Peterkin

Yes, but a lot of that ersatz mud sticks. People are gullible and these days, inclined to cast great big gobs of blame at the federal government for everything that goes wrong in their lives from hailstorms to bad breath. The more ruckus the media kicks up about Biden's minor failings, the less anyone hears about Trump's glaring faults. Besides, the whole western world seems to be in a let's-go-fascist mood.

The system has a few little weak-points.... Well, now, with the Supreme Court decision, Biden had better get busy bumping off the opposition while he's strong enough.

They can look, but they can't transport anybody. Endgame!

I wonder whose poll that was. If true, which I doubt, the majority of Americans are sleepwalking to the slaughterhouse.

Make the planet uninhabitable faster, so that we have no choice but to get off it or die. Elon Musk will get off... but I don't think he'll get very far.

Well, for one thing, it's hard to breathe in space. For another, there are too many of us. Anyway, we're far too busy blowing up our own and one another's assets in wars.

No, but young voters, especially the female ones, not happy with the idea of either the abusive or the indulgent grandfather figure deciding their future, might pin their hopes on a sharp, energetic youngish aunt.

The party didn't have the foresight to groom a plausible alternate from the beginning of the campaign. The DNC is not real big on foresight at the best of times, which these are not. What the party workers need to do now is light a fire under young voters, wake them up to a their realistic prospects under a Trump administration - lure them out to vote for the Biden-Harris ticket in the expectation of getting Harris for most of the term.

That's what I'm hoping. He needs to make a really strong comeback in September. Next February, once this horribly messy election is over, we'll see what happens.... ...always assuming Putin doesn't hurl a nuclear missile, in which case, all wagers and life insurance policies are void.

Scramble as they might, they're not going to get anyone electable in the time. I love Sanders but he's old, too. Unless Trump self-destructs (we keep praying and thus proving there is no god) it will be close and close means hotly contested and that means a giant mess. I don't think the world can really afford a giant mess in US leadership. If Biden can't hold out till January, this could be the beginning of the global meltdown.

But will they judge him on the one debate itself or on all the media commentary afterward? The talking heads have way too mush political power in situations like this. I don't know what their coverage of Trump was in the same debate - just one article on the number of lies he told - what I've heard and seen was how poorly Biden performed. It's quite true, people don't vote rationally, taking all aspects of the situation into consideration. If they did, we (by which I don't just mean the USA; it has very far-reaching consequences), would never had the disaster of a Trump presidency in the first place. But the Democrats haven't been all that sharp in selecting their candidates, either. Whom do you see as credible?

It was probably one of those panel discussion shows where experts dissect a debate they didn't attend between people they never met. IOW, speculation, conjecture and opinion. There have been hundreds of medical opinions about Trump's mental condition. None of them said anything we couldn't all see just clearly. He's been obviously losing memory, vocabulary and syntax. He lost any grip on reality a decade ago - it was already loose a decade before that. I watched a couple of episodes of The Apprentice as I might watch ten minutes of Nightmare on Elm Street - too rigid with horror to change the channel.

Must be early stages. So he has some functional time left.... That is, assuming we trust a diagnosis made on a television screen, rather than an office visit and lab tests. Of course he's declining. So am I. But I'm working another book all the same.

What cognitive impairment? He was tired and had probably been over-rehearsed. For the time being, he's quite compos mentis - very, very far from the condition of that other guy. Replacing the candidate at this point is extremely risky. The only way I'd attempt it is in full assurance than the other party would follow suit. Bringing Harris forward now would alienate a lot of conservative-leaning people who actually noticed Biden doing a good a pretty good job, and who still only trust a patriarch to run their country. After the inauguration - after the recounts, protests and court challenges - Biden can plead infirmity or exhaustion. Then Harris can step forward legally and appoint a popular white male VP. I think she might actually make a good and energetic president, so long as she has a solid cabinet.

Guess you don't care much about people suffering, just so there are too many doing it.

