Peterkin

May one ask? What is a 'centrist' policy? Or a 'centrist' vote? Is anybody at the actual center of anything - assuming anything non geometric has a locatable center? If we define 'moderate' to mean reasonable, careful, tepid, rather than half-way between the currently presented alternatives, it probably would describe the older Democrats. Many of the young one, who might actually get something done given their head, are neither moderate nor half-hearted. Even if 40% of people think the moon is made of cheese, they can be deluded, misinformed and dead wrong. Even if 99.8% of the people sincerely believe Earth is flat, they're still wrong.

Comparison with samples on file. The name and grouping of a particular Homo subspecies has been reasonably well established, but since there is evidence of interbreeding at many stages of the evolutionary process, and since new finds and methods do still keep intruding, the lines are not drawn in thick black crayon. Matters are complicated by the fact that few specimens yield usable DNA. However, the H. neanderthalensis fossil library is quite extensive, so there are lots of partial and intact skulls, teeth, as well as other bones and complete skeletons of different individuals, their group characteristics are quite well documented. So, when one of those bones, or a new one that matches, has enough DNA, the information is added to the database. By now, the genome has been reliably sequenced and available for comparison. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4031459/

Eureka! Found another one! I'll try to find some way to survive it.

Only you didn't say "Nominated with questionable judgment"; you said "questionably elected" Two very different matters.

There's no question that there was pervasive and blatant voter fraud, suppression and intimidation. Biden won in spite of it: no question about that.

Well! She grew up unexpectedly normal-looking, didn't she?

There is a considerable amount of Neanderthal material available for study - fossils found as far back as the early 19th century. Plenty of information to be gathered. Teeth are usually a good source of ancient DNA, as are intact long bones. Not only that, there is a lot of associated artefact - tools, weapons, burial pits, etc. which tells us more about how they lived. Here's a start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Neanderthal_fossils

Then comes the fun part of examining the bone itself. Comparison with other remains, size and shape, chemical analysis, sometimes DNA - or at least bits of DNA - can be extracted, growth pattern, rigidity, thickness - all kinds of clues. If you're interested in entry level forensic anthropology, you might check out this BBC program https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11657912/, runs on all the public tv networks.

Seriously? A Trumpet? General comment: It's not unusual for basal cell carcinoma to recur, even several years after successful treatment. And it's quite standard for cancer patients to consider their condition on-going for five year observation period after they are 'cured'. Whether he had basal cell or squamous cell (the two common types of skin cancer) it's not entirely inappropriate to refer to it in the present tense. Neither one is debilitating; neither effects the patient's mental or physical capability.

Neither. They both succeeded brilliantly in what they intended to do. That's the most profound comment you have contributed to this whole thread.

We could debate whether that includes any nation. And there certainly are wrongdoers in every walk of life. As a category, politicians may not be spontaneous, but I believe their general willingness too compromise principle in favour of popularity, as well as their record of corruption and breach of trust is rather higher than that of medical personnel. If you were to attend the weekly morbidity conference at any general hospital and compared it to a senate committee hearing, you might learn the difference between the standards to which doctors and lawmakers hold their own profession. No, they didn't simply plant a flag. Statesmen and generals do that. Medical practitioners earn trust through achieving desired results - like helping people live longer with less pain.

And 7 or 8, given male rights and female subservience as legislated in the Medieval South, cost even more. You really have no data-base for this subject, have you? Economics - not mine; capitalist society's - does play a part, pushing poor women with unwanted children deeper into poverty https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/11/06/united-states-poverty-rate-for-every-group/40546247/ Social dynamics do, as well. The mother - never mind whether she got pregnant by rape and was given no options - has a baby, or more than one, no available childcare, maybe a husband with substance problems who beats her and the kids and can't hold down a job - has to try to juggle one or more part-time jobs with looking after the kid she can't afford to feed or house properly, so it's sick half the time, and no way in hell can she afford medical insurance, so she has to keep lugging it to the free clinic, however far away that is, since the holy moral government closed most of them down for giving birth control advice to people like her, and sit for hours in the waiting room - if there are chairs to go around - so of course she misses a shift and gets fired. Now she and the child or children are living in the street. Not the first time a society has treated its lower classes this way. We had hoped it wouldn't come around again. Oddly enough, that's what I've been wondering about your support for the control of medical treatment by "moral lawmakers" .

