DramatistDreamer

17 minutes ago, Vee said:

Meanwhile:

It is well known (or should be) that Jared Kushner has been compromised to do the bidding of Saudia Arabia/Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE.  You can see this clearly in the U.S. shift in attitude toward Qatar, a U.S. ally that also has air bases for the U.S. military, which has now become antagonistic.

I looked at that interview from a legal standpoint and the fact that the FEC stated that the campaign finance violation(s) may, in fact, be worse than in the Edwards' case to be pretty significant.

I know many people chose to gravitate to the more salacious aspects but Cliffords' lawyer, Mr. Avenatti emphasized that this case was all about the cover up.  I also believe that to be as important as the possible FEC violation(s).

Speaking of the GOP in shambles,

This guy chooses not to run again because he knows he can't win in a newly drawn district--one that no longer heavily favors Republicans.

Republican Rep. Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania won't seek re-election

Very effective of Daniels'/Cliffords' lawyer to repeatedly refer to Cohen's/Trump's tactics as being "thuggish".  A very apt description of how Trump Inc. has been known to operate.

Interesting too that this is being seen as being worse than John Edwards' campaign violations, which were pretty darn bad.

12 hours ago, DRW50 said:

 

I guess it shows how much acclaim is worth in profit that they won't pay her money but will go to the press to either head off a story or try to look good. 

 

And now Matt Smith is expected to pay her money for something he had no involvement in. This type of thing, if it goes on too much, is likely to lead to lawsuits over spilling contractual details. 

 

Considering how many people throw around money for various crowdfunding gestures, maybe they should just raise the money for Claire Foy themselves. 

 

I also see from Claire Foy's comments that she did not ask for any of this to become a public issue. This is something which will likely be an issue for her career as well as Smith's.

 

If they were not approached first, then the company's tub-thumping about how much they now care about women and equality rings very hollow indeed.

It's not just about acclaim, they literally used her image in every single one of their promotional ads for the show.  Even when her co-stars were in promos, she was featured alongside them in addition to ads that featured her alone.

I don't agree with the idea that Smith should somehow donate/refund the difference in salary but the production company should pay Foy commensurate to her value to the show, a helluva lot since any show about the British crown in the 20th and 21st century simply could never place without Queen. 

In fact, critical acclaim mattered a great deal to this company and Netflix because once Claire Foy won her acting awards (she won more than one), Netflix and the production company doubled-down on using her image to promote the show.

Pay the lady what she's worth.

And since it was the production company who decided to "let the cat out of the bag", not Netflix (or anyone else), the responsibility to fix this should rest with the production company.

Based on the show he wrote for cable (A New Day In Eden), I think Marland would've jumped at another chance to write far more edgy racier fare than what he was allowed to do in daytime.

pic.twitter.com/BalT2lgF3g

— 𝒟𝒶𝓋𝒾𝒹 𝒦𝒶𝓃𝑒 (@DKTNNS) March 24, 2018

This is the response from the Miami Open. Doesn't sound as if anything will be resolved anytime soon.

Official statement regarding last night’s Wozniacki-Puig match: pic.twitter.com/JHEjO1RZ7r

— Miami Open (@MiamiOpen) March 24, 2018

24 minutes ago, Juliajms said:

I saw this yesterday, tweeted out by Avenatti.  Seems like that 60 Minutes interview has all the potential to be Fire!  Also, Trump is noticeably silent about it on twitter.

Meanwhile, I've been checking in with some of the speeches from the March For Our Lives event online and these kids are so inspiring!  They are so much more thoughtful, eloquent and resilient than the people who currently run this country.

It's like a OLTL reunion on Netflix. 

Shaun Evans makes a cameo in Roxanne Roxanne as a bouncer who doesn't want to let Roxanne rap and her friend (Shenell Edmonds) is trying to change his mind.

