Skin

Sophie seems tickled pink with this season from her interviews.

I think everyone knew that she could do it, it's just the way in which it was done, which was so surprising. D&D pretty much gave her no cover, and forced her to become the villain of the series. They could have had Cersei refuse to surrender - that would have more or less been in character, and that would have made her actions a bit more morally grey, but it's clear they wanted to make her the Mad Queen 2.0, and they needed her to be unjustifiable in this. There's no where else for the character to go at this point. They boxed her into a corner and have now thrown her away. They pretty much ruined the chance for plausible deniability for her, and can't salvage anything left of her character. It's tragic, and crazy unfortunate, being how hugely popular Daenerys is for the show. Sad to see that this is how GRRM sees the character.

That's not what the original series was about. Especially not in the later seasons.

Tess herself, wasn't the problem so much as the way she was utilized as a plot contrivance to bring the show in a different direction. I think had the show gone about bringing her on differently, there wouldn't have been much of a controversy around her addition to the group. She was added to bring strife to the group, and she broke up the set that was mostly formed by the time she got there. Had she been added to the group sooner (and differently) - I think she would have been more accepted. The fact that she came nearly right at the end of the first season made fans look at Tess as an interloper. There's also a larger metaphor that they don't like the way the show deviated and got worse over time around the time she became apart of the main cast. The larger problem was that the WB didn't know what they wanted Roswell to be, they didn't know if they wanted it to be a romantic teen melodrama like Dawson's Creek/Felicity, or if they wanted it to be a huge arc carrying sci-fi action series like Buffy/Smallville and the network interference caused a lot of issues in the second season. I think the series writers even lamp-shaded this in an episode where they had two of the characters argue which movie was better "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" or "The Matrix". It didn't help that the writers didn't know what they wanted either. If you take a look at Season Two of Roswell, it's all over the place. They went from a secondary alien invasion from a rival species, to Time Travel to Evil Twin Aliens to Alien Possession Parasites to Alien Teen Pregnancy to Alien War on a Remote Planet. A hodgepodge of ideas, none of which had real legs. A lot of people give season three grief, but it was clear that the show was going off the rails as soon as season two. Season three just inherited a lot of bad debt. The writers tried everything they could but the show couldn't stick with anything, and by the end they couldn't bail themselves out of bad story-telling. It's telling that most fans now either ignore those plot points completely or forget they even existed. The Sci-Fi portion of the show never found the right direction, and never took off. I don't know if it's because they couldn't or they didn't want to.

It was really the chemistry of the actors that made Roswell work as a character study, rather than as a show. I don't know many people who watch Roswell who were in love with the plotting and storylines but rather the actors, couples and pairings which made the show work. It had a dedicated fanbase directly because of those actors/character ships. Liz/Max (Dreamers), Maria/Micheal (Candies), and even Isabel/Alex (Stargazers) really were what kept the series afloat. When they started messing with those characters and the relationships, friendships and connections within the series the show pretty much tanked, as a lot of fans felt betrayed in seasons two and three.

I remember reading about the working conditions in places like China, India and the like from a friend who traveled there, and the conditions sound horrible. The work for pennies on the dollar and have virtually no holiday pay outside of the new year. If there is ever a talk about a strike, they threaten to move the plant to somewhere else where pay will be cheaper. You can't fight against that kind of greed, because it's a race to the bottom. They have no laws to protect their workers. Opinions on the Affordable Care Act are just so odd. You have a large amount of American's who receive healthcare from their employer, and you also have millions of Americans who don't want to pay for health insurance and are angry because they don't want to sign up for insurance. But these are the same people who will be in the poor house if they didn't have insurance or if they wind up with a pre-existing condition when they want care.

Those jobs are forever gone.

Single payer is when the government pays for all of your health insurance and healthcare associated costs. Like many European countries already do. The drawback to this and the only one I could think of is that most people won't be able to have luxurious hospital visits where each individual patient receives their own suite, with gourmet food, premium cable channels, and won't be able to order any medical service they want ala carte. But this is mostly for the blue cities in New York, California, who have that kind of money and embrace that kind of technological innovation in their hospitals. That is not a concern in say a place like Kansas - where the average hospital is 100 miles or so away from some residents. There is something to be said about it's ability to ration out medical services -- for instance the 15 year old soccer player who bumped her head and is saying it hurts won't be able to get a CT scan, and twelve other tests to make sure their isn't a problem with her, and neither will a 65 year old who is 200 lbs over weight and complains of angina won't be able to receive a new heart valve -- but those are the kind of unrealistic expenses that American's shouldn't have had in the first place. It's more regulation - but it's from a place that is a bit more moderated and knows it has finite resources amongst it's population.

I'm actually willing to play ball with some of the mid-west voters who feel that they are being displaced by the economy. But only very marginally, the great recession may have been a huge wake up call for them that they weren't as "solid" as they believe themselves to be. The reality of the situation is that wages have been stagnant since the 80's, and as such due to inflation the dollar doesn't stretch as it once did and everything is rising and their salaries are not -- this is all true, but it's been true since forever. I think what blew out a candle or made the light go off was the recession that was more or less a lot like the Great Depression. I think for a lot of them these past few years have been a major wake up call that whatever they have can be gone in a split second, and they are right. On average people are only 3 or 4 steps away from homelessness and that's a hard pill to swallow when you feel that you were artificially "safe" for decades before. However this demographic is not the manufactured working class worker that Donald is pitching too. This specific subset of people are those who are currently employed pulling upwards of 50k+ jobs and are somewhat educated and in the age bracket of 50 or older. These are the demographics who have more or less been "safe" from the worst effects of the recession and who don't have faith that their children will have a better life then they had it. These are the folks who are hosting their kids after they paid for their college or are currently paying college tuition. This is a problem, but it's also inherently capitalistic - this isn't going to get better with Regan lite policies. When you live in a capitalistic society you end up with winners or losers always, and this is the nature of our country. These are the same people who are profoundly afraid of socialism but then hem and haw about the ill effects of capitalism and not being able to build wealth, and being 3 or 4 bad moves away from losing everything and having nothing for their children. These concerns are valid but they keep voting for more of the same and they are a big portion of the electorate -- precisely 70% of it. I have no sympathy for the working class whites who refuse to acknowledge the end of manufacturing and do not want to change fields. This same thing happened in the black community and no one blinked an eye at it, but now because it's happening to poorly educated whites everyone is supposed to care. At least they don't have to put up with the added stigma of believing that they are just lazy, violent, people who wanted to live on the welfare state and nothing about them or their problems was ever worthwhile. Largely these problems aren't anything new, it's just - just like with social security these problems are so reactionary that they are coming up late in big ways. What makes me a bit upset is that if we had strong leadership we probably could be talking about ways to make this better - but due to the electoral college these problems will never get solved. Obama wasn't able to break the Reagan footfold in the belief of trickled down economics - but maybe Trump will be able to get them to realize that none of this stuff is going to work. Republicans have been set on an agenda that will harm their constituents the most, and I can only hope for the backlash of what will happen when they realize all of their aid is cut off and they can't eat or pay bills in addition to slashed wages. I'm worried about what form this backlash will be as well the Bundy's just got away with holding government property at gun point just last year. That kind of extremism with guns is horrifying. His approval ratings are a disaster and they keep getting lower and lower. He has already lost Democrats and Moderates, the only thing keeping his score from completely collapsing is Republicans which favor him nearly 90%. Democrats and Moderates have rated him so low that his score has fallen down to something like 44% which was down from 51-52% (when he won the election) and down again from 48% (Republican candidate). If Republicans collapse on him he won't have anything to buoy his score. So far they are the only ones who have faith in him. I can only imagine what the floor will be. I'm predicting record lows by 2018.

Twelve states to keep an eye on: Arizona Colorado Florida Maine Michigan Minnesota Nevada New Hampshire North Carolina Pennsylvania Virginia Wisconsin These were all won with a percentage margin of 5% - these states can flip either way. Democrats need to start mobilizing now to make significant gains over the next 2-4 years. 147 electoral votes right here.