That's understandable. It made more sense in the context of a reply to someone [J.C.MacSwell] urging citizens to accomplish two opposites over neither of which they have control. The only thing that could save the US from sliding over into failed status is a progressive Democratic majority with the popular mandate and the courage to enact massive electoral reform, tax reform, judicial reform and administrative restructuring. I see no clear path from here to there.

and my opinion was not FTR

I am not alone in this opinion. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/01/us-politics-state-government-democrats-left ...which is touching in its irony, given that and tossed at various other countries, including their own puppet governments, with gay abandon by American politicians ever since.

The moral position of their constituents was the prevailing status quo prior to the co-opting of governments and courts by a right-wing minority. That is what has just been overturned. I was 'there', had a small part in getting the rest of my country 'there' and to a large extent am still 'there', even though our health-care system is collapsing. As illustrated by which of my statements? And not evident in which of the US Supreme Court's and US state legislatures' decisions? And why need these restrictions be imposed by ignorant outsiders with no stake in the outcome? Why cannot an informed, impartial medical ethics board set the terms and conditions of doctors' authority? Why cannot a woman be guided by her own moral code, rather than Abraham's? (He wasn't all that nice to his own bastard or its mother... having piously made sure it was borne to term. And the "moral" US legislatures are meting out similar treatment to their servant-class women.) How does this follow? All kinds of killing of humans by humans is done all the time, in every country - some countries more than others, some countries, a lot more. It's done for a great variety of reasons. Infanticide is typically done for one of two reasons: pity for a suffering baby, or despair in a girl who was denied protection or help by her community. Less commonly, an extreme emotional state brought on by sleep-deprivation, frustration and anxiety, which culminates in a single drastic act of blind rage. Sometimes jealousy, revenge or anger against one adult by another, with the baby as mere instrument. Sometimes greed, sometimes convenience, sometimes pathology. The only way in which abortion laws affect infanticide is that outlawing abortion invariably raises the incidence of the first three reasons for infanticide - mercy, despair and loss of control - as well as perinatal mortality rates. Infanticide will definitely rise as a result of these recent legislations, as will suicide and domestic violence, including child battery. The way that legislators could reduce perinatal mortality and morbidity, as well as infanticide, child neglect and abuse, would be to allocate resources to pregnancy prevention, prenatal health care - including an informed choice* of termination - post-partum support and child wellness programs. (They know this, but don't care.) *Choice - and this is the most willfully overlooked aspect of the issue - implies other options. Rather than the simple extremes of abort whatever quality of foetus or carry it to term, choice would also include to abort a defective foetus, but carry a healthy one to term with the expectation that its needs will be met, and that the mother's needs will be met, whether she keeps the baby or not. Where the choice is between abortion, with at least a chance at autonomy, or motherhood as a miserable outcast, infanticide begins to look like a reasonable option. It's damn close to that tipping-point, yes.

There is that "you" again. No, he cannot. No voter can. All the law needs to do is protect citizens from predation by other citizens. That doesn't require meddling in the treatment decisions of individual patients. Doctors and nurses have their own code of ethics and are quite capable of maintaining professional standards in their ranks. Legislation is required only in the allocation of resources to serve the public well-being. (It would also be nice to have in the organization of national and local response to emergencies... but, alas!) All or none of what? Reasonable laws and guidelines have been in effect for about 50 years, in most civilized countries. People are upset, because that reasonable state of affairs has been upset. With me, it's neither: I'm an onlooker. Yes. You want lawmakers to control medicine according to their own moral position, and somehow exert this control without taking it away from doctors and patients. That's exactly as clear as wanting individual voters to correct flaws in an electoral process that has already been damaged beyond repair. Any other pairs of opposites you while you're prescribing?

