Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Consistently wrong since 2002

You are here: Home / Politics / Proud to Be A Democrat / “Uncle Joe” Biden Is A Joker, But He’s Serious About Violence Against Women

“Uncle Joe” Biden Is A Joker, But He’s Serious About Violence Against Women

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So, in the midst of all the horrible news last week, the usual outlets were yukking it up about some speech by Joe “I’ll kill your son” Biden. And that was a true quote!

But there was more to the speech, and NYMag has a full transcript:

… Look, let me just say it straight: violence against women is a stain on the moral character of a society, in any society in which it occurs. It’s an obligation of all societies, particularly the men in society, to stand up and do all in their power eradicate that stain. And it is a stain on the conscience of a country. This is an issue, that has been made repeatedly tonight, of basic human rights.

My dad said it differently. He said, ‘Everyone is entitled to be treated with dignity.’ That was my dad’s favorite word, the one we heard most often. We should be attacking this virus, this stain, with a profound sense of urgency. Urgency. For as I speak, there are thousands of women around the world being brutalized. Mutilated. Killed at the hands of those who allegedly love them and care about them…

This notion that women are chattels is a central part of our culture, inherited from our Anglo-Saxon ancestry, but also in many other cultures, and our law. I asked my staff, when I started to write the law, two men and four brilliant women, one of whom is here today, and went on to be a distinguished professor of law for ten or twelve years, I asked her to come back and be my council. And I asked them to go out and do a survey of the laws on the books in the states to determine where and whether or not, this implicit bias that somehow it’s the woman’s fault, somehow it’s a man’s right, are written in the laws.

They wrote a paper, and I’m happy to send it to any of you who are interested, because you may be. It’s over 23 years old. We listed in almost every state in the nation, the application of law was different. In the State of Delaware, my home state, if you consented to go out with me, if you were a voluntary partner, no matter what I did to you, no matter how brutally I raped you, I could not be convicted of first-degree rape. If I jumped out of an alley and brutally raped you, I could be convicted of first-degree rape.

Think of the premise: you must have done something. You must have somehow, inexplicably consented somehow, to something. I could not be convicted of first-degree rape…

And indeed, when I began to draft the Violence Against Women legislation, the reason why it didn’t work out at first, I physically drafted it myself, because no one wanted to be part of it. There are a lot of you out there who are working like the devil to do something, but getting nowhere. Because of the incredibly talented staff I had, we put together the Violence Against Women Act. And when we did, our opponents said that what Biden was doing – I could give you all the quotes – was ‘undermining the solidarity of the family.’ Seriously. That it would impact on the cohesion, bring about the disintegration of the American family. When we championed, and [they] now exist, women’s shelters, and housing, and transitional housing, they were characterized ‘as indoctrination centers for runaway wives.’ This is 1989. 1990. 1991. 1992.

Senator Birch Bayh, you may remember from Indiana, back in the early ‘80s introduced in the Judiciary Committee, and got a law passed saying that a man, a husband, could be convicted for raping his wife. In the markup of that bill, the deceased Senator from Alabama said on the record in frustration, ‘My young friend just doesn’t understand, sometimes a man has to use force with his wife.’ On the record.

Even some in this audience did not support the Violence Against Women Act in the beginning, to tell the truth. No women’s organization stepped forward and supported it, until Ellie Smeal spoke about it. It was characterized as ‘this is just a fad on Biden’s part.’ That was the phrase used. Others said that it was important, but did not deserve the national response….

I’ve now traveled a million miles as Vice President, and so many more as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. And those of you who are involved know there’s not a country I go in I do not raise this issue. Not a single country I go in. But I’m told: it’s a family affair, or you don’t understand our culture, you don’t understand our religious practices, you don’t understand we’re different. You have no right to trespass on our culture. Let me make something absolutely clear to everyone here: there is NEVER, never, a religious, a cultural, a societal, justification for inhumanity. Period. Never. Never. And don’t be intimidated when you are told that you don’t understand our culture. You’re right, I don’t understand it. They’re wrong. They’re simply wrong…

Full text at the link. Bless you, Uncle Joe, may your outrageous voice be with us for many years yet…

I can attest to the absolute outrage among the Very Serious People when Biden’s Violence Against Women Act was first introduced, as I’m sure many of you can. (I was writing at a feminist apa/fanzine collective, since we had yet to discover weblogs.) Seems to have been just an eye-blink… and yet, it’s a whole generation.

