Jolting Joe Biden letting the baby cry during a speech yesterday in Ohio (via HuffPost):

“I don’t blame that baby for crying,” he said, over audible wails from a child in the crowd.
“You know what, she just realized what it means if Romney gets elected.
She is out there  –  God love her.
Hi, baby, how are you? It’s okay, he’s not gonna get elected, you’re going to be okay. You’re gonna be okay. But you can’t blame her.
God, I shouldn’t be scaring children like this.”

Ground level vintage politics.

(Illustration found here).

Joe has always seemed a good guy with a crazy tongue — and apparently his wife, Jill, has been around him too long.
This from Suzi Parker at the Washington Post, commenting on Jill Biden’s introduction of her husband during a campaign stop in New Hampshire last month:

She’s looks down at her remarks and says, “I’ve seen Joe up close” while inadvertently holding her hands apart.
The crowd laughs.
Jill, looking lovely in lavender, stops, realizing perhaps how personal that statement really is.
She smiles and turns to Joe who is sitting behind her.
The crowd cheers more.
“It’s in my remarks, really,” Jill says, looking back at Joe and seemingly blushing a bit.
She pauses and tries to calm the cheering, chuckling crowd.
The camera pans to a wider shot, showing Joe, too, smiling and laughing.
She carries on and Joe laughs.
“I’ve heard the urgency in his voice when he comes and talks about the people he’s met,” she says.
At that point, Joe laughs and shakes his head with a big grin on his face.
Oh, love.
It’s a splendid thing especially on the often stale campaign trail.
It’s even better when there’s an unintended double entendre.
Jill and Joe Biden seem real, authentic and still very much in love in the clip.
It’s reminiscent of Joe’s recent photograph with a female biker in Ohio sitting almost on his lap in a diner.
The Bidens are great at unscripted, real deal politics.

Appears the YouTube version of the clip has been removed — see it at the UK’s Daily Mail.

Joe Biden is one of those originals, which despite decades in the public eye can’t seem to understand the value of the spoken language on the human ear, but he’s fairly-quick on the trigger, no matter what — via DemocraticUnderground:

Take Mary Hartnett, 72, of Wilmington.
She was walking home from church in 1977 when a purse-snatcher struck.
Biden, who was driving by, jumped out of his car and hot-footed it after the culprit, she says, running through backyards and scaling fences.
The thief dropped the pocketbook.
The next day, Hartnett sealed it in plastic and put it in her cedar chest.

She dreamed of Biden someday becoming president, but alas, now just the second-in-command, but still…

And Joe continues to be Joe.
In Springfield, Ohio, yesterday, he surprised a few folks when he stayed overnight unannounced at a local hotel and surfaced in the morning:

“We were told we couldn’t go on the third floor. They cleared out two rooms and put in only tables and chairs,” Minnie Bethel said of what hotel staff told those staying at the hotel, which offers rooms for nearly $100 a night.
She said Biden’s entourage also turned the hotel’s conference room into a press conference area.
The Bethels’ daughter, Shawnette Walker, 40 of Springfield, said Biden told jokes and talked for a while before autographing her 2012 Obama hat.
“He didn’t make me feel like he was the vice president. He made me feel more like he was the principal of my daughter’s school.
He was just laid- back, easy-going. I wasn’t expecting that,” Walker said.
“I thought he was going to shake my hand and run off. No, he stood there and talked.”
Walker said her autographed hat is now in her China hutch and will no longer be touched.
…
When Biden emerged from his hotel room Wednesday morning, Minnie Bethel said he took pictures and signed autographs with hotel staff and others.
The mood turned comical when Biden asked those around him, “Did anyone else have a problem with the shower head?”

Oh, Joe…get outta here…

Originally this morning, I was going to post about gun violence — another ‘mass‘ shooting yesterday, this time in Downey, California, about 20 miles from LA, in which three members of one family were killed and two others injured.
This on the heels of the killings at a Madison, Wisc., hair salon — and right now law authorities are trying to figure out the details on a rash of gunfire in four Michigan counties, many of which targeted motorists near Interstate 96.
Too weird, and depressing.

And then I came across Biden and the crying baby — the video is near-precious.
F*ck you, NRA!