“At 79, Joe Biden is the oldest president in American history. Concerns about his age top the list for why Democratic voters want the party to find an alternative for 2024.
I don’t think this reflects an “ageist” prejudice against those who have reached such withering heights so much as an understanding that people in their late 70s and 80s wither.
I speak with some authority. I’m now a spritely 76 — light years younger than our president. I feel fit, I swing dance and salsa, and can do 20 pushups in a row. Yet I confess to a certain loss of, shall we say, fizz.
Joe Biden could easily make it until 86, when he’d conclude his second term. After all, it’s now thought a bit disappointing if a person dies before 85. Three score and ten is the lifespan set out in the Bible. Modern technology and Big Pharma add at least a decade and a half. “After 80, it’s gravy,” my father used to say.
Joe will be on the cusp of the gravy train.
Where will it end? There’s only one possibility. I find myself reading the obituary pages with ever greater interest, noting “Older Than Me” or “Younger Than Me.”
Most of the time I forget my age. The other day, after lunch with some of my graduate students, I caught our reflection in a store window and for an instant wondered about the identity of the short old man in our midst.
It’s not death that’s the worrying thing about a second Biden term. It’s the dwindling capacities that go with aging.
When I get together with old friends, our first ritual is an “organ recital” — how’s your back? heart? hip? eyesight? hearing? prostate? hemorrhoids? The recital can run (and ruin) an entire lunch.
The question my friends and I jokingly (and brutishly) asked one other in college — “getting much?” — now refers not to sex but to sleep. I don’t know anyone over 75 who sleeps through the night.
When he was president, Bill Clinton prided himself on getting only about four hours. But he was in his forties then. (I also recall cabinet meetings where he dozed off.) How does Biden manage?
My memory for names is horrible. I once asked Ted Kennedy how he recalled names and he advised that if a man is over 50, just ask “how’s the back?” and he’ll think you know him.
I often can’t remember where I put my wallet and keys. Certain proper nouns have disappeared altogether. Even when rediscovered, they have a diabolical way of disappearing again.” Reich
As a 76-year-old let me say: Joe Biden is too old to run again | Robert Reich | The Guardian
I remember in college an ‘all nighter’ was studying. Now at 75, an all nighter is sleeping through without having to get up a time or two to pee.
Oh the humanity of it all. I’m a 6 a’niter me sef.
The – apologies before hand – old saw is applicable for me now.
“A place for everything and everything in its place.”
I misplaced my checkbook early last week. Took four whole days to find it. Not, ‘remember where I last needed it’ or even where I’d last penned a check. Nope, precisely speaking, find it.
Oddly enough it was a mirror that guided me to it. Washing my hands I happened to glance at the shelves on the wall behind me and half-whispering half muttering said to myself, ‘Could that possibly be what it looks to be’ and, sure enough.
Occasionally someone will ask me, “JK, you still shoot nine ball, still cleaning out the kids of their lunch money?” My my. It was after I got my cataracts removed that I somehow also got my famed billiards shooting skill removed too. The circumstance of that last removal’s discovery was nearabouts on the same level as my finding my checkbook. Both were befuddling. On the one hand being 20/20 is a real neat trick. But on the other, sometimes, I seem to overlook stuff like during my hunt for my checkbook Now I know I’ve been in this room many times over the past few days I distinctly remember saying to myself when I reached for that top shelf. Problem was I think, I was looking for it.
It’s curious I only found it in a reflection.
And I ain’t that old!
Working late into the wee hours to complete my thesis on the Subject: “Hybrid Wars: Applicability of Appallingly Sick Humor,” I awoke on my second hand Posturepaedic divan to find, gratefully, not the snoring drunken visage of Liz Truss, but this news item:
Breaking: Major Incident in London;
https://youtu.be/UsmIbVego1A
Emulating the finest sarcastic dark humor of the estimable retired FSB Colonel Igor Ivanovich Strelkov, I dreamed of covery coding a teletype which asked: Did the Plywood Marshall finally authorize a strike on the decision centers of respected Western partners? If so, I congratulate him for recognizing the maskirova opportunities provided by the sizzling heat waves setting temperature records in foggy Albion.
In other words, Colonel: Smokin Joe the Buy Dem will be aging ten years for every month soon.
This is Biden’s brain on the standard anti-Alzheimer drugs – they “work” for 6-12 months, then back to the steady decline. We are well past the 12 month mark. Scary times ahead. Aricept, Exelon ……….
I’m impressed that he can stay on his feet. A “culture” which can oversee 19 children being knowingly shot to death by 376 iron-pumping pistol packing losers with badges will not draw the line at elder abuse. If it were only his age I wouldn’t participate in mocking him. And we should be careful what we wish for. I propose 40 to 1 odds that he is replaced, if replaced, by either an immeasurably more malleable cipher or a conscienceless carnivore with the table etiquette of Tyrannosaurus Rex for the same reason the Perfidious of Albion are moving on from Bojotannia to Lizard’s Gardens of Miss Truss(t). Prosecute Yourcranium till kingdom come.
Was his recent slip of the tongue over his possible illness a subtle insertion of ambiguity by his handlers, or did the President think: “maybe if they think I’m seriously ill they’ll lay off?”
