DramatistDreamer

Venus at 36 with an autoimmune disease playing her first clay match this year performed better than Halep against Siegemund. Halep's game may be in more trouble than I thought. I don't know how she is still at #5 in the world.

Kiki showed some grit and beats Maria!

Am I the only one just now seeing this Tweetstorm by David Frum? I wasn't going to read this but turned out, I couldn't resist. Ooh, salty. LOL Trump Just Whined About His Hard Job. Bush’s Speechwriter’s Response Is EPIC

If someone posted this before, pardon me, however, seems as if I'm just seeing this news. US GDP growth weakens to 0.7 percent ...but the good news is that there may be another housing market bubble on the horizon.

Serena's TED talk has been uploaded to her website. https://www.serenawilliams.com/#whats-new

I'm with Keith Boykin on this one.

Trump criticized Obama for writing Executive Orders but already Trump has written more EOs that Obama did in his first term. In fact, Trump has written more EOs than any other President in recorded history! Pay attention to the man behind the curtain: Trump is no wizard of government

He thought the job of President would be easier since a Black man used to do the job because Trump believes Blacks are incompetent, read his remarks over the years.

@Khan LMAO. I would've been quite gleeful had they never bothered with Hunt Block at all but I was trying to be charitable when I made the suggestion that he should've been cast as Rick Ryan instead of Craig (if they couldn't get Scott Bryce, they should've left the character with Sierra in Montega). For what it's worth, Jon Lindstrom could just as well have played Rick Ryan. I do agree that Jeffrey Meek always gave me Stenbeck vibes but not a son, like a long lost little brother to James. Speaking of interesting (re)casting, about a month ago, I was binge-watching some episodes with the last days of the Diana McColl character on the canvas and I kept thinking, Kim Ulrich could've been brought back to play Betsy, even for brief storyline arcs although it would've been nice to bring back the character- that is a recast I would've gotten behind, provided they didn't re-write the character too drastically, which unfortunately would likely have happened with that group of writers.

Aaaannnd milk! Yes, how could I forget about the evil Canadian dairy industry dropping the cost of ultrafiltered milk that the U.S. specializes in? Lumber was sooo earlier this week, it's all about dairy now! In other news, A lot of Black women (including yours truly) talked of feeling unsafe in the wake of Trump being elected. Well voilà, Sisters With Guns in the age of Trump! I guess that's one way of dealing with the issue. More black women are learning to use guns: 'this is a movement, and it starts now'

Having failed with China and been forced to eat his words, Trump apparently believes that Canada is low-hanging fruit and has decided to try to initiate a trade war with them over Canadian lumber. If Trump keeps trying to bully Canada, he may end up on the receiving end of a jujitsu move, courtesy of Trudeau.

Serena did a TED Talk this evening. Apparently, she found out she was pregnant two days before the start of the Australian Open! She also said she accidentally hit send when she was simply taking a photo to save to her phone. As much as I love Serena, I'm not buying that for one instant!

But if people simply ignore how racism plays into issues like gerrymandering and voter suppression (mechanisms that have traditionally and successfully kept people away from the polls), how is that "outreach" going to manifest itself into actual collective action? As for Cornell West, he had the nerve to speak at my school demanding tens of thousands of $$$$ for only 10 minutes worth of talk. He drained the coffers of the Black Student Union and for what? It wasn't even a memorable speech other than the feeling it left that we'd all been hustled. Bernie would probably be better served if he did start a new political party. What good is it to constantly rail about a party while simultaneously using their apparatus and infrastructure?? At least Nader didn't do this. I sort of disagree that Bernie's message is broad, it may appear broad on its face but is actually more specific and narrow to a key set of interests.

I don't even have to watch the scene and I remember it. It was so memorable in such a terrible way with Barbara practically channeling Grouch Marx before jumping out the window. The show truly had its ultimate jump the shark moment. It could only make its final descent from there.

Wimbledon will likely follow the French Open's lead.

Cilizza has also been trolling and low-key harassing Chelsea Clinton on social media over things that she has never claimed to say. He has the idea that she will someday run for office and aims to pin her to it. Clinton has never made such claims. Is this what one would call a 'pre-emptive strike'?

Supposedly, this re-branding was done without Trump's consent but the lincensing company knew darn well that her product wasn't selling so they relabelled to move her product off the shelves by whatever means available.

Normally, a story about a clothing label rebranding itself wouldn't be put in a Politics thread but 1) this was before Ivanka Trump (said owner of the clothing label) decided to insert herself into the WH business and 2). there is nothing normal about this current WH. Amidst Backlash, Ivanka Trump Clothing Is Secretly Relabelled as Adrienne Vittadini

Trump is unintelligible was trending on Twitter this morning. I don't know whether it still is though. Is sexual harrassment a damn epidemic at Fox NewsChannel?! http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/23/sean-hannity-accused-of-inviting-fox-news-guest-to-his-hotel-room.html?via=twitter_page

Nobody's gonna mention that Nadal won his 10th Monte Carlo Masters title? TBH, I saw very little of the tournament-maybe one full match and half of two others and I missed the final entirely. It was quite fitting that Tiafoe won the Sarasota Challenger (which made up a T-shirt with Tiafoe's catchphrase "It Can't Be That Good!") beating former Top 10 Jurgen Melzer along the way (honestly, I didn't even know that Melzer was still playing, has he been injured or something??) The U.S. Fed Cup team made it to the finals where they'll face Belarus. Honestly, I don't know what to say other than, even though the U.S. didn't have its best team, The Czech Republic probably had their C Squad there without Petra, without Lucie Safarova, without Barbora Strycova, etc. and with the lesser heralded Pliskova sister (Krystina, not Karolina),

Interesting that the Carrier jobs that were not saved had a mostly female workforce. Trump Saved Carrier Jobs. These Workers Weren’t as Lucky. by the way, those jobs will be going to Monterrey, Mexico.

I don't think I can stomach reading all of this tonight. I'll try again tomorrow. Transcript of AP interview with Trump

Yeah, I've been reading about what has been occurring in Chechnya and it is indeed draconian stuff. Kadyrov is intent on maintaining an utterly dystopian landscape. This morning, I also read a longform article detailing Comey's decision-making concerning the FBI investigations of both presidential candidates and the more I read, the more I became convinced that Comey was more concerned with his personal reputation and image than he was with even the FBI's image or it's appearance of partialilty. It seemed as though Comey didn't want to risk being seen as doing anything that would make Clinton look good, even if it meant observing normal FBI protocol (to not discuss an active investigation-which he did, publicly), while he seemed unwilling to be forthcoming on the Trump investigation (despite the fact that there was an active investigation and he had already disclosed the investigation of Clinton's e-mails, already breaking FBI tradition of not discussing open investigation). This tells me that Comey felt there was nothing to lose politically for publicly discussing the investigation of Clinton's e-mails (given the venom spewed from many in political circles toward Clinton) while fearing backlash from the GOP and its adherents if he were to disclose the investigation into the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin-given the tendency of the Republicans to engage in conspiracy theories, especially as it concerns Obama (and Comey was appointed by Obama and was technically a part of the Obama administration). Many have stated that they think it was a mistake for Obama to attempt to be bi-partisan by appointing a Republican but Obama probably believed that everyone would put country above party and do their job to the best of their ability. If Obama made any mistakes it was probably trusting that people would do this.

I was tempted to post that promo of Shannon last week when I posted the episode of Lily and Dusty dancing to Prince's Let's Go Crazy. Thanks for doing it. That one has always made me chuckle. It shows that soaps can actually (and often used to) use humor in their promos.