Politico has collected some of the very best Bidenisms. Go over and check them out:

On ambition:
“I never had an interest in being a mayor ’cause that’s a real job. You have to produce. That’s why I was able to be a senator for 36 years.” —March 29, 2012

On the campaign trail:
“You got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” —Jan. 31, 2007

“There’s a gigantic difference between John McCain and Barack Obama, and between me and I suspect my vice presidential opponent. … She’s good-looking.” —Aug. 31, 2008

And so forth.

God love him, I’ve just gotta say this: We make fun, but Joe Biden is no dummy. I’ve had the privilege of sitting and talking with him at length a number of times (any time you sit and talk with Joe, it’s “at length,” only he’s the one talking). And Joe says lots of smart stuff. It’s just that he talks so much, and so freely, and with so little hesitation, that occasionally it’s not going to come out right. Or as he would say:

“If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there’s still a 30 percent chance we’re going to get it wrong.” —Feb. 6, 2009

Of course, some of the things he says are not just mistakes, but revelatory of character. And I’ve gotta say this, too: I enjoy the character that it reveals. To find someone so genuine at the top of the heap is no small thing these days; it’s a BFD. We need more real people in politics.

The quintessential modern man is suddenly mesmerized by history…

“I personally take no pride in the Confederacy. Avoid wars you can’t win, and never raise your flag for an asinine cause like slavery.”

— Francis Underwood

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances…

— William Faulkner

Between the two, Faulkner knew better what he was talking about.

To call slavery merely “asinine” is to fail to give evil its due. It was something far more than “foolish, unintelligent or silly.” It was this country’s original sin, and before the national blood offering that killed hundreds of thousands of our ancestors, it dragged down both white and black.

In his quote, Underwood — protagonist of “House of Cards” — wasn’t teaching a moral; he was showing his contempt first for losers, and secondly for the things that occupy the small minds of ordinary humans. Frank thinks he’s so far above them, above us. In his contempt, he is contemptible. You didn’t have to be an apologist for slavery or march behind a Confederate flag to feel the profound loss when Levon Helm sang “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” You just had to be human. (You can even be a guy like me who has struggled for years to get that flag off our State House lawn — in fact, I may feel it more intensely for that. The SCV guys don’t understand where I’m coming from. I think I get them, but they don’t get me.)

But by the end of season two, episode five, the regional obsessions of the only defeated part of this country have grabbed Francis — a South Carolinian, remember — by the throat. On the battlefield where his great-great-great grandfather fell and was buried in a common, unmarked grave, Francis has a mystical experience that brings him closer to being Faulkner’s 14-year-old boy.

I’ve been dismissive of this show, and it has many weaknesses. But the moment when Frank was confronted by his “ancestor” was Shakespearean. It was the Southron version of Hamlet being haunted by his father’s ghost.

Only without a hint of the supernatural. The explanation is quite pedestrian. Underwood is touring a Civil War battlefield, asking polite questions but exquisitely bored, when the park ranger springs a surprise on him — the kind of surprise that your average tourist such as you or me would not experience, but something completely within the realm of believability for a vice president: An unassuming, deadpan young man in homespun butternut strides casually but purposefully out of the woods toward the veep. He is introduced as Augustus Elijah Underwood, Frank’s great-great-great grandfather.

Frank, in no mood for hokum, immediately protests that his grandfather had never told him of any Underwood who wore the Confederate uniform. The ranger assures him that the research is sound; this “is” his ancestor. The re-enactor delivers a brief spiel, the ranger cuts him off, and they start away. But history has its hook in Francis now. He turns back, and questions “Augustus” further. The young man obliges, telling in simple, matter-of-fact language about how he died, how it looked, felt and smelled. No hesitation, as real and organic and naturalistic as Stephen Crane. It was more detail than anyone could know, of course, but Francis doesn’t want to break the spell by saying so; he drinks it in, his eyes wide.

The next day, he interrupts a groundbreaking ceremony for a new visitors’ center by having “Augustus” — who never breaks character — turn the first spadeful. Then, while everyone else is distracted, Francis gets down on his knees, takes off his “Sentinel” (Citadel) ring, and buries it in the brown earth.

I don’t know what that gesture meant. Was he embracing his heritage, trying to become one with it, or trying to bury it? In any case, you know now that he doesn’t feel he can just sneer at it with impunity. It’s in him, part of him. (In a measure of how impressed he was, he soon gives up violent video games for building a Civil War battle diorama in his home.)

