DramatistDreamer

At least there is some positive news coming out of Syria: IS frees hundreds of 'human shields' in Syria

I know that failure is a very real (and often necessary) part of life, but this man's penchant for failure is absolutely breathtaking!

He's not the only Criminal Minds star in the headlines Criminal Minds’ star Shemar Moore robbed of $60G by show’s guest actor That's so sad. Such a big abuse of trust.

Thomas Gibson (Derek Mason, ATWT) got the boot after kicking a writer on Criminal Minds. Thomas Gibson Fired From CBS' 'Criminal Minds'

Trump supporters are getting nuttier and nuttier. This man who attached himself to the side of Trump tower by suction cups for 3 hours before the NYPD nabbed him and forced him inside.

Me too. I still don't get how this show tossed lively veteran characters like Kim, Bob, Lisa, Nancy, Emma, and Lucinda to the background. I would've had a field day with them. More than I would've younger characters. It boggles my mind how they phased John out too. They should've brought back MJ and Andy and recast Duke. He would've had all his kids (Margo, MJ, Duke, Andy, Dusty) on the canvas providing him tons of drama. Plus, I would've loved to have seen John interact with an older Parker and for them to form a bond as John once believed his was his son. I would've loved for MJ to pop up on the canvas and been an ambitious, smug, hot mess like his daddy was. MJ would've been the perfect rival for Casey too. That would've been interesting too seeing as MJ is Casey's uncle. Ugh! They tension between those two along with Margo and John being tossed in the middle would've been EPIC. Instead we got Parker and Liberty and Luke's fake cousin Jade which hardly seemed fair. TPTB didn't want to bother writing would could be complex storylines where they'd actually have to care about the history of the show. I guess creating brand new characters was easier for them. Too bad it was a total bore.

Yeah, that took me by surprise when I heard it too. Tennis in Rio is a real sh*tshow at this Olympics. The surface is as slow AF and many of the players are either fighting illness or getting weird injuries and the crowds have been incredibly rude at times. There are no points for this either. I tried to tune into the match between DelPo and Sousa and saw some fight break out in the stands. I'm just over it already. The only thing that will save it for me is if the 3 or 4 people I like that are still in the draw get a chance to get a medal. John Isner stayed at home thinking he was going to vulture the U.S. summer hardcourt season but Nick snatched that BB&T title that John had assumed he owned. I saw John even tried to change into his Georgia Bulldog colors but it didn't work.

That's what I am seeing a lot of with these episodes. It's starting to make me re-imagine where things went wrong and opportunities missed with the last decade of show. Oh, I've been imagining what went wrong since before the show even went off the air (LOL)! And ever since then I've been imagining how I'd re-write everything and fix it!

I see things slightly differently, I think. To me, this era seems, not so much separate from the Passanante reign but part of a continuum (that started in the late 90s) of where ATWT was heading in it's last few years. A writer of Passanante's ilk writing the end of ATWTs run seemed inevitable from what I'm seeing in the late 90s, early 00s. As good as the cast was as much as the show still had life left, you could see the beginning of some poor writing and direction choices in the show that would have consequences later on.

Fareed Zakaria's show is one of the few things I miss by not having cable. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria Devotes Segment to Explaining Why He Called Trump a ‘Bullshit Artist’

I wasn't a regular viewer of GH, so I didn't know much about Kimberly McCollough (although, for some reason, I knew she had some Latin ancestry) but her personal story and how it ties into this project seems interesting. http://abc.soapsindepth.com/posts/gh-general-hospital-kimberly-mccullough-pitch-video-hey-day-109966/photos/gh-mc-cullough-bts-01-127769

Todd Rotondi seemed likeable but the direction of his Bryant character seemed more like a kid raised in NYC or L.A., not someone who would've been raised in Montega. Strangely enough Peyton List, when she first came on was a bit more convincing as someone who was raised in a different culture from an American or Oakdalian one. Abigail did come off as shrill but I kept telling myself that she was hurt and embittered by Chris and Molly's affair, that was probably the least problematic of the show's contrived storylines. Jake had great chemistry with Lucinda. He had an easy chemistry with Isaac as well, even though I still was dubious about how Isaac and Jake would become such close friends since they don't even seem as though they'd be of the same generation or have the same interests, at all. It's actually a credit to both actors that they somehow made me willing to overlook the fact that their histories, ages and character profiles were completely incompatible. It looked as if both the show was trying to give two relatively recent characters a foothold on the canvas. The storyline with Denise and Andy's sham marriage came off as very contrived, it didn't need to happen in the year 2000! Unless a Mother is a chronic drug abuser or has a poor medical history or history of severe mental illness, the courts usually side with the biological Mother, even if the mother is not the fittest parent. ATWT clearly felt they needed to give Andy a story, due to a history of the character drifting and the show's obvious difficulty writing him in sincere adult storylines. I definitely agree that Hope should've returned to Oakdale as a character. It would've given Kim, in her later years, another role, perhaps more possibilities. Perhaps they may have given John cause to show up even occasionally, even though he'd left the show as a contract character. Hope should've shown up as a Type A personality, with aspirations to be pre-med (and be a doctor like her grandfather) and gotten into drinking as a way to cope, which could've drawn Andy back, hoping history won't repeat itself. She could've lived with her grandparents, if the show couldn't bring back either Cassandra Creech or Scott DeFreitas but the executive producers and writers seemed incredibly short-sighted and unable to put together sensible shows built on obvious logic and the show's history. Really sad stuff.

