Can we call it a national security crisis yet?  The stress that comes with the job of POTUS seems to be accelerating the cognitive decline of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. at a time when the world is becoming ominously more dangerous.  Embarrassing incidents of inappropriate Biden behavior are accumulating, even as the agitprop media begin publishing material that makes Kamala Harris look unsuitable as a replacement should the 25th Amendment be invoked.  Some cynics believe that the anonymous leaks are being orchestrated in an effort to drive her from office, as happened with Spiro Agnew before Richard Nixon was driven out of the presidency to be replaced by Gerald Ford, appointed to replace Agnew.

Two recent examples of Biden's mental decline are especially troubling, given the high stakes of international diplomacy currently.

In a clear sign that cognitive impairment has destroyed his understanding of normal behavior, not to mention protocol, Joe Biden humiliated himself and the United States by dropping to his knee before a foreign guest in the White House.

Just over a week ago, on June 28, during a White House meeting with Israel's President Rivlin, Biden actually took to his knee before a foreign head of state.  Apparently, the gesture of submission was aimed at Rivlin's chief of staff, Rivka Ravitz, as she explained to an Israeli publication:

The two leaders were having a "nice small chat" when Rivlin pointed towards Ravitz and said, "This is my chief of staff. She is very Orthodox, and you won't believe how many children she has."

Biden asked how many, and Rivlin answered, "12 children."

"And he [Biden] was like going, 'Wow, I can't believe it. That can't be. Are you sure, 12? Is that true?'" Ravitz said.

Ravitz said that she answered, "Yes, that's true. There are 12, and there are even some grandchildren already."

Biden then told her that he was from a Christian family, she said, and he began to talk about his mother.

Then he said, "You know what? I have to go down on my knees for honoring you for having 12 children," before lowering himself to the floor on one knee and bowing his head.

Ravitz said that Biden also attempted to shake her hand, but Rivlin quickly explained that she is very religious and doesn't shake hands with men.

A photograph of the incident appeared in a tweet:

It turns out that this was the second instance of Biden kneeling last month:

Biden got down on one knee to greet Opal Lee, the 94-year-old Juneteenth advocate and former educator from Texas, at the presidential signing ceremony as Vice President Kamala Harris introduced her.

It appears to me that he got down on both knees for Ravitz and Rivlin.

Maybe these gestures were made in the spirit of honoring guests, but I am sorry: the president of the United States should never kneel down before anyone.  Especially not before a foreign head of state.  He represents the entire country, and this gesture of submission is entirely inappropriate.  It is even worse than Barack Obama's habit of bowing before foreigners.

A scientist friend who is an expert on brain function emailed me:

I think he's become too bizarre and irrational to last long. The whispering thing has occurred three or four times, a clear loss of adult judgment about normal behavior. This is even worse. It's also on international display, cannot be hidden.

Last Friday, the president made an easily disprovable boast that puts him in the company of communist dictators who were claimed to have performed impossible feats of athletic accomplishment.  Back in 1966, when he was launching the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong's henchmen claimed he had swum nine miles in the Yangtze River in 65 minutes, stopping along the way to teach the backstroke to a youngster.  It was obvious nonsense.

[T]he Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported that "a Hong Kong sports writer, who says that the Chairman is a backstroke man, has estimated that even allowing for a favoring current, Mao must have swum fast enough to beat the world backstroke swimming champion by seven minutes." 

Even more implausibly, the late Kim Jong-il of North Korea

... shot 38 under, including 11 holes-in-one, at the 7,700-yard championship course at Pyongyang in the VERY FIRST golf round of his life, according to North Korean state media[.]

Unlike these state-media-backed fables, Joe Biden offered his own implausible boast of athletic achievement last Friday.  Nick Arama of Red State reports:

[W]hen he had the World Series winners, the Los Angeles Dodgers, to the White House on Friday ... he told the Dodgers that he hit a 368 ft. home run off the right-centerfield wall during a Congressional baseball game. He even claimed his "kids remember that." CBS' Bo Erickson, one of the few reporters who actually asks questions and reports like a real reporter should, took note, calling it "Peak Biden." (snip)

Except, as with anything Biden says, it seems there was a small problem with that. Joe's first year in Congress was 1973. Yes, he is that old. In 1974, as Zach Parkinson RNC Research Director and GOP Deputy Communications Director found, Biden actually went 0-2, the furthest you could get from hitting a monster home run.

Biden's second Congressional baseball game would have been in 1974

Did he really hit a 368 foot shot?

No, he went 0-2 https://t.co/EXtET8orNx pic.twitter.com/TwUnAy1Zgg

— Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) July 2, 2021

Both of the incidents, the athleticism boast and the dropping to the knee, tell foreign adversaries that the United States is led by a man who has little grasp of reality and no sense of the importance of his office.  This is an example of provocative weakness.  The status of incompetent Kamala Harris as the stand-in does nothing to decrease the wearisomeness of the situation.

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