leicsmac

It's a hope, rather than an expectation, for me. The expectation is that there will be violence, as there was post-2020 election.

A general observation on this topic: I wonder how many in the press and their readership decrying this act of cruelty towards pensioners were a couple of years ago totally OK with the idea of little to few restrictions regarding controlling the spread of a virus that was rather deadly to the same demographic? I'm thinking perhaps that's rather a lot of hypocrisy to swallow from them.

Is there any suggestion at all that he, or more pointedly his supporter base, will do this?

Given the events of 2020 where a pretty conclusive victory led to serious unrest anyway, I think that's going to happen this time round again regardless of the margin of victory for Harris (should she win). The cult of personality surrounding Trump will simply not accept him losing. WRT the future, long term policy decisions had an effect during his last four years and they likely would have still more of an effect were he to win again. And ask Heather Heyer just how ugly the actions were last time round.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly8y27dwgpo And introducing a member of the Trump circle, Laura Loomer. Riddle me this: just how far gone do you have to be when Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks you go too far?

Unfortunately there are a lot of people who still haven't got the memo there.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/ckg2g1nj4y4o Billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman has become the first non-professional astronaut to walk in space during the Polaris Dawn mission. "Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world," he said as he stepped out into space for the first time. Carrying four private citizens, including SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis, the SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launched into space on Tuesday and will spend up to five days in orbit. Mr Isaacman funded the mission, which is the second privately-crewed mission from SpaceX - the spaceflight company founded by Elon Musk. Their spacecraft, called Resilience, will go into an orbit that will eventually take them up to 870 miles (1,400km) above the planet. No human has been that far since Nasa's Apollo programme ended in the 1970s. And so we continue on The Expanse timeline, it would seem.

Interesting fact I just came across: at home, England haven't lost a Test series of three matches or more since the Saffers in 2012, and have only lost three in the last 22 years. I reckon that's comparable to India and Oz in terms of home conditions dominance. And Graeme Smith can have a little smile at succeeding (twice) where Steve Smith, Kohli et al never did.

And someone like Swift - a successful, independent woman who will use her voice to advocate with gusto - represents everything Trump and his followers dislike anyway (apart from her skin colour).

Agreed. And in this digital era, that percentage can cast a very long shadow. It's darkly amusing that the advent of such tech was viewed as a social leveller when it first became big (by me too); now it appears clear it just grants power to a different kind of "few".

Starmer has hardly set the world alight with his decision making so far, but then there's a long way to go and of course the press and social media talking heads would jump on him for the slightest infraction from minute one, no matter how well-meaning - the press have done the same with every Labour leader apart from Blair, that's just the way things are.

Quite. When he first started out it was entertaining. Now the consequences are deadly serious. Emphasis on the deadly for some people not of the "right" demographic. Unless one thinks everything is fvcked anyway and we may as well go down in a storm of black comedy.

Makes a change from folks like Trump and Vance not giving a shit about kids killed in school shootings, I guess.

Think it will come down to turnout, which means Harris energising her own voter base is critical.

Harris did pretty much what she needed to - her team must have identified weaknesses well and she exploited them well too, particularly with the focus on abortion/Project 2025. Kudos to the moderators too for doing their jobs and fact checking at least some of Trump's more obvious lies.

Yeah, a fine goalscorer - one of the best in English history - Kane no doubt is, but his scoring record in major tournaments from quarterfinals onward that don't involve penalties leaves...something to be desired.

That's a fair point too, and to add to it the lines in terms of policy and attitude seem pretty well drawn for the last eight years.

I'm sure that those inside will enact their own particular brand of justice upon him, given the chance.

Thanks for clarifying. There certainly shouldn't be a cap on such benefits as they affect families now - as you say, that's simply the decent thing to do as it does enhance child poverty. However, though perhaps "development" of nations does organically reduce family sizes without any other incentives/disincentives, I would be encouraging the UK and other nations to be working towards overall world population stability ASAP. This has come up before, but I fear it may become a real issue not too far down the line, and a demographic crisis based on age with a stable population could well be the least worst outcome.

Right, they're not and polling is clear on that, hence the part of the sentence before that bit. Far too many don't think far enough ahead in this regard to prevent problems. It would just be nice - and perhaps necessary - if that were different. And though it doesn't mean much, that question would also be 100% accurate.

Can I ask for further details on why this is problematic?

...because unfortunately in this era perception often trumps the facts you're quoting here and viewpoints, as well as elections, are often decided on that perception. Believe me, I wish it weren't the case, it makes doing the logical thing an order of magnitude more difficult for people like Starmer, and I've no idea how he can work on changing perception of this policy. The same matter sadly bleeds over into other, still more important, policy areas too.

It's funny that Trump supporters wrote Nate off as just another liberal pollster until something like this came up, isn't it? Still a long way to go and anyone can see the volatility in that graph. Yeah, it's going to be important. Stay away from economic issues as much as possible, go for healthcare and abortion as things to hammer him on. (I would say environmental issues too but sadly the future seems not to bother far too many Americans; still, it would be nice to hear Harris ask "why are your policies setting up a world where at best hundreds of millions of people will end up without food or potable water?")

I don't know, you back the Welsh team at the last rugby WC and this is the fvcking thanks you get...