Vee

NY Mag reports that Roger Ailes and Fox News have thrown in the towel on Rubio.

I think many of them - too many - are going to do what others have done, throw up their hands and fall in line behind the nominee out of fear - fear of losing the base altogether, fear of them turning on the establishment. I don't think many of them will dare advocate voting for Hillary, though they may do so privately. She is too much of a legendary hate figure for their voters. The GOP has bred a lemming-like loyalty into many of their rank and file politicians, and I think one by one they will all fall on their sword for Trump while hating themselves for it because they are frightened of their base and they have no concept of what the alternative could look or feel like or where it will leave them after.

I'm not trying to throw anything out anywhere, I just disagree with you. I don't think it was a particularly nasty sequence of events. And I'd say that to anyone else, though I'd probably say it much more rudely to 95% of the board. It's not personal.

Yeah, see, you find all that horrific - I don't. I think you're taking it way, way too seriously. And I thought so well before the thing aired.

I mean, horrific? No. There's maybe two jokes in there in 13 episodes, it's not exactly a vicious dragfest. They're not burning them in effigy and pissing on their graves. And of course the media focused in on the Olsen twins and made every single article about them over and over before the thing came out - they were the breakout stars. That's what media, especially online media driven by traffic, does. But it didn't end up being the center of the show's narrative upon release. It's just an unavoidable thing the media is always going to go back to or bring up until such time as one of the twins appears.

Here's a wacky turn of events: Mark Frost's upcoming The Secret History of Twin Peaks is also getting an audiobook edition. How this will work with the book evidently being an elaborate collection of found media/articles/etc. is an interesting question. Meanwhile, Naomi Watts was asked about her role on the new TP at the Oscars and responded with a simple zip of her lips.

It was. For one thing, television hadn't come along nearly as far then - there would be no space for something as saccharine as FH to exist and thrive as a counterpoint to all the other great programming, both drama and comedy-wise. The big reason something like FH now seems so viable and even charming to me is because everything else on TV is no longer just like it. Miller-Boyett Productions no longer rules the world, quality (or attempts at quality) do. When we have stuff like Black-ish and Fresh off the Boat holding it down for situation comedy I feel a bit more permissive about something that is both quaint and somewhat retrograde as FH. Another big reason: Jodie Sweetin, who's run away with the show like I always knew she could, was not clean at the time.

The Atlantic continues investigating the Republican nervous breakdown.

You thought I'd never see this, bitch! Sleep with one eye open!

Chris Christie steps into the void.

The danger is that Trump has already begun modulating his message in his victory speech - trying to appear like a reasonable moderate to the middle of the electorate. He believes in nothing but himself and until we can gauge him head to head with a Democrat we have to assume he can be extremely dangerous up close if people don't take him seriously. Which fortunately Hillary is, and so must we all.

Please explain your grand plan to deal with Syria, Iran and Russia; I suspect it will be Donald Trump's, vague and nonsensical. You are a right wing apologist and we both know it. Another thrilling Trump talking point from one of the millions of unthinking sheep who follow him.

No one's overanalyzing, these are plain facts we've all known for years. Please don't make excuses for the disgusting xenophobic bigotry and antiquated breast-beating of the right wing. It's because of Obama's administration that we're far more respected worldwide now than the absolute bottom of the barrel we were in thanks to Bush II. The Republicans just don't like it because they prefer swagger and hawkishness to any kind of humility or acceptance of mistakes. They refuse to deal in reality - they want a nonstop glory train where everybody is always rich, always powerful, always on top, never losing. But we're not always rich. We have gone down in the eyes of the world, we haven't always won. It took our facing what we'd become to begin to dig ourselves out of it, financially, internationally, morally. The Tea Party base couldn't handle facing it. That's why they gravitate to an ignorant fascistic oligarch who tells them that they, like him, can always be great, powerful and on top just like their dewy dreams of the Reagan era or the '50s - even though Trump is historically a failed, debt-ridden huckster with a lot of bluster. They value bluster and fantasies over honest, hard solutions. And that's their fatal flaw.

