One Thing of Which we Will Never Have a Shortage

I assume a lot of you are familiar with my feelings on high-end audio. It’s a giant load of manure, for the most part. You may remember the time I linked to an experiment which proved audiophiles couldn’t tell the difference when a tester substituted coat hangers for expensive cables. Okay, let’s be fair. Maybe the experiment proved coat hangers make really fantastic cables.

Here’s another funny story. Back in ’01, some French guy gave 57 wine experts a glass of white wine and a glass of red wine, and he invited criticism. And none of them noticed something which should have been obvious. Both glasses contained the same wine. The red wine was the white wine, with dye added. These are the people connoisseurs rely on when they decide it’s okay to spend four hundred bucks on a bottle of Bordeaux.

Here’s a quote about another experiment the guy ran:

The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings.

Dang.

Why are human beings so full of it?

Another amusing thing is that when you expose BS, many people can’t accept it. They actively work to put the BS back in place. I just looked at a piece about research which suggested coffee really does taste better at Starbuck’s, because of the overall atmosphere. I see no reason to doubt it. Food tastes better outdoors, doesn’t it? Why should coffee be immune to similar effects? But some guy–this is actually funny–swooped in, in a comment, to make up an excuse for store coffee. He said stores have machines that heat water to higher temperatures, and that you can’t get such temperatures in home machines. Two things. First, as a subsequent commenter pointed out, water at sea level never gets hotter than 212 degrees, and home coffee makers could certainly achieve that if they wanted to. Second, if you know anything at all about coffee, you know that high temperatures ruin it by dissolving alkaloids that taste bad. This is why you don’t boil coffee in a pan and pour it through a strainer.

A while back, as most of you know, I got tired of listening to people perpetuate the myth that steaks need to be “rested” before you eat them. Restaurants don’t do it, and neither should you. Ideally, a steak would be prepared a foot from your plate, and you’d jump on it before it had been off the heat for more than a few seconds.

I proved it with a Youtube video. I cut a steak in two pieces. I cooked them together. I ate one immediately, and I ate the second one five minutes later. And the first one was better, because the outside was hotter than the inside. Obvious. But people have heads like granite. It kills them to give up their cherished wrong beliefs. It doesn’t matter how much proof you show them; if people are determined to believe fantasies, that’s what they’re going to do. Guns cause crime. Raising taxes always increases revenues. Ethanol is a great idea. Steaks need to be rested. You name the myth; they’ll defend it. Sometimes bitterly. Why a person would get emotional about a steak myth is beyond me, but it happens. Some of my Youtube commenters were furious.

One guy claimed you have to rest the steak in foil, and that the steak would actually get hotter during the rest. Thermodynamics is no obstacle to a good myth. That must be some great foil. I think from now on, instead of wasting propane, I’ll cook my steaks by wrapping them in foil and throwing them on the counter. Where do you store foil like that? If you put it in a cabinet, it would set fire to the kitchen.

The funny thing about the angry Youtubers is that none of them were willing to do what I did. I wasted a perfectly good steak and an hour of my time, performing a well-designed experiment. And I filmed the whole thing. The people who got mad at me just called me names and said I was wrong. Who has more credibility, in a situation like that?

The myth of the super-hot coffeemaker reminds me of the myths you hear about steakhouse ovens. They’re made in Area 51, by alien slave labor. They cook steak with bursts of tachyons, previously known to exist only in theory and on certain episodes of Star Trek. And the steak comes from special steers raised in antigravity chambers in a space station with a cloaking device. And the aging is all done at CERN and Livermore Labs. It’s very technical. You wouldn’t understand.

The fact is, anyone who can find prime beef and turn a gas valve on and off can make the best steak on the planet. It’s not just doable; it’s incredibly easy. Anything that chars a steak well without messing up the flavor will work.

Cigars are surrounded by BS, too. The excellence of Cuban cigars is no myth; they’re wonderful. They’re generally better than cigars from other countries. On the other hand, some marvelous cigars are cheap, and some highly regarded Cubans are only very good. For example, the Cuban Montecristo No. 2 gets raves, but it’s not really that great. It lacks complexity, which is the only thing that really separates great cigars from good ones. On the other hand, I have some smokes rolled by a local guy in Miami–ten bucks for 20–which are wonderful. He passed away. Too bad, for all the people who bought his cigars. I also had a Brazilian CAO which was better than any Cuban I’ve ever smoked. It was the high point of my experience as a cigar smoker.

