IRIS Blog

The previous entry focused on Biden's gaffes and lies in last night's debate from a Middle East perspective, but this whopper is so big, it deserves its own post:

Look, all you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie’s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody in there whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years.

It turns out that Katie's Restaurant closed down fifteen years ago. Talk radio host Curtis Sliwa of WABC dug this information up (audio here). He also got puzzled reactions from Wilmington Home Depots asking if anyone had ever sighted Biden. Think any mainstream reporter will follow up and ask him which Home Depot he frequents? Think any journalist will go to that Home Depot to confirm?

Joe Biden's 1988 presidential campaign shut down due to revelations of egregious plagiarism. He was discovered to have plagiarized in law school. He commits gaffes on a daily basis.

Biden succeeded in the debate by covering up who he really is.
Palin succeeded in the debate by conveying who she really is.

For those who follow the Middle East, such as IRIS readers, Joe 'Foreign Policy' Biden made some serious gaffes, such as on Iran, Hamas' election victory in Gaza vs. the West Bank, and this whopper about Hezbollah being thrown out of Lebanon:

In Thursday night’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life. “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.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” [Emphasis added.]

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.

Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about.

On Iran he made two blunders:

The first was a denial that the Ahmadinejad threats against Israel are serious given that 'the theocracy' controls the military. Here is the head of Iran's theocracy calling for the extermination of Israel this week. The second was an outright lie denying Obama said he would meet Ahmadinejad without preconditions. Here is the video proof:



In this light, take a look at the rest of Biden's misstatements and consider how much credence to give his heartfelt love for Israel (despite reportedly threatening to cut off all aid during the Lebanon War, telling Israeli officials to come to terms with a nuclear Iran and suggesting that America send a $200 million 'blank check' to Iran in the wake of the 9/11 attacks).

One month ago, before anyone knew much about Governor Palin, I made some wild predictions, including the outcome of last night's debate:

Palin will defeat Biden in the Vice President debates in terms of popular opinion, but the mainstream media will declare Biden the winner.

This was written before she had given her convention speech.

Over the next few days, the outcome will become more clear, but there are several key indications that it was a split decision between the public and the mainstream media:

Popular opinion went to Palin:

The four indicators I would use here are: Frank Luntz's undecided focus group, Drudge Report insta-poll and Intrade Market odds.

Luntz focus group of undecideds
The Luntz polling organization gathers a reasonable sample of undecided voters for every debate and polls them immediately afterward. Palin won this group 20-4. This is unprecedented in their experience.

Drudge Report insta-poll
After 416,000 votes cast, Palin has a knockout lead of 70%-28%. It is fair to argue that Drudge's readership skews right, but compared to previous Drudge polls, this was extraordinary.

Intrade Market odds
This is the best single number to see what the general public thinks in terms of who will win the election at any given moment. At the start of yesterday's debate, the odds were heavily in Obama's favor: approximately 69:31 in favor of Obama. In the next 12 hours, the odds dropped sharply, down to 65:35. In the morning trading, Obama has gained some ground, but it is possible that this is due to the mainstream media morning-after effect.


Media pundits called it for Biden:

Although many analysts said that Palin exceeded expectations, that is nothing like saying she won the debate. She had been so pilloried since the Gibson and Couric interviews, this was not much of a compliment. There is no question that a comprehensive summary of MSM scores would show a large margin of victory for Biden.

CNN's report card, for example, gives Biden 3 A's and 2 B's, while Palin received 2 A's, 2 B's and a C.

Here is a roundup of mainstream media analysis, which gives the edge to Biden.

Why do these predictions matter? Because political analysis is like science. Theories that cannot explain unknown data are not worth much. In politics, the unknown data are future events. Many of them are unknowable, but a great deal are predictable from valid hypotheses.

Joe Biden's 1988 presidential campaign was aborted due to the discovery of his egregious plagiarism of a British politician's stories (complete with adoption of his biography) and reports of plagiarism in law school. Now the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee is making 'gaffes' on a daily basis, including claims that he was 'shot at' in Iraq and that his helicopter was 'forced down' in Afghanistan. For good measure he told a coal miner's group that 'I am a hard coal miner' and said that 'hundreds of thousands of people' drove from his boyhood home town of Scranton, PA to support his bid for the Delaware Senate.

Here is his claim of being 'shot at' in Iraq:

"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube last year. "Number one, you take all the troops out - you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."

But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."

The senior senator from Delaware went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.

"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."

The rest of the press ignored the flap at the time because Biden was viewed as having little chance of ending up on the Democratic presidential ticket.

Here is his claim of having his helicopter 'forced down' along 'the superhighway of terror:'

"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Senators Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.

"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."

Shana tova to our Jewish readers. May 5769 find you all be blessed with a year of sweetness and happiness, and may our world be blessed with peace.