Come on Roger! How many times do we gotta do this damn scene?! Baby Herman Who Framed Roger Rabbit
I’m sorry Mr. President, but it’s time for another road trip. On Tuesday President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Buffalo to meet with and at least try to console the families of the racist Tops supermarket shooting yesterday. And in doing so, President Joe Biden will have another small piece of his soul torn off.
It is by far and away the worst part of the job for an American President. At some point in a President’s tenure, there will be a disaster, a flood, a hurricane, tornadoes, or more likely these days, yet another mass shooting. And the President will have to hop on board Air Force One, and go to console the families.
Some Presidents have the touch, and some don’t. Reagan had the touch, as he so eloquently showed in his speech about the Shuttle disaster. He just had that look. Clinton had that touch after the Oklahoma city bombing. And Obama was a master. Remember the honest tears when talking about the lost children of Sandy Hook, and the emotional singing of Amazing Grace at the funeral of the Reverend Pinkney after the Mother Emanuel AME shooting.
Some don’t. President George W Bush didn’t, as much as he tried. His greatest sin was banning cameras and reporters from the Dignified remains transfer for returning dead US soldiers at Dover Air Force base in Delaware, because he thought the images would hurt him politically. Fuck that. And Trump was a national disgrace, which is why none of the families of the Route 66 Festival massacre in Las Vegas wanted to meet with him, and neither did any of the survivors still in the hospital.
But in my 65 years, I have never seen anything quite like Joe Biden. Look, we all have gone through personal loss and anguish. We lose a parent, a spouse, or God forbid a child. But Joe Biden has had to suffer through more than most would in two lifetimes. The loss of his beloved wife and daughter in a horrific car wreck, hospitalizing his two sons. Seeing his son survive a combat tour in Iraq with a Bronze Star, only to lose him to brain cancer. And trying to shepherd his other son through substance abuse.
You can say what you want about Joe Biden, but what you can’t say is that you’re not getting authentic Biden. Is he perfect? Of course not, that’s why he’s occasionally referred to as a gaffe machine. But what he is is an honest, sincere, kind, devout catholic family man, and that shines through in everything he does. He really tries.
And he wears his heart on his sleeve like no man I’ve ever known before. He has over the years learned to deal with his incredible load of grief. And he has learned to share it. He did it again today in the Rose Garden, when speaking to the families of fallen police officers from 2021. I can almost recite it by rote, I know the feeling. Believe me I know the feeling. That feeling of rolling over in bed at night, reaching out, and feeling an empty space on the other side of the bed. I know the feeling of sitting down at the kitchen table to eat dinner, and seeing that empty chair at the table. But it gets better. Please believe me, it gets better. There will come a day, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but there will be a day when you think of your loved one, and it will bring a smile to your face before it brings a tear to your eye. It gets better.
He’s done it with hurricane survivors. He’s done it with mass shooting survivors. He did it with the families of Covid losses. He has done it more times than I can count in less than 2 years. And if you look at his face, and you listen to his voice, you can see that he is literally laying his own soul bare to empathize with those grieving family members. And in doing so, you can see him ripping off a little piece of scab that he thought had long ago healed over. That’s just Joe.
And now, on Tuesday he’ll do it again. He’ll go to Buffalo, he’ll greet, he’ll console, he’ll hold, he’ll shed tears, and he’ll do everything in his power to give them a little peace. And in doing so, he’ll scrape off another raw little bit of himself. I don’t know how he does it. I sure as hell couldn’t. But I couldn’t have more respect for him.
When you put all that in the context that Uncle Joe is around 80, Murf, it’s a minor miracle that he’s alive himself rather than dead from a broken heart.
actually, my heart breaks for the friends and families of the people shot up in that store in Buffalo. As leader of our nation, shitty jobs fall on his shoulders; that’s in the job description–that part that says “and other duties as assigned….”
Now, President Biden was a Senator back in the day. Where was he with regard to legislation reining in this plague of firearms? I mean, I know where he was when it came to a woman’s right to work and not be sexually harassed by her boss. It might just be I’m not remembering something but nothing really stands out firearms- wise for President Biden.
Relitigating the past is a practice best left to Republicans. In the here and now, we are calle to not only do better but BE better. Uncle Joe understands this better than most…but do you?
Maybe put the crack pipe down and realize Joe Lie-Den is one of the biggest idiots to ever come out of Washington. HIS WIFE was the reason she and his sons died….. Hunter is a meth addict joke and his ‘gaffes’ are due to his brain never working….. keep trying to blow smoke up that old tailpipe of his…. God help this country with people like you…..
Projecting are we? The accident that killed Biden’s first wife and daughter was five decades ago. Curiosity about it (due to slanderous shit like you’ve written) caused me to look into it a long time ago. I should also note that while there were no fatalities (thankfully) I was involved in major auto accident just at edge of my small hometown in 1975 and have some personal experience with LE actions and decisions, as well as records or lack thereof of the era. According to responders asked about this stuff decades ago accident notes/reports were written on 3″ by 5″ cards and put in a box for transfer to formal records once a month, and some of them getting misplaced/lost was common so pretty much all there is to go on is what folks who responded had to say in the aftermath and as Biden rose in politics some years later.
