Paul Ryan sees his 2016 job as ensuring that the party doesn’t become a Cult of Trump https://t.co/LW5SUcRtIe pic.twitter.com/90mKOiMB9y
— POLITICO (@politico) May 29, 2016
In that case he's failing at his job. https://t.co/XOhgo5mycn
— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) May 29, 2016
Lest we fall into the media trap of thinking it’s only us Democrats who must contend with nutballs, narcissists, and fanatical deadenders. Lyin’ Paul Ryan attempts to protect his own 2020 chances while not getting into the short-fingered vulgarian’s cross-hairs…
… “When people go to the polls in November, they are not just picking a person … they’re also picking a path,” said Ryan, who spoke repeatedly of unity with the front-runner — while refusing to bet on a Trump victory this fall.
“I think this is a ‘we,’ not just one person,” he added. “I very much believe in a type and style of politics that may not be in vogue today but, I still think, nevertheless, is the right kind of politics.”
It was that core belief, he says, more than any rank political calculation, that led Ryan to say he was “just not ready” to back Trump in a shocker of a CNN interview on May 6. Standing in front of an idyllic waterfall, Ryan said he wanted to see “a standard-bearer that bears our standards” and called on Trump to rein in his worst impulses if he wanted Ryan’s support…
“You should ask him those questions,” said Ryan. “I’m not the person to be giving you the breakdown of Donald Trump. That’s not my job and responsibility.”…
Shorter Ryan: Hey, if Trump wins, I’ll be his biggest cheerleader. And if Trump loses, I’m young enough to wait out a Hillary Clinton presidency…
***********
Apart from more healthful exercise rolling our eyes, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Corner Stone
He’s their nominee. That’s it. End of story time.
Baud
My eyes are googly from rolling so much this election season.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Was going to mow the lawn. It’s in the high 80s and very humid. Not an appealing prospect. Then unpredictable Detroit weather obliged with a 5 minute downpour that rendered the grass too wet to cut.
I have a few electronics projects to work on in the basement where it’s cool.
Mustang Bobby
Via Mediate:
What a profile in chickenshit.
Corner Stone
About to go to the store for the final few things I need for some pickling exploits. Not tickling exploits, that’s for when I’m next in Michigan. *Wink*
Then going to make roasted garlic creamy cheesy smashed potatoes and chicken fried cubed steak patties. May grab some fresh corn on the cob if it’s on sale. For health reasons, natch.
redshirt
That’s a pretty reasonable position for Ryan to hold. He’s the Republican leader. Either he’s working with Trump next year or dealing with his loss. Best to be prepared for both.
Major Major Major Major
I’ve decided that, at least for right now, in the right lighting if you take off your glasses and kind of squint, the Republicans are amusing.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Well, Gary Johnson is the Libertarian candidate. Remember them? Take a minute if you have to. This year there’s a possibility that with so much antipathy toward the major party candidates the Libs might get a larger than usual number of votes in the general. I have to wonder at whose expense the bulk of those will be. At a rough guess I’ll have to say more Republicans who can’t stand The Donald will vote for Johnson as a protest than Democrats protesting Clinton.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: You have a duty to your supporters to stay healthy — eyes and all.
benw
Excellent work by young Mr. Ryan there to string a bunch of deep-sounding sentences together without actually having to define his “path,” “politics,” or “standards.” Well done.
And he even manages to correctly define the word “we.” Well done, indeed.
MattF
At best, Ryan gives his allegiance to a Republican party that doesn’t exist. The obvious problems with this are 1), the non-existence of an honorable Republican party has been evident for several decades now and 2), Ryan has been a significant actor in developing the policies of the actual, not-at-all-honorable Republican party. He wants his cake and he wants to eat it and that’s a problem.
Patricia Kayden
@Mustang Bobby: The Robot is exhausted. It took quite a beatdown.
jayjaybear
All these Republicans who are shocked (SHOCKED!) to find out that their party is a nest of racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic vipers apparently haven’t been paying any attention to anything involving politics for the last (to be unnecessarily generous) 8 years.
Amir Khalid
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Just curious: Is Green vs. Libertarian like the undercard fight in American presidential elections?
jayjaybear
@MattF: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” – John Kenneth Galbraith
redshirt
@MattF: Yeah, but that’s the game now. Appear reasonable to the media while engaging in typical Republican atrocities.
jayjaybear
@Amir Khalid: It’s the underGROUND fight. Like “Fight Club”. The vast majority of US citizenry doesn’t even know either party exists, let alone that they’re actually involved in a presidential campaign.
The first rule of third parties is don’t talk about third parties…
The Thin Black Duke
@Ultraviolet Thunder: To my way of thinking, a “moderate” Republican belongs in the same category as unicorns. However, if such mythical creatures do exist, then voting for Donald Trump is not a viable option, period. So, confronted with the horror of Hillary Clinton, voting for Gary Johnson gives any Republican owning a non-leaking brain pan a honorable choice.
MattF
@Ultraviolet Thunder: As long as prospective voters don’t look too carefully at what Libertarians actually argue about. E.g., should selling heroin to a five-year old be a crime? Should it be illegal to drive a car without obtaining a driver’s license? And so forth.
lollipopguild
@MattF: Up to a point it has worked fine so far for Ryan. Now it gets a bit sticky.
Chris
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Who?
The what?
No.
Baud
@MattF: I watched part of the libertarian debate last night. Crazy as they were, they were still better than Republicans.
Chris
@The Thin Black Duke:
Too harsh?
Or should I go further back?
Mike J
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I know Johnson got booed for saying that it’s ok for the state to require a license to drive, but is he the same candidate who was booed for saying it was bad to sell heroin to children?
MattF
@Chris: To Eisenhower, at least. Or maybe Hoover or T. Roosevelt.
Eric S.
A decidedly non political weekend for me so far. BBQ at one softball team’s captain’s apartment yesterday. Today I’ve done a BP with other softball peeps. Now I’m getting ready to stay cooking dinner for the GoT crowd.
Not an original observation but this year’s election just baffles me. I know the the GOTea had been a cesspool of ugliness for a long time but their inability to stop Drumph still confounds me. There’s a realignment going on but I don’t understand it at the moment and don’t know how to predict it. I’m just rambling with no point to make but that’s where this election had led me.
Chris
@MattF:
Ike is the last guy that I would not have voted for, but whose victory wouldn’t have made me too bent out of shape. (With caveats. But then no president’s perfect). That whole “I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president now” bipartisan patriotic spirit that the media claims to fetishize.
I’m not sure who the last Republican is that I would actually have considered better than his adversary – don’t know pre-FDR politics quite as well. But it would have to be pre-FDR.
JPL
@MattF: Well the this will gain the libertarians some votes.. nsfw
M. Bouffant
@Mustang Bobby: “It is what it is”, & what it is is white supremacy & racism.
Chris
@Eric S.:
I’m not sure it can be called a realignment when the Republican Party under Trump still values all the same things it did before, and still has all the same constituencies as it did before. A makeover, maybe. Like the rise of the teabaggers in 2008. But nothing’s fundamentally changing.
As near as I can tell, it’s a combination of 1) extreme fatigue by the voters with the GOP establishment, which has made the climate more favorable for a total spoiler/outsider and 2) Trump understanding exactly what it is the GOP base values and saying it more loudly and proudly than anyone, which explains not only his appeal but also their inability to strike back – they can’t fight him because they basically agree with him on everything, and just aren’t as good at broadcasting it.
The Thin Black Duke
@Chris: No, that’s not “too harsh” at all. But maybe ordering the wretched zoo of Republican traitors presently holding the government hostage to dig their own graves while a firing squad waits patiently, now that would be overdoing it just a tad. Then again, who knows what new atrocity the Republicans will commit tomorrow? As Lily Tomlin observed, “No matter how cynical you get, you can’t keep up.”
JPL
@Mike J: That was Daryl Perry. He thinks we all should have the same freedoms as tomatoes .
redshirt
@MattF: A factor that I never see discussed in the great electoral shift of the 80’s where the South went from a bastion of Democrats to a bastion of Republicans is the resulting shift in the North. Interesting fact: Maine and Vermont are the only two states to never vote for Roosevelt for any of his 4 terms. That tells you how strong Republicanism was in the Northeast prior to the 1960’s. With the upheval of the Civil Rights Act, the Northeast turned the bluest of blue Democrat, except for occasionally New Hampshire.
What I find is these areas would be even bluer if not for a demographically inherited tradition of voting Republican, AKA my Father did and his Father did and so on.
I’m sure the same thing happened in the South for a period but I feel like that’s been mostly burnt through by now. Kim Davis as an example/exception.
lollipopguild
@Chris: I think Eisenhower was actually a normal human being. Cannot say the same for the ones who followed him in the GOP.
Schlemazel Khan
@Chris:
I think Gerry Ford might have been OK had he actually had the job & not the leftovers of the Nixon administration and stagflation. But then he never would have been President without Nixon believing his ascendancy would protect Nixon from impeachment. Ike was W in a more reasonable time. Not particularly interested in the job but happy for the attention. Ike allowed a lot of bad things to be done because he let the GOP put key people into key slots & he ignored what they did. Dulles set Iran, Cuba, Central America and Lebanon for the failure that was to come plus sent Marines to fight in a little known place often refered to as French Indo-China that later was better known as Viet Nam. Ike ignored what McCarthy was doing because he was a Republican. Not immoral but amoral.
JPL
@Baud: Maybe not. I linked to Weigel’s twitter feed and there is a short video.
my comment 30
M. Bouffant
@JPL: Dave Weigel’s Dewey avatar does look a little like Dave w/ a ‘stache.
germy
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/05/chris-wallace-wont-compare-clinton-other
whoops. Wrong thread.
Cacti
The liberal Kevin Drum is deeply concerned that Hillary shouts too much.
As opposed to, say, the level conversational tones of candidates Sanders and Trump.
With friends like these.
smith
@JPL:
And sit still until we get eaten? Sounds Republican to me.
lollipopguild
@M. Bouffant: Rubio is too weak and spineless to stand up to Adolf Hitler Jr. Rubio also figures that someone like him is quite safe from Trump’s concentration camps.
Barbara
@Baud: I am impressed that so many posters here are able to watch things like this — a third party debate on CSPAN! — without being bothered by an SO threatening them with homicide. Which is what would happen to me.
Schlemazel Khan
@The Thin Black Duke:
No, I don’t think so, it seems fair to me as long as they are given teaspoons and not shovels to dig with. But then I am a very bitter old man so maybe I’m not the best judge.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
2020? Ryan will be lucky to survive to 2018. GovExec from March:
Of course, there is no FY17 budget resolution (from May):
Ryan is a fraud and a failure. Of course, that won’t keep much of the political press from talking about how dreamy and reasonable he is and pumping him up for 2020…
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Barbara: It’s easier because there’s no chance they’ll be president.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I’ve been checking Dave Weigel’s twitter feed, Johnson made it on the second ballot, they really don’t like Weld, but it reads like they’re coming around, and some guy just did a strip tease on stage to make, I assume, some point about the Constitution. And lots of costumes.
