The Whoppers of 2008—The Sequel

When Biden did take office on January 3, 1973, at age 30 (the minimum age to become a U.S. Senator), he became the fifth-youngest senator in U.S. history.[33] In 1974, freshman Senator Biden was named one of the 200 Faces for the Future by Time magazine.[34]

Biden has since been elected to five additional terms, in most cases with about 60 percent of the vote.[35] He has not faced strong opposition; Governor Pierre S. du Pont, IV chose not to run against him in 1984.[36] Biden spent 28 years as a junior senator due to the two-year seniority of his Republican colleague William V. Roth. After Roth was defeated for re-election by Thomas R. Carper in 2000, Biden became Delaware's senior senator. He is now the longest-serving senator in Delaware history.[37]

In February 1988, after suffering from several episodes of increasingly severe neck pain, Biden was taken by long-distance ambulance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and given lifesaving surgery to correct a intracranial berry aneurysm that had begun leaking;[38][39] the situation was serious enough that a priest had administered last rites at the hospital.[40] While recuperating, he suffered a pulmonary embolism, which represented a major complication.[39] Another operation to repair a second aneurysm, which had caused no symptoms but was also at risk from bursting, was performed in May 1988.[41][39] The hospitalization and recovery kept Biden from his duties in the U.S. Senate for seven months.[28] Biden has had no recurrences or effects from the aneurysms since then.[39]

In 1975, Biden met Jill Tracy Jacobs, who grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania and would become a teacher in Delaware.[30] They had met on a blind date with Biden's brother's help, although it turned out that Biden had already noticed her in a local advertisement.[30] Biden would credit her with renewing his interest in both politics and life.[31] On June 17, 1977, Biden and Jacobs married.[2] They have one daughter, Ashley Blazer (born 1981).[2] Biden and his family are members of the Roman Catholic Church, and regularly attend services at St. Joseph on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware.[32]

On December 18, 1972, a few weeks after the election, Biden's wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in an automobile accident while Christmas shopping in Hockessin, Delaware.[2] Neilia Biden's station wagon was hit by a tractor-trailer as she pulled out from an intersection; the truck driver was cleared of any wrongdoing.[24] Biden's two sons, Beau and Hunter, were critically injured in the accident, but both eventually made full recoveries.[2] Biden considered resigning in order to care for them;[5] he was persuaded not to by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and was sworn into office from one of their bedsides.[25] The accident left Biden filled with both anger and religious doubt: "I liked to [walk around seedy neighborhoods] at night when I thought there was a better chance of finding a fight ... I had not known I was capable of such rage ... I felt God had played a horrible trick on me."[25]

In order to be at home every day for his young sons,[26] Biden began the practice of commuting an hour and a half each day on the train from his home in the Wilmington suburbs to Washington, D.C., which he continues to do.[5] In the aftermath of the accident, he had trouble focusing on work, and appeared to just go through the motions of being a senator. In his memoirs, Biden notes that staffers were taking bets on how long he would last.[27][19] A single father for five years, Biden left standing orders that he be interrupted in the Senate at any time if his sons called.[25] In remembrance of his wife and daughter, Biden does not work on December 18, the anniversary of the accident.[28] Biden's elder son, Beau, later became Delaware Attorney General and an Army Judge Advocate serving in Iraq,[29] and his younger son, Hunter, is a Washington attorney.

His entry into the 1972 U.S. Senate election presented Biden with a unique circumstance. Longtime Delaware political figure and Republican incumbent Senator J. Caleb Boggs was considering retirement, which would likely have left U.S. Representative Pete du Pont and Wilmington Mayor Harry G. Haskell, Jr. in a divisive primary fight. To avoid that, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon helped convince Boggs to run again with full party support.[22] No other Democrat wanted to run against Boggs.[10] Biden's campaign had virtually no money and was given no chance of winning.[6] It was managed by his sister Valerie Biden Owens (who would go on to manage his future campaigns as well) and staffed by other members of his family, and relied upon handed-out newsprint position papers.[23] Biden did receive some assistance from the AFL-CIO and Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell.[10] Biden's campaign issues focused on withdrawal from Vietnam, the environment, civil rights, mass transit, more equitable taxation, health care, the public's dissatisfaction with politics-as-usual, and "change".[23][10] During the summer Biden trailed by almost 30 percentage points,[10] but his energy level, his attractive young family, and his ability to connect with voters' emotions gave the surging Biden an advantage over the ready-to-retire Boggs.[5] Biden won the November 7, 1972 election in an upset by a margin of 3,162 votes.[23]

