Senator Grassley of Iowa…
…has tested positive for COVID.
Grassley is 87 years old.
2020 has had quite a few tricks up its sleeve, hasn’t it?
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
…has tested positive for COVID.
Grassley is 87 years old.
2020 has had quite a few tricks up its sleeve, hasn’t it?
The median age of the covid deceased is 83 in MN. I lost two over 80 clients last week, but they were in nursing homes and had other health issues.
Pray that he receives the best of treatments and that he recovers quickly.
Don’t let Ezekial Emanuel anywhere near him.
om:
If I were Biden, I’d also stay far away from Emanuel.
I think studies vary, but they tend to bounce around a conclusion that about 1/2 the people infected are asymptomatic. IIRC, it wasn’t much different with the older set on the Diamond Princess. If he starts to get worse between 7 and 10 days after his diagnosis, he’s in danger.
IIRC, the median age at death of COVID patients since March has been 76 years. The last time the CDC issued readily accessible data on the year’s deceased by precise age was in 2007. At that time, the median age of the year’s deceased was 79.
He needs to get monoclinal ant-bodies before he develops pneumonia. Two choices available. Regeneron and Eli Lilly.
Here’s a piece about the Eli Lily ant-bodies.
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/11/10/fda-approves-emergency-us
I hope he moves quickly.
I’m sure Sen Grassley will get the best care available. Hope he makes it but his age and if he has other health problems he’ll be fighting uphill battle.
From Neo’s link,
Of course, Romney was one of the turncoats.
Shelton would have been one of the few or only Fed. committee person to support a return to the gold standard. Four years ago I never would have guessed that Trump was such a hard core conservative. OTOH, Trump did push hard for loose money and a very low Fed funds rate over the last couple years. I suppose one could try to argue that those two things are not contradictory, but they certainly seem contradictory.
Shelton would have been one of the few or only Fed. committee person to support a return to the gold standard.
I think I’d be pleased to have her working at some position other than Fed Governor.
Don Young (D-Alaska), also 87 years old, got Covid and is recovering after three days in the hospital.
https://www.adn.com/politics/2020/11/17/despite-his-own-serious-coronavirus-infection-alaska-rep-don-young-still-doesnt-support-mask-mandates-or-hunkering-down/
(So if the Presidential election goes to the House, AK will still be in the red column instead of abstaining.)
With all due respect to some of my older fellow commenters here I think it is kind of a sad commentary on our national political system that we have so many very elderly members of congress and presidents of course although I think early 70s is not that bad at this time in history.
As I’ve observed my parents and their friends age it was pretty clear to me that they simply wouldn’t have had first the physical stamina and eventually the mental acuity to fulfill such an important, demanding and stressful job as a senator after about 80.
I also get the feeling that with a lot of these senators they are almost like a part time CEO and their staff does way more of the job than they should in my opinion.
None of this is some blanket assessment it just seems a little worrisome to me.
With all due respect to some of my older fellow commenters here I think it is kind of a sad commentary on our national political system that we have so many very elderly members of congress and presidents
New York has since 1846 had mandatory retirement for judges. I’d like to see that applied to elected officials and discretionary appointees generally. If a 75 year old man wants to sit on a small town school board for a term or two, that’s probably a good thing; when you’re talking presumptively f/t offices which require extensive travel and when you’re talking about people in office for 40, 50, 60 years, it’s not a good thing.
My old congressman was Louise Slaughter, who died abruptly in March of 2018. Over the last several decades, there have been four voluntary retirements of members representing portions of the Genesee Valley. The members in question served 18, 28, 20, and 30 years respectively and were 78, 63, 62, and 73 years of age respectively when they retired. Slaughter had been in office for 31 years and was 88 years old at the time she died (and planning a re-election campaign). I had to wonder how many junior grade politicians in Rochester were marking time while this octogenarian insisted on holding on to office. Her husband with scant doubt had satisfactory retirement benefits from Eastman Kodak and she herself reached a consequential service milestone in re her federal pension in 2007 (at which point she was 77 years old). You’d have thought her husband turning up with cancer (which eventually killed him) would have been motive enough not merely to retire but to resign forthwith. Nope.
Art,
Yep, I remember when Strom Thurmond was re-elected when he was like a month away from turning 94 and thinking how ridiculous and sad that was. I guess it says something about these people that they can’t let go of power so often. We haven’t really had any of that in WA that I can remember at least to an extreme age anyways.
Maybe they think like coaches who always point to Bear Bryant retiring as Alabama football coach and dropping dead a few months later.
