DRW50

I guess I just find this type of behavior to be very shallow. To be honest, as cynical as this makes me sound, my first thought was he didn't even vote and he just wanted to get in front of a camera. I do see what you mean though.

Someone should give him some volunteer organizations so that he can actually help the people these votes hurt rather than just getting media attention.

I don't think it's Rove-style machinations, I just think they have a basic goal in all of this which is hidden somewhat more than it should be by all the focus on GOP infighting. Most of the infighting is real, but I think it's also probably somewhat encouraged if it helps distract from the unified goals they do have that will be spun to the public and the press as, "It could have been worse."

I think most people knew it. What the article seemed to be suggesting, to me anyway, is that a lot of the bickering over this plan that has gotten most of the attention in the press and among a lot of activists is a cover to help their real plans get through more smoothly.

So it looks like a lot of the backbiting over the ACA changes may just be a shell game on the part of the GOP to get away with gutting Medicaid. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obamacare-repeal-medicaid-trojan-horse

That Liz/Neil/Marie triangle certainly looks...wild.

More on the Dutch elections. http://www.politico.eu/article/how-to-lose-but-win-5-takeaways-from-the-dutch-election-mark-rutte-geert-wilders/

That "pro-EU = sane voter" tweet makes me pause, as it shows how out of touch some may still be due to a lucky escape. The EU has a ton of problems and is not a paradise, even to the migrants who drowned in the name of supposed charity. The blind eye turned to many growing struggles in so many EU countries still needs to be addressed. It's just that people in the Netherlands, perhaps due to Wilders' own insanity or perhaps due to our beloved President, realized the alternative was much worse. If that tweet was from an American, then I'd say the problem with the US wasn't so many "insane people," as Hillary won the popular vote by millions...it was the electoral college. But again that type of tweet is a good reminder of why we often lose here too.

I see that one of the people on the GOP side is Karen Handel, who has failed and failed and failed at a variety of offices. She may be best known for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Handel#Susan_G._Komen_for_the_Cure

Just awful stuff...you can see even here they take such time to make us pity Dash and paint his female lawyer as the one to hiss at. At least they did give Julia some great material in that scene, powerful work from NLG, especially when she tells Dash that a part of her has died thanks to the not guilty verdict. I'm always impressed with her work as Julia - it's so strong and has such clarity. She was born to play that part.

Thanks.

Thanks. I thought they were different, as I couldn't imagine Julia dating Keith. They just blur in my head.

That John Beck character Julia was with in some of the clips above - was that the Keith recast? Or someone else? He looks and acts so stiff, I'm not sure why he was cast.

I don't think it had to be sat on but it should have been reported a different way. If there's one thing I wish that those in the media had learned from the election it's that going after Trump directly doesn't work. He's teflon, because people spent so much time attacking him that many are simply numb to it. The greatest strengths from the left and the middle and sane conservatives so far has been in going after his associates, causing them to resign or be discredited, and leaking info in a way that causes paranoia and for him to turn against his own. I do get what you're saying...I just think that the way she handled this comes across as more inside baseball smirking, the kind that usually involves the press being more focused on how awesome they are than on the world burning around them.

They won't be, as they can just say Hillary is to blame for losing and she obviously had something to hide, and so on. These are stupid, selfish people living in towers looking down at the peasants. This was the last election where purity contests should have been so dominant, yet that's exactly what happened. It was obvious to anyone with sense that while Hillary was cozy with Wall Street, she was still going to provide more checks and balances than Trump and a GOP Congress would. But people assumed she would win and Trump would lose, and that this was the best way to box her in. Or they talked themselves into believing that both were the same. This gave the media an opening to go on and on and on about it. The average voter likely doesn't know the difference between Goldman Sachs and the Benny Hill song. The people who did know the difference screwed us all over. It still benefits Trump because it means the next time there is a "breaking" story on this, more people will automatically tune it out, as they remember the overhype of the last time. But Rachel Maddow, like everyone else at MSNBC, is more interested in what people think of her than of the greater good.

Most of the people who voted for him never cared about that - that was Bernie and Jill Stein supporters who likely thought she would win and they would just rough her up first to make her more compliant, or that Trump really was no different than Hillary. As for the tax returns, to be honest I just don't see what the point is now, just as I don't see the point of that woman arguing with Sean Spicer in the supermarket and saying he threatened her, and so on. I feel like these are all shell games to the real stories going on - like the one today about the Senate voting to lift Obama's ban on too much drug testing in the workplace.

What did you think of Cruz and Kelly? I guess they kept up the whole thing of Eden in a bad disguise so we'd get the scenes in the clip above where Sophia realizes who she is. As powerful as those were it wasn't worth the other characters looking foolish. They should have had her gaslight Sophia and have no one else but Sophia see her. Then viewers could have wondered whether she was simply hallucinating Eden, as the family would have wondered as well. The other thing I take from the clips is that the Mason scenes suggest the Dobsons reset him back to factory settings, complete with lengthy monologues about the evils of CC Capwell. While Gordon Thomson can do a mean monologue, it doesn't really suit the character by that point. The dialogue in the Augusta and Mason scene was very good though. The writing for Gina also seems very uneasy...although maybe if I saw more of it I'd have a different opinion. What was it like watching Augusta at this time? She seems out of place. Was she out of place for all of Sorel's return?

I wonder how fans at the time felt about Cruz having all these emotional cathartic scenes with a brand new character he was obviously supposed to become involved with. I can't imagine they were thrilled. Terri Garber was fun on ATWT but she is not suited for this role.

The woman in the ad at 2 minutes looks so familiar. It's not Fran Myers is it?

I don't have a huge issue with him as a person, I just find him repulsive to watch as an actor. He was one of the big factors in OLTL becoming unwatchable for me and I didn't care for him on AW either, other than toward the end, when he was checked out.

I tend to wonder how many put up with Daredevil (which is essentially a generic white man mixed up in "mysterious" other cultures) expecting some big departure for Iron Fist. Ultimately I'd say there are other genres that will have this but Marvel Fu isn't one of them. Sorry, I know this is off topic for GoT. The only thing I heard about that show recently is an item about Ed Sheeran being on it, which...yeah. Good for his fans I guess.

You mean Michelle? Dennis was blackmailing her. The scenes with Tina, Sylvie and Shirley were very strong. It gets no credit but Tina's story has actually been the strongest part of EE for the last year.