DramatistDreamer

Judges Find Wisconsin Redistricting Unfairly Favored Republicans

Just watched PIX11 do a report and the local NYC media is definitely reporting the Post's version of events.

Supposedly there is some dispute between the Post and CNN regarding what actually happened in that room. According to CNN. Top network executives, anchors meet with Donald Trump

Q: What did you say to Trump in your (congratulatory) call to him? A: We promised to establish the best bilateral relations ever. I hope that our good relations with the United States, seen under U.S. President Barack Obama, will continue and expand further under Trump. In the call, I also talked with his daughter. I have known her since her infant days. From The Asahi Shimbum Macri: Trump is a man who pushes through his own ideas

Speaking of Kei, since these tsunami alerts came out, fans are wondering whether Kei flew back to Japan or is he in Florida? I don't think his parents live anywhere near Fukushima though.

He also spoke to Ivanka who apparently was there on the call.

So NYC is paying $1 million per day to secure Trump and his family in the city. If I still lived there, I'd be pissed, especially seeing Manhattan voted overwhelmingly for Clinton. And remembered how much people squawked about Malia Obama's dress to a state dinner?

If this is true, what a disaster! ETA: I see that @Vee just posted a few seconds before me, so I removed the link from my post.

I just saw that Ohio State University has some working scripts from 1980-1982. 12 boxes of 130 scripts. That would've made a nice summer project for some interns to scan those scripts and prepare them for digitization. Don't know why they're at Ohio State though.

@Nothin'ButAttitude Such a shame. I know that Bill Bell likely archived every single one of his scripts from Day 1. He did have the advantage of starting in the early 70s and not in the late 50s or 60s like other soaps. He most likely saw what others did and marked their mistakes and learned from them. He treated his show with value from the very start. I wonder whether anyone has bothered to ask Don Hastings, Eileen Fulton, Karthryn Hays or any of the veterans who were on the show during the 70s and 80s whether they kept any scripts. What about the writers? Union and scab? Susan Bedsow Horgan was on the writing staff during some pretty great years in the 80s. She strikes me as may have even kept some scripts.

Well, it was highly publicized in several Indian papers that the businessman from the Pune district were bragging about Pune now having an open line to the President of the United States! The real estate industry in India has a lot of problems with corruption. Some real estate/construction companies have been known to take deposits from prospective tenants and use it to build new buildings without finishing the first! And those who paid are left waiting for their apartments/retail space to be completed, which can drag on for years! If there is any hint of this happening with any of the buildings being built that are associated with Trump, it won't be good.

Since I'm not a big fan of Peter Bodo, I skimmed this article but the section on Novak's Spanish meditation guru was...uhm, interesting. Pepe Imaz, used to be a minor league tennis player. He was in Novak's box during the entire WTF Championships. I wonder whether Novak will keep him, Boris and Marian Vadja on at the same time?? The great unraveling of Novak Djokovic Still wondering about what that "personal" problem Novak was having. Was it merely malaise or something in his relationship?

Sloane Stephens (#35) is down there with CoCo (#36) but I know she had an injury she was dealing with for a part of the year. She's been quiet. By the way, did you all hear that the WTA has yet to work out a streaming deal for next year? Their CEO Steve Simon (who is quickly becoming one of the worst ever!) says he doesn't know whether there will be any streaming in place before the 3rd Quarter next year!! How is this allowed to happen? This makes me feel as if the organization cannot get itself together. If the WTA makes itself even less visible to current fans, don't expect new fans to hop on the bandwagon. The pirate websites that do livestream are going to be getting a lot of clicks next year.

Does anyone know where/how ATWT archives their scripts? I know that as a student, I use to have access to Primetime TV and movie scripts and I used to go to the New York Public Library and get access to plays very easily but I have always wondered how P&G/ATWT archived their scripts, especially from the past 35 years. I'm so curious about the scripts written during the strike in 88. I just wonder how much of the material was going according to Marland's outline and within that material were any new ideas added in by the scab writers? I guess because daytime was five days a week, unlike weekly Primetime scripts so perhaps they weren't archived with as much care? I know that many old plays are in the public domain and can be accessed digitally. So can movie scripts and many TV shows that are no long on the air are easy to access digitally (not all are free, though). For now, I'd settle for reading a few of those scab scripts because I'm curious. I mean, would P&G really be protective of those?

Sorry to say this but I think the era of phenoms is over for the foreseeable future @ChitHappens The game has changed, the technology and surface tweaks favor those with more experience. Many people were sold on Bencic, thinking she'd be another Martina Hingis but I was always dubious and now I see why...injuries have done her in this year and some serious ones (back is always a serious one for someone so young). Puig is a talent that can go on a run but a person who is on the shorter side she has to be relentless all the time like a Justine Henin, which has its risks (wearing down the body). Had Puig and Bencic come along in the era of Henin and Hingis, I would be more sold on them but who knows, really? When the tour empties of the Williamses, Sharapova and if Azarenka lacks motivation to be consistent, they both could squeeze in there. As for Naomi, we know marketability doesn't always have to do with big wins or there would never have been a Kournikova phenomenon. We know there was a time that Sharapova wasn't winning jack, yet still earning more than Serena. If Naomi hits big in Asia, that's a good chunk of the world market that the WTA is anxious to tap. I was just mentioning Osaka because she does have power (which needs to be directed properly) and she seems to have good global appeal to many. And like Puig and Bencic, if she gets a tour that has emptied of some of the current stars, who knows? She's only 18. If Marion Bartoli can pull out a Major, I won't rule out Osaka, LOL. To me, Elina Svotolina has a game more reminiscent of Radwanska, can do some things well, moves well but no real power in her game, can be hit off the court regularly. Isn't Taylor Townsend being coached by Donald Young's folks? That's worrying, in and of itself. Donald Young once had the potential to be where Kei Nishikori is but he didn't want to move away from Mommy and Daddy, unlike Kei who moved more than 1/2 way around the world to Florida as a teenager. Can you imagine there was a time that Donald had a winning record against Kei? Those times have changed! I haven't mentioned Madison or Sloane because Madison needs to show me that she can stop crying on court when things get complicated and games don't go her way and I have no idea where Sloane is in her health or motivation right now.

