Me, three days ago– why am I linking this, you can just scroll down a few inches:

If the debates reveal that your guy is just plain too old to do the job, you need to replace him ASAP, and preferably before you officially nominate him. Thus the early debate.

So the debate revealed that Biden is just plain too old to do the job, and needs to be replaced ASAP, and preferably before he is officially nominated.

The other day, I also wrote

I don’t actually expect any big problems, and even if there are any, right now I’m too angry about the US losing to Panama to care. We’ll see how it goes.

Normally, President Biden is– looks?– prepared medically and mentally for public events like speeches, interviews, and debates. They had a week to prep him for this, they picked the date, they set the rules– so there was no way there’d be any big problems, right? There’s no way they’d let him take the stage if he weren’t up for it, right? They’d make an excuse about an emergency if they had to, right?

I watched that debate with a growing dread. I didn’t pick my jaw up off the floor until they started talking about golf. Then I laughed. Hoo boy, did I laugh, because I needed a laugh at that point.

I will gladly entertain arguments about whether Biden or Trump has the better policies, or the better results, or the better character. But as of Thursday night, we’re past the point of arguing over President Biden’s mental acuity. He should not be the Democratic nominee for President, and I think it’s President Harris time right now.

Since the writers are lazily rehashing a story arc from four years ago, allow me to lazily rehash a post from four years ago. Deletions are struck through, additions are bolded.

Tomorrow Tonight, President Trump and Vice President Biden are scheduled to meet in rhetorical battle, if “rhetorical” is even remotely appropriate to describe what drops from their maws. I expect the rationality of a goldfish on social media, the intellectual heft of a pile of gypsum, and the eloquence of a braying hyena, with dignity to match.

But that’s if it even happens. Turns out that a] Biden recently visited Governor Northam of Virginia, who tested positive for coronavirus, and b] the campaign has been putting early “lids” on Joe’s appearances this month, and we can’t tell if it’s to prepare for the debates or if he’s just not lucid on those days. they’re both insanely old.

My guess is that Biden will do better than expected in the debate. He usually does; he’s spent nearly over 50 years getting people to expect very little of him. If he’s lucid for the first 15-20 minutes of his own speaking time, I think he’ll be the “winner” by conventional wisdom. If his handlers know he’s not going to have a good night, I think he should use his opening statement to say something along the lines of, “I’m walking off in protest of Trump,” walk off, then let the press and his fans (BIRM) applaud the move. I think Biden needs to remain invisible for as much of the next six weeks four months as possible; the more people see of him, especially in unmanaged environments, the more likely he loses.

I still say that Trump would win relatively easily if he locked himself into a Captain Pike-style apparatus that would only permit him to answer “yes” or “no.” It would be less entertaining, but he’d save himself a good 90% of the trouble he gets into.

Either way, popcorn tomorrow tonight. Well, not actually popcorn, probably some air-fried chopped cauliflower with gobs of salt and butter poorly made hamburgers, but you get the idea.

The arrangements are atypical. I can live with the lack of a studio audience. I can live with cutting off the mics, especially given a certain somebody’s proclivity to talk over his opponents. Maybe those arrangements will become SOP if we see a more civil debate than we’ve been accustomed to.

It seems odd that CNN is restricting studio and stream access, at least at the time of this writing. If they’re doing it for purely proprietary reasons, fine. If not, I think they need to explain themselves.

But the weirdest thing is that we’re having this debate so early. It’s almost three months earlier than ever (previous record: September 21st in 1980), and it’s before either party’s conventions. You might say, “Yeah, it’s before the conventions, but we know exactly who the nominees are, so what’s the difference?”

My response would be that each man’s grip on his nomination is more precarious than usual because they’re both insanely old.

If the debates reveal that your guy is just plain too old to do the job, you need to replace him ASAP, and preferably before you officially nominate him. Thus the early debate.

