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It's So, Joe

What's the sound of Joe Biden's hat entering the presidential ring?

"Is there anyone here that wants to jump on Joe Biden's bandwagon?" asks Jerome Armstrong on MyDD, the Philadelphia left-leaning political blog. "... I would guess that Biden feels like it's now or never. In my view, he's from DC, so he's out of the question-- pretty to-the-point litmus test eh?"

A reader named Fitzy smells No. 2:

"But Vice President Biden? I'm not a big fan of the guy, and don't particularly want him in either spot, but to me, it feels like he's running for Vice President, not President. He's getting his name out there, making noise to get noticed, but at the same time he's been talking up other people's candidacies more than his own. He called Senator Clinton "the overwhelming, prohibitive favorite" for the nomination (which is probably true right now), and, even more obviously, I noticed this on the DraftMarkWarner.com website:

"On a possible Warner run for the White House, Senator Joe Biden teased the February 5th Jefferson-Jackson dinner crowd with lines such as 'My name is Joe Biden and I'm here to audition for Vice President of the United States of America' ... If an outsider governor from Virginia or New Mexico were to win the nomination, wouldn't they want a DC insider with recent foreign policy experience?"

The Corrente group blog notes the news with a questioning headline that doesn't pass the Inquirer's breakfast test. But read it here. Nor does much love come from the peanut gallery of Corrente commenters.

Over at Eschaton, one reader , SWR, likes the idea: "Well he is "electable" right? Why throw our chance away this time with some mad dog like Howard Dean or Wesley Clark or some divisive witch like Hillary Clinton when the presidency will be within our grasp?"

...

Daypop says the Web's most-popular document this weekend was Steve Jobs's commencement speech at Stanford. One pearl from the Apple guru and former college drop-out:

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

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The second most-trafficked piece was an allegation reported in Britain's Independent that U.S. military lied to its closet ally, denying that napalm was used in Iraq. The First Marine Expeditionary Force used 30 MK77 firebombs, a new generation of incendiary weapon, between Match 31 and April 2, 2003 against military targets and at enough distance from civilians not to breach a 1980 weapons convention, the paper said. But British Defense Minister Adam Ingram denied the use of incendiary weapons to Labour party MPs because he'd been misinformed by U.S. officials, he wrote in a letter the Independent obtained. MPs are calling for answers.

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Jim Lampley the veteran sportscaster-turned Huffington Post blogger brought attention to an incendiary claim of his own: that a website calling itself TBRNews.org contends the Bush Administration is burying the true body count from Iraq. But the liberal blogger known as The Left Coaster discredits that site and writes that "Lampley would be well advised not to give much credibility to TBR News and spoil his own reputation in the process." The Left Coaster asks some solidly skeptical questions and links to some Daily Kos diaries that connect the TBR site with a series of revisionist stories.

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Lucy in the Sky dies. Was "rather chuffed" at being immortalized by John Lennon in song. And you thought it was a drug song.

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Over the weekend Captain's Quarters questioned the Downing Street memo's authenticity. The London Times reporter who obtained the document had it re-typed to protect his source. Jonah Goldberg calls the Captain's blog a "must read." The Washington Monthly says hold on:

Now, unlike the Killian memos that were at the center of Rather gate, there are quite a few principals in this case who either wrote or received these memos and therefore have absolute knowledge of whether or not they're genuine. The first memo, for example, was written by Matthew Rycroft and distributed at the time to David Manning, Geoff Hoon, Jack Straw, Peter Goldsmith, Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, Richard Dearlove, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, and Alastair Campbell. So far, not a single one of these people has claimed they're fake.

I seem to remember an on-point quote from the May 5 Knight Ridder Washington bureau report on the memo:

A former senior U.S. official called it "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington.

The All-Spin Zone worries about what the development might do to chill any further use of the memo to energize opposition to the Bush Administration. The Philadelphia political blog sees a Karl Rove move to deep six the story in the press:

The Rovians have pulled out their only option - start screaming "FAAAAAAAAAAAAKE". After being burned on Rathergate and Newsweekgate, I supposed it's at least (grudgingly) understandable why much of the media has taken a "wait and see" attitude on the DSM. There's a reason that the Bushies have gone all out to neuter the press.

With this move by the Rovians, DSM followup by the corporate media effectively ends today unless the left makes a whole lot of noise real fast. Even a cacophony might not make a difference. My concern now is that unless the originals of the entire collection of the Downing Street Minutes are produced, this story might end up backburnered with the Killian file.

Thoughts on how to proceed? Am I over reacting? Am I seeing monsters under the bed where none reside? I sense a disturbance in the force, Obi Wan. Someone calm my jittery nerves.

That Dude from Philly
Posted 06/20/2005 01:02:18 PM
I would invest in oxygen futures as Biden is a BLOWHARD lol.
amento
Posted 06/20/2005 06:35:52 PM
The "DSM is a hoax" story is driven, as far as I can tell, by a misunderstanding.  Captain's Quarters suggests that the reporter destroyed the original memos, and he links to an AP report that says as much.  The reporter, however, testifies elsewhere that he copied the original memos, returned the original memos, then made copies of the copies, then destroyed the first set of copies.  My blog entry at http://amento.inknoise.com/thieves/2005/06/20/0001 expands a bit, with references to the above info.