ETA: daveweigel @ daveweigel 6m6 minutes ago
Libertarians now arguing over how to condemn the man who came onstage and stripped down to a thong.
MattF
@Eric S.: Yeah, the R party just collapsed. Seriously– is Reince Prbxysmk really the best spokesperson they could come up with? The big question is where Reince puts his beep-beep nose and size 40 shoes when he’s doing a press conference.
smith
@lollipopguild:
I’m confident that the Trumpenfuhrer’s brownshirts will scrupulously observe the fine distinction between citizen and non-citizen Latinos when the Great Eviction gets underway.
Amir Khalid
@Schlemazel Khan:
Eisenhower was pretty new to the Republican party, wasn’t he? Maybe he had a certain naivete about what they were capable of doing without proper supervision. I seem to recall that he didn’t have a party affiliation when he retired from the Army; and that he was courted by both the Democratic and Republican parties when he started thinking about running for President.
MattF
@Barbara: It’s amusing to watch the Libertarians get excited over their big chance to get their message out. On CSPAN!
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
But the exercise of that right is the only reason I was considering voting libertarian.
Mnemosyne
We went out to brunch this morning and I’m pretty sure it served for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s 3:00 pm and I’m still stuffed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
On topic, I assume Marco’s sucking up to Trump is his strategy for getting there, wherever that may be, before Ryan. I figure Cruz, Martinez and probably Walker and a few others are all trying to figure out exactly where to fit between those two, assuming Ryan manages to drag this out.
Chris
@redshirt:
Ten years ago I read an article arguing that the 2006 elections might be a less acknowledged mirror image of the 1994 elections – an election where a region that had historically voted for Party A, but had been trending towards Party B for a long time now, swept out a bunch of holdovers and became much more firmly Party B. (The South becoming Republican in 1994, the North becoming Democratic in 2006). I never went and checked on the election results in the North to see how true this was, though.
@Schlemazel Khan:
Gerald Ford, the guy who pardoned Nixon, to me is pretty much the living embodiment of “you tosser! You had ONE JOB!”
Ike Eisenhower, yeah… The two things I hold against him are the foreign policy messes on the one hand (Dulles brothers, yay!) and happily riding McCarthyism into office on the other hand even though he wasn’t their biggest fan. The tactic of “I don’t really like those backwards-ass right wing fucks, but God damn do they bring votes and enthusiasm!” was already alive and well back then.
On the other hand, he mostly accepted and even built on the legacy left to him by Roosevelt and Truman, and helped normalize these views among the Republican Party establishment (at least for the next thirty years until Reagan took over). Prior to that point, the conservative wing had still had a very strong grip on the party. Without Ike moving into the GOP, Taft’s wing probably keeps control. If the GOP had gotten into the White House (as it eventually would have) under those guys, it would’ve been much worse than anything that happened under Eisenhower. He probably did the country a big favor by forcing those guys back for a generation.
Elie
@Cacti:
Yeah, I caught that… WTF!?
In general so many so called progressive media types spend a lot of time handwringing about Hillary — she is not attacking Trump, does not know how to attack Trump, doesn’t have anything interesting to say…. just a bunch of bullshit.
There is a lot — A LOT of misogyny. I always thought that there was a lot, but there is way way more than I thought…
lollipopguild
@smith: One can hope so but I highly doubt it. If Trump gets in, there are no more rules/laws anymore.
satby
My comment got eated :(
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I assume that man was hoping the invisible hand of the market would stuff his thong full of gold coins.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: Eisenhower worked his way up through the Army bureaucracy and successfully organized the Normandy invasion. Not naive. He played hard-to-get, but he must have wanted the nomination pretty badly in order to defeat the 1950s conservatives.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
The troll in the other thread has resorted to linking to Morning Joe to “prove” his claims, so you may as well leave this here. It ain’t going to be convinced of anything other than that Hillary is the most crooked politician since Nixon (actual comparison).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elie: my favorite thing about “she doesn’t know how to attack Trump!” is that two months ago it was “she can’t just attack Trump, she has to talk about policy!” No question there’s a lot of misogyny, but the Clinton hatred seems to have passed to the Millenial Villagers as surely as Broderism passed on to the Boomers and older Gen-Xers there. The Bright Young Things of MSNBC all but roll their eyes whenever they mention her name. Kristen Welker I think is the name of the one I’m thinking of most of all.
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah.
Ike had two big advantages: one, he was a hero of a recent war and so was able to run as a General-President in the tradition of Washington, Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt, and two, his views were basically in line with the public mood of the times (which had gotten tired of twenty years of Democratic control, but also didn’t necessarily want the reforms of the New Deal repealed) in a way that neither liberal Democrat nor conservative Republican factions were. The question was basically whether he’d beat Taft in the primary and Stevenson in the general, or the other way around.
Ultimately, he chose to run as a Republican precisely so that he could squash Taft and his faction as early as possible, and thus prevent a resurgence in the isolationism that they were preaching. It’s hard to fault him there, and like I said above, I think he probably did the country a big favor by doing that and by buffing up the moderate wing of the GOP the way he did.
rikyrah
@Eric S.:
Realignment?
Really?
Seriously?
There is nothing that Trump is saying that the rest of them don’t think, except for that Trump doesn’t use dogwhistles.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She does that with Obama too.
guachi
@Cacti:
She does shout too much. It’s like she equates volume with emotion. It’s the same thing that dooms many comedy movies where the actors just keep getting louder instead of actually getting funnier.
Having seen her at a town hall, her speech was mediocre but as soon as she started taking questions and answered in a normal tone of voice she was awesome. Clinton just can’t project her voice well and she either needs to take a crash course or stop trying.
nutella
Ryan’s “core beliefs” and “standards” consist of knowingly submitting falsified budgets. By falsified I mean he says they balance when they (very obvously!) don’t.
An impressive moral counterpoint to the Trump wing of the party!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Also, for those of you of a certain age who listen to Sirius/XM radio, the egregious “Madison”
lollipopguild
@rikyrah: Trump went thru the GOP’s deep bench like Sherman took Atlanta. He took their Hate Themes and ran with them. Most of the GOP is quite Ok with Trump. They also think that they can control him once he is in the White House.
Schlemazel Khan
@Amir Khalid:
That is the story my parents told, both parties wanted him because of his reputation from WWII but the Dems had talent on the national stage and the GOP offered him a richer pot. I read that he was never really interested in governing, he used to have a pair of 10 inch scissors he would use to trim his nails when he was bored during meetings. I think he was used to Army life where people brought him solutions and he blessed them but counted on their ability to carry them out.
lollipopguild
@nutella: Standard Operating Procedure for the GOP.
smith
@Elie: Misogyny is the water we swim in. Recently I have been trying to make a distinction in my mind between sexism and misogyny when I hear something like that. To my mind, misogyny clearly implies an active animus toward women, while sexism is more an unthinking response conditioned by culture in which people’s behavior is categorized by sex and evaluated primarily in that light. The former is the province of MRA types and the many paler versions of same who advocate for taking as much power away from women as possible. The latter is often characteristic of even well-meaning men (and women!) who use sexism as a heuristic without necessarily feeling any antagonism towards women.
One of the things that has been eye-opening for me with the rise of the internet is not the sexism, which I already knew to be endemic, but the active misogyny among so many men (and some women!).
That said, I’d be inclined to think of Drum’s comment falling more along the lines of sexism than misogyny. Obviously, YMMV.
Schlemazel Khan
@Chris:
FWIW I think Ford really believed the nation would be better off if we buried the Nixon years and moved forward from there. It was a failure to understand the party he belonged to & its worst elements not a failure of morality. He foolishly assumed the humiliation of Nixon and the obvious immorality of what they had done would prevent people from doing it again. He misunderstood the depth of ugly nastiness of his party.
bystander
Sorry, but Sanders is not a Democrat, so Brock hasn’t broken the pattern.
Schlemazel Khan
@nutella:
Have you HEARD Bernie?
Villago Delenda Est
Ryan is as much of the path to fascism as Drumpf is.
Fuck him, fuck the GOP. It’s a party that needs to go the way of the NSDAP. Annihilation.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: She’s of the Village.
The Village needs to be destroyed.
debbie
@guachi
For Chrissakes, women’s voices aren’t deep enough to project as far as men’s. Someone forget to teach you about the physiological differences between the sexes?
gene108
Republicans are heavily invested in Zombie Reagan’s cult of personality.
No reason not to launch one around Trump.
They’ve wired the Party and their followers to want that sort of leadership.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@gene108:
But Reagan acted like a leader. Sure, it was just acting but people believed it. Trump acts like he hates everyone beneath him. Or, everyone. I don’t see a cult of personality coming out of that.
The Thin Black Duke
@debbie: Too loud, too angry, too cold, too phony, too calculating, too fat, too old—have we missed anything? Fuck it, let’s just say “too female”, and be done with it.
Baud
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I have no love lost for Reagan, but it really is humiliating to Reagan to compare Trump to him.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
Did you see the NYTimes story about the H cast playing softball in Central Park? I had it to link for you yesterday but you weren’t around. LMM doesn’t play, though.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mnemosyne: Oh, Mnem! At WisCon, there was a Hamilton singalong. They played the original cast album and everybody sang with handouts for the words. “Guns and Ships” was a challenge.
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
I had brain surgery yesterday performed by the Hamilton cast. They are amazing!
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
And I am loving the sheet music. I just ordered the sheet music for In the Heights, too.
gogol's wife
@Baud:
Inorite?
Schlemazel Khan
@Baud:
Reagan deserves to be humiliated, unfortunately he is not here to experience it
smith
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I think what we’re seeing is more like fandom among his followers than leadership in Trump. It’s not for nothing that the R base caught fire behind a reality TV actor rather than some other loudmouth fascist, among which there are many to choose.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Schlemazel Khan: Ford’s Proclamation:
It was a good decision on Ford’s part.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
I was running all over town yesterday taking my niece and nephew to a play and then going to a graduation party for one of G’s friends. LMM seems to enjoy watching sportsball but isn’t a sportsball player himself.
@Iowa Old Lady:
They did that at the ALA conference, too. Worlds colliding!
@Baud:
Join the cult — we have cookies!
Patricia Kayden
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kristen can roll her eyes for the next 8 years then. Fine with me.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@smith:
You have a point there. Trump and Reagan both came to politics with their phoniness already established in the entertainment media. Interesting parallel. Plus both divorced.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
No, seriously, we have cookies. And cupcakes.
Y’all think we’re obsessed, but you don’t know. You just don’t know.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: Are there action figures?
hovercraft
@redshirt:
That was the result of the southern strategy, the GOP was willing to embrace the racists in exchange for power. They wanted to win congress after being shut out of control for most of the 20 th century. The downside for them was that those dixicrats ended up repulsing liberal northern republicans driving them out. So the parties switched coalitions.
seaboogie
@JPL: That was pretty awesome! I pray that Trump keeps his suit on, or a significant portion of the country will be blind from ripping their eyeballs out.
