Photos: Joe Biden Unleashed

In early March, Team Obama announced it had decided to “release the Biden“: The pugnacious, filter-free VP would be returning to the campaign trail. Soon after, the campaign posted this photo to their website next to the headline “Welcome Joe back to the trail”:

Yep. That’s the 47th vice president of the United States at a 2012 campaign event, acting out a one-liner from CSI: Miami. Or preparing to gun down a yak from 200 yards away with the power of his mind bullets. Or simply striking a pose that might be described as “Bidening.” The Internet jubilantly had its way with the imageGrist blogger David Roberts dubbed it the most “Joe Biden-y” photo ever taken.

Here are some more photos of Joe Biden being Biden—or at least doing a pretty good impression of The Onion version of himself:

Biden, at his part-time job as vice president of the United States of I-Wear-These-Aviators-Better-Than-You-Do.

...doing his best Jack-Nicholson-face.

In May 2011, probably saying something like, “Hey remember that time four days ago when we annihilated Bin Laden? That was pretty sweet.”

Hey, remember that time four days ago when

Yet another in a series of photos of Biden cracking up the president. Here, he hangs up his Aviators to play Angry Birds last July, debt-ceiling crisis be damned.

Wreaking vengeance on thieving pigs who remind him of Bin Laden.

Showing up in Kandahar looking exactly like Steven Seagal in Machete while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) cowers behind him.

Lindsey Graham

A bromantic high-five. 

Needs more aviators.

In Iraq. Wearing the Aviators. Of course.

Iraq

Ignoring a small child. And possibly telling the president a dirty joke.

Too damn cool

Biden and Obama, blowing off running the country for a few minutes of taxpayer-funded dicking around.

This is technically taxpayer funded.

 Oh hey Biden. Are you just bidin’ your time? Or is that a UFO you see out there?

Image credits: TaraGiancaspro/Flickr; Pete Souza/The White House; Pete Souza/The White House; US Navy Petty Officer Aramis X. Ramirez/isafmedia; Pete Souza/The White House; The US Army/Flickr; Pete Souza/The White House; Pete Souza/The White House; Pete Souza/The White House

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate