Joe Biden isn’t President But He Plays One on TV
ByHeh, heh, heh! Joe Biden is acting president while Obama is on another vacation. He seems to enjoy the role, at least judging by this Washington Times story.
There’s no “I” in “team,” but there is definitely one in “Biden.”
With President Obama off on vacation, his second in two weeks, unofficial Acting President Joe Biden has stepped into the vacuum, claiming credit Thursday for the successes of the administration’s $787 billion stimulus package and fielding questions on health care reform — something his boss hasn’t done in nearly two weeks. ….
The vice president, borrowing Mr. Obama’s teleprompter for a speech before a friendly audience at the Brookings Institution, said “I” more than a dozen times as he pointed repeatedly to progress on the economy and to his lofty role in the process.
“Every week — with notable exceptions — I hold a Cabinet meeting. And most of the Cabinet secretaries attend,” he told the audience in Washington.
[...]
In a presidential-like declaration, Mr. Biden said the buck stops with him. “I take responsibility for mistakes that were made,” he said at one point.
Mr. Obama, his poll numbers plummeting after a long August recess, has all but dropped out of sight, except for his appearances at the services for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. In Martha’s Vineyard last week, he kept reporters far away as he played golf on Monday, and Tuesday, and Thursday and Friday.
Since his prerecorded radio address on Aug. 22, Mr. Obama hasn’t said a word about health care, which has quickly climbed to the top of the list of concerns for Americans. Instead, he choppered off to Camp David on Wednesday, and was heard from on Thursday just once when he proclaimed September “National Wilderness Month.”
While members of Congress and the president vacation, Mr. Biden has emerged from his disclosed location (Wilmington, Del.) and embarked on a flurry of activity.
He has held conference calls with governors, hit Philadelphia and Chicago for fundraisers to help freshmen Democrats, held a “Middle Class Task Force” planning meeting, spoken at the White House Conference on Gang Violence Prevention and Crime Control and even took in a Little League World Series baseball game.
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama has hosted a private White House dinner to celebrate Ramadan, a Muslim religious holiday (during which adherents are supposed to fast), played golf at Arlington’s Army Navy Country Club (no press allowed), hit the beach on Martha’s Vineyard (closed to press) and had dinner with his wife at the Sweet Life Cafe.
So with his boss out of town, Mr. Biden stepped up Thursday to deliver a speech heavy with superlatives about the administration’s economic stimulus plan. “Today there’s a growing consensus: The Recovery Act is, in fact, working.”
Declaring that 95 percent of all “working families” have received tax relief (check your mailbox), the vice president also noted that more than 54 million seniors and veterans “received a one-time check of $250.” Mr. Biden also asserted that the program “saved or created 150,000 jobs in the first 100 days,” and reiterated the administration’s pledge to save or create another 600,000 in the second hundred days.
But that’s where facts and fiction, like two Amtrak trains on the same track, collided. On Friday, the Labor Department is expected to announce another 200,000 jobs lost in August. Unemployment is expected to surge to 9.6 percent for August, according to Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business, who predicts the rate will top 10 percent by year’s end.
Since Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden took office, the economy has shed 3 million jobs. “The recession has wiped out all the jobs created in the private sector over the last decade,” Mr. Morici wrote. And while the stimulus package is expected to add about 3 million jobs by the end of 2011, “most of those jobs will be temporary and 3 million will not be enough to replace the more than 7 million that will be lost before the recession ends.”
But Mr. Biden pooh-poohed such negativity, saying the recovery program is just getting under way.
Personally, I prefer Biden when he’s playing the Village Villages idiot!
Popularity: 4% [?]
At least he isn’t playing doctor, especially after watching that video. What an idiot.
True: There is no “I” in team.
However there are a few in:
Infected Idiot’s Indefensible Idiology.