Reader Interactions

46Comments

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    Love me some Joe, Onion and not-Onion editions.

    Australia is riveted by hostage-taking and three dead. In America, six are dead, making it a Monday.

    We’re going to deal violence, when?

  5. 5.

    gratuitous

    For those unfamiliar with the concept, you can read the conclusion of Biden’s remarks as something called “having a principle.” In this case, the principle is there is no justification for inhumanity. Biden isn’t cowed by “societal” or “religious” or “traditional” excuses* for treating people as not human; the principle remains, no matter what kind of objection or excuse you raise. It’s really not that difficult, either.

    *In particular, this is effective against the “I’m really just a jerk, hiding behind some trumped-up rationale that usually deters you liberal types.”

  7. 7.

    MomSense

    My kids call him Joe Fucking Biden said with all respect and admiration. He’s a champion.

    One of my favorite pieces at theawl.com was when they live blogged the 2012 VP debate with the sound muted.

  8. 8.

    geg6

    I love Uncle Joe. Just love him. I don’t always agree with him on everything, but he gets many passes from me on those simply for his work on this. It’s a real legacy and he’ll be remembered for a long time for this one true good. And yes, I’m old enough to remember when he was getting laughed at and excoriated as anti-family for VAWA. I wish my mom could have lived to see him as VP. She just adored him. She wished like hell he’d stayed in Scranton so as to be our senator.

  9. 9.

    Elizabelle

    We have a Surgeon General!

    Dr. Vivek Murthy confirmed, 51-43, despite his concern that guns are a public health hazard on a day when cable TV was riveted to a hostage situation in a cafe in Sydney, Australia (3 dead, including the gunman) and a gunman who killed 6 members of his family is on the lam above Philadelphia, PA. Which is hardly noted. CNN is all about Oz.

  12. 12.

    Mandalay

    @Elizabelle:

    We have a Surgeon General!

    And let’s give credit to the man responsible for this: Thank you Ted Cruz!….

    Unhappy Republicans say Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has given President Barack Obama a present this holiday season – a gift certificate good for confirmation of 12 judicial appointments, not long after the voters had delivered the Democrats a lump of coal in midterm elections.

    Cruz, a tea party favorite and potential 2016 presidential contender, disputed the claim through his spokesman on Monday.

    But there was no dissent that Democrats, who must turn over power to Republicans in January, were in position to confirm not only the judges, but 11 other appointees before the Senate wraps up work for the year.

    Among them are nominees that Republicans have sought to block for two relatively high-profile posts. They are Vivek Murthy, confirmed late in the day as surgeon general, and Sarah Saldana to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that will oversee the new administration policy on immigration that Cruz wants to defund.

    Cruz has pissed off both Republicans and the NRA with his “principled” shenanigans. Thanks Ted!

  13. 13.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    I remember when “not a spouse” was an element of rape. It was horrific to have to explain to a rape victim before a preliminary hearing, “I’m sorry I’ll have to ask and offensive question, but it’s an element of the offense. That’s why I’ll ask you if the man you just identified for the court is your husband.” I hated it, and I hated that I had some asshole colleagues who would not explain it to the women first. So the victims would get blindsided by being asked if they were married to the rapist. And rarely did the rape defendants waive preliminary hearing. Sometimes we could get the county to take the cases direct to the grand jury, but not often if it wasn’t a minor victim.

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    @Mandalay: But Cruz made “the base” happy by jumping up and down and holding his breath until his face turned blue. For someone who is very likely thinking “Mr. President” every time he looks in the mirror, that matters more than raised middle fingers behind him in the Senate cloakroom.

