Joseph Auclair: A lot of Democrats and others have come to believe it would be better to try a Pence presidency than allow The Duce to stay in the White House one day longer than absolutely neces...
Ron Chusid: The existence of Antifa still does not justify this false equivalenc y, but I am more concerned about its applicatio n to the left beyond Antifa. Peter Beinart has a good response re...
Chris: The antifa exists, so "alt- left" isn't entirely fabricated to create a false equivalenc y. Crowd pshycholog y being what it is, I think we know that at least a couple...
Ron Chusid: We don’ t know yet if there will be grounds to impeach Pence. It is possible that if the investigat ions uncover grounds for impeachmen t of Trump, Pence will also be implicated ....
Robert J Kolker: Even if Trump is impeached and removed ther e is no grounds for impeaching Vice President Pence. If Trum p goes Penc e will be President and the joke will...
Ron Chusid: Yes, in this case a puppet government under Chinese control would probably be better. I’m not sure if South Korea would want China on their border that way, but they also might...
Mike Hatcher: Good point Ron regarding if China did act, it would most likely be in installing a puppet government rather than allowing unificatio n. I might personally consider a puppet Chinese...
Ron Chusid: If China wanted North Korea to collapse it is possible they could make this come about. However I doubt that China would want this. If they felt compelled to act due to North Korea&#...
Mike Hatcher: Of course you statement is true that East Germany was a satellite state and N. Korea is not. However, I would argue that the comparison is more similar than dissimilar in that N....
Ron Chusid: The difference in East Germany is that they were a Soviet satellite, and the main obstacle to reunificat ion disappeare d with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Similar peaceful reuni...
Mike Hatcher: I certainly am not going to pretend that I know the best path to solving Korea. But I would like to point out how different the situation is compared to conflicts elsewhere. North and...
Ron Chusid: Her gross violation of the rules written to provide further transparen cy, and then repeatedly lying about it, is pertinent. Besides lying about the email, she has a history of lying us...
Ron Chusid: No, Obamacare is not unaffordab le. Large numbers of people receive it at minimal or no charge. Those with higher incomes do pay high premiums, but the premiums have always been a...
alboy: Obamacare is unaffordab le and increasing premiums exponentia lly. The left is outsourcin g middleclas s jobs to the extent of collapsing the middleclas s.
Will: What Hillary doesn' ;t want you to realize is that "prop aganda&quo t; is most effective when it's the truth. Certainly, Russia promoted and circulated many of the stories based...
Ron Chusid: While there is no doubt that Clinton has been the subject of a number of fake attacks from the right, Clinton 217;s rather vast propaganda efforts sure tried to mix in all the...
Eruanion: Raymond, considerin g that Clinton also had a massive propaganda effort on social media, one has to wonder, does that mean Russian trolls are just better than American trolls? We have...
Ron Chusid: That is discussed in the second from the last paragraph, and I have had previous posts on this. ; People had negative views of Clinton long before this election and it did not...
Raymond Smith: The one flaw I find in this article is there is not one shred of discussion in it that considers the effects of the massive propaganda used by Russia on social media.&nbs p; I would...
I’m picturing Mike Pence sitting in his office trying to decide when Trump has acted just crazy enough that he can invoke the 25th Amendment and be seen as a hero. There are certainly plenty of psychiatrists who would argue Trump is unfit to fulfill the duties of the presidency. I’m not sure what the odds are of Trump being removed, either under the 25th Amendment or impeachment, but humor writers have seen this as likely.
Earlier in the year I noted a sequence on The Last Man On Earth in which a plague killed off politicians going through the lines of succession. They started with President Pence, implying that one way or another Donald Trump was already gone. (The video at the link concludes with the death of President Betsy DeVos.)
Late night comedians have had several similar jokes this week:
Vice President Mike Pence denies he’s planning to run for president in 2020. He said, “I’m pretty sure I’ll be president way before then.” –Conan O’Brien
Mike Pence is denying speculation that he wants to be elected president in 2020. Pence was like, “I think you mean re-elected president in 2020.” –Jimmy Fallon
According to The New York Times, Vice President Mike Pence is planning on running for president if Trump doesn’t run for a second term. But he issued a statement strongly denying the article, saying it was disgraceful, offensive to me, my family and our entire team. He said to suggest he is running for president in 2020 is laughable and absurd. Right, why would Mike Pence want to be president in 2020? He’s going to be president much, much sooner than that. –Jimmy Kimmel
Vice President Mike Pence is adamantly denying a New York Times article claiming that he has begun a secret campaign for a presidential run in 2020. He says he has even less interest in being president than Trump does, which is saying something. Pence is like, “This is ridiculous. I’m not focused on being president in 2020, I’m focused on being president after Trump is impeached sometime this year.” –James Corden
Meanwhile in today’s news, Congressional investigators now want to question Donald Trump’s personal secretary, Rhona Graff, in the Russia investigation. If either were still alive, Richard Nixon and Rosemary Woods might tell Donald Trump that bad things can happen after a president’s personal secretary is questioned by such a Congressional probe, even if the specifics were different.
Of course we would have a new set of problems if Mike Pence were to replace Donald Trup. Pence could not honestly say, as Gerald Ford once did, “our long national nightmare is over” should he become president. Hopefully, should Donald Trump be removed from office the Republican brand will be so damaged that Pence won’t be able to do much harm. We can also hope that whatever brings down Trump also brings down Pence. However, unless they are separate events and another Vice President is chosen, Paul Ryan would be next in line.
