"There are two people -- you've heard me say it before -- two groups that stand between us and the barbarians at the gate," Biden said. "It's you and organized labor. That's it. That is it. So, mark my words, mark my words, if we lose this election, you are going to continue to see a continuation of the onslaught on everything we care about. For real. For real. So, I'm not only thanking you for your help. I would think you're all absolutely brain-dead if you didn't help. And I mean it."Speaking of brain...
September 24, 2008
"John McCain truly believes, truly believes that you are corporate America's problem. And thank God you are."
Said Joe Biden to the trial lawyers:
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97 comments:
What amazes me is that BHO should have known what he was buying.
I mean, I have a friend who just bought his first project car: a Fiat X/19. But he knew what he was buying, so we only tease him and not pity him.
But I'm beginning to wonder about which emotion BHO needs to receive from us.
-XC
I'm trying to imagine how a conversation between Joe Biden and Barack Obama sounds, with Obama's continuous "uh, ah, um, um, um-ing" and Biden's unguided riffing whatever random thought crosses his mind mid-sentence.
Ideas have no chance of expression
"because we're going to mobilize thousands of lawyers to make sure they don't steal another election"
He's describing the method by which this great American experiment will die; death by a thousand suits.
_________________
"Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society."
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
I want to thank Senator Biden for his statements. He has made the Democratic position crystal clear. The thought of voting for McCain no longer makes me nauseous.
he is for real for real
"...a kettle of lawyers..."
Hmm. I would have guessed more like a charm of lawyers.
Or maybe a culture?
http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Pointless/AnimalGroups.html
I never thought it was possible but Senator Biden makes George Bush look like Einstein.
Althought this still isn't as bad as FDR getting on TV after the crash of 1929. Now that is priceless.
If anything, this pretty much shows the level of intelligence our elected officials have.
Do we really want a man with a case of saying dumb and ludicrous stuff that is more serious than Bush's to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?
Having been one of those guys who considered himself a gate guard against barbarians, I gotta tell ou, I ddn't see no lawyers when I was out in the bush.
Ann, thought the line previous to your chunk as also telling:
Biden said that he's "done more than any other senator combined" for trial lawyers.
that is a scary sentence
The man is a gaffe-o-matic but not a word in the MSM.
For the record, the American Association of Justice = Trial Lawyers.
Number 5 in PAC giving for 2008 at 95% DEM to 5% GOP advantage, they clearly have heard the call
"The man is a gaffe-o-matic but not a word in the MSM"
What about the VP debate? The MSM's loving care can't shield him then.
By "trial lawyers," you mean (and he was speaking to) plaintiffs' personal injury contingent fee lawyers.
Many of them never go to trial. Many lawyers go to trial who aren't among them.
I am continuing to see a continuous concern about the things I continue to think matter for the continuation of the beliefs that are America's problems. And I, among myself, mean it.
You can quote me.
WB beldar.
got the laptop charged up? using a cellphone modem?
He's definitely unanimous in this...
I want him to keep running. I would be truly sad if he dropped off. He's the most entertaining part of this last stretch of the campaign.
Please people, don't hide Uncle Joe's gin!
And good morning to all of you.
Ann, thought the line previous to your chunk as also telling:
Biden said that he's "done more than any other senator combined" for trial lawyers.
that is a scary sentence
No, that is a campaign commercial just waiting to be made. Face it; despite his high personal opinion of himself, Biden makes Dan Quayle look like a genius. Could you imagine the MSM uproar if Sarah Palin had said even a couple of the moronic things Biden has said over the past few weeks? Can you hear the crickets chirping about their coverage of Biden?
Pass the popcorn, please
"Could you imagine the MSM uproar if Sarah Palin had said even a couple of the moronic things Biden has said over the past few weeks?"
To whom would she be saying anything moronic? She hasn't been allowed to say anything unscripted. The one time she challenged a favorable town-hall audience to quiz her on foreign policy, Boss Man McCain shut it down before anyone could get a chance.
From the Texas settlement with the tobacco companies;
According to Texas state senator Troy Fraser, the $2.3 billion -- to lawyers who never had to try their case in court -- "is enough to pay the yearly salary of 7,500 teachers or police officers for the next 10 years." Fraser calculated that the fee to each of the five firms -- assuming they worked 8 hours per day, 7 days per week, for 18 months -- amounted to $105,022 per hour. But we now know that the final fee -- after what should have been hard-nosed and impartial arbitration -- will be not the $2.3 billion that the attorneys requested, but $3.3 billion, fully 43 percent more than requested.
