This is a direct quote from Joe Biden:— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) March 2, 2020
"We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by the you know, you know the thing."pic.twitter.com/A0MRpMmIWk
The original line (from the Declaration of Independence is: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...."
Where he got tripped up was in saying "by" after "created," as if he were in a hurry to get to God, and in the original line, God is called the "Creator," but it's glaringly inelegant to say "created by their Creator." He needed to say "created equal," and get that word "endowed" in there to put some distance between "created" and "Creator." Having lost the flow, he resorted to "the thing." So his enthusiasm about God, rushing toward God and skipping the big idea of equality, flung him into the gaffe of calling God "the thing."
Posts
112 comments:
Joe really is a gaffe machine.
I love it. A thing of beauty.
I like the "selfa-evident" word. Sounds like he saying snuffleupagus
Cool, man.
Thank God Trump's rally in NC has just started!
you know, IF i didn't KNOW better...
I'd start to think that Jo Biden was a senile, moronic, idiot; that was suffering from dementia
Let's do some more in this general style:
"In the beginning, the Lord God created...all that good stuff, you know."
Time to leave the teepee? Or is this his lawyer's game plan?
Y’all need to cut ol’ Creepy Joe a little slack! His son’s a starving artist, dontcha know...
And he was having such a nice day!
Okay, I’ll say it: the DNC is guilty of elder abuse if they don’t intervene.
They are not gaffes - they are the misspoken thoughts of a person who has dementia. If his family actually cared about him - they would intervene and get him the medical help he so obviously needs.
But they won't, as they like the linky to the piggy trough more.
"Hey great to be here in Ohio" and Sleepy Joe is in NC.
"Great to be here in Iowa" and he's in NC.
Hilarious.
True though. Trump can't make any minor error and it gets blown up into 25th Amendment stuff, meanwhile idiot Biden can't tie his shoes.
Quid pro quo, quid pro quo. Amy and Pete made a deal with Sleepy Joe, they should all be impeached if/when they hold office.
"He doesn't know where he is, what he's doing, or what office he's running for." Trump on Sleepy Joe.
Joe is a placeholder for somebody else, whose name we dare not mention.
"Oh my Lindsey my Lindsey" - Trump
The only thing more amazing than Joe's obvious dementia and gaffes are LLR-lefty Chuck's continued moronic efforts to pretend its Trump that has dementia.
Did you know that LLR-lefty Chuck, just the other day, actually claimed that Trump never eats in public because of some bizarro choking hazard....just days after a state visit to India where every meal was a State-type dinner!
Anyway, back to Biden, its really getting out of hand now....but the dem/lefty/LLR-lefty establishment has made their bed and now they have to sleep in it.
Insane stalinist commie fool of a Senator or VP Grampa-pa Dementia Swimming Naked In Front Of The Female Secret Service Agents.
That's actually very good. Trump wouldn't have dared to go that far against conventional piety. Out of the mouths of the senile, sometimes.
Joe really is a gaffe machine.
It is not a gaffe. It is a sign of dementia. There is a big difference.
The important questions are why he is running and why dropout Democrats are supporting him.
Think about what Democrats are planning. They can lose to Trump but keep the House and maybe take the Senate.
Bush's fool me once quote is the equivalent.
Men and women is a nice revision, its own mocking of PC.
If Bernie explained things like Biden does, we wouldn't know Bernie was a communist. Biden/Bernie 2020.
"All men and women created...Brigitte Bardot...sniff hair...by the you know, you know the thing."
I think he threw himself off by the “and women.” It ruins the cadence of the sentence and he forgot where he was.
Francisco D said...The important questions are why he is running and why dropout Democrats are supporting him.
Because Bloomberg crashed and burned in the debates. Biden is the next best thing they got.
"And women" is like putting "under God" in the pledge. It ruined the cadence.
Four score and seven something ago, our founding mothers and fathers brought forth on this thing a new nation, convinced in y'know, and dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and transgenders are created.
"All men are created equal" was just a fancy way of saying we were just as good as any Goddamn Englishman, even a Lord or a King.
Joe is a gaffe machine. But don't call him stupid. Its not like he's a Republcian.
My business! Mankind, and womankind, and transgenders, were my business.
PC Scrooge.
It's moral equality that was in question. Not a claim about individual strengths and abilities. Which is part of the comedy of adding "and women," which makes it about strengths and abilities and at the same time making it obviously false.
I can't believe the DNC will allow Biden to be the candidate any more than they will allow it to be Sanders. They simply are doing everything on the fly right now- stop Sanders is all they are thinking at this point.
