Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

The National Guard is not Batman.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

In after Baud. Damn.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

You are here: Home / “Bravery resides in every heart, and someday it will be summoned”

“Bravery resides in every heart, and someday it will be summoned”

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Via Paul Constant, at Seattle’s Stranger.

Transcript here, via David Kurtz at TPM, who adds:

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….

Reader Interactions

44Comments

  3. 3.

    DougJ

    And the TPM piece was right on the money. Joe Biden gets portrayed a bit of a goof ball but he’s been through a lot and he’s a thoroughly decent, honorable man.

  4. 4.

    Hal

    Just saw a bit with Mitt “Mitt” Romney at the American Legiion *I think* and man does that guy come off as fake as hell. What pissed me off is him saying something to the effect that normally he would be there to discuss the differences between his policies and PBO, but today wasn’t the time or place. Except what you just said. Asshole.

    Also, someone needs to tell him that pauses and moving your head left to right does not evoke a sense of empathy.

  7. 7.

    Humanities Grad

    @Hal:

    Nah, don’t tell him. Let him go on being the Mitt that much of America is coming to know and dislike.

  10. 10.

    Mnemosyne

    I think it was posted at the time, but his speech to TAPS for Memorial Day was also really terrific. Obviously, it was much more personal since he was speaking specifically to people who had lost a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan.

    There’s one great line in it where he says something about how he promises them that, someday, they will think of their loved one first with a smile, and then with a tear instead of the other way around.

    Yes, I love my Crazy Uncle Joe.

  13. 13.

    quannlace

    be there to discuss the differences between his policies and PBO, but today wasn’t the time or place. Except what you just said. Asshole.

    Plus in that speech he managed to get in a mention of the Utah Olympics…AGAIN.

  16. 16.

    Eric

    The TAPS soeech is one of my favorite speeches. This one was also great. He is not bs-ing them. He is trying to reach them and lessen their pain.

  17. 17.

    aimai

    Pray I will, sing I must, but yet I weep. What a speech. I didn’t even watch it, just read it, and I’m sitting here crying. I saw the TAPS speech when he gave it and it moved me to tears and put my own losses (as a child of my sister, as an adult of my nine year old niece) in a totally new perspective. I’ve really learned to love Biden.

    aimai

  18. 18.

    Josie

    He speaks so truthfully about living with the loss of a loved one and the comfort that memories bring. After ten years, my boys and I still tell stories and laugh about the funny things their father did. I always tell them when one of them reminds me of him in some way and they love to hear it. Joe knows all of these feelings and expresses them so beautifully. He is one classy guy.

  19. 19.

    Eric

    Yes but he plagerized a bill for mbna. I have always wanted to ask joe about his support of a usurious industry on a human level. I would love to hear that answer. It rings so inconsistent with who appears to be.

    Eta. I am sincere in my curiousity. His humanity strikes me as real

  20. 20.

    Soonergrunt

    What an amazing speech.
    It’s for damn sure that neither Rmoney nor Ryan could do that. One must be possessed of empathy, first.

    @Eric: Because it is the major industry of the state that he represented in the US Senate, maybe?

  21. 21.

    Geeno

    I’ve always called him Uncle Joe, because he reminds me of that avuncular uncle (in my own case uncle Bill), the guy who’s been through a lot and seen it all, but never lost his sense of humor and humanity along the way.

  24. 24.

    dance around in your bones

    Joe Biden is a thoroughly genuine man. That speech moved me to tears.

    @Hal:

    Also, someone needs to tell him that pauses and moving your head left to right does not evoke a sense of empathy.

    Who was it who said Romney moves like a lawn sprinkler? Left-middle-right, left-middle-right… tinkle tinkle tinkle….

  25. 25.

    trollhattan

    Parking Willard’s husk at the curb for a moment, I’ll compare and contrast Biden and John Edwards. Both endured unthinkable and similar tragedies–Biden became perhaps a better person from his experience, while Edwards…[shakes head].

    I think the VP is an exceptional person. A mensch.

  27. 27.

    JWL

    Lest We Forget: Biden also voted to unleash the War In Iraq.

    Remember that little Iraqi boy, whose arms were shorn from him by the same shell that killed his family?

    I wonder if Biden remembers him? Has Biden ever experienced remorse for his role in the great tragedy? If he has, he’s certainly never indicated as much publicly.

  28. 28.

