Terrible news, although not entirely unpredictable. Some people vote at the ballot box, some choose to influence the outcome through suicide bombers. Sadly, the violence done by the latter threatens to overcome the good news of the former.
Greyhawk provides the domestic context:
There’s much on the line, and one might conclude that the mission of 120,000 US troops in Iraq is critical – with violence an obvious ever-present threat. Those who would launch such brutal attacks are probably well aware of Joe Biden’s pledge: “President Obama asked me to return with a message — that the United States is committed to Iraq’s progress and success,” Biden said in a statement aired by Iraqi state television after his meeting with Maliki. Although he also warned Iraqi officials Friday that the American commitment to Iraq could end if the country again descended into ethnic and sectarian violence.
Choosing his words carefully has never been the Veep’s strong suit.
I find that I really must join Virgil Xenophon, and state that I loathe this administration. What sort of people say that will we leave faster, if the going gets tougher for you? The same people who tell the Taliban that if you just lay low until July 2011, you can have AF, I guess.
+1
Today, this along with Harry Reid’s slavery comment had me imagining the return of fisticuffs on the floor of Congress and duals at sunrise among Washington gentleman.
Bores, Cads, and Ruffians. Some guys just need punched in the nose once in a while to remind them to think before they speak in public.
Im not sure a few duels at sunrise would be a bad thing for the currently elected crowd.
I think you guys might be on to something. The public morals of the code duello lasted a couple generations after the code itself became anachronistic. These days a gentleman of honor (are there any other kind) has no recourse to public calumny than to reply in kind, which only further coarsens the debate.
Wigs on the green might just be exactly what the Republic needs to attach consequences to the actions of public men.
On the other hand things could descend to the level of Charles Sumner and Preston Brooks, something that a few might find an appropriate ending for Senator Reid given his outrageous comments. But I can’t think off hand of anyone in the Senate who carries a cane and I think they have removed the spittoons from the Senate Chamber should anyone desire to bash him over the head with one.
I see a major problem with the otherwise excellent “duels at sunrise” concept…most of these gomers haven’t the slightest idea of how to fire a weapon. Best
I know I’m supposed to respect my elders, but truly my first thought when I read that was “What a freakin’ idiot!”
Respect is earned. Since Obama, Biden, et al have done nothing to earn the respect of people like those in Lex’s community – then none should be given.
A very likely source of this horrific attack is to be found in Iran, not Iraq.
They have much to gain by keeping the U.S. (and any allies who care to join us) tied up in two countries that border Iran. It is easy for them to fight a proxy war one block over while we come from far away.
Of course, any statement by Biden is utter nonsense, and there is no need to even listen to it.
Except that the World does listen to him since he is speaking for the Administration (to some extent -Lord knows when or how much at any given time).
Joe should be spending more time keeping his hair rows in place rather than being a spokesperson of the the USA.
Ah good old Joe; he never bothers to use the clutch to engage his brain before running his motor mouth. But in some ways that’s a good thing; he frequently gets to the end of a run-on sentence/paragraph having forgotten what he started out to say. He is a living exemplar of what happens to so many of our US Senators after they’ve marinated for 20 plus years in the cave of winds on the hill. And some–e.g. Barbara Boxer, don’t even
need that long to achieve the “state of Biden”.
I’m hoping that the 2010 voters take an electoral firehose to that mess on the hill–and clean it out well and truly.
Mike
Hope you are right but not optimistic. Those supporting BHO support this corruption with their money, while we support the other side with words on a blog. I’ve got a relative on wife’s side that is still paying off her credit card campaign contributions to the dems. And their network of social support for elections in far away districts is a thing to behold – efficient, calculating, and intolerant of any degrees of freedom.
I’m sorry – everyone who criticized McCain for picking such an inexperienced Veep as Palin owes Johnnie Mac an apology. If Biden is an example of what decades of being in the Senate can do (and he was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) then JezusMarija that body’s collective wisdom is worth even less than a warm bucket of spit.
And I feel I owe an apology to Sarah Palin – she may not be an intellectual but at least, even at her Catie Couric most deer-in-the-headlights worst she wasn’t a damnable fool and dumb-as-dirt-clown, like our current Veep. She simply couldn’t do worse than our “I have a higher IQ than you” esteemed VEEP (to whom was Biden talking to at that moment, John Kerry?).
As though an “intellectual”, whatever that means, is necessarily a positive adjective. Intelligent -Yes. Intellectual -No.
There is at least one good thing about our esteemed Vice President, the Honorable Joseph Biden. As he moves, in the course of his daily business, from building to building, from room to room, he consistently improves the average IQ of the group from which he departs.