DramatistDreamer

Beth Chamberlain (Beth Raines, GL) appears in the final season of House Of Cards on Netflix.

I've forgotten that this type of style has now permeated the pulpit. I never expected a twenty-something year old man would be taken in by the kind of philosophy that Jimmy Swaggart promoted. Why so expensive? Did the side-piece go on the trip too?

Yeah, there were a few lines that I read from a few of the people that cause me to roll my eyes. Also, the guy that said that he was conflicted because although he disagreed with Trump's stance on immigration, he believes Trump is a man of God . I couldn't help but think that this guy really needed to get out of his bubble. Trump may be a lot of things but a devout Christian is NOT one of them. I was raised in church, have relatives who have done missionary work and I don't recognize Trump's brand of Christianity.

WTA needs to just go on ahead and get rid of OCC. It might be helping a few players, but in general, it's pointless.

It's been about eight years since I've watched an entire episode of anything on cable news but all I have to say is, never underestimate the calculus that goes into having an intelligent, engaging host who doesn't pander to the soundbyte. I have to put in a mention to the highly under-rated PBS Newshour that has been doing longform broadcast journalism for decades. I've watched them since I was a tweenager (Charlayne Hunter-Gault initially reeled me in). These days I admit, I don't watch as faithfully (I don't watch as much TV period) and that Brooks and Shields segment has to be the weakest part of their broadcast (thankfully, it's usually only once a week). I wasn't going to read this NYT article but I saw the first picture and excerpt and, it's not as bad as I thought it would be and it turned out to be a somewhat interesting read, particularly the young woman who states her feeling that the evangelicals have done immense harm to marginalized communities. There are some real conflicts going on within the evangelical community and just as I have suspected, it goes along demographics like age and ethnicity/race primarily. ‘God Is Going to Have to Forgive Me’: Young Evangelicals Speak Out

OMG. I have been seeing this story on the news and I had no idea the sisters were Saudi. The thread is quite chilling.

I'm just so tired.

The thread about Wohl approaching those financial firm for seed money and a bunch of perks was pretty funny too. Case in point for Trump being some sort of odd Pied Piper for the corrupt and/or criminally-minded:

It's not that I expected the challenge to birthright citizenship to succeed but I did expect him/them to try it. What I'm marveling at is the sheer frequency of these criminal operations. It's as if Trump were the "Pied Piper" of underhanded/criminal operations to subvert the government. They all are flocking his administration. Also, I'm bracing for those tax cuts to bite the economy. Trump is only good at making money for himself by gaming the system and short-changing people. He's no good at creating equity for others.

Mostly, I expected things like the challenge to birthright citizenship and harassment of ethnic minorities, racist incidents, etc., programs cut that help marginalized and low-income communities to happen but these bizarre events, like the one unfolding today is something that I still marvel at. This operation by Surefire Intelligence just feels like something lifted from the idea for a disregarded Kafka novel, or an idea that Ray Bradbury might have thrown away as being too preposterous to get published. And I didn't even post the story published by The Daily Beast.

Absolutely wild. All these GOP operatives who are trying to frame Mueller while simultaneously seeking to diminish the #MeToo movement. The women were the ones who were approached by this man and they reported this. So yes, do believe the women because they refused to perpetrate a fraud.

I didn't know who this Jacob Wohl person was until today but it seems like he's in for a spot of trouble with the FBI.

Bizarre, surreal and incredibly messy 'Merica.

People are also talking about this HRC tweet from two years ago. What a bizarre, surreal situation this country has found itself in.

This thread moves at a furious pace these days but I posted this tweet this morning. I can't see the original tweet but if you click the link, it'll probably take you to the original post where the reporter's tweet is embedded.

By the way, this is the "journalist" who did the Trump "interview" for Axios. I think people need to get reacquainted with the 14th Amendment.

Sigh. Desperate people resorting to desperate measures. Most of us saw this coming, in some form or another.

More violence and threats of violence. Yet another school shooting. Yet another suspicious package is reported. I had hoped that this week wouldn't carry the madness of last week but here we are at Monday, and I'm exhausted already.

Unfortunately by the time I was a teenager, I had already known people whose lives had been directly affected by the tragedy wrought by gun violence.

Yet another form of voter suppression at the polls.

Many people are saying that Fake News won the election in Brazil. However, there comes a time when people must use common sense to discern what is coming from a reputable news outlet and what is gossip, trash rhetoric and innuendo that is harmful to the health of a society. Brazilians need to take more time from watching some of those horrid telenovelas and watch a real news program and read an actual newspaper that reports actual news, not a WhatsApp or Facebook page. As bad as the situation that the U.S. is in politically, Brazil is worse. Corruption rules from every part of government, regardless of the political party and many of the politicians are equally as lawless as the street criminals they rail about. What makes me SMH even more is that a country that has the highest concentration of African descended people outside the African continent could elect a racist right-winger like Bolsonaro. It's entirely sad. One of two things will happen in Brazil in the next few years: either the majority of Brazilians will realize quickly that they've made a dreadful mistake and seek to correct this or Brazil will slide back into autocracy, just a level short of the dictatorship that they once had. Either way, it's bad and they are more likely to lose more than they could've hoped to gain. About a month or so ago, one of Brazil's major natural history museums burned to the ground. The burning of the museum, which house many of Brazil's oldest cultural and archaeological artifacts, caused many to lament how much of themselves they've lost as Brazilians--and how unfortunate that this is irreparable as those artifacts are irreplaceable. This election result feels like another moment in which Brazilians will lose more of themselves, the gains they've made since the days when the government used to hire hit squads to kill street children in Brazil. Then again, perhaps Brazilians welcome a return to those days-- how else can we explain Bolsonaro as head of state?

Although there are quite a few people who consistently write about voter suppression, they are usually quite marginalized. Ari Berman is one of the few who have access to the mainstream media outlets who consistently writes about voter suppression. A lot of these stats will make you shake your head, if it doesn't make your jaw drop altogether. The margins were so thin in a number of battleground states. How Voter Suppression Could Swing the Midterms