quartermainefan

I don't know why the news is bleeping words.   If it is offensive language then allow it to offend people.  

Reading that Trump tape article, it reminds me of this really good old movie, "A Face In The Crowd" starring Andy Griffith.     This is more a template for a Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, but you could see how the last few minutes could easily apply to a Trump type.

Assuming she is elected, he would be a perfect Sec of State.  He knows every president and prime minister on earth, and he could probably solve some problems the way he helped in Northern Ireland and almost in Palestine.  Plus he has all those contacts from his foundation to schmooze into action.   Not sure where else he would be as effective, unless they plan on splitting the presidency between the two of them.   She has to be smart enough to not just squander him as a first spouse. 

Bill is still the best speaker of all time.  Just look this past week what happened.   After 5 years of republicans being unable to articulate what was wrong with Obamacare, Bill just came along and summed it up in three sentences.   They had no one close who could articulate the downsides of it the way he could.    That is why Obama rightly called him the explainer in chief.   There is no issue he cannot conversationally explain the most complex of problems.    Yes, he is too thin, and the vegan thing has worn him down, and his voice is weak,  but look how effortlessly he dismissed Obamacare and he isn't even running for office trying to run against Obamacare.    He doesn't have the strength of voice to rile up a crowd of 20,000 but I cut him slack for being 70 and a recovering heart patient. 

I imagine republicans will glom onto him as the new republican hope.   It will work into their delusions that if only a real conservative would come along they'd win.  Let them pick Pence, because all that will happen is is first his Jesus BS will turn half the country off, and then his anti-gay policies will turn off young people.  He's damaged goods except  they don't see it yet.   It's 2016, you are not going to become president being openly anti-gay and trying to sell it as religious freedom.   Except for the religious whack jobs, nobody believes that.   That's why the NBA pulled out of whichever Carolina that was with the bathroom bill.   The conservatives lost the culture wars, they just can't admit it in the mirror yet.

Anyone who says Kaine won is just shilling for the democratic ticket.   It's why MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell is to be ignored because he is just the liberal version of a FOX commentator.   About Kaine:  any points he deserves for speaking truthfully about what Trump said is erased by his non-stop interrupting.   Maybe he was nervous.   Pence, despite having the ridiculous job of lying all the war through saying Trump didn't say all the things he said, kept his composure,    Kaine looked like he had one coffee too many.

He probably was just riffing off the top of his head the way he likes to do.   People sometimes say he secretly doesn't want her to be president, but I find that a little hard to believe.    I do believe he is going to be pissed when Obama is out of office and takes his job as Elder Statesman of the party.  Jimmy Carter doesn't count really, and now Bill is going to no longer be the headliner at their conventions. 

Happy New Year to you too.

Bill Clinton was totally right, but his timing could be better.   I am not a fan of Obamacare and since they announced it I never saw the logic of "we know the insurance companies are crooks, so we will make it a law that everyone too smart to give the insurance companies money will now be penalized".    It doesn't make sense, and yes, there is a problem when it comes to people just outside the assistance level of income.   I know a lot of people who have seen their rates spike by a lot. 

As for the debate.   Kaine was too manic.  Pence is like a stepford candidate in some ways and I wish Pence used his energy to bring up what a hatemonger this guy is and why he was about to get run out of Indiana.  Pence turned in the better performance, and I have no idea who that moderator was but she sucked.

double post

This sounds awful.   Every which way.   They want to center the show around Fallon?   So much for the original premise of the show being Blake.   They want a teen drama and don't know what to call it.   The turning Krystle into a different ethnicity is silly too.   Also, they don't have pros like John Forsythe and Joan Collins anymore, I can't even see who would play Blake, and you just know they will de-age him to being about 40.  And what celebrity special guest stars can they possibly get for short term roles?   There are no Rock Hudsons anymore.  And they clearly won't have the budget to do the show right.  Let these people for once come up with their own shows.

Shimon Peres had a good funeral.  Obama gave a good speech.   Clinton is reaching the point where he is starting to look unfortunate.  His yarmulke was on totally wrong.

She was unlike the typical first lady though.   They said all along they were two-for-one, and it seems safe to assume whatever the Clinton administration was doing, she was in the loop making decisions or at least helping make them.   She was integral in getting him elected when the whole Gennifer Flowers thing was happening, and she was the lead warrior when the impeachment thing happened.   The whole phrase "vast right wing conspiracy" was started by her.   She doesn't try to say "Oh, I was just the first lady hosting luncheons and setting menus" so we shouldn't either.    She was also active in his administration in Arkansas.   It's also safe to assume he will be the most influential first spouse ever, even more than Eleanor Roosevelt.    They're a package deal and don't try to hide it.  That's part of what makes them so interesting.

I don't gush over Donald Trump, I just don't subscribe to the theory that because I am a democrat I must believe the republican candidate can do no right, while the democratic candidate can do no wrong.

Trump lost fair and square and largely due to his own ego.  If one were to watch the debate with no sound on and just the split screen he probably would like like a complete nut with the face and the fidgeting.   He could not get out of his way with the interrupting, and of course that is what she was hoping for.   In contrast she was her usual good debating self and just stayed on her even keep--which probably annoyed him even more.   She got him to basically admit he doesn't pay taxes, to admit that he had racist rental policies in Brooklyn in the 70s, and to fall into the whole birther trap.    Trump started out the first fifteen minutes stronger and not looking deranged, but he can't help himself.    The issue now will be is if winning a debate on points and not a knockout will be enough to for Hillary to bring the strays home who don't want to vote for her.

Debates matter.  They have trotted out the clips again and again of bumbling Al Gore and his sighing and saying Lockbox, Ford not realizing half of Europe was under the control of the soviets, George Bush and his watch,,,debates can affect how people see a candidate, just ask Marco Rubio or Dan Quayle. 