I know people will argue with me about the Montecristo, but I know I’m right. I’ve had samples from two different batches, and it’s one of the few Cubans I would not recommend to anyone who has to pay for it. Nice cigar, and well worth smoking when free, but not worth the price. A nice aged Bauza pyramid is nearly as good, and it costs about a third as much. After six months in the humidor, they taste like roasted pistachio nuts.

I haven’t tried every Cuban, but if I were going to make recommendations from the ones I’ve had, I’d mention Cohiba Esplendidos, Cohiba Lanceros, Ramon Allones Specially Selected, Ramon Allones Gigantes, Hoyo de Monterrey double coronas, Trinidad Fundadores, Romeo y Julieta Churchills, and H. Upmann Sir Winstons. I can’t say I’ve ever had a Cuban that wasn’t good, but when you spend big, you want to taste what you’re paying for, so you should buy the best.

I don’t know why I’m writing about cigars. I can’t remember my last smoke, or the last time I bought cigars.

Another bit of cigar BS: some foreign vendors who ship Cubans claim they get super-special hand-selected Cubans, better than everyone else’s. It’s not true. They just say that because they operate in countries where taxes make their prices artificially high, and they need an excuse to help them compete with Hong Kong and the Canary Islands.

The worst BS I have personally fallen for is the Japanese kitchen knife BS. They are just too fragile and expensive to be useful. I’m afraid to use mine. And my $20 rust-prone cleaver from China is actually better than my Shun, which sits gathering dust.

Pizza! There’s a BS-filled topic for you. I still have Caputo 00 flour I bought ages ago, because people said it was the best. I think I paid three bucks per pound. Whatever it was, it was obscene. Never again. It was a complete waste of money. Well, that’s not really true. I was paying to find out whether it was any good, and I got my answer. Right now, my favorite pizza flour is whatever bread flour is on the shelf at the store. I like King Arthur brand because I know I can trust it, but for all I know, Pillsbury is just as good. And if I were rolling my crusts instead of tossing them, I’d use biscuit flour because while it doesn’t toss well, it gives a lighter crust.

My last pizza had a crust that would have brought tears to your eyes. Pillsbury bread flour. It was chewy. It blew up nicely in the oven. It had a wonderful yeasty flavor. I get misty remembering it. And boy, do I get good results with Costco bagged mozzarella. I was shocked. But I accepted the truth when I tasted it. You’ll never learn anything new if you can’t see past what other people tell you.

The power of BS is remarkable. Challenging BS can get you shot or burned at the stake. Maybe I should learn to go with the BS flow.

Man, that cheese is good, though.

This Girl Could Make me Vote for John Edwards

While I’m on the topic of what a bad Christian I am, have you SEEN “McCain Girl” from Barelypolitical.com? Oh, man. Obama Girl is okay, but McCain Girl is just too much. I feel like voting for McCain just so she’ll keep making videos.

Her name is Kate Secor.

Not Everyone has a Gift Like This

Last night a commenter took me to task for being supercilious, suggested it was inconsistent with my religion, and implied that bad Christians like me had helped him on his way down the road to atheism.

I don’t want to reflexively defend myself. I have plenty of crabby moments. I try not to be rude these days, but sometimes I still offend people. There is no doubt about it. I am what Christians kindly refer to as “a work in progress.” Sometimes I embarrass myself. What can I tell you?

On the other hand, as I noted in my response, it’s impossible for a Christian to be righteous enough to make an angry atheist happy. It can’t be done. Just as Christians look for reasons to believe, many atheists look for reasons not to believe. History shows us that angry nonbelievers may remain angry even after the Christians who make them angry are torn apart by lions or roasted alive. They even got angry when martyred saints forgave them, or when they refused to renounce God during their torments. It’s always good to try to make peace, but you can’t expect too much cooperation. On top of all that, the less atheists know about Christianity, the easier it is for them to find reasons not to believe.