Donald Trump inherited the Affordable Care Act in sound financial shape according to reports by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other independent studies. Republican attempts to abolish Obamacare have been unsuccessful, but a newly released study from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that Donald Trump’s actions are resulting in double digit increases in premiums for many people, potentially destabilizing the plan. AP reports:
“Actions by the Trump administration are triggering double-digit premium increases on individual health insurance policies purchased by many people, according to a nonpartisan study.
“The analysis released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that mixed signals from President Donald Trump have created uncertainty “far outside the norm” and led insurers to seek higher premium increases for 2018 than would otherwise have been the case.”
From the Kaiser Family Foundation report:
“Insurers in this market face new uncertainty in the current political environment and in some cases have factored this into their premium increases for the coming year. Specifically, insurers have been unsure whether the individual mandate (which brings down premiums by compelling healthy people to buy coverage) will be repealed by Congress or to what degree it will be enforced by the Trump Administration. Additionally, insurers in this market do not know whether the Trump Administration will continue to make payments to compensate insurers for cost-sharing reductions (CSRs), which are the subject of a lawsuit, or whether Congress will appropriate these funds. (More on these subsidies can be found here).
“The vast majority of insurers included in this analysis cite uncertainty surrounding the individual mandate and/or cost sharing subsidies as a factor in their 2018 rates filings. Some insurers explicitly factor this uncertainty into their initial premium requests, while other companies say if they do not receive more clarity or if cost-sharing payments stop, they plan to either refile with higher premiums or withdraw from the market. We include a table in this analysis highlighting examples of companies that have factored this uncertainty into their initial premium increases and specified the amount by which the uncertainty is increasing rates…
“Insurers assuming the individual mandate will not be enforced have factored in to their rate increases an additional 1.2% to 20%. Those assuming cost-sharing subsidy payments will not continue and factoring this into their initial rate requests have applied an additional rate increase ranging from 2% to 23%. Because cost-sharing reductions are only available in silver plans, insurers may seek to raise premiums just in those plans if the payments end. We estimate that silver premiums would have to increase by 19% on average to compensate for the loss of CSR payments, with the amount varying substantially by state.”
Most people enrolled in plans on the exchange receive subsidies and will be at least partially protected from these increases, but this is an extra burden on tax payers, along with those of us who do not qualify for subsidies. Double digit increases in premiums were commonplace on the individual market prior to the passage of the affordable care act, but this trend could have been avoided if not for the actions of Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans.
In May, Mario J. Mario Molina, M.D., former CEO of Molina Healthcare, wrote an op-ed for US News and World Report which also pointed out how Republicans are responsible for higher premiums due to their actions to sabotage the law. He concluded:
“One common thread in all these efforts is that Americans who purchase their health coverage through the individual market are the ones harmed, not insurance companies. The administration and Republicans in Congress want you to believe that insurers raising premiums for their plans or exiting the marketplaces all together are consequences of the design of the Affordable Care Act instead of the direct results of their own actions to sabotage the law. Don’t let them fool you.
“If you think Obamacare is failing, I have one simple message for you: Open your eyes and stop being the emperor.”
The conventional wisdom regarding North Korea has been that Kim Jong Un is crazy. While that very well may be the case, we are now in a strange situation where it is not clear which nation has the crazier leader. Trump made this threat: “He has been very threatening beyond a normal state, and as I said, they will be met with fire and fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.” There has been received with universal criticism that it only inflames the situation. It also turns out that this was an improvised statement by Donald Trump. The New York Times reports:
President Trump delivered his “fire and fury” threat to North Korea on Tuesday with arms folded, jaw set and eyes flitting on what appeared to be a single page of talking points set before him on the conference table at his New Jersey golf resort.
The piece of paper, as it turned out, was a fact sheet on the opioid crisis he had come to talk about, and his ominous warning to Pyongyang was entirely improvised, according to several people with direct knowledge of what unfolded. In discussions with advisers beforehand, he had not run the specific language by them, though he had talked over possible responses in a general way.
The inflammatory words quickly escalated the confrontation with North Korea to a new, alarming level and were followed shortly by a new threat from North Korea to obliterate an American air base on Guam. In the hours since, the president’s advisers have sought to calm the situation, with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson assuring Americans that they “should sleep at night” without worrying about an imminent war.
USA Today summarizes some of the international reaction. In reviewing past crises, another report in The New York Times reports how there is little precedent for such a statement. Others in the government are now busy attempting damage control. Jonathan Chait wins best headline award on the topic with, Ignore Our Crazy President, U.S. Government Tells North Korea.
Of course not everyone is critical of Donald Trump. In perhaps the scariest headline on the topic, The Washington Post reports, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un,’ evangelical adviser says:
Texas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, one of President Trump’s evangelical advisers who preached the morning of his inauguration, has released a statement saying the president has the moral authority to “take out” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“When it comes to how we should deal with evildoers, the Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has endowed rulers full power to use whatever means necessary — including war — to stop evil,” Jeffress said. “In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un.”
Trump’s statements most likely come from his lack of understanding of how to carry out the duties of the presidency. Kim Jong Un’s actions are in some ways more rational, if you look at his motivation based upon retaining absolute control over North Korea, regardless of how much suffering he causes.