Every election there is one or two great moments at the debates that can stand the test of video replay:  I loved when Obama told Romney that not only does the Navy not have as many boats, but they also don't have as many bayonets.  

He is a joke and would be a bad president, but people are forgetting the history of the last 15 years.   Trump is a racist, Trump has no idea about anything except how to build buildings and be a huckster on TV.  He'll suck, it's true.  He'd probably wreck the economy while he's at it.  However, George Bush lied under the advice of Dick Cheney to start a war of convenience that not only got a few thousand americans killed and many more maimed, but tens of thousand of Iraqis too--bankrupting our country in the process.   That war created the Isis we know today.  He will go down as the worst president maybe of anyone except whatshisname who watched as the country went into the civil war.   Nothing Trump can do will be as bad as Dick Cheney since Dick Cheney is the definition of bad.   I'd never vote for Trump, but I said it during the primaries  and I'll say it again---I'd take a hundred Trumps before I take one Ted Cruz.  

That said, I'd never let an election come between me and my friends.   My friends have the right to make bad decisions and this makes for fun debates on facebook.   I debate my republican friends on FB all the time and we barely agree on the time of day, but to stop being their friend because they disagree with me?   That's crazy talk if you ask me.  

Bill Clinton said the other day that there is one bigotry left that America stands by:  the dislike of people we disagree with.  That is sort of what has contributed to the divide:  people only want to talk to people they agree with, and watch news they agree with,  and so news that is the truth is suspect now.   I have democrat and republican friends and I don't let their voting patterns factor into my friendships with them because that is just a very impractical way of keeping friends.   You will wind up discarding friends every election, and that means they really weren't your friends at all.   My roommate at college is a diehard republican, but we have been friends 30 years.  There is no way either one of us would even consider not liking each other anymore because of some election.   Elections come and go.    Hillary herself is friends with people who will vote for Trump; everyone should follow her openmindedness.   Look at Bill and the Bushes.  They were rivals in the 90s, and today are tight friends.   That's a better policy than the Trumpian/Palinesque attitude of hating and demonizing everyone they disagree with, no?

It wasn't Rudy who lied about the air, it was Christie Todd Whitman.   Rudy's office didn't have the wherewithall to declare air safe or not, whereas that was expressly her job.  She lied presumably under orders from the Bush adminstration, I guess I can understand why considering what would happen to the entire world economy if NYC and Wall Street was shut down and evacuated. 

I saw and continue to see no downside to moving aggressive squeegee men out of traffic.  They were a menace and contributed to a sense of chaos and urban decline.     The only bias I can see there is a bias against people taking to traffic to intimidate people at red lights and extort money from them.    I have no sympathy for turnstile jumpers either, to be honest.    Every 15 yr old kid athletically hopping on the subway in fine jeans and expensive sneakers isn't hopping the turnstile because they can't afford to pay, they just don't want to.

I don't think Trump really even knows what stop and frisk is.   He had to find something to say, and he probably isn't familiar with any other crime policy NYC had.   Saying "stop and frisk" sort of sounds like you at least have theories.    There were some decent policies Giuliani and Bloomberg had that just didn't have an easy to remember label.   I thought more that stop and frisk, what really started to change the city around was Rudy's theories on stopping the minor crimes first because that would lead to a decline in urban decay and major crimes.   The squeegee crackdown, the turnstile jumpers being cracked down on...that stuff worked.   Rudy went nuts when he decided spitters and jaywalkers were next, but the city eventually came to want him gone and it wasn't until 9/11 that he was rehabilitated.

A show about Capt Pike and The Cage era would be cool, but they would have to recreate the technicolor costumes and sets, and dated/outdated tech.  

I am not entirely sure.   The first thing that comes to mind is the Wolverine version of Deadpool (also played by Ryan Reynolds)   That is my best guess.

The superhero in question is called Nightwing, which is the name Robin, The Boy Wonder chooses when he grows up.

The media made Trump, it's a little late in the day for all of them to be mad that he manipulates them in his three ring circus.

Hillary is a sucky candidate who wouldn't know charisma if it stepped up and married her, and I think she is making a mistake not deploying Bill to the blue collar states.   He was on TV the other night on The Daily Show or something, and he was on top of his game just explaining the election in very conversational terms.  He's older now and can't rouse up a crowd the way he used to, but he can explain the issues far better than anyone.  Obama has become the better campaigner.  

I still think when all is said and done Hillary will win.   Yes, she has a lot going against her but even with the best few weeks Trump could have asked for he has yet to even once this entire year pull ahead.   Her ceiling seems higher than his and I have to assume the young people will come home eventually.    That debate could be the biggest tussle since Ali-Frazier, I just don't see how she will pin him down when he bobs and weaves changing his position even mid-debate.   The guy has chutzpah, I give him credit for that.   The gall to say that it was he who settled the birther issue she created was something worthy of PT Barnum.   And he says it with a straight face no less.   You have to respect the chutzpah and laugh.  She's going to have her hands full.

His general point I sort of agree with:  she is 70 and trying to run a schedule beyond the capabilities of a 30 year old.    I don't think that is healthy.   Powell, being older, knows how it sucks to get old and what it does to your body, so  he probably knows how much of a struggle it is. 

Sylvester Stallone was asked what was the best part of getting older.  His answer was "nothing".

Re-weighting polls to reflect previous elections is a waste of time.    That is what Dick Morris did to come up with the prediction Romney would win in a blowout.  If half the responders in your poll tell you they have no college, then half the responders in your poll have no college.    Dick Morris' ridiciulous predictions: