Your Old Handsome Joe Biden hurt some sensitive fee-fees Thursday when he compared Republicans who held back reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act to early hominids, calling them "this sort of Neanderthal crowd" in the House. Advocates for the Neanderthal community were quick to point out that they were actually much nicer than House Republicans.
Biden said that the foot-dragging on VAWA reauthorization reflected the ugly turn that congress has taken:
"I'm going to say something outrageous," Biden said at the Naval Observatory at an event marking the 19th anniversary of the bill. "I think I understand the Senate better than any man or woman who's ever served in there, and I think I understand the House ... I was surprised this last time ... the idea we still had to fight? We had to fight to reauthorize?"
"Did you ever think we'd be fighting over, you know, 17, 18 years later to reauthorize this?" he asked the crowd, which included people who'd worked on getting the original bill passed in 1994. "Well, you know what? The thing they didn't like, they said we like it the way it is," he said, without the protections for Native Americans living on tribal lands and LGBT people that the supporters pushed to include in the bill.
Ah, but don't you see, Joe? Extending VAWA's protections to strange, exotic people like "non-heterosexuals" is threatening to Traditional American Values. And what about the inclusion of undocumented immigrants? Knowing that they'd have some legal protection from spousal abuse could have encouraged a flood of abused women to sneak across the border. Why can't you just stick with the traditional forms of domestic violence, huh?
Politico characterized March's VAWA reauthorization as "a small victory that served to remind [Biden] of the achievement of getting the first bill passed," prompting Biden to tell the crowd, "Nothing, nothing, nothing I've ever been engaged in matters to me more than what you've made real," as if it were somehow significant. A small victory? Considering the frothing opposition to what should have been a routine vote, we think Old Handsome Joe might have been justified in calling the reauthorization a big deal of some sort.
[ Politico ]
Maybe they would be happy if we replaced the Act with the Rule of Thumb.
I read that as reptilian cave bear.