Elderly Senator Confuses Sunnis & Shias AGAIN

Remember when some old coot of a Senator had a senior moment and mistook Sunnis for Shias?

Dominating several news cycles, the gaffe set off a firestorm which went to the heart of the Senator's vaunted foreign policy expertise. Like Brit Hume, most wrote the mistake off to old age. Chuck Todd went further, saying that if a Democrat candidate had said such a thing it would have been on a "running loop" and a "BIG problem":

Don't look now --- it has happened AGAIN. Yet another senatorial senior moment on today's Meet the Press:

Get off my lawn!

Later, the foreign policy expert crazy old fart rattles off a list of Iraq's neighbors. Unfortunately it's more like a doddering Venn diagram with an Aqua Velva/'roid creme odor, as Iraq now apparently neighbors itself:

Of course, this is all a silly little game. And Allahpundit hates it when people play gotcha with selective editing like I did in the first clip (full clip here, AP). But c'mon --- it's kinda fun, isn't it? Isn't it?

UPDATE: Are you reading this? You know, these words --- right here? Good. Then I hope that means you just read the preceding paragraph, unlike a beclowned commenter below and some unnamed bloggers I tipped this story to. I'll repeat anyway: it was a truncated clip, I disclosed that fact and provided a link to the full clip.

Hell, Bob Owens got the joke immediately with an "O RLY?" appended to his post about this clip. Thanks for taking the time to read an extra 40 words, Bob.

And for those who did indeed take the time to read the entire post, but are still upset at Biden's videos, let me illustrate how an apparently too-nuanced joke can vividly fail ... by explaining it:

Both Senators are OLD. Both Senators MISSPOKE. Both Senators CORRECTED themselves (but not in the case of Biden's Iran=Iraq fumble). The ha-ha comes at the point when you realize one senator's mistake was quickly elevated to a critical evaluation of his foreign policy chops and/or as prima facie evidence of his senility, while the other scoots by unscathed on his Rascal motorized chair. See? Another crappy old guy joke... I give up.

UPDATE: Welcome, HotAir (thanks, Allah!).

Comments

[Chris Crawford]

Having been burned once, I'm wasn't willing to take your four-second soundbite from the interview as representative of what Mr. Biden really said. So I went and looked it up. Lo and behold, immediately after your four-second version, he corrected himself. Here's what he said:

"There are no Sunnis in Anbar Province -- I mean Shias in Anbar Province."

So it appears to me that you have "edited" the man's words.

As to your intimation that Mr. Biden doesn't have his geography straight, here's my transcription of Mr. Biden's statement:

"The bottom line is that we can argue about whether the surge was good, bad, or indifferent. Let's assume it was all good. The truth of the matter is, what do we do now? What's John McCain gonna do when he's President. He says he will not sign onto a timeline, number one. Number two, He has no, no idea, no suggestion of how he's going to deal with the neighbors. He has no idea of what he's going to do with Iraq. He has no idea of what he's going to do with Syria. He has no idea of what he's going to do with Turkey."

Now, I don't know what your atlas shows, but my atlas shows that Iraq is has Syria on its western border and Turkey on its northwestern border. I think that you are guilty of what you accuse Mr. Biden of: not knowing your basic geography. Unless of course I have completely misinterpreted the thrust of your post.

And just to show off with a bit of utter trivia: there are three provinces in Europe named, respectively, Galicia, Galicia, and Galatia. Off the top of your head, where are they?

OK, I know, I know... showoff... But this is the first time in my life that I've had an opportunity to use that information for SOMETHING!

[Chris Crawford]

Ack, I got sloppy: Galatia is NOT in Europe -- but it's close. Oops. Eat my words...

[Chris Crawford]

I just read your lowermost comments (don't know how I missed them the first time around -- I was busy tracking down the video) and I owe you an apology because you freely admit that you were playing games with the video.

