In His Home State, Biden is a Regular Joe

[babsbunny]

http://www.truthout.org/article/in-his-home-state-biden-a-regular-joe

Sunday 24 August 2008

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by: Noam N. Levey, The Los Angeles Times


Washington - The personification of the white-haired Washington insider, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. has spent more than half his life in the Senate, seemingly so in love with his own voice that his colleagues must fight to be heard at his hearings.

A hundred miles away from Capitol Hill, however, is another Joe Biden - more a character in Mister Rogers' neighborhood than a globe-trotting statesman or a pontificating fixture on the Sunday talk shows.

He is a putterer who plants bushes in his backyard and designed his own house, including space for his elderly parents. He's a man quick to find a doctor for someone's sick grandmother or hold a fundraiser for a local firefighter battling cancer.

This Joe Biden is the son of a car salesman who lost nearly all his money and moved his family from Scranton, Pa., to a hardscrabble neighborhood in Delaware. As a boy, Biden struggled to overcome a bad stutter and the nickname Joe Impedimenta.