  16. 16.

    Schlemazel

    Joe may have his problems, a tad too close to some banksters maybe, but damn I love the guy. He would make a hell of a President if he ever had a chance. He understands right and wrong at a level that seems to escape too many and is fearless in expressing it.

  20. 20.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Elizabelle:

    The Morning Joe crowd were virtually pissing their pants this morning while completely ignoring the 6 dead in PA. It was stunning in its idiocy.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    The US shooter is a ginger, former military. He’s taken out six lives, and is still on the lam. Shootings took place maybe 20-30 miles north of Philadelphia.

    In Australia: a brown gunman gets himself and two hostages killed — that’s three, for those counting.

    But the Australian shooting perp is (again) brown, born in Iran, and a scary Muslim.

    News values, folks.

  22. 22.

    mdblanche

    @dmsilev: I now think the only thing Ted Cruz cares about is Ted Cruz. All his performances in the Senate are about self-promotion and he doesn’t care if any of it works or what his colleagues think as long as his fan club is impressed. And he’ll sell them out too as soon as it’s worth his while and any conservative cause he cares less about than himself, which is all of them. This level of ambition is dangerous. But it’s usually self-defeating since Cruz is going to run short on friends sooner rather than later.

  24. 24.

    Mandalay

    @mdblanche:

    But it’s usually self-defeating since Cruz is going to run short on friends sooner rather than later.

    Right. And even worse, Cruz keeps adding people to his frenemies list with stunts like this, and the government shutdown. He can pull this crap and get away with it in the short term, but he will eventually discover that when he needs Republicans to support his bills, or his campaigns, or his causes, they won’t lift a finger to help him. More and more of his own party will shun him because he is a loose cannon, and he is not a team player.

  25. 25.

    Mike J

    @Elizabelle: I will offer a bit of a defense for giving the terror incident bigger play.

    The reasoning behind hate crime laws is that if you, for example, target a gay person and kill them just for being gay, you are not only committing a crime against that person, but also against the entire community. The entire point of terror attacks is attack not only a few victims but the rest of the population.

    The guy in Pennsylvania killed his wife and her family. Yes, it was evil and awful, but it was not his intent to target the rest of PA.

    If somebody burns down a black church that is, and should be, bigger news than somebody burning down a warehouse for the insurance money. If a religious loon kills people because his invisible sky buddy (or more likely a political leader speaking in the name of the ISB) told him to kill the infidel, that’s bigger news than an equally evil person killing somebody he knew and was angry with.

  27. 27.

    PurpleGirl

    Ah, yes, the Violence Against Women Act. I wrote many letters to congresscritters supporting it. My sister was a victim, several friends were victims. (As a teenager I could hear my BIL yelling at my sister; they lived below us.) Yes, there is NEVER a reason for a women to hit or hurt by someone who supposedly loves her.

  31. 31.

    Schlemazel

    @Bill Murray: Yeah, that was exactly the thing I meant. I wonder though if as President he wouldn’t repay them like Becket repaid Henry when he put office before friendship. Maybe not but even at that I can’t see us as worse off than we will be when the cromudumbass spending bill gets signed.

  32. 32.

    mdblanche

    @Mandalay: Cruz has already alienated the Senate and is working on the House. But someday I expect he’ll finish himself off by alienating The Base in a fit of pure lust for power. To him they’re just the little people to be stepped on in his ascent to the top. They might feel differently about that. Hopefully that day comes before, FSM forbid, he’s elected president.

    And OT, but I went out to eat tonight. The price of gas at the corner station was 5 cents lower on the way back when I went out. Thanks Obama.

  34. 34.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Rand Careaga: While one wouldn’t be surprised by Heflin saying that, it looks like it was someone else:

    September 1994:

    The Chairman[Biden]. I think it does. I will tell you one little story
    about this committee. When Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana was a
    senior member of this committee, he and I cosponsored the first
    Federal law that said that a husband could be found guilty of rap-
    ing his wife.

