@kleptomage
hoe about you convince me that this article from a kickstarted inde magazine, especially since it links a video (from the totally not biased twitter) about him “bragging” about cutting social security from 1995, about 25 years ago, which means he at least changed his mind since then (that’s a possibility). There’s also this PolitiFact quote.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Biden spoke in favor of freezes to Social Security as part of an effort to rein in all spending to reduce the deficit.
“The only way that Congress will ever be able to come to grips with deficits is by dealing with all federal programs as a package,” Biden said in 1984.
In 1984, Biden co-sponsored a proposal with two GOP senators to broadly freeze federal spending. The proposal would have meant no Social Security cost-of-living adjustments for one year, but it was defeated.
In 1995, Biden voted in favor of an amendment to exclude reducing Social Security benefits in any legislation to implement a balanced-budget amendment. But Biden ultimately supported the balanced-budget amendment when its final form didn’t include the exemption.
There’s also the Iraq war, which started 18 years ago, and in fact not three years after the Iraq war, and quoting from Wikipedia this time “In 2006, about three years into the war in Iraq, Biden believed the original authorization on the use of military force in Iraq in 2002 had been a mistake because President Bush “used his congressional authority unwisely.” Biden argued that the 2002 resolution needed revision because Saddam Hussein had since been deposed and executed, and because the weapons of mass destruction that the Iraq regime supposedly had stockpiled — a principal justification by the Bush administration for going to war — were never found. Biden opposed increasing troops in Iraq while favoring the training of Iraqi soldiers to maintain the security of their own country and said U.S. troops should “responsibly draw down” and not stay in Iraq indefinitely.”
in fact, from 2016, and quoting from the same Wikipedia article “In a 2016 interview with Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden spoke about changing “the fundamental approach [America] had to the Middle East”, and that the lesson learned from Iraq is “the use of force with large standing armies in place was extremely costly, [and] would work until the moment we left.”
These are issues that I place in an order roughly similar to the article, and that’s on purpose.
There’s also the sex allegations against Biden, which is kind the elephant in the room which another article of the site mentions, which
the guardian have this to say about.
One obvious reason is that Reade’s accusations are very hard to prove. The incident happened a long time ago and there weren’t any witnesses. Reade also gave a slightly different version of events last year; she accused Biden of touching her neck and shoulders in a way that was inappropriate and uncomfortable, but did not say anything sexual took place. This inconsistency obviously doesn’t mean she’s lying; unfortunately, it is easy to use against her.
Reade’s story may be impossible to verify, but this is the case with the vast majority of sexual assault allegations. It is nearly always a case of “he said, she said” – and it is nearly always the “he’ that is automatically believed. The #MeToo mantra “Believe Women” doesn’t mean that women never lie; it means that our systems of power are biased towards believing men never lie. It means that it takes decades of allegations and scores of women coming forward for powerful men like Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Cosby to be brought to justice. All the mantra means is that you shouldn’t automatically disbelieve women.
You know who has talked publicly about the importance of taking women seriously? Biden. During the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, Biden stood up for Dr Christine Blasey Ford, noting: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real.”
Does this presumption not apply when the guy being accused is a Democrat running for president? It would seem that way. In January, according to reporting from the Intercept, Reade asked for help from the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which has supported accusers of high-profile people like Weinstein. Reade was reportedly told by the National Women’s Law Center, the organization within which the Time’s Up fund is housed, that it couldn’t assist with accusations against a presidential candidate because it would jeopardize their non-profit status. The Intercept further notes that “the public relations firm that works on behalf of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund is SKDKnickerbocker, whose managing director, Anita Dunn, is the top adviser to Biden’s presidential campaign”.