ThresherK (GPad)
Spousal ThresherK and I went to Hyde Park and toured FDR’s home. Kind of thing makes me proud to be American.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
It pre-dates the play, but yes. Also, a bobblehead.
I’m telling ya, the American Revolution is the new Civil War. I’m sure the Ken Burns doc is pending.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
Would I be correct to assume you and your cohorts saw this article about Lafayette/Jefferson’s day-off activities?
Ultraviolet Thunder
@shomi:
Lissen pal. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. You deduced from a question that I asked about libertarians that I am one, and unleashed a standard attack. Wrong move.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Amir Khalid: Actually, it’s like halftime at a football game where they let 8 year old little squirts in helmets and pads, weighing half what they do, run around for 10 minutes utes and appear to play the game.
It looks real enough, sorta, until you get to the actual contest.
debbie
@Baud:
Good one!
Villago Delenda Est
@lollipopguild: German industrialists also thought they could control Hitler.
Keith G
@Elie:
Kevin’s comments are not rooted in, or retelling others, misogyny.
I have voted for several presidential candidate whose speaking style and vocal tics made it hard for me to listen to their speeches. Carter was bad. Gore was multiples of awful.
Hillary’s large room speaking style also has me looking for “Mute”. It’s weird, since her smaller room style is very good. In an era of amazing microphones, she employs a shouty technique worthy of Rudy Vallée. It sounds forced and a bit amateurish – like she is covering a lack of (fill in the blank) with vaudeville theatrics.
As far as…
As William Jefferson Clinton once remarked, “We can walk and chew gum at the same time.”
Maybe it’s important that Hillary takes further steps to become a better candidate. Maybe she will club Trump like a baby seal no matter what. Those to chose to do so can still sincerely support her candidacy and at the same time point out issues that might be better if addressed.
hovercraft
@lollipopguild:
Apparently he may be reconsidering his decision not to run again. In that same CNN interview he claims that since he dropped out of the race and returned to the senate he has discovered a great new senate. With McConnel in charge things have changed so much, they are now casting votes and are now getting things done. We now have a productive senate now that the evil Reid has been dethroned. Now a useful reporter would follow up and ask what got done, sigh.
Anne Laurie
@Schlemazel Khan:
The GOP picked Gerry because he had a sterling reputation as a Party Man — a go-along, get-along fella who wouldn’t look too hard at all the little mid-level CREEPsters (*cough* Dick Cheney *cough*) scuttling under the refrigerator when the kitchen light came on. Also, he really was just as dumb as your average mediocre Middle American voter. Of course he wanted to ‘bury the Nixon years’; his career was founded on being a safely conservative vote in a deeply conservative (Dutch Reform/Calvinist) district where the white men in charge just wanted gubmint to stay outta their lives (& not look too closely at how they used government funds, or their tactics for keeping ‘those people’ in line).
He wasn’t as evil as Nixon, but he certainly wasn’t good.
redshirt
@hovercraft: It’s all like a bad play with no critics. They can mouth the most horseshitiest of lines and everyone’s like OK, SURE, YOU BETCHYA! A Democrat says something and there’s a faux scandal.
Baud
Now Hillary is clubbing baby seals?! Will the scandals never cease?
redshirt
@efgoldman: To my shame Bush 1 was my first vote and that was the reason – Reagan’s third term. And for the most part he did OK. Handled the end of the USSR calmly and professionally, which is the most important thing.
Please note: I paid almost no attention.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Mnemosyne: If only I could decorate cookies. Chess would still be running.
Serious skill on display!
Redshift
I think Ryan is really trying to preserve his position as the Republican the media (falsely) believe to be thoughtful, reasonable, and “wonky,” more than preserving his presidential chances. He may want that, too, but it’s always going to be a crapshoot, whereas inheriting McCain’s position as the favorite of the Sunday shows is much more.
dmsilev
@Baud: Hillary Clinton is really Cruella DeVille; she’s going to show up to her convention speech wearing a pantsuit made from the pelts of Dalmation puppies.
Mnemosyne
@debbie:
Honestly, there’s so much “Hamilton” news right now that I can’t keep up, but I’m always glad to see my imaginary future ex-husband Daveed appear in the media.
;-)
Mike J
@guachi:
You’re crazy. I went to a rally where the mic died. She got the crowd of 2500 to be silent and she was heard without the PA and never sounded like she was shouting.
Anne Laurie
@Baud:
Not unless the actors agree with licensing them, and I doubt that’s happened yet.
So you won’t find them at Archie McPhee, but there’s probably people at Etsy who’ll hand-craft ‘homages’ if you really need them.
Baud
Hillary needs to buy an autotuner.
Redshift
Apparently Trump thought the Rolling Thunder crowd he was addressing would fill the Mall like the audience for MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech. When it didn’t, he insisted that there were 600,000 (!) people there for it but they were prevented from getting in.
BillinGlendaleCA
@germy: That’s one reason Schiff’s getting my vote. He’s been a pretty good CongressCritter.
Germy Shoemangler
@lollipopguild: represent!
Lamh36
Just saw X-Men Apocalypse
it been a long time since I saw a movie I wasn’t able to give SOME positive reviews on. If you remember I was underwhelmed with Batman vs Superman, but I didn’t call it a complete disappointment. XMen Appcalypse though…VERY DISAPPOINTING.