It was a very impressive set of scenes. And for me, this is an increasingly impressive series.

This morning, skimming through an email from Slatest (or was I following a link from a link?), I see a reference to “The best scene from The Bourne Identity.” So of course I click on it, and… here’s the sweet part… they got it right! They did indeed choose the best scene, the one that really makes the movie, that hooks you and pulls you in for good, and they at least had an inkling why it was the best scene.

Here’s a portion of the writer’s musings on the scene:

You walk to the mailbox, you mail a letter. Walking back, it comes to you with a queer shock of awareness that you have no memory of the mailbox or the act of mailing—and yet the letter is no longer in your hand. What happens next is the Jason Bourne version of this phenomenon. A nightstick is jabbed into his shoulder: Bourne frowns, as if in recognition. He grabs the nightstick. “Hey!” says the cop. Voltage jump, hair-raising crackle of imminent violence: The three men are momentarily one circuit. Then Bourne looks right, looks left, stands up and in five movements disarms and dismantles the two cops: wrist grab, forearm smash, nightstick to face, wham, bam, an ecstasy of automatism. It’s over. The symmetry of the encounter is fulfilled: Policemen are laid out, sleeping in the sleepy snow … and Bourne is all at once horribly conscious. It swarms over him like a sickness. Panting and confused, he looks at the gun in his hands. He breaks down the gun, drops the pieces, and sprints from the snowy park.

So now we know. The fugue state is fully wired. It’s the present moment that hums with emptiness. Who am I? Who trained me? My substance was not hid from thee,says the psalmist to his God, in Psalm 139, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Yet somehow my substance is hidden from myself. I’m programmed—but for what? For some virtuoso ass-kicking, clearly. But there must be a mission, a commission, some greater duty. To find it out, that’s a long road. That might take two or three movies. Look at Jason Bourne fleeing the scene, shedding his coat as he goes. Short movements, maximum efficiency. He looks like a man imprisoned in motion….

We’re of course talking about the scene in which the two Zurich cops wake our hero while he’s napping on a park bench, and he discovers, to his surprise, that he can handle himself the way Mozart handled a piece of music. He’s slightly shocked by the realization. He doesn’t enjoy it, the way you or I would if we suddenly realized that nobody, but nobody, could lay a hand on us and get away with it. But we, vicariously, get to enjoy it.

It’s the moment of Harry Potter finding out he’s a wizard, or young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone. It’s the magical moment of discovering one is special, perhaps even (if you’re Neo in “The Matrix”) THE One. It’s the realization that, after all, Paul Atreides is the Kwisatz Haderach. There’s no greater vicarious thrill than that, and we eat it up in spite of the fact that — or maybe because — we have a strong suspicion that we will never make such a discovery about ourselves. It’s the reason why this is the hottest plot device going, from the New Testament to Ender’s Game, from Lord of the Rings to The Hunger Games.

The thing that keeps Bourne from appreciating his discovery is that he doesn’t know the purpose for which he has these superpowers. And he’s probably already suspecting that it’s for purposes that are not going to make him proud of himself.

Anyway, in an Inbox full of irrelevant emails that I don’t want, but suspect I should force myself to glance at before deleting, this was a nice little reward. I appreciated it.

And this was posted this morning apropos of nothing. There’s not a new movie coming out in the series. Matt Damon didn’t die or anything. There was just some movie geek out there thinking about this, irrelevantly, the way Nick Hornby’s obsessive hero (actually, all his heroes are sort of obsessive, aren’t they?) in Fever Pitch is always thinking about particular moments in soccer matches from years past, and therefore can’t bring himself to answer his girlfriend honestly when she asks, “What are you thinking about?,” because he knows the scorn to which he will be subjected. (See the end of page 1 and the top of page 2.)

Since I, too, am always thinking about stuff like this, I feel a kinship for the person who wrote this. I feel less alone in the world — maybe the way football fans or political partisans feel, sure in their knowledge that there are other people like them.

So that’s one of the things I like about the Internet. Not that it’s chock full of stuff that is immediate and relevant, but that you can find stuff that isn’t those things at all, and it can make your day. Or at least, help you pass a pleasant moment. Then you have to get back to the relevant stuff….

The pivotal instant in the pivotal scene — when the cop pokes Bourne with a nightstick, and Bourne grabs it without thinking, and pauses just an instant, before asserting complete control. That’s the cusp of the film, the cusp of the series…