Jake Tapper, hardest working man in the 08 cycle, continues his coverage of the ever declining mental faculties of Joe Biden, Senator. For all the coverage given the family affairs of Governor Sarah Palin, precious little has been given to the rambling, bizarre statements of Smilin’ Joe Biden since his convention speech. And there’s so much good stuff here, too! Just the other day in Florida, for example, where he went on a 75 minute riff:

The evening was full of Biden-isms, including the inevitable Obama/Osama slip, made when Biden was discussing the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border “where Obama, Osama Bin Laden lives, and Obama wants to go to get him.”

Look, we know you want to keep pretending Biden is going to stop flubbing this, but he’s not. He may keep doing it all the way into the second year of an Obama term. And a lot more, too:

At another moment, he said, “when I hear people say, ‘Hey Joe, geez, I understand your values. I connect with you. But I don’t know about that other guy.’ Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. If Barack Obama grew up in my neighborhood in Scranton or Claymont or Wilmington, Delaware, he would have been the guy who had my back. If Barack Obama had grown up in my neighborhood, he would have been the same guy he is now.

“I’ve got to tell you, I’m tired,” Biden continued. “Let me tell you. If you’re looking for a very sophisticated, Harvard graduate who went to Columbia undergrad and was president of the Law Review, he’s totally intellectual. Baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This guy is steel. This guy is steel, and I assure you that.”

Tapper makes the obvious point that Obama-Biden isn’t exactly in need of solidification of the people who want a sophisticated Law Review Harvard-Columbia intellectual in the office. That already exists. You might have heard of their party.

At another point, Biden riffed on being the older presence on the ticket, saying, “my role in this campaign is I’m the old man. I really thought I was still in pretty good shape. But I watched when they, when Barack, as they say, ‘rolled out,’ his, his, Vice President nominee. Half of the people in America thought I was going to get ‘rolled out.’ I don’t know. And I was listening to one of the news broadcasts after we had that great event in Springfield, Illinois, and there…was a runway to get up to the, to get up to the microphone from the door we came out. And I came out, and it was a long way away, I didn’t want to hold people up, so I started jogging. Next morning, I listen, I think it was Gwen Ifill, who I love, Gwen Ifill said, you know, something to the effect that, ‘It was a great speech, but Biden shouldn’t run.’ I thought, What are you talking about I shouldn’t run? What do you mean I shouldn’t run? So, you know, I don’t like young guys anymore.”

I don’t have any idea what the last part means.