The intersection itself wasn’t “in town” and was at a spot that was a popular shortcut for truckers. While the cross traffic had a stop sign it wasn’t a four way stop, and truckers had a habit of ignoring clearly posted signage to apply brakes and also the 35pmph speed limit sign going down the hill the driver of the semi was travelling down – so they could build up momentum to make it up the hill on the other side of the intersection. Ms. Biden might have been distracted some with three children in the car and not realizing the truck was accelerating instead of slowing down thought she had adequate time to make it across after stopping. What is known is that the impact knocked her station wagon 150ft into an embankment. In other words if not for the embankment it would have been thrown an even greater distance! No fucking way that driver was only going 35mph, and more than the dude who hit my car was at or under the speed limit.
As for the drinking part, again this was fifty years ago and it’s not surprising that neither police car that responded had a breathalyzer unit in it. Neither is it surprising (at the time) a blood alcohol test wasn’t done on the driver at the hospital. The ambulance people noted the guy was in stupor and figured he’d been drinking but with two dying people and two seriously injured with one having head trauma (Hunter suffered a fractured skull) they had other priorities. And if you think cops are sometimes overly forgiving of drunk driving these days back then they REALLY tended to look the other way. Local prosecutors seldom ever brought drunk driving cases to court because juries refused to convict in those days. It was however widely assumed at the time (perhaps unfairly – being disoriented could well – again as I can personally attest) he’d been drinking. However, it’s by no means a stretch to think he might have simply been out of sorts as the result of getting banged up pretty good in an accident. And it was also noted he was distraught knowing that there was probably dead and maybe dying people including kids in the car he’d hit. To be fair I think most of us would be less than normal under the circumstances. But drinking was a rumor that got started by EMTs and it made its way to Biden. Could or should he have been more circumspect about mentioning it publicly? That’s a fair question to raise but it was by all accounts widely accepted at the time, and again I came of age at a time when drunk driving accidents (including some with serious injuries and fatalities) were treated with a “well, that was tragic but oh well” mentality mixed with “there but for the grace of god go I” feeling too since most people who drank would get behind the wheel of a car. That’s just how things were back then. It was COMMON. Consequences were rare. Back then. Cops tended to look the other way when possible as I said, in part because of the extra paperwork and partly because the odds of someone ever being convicted were minimal so why bother investigating and documenting? What we DO know for certain is that there’s no documentation that the guy was drunk or impaired when his semi hit the Biden station wagon. It was widely rumored that was the case, a rumor started by EMTs on the scene that day. RUMORS.
Later, Biden himself would stop alluding to the drinking/drunk driving possibility and in fact spoke with the driver’s (he’d died by then) daughter to apologize for accepting rumors as fact. He publicly made it clear he accepted that family’s assertation that the man wasn’t someone who would drink & drive.
As for the cops, paperwork on a major accident is always daunting and cops are no different than the rest of us – the less they have to do the better. Stuff happens to “get this over with” that isn’t always kosher. I for instance got a ticket for failure to yield, BUT witnesses at the scene said the truck was speeding. Also, there was a huge, temporary sign for some project about to start construction that blocked much of the view of the direction that truck was coming from. It was taken down the next morning! So I wasn’t able to get a picture of it to maybe contest the ticket. My point though is that investigation and even documentation of stuff wasn’t exactly thorough back then. The bottom line is that it was a tragic accident, and no one was assessed as being at fault both then and since.
As for your vile comments about Hunter Biden, he’s not hidden his struggles with addition during his life. Hell, even when he was about to get a commission in the Navy they issued a waiver because he’d been upfront with them about his history! But meth was never part of it. Like his brother he survived the physical trauma of the accident that killed his mom and little sister. Beau had a broken leg. Hunter had a fractured skull. Did that wind up impacting his cognitive development and personality and make him more vulnerable to addition? That’s way the hell beyond my pay grade and I actually have formal training and work experience in psychology and counseling.
I do however admit to name calling. I’ve certainly been called enough shitty things by conservatives over the past forty years that I sometimes respond. Sometimes rather forcefully, bluntly and even obscenely in fact. I get a kick out of how often so many of you who hurl your insults get their little fee fees butt-hurt when someone responds in kind! So you despicable pile of shit, go fuck your baboon sized ass with a section of rusty sewer pipe. Sideways.
Cause Don the cons kid is such a paragon of virtue, posting videos of himself on the internet high as a kite on something demonstrates he’s ‘better’ than Hunter Biden. Jared Kuschner getting $2 Billion from the Saudis while working in the West Wing certainly doesn’t raise questions, does it? You must be as high on meth as anyone to raise questions about Biden when the other guy isn’t allowed to be involved with Charities anymore after taking a plea deal after defrauding a childrens charity. Not just Don the con, but the drug addict who keeps posting videos of himself and appearing on Fox News clearly under the influence, the daughter too, who also got a ton of Chinese patents days after attending a dinner with Chinese President Xi. But you aren’t worried about those things. As long as they run around in white sheets burning crosses…you’re good, right?
Of course Blotus: Nothing to see here folks, move along