    We were in what we call a markup and it was at the end of the
    year, like this is. The Senate was getting out, adjourning sine die.
    We were meeting in a conference room off the floor of the U.S. Sen-
    ate, a crowded room, a very small room, Vs the size of this room.
    The press was allowed in, but it was crowded.

    Senator Eastland was about to move this meeting along and we
    were about to vote on the legislation to report it to the floor of the
    Senate to be acted on before we adjourned, and a Senator who will
    remain nameless who is no longer here, in frustration — a junior
    Senator, but much senior to me in age — at the end of the table
    banged down his hand, and this is the Grod’s truth. He banged
    down his hand and he said, you just don’t understand, Joe, you are
    too young; sometimes, a man just has to use force with his wife.
    That was 1978 in the U.S. Senate, on the record. That is frighten-
    ing, but apparently it is there.

    In 1978 Alabama had 4 senators (I had links for them, but this would be thrown in the dungeon if I used them all – see Wikipedia):

    John Sparkman

    James Allen

    Maryon Pittman Allen (his wife) who served a few months after Allen died.

    Donald Stewart who won Allen’s seat.

    Heflin took his Senate seat in 1979, so unless the date is wrong, it wasn’t him.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  35. 35.

    SWMBO

    @efgoldman: Oh yes you would. And so would the rest of us. Especially if the exploding heads were on Fox News or one of their guests. I’d pay double if it was The War Criminals. And so would you.

  38. 38.

    SWMBO

    @TooManyJens: I think it was Burnsie who said that it takes three instances to have enough evidence for a federal case. Would deliberately allowing perjury fall under one of the strikes?

  39. 39.

    mclaren

    “Uncle Joe” Stalin Biden is a sociopathic authoritarian thug, and every once in a while he says something that makes sense.

    Unfortunately he has a long record saying other stuff.

    For example:

    Joe Biden is the guy whose bill created the position of Drug Czar. Joe Biden is the guy whose bill created asset forfeiture. Joe Biden never met an illegal unconstitutional wiretap or sneak-and-peek break-in by police he didn’t like. And for three long years, Joe Biden urged everyone to take “one last shot” in Iraq and keep U.S. troops there for three long years, long after it had become obvious to everyone else that the Iraq invasion was a futile failure of epic proportions.

    Joe Biden on the Don Imus show, 8/17/2006:
    “We’ve got one last shot here to separate these parties [in the Iraq civil war], and you have to do it politically.”

    Joe Biden, Fox News, 11/21/2005: (Should we leave Iraq right now?)
    “Not immediately, no. I can understand Jack’s frustration. This is a guy who has concluded that so far we’ve handled this effort incompetently, but it seems to me that we have one last shot at getting this right.”

    Joe Biden, Charlie Rose show, 21 June 2005:
    “I personally think we should not set an exit date. I personally think we should take one last shot at trying to do this the right way. I think it still can be done, although more difficult.”

    Joe Biden, Face the Nation, 6/19/2004:
    “We need time. There’s one last shot at getting this right in Iraq.”

    Joe Biden, Hardball, 24 May 2004:
    “We’ve made significant mistakes. Our one last shot to get this right, unite the world, convince the Iraqi people that this is not just a U.S. occupation, is June 30.”

    Joe Biden, 11/7/2003:
    “I am convinced we have one last shot at bringing the world into Iraq,” said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. “We must do everything in our
    power to seize it.”

    One last shot…for THREE FUCKING GODDAMN YEARS. Joe Biden is George W. Bush with a program of kinder gentler genocide.

    Joe Biden tells ABC News: “… I think legalization [of marijuana] is a mistake. I still believe it’s a gateway drug. I’ve spent a lot of my life as chairman of the Judiciary Committee dealing with this. I think
    it would be a mistake to legalize.”