There are multiple reasons which originally motivated North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, including both witnessing the effects of nuclear weapons in nearby Japan and the devastation their country suffered in the Korean War. However these events happened before the current leadership was born, and more recent events appear to be motivating them to further develop the nuclear weapons and refuse to compromise. North Korea has claimed that they need to preserve their nuclear program because of the example of how Saddam was overthrown after he gave up his weapons of mass destruction and Muammar Gaddafi was ousted and killed after he surrendered his nuclear weapons. Such examples make it unlikely that Kim Jong Un will back down in the face of sanctions.
It is now well known how George Bush lied us into the war in Iraq. The regime change in Libya orchestrated by Hillary Clinton has been a similar disaster, with Barack Obama calling it one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency. A report by the U.K. Parliament showed that this war, like Iraq, was also started based upon lies. The situation we now face in North Korea is yet another of the consequences we face for the reckless interventionism of neocons like Bush and Clinton. On top of this, the crisis must be dealt with by a president who appears to be clueless as to how to respond.
Update:The Washington Post points out one of Ronald Reagan’s contributions to the problem with the invasion of Grenada:
In October 1983, the United States invaded Grenada. The Kim family regime that controls North Korea saw this invasion as an early warning sign: If the United States could perceive even a small spice island as a threat, so too could it eventually train its sights on North Korea. Without an effective deterrent, any regime perceived as a threat would be little match for American military might.
It wasn’t just Grenada’s size that caught the Kim family’s attention. Grenada, a country of only 110,000 people that is known primarily for producing nutmeg, had significance for the North Korean leadership in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Kim Il Sung, grandfather of North Korea’s present-day leader Kim Jong Un, viewed the new Grenadian socialist government headed by Maurice Bishop as brave revolutionaries directly fighting U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean. Kim Il Sung also sought the help of recently decolonized nations like Grenada in international forums, as a way to undermine South Korea’s legitimacy abroad and garner support for a North Korean-led reunification of the two Koreas…
David Letterman is returning to television for a six-episode talk show on Netflix. Form The Hollywood Reporter:
Two years after signing off CBS’ The Late Show, David Letterman is returning to the small screen.
The longest-serving host in U.S. late-night TV history is set to topline a new talk show for Netflix. The untitled six-episode series will premiere in 2018.
Unlike The Late Show, each hour long episode of the Netflix series will be prerecorded and feature Letterman conducting longform conversations with a singular guest as well as exploring topics on his own — outside of the studio. A guest list has not yet been revealed.
There was no mention of top ten lists or stupid pet tricks.
The Hollywood Reporter asked Letterman about his plans for the show and people he would like to interview. Names which came up included Kin Jong-un and Donald Trump. Perhaps Dave could broker a peace deal between them. From the interview:
What made the time right to return to TV?
About six months ago I was polishing my collection of buffalo head nickels and I thought, “Geeze, there must be something else I can do with my life.” I spent a lot of time with Al Franken and I had seen and admired how his life has unfolded in clearly two different parts and two different areas and been beneficial to the culture in both incarnations. I’d done a few things with Al and so enjoyed them that I thought I wanted to do something else like this. A couple years ago, I went to India for National Geographic and the two influences made me think that perhaps there was more to television than what I had done for the last 30 years. The people at Netflix and Radical Media, we started chatting and I was very impressed by both organizations. The idea that it’s a just a commitment for six shows — it’s going to take up some time but it’s not going to be 10 hours a day, five days a week. The need to pursue something else and the way that this was made available as a possibility was irresistible, honestly.
Have you started looking at a guest list?
I want to talk to this Kim Jong-un because I see now where he’s just miniaturized a nuclear weapon that he’s going to put on his rockets I’d like to talk to this guy because, OK, the haircut. We get all of that. But honestly, what does he want? They have a missile they think can hit Chicago, what’s he pissed off at Chicago about? Are we at war with this guy? We put sanctions on him, he gets more pissed off. If Dennis Rodman goes over there, I ought to be over there. … I wouldn’t want to make it worse, but on the other hand, I don’t know that you can make it worse. OK, you’re building rockets; you’ve got nuclear capabilities; OK great. What, really, does that help?!
Is he in line with the type of guests you’re aiming for all six episodes?
I don’t know that he’d be the prototypical guest but by god, wouldn’t you like an hour to just look at this guy and talk to him and listen to him? Does he have kids? Does he have pets? Why does he want to behave like this? If he wants to be a hero, why not start trying to reunite the peninsula? Why not do something that has some humanity to it? I don’t get this.
You’ve interviewed Donald Trump a number of times over the years. Is he someone you’d like to speak with on this show?
Yes, I really would love to talk to him. That would be great because I think I have insight now that heretofore I did not have. I’m tired of people saying, “Can you believe he…” and “Oh my god, what has he done… .” I want to put an end to that. We all know that there’s something unique here. We don’t need to keep examining it day after day after day. What we need now is somebody like myself to sit down with him and calmly get him to sign some papers and then have him leave the White House.
Letterman previously discussed Donald Trump with New York Magazine. From that interview, picking up in the middle of an answer to a question:
…Trump’s the president and he can lie about anything from the time he wakes up to what he has for lunch and he’s still the president. I don’t get that. I’m tired of people being bewildered about everything he says: “I can’t believe he said that.” We gotta stop that and instead figure out ways to protect ourselves from him. We know he’s crazy. We gotta take care of ourselves here now.
How? Is comedy useful for that? Comedy’s one of the ways that we can protect ourselves. Alec Baldwin deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sadly, he’s not going to get it from this president.
