My computer keyboard keys, that is.
A particularly insolent field hand remarked that your host is the oldest ever to serve as Head Groundskeeper of Blaska Policy Werkes. So we’ve been looking over our shoulder, ready to fend off would-be alpha males in the herd.
While the Catholic Church limits to age 70 the voting rights of its cardinals, this blogge has no upper age limit. (Explains a lot, right?) Nor, from what we can see, does the Constitution of the United States. The document prohibits children and young adults from the Presidency, but not doddering old fools. (Which would explain James Buchanan.) Even permits felons (not that we have anyone in mind) to serve, unless convicted by the Senate of high crimes and misdemeanors.
That and being “a natural born citizen” are the only requirements. Otherwise, the Constitution relies on the good sense of The People at election time. We’re in trouble.
We keep having birthdays!
Your irascible bloggeur is feeling his age. Normally, we’re in bed by 9 pm, the time when the lights went up for Thursday’s presidential debate in the Eastern time zone. We scan the obituary pages for news of classmates, colleagues, and acquaintances — as we remember Grandma Rose, born in 1885, doing when we trouped over to her farm for fudge brownies and milk.
Flash forward too many decades to the present, seated around a different table at an old high school chum’s place in the new part of Sun Prairie WI. We classmates compared aches and pains — just like the script for “senior citizens.” Asked one of them — don’t know what got into me — if he had a fatal illness. “I guess I would have to say, I do,” was his most unanticipated response. “I’ve had a good life.”
We may be old but we’re not elderly
We’re still younger than either of the two leading presidential candidates. Almost quaint to think that many wondered if Ronald Reagan was too old at age 69 to begin his first term. By his eighth year in office, after the Iran-Contra scandal, his new chief of staff, Howard Baker, was forced to report that the old man was still lucid. Which was reassuring, except for the fact that reassurance was necessary. At the time, Reagan was the oldest President in history. Still a stretch to say that 86 — Biden’s age if he finishes a second term — is the new 77. Trump, for his part, is already 78.
Joe Biden remains younger than only eight of the 187 leaders of this Earth’s nations. The oldest is Paul Biya, age 91. (Source here.)The fellow has bossed the African republic of Cameroon since 1975 so, as Biden likes to say, he knows the job. Vladimir Putin is 71, Xi Jinping is 70. The median age of national leaders around the world is 62. Good Queen Elizabeth 2 got out of bed to receive her 15th prime minister, Liz Truss, just two days before she passed away at age 96. The oldest governor of Wisconsin (from 1943 to 1947) was Walter Goodland. At age 84, he was also the oldest of any state governor up to that time. Died in office.
“You better get yourself a rocking chair and get out of my way.”
Texas rancher Hud Bannon “put on a clean white shirt this morning and saw me a lawyer” because his father, old Homer Bannon, was losing his grip. Why else would the old man buy cheap cattle out of Mexico and infect the entire herd with hoof and mouth disease? “The very worst kind of trouble a cattleman can have.”
“There’s a law that says when old folks can’t cut the mustard anymore, you can make them let go, whether they like it or not.” — Hud Bannon
More red blood plasma, STAT!
One has to wonder whether, at any time during those 90 minutes on that CNN debate stage, the President was thinking, “Damn, where was I going with that?” We’ve had those, too.
We read that Mr. Biden told diners at a Waffle House at midnight (eating waffles at midnight!) that he felt he did a good job. What else does one say? May have believed it, given that wife Jill wasn’t holding her nose as he walked off the debate stage. One speculates that on Air Force One to North Carolina, Mrs. Biden or a senior aide broke the news. We got to fix this! Whatever, the President’s speech the next day (Friday 06-28-24) was a rip-roarer. Especially when he shouted, with real energy:
Folks, I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t deba- debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. (Applause.) I know — I know — I know right from wrong. (Applause.) And I know how to do this job. (Applause.) I know how to get things done. (Applause.) And I know like millions of Americans know: When you get knocked down, you get back up! (swinging his right fist upward to applause).
Great recovery; problem is:
1) The speech was given mid-day, not after 9 at night
2) to an appreciative audience of supporters
3) with no adversary in the room
4) scripted, reading off a Teleprompter and
5) seen by not a tenth of the 51.3 million who witnessed (it seems the appropriate term) the debate.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: We have said many times that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump four years ago (he did — he really did!) by hiding in his basement and playing rope-a-dope with the bombastic quasi-Republican. Wisconsin’s Vos-hating Election Deniers blame enfeebled nursing home patients for throwing our electors to Joe Biden. There’s some poetic justice in that. Senescent seniors electing one of their own!
The President closed his speech in Raleigh NC Friday by saying “I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job.“
Blaska Policy Werkes 
What do you think?