Originally posted by: AllWhacked
I don't like the guy, because:
1) He's a crooked punk that legalized usury and allowed the credit card companies to charge 33% interest. He's also one of the few democrats that voted with the bankruptcy reform that prevents individuals to discharge their credit card debt. But given he's from Delaware, it's not surprising.
You have a point on this one. For those who aren't aware of it, Delaware has probably the most corporate-friendly laws in the nation so many corporations are based there.
2) He's also a racist gaffe machine that gets away with it because he's a Democrat. If it was a Republican who said you couldn't goto a 7-11 without hearing an Indian accent, that guy would be screwed--just like the Macaca guy, whom I think wanted to say mohawk as he was referring to a dark skinned guy with a Mohawk. Who knew that in some obscure African dialect, macaca is an insult.[/quote]
You badly misrepresent this one. There was evidence as I recall that 'the Macaca guy' knew exactly what Macaca meant. And the 7-11 crack isn't the same at all.
3) He's a liar and plagiarist. In his 84 or 88 run, he tried to pass off a British politicians speech and life story as his own--he didn't even change the speech to match his own history. Anyway, this exactly of blatant dishonesty should not be forgotten nor forgiven from someone in public office. But coming from a lawyer, I'm not surprised by this lapse in moral clarity.
You have a point here too, but you can weigh it how you like - but the broadside at lawyers isn't fair. Many lawyers are people who 'play by the rules' more than a lot of people.
He's an idiot. Right after 9/11 he said to his aids that we need to send a message to the Arab world that we don't want to destroy them. He proposed to send a $200 million dollar check, no strings attached, to Iran. All his aids looked at him as if he was crazy and once the shock wore off, one by one the aids responded back. One aid said it would look like a publicity stunt. Another said that Iran would probably refuse it. A third said that there was a move within Congress to pressure Russia not to accept a $300 million dollar weapons deal with Iran. And a not mentioned fact is that Iranians are Persian and are ethnically and culturally different from Arabs. From what I've been told from people who've visited the region, Arabs hate Persians and vice versa. And that send money to the Persians would not make any friends in the ARAB world.
Your attack is absurd; he's widely recognized as a top public official on foreign policy.
I don't know the history of the incident you cite without source (did Hannity do you the service?), but I'm a fan of his independant approach. Talk about a real 'maverick'.
Without knowing the situation, we have a hell of a lot to account for in our treatment of Iran. Going back to the first half of the 20th century, they were abused for their oil with low compensation forced on them. When in the early 1950's, the people of Iran got someone in leadership who would actually represent Iran and not Britain, who supported a more fair price for the oil, Britain asked the US to do something, and the new Eisenhower administration did as our ally asked, and got Kermit Roosevelt - yes, of the Teddy Roosevelt family - of the CIA on it, and the CIA's first anti-democratic 'covert action' was done to remove the democratic head of state, and install our tyrant - returning the Shah from exile and giving him a ready-made police force to keep him in power by terrorizing the people - and keep oil prices low.
Their great crime: after 25 years of tyranny thanks to us, when the religious groups led a revolution (who were unlikely to get much power had democracy still been there), a group held dozens of Americans at the Embassy hostage for just over a year and then released them all unharmed.
In the 1980's we encouraged Saddam's invasion of Iran, the longest large war of the 20th century, with Saddam using gas on Iranian schoolchildren, Iran with a million casualties.
When the invasion went in Iran's direction, the US military got involved directly opposing Iranian forces to *prevent them from overthrowing Saddam*. The irony...
Talk about a nation who had the *right* to view Saddam as a threat, and to overthrow him for that...
But you complaing because with that horrific history for 50 years, Biden wants to make peace. You are the problem with our electorate...