Oh my goodness, Shenell Edmonds (Destiny, OLTL) is playing Roxanne Shanté's friend in the Netflix movie Roxanne Roxanne.  It took half a second to recognize her.

Now Playing on @netflix is Roxanne Shanté Biopic, #RoxanneRoxanne with @chanteaadams @NiaLong Mahershala Ali @shenelledmonds - https://t.co/ALNboIWRi4 pic.twitter.com/xuY77wvpUz

— Wilson Morales (@blackfilm) March 23, 2018

Also, did anyone see Nia Long's SAG interview?  Guiding Light is literally the first show that gets mentioned.

I guess nobody saw Long's Uncensored episode on TV One?  She talks about getting the call about an audition for Guiding Light fresh out of high school.  She did talk about not liking the audition process but getting the role.

Honestly, I think had anyone bothered to ask Nia Long, she would likely have gladly talked about it but she's unlikely to bring it up out of nowhere.

I don't remember her bringing up Boys In The Hood or The Best Man and more people likely know her from those roles. Perhaps she sensed that time was limited and wanted to use it to promote her latest project.

In any case, I put the onus at the women of The Talk for failing to introduce the topic, then again, I don't expect them to draw attention to either of the two canceled soaps, lest they stir feelings about ATWT, the soap they replaced.

7 minutes ago, kalbir said:

 

Sheryl Underwood knew Taye Diggs was on GL so we knew she was watching in the late 1990s.

Yeah but Long as long gone by then. 

It may not always have been great storyline (I agree that ATWT could have and should have kept Lisa and Lucinda clashing) but Lisa had storyline until the mid 90s.

The last several years of the show's existance the Lisa character was totally marginalized and then shut out.  Eileen Fulton was the most upset about this.

Trump signed  the spending bill.

Is this what all the hullabaloo was about?

I remember Bolton railing on CNN during the times of the Bush administration.  A real nutter!

Lord help us all if Trump gets cornered on any number of the violations he has perpetrated, both personally and during his administration-- surely Bolton will help orchestrate some conflict or beat the drums of war because he is an avid warmonger.

I could imagine a scenario where the U.S. will suddenly step up their footprint in an African country where they already have a presence (Niger, Mali, etc.), thinking that it is too "far flung" for Americans to notice or care, the way the Bush administration once thought of Iraq (remember the Bush White House's adage that the U.S. should fight "them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here", there being Iraq and here being the U.S.?

There is a reason why the Trump WH has been steadily upping the  U.S. military presence in Africa in the past year.

US trade war: global shares plummet as China signals tariff retaliation – business live https://t.co/swoWVRSCGj

— The Guardian (@guardian) March 23, 2018

I saw the segment and couldn't help but think that it's likely Sheryl wasn't watching GL in the 90s and had no idea Nia Long was on the show.  Someone should've done research.

Keys retired from her match against Azarenka.  

Did Keys play Indian Wells?  I don't remember at all.

2 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Are things as bad in South Africa as some in the right wing media keep saying?

South Africa, like many countries including the U.S., is a land of contrasts. An economy that grows in leaps and bounds, with pockets of astonishing poverty.  There is a Black middle class that continues to expand, although the progress has slowed down in recent years, for various reasons.

South Africa's political problems (i.e. the ANC vis a vis Jacob Zuma) is what the right-wing media has no doubt affixed themselves to.  Zuma has been expelled as leader of the ANC but in being allowed to stay so long, he has done a lot of damage to the party of Mandela, mainly the reputation and trust the ANC had cultivated with the South African people over decades.

Needless to say, South Africa is in a (re)building phase.  Still, people must remember that it's South Africa, not Somalia with its struggle with militants...or Kenya, with its history of bursts of pre/post election ethnic violence. It's not even Nigeria, that has a simmering battle with Boko Haram.  It's not even Rwanda, that has an economy on a decided upswing yet has a president that dabbles in autocratic tendencies at times.  And all countries battle corruption, obviously some (e.g. Nigeria, Russia, etc) more than others.