I am looking at California, Texas, and Virginia tomorrow with an eye on Massachusetts, too, because the fate of Warren's campaign matter a lot more than that of Klobuchar and Buttuvwxyz. Basically, if Sanders wins California and Texas, he is going to be unstoppable. Clinton, in 2016, won large delegate majorities across the southern half of the US, but with Biden and Bloomberg in the race, Biden can't win such majorities and might not even win a plurality in those states. Across the northern half of the US, Sanders will dominate, and will likely win many states Clinton won in that half of the country in 2016 nomination battle. If Biden can win Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina, then Sanders can be stopped.
Democrats in 2020. Bless their hearts. This all must be just devastating to them.
It's the strangest feeling I have. I pity them, while simultaneously feeling satisfaction in them getting at least a small portion of what they deserve in politics. They play so dirty, and lie so much that the whole Trump phenomenon seems like some kind of well-earned divine intervention.
It wasn't real clear when he said: "We hold these truths to be self-evident". It came out so blubbered that it was hard to understand. Would like to see what he said before this gaffe-barf, and after the barf-gaffe. More entertainment for sure.
Biden has absolutely no shame. Who else would keep doing this over and over, and not realize he's incompetent.
Also, he must not have any close friends who should intervene and tell him what a fool he is making of himself.
If Bloomberg's presence in the race causes Biden to lose a lot states tomorrow that he would have otherwise won, that will be one of the most ironic things ever.
I'm wondering if his addition of "and women" threw him off his ability to quote the passage. Why put that in there when you're quoting a historical document? Just quote it as written, and if you want to get brownie points add that of course now women are included too.
Another possibility is that he instinctively knew that referring to "the Creator" in front of this crowd would not go over so well, so he panicked and then stumbled over his attempt to avoid mentioning the God-who-shall-not-be-named.
Regardless, his cognitive decline is so obvious now that it is borderline cruelty to let him continue. It sure is entertaining, though. Robert Bork is no doubt gazing down from heaven with a smile.
It was speculated by a co-worker years ago that senility always seems like a threat but when you've got it, you don't care.
See mold bees roofs belfry dent.
I think he threw himself off by the “and women.”
Could it be for a split second he started to wonder if "men and women" was inclusive enough? It's hard to be sure where the goal posts are on any given day.
The most melodious word in morse code is "bent."
This was Biden losing his train of thought- he wasn't trying to change directions in the moment, he literally forgot what he was saying as he was speaking.
Oops. I didn't read the comments and notice the "and women" thing was already pointed out.
"Male embraces female, in grammar as in life." - Margaret Thatcher
Here's something for Joe when Warren comes after him:
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
I wonder if he was actually quoting the Declaration, or if he meant to be referencing MLK.
I keep praying for Karma. Schitt runs downhill.
Do the late night talk shows make fun of Biden? I mean, if he was a Republican it'd be a total hoot, night after night.
Biden should have said, "both sexes and hermaphrodites." (Name that movie.)
We hold these truths to be snuffleupagus.
The Wisdom of the DoughJoe-QuidProJoe.
Unfortunately it is not ignorant bliss to suffer senility or dementia, at least not at first. Anxiety and depression are the typical accompaniments of the early stages. His campaign must be an extraordinarily stressful place to work.
This can only be scored as a gaffe if the thing Biden said is true.
"Think about what Democrats are planning. They can lose to Trump but keep the House and maybe take the Senate."
This is probably spot on.
The dementia is a narrative the DNC can use at the convention to not nominate Joe. Bloomberg tried to but the election- can't have that. Telling the socialists they can't nominate a socialist is tougher, but like last time they'll get over it.
Who was it who ran the “front porch” campaign? Wasn’t that Harding? Dumb as a post Harding who at least had the sense to shut up?
What a joke. Give that man the nuke codes.
Which states are voting on Super Thursday?
Count me with those who don’t think gaffe is the right word. A gaffe has content, is an unintended revelation, Or foolishly expressed thought. This is a mind wandering. If it happened once or twice to a 50 year old you wouldn’t worry. It is happening to a man who is almost 80. Very different.
Americans must insist on a full mental workup on Biden.
From Gilligan's Island to The Addams Family, in just a few hours! Come On Man!
@Yancey Ward,
"I can't believe the DNC will allow Biden to be the candidate any more than they will allow it to be Sanders. They simply are doing everything on the fly right now."
If true, does this give credence to Drago's prediction that Michelle comes off the sidelines to rescue the Dem nomination from these flawed fools?
