Say it ain’t so, Joe
The story is likely apocryphal. In the 1919 World Series, the Chicago White Sox were accused of intentionally losing to the Cincinnati Red Stockings. The scandal was called the Black Sox Scandal. The center of the scandal was “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, pictured above. The story is that a young boy, disappointed, walked up to Jackson and said, “Say it Ain’t so, Joe.”
Here we go again. Special Counsel Robert Hur was charged with investigating charges that Biden, like former president Trump, had willfully retained and disclosed highly classified information. Hur concluded that Biden had in fact done what the charges read, but noted that it would be a problem to convict him because he would be perceived by a jury as a pleasant old man with poor memory who had cognitive deficiencies. Since the charges and conclusions were identical for both Presidents, Hur either had to recommend Attorney General Merrick Garland file the same charges against both men, or recommend they be charged differently and provide a rationale for the recommendation. He chose the latter. Garland released the report.
The President was initially pleased with the report, focusing on the recommendation that he not be charged. By the evening he returned to talk to the press and he was loaded for bear. Fox News asked him how good his memory was, and he replied with a joke. Then another reporter, from an MSM outlet, asked specifics of the President and he reacted with anger and hostility.
Can No Longer be Hidden
There is not enough bubble wrap in the known universe to cover this up. A combination of obvious symptoms can no longer be hidden from the public, even with the best efforts of a partisan press.
The usual enablers and suspect sources leapt to his defense. The Vice President said that the material about his mental fitness was gratuitous and unprofessional. As the Attorney General of California she knows what a prosecutor must do. In a widely-followed case if a prosecutor is going to recommend disparate treatment for identical crimes under identical circumstances, the prosecutor must indicate why.
Not Specific Memories, but other symptoms
It was a combination of the President’s affect, body stiffness, anger, hostility and expressive and receptive aphasia that gave many people pause. It was not his inability to remember specific facts; all of us do that. Few display so many symptoms of senile dementia in such a public forum over so short a period. I am particularly equipped to describe this. I practiced psychiatry for a year in a German residency and I am slowly slipping into non-Alzheimer’s dementia myself due to Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus.
I am sad and sorry. Biden is the only President we have, and I want and need him to succeed. I don’t want our allies, much less our adversaries, sensing blood in the water with a gravely wounded leader. I hope he decides to step down and let VP Harris assume the reins of government.
Eleven months to go.
Oh Bill. Mrs. Wilson--I mean Mrs. Biden--I mean Dr. Jill Biden would never let that happen. This is all they've got.
The Obamas have blackness. I mean Blackness. Nobody, if the Bidens lose the throne, will buy any books they might try to contract to be ghostwritten, or any of their artwork, or seek their continuing non-existent wisdom. This is it.
And karma is just a breathtaking thing. People in my circle (my miniature circle) had urged me to vote for Biden in 2020 and I told them he was a genuinely evil person on top of all his everyday sort of wretchedness. When he did achieve the Presidency I had a grim satisfaction in knowing it would become his public humiliation. Of course that's not good for the country but at least I am proven correct. Maybe I should change my name to Cassandra.
This is sadly what happens when the presidency becomes a role reduced to a hood ornament. The big machine keeps them propped up because the real decision makers are playing behind the curtain. Unelected power centres selling the facade of democracy.