Since Addie asked, I think Trump is a simple end result of a long-standing phenomenon: The Republican establishment in America was fine with courting the ignorant, the bigots and the crazies so long as it worked for their ends. They kept their segment of the electorate dumb, scared, poor and angry and used that to keep Bush in office even as he fleeced them, then used them to block Obama's initiatives and take the Congress. They nurtured and cultivated a new base of deranged nativists while all the while working against their interests, and kept fanning talk of Obama not being American, being Muslim, etc. I'd wager most of the existing GOP did not believe it but it worked for their voting bloc. The tide began to turn as the Tea Party rose, and Tea Party candidates began ousting them from their own seats in government. They began to realize they'd created something in the Tea Party movement that they couldn't control, but they couldn't stop - the Republican Party is all about winning at all cost and lock-step voting to 'beat' the other guy without actually thinking strategically or rationally about what that win will cost or result in. So they kept going all in with a new kind of voter base that they did not fully understand and increasingly could not hold at bay - these people had begun voting in more of their own kind as opposed to more relatively rational longtime GOP hands. They'd begun voting in lunatics whose only interests were ideology, paranoia and simmering anger. The logical endpoint of that is Donald Trump, who has no morality beyond himself (and, the base thinks, them) and no platform besides anger, bigotry and a bully pulpit. He's what years of the GOP courting the crazies and creating the Tea Party has given them. First they got a base they couldn't control, then various House and Senate candidates, and now a top ticket candidate who may bring them all down - even after eight years they didn't realize just how crazy their new base was, how it would reject every other candidate as not extreme or deranged enough. They should have seen it coming but they never do, and now Trump is poised to fracture their entire party in two in civil war. As always, the GOP does not realize they are the only ones to blame. Trump is the worst part of their id made flesh - that's why their voters love him. He gives voice to everything they thought none of their leaders would say.

The NY Times discusses the Clintons' plan to take down Trump.

Trump has now blamed his non-denouncement of the KKK on "a very bad earpiece" during the interview. He has since 'officially' disavowed them but continues retweeting white supremacist Twitter accounts. The Atlantic has more on the Republican civil war and panic over Trump.

Naomi Watts' Mulholland Drive co-star Laura Harring (also a former castmember of SuBe) will be attending the Twin Peaks Fest this year, as will MD's Bonnie Aarons, who played the terrifying bum behind Winkie's Diner. As both have yet to be affiliated with TP, there is a strong suspicion and likelihood that both Harring and Aarons will also be in the new Peaks. I love Laura Harring so I'm always glad to see her.

In the books I expect that trajectory to continue with some changes, but who knows. I'm not sure they'll go that far. They sometimes follow the rough line of the story but take a lot of liberties with Kirkman's narrative to make it actually good. Other times they do totally different stuff.

They always tend to rotate the (now very large) cast from episode to episode to give different people focus. Abraham, Rosita, etc. had their share of time off up to now, so it was Carol's turn. My bet is she gets a lot more in the upcoming weeks, that's generally how it goes. I don't think they will kill Maggie and I don't think either the showrunner or AMC have any interest in brutally murdering another pregnant woman, especially in the circumstances which may arise. I think it's either Daryl or Abraham, but it's also very possible they'll kill both - or they'll just opt to finally take out Glenn. I'd hate to see him go, but who knows what'll happen. The sense of foreboding was really effective. Even people who don't know what happens with Negan can tell it's about to go down. The Hilltop so resembled Django Unchained it was kind of hilarious. But I liked them building the new paradigm with the various settlements and I thought all that worked - this is what I find interesting about a post-apocalyptic story, the nuts and bolts of rebuilding communities and what that requires. God knows my diet would improve. Sorghum! As always, it reminds me of the old Survivors in the UK. I liked Abraham's romantic testimonial to Sasha in the first half of the season way more than I'd expected to, and I think they've done a good job fleshing the character out after his unbearable introduction and making him tolerable and then enjoyable. I thought his existential struggle this week (which was shown to be about more than the woman both here and earlier in the season - more about his PTSD/adrenaline fix) was interesting. That being said I still could lose him and be okay with it, and I can see why Sasha backed off. (I did not see Michonne grabbing Rick's ass.) I had pretty much stopped reading so this may be wrong but IIRC, in the books

They held hands for two seconds. Chill the !@#$%^&*] out.

It was always going to happen.

I said it about Obama in '04 and I said it about Castro a few years ago: He will be President someday. He needs to be VP.

I think with Trump we'll take at least the Senate as well. The GOP power structure certainly fear that.

There are always Brand New voters who think Bernie is some amazing new phenomenon and are horrified that Hillary, like 90% of liberal leaders, has a past. I hope/think she can take most of them, as we do in the best of years, but there will definitely be more agitated thinkpiece-outrage kids this year who vow to stand on principle and cede their vote to Trump.