Similar situation occurred in Florida if I'm not mistaken. Yep, I'm glad those trial lawyers are standing between us and the barbarians.
I recall a Forbes magazine cover with the picture of two prominent plaintiff's trial attorneys. The issue was styled, "Lawyers from Hell." There is some truth both in what Sen. Biden said and in what belief he attributes to McCain. There really were (and sometimes still are) problems in corporate America that tort law is in a unique position to correct. That said, the excesses of the tort bar (think Dickie Scruggs, Bill Lerach and John O'Quinn) are in fact a big problem.
The excesses are relatively easy to correct with legislation. Politically, however, that will require considerable stomach, because the amounts of money being thrown around by the tort bar are truly staggering, and essentially all of it goes to Democrat candidates.
Considering that among Obama's constantly touted 'qualifications' are his judgement and his ability to run a campaign, his inability to keep a sock in Slo Joe's mouth contrasts unfavorably with how McCain is maximizing Sarah Palin's appeal.
And there are over a million more lawyers aspiring, I'm sure, to hold political office.
NUMBER OF LICENSED LAWYERS - 2006
1,116,967
Source: ABA Market Research Department, 6/2006
At the federal level there is a stark imbalance with lawyers holding a majority of elected positions. Don't we need affirmative action policies to promote the election of non-lawyer types to political office?
"contrasts unfavorably with how McCain is maximizing Sarah Palin's appeal"
Maximizing her appeal? That's what you're calling it? LOL.
I wonder if Biden ever read Barbarians at the Gate.
There, the barbarians were leverage-buyout firms like First Boston and KKR, each a jumble of traders, lawyers, and bankers.
But who are the barbarians in Biden's tale? Disorganized labor?
I think that's right. The barbarians at the gate of Biden's ego is everyone else in America.
This is the problem with having only lawyers on the dem ticket.
Trevor: while I applaud your commitment to openess, it seems to me that if Sarah Palin can draw 60K at a rally she really doesnt need the MSM to get her message out. Unless, of course, you regard the MSM as the neutral arbiters of truth. I, for one, do not, but as always YMMV. Openess is going directly to the people, unfiltered by the egregiously partisan reporting of the MSM which, IMO, is a dying beast.
McCain is very smart in keeping Sarah Palin isolated from the MSM. And he will continue to do that, and its a very smart strategic move.
So Rome fell for a lack of trial lawyers?
if we lose this election, you are going to continue to see a continuation of the onslaught on everything we care about.
If only that were true...
"...a kettle of lawyers..."
Hmm. I would have guessed more like a charm of lawyers.
Or maybe a culture
I like the sound of a murder of lawyers better.
What concerns me are the "non-political" groups the Obama people want to dispatch to Ohio, Florida, and the like to make sure we don't have the same voter problems as last time. Yes, the scare quotes are intentional. Imagine the intimidation that will be brought to bear on those not voting with the "protection."
Remember, Obama is the guy who finessed the caucuses to beat Clinton. Don't underestimate his vote manipulation team. Won't do anything illegal, but will do all they can to discourage participation from non-believers.
Trevor, I've said it before and I'll say it again. The media made its own bed vis-a-vis Palin. If they wanted to be given respect and access, they should have treated her the way any other candidate was treated, instead of resembling piranha swarming around a lamb chop.
OK Simon: I'm throwing the flag on the pirhana lamb chop analogy: fifteen yard and loss of down for a terrible analogy. :)
I love how he keeps saying things twice. This man is the best comedy in politics. A baffling, bumbling, blathering, buffoon. A gasbag spouting gasbaggry.
I can't wait for the debates. He will just keep on repeating himself and looking like the court jester that he is.
Simon, whether the media behaved badly or just behaved how the media always behave is debatable. What isn't debatable is that since the invention of the modern press this kind of "media management strategy" is utterly unheard of and, frankly IMO, insulting. Including to Sarah Palin.
See, I don't think, as Roger J points out, that much of a case is being made at rallies. Ability to deliver a stump speech is exactly the kind of criticism that was leveled at Obama all year long. The difference of course is that Obama has balanced those rallies/stump speeches with positions, policy papers, and interviews.
When will Palin take questions in an unscripted environment? Is she incapable of this or is the McCain camp afraid of what she'll say?
Like I said, either way, it's insulting.
Trevor: you are a fairly young man. If I may take the old fart liberty, the strategy of media control goes all the way back to JFK. There was a contretemp during his administration about how he attempted to control the media. I even wrote a paper on that subject while in college. And all politicans attempt to do it. Its nothing new.
Now if you think the media offers unbiased coverage and should therefor be the arbiters of coverage, thats fine. I see absolutely no evidence that the media fulfills that role today. We will have to disagree on this issue, and I continue to assert that McCain is absolutely correct in his strategy. Why do you feel that going to the people directly is a bad thing? Why should the message be left to a media to parse? My default position is let people hear the message directly and trust them to make the right judgment. YMMV of course.
"Uncle Joe is at it again...Hey, everyone, don't look at the crazy man with the hair plugs, look over there, at the hockey mom! I said, don't pay attention to him! Look at her!!!"
Or something like it...
Biden is Michael Scott.
"Why do you feel that going to the people directly is a bad thing?"
I don't. I just don't think that's really what Palin and McCain are doing. Nor should they, because they won't be able to reach the number of voters they need to reach in order to win. Rallies won't win an election. Interviews with partisan figures like Hannity won't do it either. She could be doing MORE interviews and thus exposing the hacks from the genuine reporters.
I don't think the media is unbiased, but it's all we've got. Controlling media access is one thing. Cutting the media off entirely from asking questions of a person who could become leader of the free world is a little different. I'm not going to just trust the judgment of McCain or even the voters of Alaska to tell me that she's capable.
Thanks for saying I'm young. "Fairly" is noted, though. ;)
Let's see, Jay Leno is retiring. May be Joe Biden could take his late night spot. It could be the Joe Biden Joe Biden show. Starrrrrrrrring Joe Biden Joe Biden and the Capuchin Hurdy Gurdy band.
Trevor--at my age, all you folks are fairly young! I do admire your idealism and you should never lose that.
Someone should tell Sen. Biden to just shut up and be a good boy!
When will Palin take questions in an unscripted environment? Is she incapable of this or is the McCain camp afraid of what she'll say?
It's quite possible. Few people come across as Shakespearean off the cuff and in presidential elections, those who make the fewest mistakes generally win.
Obama shattered the myth of his 'articulateness' when it was clear he couldn't string three words together without stammering although his syncophants simply say he's showing his thoughtfullness. Whatever.
McCain is hardly inspiring and certainly is no better than Obama in an unscripted environment. Joe Biden is in a class by himself, the one usually reserved for the special needs types. Why Obama picked him and allows him to run around unsupervised is anyone's guess.
The Drill SGT said...
Having been one of those guys who considered himself a gate guard against barbarians, I gotta tell ou, I ddn't see no lawyers when I was out in the bush.
Great comment.
Said even more concisely by Pastor Jeff:
Pastor_Jeff said...
So Rome fell for a lack of trial lawyers?
I'd add that the root cause of America's financial meltdown and what appears to be a coming drop in the living standards of fiscally responsible Americans who had no major credit card debt and did not move from the 190K house into the 450K house the local burger flipper got?
The root cause appears to be Ruling Elites from both parties (mostly lawyers) passing laws to extend credit to un-creditworthy whites and minorities to "give them the American dream".
All while the Ruling Elite lawyers assured the greedy Wall Street financiers that there was plenty of profit and little risk because if minor problems arose, the Gov't would save them just like it did past junk bond holders, savings&loans, holders of billions in unsecured foreign loans, and a top Hedge Fund.
(And also all while Bush remained willfully oblivious (*even the Bushies are not entirely clueless*) to regulatory failures and Crony Capitalism corrupting the country. The Bushies were also big cheerleaders of "The Ownership Society" and their donor fatcats who were making tens of millions a year pushing bad paper that the taxpayers are now on the hook for.)
There are two people -- you've heard me say it before -- two groups that stand between us and the barbarians at the gate," Biden said. "It's you and organized labor. That's it.
If trial lawyers and organized labor stand between you and the gate, which side of the gate does that put you on?