    Ann Rynd

    I remember when he lost his family. This is the truth: I have never looked at him in the years since without thinking of how he has carried that pain all this time. I just see it in his face. In the way it’s just there, in his face.

  29. 29.

    SBJules

    I have long forgiven Joe for the Clarence Thomas hearings (you had to have seen it) and admire his frank heart on sleeve stleeve style.

  31. 31.

    Sly

    @Eric:
    There are a lot of pols throughout our history who had to cater to powerful interests that they would otherwise prefer to fight in order to advance their own goals, and consider doing so a fair trade-off. Many of these pols, like FDR and LBJ, went on to become canonized by modern Progressives; FDR had to placate the sizable white supremacist faction in the New Deal Coalition, while LBJ didn’t get out from under the thumb of Texas planters (who acted not much differently than slavemasters towards Mexican migrants and Mexican-American laborers) until his presidency. And that’s generally the test; do these same politicians remain beholden to these interests when they no longer need them to stay in office?

    Biden was the same way with MBNA and the credit card industry in general, which is probably the most powerful political interest in Delaware. Crossing them would be like a West Virginia Senator crossing the coal industry, or a New York Senator crossing finance. And he hasn’t exactly been a contrarian voice within the administration or in public when it came to the Credit Card Bill of Rights or the CFPB. So even though I think BAPCA is one of the worst pieces of legislation to come out of the Federal government in decades, my scorn for Biden is somewhat dulled by the fact that he also authored one of the best.

  32. 32.

    Nellcote

    @JWL:

    circa 2007:

    “It was a mistake,” he says in reply to a question about his vote to authorize the Iraq war. “I regret my vote.”

    Joe Biden’s mouth can get him in trouble, but when it is working right, the words drop from his lips like pearls, and nodding heads now spread through the audience like ripples on a pond.

    Biden’s full reply to the attendees of the Story County Annual Soup Supper takes 4 minutes and 45 seconds — it can take him 4 minutes and 45 seconds to say “hello” — but here is the short version:

    “It was a mistake,” Biden says. “I regret my vote. I regret not realizing how incompetent (the Bush administration) would be. The president did not level with us. And if I had known it, I would never have voted to give him that authority in the first place.”

    creators.com/opinion/roger-simon/joe-biden-and-the-mouth-that-soars.html

  35. 35.

    Yutsano

    @Geeno: That was my uncle Jim. He unfortunately passed away from a heart attack at 60 (another unfortunate family tradition) but he was ebullient and had great humour.

  36. 36.

    dogwood

    @SBJules:

    I have long forgiven Joe for the Clarence Thomas hearings

    Whatever the result of the Clarence Thomas hearings, we all owe Joe Biden a debt of gratitude for keeping Robert Bork off the court. Those are the hearings I remember, and as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Joe orchestrated a take-down that was masterful. I frankly get pretty tired of Democrats who talk about Joe like he’s a crazy old goofball. He’s a smart, capable man who’s honest and decent. The Bork take-down and his passage of the Violence Against Women Act are a hellava lot more impressive than Dems. give him credit for. And I’m also pretty sick of this Iraq vote shit. When it comes to remembering what happened in politics, my memory is long and accurate. Progressives told me in ’07 that John Edwards’ was to be forgiven for his Iraq vote because he apologized, but now Joe doesn’t get the same consideration. Whose apology do you think is more sincere? Just goes to show you why it pays to be a phony in politics. It works.

  40. 40.

    James E. Powell

    Joe has driven me crazy more times than I can count, but a part of me will always like a part of him. There are so few of these big shots who are anything close to an ordinary person. I’m not saying that Joe Biden is an ordinary person, but I am pretty sure he remembers what it was like to be one.

  41. 41.

    dogwood

    @James E. Powell:

    I’m not saying that Joe Biden is an ordinary person, but I am pretty sure he remembers what it was like to be one.

    The thing is, Joe really does think he is an ordinary person. We might find that incredulous, but it’s how he sees himself, and I think it’s at least somewhat true. When Biden was in the Senate, he was always near the bottom, if not at the very bottom of the personal wealth category. Yet, Joe thinks he’s a rich guy. And by any ordinary person’s standard, he is. That’s the beauty of Biden; he might not live like an ordinary person, but he views himself, through the same lens than you or I would.

  43. 43.

    JWL

    @Nellcote: That doesn’t cut it with me. I had Bush/Cheney pegged, along with millions of others around the planet.

    And so did Biden. He put ambition before country, that’s all.

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