Vee

I suspect that's correct, but it's a squeaker. We do know Gottlieb hired Mark Brettschneider and had Jason created.

I remember that site. Interesting if true. Jason Webb of course came in a month before.

I am focusing on taking care of myself and the people I care about in the way I mentioned from the article on the last page or two - focus on the little things, the little issues, the local problems, the things or people you can help in day to day life. That's all I have energy for at this point in the face of both this national situation and my own health concerns. If that means at some point I leave outright for parts elsewhere so be it, but I'm not there yet. I'm just shrinking my world and concerns down to something manageable for now, and tending to that. I suspect a lot of people will. What comes after that on in the further future, we'll see. But I am done giving all my energy and mental headspace to a majority of the electorate that presently has no interest.

Tony Todd was an absolute legend. Candyman has never left my mind and his cameo/return in the (deeply underrated) revival film a few years ago was a big deal for me. His work in Trek is of course also great.

I'm with @Khan. That outlook is the only way I can get through the day. I won't give up on abortion though. That one's not why Trump won, it remains a major weakness.

I don't agree. JJ gave it his all with the Aiden scenes, as he generally always does. It was the overaged twunk in the role I found distracting, though the kid is a decent actor. I fear FV and ABC will become even more conservative with this show going forward, though.

Losing a lot of those guys with FV's arrival did a terrible number on the look of GH since the '90s (Renfroe started in '01 I believe, but he kept up the house aesthetic that preceded him). I know the fog, docks, etc. had its detractors, but I think it held up for many years.

Newsom is an overly manicured California liberal who would fall prey to some of the same attacks as Harris. Insufficiently Midwestern masculine. Whitmer is a woman.

I may be wishcasting, but I know Mulcahey inherited the Jason return when he came in (having to rewrite the planned return storyline that the network apparently rejected from CVE/O'Connor), and I suspect he believed he could make it and possibly a higher production mandate for a renewed Jason/Carly romance work. (I think they were committed to that when Steve came back, until they realized it was again a dud and Korte shifted to this Brennan nonsense.) After all, PM had written some of Steve's most famous and popular material in the '90s with both Kimberly and Sarah Brown; I can see him figuring he could make it happen if that's what they asked for. You saw hints of this in a few good scenes with Steve and Laura - talking to her about his tattoo, moving in above Bobbie's again - but you can't create romantic heat where there isn't any. There was no core there for the writing to uplift. With Lucky's return the show feels possibly even more piecemeal storywise atm than before across the canvas. A sustained focus is what is necessary, but Frank doesn't do that.

I don't think it's that at all. They heavily promoted him. Frank is just nickel and diming on guarantees and playing his classic inconsistent character/story shuffle as usual to keep the budget low. That leaves Lucky and half the cast perpetually in and out of limbo in unacceptable ways.

IIRC Renfroe came over from the Guza GH crew with JFP. I may be wrong. The Guza production staff kept things atmospheric in those years even as the writing sank.

I hope you're wrong, but here we are. We got a long way to go. Now all that's left to do is survive and take care of each other in incremental ways, wherever we choose to live or stay. I am grateful for the community here, the ideals we can still value and the interests outside of politics we share. I think it will have to be them or someone like them. Newsom, Buttigieg and Whitmer are now all non-starters. I do wonder if Pritzker has any juice nationally. His strong statement the other day re: standing for his people got play.

Not happening, possibly not in my lifetime.

I feel for the innocent citizens in Gaza. But anyone pro-Palestine in this country or any minority who sat this one out or voted for Trump (often for the same reasons as Latinos and white working class males, apparently) have bought and paid for exactly what they will get. Take a good look. And I am as progressive as the next person, but there needs to be a real hard line going forward about how we let academic language and concepts dictate how we talk about policy or issues. I'm also beyond done with the casual antisemitism of the far left (which predates the latest Palestinian crisis, to be clear) being coddled and tolerated. Jews showed up.

This quote above, from Timothy Snyder, is pretty smart and probably the best I can do with my remaining energy any time soon. Small things.

Nope. Pass. The majority of the country wants Roe. They're just stupid as shít about other things.

The answer is clear and it's nothing that any of us would like.

I'll admit it has crossed my mind that CBS will be concerned they have backed the wrong horse. But if it makes money, and gives CBS points with enough key demographics, who knows. I choose to remain optimistic about this show as a business, if not about the country.

My despair comes and goes. History is cyclical, which is what I've always told people in low times like these before. Things come around again. What concerns me most is the damage that will be done to not only people but our fundamental system and institutions in the next 2-4 years, and beyond that how we can begin to combat and counter what is now in place in terms of the media/information war. As I've said, Democrats should've countered Fox long ago with a real media push vs. constantly going begging to the Times or CNN for fair treatment they won't get - too many of them still think the Beltway press are their friends. It's going to take a generation at least to reeducate the youth, and it may take longer to untangle what this crew can do to our government, if it survives. If it only takes a cycle or two and they don't then immediately flip red again the next time folks get bored, I'll call that a miracle. I don't expect all of it to get better in my lifetime at this point, though it sure would be nice to have some of it back. I have to believe it will for the future generations. Maybe I'm being too defeatist for the short term; I hope so. I believe in the spirit of the country when it's at its best, in the ideals. I don't need to believe in the country as it is today to still believe in those things. I'm just so ashamed that my mother is probably living out her last years with it having disgraced her service and hard work and her father's service like this. That's what I can't stomach. I'll probably try to stay for a long while assuming she remains in good health. I'm not ruling out just leaving. I will keep an eye on things in a detached way but I can't engage in the same way right now, at least not atm. Maybe that will change if things change. But that's how I square things in my mind. I believe in what I can and I leave the rest, and I hope down the road we get better. In the meantime the people that asked for this can choke on what they bought. And if there is a female president in my lifetime, I'll remember Kamala maybe even more than Hillary. Because boy did she deserve it. I think the 'what could I have done' question will haunt her to the end of her days and that's just awful, because she did it all.

That's not what I meant. I just don't need any more of this period. I didn't watch Kamala concede and I don't need to watch Joe choke out this loss.

I'll pass.

And older white women moved to Harris. Judging by the numbers it was Gen Z and other minorities (primarily male) who sold us out.

There's absolutely no mistake. If it was some mistake Harris would not have conceded. That happened long before I spoke, and the loss happened before even the networks called the election. Your eyes and ears are not lying to you. Common sense. You are right about 2004. And those people were much more skilled and still lost, Rove's dream never came to pass. But these ideologues are different and more visceral, their patrons are more omnipresent (Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg) and the information environment is very different and much worse. We will be very, very lucky if this administration is somehow half as incompetent as they were last time, and even then it will likely take a generation to dig the country and its government out of the hole this will leave in. If it doesn't and we somehow retain or regain some semblance of a functioning democracy and non-doomed planet by 2030 or 2040-50, if our system of laws, rights, checks and balances aren't in ashes by then or we don't have a permanently right-wing court, we can call it a miracle. I'm not holding my breath. I think it'll take most of the rest of our lives to get a lot of the machinery of government and our laws back to where it was before Trump, if we do. (And the way to start doing it, whenever it happens, is to take back a share of the new media landscape.) I think we can. But I'm done fighting for it today. This is what a majority of people want, and they can have it and lick up the result. Take it all.

Believe what? I'm not changing election results.

Well, I'm not dying! Or leaving the forum. We'll always have our soaps. Just dealing with a physical issue that has been pretty taxing and is an ongoing process to recover from, but not life-threatening (AFAIK, anyway). I'm just done with this shít.