Zach said...
There are two people -- you've heard me say it before -- two groups that stand between us and the barbarians at the gate," Biden said. "It's you and organized labor. That's it.
If trial lawyers and organized labor stand between you and the gate, which side of the gate does that put you on?
9:21 AM
Inside, trapped...
...genuine reporters.
Please name one genuine reporter who is not a partisan hack? Couric? Gibson? Brokaw? Sheiffer? Page? Clift? Dowd? Brooks? They are all partisan hacks.
Genuine reporters- fair,objective, and non-partisan- do not exist anymore, except in old movies and fiction.
"(And also all while Bush remained willfully oblivious (*even the Bushies are not entirely clueless*) to regulatory failures and Crony Capitalism corrupting the country.."
The current administration and the R's tried to curb the malfeasance at Fannie Mae, Freddie, et al in 2005 and were blocked by a straight party vote by the D's. That is the genesis of our current situation. Before cast a pox on both their houses, check Raines, Johnson, Gorelick, Dodd, and other
D's response to the first whiff of
what was coming from FNMA. Totally obstructionist.
To be supremely manipulative you must make the target believe the desired behavior is their own idea. You can't tell people they'd be brain dead if they don't vote your way, that's too obvious. You mustn't tell people they're racist if they vote for the other, they'll know they're being manipulated. Must this be explained? This has become obnoxious.
Meade, [+collective nouns + lawyers] An eloquence, a disputation, a litigation a quibble, a shyst, a hagle, a wallet, a slick, a slither, a greed, a connivance a distain, a grabbit, an extortion, a fleece ,a leech a cunning a thicket a wriggle, a twist, an adroitness, a wealthiness, a loophole, an honesty <--- Ha ha ha, irony.
A vulture of personal injury attorneys.
A pardon of White House Special counsels.
A surcharge of tax lawyers.
A mudslide of real estate attorneys.
An alimony of divorce lawyers.
A deportment of immigration attorneys.
A consolidation of bankruptcy attorneys.
(And also all while Bush remained willfully oblivious (*even the Bushies are not entirely clueless*) to regulatory failures and Crony Capitalism corrupting the country.
From the White House site:
Just the Facts: The Administration's Unheeded Warnings About the Systemic Risk Posed by the GSEs
Bush's failure was to strongly and in no uncertain terms demand reform. One can assume the fallout would be Democrat condemnation inciting minority backlash.
Political courage was lacking.
Trevor, should Chris Nassetta agree to sit down for a hostile interview with the in-house newsletter of the Marriot chain? When the media made the choice to become an unpaid subsidiary of the Obama campaign's PR team, they threw away any right they might have been able to claim to access. They made their beds and now they're whining about having to lie in it. As far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't be disappointed if Palin never gave an interview to the MSM ever again. Between PBS, Fox, CSPAN and the web, she has ample tools to talk over the heads of the media directly to the people.
Everyone wants Palin to do interviews, but sensible observers are justly skeptical that the media will throw straight dice. The campaign should resolve this problem, I suggest, by booking into C-SPAN's Washington Journal. The MSM's goal isn't to get her to answer questions, per se, but to find inventive ways to make her fall on her face. How to vitiate the talking point without giving them the opportunity to play gotcha? There's much to be said for the idea that Palin should have to answer questions, and the left and the media have traded on it to press the argument that she needs to sit down for interviews. There's far less to be said for the idea that those questions have to be asked by journalists who are obviously in the tank for Obama and who have spent more than a week trying to rip her apart. If Palin is demonstrably answering questions directly from the public on C-SPAN, the media is left to grouse that she's not answering their questions on their turf, which is a criticism that will get very little traction with a public that has seen exactly how the media treats Palin.
On cue: The same media that demands access to Palin caught manufacturing Obama propaganda from thin air.
The "onslaught on everything"? What is that "everything" anyways?
Simon, like I said in another thread, these continued demands for more MSM access is simply encouragement to cast pearls before swine.
Lipstick on a pig indeed.
