Time To Level With Us, Beau
Beau Biden apparently wants to have it both ways. According to this article at WDEL.com, Biden states that he plans to run for reelection in 2014, but refuses to give any update on his health. Although the ‘…long, curving scar stretching from his left ear to the top of his head’ provides a clue. However, Biden “is still refusing to discuss details about a recent health scare that sent him to a Texas cancer center.” This in the same interview where he says he’ll run for reelection.
This is not acceptable. If you want to talk about running for reelection, you owe the public the information it needs to determine whether you are fit to hold office.
Any claim to privacy is no longer operative while openly discussing plans to run for reelection.
We’re grownups. Stop playing these games. Level with us.
Totally disagree, but too busy to argue with you and Geezer today.
From an “X’s and O’s” perspective, I don’t see the point of NOT providing information. If he feels that he is fit to serve he can probably make the case that whatever happened isn’t going to have an impact.
Stonewalling it just makes it a bigger issue than it needs to be.
There’s a photo of him now at http://www.wdde.org/53405-beau-biden-health
His head is shaved on the left side, with a long scar.
Doesn’t look like minor surgery to me …
I don’t see a scar, but I see a guy wearing the haircut of a guy who deployed with the National Guard.
Beau isn’t his father. If he says his health is fine, I believe him. If returning to work, doing his job, or running for office next year was a threat to his health, I don’t think he would do it, he’s a good father who loves his children, he wouldn’t take those chances.
If you look closely you can see the scar.
Or if you read closely:
“Biden made one of his first public appearances since the episode at a preliminary state budget hearing Monday. Biden had a long, curved scar above his left ear, but says he feels “very good.””
“If returning to work, doing his job, or running for office next year was a threat to his health, I don’t think he would do it”
I don’t give a crap whether he’s a good person or whether he’d put his health in danger. If he won’t tell me the truth about this, then he thinks there are things that he doesn’t have to tell me, and I’ll be voting for his opponent.
Anon, he doesn’t say his health is fine. He says he is ‘very lucky’ and ‘very grateful’. He declined to discuss the status of his health.
If he is a self-proclaimed candidate for office, not to mention a current officeholder, it’s time for him to level with us.
Hey, I fully plan to vote for him again for AG, if he’s healthy. I didn’t have that much of a problem with the initial secrecy, felt he deserved his privacy.
But I think it would be quite cynical for him to run for reelection w/o sharing his status with us. Feel free to disagree.
“I got a clean bill of health.” – Beau Biden
That is not “declining to discuss the status of his health.”
This is the haircut of a guy deployed with the National Guard: http://operationyellowelephant.blogspot.com/2011/11/delaware-attorney-general-beau-biden.html
If you’re asking for my vote, I need to be able to trust you. I can’t trust someone who’s keeping secrets about giant scars and visits to cancer hospitals.
If his health is fine and there’s nothing to worry about, then there’s no reason not to disclose the cause of the scare. His family and friends surely know. The only reason not to disclose it is because there’s something bigger looming – and his statement about being fine would be transformed into a lie.
Thus, I find it really hard to trust him on this.
He definately has a scar, minor, I think not. If he says he’s fine, then lets take his word for it, he has a right to privacy on this matter. if he had a higher office he might have said what the ailment was
Small scar or not, I think my head would explode if Chip Flowers called me and the AG legal team corrupt: http://m.wdel.com/story.php?id=55276
Chip Flowers has never read the Delaware Code in that case. The AG is merely providing an opinion that supports what is written in the law: That the Cash Management Policy Board has the authority to invest the state’s $$’s, not the Treasurer. The treasurer is but one member of that body. One voting member of that body whose vote has no greater weight than anyone else’s.
This is even more clear than what the Sheriff of Nuttingham could not understand. At least, the Good Sheriff could somehow claim that the State Constitution was at odds with the statute. He was wrong, but at least he could claim it.
Flowers is proving himself even nuttier than the Sheriff of Nuttingham. There is not a scintilla of ambiguity in the Delaware Code about his role in this.
I think he’s insane. I can reach no other conclusion. Words mean what they say. End of story.
My first post here was about the Sherriff, which is why I chose the name Nuttingham (and kept it because of the sock puppet rule). But there are a lot of similarities between the People’s Sherriff and the People’s Treasurer.
It’s scary. I don’t reach a conclusion like this blithely. But how can you reasonably argue with someone who says that words don’t mean what the words say? And then calls the AG’s office ‘corrupt’ for simply having basic reading comprehension skills?
Flowers is every bit as troubled as Christopher, IMHO. I hate to say it, but if someone has a reasonable alternative explanation for Flowers’ behavior, I want to hear it.
I think it is past time for Beau Biden to level with us. The rumor is that he’s going to run for governor in 2016.
This whole Flowers thing is strange. The money for the travel is not very much in the larger sense. So why all the stonewalling? Just say you misinterpreted the rules or something and move on.
If my memory serves, Flowers always wanted to expand the role of Treasurer. I think he has made a mistake in publicly feuding with Governor Markell. Now he’s going to expand the feud to Beau Biden.
This is stupid. He might not know all of the information yet and is waiting on tests before he puts out a statement; his family does, after all, have a history with neurological problems. Biden has been an incredible AG and I understand the need for transparency, but questioning whether or not he thinks there’s “things he doesn’t have to tell you” because it’s a private health matter is far-fetched at best. Contrary to popular belief, being in elected office does not mean you stop having a personal life and family considerations.
For the record, that story about Beau Biden heard on WDEL, and appearing on our website, came from the Associated Press.
WDEL has repeatedly requested telephone interviews with the Attorney General since his hospitalization in Texas. We frankly admitted we wanted to talk about his health whenever the Attorney General was comfortable with that. All requests have been either turned down or ignored.
When the Attorney General’s office put out a press release Tuesday about the opinion on the powers of the Cash Management Policy Board vs. State Treasurer Chip Flowers, I e-mailed the A.G.’s spokesman simply to request a telephone interview with Beau Biden (with the promise we wouldn’t ask about Beau Biden’s health situation); still no response. (Of course, the sensitivity of the Flowers case might have also prompted this non-response.)
Before this most latest hospitalization, the Attorney General’s office usually set up phone interviews with Beau Biden, and occasionally pitched them to us.
Also, see my latest blog about the Attorney General office’s opinion in the Flowers matter.
Allan Loudell
WDEL
Deputy Treasurer Erika Benner resigned her post in August
Benner remains on the treasury’s payroll