Can you explain that a bit more? How does satire protect us from Donald Trump? The man has such thin skin that if you keep pressure on him — I remember there was a baseball game in Cleveland,Actually, it was the other way around. In a 2007 playoff game, a swarm of midges from Lake Erie caused Yankees reliever Joba Chamberlain to blow the game with a few wild pitches. and a swarm of flies came on the field and the batters were doing this [mimes swatting at flies] while the pitcher was throwing 100 miles an hour. Well, that’s Alec Baldwin and Saturday Night Live. It’s distracting the batter. Eventually Trump’s going to take a fastball off the sternum and have to leave the game.
There’s this idea that reducing Trump to a punchline could make him seem harmless or helps to normalize him. Is there any validity to that argument? I guess it’s a possibility. On the other hand, Donald Trump can be Donald Trump, but if he doesn’t help the people that need help, then he’s just a jerk. That press conference that he held berating the news media? I mean, how do you build a dictatorship? First, you undermine the press: “The only truth you’re going to hear is from me.” And he hires the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Steve Bannon, to be his little buddy. Bannon looks like a guy who goes to lunch, gets drunk, and comes back to the office: “Steve, could you have just one drink?” “Fuck you.” How is a white supremacist the chief adviser to our president? Did anybody look that up? I don’t know. How’s this interview going? Do you think you’re talking to a normal person here? Don’t I seem like I’m full of something?
Support for Donald Trump continues to fall in the latest CNN poll, with his approval at its lowest point and three fourths of Americans saying they can’t trust most of what they hear from the White House. From CNN:
Six months into his presidency, Donald Trump’s overall approval rating stands at its lowest point in CNN polling, while three-quarters of Americans say they can’t trust most of what they hear from the White House.
Overall, 38% say they approve of Trump’s handling of the presidency, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, with 56% saying they disapprove. Just one other newly-elected president has held an approval rating below 50% at this point in his presidency since modern polling began: Bill Clinton, whose approval rating stood at 44% at this point in 1993.
Enthusiasm breaks against Trump by a 2-to-1 margin. Nearly half in the new poll say they strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the job (47%), while just a quarter say they feel strongly positive about Trump’s performance (24%)…
The poll finds widespread doubts about the veracity of information coming from the White House. Only a quarter of Americans (24%) say they trust all or most of what they hear in official communications from the White House, while more (30%) say they trust “nothing at all” that they hear from the President’s office. (Even among Republicans, only about half say they can trust most of what they hear from the White House.)
…He gets a mixed 48% approve to 47% disapprove rating on national security, and Americans are also divided on his handling of the economy (47% disapprove to 45% approve). On just about every other issue tested, majorities disapprove of Trump’s work, including on health care policy (62%), foreign affairs (61%), immigration (55%) and helping the middle class (54%). Nearly half (48%) disapprove of his handling of taxes while just 34% approve.
Looking back over the first 200 days of Trump’s time in office, just 36% say they consider it a success, and 59% consider it a failure. Both Barack Obama and George W. Bush were viewed as successful at this stage of their presidency by most Americans (56% for Bush, 51% for Obama).
These results are similar to other polls. Politico notes:
A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Trump’s approval rating at 33 percent. A Gallup poll reported it was 36 percent. However, the Quinnipiac poll found a 76 percent approval rating among Republicans.
It looks like Star Trek: Discovery might not be the only Star Trek television coming up. Geek Exchange reports that Nicholas Meyer is working on a limited television series based upon Kahn:
According to the sources, Meyer’s new project takes him back to Khan Noonien Singh, the “genetically superior” villain played by Ricardo Montalban in the original series episode “Space Seed” and in The Wrath of Khan, and by Benedict Cumberbatch in the J.J. Abrams-helmed Star Trek Into Darkness. Meyer will reportedly be developing a prequel miniseries, or limited series that would take place on Ceti Alpha V and chronicle Khan and his followers struggling to survive in the years between when Kirk dropped him off on the planet at the end of “Space Seed” and when the crew of the U.S.S. Reliant finds them early in The Wrath of Khan.
The directors cut of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn is going to have a theatrical release in September to mark the 35th anniversary of the movie:
The Director’s Cut of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, widely considered the best Star Trek film, is getting a special theatrical release this September to celebrate its 35th anniversary! I had a chance to sit down with writer/director Nicholas Meyer to discuss his experiences making the movie and its long-lasting success. But first, some exclusive details regarding the big screen re-release…
The digitally remastered Director’s Cut of Wrath of Khan will show for two days on Sunday, September 10th and Wednesday, September 13th in more than 600 theaters across the U.S. at 2pm and 7pm local time. Fans can buy advance tickets starting today. Screenings will be preceded by a brand new 18-minute interview with William Shatner about the making of the film. Tickets can be purchased online by visiting FathomEvents.com or at participating theater box offices.
A very creepy trailer was released for the third season of Mr. Robot with this description: “MR. ROBOT follows Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a cyber-security engineer who, along with Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) and fsociety, starts a revolution to change the world. Picking up immediately following the Season 2 cliffhanger, Season 3 will explore each character’s motivations and the disintegration between Elliot and Mr. Robot.” The show returns October 11 with new cast members including Bobby Cannavale.
Considering all the noise made about Jodie Whittaker being cast as the thirteeth Doctor, it is fitting to learn that the Doctor Who Christmas special will deal with chauvinism:
David Bradley is set to appear as the First Doctor in the Doctor Who Christmas special lined up for the end of the year, and he’s recently revealed at the London Film & Comic Con that he and outgoing Doctor Peter Capaldi are set to clash over their attitudes toward women during Steven Moffat’s final episode.