The practice of refusing to grant the media interviews dates back to the days of President George Washington who refused to be interviewed by the first of the partisan democratic hacks James Callender. Mr. Callender was a paid partisan of Thomas Jefferson who published a series of articles on a sex scandal involving Jefferson’s rival in the Cabinet Alexander Hamilton who had been banging Maria Reynolds and allegedly provided insider information on Treasury matters. President Washington refused to be interviewed by this hack who was later tried and imprisoned under the Sedition Act by President John Adams when he wasn't drinking Merlot and managing second rate prize fighters. There has been a long and illustrious history of ignoring the press by such luminaries as Abraham Lincoln telling Horace Greeley to piss up a rope to William McKinley sitting on his front porch and telling them to stuff it where the sun don't shine. So saying that a complete and utter contempt for the press something new and extraordinary is just completely wrong.
But don't let the facts get in the way of a good argument
Well, it's not so much a gate. I think toll booth is the correct term.
Democratic hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt was noted for his bullying of the press when he wasn’t going on television for one of his fireside chats to reassure the people after the stock market crash. He refused to allow them to take pictures of him in a wheelchair and heavily censored what was reported during the war for security reasons. President Harry Truman also hated the press and although he bantered with them he also often threatened them and in fact threatened to kick a music critic in the balls. One could only wonder what he would do to Frank Rich.
But don't let the facts get in the way of a good argument.
FREDDIE MAC PAID MCCAIN CAMPAIGN MANAGER'S FIRM THROUGH LAST MONTH
McCain: "My Campaign Manager Had Nothing To Do With Freddie Mac Since 2005...
...And I'll Be Glad To Have His Record Examined By Anybody Who Wants To Look At It"
Oh, Michael, that is so five hours ago. Please keep up.
President John F. Kennedy did in fact in enjoy good relations with the press. Of course they were sexual relations as he enjoyed banging girl reporters or the wives or relatives of those reporters who angered him. He reputedly had a relationship with the sister in law of Ben Bradlee the editor of the Washington post as well as many of the beat reporters who where trilled by the attentions of the handsome Democratic president. Of course his most legendary feat was to be able to avoid vomiting while getting a rim job from a young Helen Thomas.
.. pearls before swine
Reminded me of a Dorothy Parker witticism I read way long time ago.(had to look up the rival):
Dorothy Parker and literary rival Clare Boothe Luce were entering a room, and Luce stay back, saying, "Age before beauty"; Parker entered saying "Pearls before swine."
Michael said...
FREDDIE MAC PAID MCCAIN CAMPAIGN MANAGER'S FIRM THROUGH LAST MONTH
McCain: "My Campaign Manager Had Nothing To Do With Freddie Mac Since 2005...
...And I'll Be Glad To Have His Record Examined By Anybody Who Wants To Look At It"
10:53 AM
Fixed
On cue: The same media that demands access to Palin caught manufacturing Obama propaganda from thin air.
I don't get it Simon. The NYT reports accurately that the lobbying firm owned by McCain's campaign manager continued to receive a $15,000 a month retainer from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac until it was taken over by the government.
Now it may be true that Davis is apparently not accepting compensation from his firm while he acts as McCain's campaign manager, but he still retains his equity stake in the company.
McCain kind of brought this on himself when he brought up the issue of Obama accepting campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie.
Certainly, considering your rather strict definition of what constitutes a lie, nothing in the NYT article is nothing but the God's honest truth.
It's also not a lie that Obama voted against a bill that prevents infanticide.
It's also not a lie that Obama voted for an amendment to provide comprehensive sex education to children.
It's also not a lie that Obama has worked with an unrepentant domestic terrorist.
I mean, the Obama campaign has no trouble calling them dishonorable lies, but that doesn't make them so. They are, perhaps, propaganda, which is what Simon is accusing the NY Times of spreading.
McCain kind of brought this on himself when he brought up the issue of Obama accepting campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie.
And the New York Times actually mentions James Johnson in paragraph 26. How can anyone accuse them of not being objective?
Now it may be true that Davis is apparently not accepting compensation from his firm while he acts as McCain's campaign manager, but he still retains his equity stake in the company.
McCain kind of brought this on himself when he brought up the issue of Obama accepting campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie.
Yes because we all know it's Davis, not McCain that's running for President.
Few McCain backers here are under the illusion that McCain is a career politician with his share of dirt or scandal or questionanle acquaintances. However, its your candidate that is running on the HOPE AND CHANGE theme and frankly, he hasn't demonstrated one iota of what he's peddling yet you and yours act like there's nothing to see here.