There's also the problem that healthcare is a market that just keeps exploding in regards to cost. It's a for profit industry that doesn't really care at all about it's consumers, patients or sick people. They just want to make money. I don't necessarily think the problem is just taxation, it's that the healthcare industry doesn't want healthcare to be affordable, or work for everyone. That's why the costs keep escalating. A lot of people belief that the ACA is the reason for their increased health costs and bills, but it's really just the messenger or something that has been escalating at a great rate for years now. I was reading an article, and I agree with it, it basically said that the floor for Republican voters is going to be around 20-30% with Latino voters, which makes sense. Not everyone is going to have Republicans with a fervor. It's just not in the cards. The solidly liberal camp is only but maybe 15-20% of Americans, and then we start delving further into the spectrum of left leaning, moderate, and right leaning. If these latino voters stay in this 20% I don't think that's much of an issue. The Hispanic/Latino population is diverse, and you have some that have internalized hatred for their race, and others who are angry with undocumented immigrants because they feel they got over when they didn't. That kind of infighting can't really be helped. You also have segments of the population who can "pass" for white or who have accumulated a sense of economic status like Cubans who left Castro - and they feel they belong to that demographic more then those who recognize their diversity and true heritage. Colorism is alive in all races. Some feel they can "pass" for white, and they would rather indulge that belief. As white-Hispanics grow in the population this may happen. But there is more growth outside of the latinx/Hispanic demographic.

This is the kind of stuff that scares me, it brings me Cold War and WWII vibes. The escalation and verge of war out break and appeasement is terrifying to me. This isn't 1960 anymore.

Honestly that doesn't make me feel any better. The fact that racism, ablism, sexism, homophobia, and Nazism and everything else wasn't enough to disqualify this man is enough to make me lose complete faith in this country. As to those whites who voted for Obama and then Trump - I think those could most accurately be described as those change candidates someone in this thread described earlier. They just want change, not realizing what change will actually be or consist of. Again they feel and seem largely uninformed about what it takes for them to recover, and honestly this whole sympathy narrative is incredibly taxing because these same individuals in the Republican party have said despairing things about the black communities for decades now, and now all the sudden now that whites are having similar problems we must roll out the red carpet in order to see to their needs. It's the crack/cocaine/heroine dichotomy all over again where you demonize one race for something and then give endless understanding and sympathy to the other. What I am coming to realize in regards to the numbers and trending issues is that we most likely will get there in regards to representation - we already see this happening with winning the popular vote, what I am most concerned about is the Republican's redistricting everything and putting forth suppression laws to make these numbers not count. It's a perversion of everything America stands for, and Republicans can and will do whatever it takes to disenfranchise as much people as possible. We may end up getting those numbers - but they may not end up meaning anything in the long run.

