Now that the childhood hijinks of our national candidates are fair game, the Washington Post might want to devote some investigative resources toward the background of Vice President Joseph Biden. That’s right, “Sheriff Joe” was reportedly involved in a spate of anti-social activities as a child and adolescent, including but not limited to elaborate neighborhood pranks, street brawls, and even an assault on a lowly dorm employee in college.
From the book What It Takes: The Way to the White House, a story of the 1988 presidential election by reporter Richard Ben Cramer, a troubling snapshot of young Biden emerges:
Once Joey [Biden] set his mind, it was like he didn’t think at all—he just did. That’s why you didn’t want to fight him. Most guys who got into a fight, they’d square off, there’d be a minute or so of circling around, while they jockeyed for position. Joey didn’t do that. He decided to fight … BANGO—he’d punch the guy in the face. Joe was kind of skinny, and he stuttered, and the kids called him Bye-Bye, for the way he sounded when he tried to say his name. But Joey would never back down, and he knew how to box, when no one else did. …
Even after he left, after Mr. Biden got the job selling cars in Wilmington and moved the family away, Charlie Roth would still (in moments of duress) tell guys that his friend Joey Biden would come back and beat them up, if they didn’t watch out. (When Joe did come back, Charlie always had a list.)
A list of children to beat up! That means there are documents, assuming they haven’t already been destroyed. WaPo could find this list and potentially interview the victims. Surely there are some stories there that could give us crucial insight into these vaguely sociopathic flare-ups.
But there’s more. According to What It Takes, Biden apparently also led neighborhood boys in carrying out what he would call “pranks” – and what current law might call “willful and malicious destruction of property” – against an innocent elderly neighbor:
Joe always had an idea. … If their notion of a summer evening’s prank was to put a bag of dogshit on old man Schutz’s doorstep, Joey would say, “No, here’s what we’ll do. You know behind my house, where they got all those little trees? Get a shovel …” And they did: they went out with shovels and planted a forest of saplings on Mr. Schutz’s lawn. It was so much more elaborate—all thought out, the way Joey had it figured.
And later, the book recounts a story about how Biden was put on student probation in college for apparently assaulting a resident adviser with fire extinguisher fluid. Tampering with fire safety equipment? Now we’re moving into federal offense territory:
And before that, University of Delaware, where he only screwed around, trying to be Joe College—got probation for dousing the dorm director with a fire extinguisher. … Then there were hijinks from high school, streaking the parking lot. … They were getting back to childhood sins, stuff where the priest says, “Two Hail Marys” … but Joe was still talking.
Okay, so maybe these incidents all sound innocent enough. But that’s probably just because we haven’t heard from victims or aggrieved outside witnesses with axes to grind. What did that hapless RA do to deserve getting sprayed down with a fire extinguisher, anyway? What about “old man Schutz” – how could he possibly remove all those trees from his lawn on his own? Yes, it will be tough to track down information on these cases considering they took place more than 50 years ago. But if WaPo’s investigative team has shown us anything, it’s that the paper has what it takes to get to the bottom of pressing national issues like these.
There was a great political cartoon during Clinton's presidency which essentially said that Clinton could make child sacrifices to the God Baal and people wouldn't care. That goes double for Obama and Biden. People have made up their mind about Obama because he looks cool, is black and says words that push the right buttons in our benumbed minds. It is hopeless unless someone starts powerfully deconstructing the lies, bad motives, will to power and utter vanity of this horrible and evil man (evil not because he is like a Nazi, but because he is against American ideals, and puts himself above the country, which in my book is evil).
well, maybe the American public is finally getting it….see Rasmussen's poll (Romney 50, Obama 43) today- and this is after Romney has been attacked from all sides in a brutal primary fight, after he has been called endlessly by every one- plasitc, uncaring, aloof, not in touch ( just fill in the blanks) and yet, Romney continues to prosper- maybe he is not such a bad campaigner at all, or maybe Obama is looked upon so abysmally by the public that nothing can save him. not even fifty year old pranks by his opponent….
Well, I'm not hot on Romney but it's the Syphilitic Camel Rule: 0bama sucks so massively at his job that even Zeeba the Syph Camel would be an improvement.
Don't be blaspheming old Baal! It was Moloch to whom child sacrifices were due.
What about John F. Kennedy? He was an inveterate prankster in high school and college; some of his pranks were relatively harmless (e.g., the exploding toilet seat) but others were cruel (filling a guy's mouth with shaving cream while he slept). n nLet's bring it all out, now, and show that famous beloved Democrats can be just as ornery when teenagers as the rest of us. n nThen let's fast forward 50 years to the present and start talking about the real issues again!
If he does that the media will sure enough have a feeding frenzy. The girl he supposed to hav 'bullied was previously interviewed and she said Obama never shoved her. She's also called Obama her knight in shining armor and her savior for sticking up for her while she was being bullied.
