The Weekly Bidenism

When last we left our moronic number two, he was breaking laws and lying about his past. But Slow Joe doesn’t limit his historical revisions to himself. No, indeed. He’s happy to revise world history too, as you are about to learn. Get ready for. . . The Weekly Bidenism.

On October 2, 2008, Slow Joe was in the middle of the vice presidential debate at Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri, when he suddenly whipped out this little doozy:

“When we kicked -- along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know -- if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Oh Joe. Alternate universes not withstanding, Hezbollah has never been kicked out of Lebanon. Hezbollah was formed in 1982 (Joe’s tenth year in the Senate representing the good banks of Delaware) and they’ve run Lebanon ever since. It’s possible Joe meant Syria, though he was clearly talking at length about Hezbollah at the time. And, of course, if he did mean Syria, he still would be wrong. Sure, Syria did pull their troops out of Lebanon, but it had nothing to do with the United States or France. . . it was the result of an uprising by the Lebanese people.

And the idea that Joe and Barack suggested sending NATO troops seems to be made up entirely. Not only did the incident not happen, but there’s no record of any comments even remotely similar to what Joe suggests. But then, maybe Joe was talking about the future rather than the past? That’s about the only explanation that make sense. . . that or Joe’s just a liar or a fool.

But I guess it’s unfair to expect anyone to know the history of such a complicated place like the Middle East, even a supposed foreign policy expert like Joe. After all, it’s not like he butchered U.S. history right? Like the time he said:

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

True Joe, very true. . . though, I’d like to make two corrections. First, Roosevelt wasn’t President in 1929, Hoover was. And secondly, televisions were still experimental in 1929, so it’s unlikely that Hoover would have attempted a television broadcast of any sort.

Interestingly, when Slow whipped this one out during a September 22, 2008 interview, Katie “the Brain” Couric, a television news personality, didn’t seem to know that either fact was wrong.

The lesson here is that if you find yourself sitting next to Joe or Katie while taking a standardized test, don’t cheat off of either. Just guess, you’ll do better.