You're welcome.

This article (warning: lengthy-so read when you have the time) serves as an interesting follow up to a lively conversation I had a month or so ago with another member on this board about the MS-13 gang and their suspected connection to the tragic deaths of some teenagers (all of Color) in a section of Long Island. It confirms some history that I already knew and mentioned- that in essence, they are an American-made gang that was exported to El Salvador through deportations of criminals released from Los Angeles prisons. Also that those fleeing El Salvador's violence from the gangs (of which MS-13 is one of the most prominent, others were started in the wake of M-13) comprise the ranks of those unaccompanied children as well as women and children fleeing to the U.S. via the Mexican-U.S. border in recent history. One thing I didn't know is how poor these gangs actually are and that extortion, not drugs are their main source of income. They are feared, of course by their local communities as they make good on their threats to "Pay or Die" but internationally they don't compare to the Mexicans, the Russians, the Japanese or even the Italian mafia in terms of financial heft. Also the small number of MS-13 that exist in the U.S. are a self-autonomous collective. Here's the article to anyone interested in reading. One teenage gang member, who could neither read nor write, offering an interview for his anonymity and breakfast (which he shared with his siblings) strikes me as almost pitiable. Killers on a Shoestring: Inside the Gangs of El Salvador ETA: I do not condone what these people are doing in any way. These gangs are destroying their communities with their brutality and lack of regard for human life. I do think that if the government itself were less corrupt and if education and the training of people to acquire self supporting skills were a serious option, the ranks of these gangs would be thinned by a large margin.

American tennis, I think is a separate issue from the health of the WTA though. In the era of Steffi and Monica tennis was big as well. Yes, it would be nice is Vicki Duval could be healthy and playing to her potential or if Taylor Townsend could get her life together (Taylor could have big marketing potential also) but someone like a Naomi Osaka (who just needs a little more self belief and consistency in big matches) has also proved very popular on a global level. Viktoria Azarenka was never the most popular player but I bet when she returns from maternity leave, her popularity will increase. As much as I don't like Sharapova, she does have a lot of fan/media interest and Serena does love to play her. Of course the Williams Sisters don't even need to be anyhwere near a tennis court to generate interest. Both the ATP and WTA have done a terrible job of harnessing the interest in their players. They got lucky with the likes of Venus and Serena and Roger and Rafa. Monfils is popular but they call him names and he wavers between wanting to quit the game and wanting to fulfill his potential but if you asked him the % in terms of how much he enjoys tennis, I wouldn't be surprised if it is as low as Nick Kyrgios' assessment. I think the WTA really just needs to help their players stay healthy and some of those interesting players will rise. The ATP needs to figure out a way to have a balance between letting their most dynamic players show their personalities without it getting out of control. You don't want another John McEnroe or Ilie Nastase but you don't want to squash people's personalities and identities. The American players on the ATP side need to develop a way of playing tennis that incorporates something other than serve and forehand. I'm hoping that Tiafoe, Mmoh and Fritz will not be afraid to develop a wider array of shots into their repertoire than the group that came before them.

Trump is going to make Nixon, Warren Harding and Bush look good in comparison. Apparently, Trump registered eight companies in Saudi Arabia during the presidential campaign. A scramble to assess the dangers of President-elect Donald Trump’s global business empire

I told someone a month or so ago, if only Republicans and Democrats opted for treatment instead of locking everyone away, there would have been a successful template for preventing or at least successfully treating addiction today and perhaps we'd have avoided this latest drug crisis.

Unless someone brand new emerges out of nowhere, this is bad news for the ATP Tour. Roger and Rafa are not going to be around forever and none of these other guys are currently stepping up. During the Djokovic/Nishikori match someone literally shouted out "I miss you Roger!" Some people may be tired of Roger and Rafa but they sell tickets. I was told that there were still some empty seats (though I couldn't tell on TV) whereas the last few years they were sold out. In a city where Murray is the hometown hero.

Wait until West Virginians discover that coal cannot be resurrected into the economic engine it once was, despite Trump's lofty promises. They will really be angry then. Also, parts of West Virginia are being ravaged by the prescription drug and crystal meth crisis. It has rendered entire segments of the population incapacitated. Young men and women who might otherwise have been contributing to their communities and creating jobs are in the depths of addiction and despair. These problems are an outflow of generations of unsolved problems in education and job training gaps and a lack of solutions through decades. The best and brightest who might be the future entrepreneurs, have left for better opportunities, thus adding to the 'brain drain' and cutting off the potential for alternatlive economic engines. It's similar to some of the New England towns in states like Maine that never emerged with ways to cope from a loss of industry 30-40 years ago and have been diminished and struggling ever since.

I have been watching this match. Murray looks the more focused, he wants to win in straight sets, probably because he has spent more time on court and realizes the danger of going into a 3 set match against Djokovic, who looks surprisingly lackluster. I didn't expect that. I thought Djokovic would be raring to go considering he didn't spend much time on court but he looks flat and is playing flat, so far.

So are taxpayers going to have the foot the security bill for Melania and Baron to stay in Trump Tower also?