The Real Joe Biden
Roger Anghis
Joe Biden is one of the establishment elite in Washington. He’s a typical politician who has made himself very wealthy being a millionaire many times over. That’s pretty good seeing that his salary since 1973 has been from $42,500 and increasing to $174,000 in 2008. I think it was Harry Truman that said you have to be a crook to get rich being a politician.
His history as a Senator has some areas that make one question just how much he actually supports our Constitution. He has supported the ban on so-called assault weapons and still thinks they need to be banned. He claims no one needs a ‘military-style’ weapon even though not one military in the world uses an AR-15. If he understood our history, he would know that when the 2nd Amendment was written anyone that had a firearm had a ‘military-style’ weapon. To his credit, most of the Democrat Party is not capable of understanding that fact.
Joe seems to stand on both sides of the fence at times. He voted to authorize force in Iraq but then criticized Bush’s handling of it.[1] In 2006 he voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006 to build additional walls and barriers on our southern border but in 2019 he stated: “We need border security but that’s not the border security we need.” in reference to the wall Trump was calling for.[2]
As a Senator, he chaired the Judiciary Committee for 8 years and presided over the highly contentious Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings. Bork was railroaded and Thomas was narrowly approved.
When he ran for president in 1987 we began to see his affinity for gaffes and at times outright lies. On the campaign trail, he took to paraphrasing British Labour politician Neil Kinnock. Although he had appropriately credited Kinnock in prior speeches, he failed to do so during an appearance at the Iowa State Fair and even borrowed facts from Kinnock’s life, stating inaccurately, for example, that he was the first in his family to go to college and that his ancestors were coal miners. Soon after, reports surfaced that Biden had likewise allegedly lifted passages from Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, and he was caught on camera exaggerating his academic credentials.[3]
It can go without saying that he shifts back and for with the political winds. I guess a little of that may be needed but there are things that just need to be left to the trash heap of history, but Biden has embraced them enthusiastically. Nobody that has the ability to research can embrace the idiocy of global warming. There is no compelling evidence that can support it yet he actually believes that falling for this fallacy is “the best way to protect our children and global leadership.”[4] I mean really? The government can’t stop a virus but raising everybody’s taxes will cool the earth. Right. He supports the New Green Deal which has to be the most insane reaction to a non-crisis that we have ever seen. We need common-sense reactions to idiotic ideas, not someone who simply goes with the flow to be politically correct.
He has complained about ‘dark money’ in campaigns but it is his political party that has the most dark money coming into it. Does anybody remember Hillary Clinton? The Clinton Foundation? Even though he somehow convinced Sanders to not accept PAC money, he hasn’t pledged to not take any for himself.
He is not able to stand for what is right. He is a Catholic but believes that abortion should be legal. Though he says he believes that abortion is wrong he doesn’t want to impose his beliefs on others. He doesn’t want to impose his belief that it is wrong to murder a defenseless child.[5] Seriously? What else does he not have the guts to stand for? America first? He doesn’t oppose the attack of the traditional family. He was against same-sex marriage before he was for it. This is a part of that ‘political wind’ that he is always checking on to see which way it’s blowing. He even supports transgenders in our service. I find it strange how easy it is for some people to embrace something that God has called an abomination yet claiming that they are Christians.
Biden was a pro-gun in 1973 stating his opposition to “to such liberal shibboleths as gun control.” And then turned into a gun control advocate. Biden earned favorable grades from the NRA during his first two terms — solid B’s in 1978 and 1984. He accepted campaign contributions ahead of his second election from the original manufacturer of the AR-15, Colt Industries. He voted to allow the interstate sale of handguns, successful legislation that the press heralded in 1985 as “a major victory for gun owners, dealers and the National Rifle Association.”
And yet, Biden has as sterling of a gun control reputation as any of the candidates competing for the Democratic nomination in 2020, if not better. He helped pass gun control legislation when Mayor Pete Buttigieg was in middle school, then followed up on his work in the Senate during his two terms in the Obama White House.
All of this allows the former vice president to say with confidence, as he often does, that he took on the NRA twice, and won. Now, as the pro-gun Democrat of the 1980s goes extinct and a more confident gun-control party emerges, Biden hopes his record will help make him president.[6]
On international issues, he talks one way but has acted another. Joe Biden has made a habit of describing himself as a loyal, stalwart friend and ally of Israel. At a campaign stop earlier this month, for instance, he declared: “I’m so proud of the Obama-Biden administration’s unprecedented support for Israel’s security.” But a careful examination of Biden’s track record reveals his long and extremely troubling history of undermining Israel’s security and public image. Some lowlights:
1982: Biden’s Angry Exchange with Menachem Begin
At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting on June 22, 1982, an animated Senator Biden, banging the desk in front of him with his fist, warned then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin that if Israel did not stop establishing new Jewish settlements in the West Bank,[1] U.S. aid to that country might be cut off.
Begin responded forcefully:
Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid. [7]
Biden has flip-flopped more than a fish out of water. He says one thing, but his actions tell us something else. The next couple of weeks will show us even more of the disturbing aspects of his politics and what a future with a Biden presidency may bring.
© 2020 Roger Anghis – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Roger Anghis: roger@buildingthetruth.org
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