For far too many being a politician is who they are not simply what they do.
Speaking as someone on the wrong side of 40 (none of your business), we have too many people in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, who cling to their seats long past the age of retirement. In tandem with this, I have a pet theory that the older any congressman/senator is, the more that likely that he or she is a sock puppet for their staff.
That said, may the Lord be with Sen. Grassley.
Jack_of_Spades wrote, “Speaking as someone on the wrong side of 40 …
An old man goes into a pharmacy, asks for two Viagra pills, and for the pharmacist to cut them in half.
The pharmacist winks, and says, “OK, but you do realize that they won’t be as effective?”
The old man says, “Listen sonny, I’m 80 years old. I don’t want them for sex. I need them keep me from peeing on my shoes.”
There are perks to holding a political office at the national level. Heck there are perks to holding office on a city council. I had an aunt who was a city council member for about twenty years. She traveled to many conferences on the taxpayer’s dime. Travel she never would have done on her own money. Imagine what it’s like at the national level. All that lobbying money sloshing around. All those companies looking for favors.
Many people get too much of their identity from their job. Often, letting go is a road to depression and worse. In the 1970s the stats showed that airline pilots didn’t live long after retiring at 60. Most died by age 70. (A lot of that was smoking and sitting in a chair to earn your living – I think.) I decided that I was going to develop other interests and hobbies. When I retired, it took me a couple of years to mentally adjust to less money, less prestige, less feeling of being needed, and being home all the time. But I had more time to fly fish, more time to work out at the gym, more time to travel, more time to try my hand at writing, more time to work on our house, and I soon was so busy I wondered how I ever had time to work. Other than occasional dreams that the crew desk called me and said they needed me for a trip right away, I got used to being a retiree. But it is a fearful proposition for many, especially politicians.
J.J., that’s interesting about the fear of retirement. I had figured the vast majority would be looking forward to it. I feel as if I’d rather retire sooner than later, though I see your points about the feeling of being needed and so on. And truth be told, I wonder sometimes if those feelings would reach me, too, even if I were to retire tomorrow, say (not going to happen unless certain political/ideological crises come to a real head very quickly). Since I’m a bachelor, I have a certain concern about my vulnerability to those feelings.
Last I heard, Sen. Grassley was not feeling ill. Hope that continues.
I want to leave this comment here. It is about the virus. It is about the election fraud. It is about all the dire situations we are facing:
I am beginning to be VERY afraid. I am old enough to remember when people were afraid of communism, but today, many have never lived through the Cold War and so think socialism is fine. Lenin himself said that socialism was just a step toward communism. If we lose this, it is much more than a lost election. We are going to lose our freedom. We are going to lose America.
Francesca:
If it’s any consolation, I think a lot of people share your fear. I certainly do. I wrote about it even before the election, here.
Francesca on November 18, 2020 at 7:50 pm said:
I want to leave this comment here. It is about the virus. It is about the election fraud. It is about all the dire situations we are facing:
I am beginning to be VERY afraid.
There’s no need to be afraid, I already have them in perpetual check and soon to be check mate.
Their End Game is horribly bad.
We are going to lose our freedom. We are going to lose America.
Slaves have to recognize they are slaves before they can claw back their power. And America has to die first to be reborn.
This is all part of the Divine plan. God wins.
Nothing can stop what is coming.
Is this Grassley useful? If so, Q and Trump should retain his services and I will forward my observations on that.
If not, he can log off if he wishes. The Divine Godhead guarantees that right of log off.
Interesting thread – we start out with:
“we have too many people in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, who cling to their seats long past the age of retirement.”
… And we end with:
“I am old enough to remember when people were afraid of communism, but today, many have never lived through the Cold War and so think socialism is fine.”
…so maybe it’s not so bad to have lawmakers who are “old enough to remember” – especially given how disposible American culture worships The Next Big Thing with little attention to tradition or historical context.
That aspect of our national character is partly responsible for how we got in this mess.
…so maybe it’s not so bad to have lawmakers who are “old enough to remember” –
Of course it isn’t. Amory Houghton was elected to Congress at age 60 and retired at age 78. I think he stayed too long, but you cannot say he spent his bloody life in political office. Contrast with Barney Frank, who held political jobs from the day he left graduate school at age 28 to the day he retired at age 72. We benefit from Houghtons in Congress, not Franks.
That aspect of our national character is partly responsible for how we got in this mess.
Which mess? And how does an affection for novelty relate to our real problem, which is the prevalence of gross dishonesty and cluster B personality disorders in this world.