And in one respect, that's more true than you think.
William Howard Taft had a legendarily bad relationship with the press. But he had a simple solution. Whenever they published an article he didn't like, he would sit on them. That is in fact how the term "press" was coined.
Paragraph 27:
Since his campaign for the Senate, in 2004, Mr. Obama has received about $126,000 in contributions from employees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while Mr. McCain has received about $22,000 over the last decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
That's $30K/year vs. $2K/year.
Sometimes I wish I could be The New York Times' headline writer for a day.
I'd retitle this article: "McCain a Tool; Obama Unfairly Attacked"
Maybe Ole Joe thought he was talking to an association of Tribal Warriors instead of Trial Lawyers.
OK, I'm not very hip. Please, someone, what does YMMV stand for?
Trooper Y: lol
On the terminology question: How about
a tranche of lawyers
Biden was overheard commenting that FDR also didn't intend for Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and that when he tried texting the revisions to Stalin the call was dropped. Thus millions of people were subject to the Soviet yoke because FDR didn't use Verizon.
True story
Drill SGT (7:28am): I've got power back and am blogging up a storm now, but mostly as a guest-poster at HughHewitt.com between now and the election. (I cross-post titles and links at my own blog, and interact more in the comments there.) Thanks for asking!
dr kill (9:52 am): You wrote, "A consolidation of bankruptcy attorneys." But that's only Chapter 11. For other chapters, it may be "A liquidation of bankruptcy attorneys."
Everyone: I used to enjoy razzing my ex-wife, who's a physician, with the old line that "When my professional predecessors were drafting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, yours were killing George Washington with leeches." Since then, medical use of leeches has returned to popularity.
One of the best things that can be said for George W. Bush is that he's not a lawyer, and hasn't governed like one for the most part, but he hasn't been able to stop them from, for instance, damn near choking to death our ability to wage the global war on terrorists. But of course, that's not the kind of lawyer Biden was addressing either.
Do you think there will be any kind of tort reform so long as we allow lawyers to make the law?
mmmmmmmNo.
Which is why anyone with a law degree - wheter they've ever passed a bar exam or not - ought to be excluded from running for office in a legislative body: Clear conflict of interest.
Biden is almost the perfect poster boy for me, but Charles Schumer is just so much oilier, greasier, and obviously corrupt (Only his corruption is legal, because lawyers say it is).
re: WHT and the 'press'
Ha, ha
Jim: Your Mileage May Vary
Huc:
"Biden is almost the perfect poster boy for me, but Charles Schumer is just so much oilier, greasier, and obviously corrupt (Only his corruption is legal, because lawyers say it is)."
I'll see your Biden and Schumer and raise you a Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
Trooper is deliberately misleading us. It was President Buchanan who was a former prizefighter and possibly a former manager of prizefighters. President Adams was just another filthy lawyer. What a calumny to credit Adams and by omission, trash Buchanan!
Troop,
How about a chancre of lawyers?
I thought the origin of the term press was the "press" of reporters all attempting to squeeze through the exit door simultaneously when the police raided an 1890's bawdy house.
A pustule of lawyers??
Conan O'Brien, yesterday:
Yesterday the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, challenged John McCain to a debate. McCain says if he wanted to be attacked by an extremist in an unfair environment, he'd appear on MSNBC.
Ha!
It was a great disappointment to the political classes and the press when the “Era of Good Feelings” ended with the election of John Quincy Adams. During the Presidency of John Monroe, there were in effect no real “political” parties as the entire political class was in basic agreement and tranquility reigned. Unfortunately this ended with the “Corrupt Bargain” in the election of 1824 between Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams where Andrew Jackson lost the election in the House of Representatives and somehow or other Henry Clay ended up as Secretary of State. The spirit of hatred and enmity reigned as charges and counter charges flew and calumny was king. General Jackson managed to wrest the Presidency away in 1829 and the acrimony continued in both the parties and the press. In fact in activies very similar to the personal attacks on Sarah Palin, the press savaged Andrew Jackson’s beloved wife Rachel claiming that their marriage was in fact bigamy since she had never divorced her first husband. The constant attacks on her reputation by the press were so severe that she in effect turned her face to the wall and died. This did not improve General Jackson’s temper and he took it out on the press for the rest of his life. Civility was not returned to politics until the acension of the dapper Vice President Martin Van Buren to succeed Andrew Jackson. Know for his silky manners and debonair ways Van Buren was a cosmopolitan man of the world who favored internal improvements and massive immigration. It was in fact his support of Chinese immigration which led to the subsquent “Era of Happy Endings.”
