Biden the Blowhard

It's fairly easy to see why Obama's handlers never let Joe Biden talk during the campaign. If Barack has a tongue made of gold, then Joe's tongue is, well, horse manure. According to a recent news article, Biden stated that he chastised then President George W. Bush on more than one occasion.

"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN on Tuesday, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"

In 2004, on HBO's Real Time with Bill Mahar, Biden said "When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"

Hmmm. Well, numerous Bush aides, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and Former Advisor Karl Rove have all disputed these assertions. Rove even commented "It didn't happen." Rove, a FOX News contributor, said in an interview with "On the Record, "I hate to say this, but he's a serial exaggerator. If I was being unkind, I would say liar, but it is a habit he ought to drop."

Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."

This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."

Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."

Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.

"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "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."

Biden 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.

Wow. How's that for transparency. You think this guy's gonna be honest with you when the going get's tough?

Or is it that Obama is just as full of crap, only he's much better at saying it?