(I’m trying to both-sides this thing. It’s clearly a bigger issue for one of the candidates, but the Big Macs coursing through the arteries of the other one are also concerning.)

Maybe there are established mechanisms for replacing a candidate after the convention, but I’d bet dollars-to-doughnuts that it’d be easier, cleaner, and less divisive to replace him before the convention. Before the convention means you have at least some time for vetting, debating, polling– you know, checking with your voters. After the convention probably means you’re resorting directly to the smoke-filled rooms.

You might say, “Can’t they just go with the VP nominee?” They could, but I don’t see much evidence that the Democrats have confidence that Harris can win, and as of this writing we don’t know Trump’s pick for VP. So, maybe it should be that simple, but it’s not that simple.

All that said, I don’t actually expect any big problems, and even if there are any, right now I’m too angry about the US losing to Panama to care. We’ll see how it goes.

Today would have been my grandmother’s 114th birthday. I haven’t seen this picture before, or at least I don’t remember it. But I know when it was taken, which was her next-to-last birthday. I know where it was taken, which was at her dinner table. And I remember that look. I hope that whoever did the shopping that day brought the right stuff. Elsewise?

I’m sure everything turned out okay on that particular day. The heart and the hearth of the family were right there.

And there was Lambrusco in the bag.

Happy birthday!

Today would have been my grandfather’s 124th birthday, so now I post this year’s edition of the digital birthday card. Here he is at age 85, climbing atop a roof:

I notice three problems. First, nobody is steadying the ladder for him. Second, by taking his picture, the photographer is distracting him. Third, 85-year-old men aren’t supposed to climb ladders, much less to rooftops.

But there was undoubtedly work to be done, and folks were made of sturdier stuff back then, and he certainly wasn’t going to take the risk that hired help might mess up the job, so… up the ladder he went.

It occurs to me that I haven’t posted anything this year, so why not start with commentary on my newest glowing rectangle?

Backstory: I switched from MacBooks to Chromebooks ages ago. I had come to despise the MacBook because it took forever to do anything– to update, to start up, to shut down. It was bad. It was “waiting for Tunnels of Doom to load via cartridge and audio cassette on a TI-99-4a in 1983” bad, but with bitter loathing instead of joyous anticipation.

So I tried out a Chromebook because it was advertised as cheap and fast, and it fit the bill, and I was an instant convert. They were cheap enough that I could replace them every couple years without breaking the bank. Then I decided to break the bank on a Pixelbook in 2018. It was the best computer I’ve ever had.

The Pixelbook worked like a charm for 6 years, which is unusual for any “smart” device these days, until I discovered that it is– was– susceptible to ketchup. Worse, the Mensa candidates who run Google decided they don’t want that much of my money, so they cancelled the Pixelbook line altogether.

I looked for alternatives. Didn’t feel like taking out a second mortgage to get a MacBook, the Windows laptops felt clunky, and the Chromebooks– though still cheap and fast– paled in comparison to the perfection of the Pixelbook. So I figured I’d try an altogether different form factor.

I am typing this on a detachable keyboard on a Samsung tablet. (For those of my generation and older, a “tablet” is like those touchscreen clipboards on Star Trek.) The tablet was cheapish and came with a magic pen. It may not actually be magic, but the device can convert my scribblings to digitized text, which is pretty darn impressive. Hold on a second…

I am writing this sentence using the magic pen.I just erased a mistake by scratching it out.. I just changed the numeral “1” at the beginning of this paragraph to the letter “I” by  simply writing over. it. I clearly haven’t fully mastered the pen, because I just spent five minutes trying to get this sentence right without inserting it into a previous sentence. impressive enough for now. The magic pen that is, not my proficiency with it.

That was an adventure. Back to the keyboard. Next I’ll have to write a post in digital manuscript and/or cursive.

What times we live in. Maybe the return to “stylus on surface” writing will get decent-lookin’ handwriting and signatures trending again. We’ll see.