Jim O'Sullivan: computer speak for Your Mileage May Vary
And there are over a million more lawyers aspiring, I'm sure, to hold political office.
NUMBER OF LICENSED LAWYERS - 2006
1,116,967
That's one lawyer out of every 300 men, women, and children in America. What a waste. Lawyers as a group don't produce anything but a drain on the economy. Sure, there are some good lawyers but like the joke says, "99% of the lawyers make the rest of them look bad."
That's one lawyer out of every 300 men, women, and children in America. What a waste. Lawyers as a group don't produce anything but a drain on the economy.
Not a waste for law schools though. When you think about it, if a Martian came to this country and watched our tv shows, they could justifiably come to the conclusion that everyone was either a lawyer, police officer or forensic expert.
Beldar,
Another difference between the two professions is that medical doctors can't pick clients based on who has the most profitable disease. In fact, lawyers do all sorts of stuff (referral fees, fee splitting) that doctors consider unethical.
You can walk into virtually any emergency room in the country and get first class treatment whether you can afford it or not. Can you walk into a law firm and expect the same?
It has long been a matter of contentious debate among presidential scholars as to what occupation best prepares a man to be President of the United States. Some have been soldiers such as Washington, Zachary Taylor, US Grant and Eisenhower. Others have been lawyers such as John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon. Harry Truman was a haberdasher. Both Roosevelt’s and George W. Bush were just rich guys. Jimmy Carter was a naval officer and a peanut farmer. Now our choice rests between a reckless naval aviator and a feckless community organizer.
May God have mercy on these United States.
And God Bless Us, Everyone.
To Arturius' comment I would add that the same Martian visitor would determine that our courtship ritual involved meeting and falling in love while investigating serial killers....To Auto Report World Editors I would point out that physicians get to pick their specialty. The two most lucrative are dermatology and plastic surgery. Most of their procedures are not covered by insurance or Medicare. Despite or because of this, their fees have gone up the least among physicians in the last ten years......What with supply and demand shouldn't the fees for lawyers be coming down?
I think the most interesting question in this comment thread is what to call a group of lawyers.
I submit that it should be a firm of lawyers. That's the closest to normal English usage.
Alternatively, it might perhaps be a bar of lawyers.
Sisyphus, I think you might have missed the joke. The idea is to compare a group of animals to a group of trial lawyers. For example: a kettle of hawks, a kettle of lawyers; a murder of crows, a murder of lawyers; a flamboyance of flamingoes...
Chip, being Chip, took the joke several steps further and in typical Chip fashion attained levels of Chipperific hilarity never before seen. But we've come to expect that from Chip.
Your challenge, Sisyphus, if you choose to accept it (as if you have a choice, right?), is to top Chip's quip. And then do it again... and again... and...
(By the way, my ex-spouse's highly paid divorce attorney's firm was Moore, Moore, and Moore. Now there's a name that fits!)
Okay Republicans: If you could really be a barbarian what kind of barbarian would you want to be?
A. Viking
B. Mongol
C. Hun
D. Vandal
Why?
I want to be a Viking because I enjoy spending time on the water and Scandinavian girls are hot.
I want to be a Viking because I enjoy spending time on the water and Scandinavian girls are hot.
Yeah, but Vikings spent all their time getting away from the Scandinavian girls...
Which may have had something to do with why they were such barbarians, eh?
I too would like to be a Viking, except for during the bleak years without Fran Tarkenton. What barbaric fools they were to let him go.
If I couldn't be a Viking, I'd opt for being a Hon. Or maybe a Sweetie. But not a Stud Muffin. Republicans can never be Stud Muffins. Too left wing. Too George Clooneyish.
Duscany: It's about time to start hearing stories again how the upcoming elections in Ohio and Florida were fradulent--Diebold gamed the system, the chads didn't hang right, a voter pushed the Obama button and the machine registered a vote for McCain instead. Only 41 more shopping days till the election. Where are the stories proving the results were rigged?
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