However, I still think you blew the geography point -- unless there was some other subtlety I missed.

[Cuffy Meigs]

So it took you a *full hour* to read my entire post? Speed reader!

And the "subtlety" you missed was that Biden meant "Iran" was a neighbor (like Syria and Turkey) but said "Iraq." Another slip of his elderly tongue.

Chris, thanks for stopping by. But really, you have become a pedantic bore.

[Chris Crawford]

So it took you a *full hour* to read my entire post? Speed reader!

Just can't resist getting in some sort of personal shot, can you? I think it must be bred into conservative genes.

And the "subtlety" you missed was that Biden meant "Iran" was a neighbor (like Syria and Turkey) but said "Iraq."

The antecedent of his remarks ("neighbors") was syntactically distant from his examples, and therefore basing your criticism on that antecedent relationship is weak. If you wish, I could go through your own written (not oral) comments and analyze the many grammatical errors there -- but that would be just as petty as this post. Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Chris, thanks for stopping by. But really, you have become a pedantic bore

OK, I'll take off. I'm not at all surprised by your reaction; in many years of exploring conservative blogs, I have never -- NEVER -- encountered a single one that encouraged genuine discussion. This is one huge difference between conservative blogs and liberal blogs. The liberal blogs like to take apart an issue, examine its components, discuss the ramifications. When I disagree with liberals on blogs, there will always be one or two asses who get just as nasty as the conservatives, but I'm able to continue an interesting discussion with the majority. Indeed, on Daily Kos, where they have a rating system for individual comments, I often get positive ratings for posts that argue against the liberal position -- but only when my comments are well-reasoned.

On conservative blogs, the emphasis seems to be on loyalty rather than analysis. This is the structure universal among conservative blogs:

POST: Liberals are bad
Comment #1: You bet!
Comment #2: Sure thing!
Comment #3: They're not just bad, they're REALLY bad!
Comment #4: ROFL!
Comment #5: I can come up with a nastier jibe than you can.
Comment #6: You bet!
Comment #7: Sure thing!
etc
etc
etc

When I interrupt this self-congratulatory festival, I am seen as a party-pooper, a [shudder] dissenter, one of THEM and not one of US. And in conservative blogs, camaraderie is more important than the search for truth.

I will leave you with a set of related questions: why do you place such a high emphasis on consensus? Why do you resent disagreement with your beliefs? Is it because you are unsure of your beliefs and feel them too fragile to stand up to questioning? Is it instead because you have made up your mind on all the issues and do not wish to spend the time accommodating those beliefs to thoughts that did not cross your mind? These are strictly rhetorical questions; I do not pretend to know what's going on inside your mind.

Best wishes to Brian, Interested Bystander, and all the other correspondents here.

Vaya con dios, Cuffy.

[Interested Bystander]

Cuffy,

I agree with you. Chris, and others who think like he does, seem to pooh, pooh these things when Obama or Biden do them. I remember when McCain made those slips, and good ole Joe was there the first time, and corrected him immediately. I know there was one other time. But boy did the MSM jump on this like a pack of wild dogs smelling blood.

Remember Obama's "57 States visited so far with one more to go" statement? I think his campaign said that he was tired from being on the trail for so long, or some such statement like that.

But the bottom line is, we can play the "gotcha" game all day long, and in the end, we will still have Obama and McCain to choose from.

Unless of course the lawsuit filed in Philly by that Berg guy gets some traction, and people start wanting answers to the simple questions "Is Obama eligible to run for POTUS?" and "If so, where is his birth certificate that proves where he was born?" Both of these are LEGITIMATE questions when you know the fact that to get on a State's ballot all a person has to do is sign a statement saying he is eligible. No proof required. Unbelievable to me that this is all that needs to be done by a candidate.

I sure hope O'Reilly gets down to some serious questions tonight. I suspect however that like Michelle and her "The View" appearance, the campaign gave O'Reilly a list of things that were off limits.