Biden received five student draft deferments during this period, with the first coming in late 1963 and the last in early 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War.[15] In April 1968, he was reclassified by the Selective Service System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager.[15] Biden was not a part of the anti-Vietnam War movement; he would later say that at the time he was preoccupied with marriage and law school, and that he "wore sports coats ... not tie-dyed".[16]

Negative impressions of drinking alcohol in the Biden and Finnegan families and in the neighborhood led to Joe Biden's becoming a teetotaler.[17][6] Biden suffered from stuttering through much of his childhood and into his twenties;[18] he overcame it via long hours spent reciting poetry in front of a mirror.[11]

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. (1915???2002) and Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Finnegan (born 1918).[1][2] He was the first of four siblings[2] in an Irish Catholic family.[3] He has two brothers, James Brian Biden and Francis W. Biden, and a sister, Valerie (Biden) Owens.[4] One of his grandfathers was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate.[5]

Biden's father had been very well-off earlier in his life, but had suffered several business reverses by the time Biden was born,[6] and for several years the family had to live with Biden's maternal grandparents, the Finnegans.[6] When the Scranton area went into economic decline during the 1950s, Biden's father could not find enough work.[7] In 1953 the Biden family moved to an apartment in Claymont, Delaware, where they lived for a few years before moving to a house in Wilmington, Delaware.[6] Joe Biden Sr. then did better as a used car salesman, and the family's circumstances were middle class.[7][5][6]

Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont,[8] where he was a standout halfback/wide receiver on the high school football team; he helped lead a perennially losing team to an undefeated season in his senior year.[9][6] He played on the baseball team as well.[6] During these years, he participated in an anti-segregation sit-in at a Wilmington theatre.[10] Academically, Biden was undistinguished,[6] but he was a natural leader among the students.[11] He graduated in 1961.[8]

Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark, where he was more interested in sports and socializing than in studying,[6] although his classmates were impressed by his cramming abilities.[10] He played halfback with the Blue Hens freshman football team,[9] but left football in his junior year, without significant varsity experience, in order to spend more time with his out-of-state girlfriend.[9] He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in history and political science in 1965,[2] ranked 506th of 688 in his class.[12]

He went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968,[13] where by his own description he found it to be "the biggest bore in the world" and pulled many all-nighters to get by.[10][14] During his first year there, he was accused of having plagiarized 5 of 15 pages of a law review article. Biden said it was inadvertent due to his not knowing the proper rules of citation, and he was permitted to retake the course after receiving a grade of F, which was subsequently dropped from his record.[14] He was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.[13]

Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. (pronounced /'d??o??s??f r??b??'n??t 'ba??d??n/; born November 20, 1942) is the senior United States Senator from Delaware. He is both the Democratic vice presidential nominee for the November 2008 presidential election and a candidate for re-election to the U.S. Senate.

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and lived there for ten years prior to moving to Delaware. He became an attorney in 1969, and was elected to a county council in 1970. Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 and became the fifth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, and 2002, and has served for the sixth-longest period among current senators.

Biden is a long-time member and current chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. His strong advocacy helped bring about U.S. military assistance and intervention during the Bosnian War. He voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution, but later proposed resolutions to alter U.S. strategy there. He has served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, and led creation of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and Violence Against Women Act. He chaired the Judiciary Committee during the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.

Biden unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008, both times dropping out early in the process. Barack Obama selected Biden to be the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 U.S. election. If elected, he will be the first Roman Catholic Vice President and the first Vice President from Delaware.

What does redistributive mean. Well, remember that it was the Left-Wing of the Supreme Court that brought us this little jewel, holding that the government could take your real property, like your home, not for public use, but to give to another private individual, such as a political contributor or other party hack or interest group.

Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another to further economic development. The case arose from the condemnation by New London, Connecticut, of privately owned real property so that it could be used as part of a comprehensive redevelopment plan. The Court held in a 5-4 decision that the general benefits a community enjoyed from economic growth qualified such redevelopment plans as a permissible "public use" under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion; he was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer

The decision was widely criticized by American politicians and the general public. Many members of the general public viewed the outcome as a gross violation of property rights and as a misinterpretation of the Fifth Amendment, the consequence of which would be to benefit large corporations at the expense of individual homeowners and local communities. Some in the legal profession construe the public's outrage as being directed not at the interpretation of legal principles involved in the case, but at the broad moral principles of the general outcome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

Hear Obama and Clinton for yourself, in their own words with out the filter of someone else's opinion..