It's iffy. It might be all right if that month was the last in a period of time spanning several months, and something notable - like a change in some condition - took place during that final month. Even so, it would be more usual to say 'In the last month of his life, Mr. Jones lost interest in nourishment," or something like that. You would certainly say 'on the last day of the month', but 'in the last days' and 'in the last hour of that day'. Prepositions assume their places by convention, even when logic doesn't support their placement. Yes, if you're talking about the month preceding the present one. No, if you're talking about the final month of 1999.

The numbers don't match. Very few people - especially in the rabidly 'pro-life' states - are looking for a baby of a different ethnic group, and nobody wants defective babies who will require medical and educational help. The conservatives who most fervently advocate against birth control are least forthcoming with the necessary financial and social support. Are you willing to take on the life-long responsibility for even one person born with foetal alcohol or Down syndrome? It already exists, in practice, for couples prosperous enough. But most people who attend fertility clinics are desperate to have their own biological child. You may see all newborns as interchangeable, but most people don't. The logistics of in vitro incubation are prohibitive.

I hoped he might attempt to defend it anyway. A long-shot, I admit. They're not terrific at follow-through.

Just so. It will be available to couples of considerable financial means who desperately want a baby and can't carry one to term. Why would a woman who didn't want a foetus in the first place want to keep it alive artificially? If it were kept alive, whose child would it be? Presumably, you wouldn't try to foist it on a mother who doesn't want to be a mother (and might, depending on the state be in prison), so you would either have to find adoptive parents or make it a ward of the state until the age of maturity. Which states are willing to take on the expense of incubating all the unwanted foetuses artificially and then also raising the children? What if a woman wanted to terminate her pregnancy because one or more parents have a genetic defect? Does the state take responsibility for a child with serious medical problems? You can force it to be born - but - then what?

I should have read all the previous responses! Not in this century!

I watch people in public places. It's a long-standing habit. I'm interested in how they dress, what they do with hair and tattoos, how they interact. In the last 60 years, not one single person I was observing reacted in any way.

It wouldn't matter either way: if he's elected by some means or another, he'll cancel the constitution anyway.

Religiosity may be divided into two parts: internal and external. The internal aspect, what one believes is unlikely to have any effect on evolution. Doctrines can be both advantageous to a society and detrimental at the same time. The external is practice. Ritual, shared activities, the fraternity of common belief binds a community and gives it a huge advantage over a less cohesive community.

I don't use wiki as a reference very often. I use it as starting point for research. The relevant names, dates, events and places are there, and some connections I might not otherwise have made, and usually pretty accurate numbers. From there, I can decide how to follow up those leads on more authoritative sites.

It's a normal side-effect of being social beings. We generally wish for the approval and respect of our fellow humans - especially our superiors, peers and potential mates. Parents want their children to be successful in work, social situations and love, so they train their children in the niceties of their culture - its mores, manners, public demeanour, polite discourse, courtesy and protocol. People who can't or choose not to behave 'properly' are not well liked; other people don't want to marry them, be their friend, work with them, help them or support their ambitions. If you fail in or reject the major protocols, you become an outcast. In the more trivial aspects of public demeanour, people just laugh at you or frown at you. Farting in company is embarrassing. Dribbling sauce on your shirt when you're on a date is embarrassing. Showing up in a lumberjack shirt for a wedding reception is embarrassing. Simply because these things show you as incompetent or ignorant or just plain rude, and we don't like to be seen as those things. As for one's preference in clothing, we're a lot more liberal than we used to be. There have been times when the way a person presented himself - or worse, herself - in public could be viewed as a crime or breach of religious tenets. Wearing clothing intended for another gender can be considered in some segments of society a breach of decency. Wearing something outdated or inappropriate to the venue is not a breach of anything but aesthetic taste or fashion. Wearing something that doesn't suit you is nothing more that a disservice to your own attractiveness. Other people may look, may even snicker, but they don't condemn you.