Biden Caught Lying About “Coal Miner” Background
About the Author: I am an ex-urbanite who escaped the city life and has lived for the past 27 years in a rural, mountainous area of Virginia that in colonial and early-American times was part of the "Backcountry." Politics: Democrat by tradition, but moderate-to-conservative views on most issues; I fit the description of "traditionalist." Please visit my Web site, Backcountry Notes, at http://www.backcountrynotes.com/ Read more from this author
"I'm talking and I can't shut up!"
The Obama-Biden ticket is hoping to make inroads in Appalachia by pretending to be in favor of coal-fired electrical generation. Backed by the United Mine Workers union, which typically endorses Democrats, both Obama and Biden have been making frequent visits to coal country. In a campaign appearance in Clintwood, Virginia, this past Saturday, Biden stated, “I am a hard-coal miner, anthracite coal, Scranton, Pennsylvania.” This isn’t the first time Biden has claimed to have a coal-mining background.
Biden lies.
Biden’s “Coal Miner” canard traces to his 1988 Presidential bid and was exposed in a 1997 article in Slate. According to the Slate piece:
In his standard stump speech of the 1988 presidential campaign, Sen. Joe Biden started off by quoting British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock on the hard life of his uneducated, coal-digging forebears. Pretty soon, though, Kinnock had dropped out of the speech and it was Biden himself whose ancestors “worked in the coal mines … and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours.”
Such an obvious fraud. The Slate author continued:
Biden grew up in a white-collar suburb, his father was a car salesman, one grandfather was a state senator, and the only Biden on record as having worked near a mine was a mining engineer.
Well, well. Time for more damage control, right? Obama’s Virginia campaign flack was quoted in today’s Bristol Herald-Courier as saying that Biden’s claim was not “a literal statement.” A longer way of saying that Biden’s claim was not “true.” The Virginia Obamabiden guy is spending a lot of time recently explaining what Joe Biden meant to say.
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Sidebar
If you wonder whether all of this blogging and posting is doing any good, the answer is “yes.” The headline in today’s Bristol newsrag was “Coal comments create flap,” and the subhead read as follows: “Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s comments against coal at an Ohio rally, circulated on the Internet, drew criticism as both campaigns seek to bolster support on the issue.” So, yes, we get noticed; keep blogging, keep posting, keep commenting!
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The UMWA is supporting the Obama-Biden ticket, either oblivious to or unaware of the National Democratic position on coal-fired plants. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is on record as being against all fossil fuels, because she wants to “save the planet.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is also on record as opposing coal, which he calls “dirty.” In this context, Joe Biden deserves credit for once again highlighting the true nature of the Obama-Biden campaign: say what it takes to get elected.
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This guy is just unbelievably wonderful. :mrgreen:
Editor’s note: copyright violation removed
Our local dejected Hillary Clinton radio guy Steve Corbett (WILK) is all over this. The local NoBama camp wont talk about it. How can they not give us answers…we live in hard coal country ! Obama/Biden = Fraud
Biden recently was against clean coal as part of the energy package.Obama,while campaigning in Pennsylvania ( a coal state) ,said clean coal should be a part of the energy package !
Will Obama take on the Nancy Pelosi democrats,Harry Reid and now Joe Biden ?
Obama has voted with his party 96 % of the time I wonder if his energy package will be comprehensive enough ?
McCain’s energy package is forward looking and not the Nancy Pelosi myopic plan!
Electricity demand is increasing and in the future we cannot afford the brownouts /blackouts the Californian’s experienced some years ago due to not having enough power plants.Wind turbines are great but recently I drove past a wind turbine farm in Wisconsin that was idle because of no wind.
Obama wants a tax break to help offset high enery costs.McCain wants increased supplies of American oil,natural gas and coal. After all , the high cost of petrochemicals( derived from oil) plays a big part in a higher inflation rate as well as fuel costs.
It’s time for bi-partisan solutions and not the kind of energy legislation endorsed by Pelosi,Reid and now Biden. Who has worked across the aisle more Obama or McCain ? The answer is McCain.
McCain also wants nuclear power plants as an option but he wants alos wants “all the above”. Petrochemicals ( derived from coal) play a big part in our economy. Coatings,inks,lubricants,fuel additive chemicals,sealants have chemical components derived from oil.Some chemicals may be derived from coal liquification which is not in the Pelosi,Reid, Obama, and Biden’s energy policy.
So one can see that fossil fuels can be more than just fuels but precursors to very useful chemicals. Coal research may lead to useful chemicals.
McCains plan makes sense in that it covers all the above from coal,natural gas,oil shale extraction,nuclear power plants,
renewables such as hydroelectric,wind turbines,and geothermal. We need research dollars not politics !
Let’s not forget the chemical industry right now because high oil and natural gas prices mean higher priced chemicals for packaging inks and coatings for example.
Coal liquification can produce some useful chemicals.
We have an abundance of coal and we need lower oil prices.
The Pelosi / Al Gore democrats have a point about carbon emissions but they seem to lack economic impact understanding of their policies.
I’m not an expert here but I am a chemist who’s task it will be to lower formulation costs with high priced petrochemical based raw materials.
Nice work, Jay
Sorry, I should have said that most petrochemicals are derived from oil but that some chemicals could be derived from coal/
Speaking of chemistry. My father is a chemist. He worked with Eastman Chemical Company, which was one of the first, if not the first, to do coal liquifaction.
As far as I’m concerned, chemists are like wizards. My own career in chemistry was cut short by ineptitude; I seemed to have the ability to make any putatively harmless mixture into something explosive. (Maybe we should call that Bill Ayers Syndrome
). But real chemists can take a given feedstock - - petroleum is handy, but it could be coal, or peanuts, or wood pulp - - and make it into useful stuff. Marvelous.
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