“What we did emphasise,” Bradley explained, “was the old fashioned nature and how he is from the 60s. He goes into the Twelfth Doctor’s Tardis and says ‘it’s a bit dusty around here, it’s in an awful state isn’t it? Where’s Polly? Shouldn’t she give it a spring clean?’ And then Peter’s saying ‘you can’t say that’.”
Bradley added that his character “brings all his 60s sensibilities, what’s lovingly called casual chauvinism. He’s just talking [as if] the [companions] are there just to help out, and do the dusting and do all the domestic chores – his attitudes to a lot of things come right from the 60s, so there’s a lot of conflict between Hartnell’s Doctor and Peter’s Doctor about how things have changed in the last 50 years… we had quite a bit of fun with that.”
LGBT Nation takes matters even further in questioning if the new Doctor will be bisexual:
Michelle Gomez, who plays Missy in the hit sci-fi show Doctor Who, dropped on heckuva spoiler in an interview with the UK’s Daily Star.
While male versions of the Doctor have had female companions, Pearl Mackie’s character Bill Potts, was the first lesbian companion on the show. The character “died” last season when she left to continue her relationship with an old flame who turned into an alien during her first plotline.
Missy, however, paved the way for Whittaker’s role, as the newest incarnation of the Doctor’s longstanding nemesis, the Master. Gomez’ character proved that a Time Lord could regenerate as the opposite sex.
“Now we have a got a female Doctor so there is going to be girl on girl,” Gomez said. “It might work. Dunno. Obviously it might be awful.”
While producers have reportedly pushed for a male companion next season, Mackie for her part says she’d love to see a lesbian relationship develop between the Doctor and her companion. “It could work,” she said.
Asked if she’d be willing to return to the show to be the object of the Doctor’s affection, Mackie was quick to reply.
“Who wouldn’t? It is Doctor Who. Never say never.”
Buddy TV has this news on the third season of Legends of Tomorrow (trailer above):
Legends of Tomorrow season 3 will continue the trend started in season 2 of having a group of villains terrorize the heroes. It won’t be the Legion of Doom this time but a much larger and more diverse group. Klemmer did announce that among this group will be Damien Darhk, Arrow‘s season 4 villain and one of the original members of Legends of Tomorrow’s Legion of Doom.
Legends of Tomorrow season 2 had Darhk travel from the past to participate in adventures with Reverse Flash and Malcolm Merlyn. This will no longer be the case in season 3. Darhk will be resurrected from the dead after being killed by Oliver Queen’s hands in season 4 of Arrow. There will be a power behind Darhk, who the show has yet to reveal, but Damien will be the face of the organization.
“Damien Darhk is going to be the leader of this group in the way Thawne was sort of the boss last year for the Legion of Doom. This group is distinctly led up by Damien,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim explained.
As for the mysterious head honcho, Klemmer promised that they would be unlike anything the show has seen before. At the head of the group of villains will be a “non-human entity” as Legends of Tomorrow plans to get more into the occult and magic side of the DC universe. Klemmer confirmed that they are actively pursuing getting Matt Ryan’s Constantine on season 3.
One non-human on the evil crew however will be The Flash‘s Gorilla Grodd. Much like Damien Darhk, Legends will introduce a Grodd that has not yet been seen on The Flash. Legends‘ Grodd will be older, wiser and much more dangerous. “It will be a version of him that we have not met yet on any of the shows. It will be the most evolved and powerful form of Grodd,” Klemmer said.
While the group of villains will form the spine of the season on an episode-to-episode basis, Legends of Tomorrow will be dealing with anachronisms, not aberrations. Following the season 2 finale where time “broke,” figures from history will start appearing in the wrong eras. One example that was teased was Helen of Troy showing up in the 1940s and become a movie star. The head of the villainous group of season 3 will be using these changes to exploit and further their own purpose.
Mistresses alumna Jes Macallan has signed on for a recurring role in the third season of the CW’s superhero drama DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
Macallan will play Special Agent Ava Sharpe, a hard working agent for a secret branch of the Federal Government (the Time Bureau) dedicated to the regulation of time-travel and the protection of history. She is very smart and incredibly ambitious and always believes she is the smartest person in the room. She is often quite ruthless in obtaining her goals and her drive for perfection has left many discarded friendships (and relationships) in her wake.
The Handmaid’s Tale has been the best new show so far of 2017, ending the first season in an ambiguous manner. The story now goes beyond the book, and the fact that there will be a second season indicates that Offred survives after being taken away. There were also other small signs of hope and rebellion in the first season finale.
We also know that Alexis Bledel’s character not only survives, but has been promoted to a series regular.
Beyond this we know very little, and Elizabeth Moss warns against trying to guess how the second season begins. She told TV Guide:
“Don’t try to guess what happens in that first scene of Episode 1 in Season 2,” she said. “You will never get it, and I mean that objectively as a viewer. You just won’t guess, and I love that so much.”
TV Line reports that Allison Williams has been added to Benedict Cumberbatch’s upcoming Showtime series, Patrick Melrose:
The former Marnie Michaels will guest-star on Patrick Melrose, Benedict Cumberbatch’s upcoming Showtime limited series, TVLine has learned.
The five-part project, formerly called Melrose, is based on Edward St. Aubyn’s novels and stars Cumberbatch as the title character, “an aristocratic and outrageously funny playboy” who turns to substance abuse to erase bad childhood memories of his abusive father.
