The other side of Joe Biden (You really need to read this one...)
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/09/the_other_side_of_joe_biden.phpA shout out to TPM for posting this....
Rarely do I watch Joe Biden give a speech or an interview without looking for some evidence, in his eyes or the lines of his face, of the fact that he lost half of his young family when he was 30 years old. It is inconceivable to me, always has been, but especially in the years since I became a father. For all his goofballism, Biden has gone through a crucible that I cannot imagine. And he did so when he was 30, an adult, already deeply invested in the life he was building.
That’s not to diminish the tragedies that children endure. But at 30 years old to lose your wife and baby daughter, to almost lose your two toddler sons, and to somehow carry on? It truly baffles me. I know everyone says you do what you have to do. But that’s not really true. You don’t. You could curl up in the fetal position, if not literally then emotionally, and shrivel up. I’m more certain that that’s what I would do than I am confident I would find a way to persevere. But Biden has been through it. He’s seen hell and been back.
That he served his entire 36-year Senate career after that searing experience in December 1972, shortly after winning election, and then went on to become vice president, adds some drama to the story, I suppose. But for me the emotional highlight is just him getting out of bed the next day, and the day after that, and the one after that.
Which brings me to Joe Biden’s speech today in Shanksville, Penn., commemorating the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. The speech is marvelously and sensitively written. But rendered by Biden, drawing on his own life experience, in rhetorical ways that are not ostentatious and which don’t try to elevate his own story above those of the victims’ families, it packs a wallop that still makes me cut him a lot of slack for his sometime inexplicable goofiness.
Read his speech....there is a transcript of it.
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Anymore than I can forget Clinton and NAFTA and Glass-Steagal.
I don't know how involved Biden was or wasn't in the behind the scenes discussions over the big banks back in 09. I saw a PBS special that showed there were 2 camps: Geithner wanted to give the banks whatever with no strings or punishment, and Sumners wanted to make examples of some banks and complete financial overhaul.
From the special I got a sense of why President Obama went the way he did -- the risks involved with a complete overhaul were so high. I got no sense of Biden's input. I don't remember him in that program at all.
I'd like to think that if, dawg forbid, some catastrophe sidelines Obama, that Biden, without an election in the balance, and representing the country versus one state, and seeing the devastation he helped unleash, would use that as an opportunity to beat the banks into submission, change the bankruptcy laws back, etc.
But really, who knows what it will take to get it fixed. 
How many lives have to be destroyed before they wake the fuck up. 
That too. 