Some atheists think that if you go to church regularly, you are a Christian, and if you don’t, you are not. I don’t know where that idea comes from. Christians should go to church, but attendance has no bearing on whether or not you’re a Christian. Some atheists think that you have to be good to be a Christian, and that if you’re a well-behaved atheist, you are just as well off as a Christian, with regard to eternal life. Clearly, Christians should be good, but you can behave pretty badly and still be a Christian. And if you think being good buys you eternal life, that’s swell, but Christian doctrine contradicts that notion very clearly. No Christian denomination says you can work your way into heaven. Only heretical post-Christian sects say that.

Being a Christian isn’t like belonging to AAA. It’s not like you get a card and pay dues and therefore belong. That kind of thinking may apply to some denominations, but it’s not universal. Overall, the church isn’t an earthly organization, like a bar association. You belong because you have faith. And hopefully, you try to behave in a way that reflects your faith. And you should have a personal relationship with God, which you maintain by prayer and study. I guess it’s a very hard thing to understand, from outside.

I can tell you another thing. If you want advice on how to be a good Christian, one of the best ways to get it is to disagree with an atheist. They are extremely generous with instruction. It’s not the greatest instruction available, because a lot of it is completely wrong, and most of it is motivated by self-interest, and very often, it’s just an attempt to manipulate you. Sometimes they’re right, though.

If you’re curious about Christianity, my advice to you would be to avoid judging it by the behavior of believers. Sooner or later you’ll see a Christian give someone the finger, or you’ll see some other act or attitude that is inconsistent with the Bible. Bishop Desmond Tutu once told people he disagreed with to go to hell; that had to be a dark day for the church. Human beings will always let you down, and I am a human being. The point of believing isn’t to become as wonderful and perfect as I am.

The depressing thing about all this is that I have never succeeded in persuading a single person to become a Christian, but it looks like I have pretty decent luck turning people into atheists. I must be an even worse Christian than I thought.

Like a Dog With a Bone

You LOST, okay?

Two Things With Which I Am Intimately Familiar

I just got back from Costco. Good news: the beef is still cheap. They have boneless rib eye loaf for $5.99 per pound.

Got home and checked out Weather Underground (sounds like a candidate for favorite site of Michelle Obama), and it looks like invest 94L has decided to punish me for making fun of hurricane season. It jumped up to 60 miles per hour today, and it is expected to manage a hard right turn, just for the purpose of getting at me and knocking the plantains off my trees.

One bright aspect of the situation: right now, the projected path is a straight line that puts me right in the north eyewall when the storm hits. That’s good, because these things never take straight lines. Although this one might manage, if it thought it had a shot at me.

The computer models say it won’t be anywhere near me, but the forecasters have decided otherwise, possibly indicating that someone has alerted them to the fact that I ridicule them every year.

By the way, Fay ended up near Pensacola, proving once again that nothing draws tropical cyclones like Ward Brewer. The government should pay him to move to a shack on the Yucatan Peninsula. I kind of wish he were in Denver today.

I don’t think the storm will be a problem for me. But it will probably bring us more rain, just when I was hoping to see the humidity go below 70% for ten or fifteen minutes.

I found a weird item at Costco. Premade falafel balls. I had to try it. You nuke them. They’re made by some vegetarian company, no doubt staffed by smelly faux-socialist hippies. But falafel is something hippies are actually capable of doing right, unlike brushing teeth, looking for work, or applying deodorant. Still, I don’t recommend them. I just ate a few. It’s not that they’re bad. It’s that they’re not particularly good. They have no spiciness to them. Falafel should have some heat, damn it.

Costco has Frank’s Red Hot sauce in what appear to be half-gallon jugs. Now I know where to go when I want to make wings. Frank’s is one of those moderately cheesy products I like in spite of its cheesiness. If you like weak but fairly tasty hot sauce–a good thing, because you can apply a ton–Frank’s is a fine choice.

The Truck I’m not Going to Buy Makes me Unhappy

I’ll tell you what is depressing about the pickup truck I am trying to convince myself not to buy. It’s like a vanilla ice cream cone. It’s the Pat Boone of trucks.