Williams will play Marianne, someone Patrick runs into during his time in New York City.
The drama’s cast also includes Hugo Weaving, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Anna Madeley.
Will and Grace has not only been extended for sixteen episodes next season, but was also renewed for a tenth season before the revival even began. The revival plans to retcon the original series finale and have the cast back as we remember them (such as without the children shown in the original finale). Things have also been brought up to date, with Karen having voted for Donald Trump. Eric McCormack discussed this:
“One of the hardest things we’ve all had to deal with is realizing that some of the people around us didn’t vote for who we voted for and they might’ve been friends or they might still be friends, and how do we maintain that friendship?” McCormack told reporters at the Television Critics’ Association on Thursday. “We know that’s the case here as a result of that video we did in September. We know that Karen, of course, voted for her friend Donald. So that is going to lead the conversation. That is not inherently about the politics of today or even yesterday; it’s about the politics of friendship and how you navigate that. And it can be quite hysterical, how you navigate that.”
I wouldn’t dream of attempting to do recaps of Twin Peaks, or in any way try to explain what is going on, but I will note that last week’s episode had the return of Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn). Picture from last week’s episode above. Or as we remember her:
The Atlantic has a story about Hillary Clinton’s religious views entitled, Hillary Wants to Preach. They miss the real issue with regards to Hillary Clinton and religion as her religious views have affected her views on policy. Clinton has always been oblivious to First Amendment rights, seeing no problems when her political policies violate First Amendment related to either freedom of expression or separation of church and state.
I have always suspected that the vast ideological difference between myself and Clinton is that while I am a civil libertarian concerned with defending our rights, Hillary Clinton’s political views are based upon her strong religious views. The article notes, “Clinton might argue that her politics were the ultimate expression of her faith. Methodists helped lead the early 19th-century Social Gospel movement, a faith-based campaign for greater aid to the poor and vulnerable.” While perhaps her religious views led her to some admirable goals, her religious views probably have also been responsible for many of her conservative political positions on social and cultural issues throughout her career. Plus, like many who are deeply religious, she finds in her religion a way to justify her dishonesty and personal corruption.
While Clinton has usually kept open talk about her religion out of her political speeches, this is hardly the first time it has come up. She was mocked quite a bit when she cited the Bible as the book which influenced her the most. This was generally taken as a politically calculating move, but afterwards I believed, for better or worse, that in this case she was saying what she believed.
Clinton discussed her religious views in an interview with Newsweek in 1994. (Hat tip to The Blaze for the link.) One paragraph is particularly interesting:
Despite what some critics believe, the nation’s First Lady is not markedly feminist in her religion. She thinks abortion is “”wrong,” but, like her husband, she says, “”I don’t think it should be criminalized.” She does not follow feminist theology and seems unaware of the upheaval its most radical exponents have created among Methodists in the name of greater inclusiveness.
Even without having read this interview before, I have longed warned that Hillary Clinton’s support for abortion rights has never seemed very sincere, and had predicted that if she was elected she would be far more likely than Donald Trump to actually bring about further restrictions on abortion rights while triangulating with Republicans. She has already expressed a willingness to compromise, and has supported restrictions such as parental notification laws. Her often stated view of keeping abortion safe, legal, and rare plays into Republican policies to restrict access, along with placing a stigma on women who have had abortions.
The danger of Clinton’s religious views were most apparent when she was in the Senate and worked with The Fellowship to increase the role of religion on public policy. I posted about this in 2008, quoting from an article from Mother Jones:
These days, Clinton has graduated from the political wives’ group into what may be Coe’s most elite cell, the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. Though weighted Republican, the breakfast—regularly attended by about 40 members—is a bipartisan opportunity for politicians to burnish their reputations, giving Clinton the chance to profess her faith with men such as Brownback as well as the twin terrors of Oklahoma, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and, until recently, former Senator George Allen (R-Va.). Democrats in the group include Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who told us that the separation of church and state has gone too far; Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is also a regular.
Unlikely partnerships have become a Clinton trademark. Some are symbolic, such as her support for a ban on flag burning with Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and funding for research on the dangers of video games with Brownback and Santorum. But Clinton has also joined the gop on legislation that redefines social justice issues in terms of conservative morality, such as an anti-human-trafficking law that withheld funding from groups working on the sex trade if they didn’t condemn prostitution in the proper terms. With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn’t back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won’t fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won’t guard abortion clinics.
Clinton has championed federal funding of faith-based social services, which she embraced years before George W. Bush did; Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel, says that the Clintons’ approach to faith-based initiatives “set the stage for Bush.” Clinton has also long supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure that has become a purity test for any candidate wishing to avoid war with the Christian right.
As I mentioned at the start of this post, Clinton’s lack of concern for First Amendment issues includes a poor record on both separation of church and state and freedom of expression. This includes her support for making flag burning a felony as mentioned above, as well as sounding remarkably like Donald Trump in mocking freedom of speech while promoting restrictions to supposedly fight terrorism. After losing the election, Clinton called on Congress to restrict what she considered fake news. This appears to include both the many bogus attacks on Clinton, along with the many valid points made despite her repeatedly debunked denials. Regardless of the accuracy of someone’s speech, First Amendment rights do not have an exclusion for “fake news” which a political leader objects to.