Bill Clinton says Democrats failure to allow Republicans to regulate Freddie and Fannie caused economic melt down.

so. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsynspIqAoE

Obama in this video, addressing his community activist work and his work representing ACORN in litigation against the banks and relating to the Community Reinvestment Act, and addressing the failure of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as those actions relate to the destruction of our economy by causing the current real estate and subsequent financial crisis, states that, and I quote:

"Subprime lending started out as a good idea, helping Americans buy homes who previously could not afford to. Financial institutions created new financial instruments that could securitize these loans, slice them into finer and finer risk categories, and spread them out among investors and around the country, as well as around the world. In theory, this should have allowed mortgage lending to be less risky, and more diversified."

Acknowledging the catastrophe, but as apologist for the Democrats, Obama then offers this justification.

"The original idea was a good one, which was, lets see if we can distribute risk more broadly, and make it easier to provide loans to people who otherwise might not be able to get one."

Yah, great idea. Economically unsound, but embraced by Obama. Listen for yourself. You cannot dispute the mans on words recorded live:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314&feature=related
???
And here is Obama again, stating

"And I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that,"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck

2001 Chicago Public Radio Interview.

And here is Obama again in December 2007, promising a role in formulating policy during his transition if elected, despite saying he has no ties to this organization, Acorn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJcVgJhNaU


And here is a link to C-SPAN video clips of the Congressional hearings at roughly the time McCains attempt at S.190. to fix Fannie and Freddie. See for yourself who said what.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

To all of the conservatives out there who think that Obama is a flaming liberal, I would like to remind you of what he did when he was elected President of the Harvard Law Review. The Law Review President gets to name ten individuals to write articles for the Review, and these ten people get to control the content of the publication. All of the minorities and the liberals thought they finally had it made, that Obama would appoint ten left wing editors. Instead, Obama appointed three conservatives, three liberals and four moderates. That year the Law Review was critically acclaimed as the best run and best written Harvard publication in decades.

So when he wins in November, conservatives don't have to freak out. Obama is a centrist and will appoint a balanced cabinet full of active people who will really get things done. Kind of like the way our multi-cultural society is supposed to be. And exactly what we need in this time of economic crisis.

Barack Hussein Obama II (pronounced /b????r????k h????se??n o????b????m??/; born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 United States presidential election.
Obama is the first African American to be nominated by a major American political party for president. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After a primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70 percent of the vote.
As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel.
Barack Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black Kenyan from Nyang???oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas. His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student. They separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.
After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for several years and then back to Indonesia to complete fieldwork for her doctoral dissertation. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995.
Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983.

after reading 90% of these posts, I belive Utah's law that states "Idiots may not vote" should be a federal law.......it doesn't matter what party you are voting for but please know what you're voting for, go to a PC and since you are reading this, go to each candidate's sites and read All their policies, ideas, agendas and see how its gonna benefit you or work aganist you......so yeah i still believe idiots should not vote

Did anyone see the article in today's Parade - a section found in many Sunday papers? Written by Jonathan Alter, it's titled "What to Know Before You Vote." It is an obvious biased opinion against John McCain, likely timed on purpose to come out on this Sunday before the election. What is doesn't tell you is that Atler is a senior editor with Newsweek, describes himself as a Chicago native although now living in NJ. If papers publish crap like this, they should be required to state that the author already supports one of the candidates and that the article is based on personal opinion.

I have become so fed up with the media for losing any semblance of objectivity. In addition to the failure to properly 'vet' Obama and his background, there is rarely any mention of the successes on McCain's side. We hear about Obama's supporters on front pages, but have to research outselves to find the long list of highly respected, intelligent supporters on McCain's side... I mean, come on, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, most of the retired military brass, a long list of newspapers, celebrities, even some Democratic politicians.

McCain supporters - help spread the word. I see more and more lawn signs each day for McCain/Palin. There IS a buzz out there and his support is GROWING. Spread the word, get the vote out in your neighborhood. It's an uphill battle against prejudiced reporting for a smooth-talking snake oil salesman, but if you believe in family values, love of country, service with honor.. join the fight!