I live in a place where the sun is insanely hot, due to the angle of incidence. That means anything left in the sun heats up fast. That means you have to be crazy to buy a car in a dark color. A long time ago, my dad was shopping for cars, and I had him stand between a dark car and a white car, with one hand on each. As he noted right away, the dark car was way, way hotter. That translates to a hotter car every time you get in it, and a longer wait for the A/C to start having an effect. So when you run a typical errand, the car may still be unbearably hot when you arrive at your destination.

What does all this add up to? A white or silver truck. For some reason, there are very few color choices for the model I like. It has to be white, silver, or something dark. Whoops, I meant “avalanche,” “radiant silver,” or something dark.

On top of that, I refuse to buy a four-door truck. Why do people who don’t drive employees to job sites get those things? I guess they build them for henpecked husbands. “Look, honey, the whole family can fit! No, no, don’t walk away! Wait! Wait!”

They’re more expensive than regular trucks, they have more parts to go bad, the beds are shorter, and they have lower payloads. Useless. But because so many people buy them, the “King Cab” version (not four-door) is rarer. And I have to have automatic, because I have decided I am secure enough in my masculinity to admit that manual is just plain inferior. And I demand the big V6. I drive so little, I don’t care at all about gas mileage.

Given those constraints, the only white or silver non-four-door Frontier in my area is white. And the interior is tan. Whoops, I meant “desert.” So I would be tooling around in a cheesy white truck with a tan interior. I can’t even find silver.

I don’t ask much in this life. Well, yes I do. Nonetheless, I think I should be spared the horror of a white truck with a tan interior. Can’t I at least get grey seats?

The Frontier is the only acceptable option. The GM, Dodge, and Ford small trucks are hideous abominations. The Tacoma has a payload one third smaller. The Ridgeline is what Harvey Fierstein sees in his mind when you say “truck.” It’s a joke with a bed that barely holds a week’s groceries. The bigger trucks would be hell to put in the garage, and I just plain don’t want to drive a battleship in Miami traffic. I don’t want to park it in Miami’s tiny parking spaces.

White. A white truck. I’d look exactly like Hank Hill, only without the narrow urethra.

The last few times I considered getting a truck, I managed to put it off until the sweating stopped and the urge went away. I hope I can pull that off one more time.

Have a Bosco and Read

Chris Muir is going pro with Day by Day. That means money is involved. YOUR money. Go over and take a look. If you don’t feel like supporting the only major online conservative cartoonist, that’s fine. No one will look down on you for it or call you a MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING. I think you should contribute. You don’t know how hard it was for me to talk him out of becoming a male stripper. And because he already quit that job a couple of times in the past, he has lost all seniority, so he would also have to pick up litter in the parking lot.

Also, it looks like Christopher Walken is soliciting donations for a new computer for Mike over at Cold Fury. His MACINTOSH COMPUTER CRAPPED OUT.

That’s right, George Moneo. Read it and weep. Hippie.

Thank You, OPEC

I am aflame with temptation.

Trucks are getting so cheap now, they practically take you to court and force you to take them for nothing. I can get a Nissan Frontier with all the crap I like for around $16,500. Man, it would be nice to have one.

But I don’t think I can bear to part with the T-bird just yet. Ford seems to have fixed the COP problem, and I do love a ragtop.

If I kept it, I would have to park the truck outside, and some idiot in this neighborhood has an egg fetish. I can’t believe how cowardly people are. I must be the scariest guy in Miami. I don’t know if I’ve offended someone, or if the kids across the street are just growing up and feeling their hormones.

It could be the trashy neighbors across the fence, with the junky cars and the green pool and the barking dogs and the loud parties in the middle of the night. I’m sure they hear from the cops all the time. Maybe they go around the neighborhood and egg every property, to make sure they got whoever turned them in.

One thing I don’t understand: people with used trucks are trying to charge 80% of the cost of a new one. Hard to believe, in this market.

I know I won’t buy. But I have to say, the oil crisis isn’t completely bad.

Help a Nervous Dad

Aaron’s daughter and niece are leaving for Jerusalem, where they will spend a year studying at Jewish seminaries. Say a prayer for their safety.

Torturer of Countless Christians

I watched part of Gladiator while eating dinner. And it made me think of Marcus Aurelius.