Clinton’s primary problem might be that she wound up in the wrong political party. Every bone in her body is that of a conservative Republican and she has struggled to alter her public statements to fit in with Democrats. It is often pointed out that she started in politics as a Goldwater Girl, however this is an insult to Barry Goldwater. Despite other faults, Goldwater was far more socially liberal than Clinton. Goldwater abhorred the religious right and its influence on the Republican Party, and certainly would not have joined The Fellowship as Clinton did.
It is also notable that many of Clinton’s supporters have as little respect for freedom of expression as she does. Write a comment on Facebook about what you had for lunch that day, and nobody will complain. However post something critical of Clinton and her supporters will descend repeating the same lines about what a waste of time it is to still talk about her (while also Liking and Sharing posts if they are favorable to her). Of course the battle between liberals and DLC Democrats like the Clintons has gone on since the 1990’s and this battle for control of the party continues to this day. Clinton supporters have been engaging in an on-going dirty attack against the left. As I posted just earlier today, Clinton has announced two new people for her “Resistance” PAC, oblivious to how she is part of what we are resisting.
After Howard Dean turned into a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, it was no longer necessary to point out what a hypocrite he is. While unnecessary, I can’t resist pointing this out. While I quickly found that he couldn’t be trusted back in the 2004 campaign, it is worth remembering that he claimed to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.
Bob Edwards asked him what he meant by that and Dean explained:
Former Vermont Gov. HOWARD DEAN: That was really a phrase that was first developed by Paul Wellstone, and although Paul Wellstone’s probably a little more liberal than I, his characteristic, which I enormously admire, was that he’s willing to stand up for what he believes in. I think there are so many people in our party that aren’t. When I go around talking to Democratic audiences, one of the lines that gets an enormous round of applause is that there are almost as many Democrats that I talk to that are angry at the Democrat Party as they are angry at the Republican Party.
EDWARDS: Well they wouldn’t be Democrats otherwise, would they?
DEAN: Well, that’s true. But people just don’t feel like the Democrats have stood up against this president who’s got really what amounts to, essentially, a radical agenda.
EDWARDS: The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, would that be the wing that loses national elections?
DEAN: It’s the wing that wins national elections because they restore principle to the party, and without principle we’re never going to beat this president.
Restore principle to the party. So what does Howard Dean say now about those who want to restore principle to the party? The Hill reports, Former DNC chair criticizes ‘whiny’ left:
Former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean ripped what he called the “whiny” portion of the Democratic Party on Saturday in response to criticism of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) by a number of progressives.
“There has always been a section of the left, which I call the whiny party — the party that doesn’t really wanna win, they just wanna be pure, and if they go down swinging purely, then that’s fine,” Dean, who ran for president in 2004, told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on “AM Joy.”
Dean was right about how to win elections in 2003. Unfortunately Democratic leaders, including Dean, have forgotten that, and no longer win many elections.
Speaking about losers, in related news BuzzFeed News reports, Hillary Clinton Hires Two Former Campaign Aides For “Resistance” PAC. That should serve as a reminder that Hillary Clinton has not gone away. Unfortunately she does not realize that she is a big part of what we are resisting.
Besides her PAC, Clinton has her book of excuses coming out, and then will be on her book promotion tour. Politco has this editorial cartoon regarding her upcoming book:
In follow up of my post yesterday on the McCarthyism we are seeing from many in the Democratic establishment in their attacks on the left, it is worth mentioning some signs of sanity from some Democrats. While it only applies to some, Politico has written that Democrats fear Russia probe blowback:
Democrats are increasingly conflicted about how forcefully to press the issue of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Fearful of alienating voters who appear more concerned about the economy and health care, Democrats campaigning in districts across the country are de-emphasizing Russia in their rhetoric — and some are warning that a persistent focus on the Russia investigation could backfire.
“In the races where I’m working, I think voters think that Russia is important and that the questions need to get answered,” Bill Burton, a veteran Democratic consultant, said at a political convention this past weekend. “But they’re mostly sick of hearing about it, and they want to hear politicians talk about things that are more directly important in their lives.”
…California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s running for governor, was even more direct in a recent appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” The Russia investigation, he said, “doesn’t do anything for Democrats at all … It’s a loser.”
The problem for Democrats goes beyond this. While we do not know the final results or everything which Mueller has uncovered, based upon what has been released it increasingly looks like the Democrats have gone far beyond the facts in making this a political issue. While the Russians may have meddled to some degree in the election, the fact is that the Russians have attempted to meddle in our elections for decades–just as we have meddled in their elections and the elections of many other countries.
While Donald Trump along with members of his family and campaign have had many suspicious actions involving Russia, there has been no evidence of successful collusion between them to impact the election. I have long believed that Trump’s actions were based more upon possible financial crimes and covering up activities of his family and associates. Last spring week former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in his Congressional testimony: “To my current knowledge, the Russian government did not through any cyber intrusion alter ballots, ballot counts or reporting of election results.” We have not seen anything to alter this.
While Donald Trump, Jr. showed he was not above meeting with Russians to attempt to affect the election, it turned out that Russia had nothing to offer. The closet thing we have to evidence that Russia might have attempted to hack the election showed that they were not successful. The stories of Jared Kushner seeking a back channel to communicate with Russia both suggests that this was over financial dealings, and raises the question as to why he would need to set up a back channel after the election if they had already been colluding with Russia.
