm Casey Kasem on American Top 40, coming to you on great radio stations like...

We're counting down the top hits...

Now on with the countdown!...

When Sen. Biden entered Walter Reed Hospital because of the brain aneurysms, I wrote him a letter expressing my thoughts and concerns, thanking him for his kindness months before and sent along a (new) cassette of one of my favorite and most relaxing albums, featuring lots of Gershwin, so that he could listen to it in his hospital room when nobody was around.

A while later, after he was back on the Senate floor, completely out-of-the blue, I received a wonderfully penned Thank You note from his wife, Jill, a school teacher, which was about as classy as you could possibly ever imagine, especially given the awful circumstances.
That really hit me hard.

As it will otherwise continue to occupy space in my long-term memory, I wanted to share the previously meaningless trivia that after the Biden campaign office moved out of their office over on C Street, N.E., the next tenant was the Church of Scientology.

Given the late breaking news about his selection and where Biden will be in a few hours -Springfield- where Barack Obama made his formal presidential declaration, not far from the original law office of Lincoln and Herndon, http://www.online-springfield.com/sites/lhlaw.html , it's semi-ironic to me that Biden's '88 campaign office was just 2-3 blocks north of Lincoln Park.

Over the years I was living and working in the Washington area, because of my job and my own interests, I was probably at well over one hundred Senate Judiciary or Foreign Affairs Committee hearing where Joe Biden was either the Chair or the Ranking Member, and at everyone, regardless of the topic, he was always well-prepared, voluble and funny.
The latter may prove more helpful than ever over the coming months, as I think it stands in stark contrast to Obama's self-evident thin-skin.
A sense of humor is something you have to acquire by hook or by crook if you're serious about spending any time in Washington getting tangible results for the country.

I'm still going to be for McCain in November because of the experience gap and the personality of Obama, but I have a strong feeling that David Broder's great column from 1988 on Biden's potential political future will be re-read a lot in coming days, with references to it appearing in all the usual places in Washington, print and electronic.

I have it somewhere in a folder with my small circular red, white and blue campaign button that simply says, "Joe."

I'll try to post it here in the next few days.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/654325.html
CAMPAIGN '08
Democrats on the verge of a sharp turn to left
Two days before their party's national convention, Democrats are more liberal than at any time in a generation.
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As a bonus, I'll leave you all to consider this excerpt from UVA (University of Virginia) prof Larry J. Sabato's typically insightful essay from his 1991 book Feeding Frenzy, titled The Media Should Not Sustain Rumors About Politicians, which was selected for inclusion in the aforementioned POLITICIANS AND ETHICS.
It seems even more timely given the news of a few hours ago.

The 1988 Presidential Campaign
• When Michael Dukakis's campaign sent out the "attack video" that torpedoed Joseph Biden's candidacy, Richard Gephardt at first received the blame.
Private speculation about the identity of the perpetrator was unavoidable, but when the conventional wisdom fingered Gephardt and this conclusion seeped into print—as it did almost everywhere—the Missouri congressman's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination was dealt a body blow. Gephardt's 1988 press secretary, Don Foley, offered this assessment:
It did us a lot of damage. Up until that time Dick Gephardt was viewed by most people as someone who would not engage in dirty campaigning, and he had a Boy Scout image. But this incident painted him as somebody who was a bit overanxious for the prize;
in the eyes of a lot of people this took the shine off of the Gephardt aura.

Even when Dukakis's staff was revealed to be behind Biden's troubles, the tarnish seemed to stick to Gephardt's image.

See also Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball, http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/
which I've been subscribing to and reading -and found invaluable- for years since my days living in the Washington area.
And it's FREE.
It's conveniently on the Hallandale Beach Blog link list, too, n'est-ce que pas?
Oui!

"A comprehensive Web site run by the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball features analyses of presidential elections, Senate, House and gubernatorial races."