When I went to my first college (I was in Obama’s class at Columbia, two years before Obama transferred in), we had a compulsory class called Contemporary Civilization, in which we read authors like Macchiavelli and Epictetus. I don’t think Marcus Aurelius was on the list. I wouldn’t know, because I read virtually nothing. I felt bad about that tonight. After all, Hannibal Lecter referred to Marcus Aurelius, and he was a very smart, albeit fictional, guy.

I grabbed a copy of the Meditations, which is the book Aurelius wrote. It seemed to espouse such wonderful values; I had to marvel that a pagan could be so moral. Maybe I had been wrong to skip all those classes.

I got on the Internet and checked him out. And here is what I learned. Under his reign, persecution of Christians increased dramatically, and they were often tortured to death. Some of the more popular methods included putting Christians on iron stools which were then heated over fires, and throwing them into the arena to be torn apart by hungry predators. And sometimes various tortures were inflicted consecutively, until the victim died and ruined the festivities.

Marcus Aurelius was an evil man. He didn’t have a particle of compassion, as we know it. He considered himself moral, but he wasn’t troubled by human suffering. So much for Ridley Scott’s version. I shouldn’t be surprised. Mary Poppins wasn’t real, either.

Marcus Aurelius wasn’t even a good pagan. He didn’t believe in an afterlife. No wonder he didn’t think suffering was significant. It doesn’t really matter how much pain you endure, if in the end, it’s fleeting and has no lasting repercussions.

I can’t understand why the Romans hated Christians so much, but then I can’t understand why leftists hate us, either. A lot of misguided priests and pastors are hardcore leftists.

I don’t see any reason to finish the book. This man was clearly a hypocrite and maybe a bit of a psychopath.

He Didn’t do so Bad, for an Amateur

I did something I hate to do, today. I marked up a Bible. I know the Bible is a tool, and you have to mark it up if you want to make good use of it. But the notion of defacing books makes me uncomfortable.

I was reading the book of Proverbs, and as usual, I thought to myself how great it would be if I didn’t have to read the stuff that wasn’t particularly useful. Proverbs is full of valuable things, but not everyone needs every verse. For example, I don’t plot against the righteous and seek to pull them down to the pit. I don’t even know where I’d find a pit in my neighborhood. And I don’t have diverse weights and measures. You can’t be guilty of everything that is condemned in Proverbs. You would be busy all day, every day.

I decided to put a little box around every verse I thought was helpful. Now when I read Proverbs, I can avoid re-reading the things that take up time but don’t carry much benefit. I was thinking I might take an online version, do a cut-and-paste job, and create my own tailored edition.

Of course the big down side to this is that I would lose all those verses that confirm my greatness. For example, I would no longer be able to say, “oppressing the widow? I never do that! I’m fantastic!” Instead, I’d have a book full of reminders of all the reasons why I’m a hopeless idiot.

It would be a lot like having a wife.

I think it was a good idea. I have been reading the book of Romans and then comparing it with The Jewish New Testament Commentary, and the going is incredibly slow. The chapter 11 commentary goes on forever. I needed something with a faster pace, to keep me from going crazy. Now I have it.

Not Fond of Tents

Since beginning my practice of observing the Sabbath, this may be the first weekend when I didn’t feel completely prepared for it. Yesterday I beat the garage into shape again, and it would have been great to devote today to other areas in need of organization. I have parts for shelves I haven’t put up. I have a sick pest tree I need to chain to a bumper and rip out of the ground. I also want to try my ant remedy on the bees. I know bees will slurp down sugar water if you give it to them, and I’ve been annihilating ghost ants successfully with a syrup of sugar and boric acid, and I think I would be smart to put a dish of it up where the bees can find it. But it’s Sunday. I have other obligations.

Almost every Sunday, I think a little about things I could be doing. Trips to the gun range. Barbecuing. Fishing. Contacting radio stations about the book. But this weekend is worse than usual. Doesn’t matter; Sunday is Sunday. I’m going to behave.

I’m not sure how strict to be. I’m not bound by all the Jewish commandments. I don’t get hysterical if I find myself running an errand in the car, or buying something I need. But I want the main purpose of the day to be clear.