South Africa has a youthful, increasingly highly educated population that has been building a lively arts/entertainment and technology scene for the past decade. 

It has more in common with its neighbor Botswana (which is proving to be more and more of an economic success story-which is why you never hear about it in the Western media) than it does with countries that are derisively referred to as 'failed states'.

For sure, South Africa has a lot of challenges that it must take on, like that of the governance/political issues that I mentioned but we should all resist the urge to compare the country to those that have had democracy for centuries (the U.S. is often still referred to as a "young country").  Remember that South Africa only emerged from apartheid in what, 1990-91? 

Of course, if you're living in poverty and squalor any wait is too long.  Just ask any post-Civil Rights POC who is stuck living in any ghetto in the U.S. 

One thing this political crisis with the ANC has brought about is that people now realize that the ANC is no longer the party that Mandela helped build and are now giving serious consideration to other political parties when they cast their votes, especially the youth, which I mentioned before, only grow in numbers.

Needless to say, right-wing media is the least likely to paint any balanced, nuanced or even accurate picture of what happens in any African country. Right-wing media can't even be trusted to report the facts of what happens with black people who live in the U.S., let alone a continent away.

This hasn't gotten attention in the way that the TPP and other trade agreements have gotten, nonetheless, there has indeed been a negotiation of a trade pact in Africa.

African nations sign largest free trade agreement since WTO

Of course, as with any trade pact, there are holdouts.  Nigeria (having one of the largest economies on the continent) is being heavily criticized for being one of them.  Perhaps they holdout because the pact is seen to favor small to medium-sized businesses and Nigeria's corporate conglomerates (they have more than any other country in Africa) don't stand to benefit directly. 

Having said that, it seems somewhat bizarre that any African country would forgo the opportunity to trim and/or eliminate high tariffs between African countries when African states currently pay higher tariffs to export between other African countries than they do to export outside of the continent.

Again, though, Nigeria and likely, South Africa (another holdout), with their large number of multinationals probably saw no problem with this arrangement as it was unlikely to affect them directly.  Still, that doesn't say much for their sense of unity and prosperity throughout the continent or their sense of forward-thinking in terms of the indirect benefits that they could get from their neighbors having more stable economies.

None of this should come as a surprised, given that the results were foretold a year ago but still...identical twins...WTH!

People ferried around to vote multiple times, ballots disappearing and reappearing elsewhere...

Тhis is what the Russian presidential election looked like where we were. #Russia #Putin #RussianElection #выборыhttps://t.co/DAAkInXoxG

— Polina Ivanova (@polina__ivanova) March 21, 2018

Yeah, this was not a surprise to me. Naomi is on a confidence high and is playing well and Serena's still trying to work her way back.  I think she is discovering that working her way back is very different from previous times when she was injured, a totally different situation for her.

A lot of people are now criticizing Serena because two reporters just reported that she skipped the post-match press.  One even tweeting that she "stormed" out.  The criticisms of the WS are always intense so I think I'll close out of that part of social media today.

According to sources, neither of the actors were aware of what the other was being paid.

JMO but Claire Foy should be paid a commensurate salary retroactively, at the very least for Season 2 where her image was consistently used (more than anyone else's) in all the promotional materials for the show. Honestly, her salary should've been equal to his in Season 1 (he may have been in Dr. Who but she's the bloody Queen!) and she should've made more than he in Season 2 because her acting award added to the show's critical acclaim.

Producers of the Netflix drama The Crown have apologised to actors Claire Foy and Matt Smith over the revelation that Foy was paid less than her male co-star https://t.co/FEBrbsGCSm

— ABC News (@abcnews) March 21, 2018

Here is the other part of Channel 4's documentary on Cambridge Analytica.  I don't know why they bothered to pretend that firing Nix would solve anything when the entire enterprise is shady as hell!