Democrats like America itself is at an all important crossroads, at this point in time, and I think it needs to be underscored America needs change, but at the same time doesn't know how to action any of those changes, and government inherently is difficult and takes forever for anything to change or resolve anything. I think the American people feel and understand that more now then ever, but the cycle is pervasive and unending. Nothing will get done, and we have a community that is too large that has diametrically opposed views on what direction they want to go in. The cycling back and forth between two parties just ends up manifesting itself as largely standing still, because the previous party has to walk back on all the things the previous party did while they were in power. It's an endless cycle that isn't efficient. Something needs to happen to break the cycle - I doubt more and more that this two party system will ever work. I think the unending lie of the democratic party is that demographics will swing towards them, no matter what and they just need to be patient for these parties to arise, not realizing that the goal of the Republican party is to make sure that day never comes in the form of allocating all the resources they can to disenfranchising as much people as possible. The gerrymandering and anything that comes through over the next 4 years will be a solidification of doing all they can to keep power in the establishment and lower the position of minorities. That being said democrats need to be focused on winning elections. The popular vote is nearly always in their favor but the electoral college is not. That being said I do not believe it is worth cannibalizing the entire platform for these individuals that may never vote for what they propose. Analysis needs to be done on if these voters fit into the demographic of newer or converted blue states like New Mexico and Colorado. I think in about 8 years, even Texas could be competitive. So Democrats have a lot to potentially look forward to, but at the same time they have to protect the vulnerable demographics who are most at risk. At the same time there are voters who are just plenty uneducated about so much -- thinking about Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the like who voted for Trump and then are completely afraid that they will lose Obamacare or that their aid will get defunded which is a cornerstone of the Republican party. They are essentially Snidely Whiplash characters who want everyone to either die, starve, become homeless or become entrepreneurs. I don't think they will ever understand or come to the other side unless we let them get exactly what they asked for. We can't be the liberal soft hearts anymore trying to stop enablers from drinking poison. I'm not afraid of the Republicans ever becoming decent because they haven't shown that for years, and their hypocrisy can only be supported by those who don't intelligently look at their arguments. It takes a special kind of person to ignore the fact that the party leader of the Republicans was a recipient of government aid, and now wants to abolish the program because he got what he needed from it. I think it goes back to seeing how far gone these people are. If they really believe that minorities are evil people and that they don't deserve to exist then there not much that can be done. At that same token there needs to be responsibility on their side to understand that the jobs that they lost aren't coming back and they need to move to another field or industry. Many of them refuse to see that - and as such they will continue to be destroyed as we move into the future. The cutting of aid programs will only exacerbate their issues. If people can't understand that all people deserve equality and a chance and deserve the opportunity of a better life America is dead. Overall the party needs to be about progression and integration. That's what I always understood the party to be and that's what I believe it still is - but it's also morphed into an elitist and intellectualized hub of diversity, and those ideologies have been demonized by the right. As if it's cool to be ignorant and not know information. This anti-intellectualism has grown with the last two Republican president elects - George W. Bush and Donald Trump. It's really abhorrent and disgusting. What I love is that Obama is putting in as many roadblocks as he can to stop Donald's craziest proposals. It will take a while for Trump to effect things on a significant scale - I'm hoping that with Obama's orders it will take him 2-2.5 years to really implement many of his changes, but with the Republican lead Congress and Senate, as well as a Supreme Court - it's going to be a rough time, and if Democrats lose any more seats (which is likely in the mid year elections) Trump could alter the constitution. We really have to see if they can be educated and if they are willing to learn the reasons for their problems and the personal responsibility of their actions, and how they have caused their failings. The recession hit everyone hard, but the economy has largely sprung back. They need to ask themselves hard questions like why haven't they recovered while others have. Don't quite believe this, I think they will be emboldened and united with every law Trump passes that harms minorities. It's already happening that the Republicans are targeting Muslims, Gays, Immigrants and Women - it's only a matter of time before he begins targeting the black community, if they haven't already. No one is safe, and every action or measure that is taken that harms these groups will rally his base even more. They like the idea of hurting people who are not white, straight and cis-gendered. Every measure he takes against them will be an action against their war against liberals.

This is important, want to come back to this when I have the time.

Women I understand a bit more of, there is a ton of internalized misogyny in this world, and white women can still profit and benefit from white men being in power. Arguably less so with minority women who are from a darker pigmentation spectrum. I think one of the biggest problems with this presidential race was that everyone was grouped into brackets, not understanding that white women in the mid-west are fundamentally different from white women in the urban centers. I think that was a costly measure as it looks more and more like white women backed their white men. Those women may be pissed that they can't be homemakers anymore, and that their men can't make enough to where they don't have to work and they may be able to just sit at home and worry about the house. Maybe they want it to be 1950 as well, where they didn't have to worry about being independent, and just had to have dinner ready before 5. Those other individuals who voted for him, I imagine Hispanics and Latino's also seem to have a hatred for undocumented immigrants, not realizing that they could be just like them if not for a number of possibilities. I don't understand nationalist sentiments, as it's not something that is controlled for. Even though I was born in America, that means nothing to me, as I can't control where I was born. That's like holding something against someone simply due to uncontrollable factors. We can't control where we were born, what color our complexion is, if we are able bodied or if we are male, female or transgendered. I don't understand why people continue to hold this belief that one is inherently better than the other, when that is out of their control.

That illustrates so much self-hate right there, I don't even know what else to say.

I remember reading an article from the Nation titled: What Time is it? Here's what the 2016 Election tells us about Obama, Trump and What Comes Next. It was an insightful read that really goes to task about Trump and what he means and that Obama was a figure that tried to fight against Reganomics but ultimately failed. The writer likened Trump to Jimmy Carter as a "disruptor" or a disjunctive President that won't get much of anything done because he isn't aligned with his party and he thinks he can do everything himself. Ultimately we need to know where we stand as a nation. There were white working class voters who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, that did not vote for Hillary in 2016. Is there any way or path for the Democrats to get back things that they should have never lost in the first place? Part of the thing that was most frustrating about this election cycle was that there was an organic effort in the Democratic party that touched the same vein Trump did in regards to income equality and lobbyists - but it was snuffed out and stifled by the DNC, to their own destruction. Is the far left out of touch with "modern" America? And by how much? Do we really have to sacrifice big revolutionary changes for incremental change? Or is Trump just an inflation and representation of an America that is tired of the same old, same old - and Democrats just needed a better alternative that wasn't apart of the system? These are the questions the party needs to answer and quickly. Trump will be a disaster, but what happens next cycle?

