DramatistDreamer

Obamacare premiums were stabilizing. Then Trump happened.

Quite a bizarre article about a cult masquerading as a women's empowerment group. Catherine Oxenburg (Dynasty) talks about trying to get her 26 year old daughter out of the cult. Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded

Well written Op-Ed piece. Yes, This Is a Witch Hunt. I’m a Witch and I’m Hunting You.

When you look at who is making top Box Office gains these days, it's not these guys (the HWs of the world, I'm referring to)! Movies like Get Out and Hidden Figures, and Wonder Woman have all made bigger box office than Blade Runner. Recent studies have shown that movies with diverse casts are making more money at the Box Office now. I think there is something to the theory that loss of money, leads to loss of power, and will make these guys more vulnerable to have their misdeeds exposed. I also believe many women (and some men) are feeling more empowered to speak out, now that others have spoken up and the stigma is being chipped away. The old Hollywood model of successful box office has been changing for years now and I don't see it going back. There has been a definite shift over the past few years, (within the studio system and the introduction of disrupters like Netflix) and most of it has to do with money.

Most human beings, especially those in high visibility positions might actually care about looking like a whole entire asswipe but not Trump. In more uplifting news- Yet another travel ban BLOCKED by a Federal Judge Federal judge blocks Trump’s third travel ban

Looks he's trying to save himself for the Paris Masters and then the Year end Championships/WTF. Something tells me that Nadal is none too anxious to play in Federer's hometown of Basel. In fact, I can't remember the last time he played that tournament since he seems to routinely skip it.

Wow. That stairs hangup is just...

Life gets more and more dangerous for journalists who are exposing corruption. How very sad. Malta car bomb kills Panama Papers journalist

And as we discuss Iraq, there is another conflict brewing in the Kirkuk area. Government militias moved into the Kurdish region and there have been clashes between government forces and Kurdish forces, as well as the pesh merga. I couldn't believe it when I actually saw that the Iraqi PM called reports of clashes "Fake News". The fact that he's parrotting Trumpist language alone is a cause for grave concern.

Oh but it does! Much like what happened in the Niger region, Trump has changed course on the policies that had been in place there and we're likely looking at the tragic results of that policy change to a more capricious strategy. It is absolutely horrendous what has happened to the victims. It is likely that it will only be the African Union that steps in to help try and remedy the aftermath of the carnage. Speaking of Africa and Niger. Fanta Fascist still has yet to acknowledge the servicemen who died. Wasn't the GOP supposed to be all about patriotism and respect for the military? This image has been floating around social media for the past few days on various Twitter feeds.

@Cat posted this in the Status Updates but I want to post the link that she provided here as well. Mogadishu truck bomb: 500 casualties in Somalia’s worst terrorist attack Lest, people think that Orange Menace has nothing to do with this, he recently loosened the restrictions on drones (yes, you guessed it, it was an Obama administration-era restriction) which many experts believe was one of the factors for a retaliation by the Shabab (some Shabab have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, while others have taken an oath of allegiance to ISIS, terrorism doesn't seem particularly choosey).

I think the calendar has something to do with it but I also think lack of surface diversity, and Renée Stubbs made an interesting point when she stated that she thought the texture and the way racquets are strung are leading to a lot of wrist, elbow and shoulder (even in rare cases, the back) injuries now. I'm seeing quite a bit of wrist and elbow injuries, even on the WTA Tour, in the last two years. And with the wrist is seems like players are out multiple times. On the women's tour, many of the players seems to be getting multiple surgeries at earlier and earlier ages. I was shocked to find out how many surgeries Madison Keys has had on the same wrist and she still had to withdraw from two tournaments in the past month and she's still in her early 20s! I think I read somewhere that the ATP Tour planned to tackle the issue of injuries during their off-season (what there is of it) but honestly, it's also a problem on the Women's Tour too, although this has been camouflaged by some of the feel-good stories that happened this year in the WTA.

I must preface this to say that I'm not a Federer fan, I don't hate him but I'd love for other guys to come up and win big titles. Having said this, I hate how slow some of the hardcourts were this season and the USO was one of them. When you have too many slower courts, you get lengthy grinding matches, which can be one of the factors that lead to injury (according to some tennis pundits there are other factors like the strings). Also, I don't ever want to see another 6 hour final like the one that Nadal and Djokovic had several years ago. The men's tour is being decimated by injuries. If we want to see players actually fulfill their potential, having them grind themselves down to multiple surgeries and constant injuries is not a way to achieve this.

@Hunk Chandler Massey You really thought Nadal would win? The courts were so fast though. I think Federer excels on fast courts. Nadal's hard court game has come a long way since his early days but he's still not as confident on fast courts as he is on the slightly slower ones and Shanghai looked much faster than the USO this year, in terms of speed.

So, no word on the worst terrorist attack in Somalia's history? At least 230 people dead.

This is a pretty cool thread. Hope it grows to include more players.

You can tell Courtney Love was afraid of getting sued. She tweeted that after saying this she was banned by CAA.

ICYMI from the NYPost, Shrinks take to streets to demand ‘narcissistic’ Trump’s ouster

And this from a state where people proclaim loudly that they are Pro-Life. Their actions don't verify this. And this is a blunt statement but, explains the dysfunction of this current administration, in a nutshell.

I don't know whether people have seen this, but I was reading an article on Puerto Rico and came across this clip of Ricky Martín (GH, Miguel) on Ellen talking about relief efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island.

Several states vow to sue Trump administration over Obamacare sabotage

I only listened to one recording earlier in the week and that was all I could stomach, TBH. It made me so upset.

Pamela Long was a talented writer. I was reading that some people blamed her for having Reva Shayne eat the show in her second stint as HW for GL but I mostly enjoyed those years.

@Mitch No fair, those screenshots are from the same scene, the plane ride where he returns to Oakdale, thinking that Sierra was dead! Victor Newman on Y&R cried a lot more over the course of his soap career than Craig. I do think that the writing exploited the fact that Bryce could 'cry on cue' unlike a lot of his male peers. Perhaps too much but Marland was very much 'going with the flow' of the times. Could Craig have been written less "emo" during that time? Yes, but I can't blame Marland for writing the character to appeal to the majority of his audience members who were women and swooned over such a characterization. The early 80s were the time of "The Cad" where you saw a roguish Craig and the emergence of "Tad the Cad" on AMC. The late 80s were the times of "The Sensitive Man" where you saw much more expressive male characters-- look at the representation of 'non-villain' male characters on the soaps and you will see this pattern.