Decided to try to watch a couple episodes from '00. The casting is pretty decent (baby Hope looks like a mix between Denise and Kim, TBH) but the stories seem sort of disjointed, like some stories start out promising but end up being clumsily plotted along the way and you can really tell that there is a noticeable lack of interaction between some characters- some of this began in the late 90s but it's really become a permanent MO on ATWT by 2000. Also, the 'warmth' factor that P&G shows historically had seems to be fading on ATWT at this point. Being reminded of Chris' history with Katie at this time and it makes it all the more bizarre that the show put them together in the end. I'd sooner buy Katie marrying Henry or them bringing Simon back somehow. The show is going in a weird direction at this point.

I think this will backfire on Zucker and CNN, makes it look like he/CNN is in Trump's back pocket. People will have even less regard for CNN, those people who actually still have any regard for CNN and cable news, that is.

There is a lengthy open letter written by one of Trump's former lawyers that was published in the Huffington Post in which he states at length, why no one in their right mind should even consider voting for Trump. #1 Reason: He lies all the time. We all pretty much know what's wrong with Trump so I didn't feel the need to post this article but I will say the open letter states all the reasons very succinctly and in detail why Trump would make a terrible president. And the lawyer, dealing with Trump since back in 1987 provides examples to demonstrate that Trump lacks the most basic of integrity. It will remind all but the most willfully blind Trump-stans how distasteful this man truly is.

Are people just now questioning Trump's mental and emotional stability?? I guess, what, 15-20 years of making irresponsible, sometimes dangerous off the cuff pronouncements without supposition of accompanying facts weren't enough to make media, GOP party leaders and primary voters think twice and maybe look deeper at his disturbing history? Hm. Can't decide whether this guy running against Paul Ryan in the Wisconsin primary is an opportunistic troll of the highest order or a nutter like Trump. Paul Ryan’s Rival, a Long Shot, Tries to Gain an Edge From Donald Trump’s Praise

Every politician that has run for or held the White House over the past decade has made statements that were untrue...yes, even Bernie! There was an organization that checked a handful of politicians and put out a chart, which I posted many threads back, showing that Hillary, to my shock, had told the least amount of false statements. Bernie had told more, even though, his statements were considered to be of relatively small consequence. Even Obama registered slightly more than Hillary, even though, again, his false statements were considered relatively inconsequential. These three, of course, paled in comparison to Trump whose numbers were pretty big on the falsehood meter. Speaking of lies, Trump's latest is about how supposedly he saw video of the U.S. paying ransom to the Iranians for the Navy personnel that had been held as hostages. Another video that Trump claims to be 'out there', that in reality, does not exist. The video is merely footage of the Navy personnel being released. No money was exchanged. By the way, the billions of dollars that U.S. paid, they owed Iran, since the time of the Shah, decades ago for services rendered for oil! Did Iran time it so that their demand coincide with the release of the Navy personnel? Probably, since we know how dearly they want to save face. Was that money legitimately owed to them? Yes. No matter who tries to frame it as a ransom, it was not a ransom, it was collection of an overdue debt.

So this is what has had "Birthers" in a tizzy all these years?? What is essentially...a hoax?! These people are not strong readers, are they? Not to mention, the lack of any existing form of comprehension.

Weellll, I peered into the B&B thread and noticed some complaints about how vapid B&B's episodes shot on location in Monaco are and how devoid of story and it made me appreciate a time when daytime soaps had actual storylines built around their location shoots.

Was this the last time Rick Ryan was seen in Oakdale? The more times I see these episodes, the more I wish they had brought Rick Ryan back. Instead of ruining Craig, they could have created a lot of fireworks bringing Ryan back. Can you imagine all the havoc that would've wreaked on Kim, Bob, Barbara, Emily and if John were there as well?

Who's naive enough to believe that good relations with Russia can be achieved as long as Putin is at the helm? The man double-crossed his own mentor who made it possible for Putin, an unremarkable KGB agent to rise through the ranks of the Russian government! There is no loyalty there.

"Shade...boy, bye!" LOL. This was so funny and so good.

It's particularly startling when someone builds their entire campaign around not being 'owned' by anyone. The 'liberal' media was fixated on the 'Never Hillary' people which drew attention away from the fact that there is this underbelly of not just money but influence peddling from Russia that has oligarchs (and possibly Putin himself through well-connected associates) that invest in Trump properties/ventures and vice versa. This is probably worse than Dick Cheney and Halliburton.

Kind of alarming that the media is just starting to look at Paul Manafort, who apparently has a history of advising authoritarian leaders like Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire) and Ferdinand Marcos (Phillipines) in addition to Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine whom everybody knows was being guided by Russia and now protected by Russia after he fled the Ukraine and left it in chaos. I would assume that Manafort is the real mouth piece for Trump's views on Russia.