Review: C-
it had the workings to be a great film but fell well short of being anywhere near as good as it should have been.
Mnemosyne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
We’re stuck with Brad Sherman on our side of town. There’s a weird spike in the congressional districts that means that our street is in Sherman’s district while the rest of Burbank is in Schiff’s district. It’s weird and annoying.
Mike J
@BillinGlendaleCA: I don’t understand what’s supposed to be wrong with running a private server. I have a private server running in my house, it’s not like it’s something weird.
redshirt
@Lamh36: Your review convinces me not to go see it in the theaters.
Baud
@Mike J: How else was she supposed to protect her files from Snowden?
rikyrah
A true American hero.
……………….
From cotton picking in Mississippi and being beaten up by racist cops to heroics in the Korean War and a legacy that inspired a generation: The incredible story of the U.S. Navy’s first black pilot
Jesse Leroy Brown became the U.S. Navy’s first ever black pilot in 1949
He was brought up in a shack with no heating and worked in cotton fields
Brown was ridiculed for wanting to go to a college and become a pilot
Police beat him up after accusing him of being ‘one of those smart n****rs’
But he made it through training and was sent to fight in the Korean War
Brown crash landed after a fuel leak and could not be saved by hero crew
But his bravery and sheer ambition inspired a generation of black airmen
By OLLIE GILLMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 11:54 EST, 28 May 2016 | UPDATED: 12:47 EST, 28 May 2016
rikyrah
@Lamh36:
that’s it. I’m waiting for Redbox.
Andy
@Anne Laurie: —–“Also, he really was just as dumb as your average mediocre Middle American voter. ”
This is why this blog sucks now-a-days.
Entitlement FP’ers.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@efgoldman: He’s been of their prime enablers.
His 2010 budget proposal was smoke and mirrors that would have gutted social programs, cut taxes on the wealthy while raising them on the middle class and the poor, and exploded the deficit and debt.
TheNation:
He made his bed. I have absolutely no sympathy at all for him being unable to do the baseline part of his job – getting a budget enacted.
Cheers,
Scott.
redshirt
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Not to be a Ryan enabler, but I don’t think anyone could run that nuthouse any longer. If the “Freedom Caucus” has enough numbers, they’ll ensure the House is a circus. Until we can excise that poison, we’re screwed.
Matt McIrvin
@Lamh36: I finally saw Civil War today. Definitely not as good as Winter Soldier, but it was far superior to Age of Ultron and well in the upper half of MCU movies. The whole conflict just seems like a terrible waste by the end of the story, but that’s probably what they were going for.
I think I’m going to wait for video with the X-Men movie… the critical reaction is… mixed. A certain amount of “yes, it’s still a Bryan Singer X-Men movie, but not up to his usual standards.”
Doug R
@redshirt: Your review is in agreement with my wife and what I suspected even though we haven’t seen it. Thanks for easing my worry that we were missing something good.
redshirt
@Matt McIrvin: I’m curious why you’d rank it below WS.
Schlemazel Khan
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Given the perspective of time I would say that Ford’s decision was a huge mistake. It encouraged bad people doing bad things because they knew they would not be held accountable. But he could not have known that would happen and I think he was a decent guy who could not see the future.
hovercraft
@Redshift:
The man is delusional, but wait until tomorrow, the crowd will be a half a million to a million.
Remember he is part of the silent majority (who are so eager to sacrifice their holiday weekend). The media lies about his crowds because they are jealous.
gogol's wife
@debbie:
I was saving that to read later — I can’t believe he loves Poirot and Rumpole! How sweet!
Mnemosyne
First World Problem of the day: there are several books available on Kindle that aren’t available for checkout as eBooks from my local library. I thought we were living in the future, damn it!
redshirt
@Schlemazel Khan: Ford was protecting the system against a fatal reboot. Or so he thought. But the very virus that caused the impeachable event was allowed to remain in the system, and spread the moment the light shined away.
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
Hands off — he’s my imaginary future ex-husband! You can have Christopher Jackson, because I think Momsense already called dibs on Leslie Odom Jr.
Matt McIrvin
@redshirt: WS just had a tighter story without quite so many characters, and I’m a sucker for that sort of political-conspiracy angle, whereas Civil War, for all its talk about principle, ultimately is more about personal grudges. I was pleasantly surprised by how they handled Spider-Man, though the movie would have been fine without him.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@redshirt: I understand where you and EF are coming from, but I just don’t see it that way.
Yes, the FC is insane, but he’s Speaker. He could put the needs of his job and the country before his desire to do everything with just GOP votes. But he won’t.
He enabled the GOP House majority. He’s to a non-trivial extent, responsible for the dysfunction of the House.
He’s also not some brainiac moderate number cruncher that is going to show the GOP the way to being a popular majority party again, as too much of the popular political press would have us believe. He’s a reactionary ideologue who would destroy the Federal Government and much of the commonweal built up with the blood, sweat, lives, and taxes of generations were he given half a chance.
He can pass a sensible budget any time he wants by compromising with Nancy and the House Democrats. He’s not willing to do that because of who he is.
The sooner he and his Teabagger colleagues are voted out, the better.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Still not gettin’ me in your damned cult, anyway I don’t like sweets.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
Fine. He’s really good as Benny in In the Heights too. And “One Last Time” is my current favorite number, which changes every week or so.
