Recent Comments

1. about 22 hours ago on Doonesbury

   > I think you are overselling Biden’s bad days. At his age my dad was running a national UK charity. Not equivalent, of course.

   Totally possible I’m overly impressed with an overly small sample. And, as you point out, everyone ages differently. My Dad was diagnosed with dementia when he was more than 5 years younger than Biden is now (also younger than TFG is now).

2. about 22 hours ago on Doonesbury

   > He makes G. W. Bush sound like a combination of Lincoln and Churchill with G. B. Shaw on the side.

   I think you win the internet for this one. I’m at the office, and it took real willpower to not laugh out loud.

3. about 22 hours ago on Doonesbury

   > Where have you been? Biden has had no problems in his speeches. Trump pretty much every day lies or makes up words.

   No argument with your statements, but kindly allow me to offer a somewhat different interpretation. The lying is TFG’s “brand” or his “style”, depending on how you see it (or how he does). It’s a sign of a moral failing, not a cognitive one. So far as using non-words, Trump goes off-script about 10x more than Biden does. Biden doesn’t always sound so great when he goes off-script, either — it just happens a lot less, so overall he sounds better. Trump may have a bigger problem in this area (IMHO, he probably does), but the fact that the discussion is over who’s worse doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be much better off with someone without this issue at all.

   Why do I say Trump is (only) probably worse? Because Uncle Joe’s temperament and demeanor are milder, making his missteps less obvious because they’re less “in your face”. If he were as obnoxious as TFG, he might look as bad cognitively; I don’t think there’s any way to know this for sure. And personality is, again, not a cognitive issue (unless/until the cognitive issue causes it to change, which doesn’t seem to be the case for either).

4. 4 days ago on Doonesbury

   Realistically, Biden has his good days, and his less-good days. As does Trump. It’s not hard to put together a “greatest hits” reel of either of them sounding like a blithering idiot, or perfectly coherent and with-it. (I presume you’re thinking right now the latter would be harder with Trump, and that’s probably true, but not so much harder.)

   This election is the reason why we have the best chance we ever did of adding an amendment disallowing octogenarians from running. Neither of them is likely to be in good mental shape after 4 more years of the most stressful job on Earth. Except each party is praying their octogenarian can emerge victorious. A really sad state of affairs.

5. 6 days ago on Dog Eat Doug

   So long as you don’t expect the band to have them.

6. 6 days ago on Arlo and Janis

   Netflix learned that trick from the networks before them. Remember Firefly?

7. 13 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   >> If an organization says they’re doing something on principle they’re lying.

   > What if what’s involved is a principal balance that’s owed

   As much as I like English in general; that’s a major difficulty: we have a lot of words that sound alike (homophones), but have little or nothing to do with each other. I believe “principle”, meaning guiding idea, and “principal”, meaning most important or (by extension) an amount owed on a loan, are one such pair.

8. 14 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Whenever some organization says they did something on principle, they’re not telling the truth. Also applies to individuals in positions of power, 95% of the time. And the 2 major political parties 100% of the time.

9. 17 days ago on Overboard

   Differences between Liberal and Progressive and Conservative approaches to a problem:

   A Liberal will propose a “solution” that is theoretically doable, makes them feel good, and does nothing to actually fix the problem.

   A Progressive will propose a solution that would actually address the problem, maybe even fixing it, and is impossible to implement.

   A Conservative will deny there is a problem.

   And they wonder why so many smart people think we’re doomed.

10. 17 days ago on Overboard

    No-one here has yet mentioned that many of the biggest companies on Earth make plastics. They lobby and persuade and do any number of things, in any number of ways, to keep us using it as much as possible. Maybe it’s a coincidence that Astroturf is plastic.