DRW50

And gift wrapping, and Christmas lights... I wish I'd done more of what I promised myself I'd do about saving wrapping paper. My grandmother would have.

In tariff news, here's a list of items Wal-Mart says will increase in price due to the latest tariffs against China. And this is just the start. https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-products-hit-hardest-by-trump-china-trade-war-2018-9

I wasn't talking about 2018, I was talking about 2020, when Trump is on the ballot, but I do think that the same women who turned out to vote for him when he repeatedly attacked the physical appearance of women, insulted them by talking about menstrual bleeding, bragged on tape about "grabbing 'em by the !@#$%^&*]," will come out again this time, as he made it very clear who he was and how he felt about women in that campaign. I don't have any faith in the public, so I am just going to wait and see and expect the worst, as I did in 2016, but my main comments were about the article, which seemed to just be about how Democrats feel if they yell really really loud about Trump (the same thing they did two years ago, when it didn't work), then they will win.

This just makes me roll my eyes. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/23/democrats-michelle-obama-trump-837499 Clegg called Michelle Obama “almost a perfect public figure,” and recalled in “We go high” a “gorgeous speech that really spoke to me in the moment.” But he added that “I think [Michelle] Obama would be the very first person to acknowledge … that what we faced in 2007 and 2008 was a wildly different world, and a wildly different media environment.” How soon many forget that Michelle Obama was not in a wildly different world or media environment in 2008 - she was viciously attacked by the right wing as hating America, and even allegedly liberal media pumped out magazine covers featuring her as gun-toting and militant. It's just that many on the left simply didn't care, as they also cared very little about anything said about her over the next 8 years (including repeated slams against her and her daughters like being compared to apes and monkeys), because they were too busy going on about what a disappointment she'd been and how she was supposed to use her First Lady role to march in the streets. Her speech was about how she had to survive as First Lady, and beyond that, how black women generally have to survive in the world. Her speech wasn't meant to be a guidebook for people who never had a lot of respect for her in the first place. The truth is that many people in the 2016 election did attack Trump - it's just that it wasn't enough. Yelling about Trump and what Trump was going to do just made the conversation even more about him and did nothing to make people less anxious about Hillary. If their strategy is still nothing more than yelling about Trump, they will be in the same position in 2020 that they were in 2016.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/23/ed-whelan-kavanaugh-theory-837445 A special comment to Mr. Whelan:

Ah. Was that the profile with a Nazi?

What is it you dislike about Peters? Is he another anti-Hillary stooge? Not even surprised that "evangelical" "leaders" are all in for abusers. Franklin Graham makes me sick, and Ralph Reed is someone who has already tried and failed at anything worth noticing.

I thought all the women would be too scared to say something, with the backlash Ford has faced. They're very brave. I wish that we had legislators who actually cared, because the allegations of Kavanaugh making sure his clerks all looked like hot models are very disturbing, and they have been drowned out.

Do any of you remember when the possible nominees were going around, and some on the right, like Ben Shapiro, were trying to speak out against Kavanaugh? The idea was that it was because he was not reliably conservative enough, but I wonder now if someone at the time knew something and was trying to stop it...they just didn't say the right things (or Trump didn't care because he wanted someone he knew would be there for him if he was ever facing charges). The sad thing is I still don't know if this will stop him. I don't think it will. I'm already seeing people dismiss it. A few days ago I was reading an article claiming that before the allegations, Kavanaugh was some kind of example of the power of women, because he had a wife and daughters. That's the worst kind of pandering. It shows just how deluded Republicans are, yet how good they are at controlling the narrative.

Thanks. I didn't know RHOBH did that well.

@Juliajms did you see unbearable Lindsey Graham going around saying that he would vote for Kavanaugh no matter what unless something different to the current information they have became available? I'd like to think this release was timed just to make him choke on it. Not that he will change his vote, no matter how many come forward.

Is Vanderpump Rules still a big show? All the focus on 40-year olds reading out trashy scripts just sort of blurred together for me.

I thought they made a handsome couple, and Erika and Roy obviously liked working together. I was mostly just surprised they were intended to be a very sexual couple as I never really felt that way with them.

Thanks! I got so tired of Michael and bored of the Baldwins-Fishers and the odd entitlement that seemed to keep them on the canvas far longer than they deserved that I now kind of just pretend Michael never came back after this stint.

Sad that I knew it would be a Republican. St. Cloud is Michelle Bachmann's stomping ground. It seems to be exurb toxic hell.

I wonder if they are just going with the lowered expectations tactic.

I'm not the author of course but I thought you did a fine job of only sharing certain tidbits while repeatedly asking people to buy the book. If not for you I never would have even heard of the book.

I thought the writing for Niki was still somewhat layered in the '80s, even if the performance wasn't. Bits like her helping Viki recover from her stroke. The '95 stuff was when she just seemed to become complete scum. And this was also the start of inviting viewers to laugh at sexual abuse (as it was supposed to be both weird and hilarious that Niki's abuse led her to do things like try to have sex with Joey), which Ron took the ball and ran with in later years.

That's the thing with these out of touch, sneering types - they didn't even listen to the words out of his own mouth. His own words! He made it clear and has made it clear for decades how he feels about trade. He didn't hide it. He didn't hold back. This is what he wants and has wanted for a very long time. They thought someone would be there to hold his hand and everything would be alright. And now we have to suffer the consequences, while they cry into their large wads of cash. CNN has a history of this (as does MSNBC), don't they? Just another reminder that Anderson Cooper tends to lean to the right, for all his phony posturing. Jeff Zucker cheered Trump running for President. You don't do that unless you share a kinship with him.

John Mulaney making me more interested in OC than I generally have been in a number of years...

Chuck Grassley is reminding me that before he mostly became known for being a huge [!@#$%^&*] with too much power there used to be "fun" articles about his wacky social media adventures. Which apparently involve him tweeting like he's texting on the toilet.

I had issues with the way that Viki's 1995 alters (namely the way that Niki was rewritten, which led to the path of her eventually becoming a complete monster), but Tori was fascinating. I wish they'd done more with her, but maybe it was for the best they only really had that one plot. I feel like I am extremely hard on OLTL compared to other soaps, and I don't even entirely know why. If I ever have time I will go back and rewatch Malone and SBH's OLTL. It was the first time I watched OLTL, on the one hand, but on the other hand, it was difficult to fully invest because there were just so many elements I disliked (Antonio, Todd, Kelly, etc.).

I don't think he'll run as a Democrat. I think he'll run as a "third way" type to push this fantasy that many in the media have of some kind of dream party combining the GOP's fiscal conservatism with the Democrats' social liberalism. I remember when they got hot over this in 2016, only for it to go nowhere.

The odd thing about that quote is I just never got that great passionate vibe between Sloan and Viki. And it is even more odd if the seeds were in place that she was with him because he was like her father. I could see it more with Viki and Ben, or I could have if I did not find Mark Derwin about as attractive as a block of cheese.

Weigel's tweet interests me mostly because I'm pretty sure this is exactly what that phony Bloomberg is likely going to do. And the media will lap it up, as they spent years trying to make him happen (remember when he was going to run in 2012, or 2016, or when he was going to stop national gun violence?). I'm not a woman so I have no room to speak about how they will vote, but in this case I do wonder how much of the Trump female vote is already locked in due to what he did in 2016. You knew what you were getting with him, to say the least, in terms of misogyny and harassment of women. If he loses some of the female vote I think it will be on economic issues, or maybe, to a lesser degree, social issues.