Yes, and now you have clarified it. You believe that medical decisions should be made, not by medically trained persons on scientific grounds, nor by the patient whose life and health is at stake, but by unqualified legislators, according to their own value system. Only without the 1. implicit threat or 2. taking away a right those affected already have. That means a return to the middle ages, when the decision-makes were prelates, the threat was explicit and the plague took out a third of Europe's population, while the Inquisition burned midwives. In the following statement, you also seem to take it for granted that voters are able to 'find' and elect what you consider reasonable legislators. That, too has happened, and was the standard for a few good years, while reasonable legislators enacted laws in accord with their constituents' will, and left medical decisions to medical personnel and their patients. That is the very state of affairs which has been reversed, one reasonable law at a time, one civil right at a time, one legal protection after another, in America's processional toward the medieval status quo. Once the democratic process has been corrupted and debased, voters no longer have the power to reform it - which was the very purpose of the corruption. The only way for a populace robbed of its political power to regain it is through revolution.

To right-wing lawmakers, who lives and who dies is not the issue - it's not even a consideration. If no abortion - or other procedure to stop bleeding or remove necrotic tissue - is performed, both mother and foetus may very well die. Or the mother may bring a pregnancy to term, deliver a defective baby, which dies a few hours or days or horrible months later, and the mother may also die of sepsis or hemorrhage. The legislators and jurists are not interested in medical problems. The only issue is who decides.

Reasoning is what every entity with a brain does to solve problems and make decision. If the entity is sane and viable, the vast majority of its reasoning is rational and logical. The soundness of its conclusions depend on the quantity and quality of information with which it was supplied at the beginning a reasoning process. As thinking entities gain complexity, they develop more facets to their mental capability: instinct, emotion, memory, pattern-recognition, empathy, anticipation, abstraction, generalization, imagination, intuition, projection. These aspects of thought can be life enhancing and prompt decisions that have positive outcomes for the individual, or its progeny or its species, but are not necessarily rational or logical. They can also lead the thinking entity into reasoning on false premises, or according to irrational rules. The individual is not necessarily insane or non-viable when this happens (though it often is the case) but they are no longer logical. Logic is strictly constrained by its own rules, while reasoning may range widely and make use of other faculties. Logic is a mental tool that can be applied to a given subject or problem or discipline or situation. One can ask: Does the imaginary world of Harry Potter have a prevailing internal logic? Yes - all stories, dreams, religions, fantasies, national constitutions, games, sports, clubs, businesses, relationships and even jokes do. Then, if one asked of a specific act or event in a Harry Potter story : Is that logical? it would be in the context of the rules of that world, rather than outward reality. Likewise, when characters in a story reason, the factors they consider are those that prevail in their world, not ours; their decisions are rational or irrational by the internal standards of the story-world. And when people in our world reason, we don't always know whether they're applying logic, or to what degree, what other faculties they're using, and in what system of rules they operate.

That was half a sentence with no meaning without the other half" The creation of an implicit threat seems to be very much by design and aims to take out medical decisions away from physicians into a So what you are approving is a system of intimidation where physicians are forced to make medical decisions according to the moral code of people who have no medical knowledge but know - or think they know - what some Hebrew prophets wrote 28+ centuries ago. to "find some reasonable law makers" Yah. Good idea... a little short on implementation. Only one side has presented it this way in legal or legislative argument. Only one side has put the extreme position in action and enshrined it in law. These opposites are in no way equal or comparable, and have never been the only choices available to patients, doctors, jurists or legislators.

Which should be? - The creation of an implicit threat - taking medical decisions away from physicians - a morality-based judgement system controlled by law-makers - all three? Should be that way for everyone in all cases? If the lawmakers are predominantly of one faith, or share a prejudice, then all life, death, treatment and prevention should be designed on their belief, rather on the scientifically determined best outcome for the patient? When did this become CharonY's job description? They very well might be so, but 2. is not, and has never been the actual pro-choice position - despite many, many attempts to present it this way.

And after all these testimonies, and all the footage we witnessed live, and again in reruns, and all the tweets and speeches that have been recorded for all to see, the pro/con split is astonishing https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2022/06/23/jan-6-poll-trump-insurrection-capitol Only 64%! That tells us more about the conservative propaganda machine and wilful unreason than anybody should be forced to know about their fellow 'intelligent' life-forms.

Time is a fluid. The reason you can't travel in it is that the past has frozen solid, impenetrable; the future is random vapour; no footing or traction: only the present is liquid enough to move around in in.

No, I wouldn't. But you have, to your own satisfaction, and that seems to be all you're interested in. I wish you well.