DramatistDreamer

...or that (*shrugs*).

Hasn't Netanyahu been fighting off corruption allegations for like, the last five years? He's now fighting formal charges too. Perhaps there are some open secrets out there that Trump cronies dug up. Trump himself revels in employing mafioso tactics. Speaking of unseemly persons-

The U.K. is one thing, anybody paying attention knew that their economy was headed for a fall but the German economy, the most stable in Europe and not prone to economic slides ( and best believe, that Trump and his cronies will not be able to harvest Germany) is also experiencing signs of an economic recession, that and the nervous Asian markets trending downward (for the moment, Asia has been...no big surprise managing economically better than the West) points to stronger signals of a recession. It's going to take someone much smarter than Trump is capable of, to pull the global economy away from a recession. When the media starts reporting, you know the signs are already being experienced in certain socio-economic corners. That's the way modern recessions and economic downturns work.

If? You mean when the U.K. economy bottoms out. It's already tanking.

We all knew (or some of us knew) that all it would take was a black man who was armed to the teeth to get the conversation going on gun control. And SURPRISE (not) the NRA has nothing to say on the matter!

Shari Redstone, who will now be the controlling shareholder of both companies, couldn't stand Les Moonves. The feeling was likely mutual. Just speculation but with all the turmoil CBS has been in for the past couple years, why wouldn't she seek to change some things? Every exec who ascends to the top job usually seeks to put his/her stamp on the company that they run, no? Interesting how the article mentions that the last time CBS and Viacom were (briefly) merged, Redstone was frustrated by what he saw as "few if any transformative acquisition properties on the horizon". Well, something tells me that that will not be the case this time around with the plethora of programming springing up. Wow, Phillipe Dauman was also ousted after engaging in a power struggle with Shari Redstone? I never knew that! I know Shari Redstone was not one to be messed with but I didn't realize the extent to which this is true!

Oof.

Not to belabor this fact but, if people aren't paying attention to this then they just don't care.

^^That article is a must-read, by the way. Yes, this lawsuit is being led by attorney general from SDNY, Letitia James and it is now 29 states that are suing the Trump administration.

I've been trying to say this for the longest time! Yet like mentions of the "working class", mentions of American farmers are assumed to be white. This has never been the case. Even today with all racism has stripped away, black farmers still exist and they are suffering.

I called this WAY back when! From the time that those allegations against Moonves began to publicly surface, I knew it was game over for the idea of keeping the two entities separate. The thumbs-up by Redstone just about says it all.

One economic analyst put the chance at 75% for a recession before the 2020 election. I'm not one for those types of prognostications (the kind where people reel off odds as if they're taking bets on the odds at Preakness) but I continue to hear/read of the red flags for the economy going forward.

And this man was unarmed. I'm in awe.

Don't worry about it, Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth's umpteenth split knocked the Clinton and Trump body count hashtags right off of Twitter yesterday. (*shrugs*).

From what I read this morning, I don't see this investigation stopping anytime soon, not while there are other facilitators (Maxwell included) lurking around. The aspect of the lack of watchfulness at these so-called maximum security, especially when there was a previous suicide attempt is another matter that should be up for discussion.

While I didn't grow up on a farm, I come from family who owned land, were planters who also raised, butchered and sold their own meat and dairy. Granted they are in the Caribbean, not the U.S. but I have walked that land and seen what goes into it and yeah, it's easy to simplify an entire way of life. I definitely don't agree with most of these farmer's political choices and in many ways they have brought this on themselves but I don't know of any country that doesn't encourage some sort of farming system. Most countries are encouraging more and better farming systems and food sustainability. Now maybe the discussion should be centered on a better, more equitable farming ecosystem (it's not just white farmers or industrial farmers, black farmers and small family farmers are the ones who stand to lose the most) instead of some sort of zero sum game in which the discussion is often framed. It is the fault of many farmers but everyday Americans are also to blame for not really wanting to acknowledge what really goes into the American food system. Most Americans don't even seem to know where their food comes from-- many of the same countries that get mocked daily are the very ones that Americans rely upon for the bulk of their produce. And the chances of contamination from traveling long distance from fields abroad to the supermarkets, well that's too much like knowing how the sausage is made (which I haven't eaten since the late 80s). Unless people are fine with being dependent on imported food, people need to care regardless of how selfish or foolish we think farmers have been.