The Brits and their cryptic crosswords. Miss Truss. Missed Russ. (Russia is bye bye). Mist Russ (becloud or mystify Russia). Is she a GCHQ puzzle addict’s insert? If their devious cleverness was ever fully exposed the overall chilling effect on things might lessen our need for air conditioning.
I keep losing my drain of thought. In this case omitting the clincher, and why I’m sure that Luz Tryst, oops, Tizzy Lust – no – nor Lizard Crust are not the subliminal decoctions the higher pitched Eunuch crooners of Whitehall are asking the twirrled earthquake surviving species known as homo sapiens (wokesterly revisioned to homos apey yens) to unbottle from the subterranean chambers of their rap music addled brains. No. The name was obviously a composition derived from frequency charts left over from the royal projects to decipher the Rosetta stone. Witness then it’s hieroglyphical roots of early stone age reebus fashioning. Truss. T Russ. The Russ is self explanatory it means Russia as well as meaning the Russians. The T? I’ll leave you time for that. .. Ok? It’s a crucifix.
Making Liz Truss the Crime Sinister, or Prime Minister means that foggy Albion means to crucify the Russian nation and the Russian peoples.
They tried it last time with Churchill. The ch is a k substitute. It meant Curr chill or kill. Why do you think he flashed the V for victory sign at the troops?
Since this was written by Robert Reich it looks like the left is going to ditch Joe, but not before he gives us another shanking with his green new deal “climate emergency” tomorrow.
Not the left. A certain ethnic minority who despise Russia so intensely and for so long that they want a more savage, criminally insane but highly functional operative to destroy their quarry. Or maybe not.
F&L,
No, it’s the left. They all need to dump Biden, unless they can arrange his popularity to win more congressional elections than the 81 million ballots managed last time.
Wall Street got what they wanted. Unfortunately the party is now over. Print anymore money and we hit hyperinflation. As for his fate who cares. He doesn’t know what’s going on.
A Damsel in distress?
Beer Hooves a buzzing (sorry, Dutch cryptics stumped me).
Hoover Dam explosion reported in tourist video:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/hoover-dam-explosion-reported-tourist-video
Back to Back Setbacks for Berlin:
https://youtu.be/gHSpJUljpAA
Three backs? Is it fantasy football?
The Rhine is low on H2O and trade is imperiled. Implications for Suisse and elsewhere.
Yes, Delaware Joe is going to declare a climate emergency tomorrow.
Internet paranoics will say Leftists set fires in sleepy London Town and Faked News of the Rhine. And set off M-80s at the Hoover Dam to spread fears of water shortage. Not me. I think climate change is quite real.
As We can see the the Photo Above..of The “withered” Old Joe Biden
.He Looks Small..a shell of a Man..We Know He will Enter The Plane..Wonder of He Should Enter the Cockpit..And Introduce Himself…Or Just Ask someone For Direction..
Its Not Meant to be Funny…Its Scary..And Alarming ..He Is the CIC..
JT
Flowers for “Algernon” Biden. Sad seeing it but that is life.
Can a stairclimber be attached to the steps leading up (and down) to Air Force One’s door?
https://www.pastairlifts.com/blog/spring-into-action-in-getting-your-lift-chair-in-philadelphia/
Magnus Carlsen withdraws from upcoming world chess title match:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jul/20/magnus-carlsen-will-not-defend-his-world-chess-championship-title-in-2023
Significance ? Imponderable but assuming things don’t unravel overly much bf upcoming match it will bode that the top Russian player Ian Nepomniachtchi will meet premier Chinese Grandmaster Ding Liren.
It means wicked witches of the west want to pit the two leading “good” witches of the Yeasts against each other. A good – serenic – sign of a preference not for an overly military strategy of opposing the “good witches” of the yeast but rather to split them?
Or a deceptive maneuver? A handy arrow in the quiver, deep ending?
Or another night mostly unslept by moi and a stressed imagination?
A group of random women for the first time got together online in an alt.support group to talk about menopause about 30 years ago. We were from all over the world, North America, Europe and even Mauritius Island in the Indian Ocean.
Symptoms were shared in public after decades of this being a taboo topic (Gail Sheehy – The Silent Passage). Common patterns emerged, and the first symptom for most women was memory loss: fuzzy brain fog, forgotten names, unable to multi-task, and always, always, always lost car keys.
So for us, this mental change started in the 50’s.And certainly has accelerated by the fast approaching 80’s – sluggish frontal cortex is the official diagnosis. It is there, it is stored in the brain, but just takes a very long time to reach the executive functioning area of the brain.
The running joke was menopause was called Krs-Kraft disease. It was the “Can’t Remember Sh*t – Remember a F***-ing Thing” disease.
So is it “long covid” that data found typically in middle age, high-anxiety women, or is it menopause. The garden variety one we amply described online over 30 years ago. And in today’s world of gender equity, one no longer hears about “menopause”, as even a coincidental consideration in this now “covid” obsessed world.
Ironically, Hestia, the goddess of the hearth was the one middle age Greek Goddess, who was also the “keeper of keys”. Hestia also the lit torches (hot flashes) that guided one safely into the underworld (the unconscious). What prescient fables the ancients provided our modern times.
I love that sort of stuff, thanks. Without women nothing exists. End of story, full stop. Why woke women want to emulate men is beyond me.