Who is Biden?

Biden was recently named as running mate with Barrack Obama for the presidential elections this year. I've heard many people complaining about how terrible a decision it was to make him a running mate, however when I asked why, or where he stands on some issues, they say "I don't know" (an unfortunate trend in American society ). So I looked him up.

Criminals - he put a lot of funding money back into local law enforcement in Delaware (his state) and has supported and passed legislation geared towards transitioning convicted felons back into society right so that the crime isn't committed again - http://biden.senate.gov/ A very democratic thing to do, but a very controversial issue. I, myself, don't even whether or not I agree felons should be placed back into society. As for funding local law enforcement, I'm not sure if he'll be able to do that on a large scale as a vice president, but we'll see.

Gay Marriage - He beats around terms a bit. He says that he believes same sex couple should be recognized by the state, but also that it should be up to the state to define "marriage" - http://biden.senate.gov/ I think he may believe personally that gay marriage should be allowed, but it doesn't seem like it's one of the battles he's going to pick any time soon.

Economy - He says he's going to fix the housing market... but doesn't go into great detail how. He says that we need re-financing options, and counseling, and less predatory lending, and stable government, but he didn't explain how, or even if, he was going to do it himself. Just because someone believes in it doesn't mean they're going to actively try to fix it. He also says that he will attack OPEC and tell them to lower their prices - http://biden.senate.gov/. It sounds great, but I don't know if that's possible, legally or practically. If OPEC is running business like businesses in the us, they are supposed to be separate from the state and have certain rights to not be bullied by it. Not only that, but I don't think that OPEC actually decides the price. It should be supply and demand, but I'm not sure how the industry works. What Biden should do is focus on raising wages to meet the rising price, because everything is going up, not just energy costs.
He also said that he plans on investing a large amount of money into alternative energy sources -http://biden.senate.gov/

Health Care - He's very interested in getting more children available health care. He's looking to do this by expanding medicare and SCHIP programs so they cover more people, and creating outreach programs that will give people more exposure to medicare and enable them to apply for it. He wants to offer plans like federal employee health plans to anyone who is uninsured, and wants to provide federal coverage for any catastrophic instances to lower costs for those involved http://biden.senate.gov/ I'll guess that last one came from Katrina. While these are good ideas in the direction of good health care, it is not any sort of universal health care. But it's some steps in the right direction.

Iraq - like most politicians.... "Senator Biden believes it is important to bring home our troops without leaving chaos behind in Iraq." -http://biden.senate.gov/ I find statements like that almost offensive. You can't do both. He wants to create political stability through regions and local governments in anyway that would work with the Iraqi constitution. Their constitution is definately something to look up. He says that oil revenues should be shared from region to region depending on population. I don't think that I agree, regions who don't produce oil will be getting revenue from regions that do. If it's a federal agency that extracts the oil, then I guess the entire nation should get the benefits, but if it's private companies, why should a region receive payments for something they're not providing? Should New Mexico get revenues from the North Eastern lumber companies? We should have nothing to do with Iraq's oil, why are we trying to regulate it? He wants to get the UN together and have Iraq come up with a settlement for it and it's neighbors that they will all agree on. This is something we shouldn't be worried about especially if people are planning on escalating the war in afghanistan when we pull out of Iraq. We should not be deciding Iraq's agreements with their neighbors."Direct U.S. military commanders to develop a plan to withdraw most U.S. forces in 2008." -http://biden.senate.gov/ I'm not sure if that happened or not. If it did, is he planning on withdrawing any more? One thing I do really agree with him on is that he wants to do major reconstruction jobs in Iraq to provide jobs to people. That is something Iraq must need, but how do you plan to do that while bombs are still going off?

I'm not too sure about biden. As vice president, he won't really have a whole lot of control, if any, in foreign affairs, so I'm not too worried about what I disagree with him on Iraq. But I do like some of what he's planning for domestic US in health care and energy. He could go a step farther in health care, but I'm not sure that anyone will.