First, I won't give Biden a pass on his offense. Fire extinguishers back then weren't pressurized water like they are now. Instead, it was baking soda dissolved in water, with a small jar of concentrated sulfuric acid in the center. When you flipped it upside down, the jar came loose, the acid mixed with the basic water which caused the whole mess to go shooting out the hose under great pressure. There was no valve or anything like now, it just went until it was done. And the acid didn't mix completely, some of the fluid was quite strong acid that could blind you. This is why they went to the dry chemical (which was damn near impossible to clean up afterwards) and then the Halon (which damaged the Ozone level) and now the pressurized regular water. n nBut — if he actually did it as WaPo says he did — and that is not clear — what Romney did was far worse. It would be an assault & battery, I (think) that damage to hair constitutes "physical injury" and Romney would have a criminal record if he did it today as he was 17 years old at the time. As he should have (if he did it) — you simply aren't supposed to do these things. n n*I* am still paying the consequences of things I did as an undergrad 30 years ago, why shouldn't Romney? And the fact that Obama & Biden are both schmucks doesn't change a thing — imagine if it had been a coed dorm and he had raped a girl — (or hacked her hair off) — we wouldn't give him a pass on that, would we? n nAssuming that Romney really did it as the WaPo alleges– and that is a BIG "if" — it is very much relevant. Remember it was the lying and plagarisms that did Biden in back in '88.
I look forward to the expose of Romney's potty training. Also, was he breast-fed or a bottle baby? It could make a difference when the phone rings at 3 a.m.
Geez, no wonder good people don't go into politics. I understand that this should be brought out only because of the supposed bullying of Romney, but when I think about my youthful crimes, it's clear I would not be fit for office! Shooting bottle rockets at passing cars, tormenting the crazy lady by letting our baseball roll into her yard to watch her come charging out of the house and trying to beat her to the ball. Dirt clod fights with our arch nemeses, breaking a girls nose during a rousing game of smear the queer (I didn't know what a queer was at that time by the way)…and that was all before I was 10! Just think what the facebook generation is going to have to face when entering politics.
The problem with the Romney attacks is that they are reducing the already low levels of trust American Citizens have for the MSM.
Aww,these guys are all amateurs…..one night when I was a junior at Ole Miss,there was a massive panty raid….it was customary during such events to throw a coat hanger into the transformer connection outside the girls' dorm to knock out the lights for that block to make the raiding of the panties more 'discrete'….Some of us got the bright idea to drive over to the campus power substation with a few coat hangers and try the same thing…..we must have tossed 2 dozen hangers into the substation grid apparatus…and as fate would have it,the very last coat hanger I had and threw hit home…BAM!!…the electrical arc felt like an atom bomb going off next to me….the power was off all over the Ole Miss campus for the rest of the night….needless to say,the panty raid was an unqualified success
You all are damn lucky you didn't get electrocuted — or at least get some serious flash burns. nWe won't even mention how much money you cost — or how today this would be considered an act of terrorism and a true Federal offense (as it should be). n nAnd did it occur to any of you geniuses that perhaps some of the ladies might have a handgun, or other improvised weapon ranging from baseball bat to pitchfork, and that she might be at a heightened state of alert because of the power failure, and inclined to defend herself first before inquiring the extent of your hostile intent? As an undergrad, I knew one young lady who had her grandfather's (WW-II) Colt .45 in her bedroom and I have absolutely no doubt she would have emptied the clip in a situation like this. How exactly was she supposed to know that you only intended to steal her property and not rape her as well? n nEven still, I make a big distinction between going into someone's abode and stealing property and forcibly restraining someone and hacking away at the person's hair.
Boo hoo hoo, losers.
This is also the same washington compost that didn't think it worth covering the revelations of president kennedy's degradation of a 19 year-old intern. It's all relative. Meaning if it's related to a democrat doing something untoward it's is either put in a whimsical light or ignored.
Better example is Teddy K and Chris Dodds and the "waitress sandwiches" — I make a distinction between consensual and non-consensual. No matter how inappropriate the activity is, I make a clear distinction between that which one agrees to participate in and that which is forced upon one via brute physical force and very much against his or her wishes. n nIt is a clear distinction if you think about it — doing something to someone who is physically resisting just as hard as he or she can but simply isn't strong enough to stop you and is in sheer terror is far FAR worse than doing the same thing to someone who isn't. Two young women, one more-or-less voluntarily has sex with JFK, the other has his younger brother jump on top of her (very much against her will) and is in sheer terror. I argue the latter was more egregious, even though actual sexual activities didn't follow, because she clearly wanted no part of any of that. n n
He planted trees? That MONSTER! Seriously, that sounds like something ACORN would do.
This attack on Romney is so damned unfair and it makes me really angry. Everybody bullies. It's human nature. Think of Christ kicking over the money changers' tables. Think of Ghandi bullying an empire. Think of those guys who drive around in pickup trucks hunting gays and blacks.
No, not everyone. n nSome people fight fairly and don't pick on people who are smaller and weaker than they. n nAnd as to Christ kicking over the money changer's tables, the issue was that they weren't following Jewish law. He wanted them to do so.
The Biden stories are all him standing up for himself or others, or funny pranks. Some of the Romney stories are funny pranks (the hearing aid thing, etc.) but the story about Romney and the kid with dyed-blonde is about Romney getting his cronies together, hunting down and assaulting someone for looking different. In what world are these the same or even similar? n nFurthermore, think about the contexts in which these things happened – Romney was in prep school whilst Biden was, if not exactly on the mean streets, was in a much less privileged environment. You sure you want to go down that road?
Biden was himself bullied for his speech impediment — and the difficulty he had pronouncing his own name. He was defending hmself. Now Romney?????
Biden on the mean streets? Like Romney and Obama, he spent all his education in private schools, including the best prep school in Delaware. He just didn't do as well in school. And his father owned a car dealership, and was NOT the first successful Biden generation! Tell about the mean streets John Kennedy grew up on!