The problem with this election is that everything is so completely skewed that it's hard to make heads or tails out of what just happened and how to move forward because so much of what once was has been turned upside down. Does the majority of this country really skew Republican, and are we really that far backwards ideologically? Or are people really just fed up with government and the Republicans and just decided to say the hell with it all and elect Trump as a way to screw the system? Democrats really need to do their research here and study what the problem is, because if they over correct themselves based on this one election they could make themselves even weaker and more irrelevant than ever by turning their backs on their base supporters. The Trump base is so ideologically screwed I don't know what to make of them. They vote Republican and then cry about losing Obamacare. They hate taxes, and yet don't realize how much they benefit from those taxes by living in red states which statistically are provided the most aid. Was Hillary such a bad choice in a candidate that they couldn't bear voting for her, and would they have won had they chosen another candidate that wasn't mired in endless scandal and corruption gossip? Trump won by such a slim margin and was completely trounced by the popular vote so there is hope. But we need a detailed and complete analysis of what the hell happened this year, and we need leadership to unite the party and move it forward. It's a shame that this loss happened but I fear that the party will remain divided. It reminds me of what the Democrats were like prior to Bill Clinton, during the Reagan years. Is the Republican party a true representation of this nation or has it been artificially inflated due to Trump's ignorant populism? His approval rating is low - lower than an incumbent President's ever been, which bodes well for the nation, and the democratic party - but some of these people are just so ideologically backwards I don't have much hope. They don't trust media, they don't trust government, and they seem to have these crazy conspiracy theories that the government is out to get them.

I said this before, but I can't believe that pollsters didn't take into consideration that white women would vote to protect and further sheath their white men. Their a packaged set in this red states. Not everyone is as progressive as the urban woman.

Well that is the myth of the presidency, without Senate or Congress you can't get much done that will be effective in the long-term. The Republicans really worked to make sure he could and would accomplish nothing, and they succeeded. I remember in 2015 feeling as if he had accomplished so much to bring the nation forward: same sex marriage, universal healthcare, economic progress, bank regulation, death of Bin Laden, Climate regulations, etc. But all of that looks to be undone. The Republicans want to bring the entire nation back to the dark ages, and it's only going to get worse. 2020 can't come fast enough. But I fear what the disgruntled white population will do when Trump fails. I feel like race relations will just get worse.

I'm worried that Fox News and the like are going to end up brainwashing all of the people that view their news into believing that Trump is the great job bringer, they already started with Carrier and now they have continued with Ford and that Asian mobile company investing 50 billion dollars into the US. If those voters end up really buying this we may be in the red for generations.

He stopped Carrier from leaving to Mexico by threatening their Government contract. This is a huge boon for Republicans. Indiana may end up staying red.

He went on Twitter and said it wasn't true.

Bannon is incredibly dangerous, he is against globalization and against diversity and inclusion - and pretty much only cares about the white half of this country. I would say not just millennials, but also the older citizens who also want to retire but can't. The Republicans are going after medicare and medicade, which will devastate the older citizens who already don't have enough to live off of. If it gets much worse you will end up in a society not unlike that of a depressed China. Where we have the Generation X-er's sheltering everyone - their children and their parents - if they can afford it.There's a bottle neck happening on both sides here and they are both getting squeezed. You have people not wanting to vacate jobs because they are unsure about being able to retire, which directly effects the graduating students because there are no opportunities for them to enter the workforce. Their both getting squeezed, the middle can't move, and prices for everything are continuously escalating. The student debt is also a massive issue, these students can't pay back their loans and they can't create additional costs like moving to a place they have no foothold in. Most of them don't have good enough credit to pay for things they can't afford when they are already hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. That's what happens when you tell an entire generation they have to go to college in order to get a good job.