RIP, Beau Biden

[Songbird]

The vice president's son died of brain cancer, age 46.

WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden III, the former attorney general of Delaware and the eldest son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., has died after spending more than a week receiving an unspecified treatment at theWalter Reed National Military Medical Center, his father announced on Saturday. The younger Mr. Biden was 46.

In 2010, Mr. Biden, known as Beau, had suffered what officials described as a mild stroke. Three years later, he was admitted to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after what White House officials described at the time as “an episode of disorientation and weakness.”

Officials said in 2013 that the doctors in Texas had removed a small lesion from his brain.

Mr. Biden’s death marks a second tragic loss for the vice president, whose first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in 1972 when the station wagon they were driving in to go Christmas shopping was hit by a tractor-trailer. Beau Biden and his brother, Hunter, were also injured in the crash, but both survived.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/u...esidents-son-dies-at-46.html?smid=tw-bna&_r=0

 

[exmediahack]

That's awful, awful news.

I cannot imagine having to bury a second child.

 

[UPChip]

Truly awful. For the many easy jokes that are made about Biden's public persona, the man's had more than his fair share of ups and downs.

 

[exmediahack]

I've respected how Biden handled the 1972 car crash that took his wife and daughter -- and even told him so after a 1-on-1 interview a few years back. He seemed truly touched. Father to father, I can't even fathom how one makes it through that.

 

[Songbird]

 

[YankeeFan]

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

Truly tragic. As a parent, just the thought of what Biden has been through is just too insane to comprehend.

RIP.

 

[SnarkShark]

Ugh. These are brutal.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

I had a high school teacher once tell us that the worst possible thing in the world was for a parent to bury a child, because it's just not supposed to happen. Whenever I hear of a child dying, I think of his words to us, RIP

And, not to make this too political, but you just know some Republican is going to put his foot in his mouth and say something stupid.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

I had a high school teacher once tell us that the worst possible thing in the world was for a parent to bury a child, because it's just not supposed to happen. Whenever I hear of a child dying, I think of his words to us, RIP

And, not to make this too political, but you just know some Republican is going to put his foot in his mouth and say something stupid.

****, I hope not... Situations like this should remind people that even those who disagree politically deal with the same fears and tragedies in their lives.

 

[LongTimeListener]

LOL. Good last line, Baron. Reminds us all that irony is alive and well.

 

[YankeeFan]

Joe Biden had one final bit of advice, a warning, really, for these very successful students. No matter how accomplished their lives turned out to be, they would not be able to control their fates.

“Reality has a way of intruding,” the vice president told thousands of graduating Yale University students two weeks ago.

Biden spent the next several minutes unfurling a story he had told hundreds, if not thousands, of times before: his improbable 1972 Senate victory, the car crash that took his wife and daughter, the weeks spent coaxing his two young sons toward recovery.

What the crowd didn’t know was that reality had again intruded in the vice president’s life.

Hiding behind a pair of aviator sunglasses that played along with the irreverent traditions of “Yale Class Day,” Biden delivered the speech knowing that his eldest son was dying of cancer — the same son whose injuries in the crash forced Biden in 1973 to take the Senate oath in a hospital room, beside his son’s bed.

Beau Biden had already been admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda for what the vice president’s staff would later call “aggressive treatment” of brain cancer.

Joseph Robinette Biden III, 46, the former attorney general of Delaware and a leading candidate for governor in 2016, died Saturday.

In the stoic tradition of Irish Catholicism, the vice president kept his son’s deteriorating condition to a tightknit circle of family, his closest friends, top advisers and President Obama. The president, along with first lady Michelle Obama, visited the Biden home at the Naval Observatory on Sunday to pay their respects to the vice president and his wife, Jill.

Family losses frame Vice President Biden’s career - The Washington Post

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Alright, who had Ted Cruz in the betting pool?

Ted Cruz Jokes About Joe Biden, As Biden Grieves For His Son

 

[britwrit]

No matter how good your boiler-plate stump speech is, sometimes you just gotta call an audible.

 

[Dick Whitman]

It's a mean-spirited and juvenille joke to begin with, and the kind of thing that turns a lot of people off of politics and politicians.

What a moron.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

Biden didn't release a statement on the matter. You know, because he is too busy greiving the loss of his son.

Ted Cruz is a tonedeaf asshat.

 

[YankeeFan]

Yeah. Ted Cruz sure is dumb.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Yeah. Ted Cruz sure is dumb.

He's not dumb.

He's a moron.

 

[heyabbott]

He's not dumb.

He's a moron.

He's neither, he's purposefully cruel and myopic

 

[BDC99]

No matter how good your boiler-plate stump speech is, sometimes you just gotta call an audible.

While I can't disagree with anyone's assessment of Cruz, this is really not that big of a deal. Taking a shot at a rival party politician in a stump speech in front of fervent party supporters is par for the course. Should he have thought twice about this particular joke? Sure. But I doubt the grieving Biden is worrying too much about the GOP's comments.