There remains questions as to whether the claims from the intelligence community that Russia was responsible for the Wikileaks release of email are any more valid than the claims of Saddam having WMD before the invasion of Iraq. Even if the investigations should show that Russia was responsible for the hacked email, nobody has seriously questioned the accuracy of the information released by Wikileaks. The Wikileaks releases of hacked email hurt because it verified criticism that the DNC had violated its own rules in rigging the nomination for Clinton, and in showing Clinton’s dishonesty. The undemocratic manner in which a major political party picks its nominees is a far more serious threat to democracy than anything actually achieved by Russia.
Blaming Clinton’s loss on Russian propaganda on social media ignores the strong opposition to Clinton from many segments of the political spectrum and the large amount of anti-Clinton material which would be present independent of Russia. People on the left have opposed DLC Democrats like the Clintons since the 1990’s, and have opposed Clinton’s neoconservative interventionism since the Bush years, independent of any Russian influence. Russia certainly cannot be blamed for similar Democratic loses in 2010 and 2016 when they also performed poorly by running as a Republican-lite party. The real problem is that by copying the policies of Republicans, Democrats turn off many potential voters while failing to win over Republicans.
Politico is right that Democrats run the risk that they will not win elections based upon their anti-Russia hysteria because this is not the major concern of voters. Democrats face a greater risk that their initial claims might be shown to be unsubstantiated partisan claims, further damaging their credibility. In October, Hillary Clinton claimed that Donald Trump would be threatening democracy by not accepting the results of the election. Democrats now risk being held to Hillary Clinton’s own standards.
Ryan Cooper recently discussed how the left questions establishment Democrats such as Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Deval Patrick over their records. He predicted in The Week how the Democratic establishment will respond by continuing to play dirty against the left:
..if they just want to have a retread of the 2015-16 primary, the center could just try to win dirty. The left, they might say (working hand-in-glove with sympathetic columnists), just doesn’t like minority or female candidates because they are racist and sexist.
I would bet quite a lot of money the centrist Democratic establishment will opt for the latter strategy. Indeed, some are already doing so — like Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress, elite Democrats’ in-house think tank.
Of course that is what we are already seeing. Just today Shareblue has a defense of Kamala Harris which resorts to such dirty attacks, claiming that the objection to Harris from the left is that she “shares a gender with Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Such attacks on the left based upon false claims of misogyny are especially absurd considering that many people who ultimately backed Sanders had previously supported Elizabeth Warren before she declined to run. Some wound up voting for Jill Stein. Many are now backing Tulsi Gabbard for the 2020 nomination. (Many of us are also excited about Jodie Whittaker breaking the glass ceiling in the TARDIS.)
Many of the most vile attacks on Bernie Sanders and the left have come from former Clinton staffer Peter Daou, who runs Shareblue. The Washington Free Beacon showed a recent tirade from Daou on Twitter within the past week. Conservative Democrats (often labeled centrists in light of how far right the middle has moved in American politics) have become the major opponents of liberal and progressive ideas, while turning to the tactics of the far right.
George Zornick responded to MyCarthy style attacks on Bernie Sanders from Peter Daou and Melissa McEwan in an article at The Nation entitled, Bernie Sanders Is a Russian Agent, and Other Things I Learned This Week: A case study in how fake news is attracting liberals. He pointed out how Peter Daou has started a string of accusations that Sanders is practically a Russian agent based upon false claims:
The jumping-off point seems to have been when Peter Daou, an avowed Hillary Clinton fan and major Twitter personality, quoted-tweeted my original post. Daou spends almost as much time energetically trashing Sanders as he does attacking Trump, and many of the respondents were followers of his. He certainly did not imply Sanders was a secret KGB asset, though, writing only: “Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul were the ONLY TWO VOTES **AGAINST** the Russia sanctions bill. Bernie was out of sync with every Dem senator.” (It was a Russia/Iran sanctions bill, and Sanders made it clear he objected only to the Iran part, but never mind.)
Sanders made his position quite clear, including on his web site, but such facts are irrelevant to anti-liberal hatchet men like Daou who are more interested in Swift Boating Sanders (even if Sanders’ concerns were also expressed by John Kerry). If anything, I think that Sanders has been too accepting of the Democratic party line on Russia, which goes far beyond the facts which have been established. Despite this, while Daou’s followers on social media have found it a sign of extremism that Sanders and Paul voted together, I see a view shared by two Senators who frequently differ from their party’s orthodoxy to be worthy of consideration.
Zornick went on:
So how did people jump to this conclusion that Bernie Sanders, by opposing Democrats, must ipso facto be working at the behest of Russia? It wasn’t entirely organic. And it points to how fake news can infect some of our brethren on the left.
Blame starts with the people with megaphones that peddle this nonsense. Eric Garland, who became a Twitter celebrity with his bizarre “game theory” thread, has explicitly tied Sanders to Russia in his threads. So has Melissa McEwan on her Shakesville blog. “Bernie Sanders, who has visited Russia, has not been, to my knowledge, suspected of being vulnerable by Russian kompromat cultivated on his visits, unlike Donald Trump. But, as I said above, if I intend to say something, I will state it plainly, and here I am plainly stating that I do believe these connections warrant more scrutiny,” she wrote. The Palmer Report, which churns out Russia-related fake news by the pixel load, wrote a post in April: “Bernie Sanders must disclose what he knows about his campaign adviser Tad Devine and Russia.” And of course, uber-grifter Louise Mensch has joined the conspiracy theorists.
We have a long way to go until the 2020 primary battles and can expect to see far more of such dirty tactics from conservative Democrats who place victory for someone with a D after their name over principle, failing to understand that their abandonment of principle is a major reason why Democrats have been on such a losing streak and could not even beat Donald Trump.