Sometimes I just plain get tired of reading the Bible and so on, and I do something else for a couple of hours. I don’t think that’s a problem, although I won’t do anything business-related.

I’ve been reading more of Brother Andrew’s books. I’m very impressed by this man, but I can’t help suspecting that his version of Christianity may be too demanding for most believers. Or maybe I misunderstand his message. On the one hand, he talks about giving without reserve, and he encourages former Muslims to stay in countries where they are likely to be martyred (some of them are already dead), and he writes about crossing borders with contraband Bibles in plain view in his car. On the other, he seems to have had a fair number of Christian friends who led normal lives and didn’t live in tents. I can think of more than one who were well-off, although some of them lived modestly in order to support evangelism and charity. And he seems financially secure, personally. His organization has a big, reliable income, as it should. He lives in a house, not a cell. The president of Open Doors makes $135,000 per year, which is a reasonable but substantial salary.

It is possible to be overly proud of your faith, and of the things you do because of it. It is possible to show off, as a Christian, and to hold yourself up as an extreme example for other people to follow, when in reality, they’re probably doing fine already. It’s a danger that has to be considered. You don’t want to be a fat worldly slob who only pretends to believe, and who never denies himself anything. But poverty is bad, and being martyred is only a good thing if God demands it, and the super-righteous can be extremely tiresome and hypercritical.

One of the things that drove me away from the church was the constant repetition of the claim that if Christians didn’t have perfect lives, it was because they weren’t doing it right. TV evangelists said this all the time, and the message made its way into a lot of churches. If you were sick or poor, or if your family was a mess, you weren’t praying enough. Or you weren’t praying the right way. Or you weren’t giving enough. Or you were giving enough, but with the wrong motive. Or you were giving enough, with the right motive, but you were giving it in the wrong way. Or you weren’t claiming what you wanted and “maintaining your confession.” Or there was sin in your life! Apparently, God only helps people who are totally free of sin. When God failed to back the somewhat heretical promises of the TV evangelists, they had more defenses than O.J. Simpson, and they all boiled down to, “It’s your fault.” What they really meant was, “We want to keep taking your money so we can live in luxury beyond Solomon’s wildest dreams, so keep blaming yourselves and writing those checks.”

I have no doubt that some people are called to lead lives of austerity and deprivation, but there were plenty of Jews and Christians in the Bible who had good jobs and lived in nice homes. And you can’t call yourself to be an apostle or a martyr. It doesn’t work that way. And making Christianity overly burdensome discourages other believers, so it’s counterproductive. That’s especially true when the person making religion burdensome is a hypocritical TV evangelist with his own jet. “Keep cutting coupons and patching your kids’ clothes, so my Gulfstream can have a better home theater.”

It’s hard to know where to draw the boundaries. All I know for sure is this: you have to be in the world, but the world shouldn’t be in you. I suppose that if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll know which earthly things pose a danger to you and which don’t. For example, some people can be warped by modest wealth, and others can have millions and be uncorrupted.

I want to be clear; I would never compare Brother Andrew to the TV guys. Not based on what I know now. I started out writing about him, and then I went off on a tangent.

Anyway, the books are good reading.

Seriously

Here they are.

Only Obama can Condescend to Obama

I just figured out why Obama picked Joe Biden, a grizzled old white authority figure and archetypal DC insider.

For two years, the condescending Obama has been patronizing us. He patronized his constituents. He patronized the press. He went on to patronize the entire nation. Then he went to Europe and patronized all the foreigners. Then there was nobody left to patronize.

So he came back home, and he picked a guy whose nature reflects Obama’s real opinion of his own experience and ability.

And thereby completed the circle. By patronizing himself.

Obama’s Pick to Counter Conceited Demeanor: Humble Joe Biden

How do all my fellow fascists feel about Obama picking Biden as his running mate? I’m pretty comfortable with it, although I was really hoping he’d go with Jeremiah Wright.