So now instead of having two decades at least to get their lives together and transition into something else, the farmers get no time to save themselves, just face more ruin, bankruptcy and higher suicide rates, while everyone else collectively shrugs. Hm, or is that Atlas who shrugs?

Also, this happened today.

Some Democrats who had initially criticized the TPP have quietly walked back their remarks, saying instead that they would've continued the negotiations (as Japan did until they got an adequate amount of concessions). It was labor intensive work, which the Trump administration didn't want to do (because they're lazy and unconcerned). Trump later said, that he wanted in on the TPP then amended his remarks to give some sketchy later date, while the ASEAN countries basically thumbed their noses at Trump and said they'd wait for an hope for a new administration to join. The irony was that it was an initiative that the U.S. began under the Obama administration, so yes, the other countries were looking to the U.S. to have a leading role in doing the arduous work of hammering out the final guidelines for the trade deal. It's not as easy as saying it wouldn't work because the U.S. no longer "makes things". Trade is vital to any functioning economy. And nobody gets everything that they want in these agreements. Compromise was essential. Obama understood that. Others...not so much. Where the U.S. left off in the TPP negotiations was in the media res, it wasn't near the end, so what people were b*tching about wasn't even the final agreement. Trump ensured that if the U.S. ever wants to re-enter the TPP, it won't even be close to being on the U.S.' terms, America will only be in a position to comply with the existing framework, similar to the Paris Climate Accord. The Obama administration warned of many things that went ignored by conservatives as well as the media. People blame him/his administration because Obama treated Americans like adults who can understand and digest the message -- he refused to nag and beg, like some nanny. I guess people prefer a nag who will moan and whinge and repeat himself, over and over because that's surely what we've got in the White House now. I agree. An imperfect agreement would've been better than none. As it is, Trump is crowing about a small group of cattle ranchers being able to sell beef to parts of the E.U. but they are essentially locked out of Asian countries which are a much larger market. He's taken away the biggest best cuts of the "meat" and instead is bragging about giving them gizzards in return. It's also bizarre that farmers know that climate change is part of the mitigating circumstances to their suffering but most literally cannot bring themselves to say the actual word climate change. I saw a news report where the reporter interviewed a farmer and he said that he wasn't going to speak the words. Strange.

And this is, what the fourth time in a week??! I've lost track. Bumping this to the next page to continue the discussion.

The commentary is pretty self-evident.

Two more people died as a result of their injuries in El Paso. That stupid fool called Dayton Toledo during his speech, which I am relieved to have missed. The only reason I know is because it's trending online.

In retrospect, it would've been for the best to let Steve and Betsy leave together (as Marland originally did with Craig and Sierra before Craig had that comeback in the mid 90s only to reconcile with Sierra again) but Frank Runyeon had chemistry with other actresses who had been on the show like Kim Johnston Ulrich, so from their P.O.V. they should've been able to make it work with another actress-- and honestly, when you look at Frost when she first entered the scene, except for the hair, she looked more like a clone of Johnston Ulrich's Diana McColl than she did of Meg Ryan's Betsy. ATM that they recast with Lindsey Frost, it was unlikely that TPTB had any reason to believe that they would eventually get completely flummoxed by the pairing of Runyeon and Frost. That Betsy/Rod pairing was a disaster, there's no "ifs ands or buts" about that one. Honestly, if they could've sent them off for a few months after Ryan's departure and maybe had Steve (Runyeon) pop up in Oakdale (a la Penny Hughes) from time to time for business and then brought back Ulrich in the role as Betsy, I doubt that many fans would've quibbled about that. I know that Runyeon did other soaps for years until the early 00s, so they could've had Steve and Betsy around a lot longer than they did. But hindsight is 20/20, I guess.

I suspect as much. In fact, many East Coast states and cities that had a chapter of The Black Panthers also have some gun control policies, which have only gotten stronger in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook. The problem is often when people enter from states that have lax gun laws or smuggle guns from those states. And yeah, I already know that if these guys on Capitol Hill see a bunch of POC walking around with guns, many would become instant converts for gun control. There'd be flyers mysteriously showing up in people's mailboxes contending as much.