What Biden and his handlers could do (if they wanted to make things more interesting) would be for them to use Teh Bowie Method of basing sentences - lyrics in Bowie's case - on random words or phrases strung together... something like this:
Iron ah begin l asked rebel lips and we i'm and I brave you've horror I boy generals you're until your, whisper "just remember duckies"
Althouse might want to know that in that same speech at Texas Southern University Biden repeated the "very fine people" misquote that she found disqualifying. He made a point of it in front of a largely AA audience.
Also, other than the two or three or four times he got tongue-tied, he gave a pretty damn good speech. It was full of the usual lies and distortions but it was delivered with enthusiasm and a fake passion that worked well.
He's not suffering from advanced dementia as much as some of us wish it was so because a man in that condition could not deliver the speech I watched.
Don't underestimate him. He still has some skills.
"Having lost the flow"
Flowless Joe Biden.
Say it ain't so, Joe!!
Blogger rhhardin said...
"It was speculated by a co-worker years ago that senility always seems like a threat but when you've got it, you don't care."
While there is much truth to your co-worker's observation I think Democrats generally tend to be careless in their speech. There is no price to pay in the media when they trip over their words or say foolish things. No one on the left cares because their intentions were good.
But I also think that Democrats have the difficult task of dealing with mutually incompatible concepts like being an abortion supporter and a Catholic. I suspect Joe got tangled up because he first used the politically correct phrase "men and women" and then realized he had to refer to the politically incorrect "Creator".
If the Democrats really turn him lose it is going to be great fun.
King George III could not be reached for comment. The last time an insane leader had power, America left the Empire.
"his enthusiasm about God, rushing toward God"
Yeah, that's the Joe we know, always rushing toward God. Riight.
the thing
God is intersex, neither 'he' nor 'she', and therefore inclusive of the small number of people with genetic problems.
I insert "Creators" to honor my parents and stay Secular and Atheist
Three hundred plus million people in this country and the best the Dims can come up with is an old unrepentant Communist and a lying moron who is senile. That almost half the country is OK with that is frightening.
I think he was trying to say "... you know, you know the saying" or "the slogan", referring to the words in the Declaration, and he couldn't think up a more serious sounding word for it, so he called that motto or slogan "the thing".
What does it tell you about the D Party that they're willing to play "52 pick-up" w/ their new primary system to ensure this gaseous windbag gets the nomination?
Equal and complementary.
It was either early dementia, or he got tripped up by the need to avoid mentioning God. He saw that word "creator" coming, and knew the athiest left wouldn't want to hear it, and the flub followed.
After Hillary is deposed by Judicial Watch how much longer for Biden deposition?
Biden is a crook. He made his son wealthy by corrupt means - and tax payer dollars, washed thru a Ukrainian energy company.
Table raises the important point. This Dem Party has nothing left besides turning up the racial grievance meter to 11. That’s not Bernie’s forte to his credit, and that’s Joe’s appeal: he can get black people to vote for him, among other reasons because he’s shameless when it comes to slandering other Americans as racist and generally at cynically inciting racial tension for electoral purported. But he’s just an empty suit, even emptier than usual. This is the powers that be and it’s the same group that would back Bloomberg. This is the dangerous party with its elite constituency and resources. That’s why I prefer Bernie, stupid crazy commit lover. Because those commies he admired are fortunately gone, and he’s no friend of the crew that is running Biden. And it isn’t really the powerful backing Bernie, even if some of them are powerful. Bernie is dangerous but the people behind Biden and that Bloomberg is looking to coopt are the ones to minimize politically, so the sooner they lose
The better.
Rabel not table.
Althouse trying to rationalize dementia.
Listening to Biden’s speech, instead of reading the transcription, I think the best interpretation is that “you know the thing” means “you all know the famous line from the Declaration of Independence”.
Guys, the kids, THE KIDS, are imitating Trump. They’re ridiculing one another, Hispanics and blacks, THINGS. That’s more or less his speech tonight. Biden the attack dog, he’s still mostly there: shameless, vicious and mendacious, and he can still read. Just make sure he does t have to just talk.
t’s not possible to be long enough on cynicism these days. Cameras break, Suicide by chest shot is in and white people are still, STILL, trying to put black people back in chains.
Watching the Biden rally so Althouse doesn’t have to.
Beto! Naming counties. Texas counties.
He has to run to keep his son out of jail!!
Still bouncing, still speaking Spanish, still super super psyched, now about Biden.
Said stuff, sounds pained now. Lotta Lowe lip sucking.
With all the speculation here, we will never really know why Biden so badly butchered the phrase from the Declaration of Independence. And the only person who might know forgot what it was a minute later.
Plagiarizin' Joe was pretty good back in 1988. Quotin' Ferguson and Kennedy, entire sentences yet, all from memory, and without attribution. So when this Old Joe messes up, you can guess what I think it is.
And yet, he can show great lucidity. I'll never forget his take-down of Kamala Harris in an early debate. He said, "We have a constitution. Let's be constitutional." Great line, and a sentiment I respect.
Sad, moved and still bouncy, but getting super duper psyched again about skin and national origin of some constituent
I give up
Don't underestimate him. He still has some skills.
No, he has newspapers polishing his turd.
Bouncy Beto
I'm the maxi-Alpha. I'm good uh erm Joe Maxi-Alpha okay,
It's good were gonna go to Mars and we're gonna win it, okay, it's good, it's good okay.
Look, I've been right there for four decades, and I made it really really bad, so I can tell you, okay, okay I can tell you, how bad it is.
But Trump is the worst thing we can do. Okay, Trump is really bad and is racist. He is a bad man. Very, Trump is what is wrong. Bad.
Who was it who ran the “front porch” campaign?
McKinley in 1896.
Who was it who ran the “front porch” campaign?
Michael Bloomberg in 2020.
At least that's what it looked like with Bloomberg holding court with a handful of people standing on the steps outside some house this evening.
Has Bloomberg had even one rally/speech to a real crowd of people that were not bought and paid for for a commercial?
"Hello, Cleveland!"
The original line (from the Declaration of Independence is: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….”
I was perusing a book — R.H. Barrow, Slavery in the Roman Empire — and was enthralled to discover that the foregoing specific “great idea” goes back much farther than the Declaration of Independence or the Western Enlightenment.
I'll quote a lengthy passage from Barrow's book, due to its (I think) general interest. The subject is the perceptible shift in the Roman legal code over centuries of the Empire in the direction of increased “slaves' rights.”
Nor was this progression a result of the influence of Christianity (at least until that religion became dominant during the 4th century), but was rather a consequence of (legal) inspiration by the preeminent Greco-Roman philosophy of Stoicism.
Here's R. H. Barrow in his Slavery in the Roman Empire: [quoting…]
Over two centuries separate Varro [1st century BC] and Ulpian [3rd century AD], and in that period a growing tendency to respect the family relationships of slaves makes itself apparent. But, though such tendency is everywhere attested, in strict theory the position of the slave as regards family rights remains much where it had been under the Republic. Yet even the law adopts the language of usage; though the union of slaves can strictly be only _contubernium_, the jurists are as ready as the slaves themselves to speak of maritus, uxor, filius, parentes, pater within the boundaries of slavery.
The ius gentium is triumphing over the ius civile, the claim of common humanity over arbitrary convention; and the moralist may find it interesting that the highest of human relationships, the bond of the family, used in part the self-interest of the master as the means of establishing its claim even upon the low level of slavery and amid a system antagonistic to it at that level. Thus spiritual values broke through the artificial disabilities which society in its initial blindness to those values was led to impose.
If a reason is sought for this humane tendency of the law, it must be found, in part at least, in the influence of Stoicism on Roman jurisprudence. The theme is familiar and has been often handled; but it is worth while here briefly to indicate and account for this alliance, and suggest the result for slavery.
Ius gentium originally meant “the usage of the world, of all mankind,” “such customs or usages as the Romans found in the experience which they would pick up away from Italy in war or commerce or travel, or in their intercourse with peregrini [foreigners] in Italy itself to be universally observed,” and this is the meaning of the word throughout its history. To the jurists of the second century BC ius gentium was “formally distinguished from ius civile as universal, informal, often unwritten usage to special, formal, recorded enactments.”
But in the two centuries in which we are interested the ius gentium had acquired even greater significance. It had come to be regarded as the model, not yet perfect, which all actual law attempts to imitate.
For this there were two chief reasons. The historic Greek controversy of φυσις [physis: “nature”] and νομος [nomos: “convention,” which law was presumed to be] had drawn attention to the arbitrary nature of human regulations, and had set in distinction to imperfect and localized rules the conception of a universal code established by nature, simple and easy, but smothered by man-made convention, surrendered by man long ago, but still capable of recovery.
{Continued on the next page: page 2}
{Continued from previous page; page 2}
On this distinction Greek Stoicism had fastened; and “to live according to nature” sums up the same ideal as it was transferred to Roman soil, where it found, foreign as it was, a ready reception in conservative circles anxious to retain simple Italian manners in the face of foreign influences.
Further, Rome had come into contact with civilizations and legal codes more highly developed than her own; the diversity of law and custom had been forced upon her notice as she tried to govern province after province. The edict of the praetor was, therefore, compelled more and more to enlarge its scope so as to include within it practices long established elsewhere but new to Rome.
And so, in conservative and legal circles under the Empire, the belief was established that the formerly despised ius gentium, now so much enlarged, was really an approximation to the ius naturale, which mankind had lost sight of. It was the fate, therefore, of civil law to be gradually superseded by ius gentium as more of the ius naturale was recovered; and so the conception of natural law, as in philosophy, so in jurisprudence, had a simplifying, a unifying, and a levelling effect.
The ground common to the lawyer and the philosopher is obvious; at the same time, the alliance is one of growth; the change in the lawyers' attitude to ius gentium was not instantaneous; Stoicism did not make an immediate convert, nor can philosophy claim the whole credit, for experience in world-government was a profound teacher.
Nor, as Maine points out, is it wise “to measure the influence of Stoicism on Roman law by counting up the number of legal rules which can confidently be affiliated on Stoical dogmas…. The influence on jurisprudence of the Greek theories which had their most distinct expression in Stoicism consisted not in the number of specific positions which they contributed to Roman law, but in the single fundamental assumption which they lent to it.”
Further, it must be remembered that the body of Roman law was not evolved theoretically from a few Stoic first principles; Stoicism merely influenced the growth of a body born long before Stoicism was thought of, and still developing on its own lines.
Therefore, when the Roman lawyer asserts that “all men are equal,” he means, in Maine's words, “that under the hypothetical law of Nature and in so far as positive law approximates to it, the arbitrary distinctions which the Roman civil law maintained between classes of persons cease to have a legal existence.”
“The jurists who thus expressed themselves most certainly never intended to censure the social arrangements under which civil law fell somewhat short of its speculative type.” Obviously they did not, for they define most clearly the barriers separating men.
The main influence of Stoicism on law, therefore, is to be found not so much in special enactments of Stoic Emperors — and there it is clear — as in a certain broad spirit of interpretation by which older law, ambiguously expressed in the first instance or modified by later rule so as to become ambiguous, and cases unprovided for by rule, or hard and oppressive because of special circumstances, are dealt with in a sympathetic way which is biased in favour of humanity and liberty, because these are in accordance with the ideal ius naturale.
[/unQuote]
We see that this idea and ideal that “all men are equal” — along with the concept of natural law (ius naturale) in general — originates not in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, nor (more generally) in the Western Enlightenment which took place during somewhat the same time frame, but rather amongst Stoicism-steeped jurists of ancient Rome.
____
(R. H. Barrow [Senior Scholar of Exeter College, Oxford; Classical Sixth Master at Sedergh School], Slavery in the Roman Empire, 1928, Barnes & Noble, New York, 1996; pp. 152-156)
So who is really going to be president in 3 years if Joe Biden wins the presidency? He will be 80 years old. The presidency is a vigorous job, 24/7. It ages much younger men. What chance does he have in remaining in office?
He has already said he's only going to serve 1 term. Why would we want to knowingly put our nation at risk using a half dead battery? Doesn't make much sense.
As a national Democrat he has to add "and women," and he cannot really talk about God without worrying he will offend someone, and the idea that God 'created' us smacks of denying Darwin.
That is a lot of mental baggage for an old man to be carrying.
This is actually one that might be Biden covering for his stutter...
Time to give grampa a shiny balloon and a hot dog and leave by the curb. Maybe some kind stranger will pick him up.
Seems cruel to make a confused old man run for public office.
"...but it's glaringly inelegant..."
Ah, that explains all those peculiar "gaffes". This is how one talks when trying to avoid inelegance.
Sigh. Okay, I endorse him too!
@GK1 "Why would we want to knowingly put our nation at risk using a half dead battery? Doesn't make much sense." Sure it does. Lots of us voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary Clinton. Someone can vote for Biden because he isn't Trump.
But boy, would it be a weird four years. On the first day of his presidency, Biden... on the fiftieth day of his presidency, Biden thinks it's the first day...
He is not well, and his candidacy is an embarrassment. It’s literally unbelievable that this guy is the best the Dems have to offer.
Even if Hillary had won in 2016 — obviously they were counting on that — you need someone warming up in the bullpen just in case.
Compare that to a man who is working long days, traveling the world, holding huge wildly enthusiastic rallies, and sleeping with a hot model half his age. Hell, Trump makes me look like I need a nap. Poor Joe doesn't have a chance.
Post a Comment