Opinion: Joe Biden update: <em>Phew!</em> Time for some vacation

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After a very busy time of secure teleconferencing from his Delaware home and being fully briefed by his national security staff on the explosive Nigerian underpants on that Northwest flight near Detroit, Vice President Joe Biden is off now on a little vacation for some badly needed R&R.

Like his boss, Barack Obama and entourage, who opted to spend the holiday far from his wintry hometown clime in Chicago in December, the 67-year-old Biden is forsaking Delaware for a sunny island -- the Virgin Islands, to be precise.

According to his official White House schedule, ‘No public events are scheduled.’

Biden, who btw was a U.S. senator when Obama was only 11 and not yet raising funds for 2008, left Monday. He will return to the mainland on Jan. 3 at the same time as the president’s family to resume his ongoing assignment of revitalizing the nation’s lagging economy and maybe trimming its double-digit unemployment rate before the crucial midterm congressional election campaigns get too far along in 2010.

So far, the $787 billion economic revitalization act has seen unemployment go from 8% to 10.2% and now 10%. But perhaps that will improve next week when the VP returns to his employment.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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