Joe Biden

• Vice President to:      Barack Obama - Democrat, from Illinois.
  
  
  • As of January, 2009 Barack Obama is currently President. He is 47 years old.
    
    
• Dates Served: Biden is currently serving as Vice President, as of January 2009.
  
• Political Party: Biden is a Democrat, from Delaware.
  
• Born: 1942.
  
• Age: Biden is 66, as of January, 2009.
  
  
• The presidential opponent during the 2008 campaign was:
  
  
  • John McCain - Republican
    
    
• Campaign issues 2008:
  
  
  • This year the issue was the same one that every candidate pulls out when running after a 2-termer, Change. Time for something new, Obama said, and he was new. He was black, and he was young, at age 46 running against John MacCain who was 70. Obama was also a Democrat, which was also a change from the previous President. McCain made a lot of noise about Obama's youth and inexperience and liberal ways, and he never missed an opportunity to tell his own dramatic war-stories from Vietnam. Obama drew large crowds wherever he spoke, which McCain tried to argue was proof that Obama was little more than a rock star with charm, but little substance. McCain tried to balance his age and his perception of being too moderate for some Republicans by choosing a much younger, far-Right female Vice President candidate, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Obama got a lot of mileage from the public's weariness of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that kept dragging on with no end in sight, and some Republicans tried to argue that Obama was a Muslim, not even born in America. But then, in the final months of the campaign, the bottom fell out of the Economy, and the Stock Market plunged, creating the deepest Recession since the 1930's. That was reason enough for voters to take their chance with Change, so on election day they voted for Obama, giving him 52.9% of the popular vote, compared to 45.7% for McCain. (The Electoral College cast their votes even stronger for Obama, giving him 365 Electoral votes, and a mere 173 to McCain). America also voted big for the Democrats in Congress, giving them the majority in both houses. Change was promised, and change came. Now it was up to Obama to deliver.

Notable Facts about Joe Biden:

• Biden was born in Pennsylvania, into an Irish family. His grandfather had emigrated from Derry, Ireland, in 1910 to work in American textile mills.
  
  
• Religious affiliation: Catholic.
  
  Biden is the first Catholic to become Vice President. His public comments on religion are rare, and he has more than once been accused of being lax in his Catholic duties. But he has publically described going through a period of a religious dark-night-of-the-soul when his wife and young child were killed in a car-accident, in 1972. During this time he experienced deep religious doubt. But he still attends Mass regularly, at St. Joseph on the Brandywine Church, in Wilmington, Delaware.
  
  One of his political positions that has caused him trouble with the Catholic Church is the fact that he is pro-Choice concerning Abortion. Some bishops have refused to offer him the Eucharist, in protest. But this ban is not enforced in the church he personally attends.
  
  
• Biden played football in college, and graduted with a dual major in History and Political Science.
  
  
• After graduating, he attended Syracuse University of Law. He then decided to get an honest job, so he became a lawyer, in 1969.
  
  
• Biden was elligible for the draft during the Vietnam War, but he received 5 deferments, so he never served.
  
  
• He was elected to the Senate, representing Delaware, in 1973, and served for 36 years, before resigning in 2009 to take on a new job, as Obama's Vice.
  
  
• He ran for his first term in the Senate in 1972. He won a close election in November of that year, at the age of 30. The following month, on December 18th, his wife of 6 years and their 1-year old daughter were killed suddenly in a car accident, while they were out Christmas shopping. The accident also injured his 2 sons who were also in the car, but they recovered. One of his sons later became Attorney General of Delaware.
  
  
• Biden re-married, 5 years later, to a school-teacher named Jill Jacobs. They have been married for over 30 years and have one daughter together.
  
  
• Joe tried to run for the Democratic ticket for President in 1987, but it didn't go too well. He tried again in 2007, but he lost that bid also. So he settled for the little chair, when the Democratic candidate Barack Obama asked him to run as his Vice.
  
  
• In 1988, Biden had emergency surgery for an aneurism that was on the verge of rupturing in his brain. He was not expected to survive, and his priest even administered Last Rites to him at his hospital bed, but he survived, and returned to the Senate after an absence of over half a year.
  
  
• Barack Obama selected Biden as his Vice President in 2008, due to Biden's much broader experience in foreign policy and national security, 2 areas Obama's opponents accused him of being weak on.
  
  
• Biden is well-known for his long-winded speeches. He is never at a loss for words and he often "shoots from the hip" when answering questions, sometimes saying things that his spokespeople have to jump through hoops to spin afterwards. He once publically asked a Senator in a wheelchair to stand up to accept an applause.
  
  
• Joe Biden is probably the only Vice President to have had a hair transplant, in 1987. His original experience didn't go too well, and he most likely did it a few more times before he got it right. It's a good thing too, because the vast majority of Vice Presidents have had hair, a critical job-requirement for being a President's Vice.
  
  
• On Friday, Jan. 8, 2010, Joe Biden's mother died, at the age of 92. Biden's father had died 8 years earlier, in 2002.

Notable Events during his Vice Presidency:

• On January 21st, 2009, Hillary Clinton was sworn in as America's new Secretary of State. She became the first former First Lady to later serve in this position. On the same day she also resigned her post as Senator of New York, a job she had held for the previous 8 years. Her career path from First Lady, to Senator, to Secretary of State was unique for any First Ladies in US history. During her inauguration, her husband Bill held her Bible as she took the oath.
  
  
• Almost exactly one month later, on February 20th, 2009, the former first-cat "Socks", owned by Hillary and Bill Clinton, died. He was 20 years old and had been suffering from cancer, and he was put to sleep by his veterinarian. It was the end of an era.
  
  
• A major cultural seismic event occured on Tuesday, June 23, 2009, when Ed McMahon died. The world of high culture would never be the same again.
  
  
• Two days later, on Thursday, June 25th, two more famous celebrities died on the same day, only hours apart: Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Farrah died of cancer at the age of 62 at 9:30 AM PST that day, and Michael died exactly 3.5 hours later, at 1:00 PM PST, of sudden heart failure due to a sedative-overdose at the age of 50. The triple deaths of Ed, Farrah, and Michael once again proved the fact that celebrities always die in three's...
  
  
• On Tuesday, August 25th, 2009, Ted Kennedy died. The Senator from Massachussetts and brother of both John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy died of brain cancer, at the age of 77. The original male line of the Kennedy dynasty officially came to an end.
  
  
• On October 9th, 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He joined an elite club of presidents who have received this award: Teddy Roosevelt for negotiating the Russo-Japanese War in 1906, Woodrow Wilson for his work with the Leage of Nations in 1919, and Jimmy Carter for his many international mediations in 2002, plus one Vice, Al Gore for his campaigns for global climate-change in 2007.
  
  Obama had been nominated for the award by the Nobel Committee a mere 2 weeks into his presidential term, and the Nobel committee stated that he was awarded the prize "Not for any substantive accomplishments, but for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". Republicans leaped at the opportunity to critize the Nobel Committee as little more than a Left-wing popularity club. But some Republican leaders warned their own ranks to not sound like "Right-wing whiners".
  
  
• On November 13, 2009, NASA announced that it had confirmed the discovery of significant amounts of water on the moon. Signs of water on the moon had been discovered previously, via spectral imaging of dark shadows of craters on the moon, but this time water was directly detected by the LCROSS mission, a space-probe which had been orbitting the moon, mapping craters.
  
  When this probe's mission was over, and its fuel tank was empty, NASA deliberately ejected the empty tank away from the probe, and pushed it out in front of the probe by several miles. This empty tank was then deliberately crashed into the surface of the moon, in order to create a cloud of debris, which the rest of the probe directly sampled as it also crashed a few minutes later. This double-impact on the surface of the moon produced a cloud of dust in which a whopping 24 gallons of water was detected in the mixture, meaning that future astronauts will never get thirsty when visiting the moon. But now the question was, where did all this water come from? The moon was always thought to be as dry as a bone...
  
  
• On May 11, 2010, one of Biden's sons, Beau Biden, had a mild stroke. Beau was the Attorney General of Delaware, at the ripe old age of 41.