Peterkin

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.

Okay by me, but you're going the wrong way around. You have to know the land and its economic potential, the population, its culture and its needs before you can design a government that will work in the long term. You've seen enough conquering nations try to foist their own idea of governance on other countries and it doesn't take. The successful countries have had a stable population for centuries and longer, and they hammered out their present system slowly, over time. If that's the way you intend to go, read their history first. Or any history.

Before you can tax anyone, the money must first exist. There has to be an economy in place. First, you have an territory with a particular location, climate and geography. Next, you have in your territory a specific number of people of a particular ethnicity, demographic and culture. Start with the basics. Google Earth can help locate your fictional country. Once you have the place, you'll know the resources, settlement, energy and transportation options. Then, you have to invent or borrow a history for that nation. Was it always a sovereign nation, or is it and emancipated colony - if the latter, by what means was independence gained? Or is it uninhabited and you're leading a diaspora to settle it? Have you considered the form of government? You need a constitution to lay out the principles on which the country is governed. If you really want to do this thought-project, think like a world-builder.

Look at it piece by piece. You buy hydro from the utility at $10/kw/hr whenever you need it. Your neighbour buys hydro from the same utility at $10/kw/hr whenever he needs it. You sell excess electricity to the utility at $7.50. Your neighbour may or may not sell excess electricity to the utility for $7.50. All separate transactions. The utility company has overhead costs for infrastructure, maintenance and repair, vehicles, personnel, administration and billing, taxes etc. So a 75% share for the supplier sound like a good deal. You have very little overhead, once the infrastructure is in place, but you may have to pay income tax on the money you receive from the utility. But then the charges can get a little whiffy: They may tack onto your bill a 'delivery charge', a surcharge, equipment rental, retirement of their debt or whatever extras. I don't know where you are, but in Ontario, the extras are considerably more than what we pay for the electricity we use. (Our solar array doesn't generate excess; it's just enough for our needs, except in winter and bad weather, when we fall back on the grid.)

I don't know where you get the $5.00. They're giving you $7.50 for generating the power and keeping $2.50 to cover the cost of delivery and maintenance of the infrastructure. Doesn't sound like a particularly bad deal, if this is surplus power you're selling. If you sold eggs or basketware or jam to a wholesaler, your cut of the retail price would probably be less.

I said nothing about what I believe. I responded to your OP title and your posts. But I'm stopping now.

He's the village idiot in your story? Okay. The bible isn't nonsense: it's a collection of historical records, ancient legal codes, anecdotes, family sagas, scraps of mythology, rants by prophets, morality tales, the narrative of a people the way they wished to depict themselves, and added on as an afterthought, the story of a character who may have been an individual reformer or a composite of many. It includes examples of excellent literature, as well as numbingly tedious census lists. Those who don't believe the supernatural nonsense can still be aware of the value religions have for believers. Obviously. But that wasn't the issue here. My objection is not to your beliefs but to your projecting them onto Nietzsche.

No. I simply disagree with it. (I don't give negative points) I don't need your permission to feel sorry for someone. We don't. You do. Repeatedly, and I don't need your permission to find that characterization annoying. And he was entirely irrelevant to the topis. If intellectually challenged people are happy believing nonsense or making useless gestures, nobody's trying to stop them. But that doesn't change the fact that Nietzsche didn't predict a second coming and was hostile to religion generally. It's not hard to believe whatever your father says when you're 4 years old. Most people don't get disillusioned with their parents' religion until age 10 or 12. Some just keep waving at cars till they die, and that's all right too.