    Joe Biden criticized George H. W. Bush for not waging a savage enough War on Drugs in 1988: “In 1988, the major drug bill he had spent years
    crafting became law. Included was the creation of a national drug czar, a key Biden objective and a job that went to Republican William Bennett. Biden vowed to be Capital Hill’s point man in pressing the
    new Bush administration on antidrug spending and helping Bennett navigate his way through a thorny bureaucratic thicket of multiple congressional jurisdictions. When Pres. Bush announced his 1989
    antidrug plan, Biden showed no hesitation in criticizing him for not finding initiatives already on the books. He called for higher taxes on cigarettes and tobacco (neither of which he ever used) to pay for them. Biden unleashed his old fire: “Mr. President, you say you want a war on drugs, but if that’s what you want we need another D-Day.
    Instead you’re giving us another Vietnam–a limited war fought on the cheap, financed on the sly, with no clear objectives, and ultimately destined for stalemate and human tragedy.”

    …from a policy perspective, it’s a disaster. Biden has sponsored more damaging drug war legislation than any Democrat in Congress. Hate the way federal prosecutors use RICO laws to take aim at drug offenders? Thank Biden. How about the abomination that is federal asset forfeiture laws? Thank Biden. Think federal prosecutors have too much power in drug cases? Thank Biden. Think the title of a “Drug Czar” is sanctimonious and silly? Thank Biden, who helped create the position (and still considers it an accomplishment worth boasting
    about). Tired of the ridiculous steroids hearings in Congress? Thank Biden, who led the effort to make steroids a Schedule 3 drug, and has been among the blowhardiest of the blowhards when it comes to sports and performance enhancing drugs. Biden voted in favor of using international development aid for drug control (think plan Columbia, plan Afghanistan, and other meddling anti-drug efforts that have only fostered loathing of America, backlash, and unintended consequences).
    Oh, and he was also the chief sponsor of 2004′s horrendous RAVE Act.

    Source: “Biden,” The Agitator website, 23 August 2008.

    Everyone knows that the Patriot Act was drafted before 9/11.

    But few know that it was Joe Biden who drafted the core provisions which were included in that bill … in 1995.

    CNET reported in 2008:

    Months before the Oklahoma City bombing took place, Biden introduced another bill called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995. It previewed the 2001 Patriot Act by allowing secret evidence to be used in prosecutions, expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of “terrorism” that could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S. military to be used in civilian law enforcement, and allowing permanent detention of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review. The Center for National Security Studies said the bill would erode constitutional and statutory due process protections” and would “authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to
    investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and associations.”

    Source: “Joe Biden Drafted the Core of the Patriot Act in 1995 … Before the Oklahoma City Bombing,” Washington’s blog, 10 December 2011.

  41. 41.

    Mike Toreno

    I’ve always been outraged that Biden sponsored the Violence Against Women Act. What was he thinking? It’s the exact opposite of the kind of act he should have sponsored? The only thing that matches it for egregiousness is when Chris Brown was ordered to take a domestic violence class!

  42. 42.

    Sondra

    @geg6:
    Amen to that. I have only heard him speak once at a campaign stop, but he was awesome.

    He comes off as being charmingly down to earth. He made me feel that if ever I needed a big hug, I’d want it to be from him.

  43. 43.

    Hunter

    One error in Biden’s speech: the role of “woman as chattel” was not a product of our Anglo-Saxon heritage — women in pre-Norman England were, depending on social status, the equals of men. The chattel idea comes straight from our “Judaeo-Christian” tradition, in which women were property — for example, if you wanted to get married, you went to a respectable man in the village and bought one of his daughters — you’ve heard the term “bride price”? That’s real Biblical marriage.

  44. 44.

    quentin

    @Mike J: This seems like a strange thread to argue that domestic violence does not have the effect of terrorizing a larger group of people.

  46. 46.

    Cervantes

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    The document you’re quoting is from 1994. In it Biden said that Senator X who made the offensive statement in 1978 was already no longer in the Senate. Heflin was still in the Senate when Biden made that statement, ergo he was not Senator X.

    Anyhow, Senator X was James Allen. When he died shortly after making that statement, his (presumably long-suffering) wife was appointed to fill his seat by George Wallace.

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