Schlemazel Khan
@Anne Laurie:
I think he represents the banality of evil. He was a nice guy but not bright enough to see what he was doing & happy to do it as long as it served him. He is good in relationship to the modern GOP. He was a guy the Dems could deal with & was willing to at least try to make American an OK place to live in. I would gladly take him over any of todays elected GOP reps.
lollipopguild
@Baud: They put a brain in?
lollipopguild
@hovercraft: You can do anything if you are allowed to live in your own universe by the press.
NotMax
@Redshift
Million
ManFigment March.lamh36
@Matt McIrvin: right. I’m not a Singer-partisan. I get what folks say about his style, but I did like both his X-Men movies and DOFP.
This movie had elements, but just was not up to comparison with the other two.
My cousin who I saw it with said, he needed to see Civil War again, just to wash this one from his mind…smh
Civil War wasn’t better than Winter Soldier, but I def have it in my top 5 now in the MCU.
It did what it was supposed to do, and the Russo brothers have a real knack for shooting action scenes with multiple stars and I think they proved that in that big fight sequence.
Oh and Black Panther and SpiderMan def steal the show.
Back to Apocalypse…it was just NOT good. It’s this big action blockbuster, and I was literally bored through out. If I was in the back of the theatre, I would have rather been texting…
Matt McIrvin
@redshirt: …One thing I did very much appreciate about Civil War, though, is that (probably as a nod to the theme of the movie) it broke the pattern of smashing up a city for the big climax, instead putting the giant chaotic action setpiece in the middle and scaling the ending down to a brutal fight between just a few participants. Given that the stakes were essentially personal, the staging of the action was well-designed to fit that.
redshirt
@Matt McIrvin: Agreed that WS was tighter, but I liked the expansiveness of Civil War. It was like the sequel to 3 different movies, which is something that’s never happened in cinema before. Avengers: Age of Ultron; Iron Man 3; and of course Winter Soldier. Maybe Ant-Man as well.
? Martin
@efgoldman: I think you’re both missing the point. We’ve long stereotyped loud deep voices as being commanding and loud high voices as being ‘shrill’. Fuck, how much stereotyping of men as being straight/gay is entirely based on the register in which they speak?
This has nothing to do physiology and everything to do with gender stereotypes.
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
Did you see Jackson’s NYTimes lifestyle piece? LMM tweeted about it because he’s quoted in it: “Open the book, dummy!”
lollipopguild
@Villago Delenda Est: That worked out so well.
lamh36
@Matt McIrvin: Right. for me WS was from start to finish, a tighter well thought out story. The action sequences weren’t just big and meaningless. They kept the cameos down to only those needed for the story, and it was just a better more efficient film than Civil War.
Plus, is was just the right length as well. But even though CW was over 2hr longs and it could have used a cut of about 15-30 mins, it was STILL better than Apocalypse
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev: “See my vest!”
? Martin
@Matt McIrvin: Not only was that a nice change, I thought the movie did a better job than most of being structured not as a culminating story, with some McGuffin tossed in to warrant the next sequel, but instead as a story part of a larger arc that could set up a series of questions that could only be resolved in subsequent films. I get the feeling that the next Thor movie will do the same with Thor/Hulk in parallel to this.
It’s a more confident form of storytelling, not so worried whether the next film will happen or not.
redshirt
@lamh36: Did you not like Civil War?
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
No, I missed that. Thanks.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Also too, Ethel Waters, Marian Anderson, Hattie McDaniel, Yma Sumac, Sophie Tucker, Kate Smith and Trixie Friganza. Or (non-singers) Patsy Kelly or Sandra Bernhard. Examples are legion.
gogol's wife
Tonight we’re watching our DVD of Reckless with Robson Green. He’s a terrific actor. I wish I could stand to watch his police shows. Or Happy Valley.
redshirt
@? Martin: Since Thor: Ragnarok features Thor (of course) but also Hulk, you’re absolutely right how this movie will complement Civil War, given their absence in that film.
My bet is Ragnarok greatly advances the Infinity Stone story, with a dramatic ending, like Asgard getting destroyed by Thanos. Since Loki and Thanos have a backstory, it makes sense.
Also, a Planet Hulk Gladiator sub-story, and I bet it’s associated with the Elder Goldblum character.
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: I’m not interested in saving it at all.
smith
@? Martin: It’s social expectations as well. Men are rarely criticized for shouting, women often are.
lamh36
@redshirt: Oh no. I liked Civil War ALOT. But it was over 2hrs long and as I’ve gotten older and began taking fluid meds, I’ve noticed the length of movies ALOT more than I have in the past.
Civil War in in my top 5, but not above Winter Soldier.
My measure of how much I truly like a movie…if I see it playing on television, and I watch it anyway, even though I own the DVD/Blu Ray…
For me those movies are few and far between…Winter Soldier is in that bunch…Civil War might make it onto that list for me as well.
Gin & Tonic
My daughter is recovering reasonably well, so I head home tomorrow to return to work Tuesday. Traveling on Memorial Day should be more fun than a barrel of monkeys, right?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@efgoldman: Dunno. Months before a grand jury indictment, months on pre-trial stuff, weeks of jury selection, months for the trial, months or years for appeals. It would have been a never-ending circus.
A trial in the Senate would have been reasonably speedy. A trial after he resigned would have dragged out for ages.
He resigned in August, 1974. It’s hard to see him indicted before the November election. The trial might not have been resolved by November 1976. You know that the GOP would have tried to find some way to portray him as a victim rather than trying to forget about him by then (as they mostly did after he was pardoned). History probably would have been very different. Would Carter have been elected, or would Reagan have won then?
