Vice President Biden's trip to Asia was the perfect opportunity for a politician with a well-deserved reputation for verbal gaffes to show off his serious political chops. A skirmish between China and Japan thrust him into the role of international mediator. No, somebody put him there.
But no sooner had Biden arrived at his first stop in Tokyo on Wednesday than his aides were greeted with a nightmare series of headlines and cable TV shout-fests back in Washington over whether the vice president is a sexist with old-fashioned, patriarchal attitudes toward women. That's a matter for debate?
Biden made the comment during a carefully staged photo op with female employees at a Japanese Internet firm. Sliding into a booth next to five young women, Biden opened his small talk with them by asking, "Do your husbands like you working full time?"
The firestorm not only distracted Biden's communications staff from devoting their full attention to the high-stakes bilateral meetings between the vice president and leaders of Japan, China and South Korea, but it also managed to undermine the entire purpose of Biden's visit to the Internet company -- to promote the need for Japan to accept more women into the workplace.
Biden agreed to highlight the issue because the Obama administration, which has made women's rights a key pillar of its foreign policy agenda, Maybe something a community organizer can manage.
wanted to support Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push for women to augment the shrinking workforce in a nation with a rapidly aging population and a plummeting birthrate
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/08/2013 12:26 ||
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"So are you Geishas or what?"
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/08/2013 15:17 Comments ||
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"Hey, you hear the one about the Japanese paratrooper? Yea, a little nip the air."
Freddy Ford, a spokesman for the Bushes, said Friday that they "have gratefully accepted the President and Mrs. Obamas invitation to accompany them to South Africa on Air Force One and attend President Nelson Mandelas memorial services next week."
Former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, along with former president Jimmy Carter, will also attend memorials for Mandela in South Africa.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/08/2013 12:14 ||
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Think any of them will go to the funeral?
Oh yeah, photo-ops.
Maybe they'll do some mall shopping.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/08/2013 15:18 Comments ||
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Wonder if the Mr Obama will mention the high incidence of rape in South Africa, considering that his administration considers "women's rights a key pillar of its foreign policy agenda?"
Posted by: Frank G ||
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My uncle was there at Wheeler Field & saw the first bomb dropped on his own air base. Of course he ran toward the sounds of explosions, to report for duty. A corporal in his squadron was washing his car at the edge of a grassy area at Wheeler. Of course the corporal went to report for duty, but by driving his car across the open area. His moving car was spotted by an attacker & strafed. I saw a photo of his dead body, sitting behind the wheel of his car, years later, in a magazine article. Have never been able to find that photo since. The corporal was the only casualty that day in my uncle's unit. The XO of my uncle's squadron, 1st Lt Kermit Tyler, was the officer in charge of the radar training unit at Pearl that morning. He was unharmed, but never lived that down.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Vice President Biden's trip to Asia was the perfect opportunity for a politician with a 