It’s an obvious gravitas move, but I don’t think it will work. George Bush did it in 2000, successfully. But he picked a very distinguished guy who was deadly in a debate. A guy who donated millions to charity, in a year when Al Gore donated about four hundred bucks and Bill Clinton donated his used underwear. George Bush picked a guy Americans respected. Remember, this was before the media maligned him and turned him into Freddy Kruger. I am still amazed that they succeeded. Far as I know, they have never proven that Dick Cheney has done anything bad. Can you think of anything, except for getting overly excited on a quail hunt? He didn’t get nailed for the Libby nonsense. He didn’t lie about WMDs. He pays his taxes. He hasn’t committed any crimes. And his daughter is a full-throttle lesbian, which, if anything, ought to please the press. He has a hell of a reputation, for a guy who has never been shown to be guilty of a single bad act.

Biden has a disagreeable manner. He’s condescending, which is probably not a good thing, when you’re trying to counterweigh the supreme arrogance of Barack Obama. They should call the ticket “the Ego Twins.” And he has told some truly hilarious lies, which will make for great 527 material. Remember when he stole Neil Kinnock’s “coal mine” speech, nearly word for word? I can’t wait to see that on Youtube.

On top of all that, he bleaches his teeth until they’re blue, and he has obvious hair plugs. I realize those things aren’t important, but because our liberalized education system turns out voters who don’t have the analytical skills to vote intelligently, a Presidential election is a popularity contest. And Biden is not charming. He has the mien of a car salesman. I’m pretty sure he even practices smiling.

Biden comes from a tiny state, and no one cares if he carries it. That’s a big plus. And he’s very rich. Today on Fox, while he was leaving his home to join Obama, they showed video of a mansion on Biden’s property. And it’s not his! It’s a separate house his mother lives in! It looked like 10,000 square feet to me. Imagine how big the main house is. Since Democrats have taken the position that they hate anyone who owns houses, Biden will have to be a big liability. But it could be worse. He could own a giant house AND have a love child in San Francisco.

The Washington Post says he has a damaging sound bite. At one point, he said this: “I’ve had a great relationship [with Indian Americans]. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.” That will be fun to explain away.

Truthfully, I don’t care about that remark at all. It’s only offensive to Indians with absolutely no sense of humor. There is nothing insulting about being associated with hard-working entrepreneurs, and as it happens, Indians really do run a lot of convenience stores and franchise restaurants. As stereotypes go, that one is pretty flattering. I can see how Democrats would consider it an insult, however. Suggesting that members of a fairly prominent minority choose to work for a living instead of relying on socialist handouts from the Mommy Dearest state.

The impression I have is that most Indians have a good sense of humor about themselves and realize they can be funny without intending to. They lampooned themselves pretty mercilessly in Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala. And who cares if you work at a convenience store, if you own it and you drive to work every day in a Mercedes? We need more people with that attitude.

I just wish they would open more Indian restaurants. Here in Miami, the Indian food situation is bleak.

I’ll give Biden a pass on the 7-11 crack (just like Hillary’s Gandhi gas-station joke), but I have a feeling Obama just put a Denver Boot on the wheels of his campaign.

Another Biden gaffe mentioned by the Post: he said Obama was the first clean, articulate black man. More or less. It was undeniably demeaning to blacks; Biden implied that no other black man in history was mature or responsible enough to be President. We’ll be seeing that footage a lot in the weeks to come. You have to wonder if this is Obama’s message to voters: “It’s okay to vote for the young black man, because we have a stiff old white guy on the job, making sure he doesn’t act up.” In 2000, we were told it was okay to vote for Curious George Bush, because Dick Cheney was the Man in the Yellow Hat. Now we’re being told it’s okay to vote for Arnold Obama, because Joe Biden is Mr. Drummond.

One more good thing about the Biden pick: it will assure that Obama has to run against two candidates. John McCain, and Hillary Clinton. The Clinton smear machine just went into high gear; the flying monkeys have been released. We are going to learn things about Obama and Biden that will curl our hair. It’s too bad Clinton attack stooge Anthony Pellicano is in jail. He could have been a tremendous asset. I’m sure Hillary will do a bang-up job, though. By this time next month, Barack Obama will turn out to have been conceived from Hitler’s frozen sperm, and we’ll have an enhanced version of the Zapruder film, showing Joe Biden beside the Grassy Knoll, holding a spotting scope while exposing himself to handicapped Girl Scouts.