It’s an interesting problem.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: Glad to hear she is doing well.
redshirt
@lamh36: I thought Civil War was genius. An insightful blockbuster that tied together 4-5 different film franchises. A believable battle between friends and allies that seperated everyone by the end of the film, even though we, as fans, know they will have to join back up together in Avengers: Infinity War. Due out in May 2018.
The MCU is out of my 8 year old dreams and I sometimes can’t believe it’s real. I also can’t believe it’s almost 2018.
Bex
@Mnemosyne: For the Hamilmaniacs:
http://shop.nybooks.com/collections/illustrations/products/alexander-hamilton-1964?variant=11267393091
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Thanks.
redshirt
@Gin & Tonic: Take it slow and easy because trying to rush through traffic will get you no where that much faster.
? Martin
@redshirt:
It’s really obvious they struggle incorporating the more powerful characters. Vision almost completely disappears mid-battle in Civil War, because how do you justify him not totally wiping the floor with everyone. Thor/Hulk have the same problem and so spinning them into their own off-world narrative makes sense, where they can be throwing mountains around without us why Hawkeye is still alive and wasn’t nuked from orbit. Vision was just too OP to fit into the Civil War narrative well, aside from the bit of balance from Scarlet, so they just periodically pretended he didn’t exist.
They also need to find a way to hook Guardians in, so I wonder if that first tiny nod won’t happen in Thor.
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: That’s good news.
Miss Bianca
Got in from a day’s ride – or what would have been a day’s ride, if just as we were mounting up the rain – and the threat of lightning – came. So, quick jog down the road and back to exercise the hounds. Of course then it cleared up and stayed clear for the rest of the afternoon. Free music in the park in Salida, but I declined the opportunity in favor of a visit with a friend, a ramble by the river with Luna, and settling in for an evening of writing.
@Baud: Yes, crazy as some Libertarian principles sound, as least they have them. And they’re prepared to talk about them. Someone said they looked and sounded stoned – what was your opinion? ; )
rikyrah
I loved Civil War. I had no interest in a new Spiderman ,but I loved the young-Un they hired, but he rocked. I absolutely loved Black Panther -cannot wait for his movie.
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: Sarah Palin has already called for Ryan to be “Cantored” by some teatard twit.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@efgoldman: Boehner quit. The Teabaggers made noise, but didn’t actually vote him out because they knew it would be very difficult to replace him. It took almost a month for them to get their act together to pick a replacement.
Yeah, it would be, er, unconventional for a Speaker to have to rely on votes from the other party to keep his job. But he could do it.
Cheers,
Scott.
? Martin
@smith:
Oh, I know. I’m constantly defending my evaluations of one of my staff (female) who is routinely criticized for being as blunt and demanding as I am, where I never receive criticism. And the most frustrating thing is that the criticism almost always comes from other women. I press them – I don’t care which way they want to go, just be consistent. If they don’t like that approach, then be equally critical of me. “Oh, but you are very effective, you get results!” FFS, so does she! That’s why I gave her the strong evaluation!
redshirt
@? Martin: Vision stayed back for his stated reasons: To avoid a catastrophe. And like you say, when someone that OP is involved, the stakes are the max. I appreciate that Vision kept it low stakes for the airport fight. He could have killed Giant Man in a second if he wanted to.
Miss Bianca
@smith: That’s an interesting way of drawing the distinction. I’ve never heard it parsed out quite way before.
@The Thin Black Duke: Yeah, this, pretty much. Sigh.
Baud
@Miss Bianca: McAfee seemed stoned. One guy seemed like he was on meth. It was definitely a motley slate of candidate. Oddly, the convention crowd didn’t look very diverse.
? Martin
@redshirt: I’m no comic buff, so everything I know is from the movies or a bit of conversation around it, but unlike Hulk that unavoidably goes into smash mode, Vision could have diffused the situation without hurting people, just by isolating them (thereby preventing them from hurting each other), but that didn’t happen either.
I really liked how Wakanda got worked in. I hope they make the most of that. MCU invariably suffers from the US being the Mary Sue of planet Earth.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: White, male, youngish?
redshirt
Is Vision’s opinion worth more than everyone else’s?
? Martin
@Villago Delenda Est: White, male, nakedish from what I’ve seen.
redshirt
@? Martin: Which was a setup for the upcoming Black Panther movie.
So CW was a sequel for 5 movies and a prequel for 2. That’s amazing.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est: Not as youngish as one might have expected. Maybe they’ve all moved on to hipper alternatives.
lamh36
redshirt
@? Martin:
The after credits end of Thor: The Dark World had Volstagg and Sif visiting the Collector to give him – crazily enough – the Aether, which in fact is one of the Infinity Stones.
debbie
@efgoldman
What, no Margaret Dumont?
Splitting Image
@Chris:
I think you can make a good argument that Tom Dewey would have been a better President than Truman if he’d been elected in 1948, although he probably wouldn’t have kept the U.S. out of Korea. He wanted to have racial and sexual equality written into the Republican platform and was one of the most important opponents of the McCarthyite wing of the party. He also helped persuade Eisenhower to run in 1952 to shiv the conservatives who supported Taft.
Splitting Image
@Chris:
I can never make up my mind whether or not Ford appointing J.P. Stevens to the Supreme Court makes up for him pardoning Nixon.
Oldgold
The pass given Nixon by Ford could be argued by informed individuals of good faith round or flat.
The real damage occurred when Reagan and Co. were given a pass on Iran-Contra. That was a Constitutional violation that went well beyond political process and dirty tricks. It was treason.
Shana
@Anne Laurie: My father, a dyed in the wool Democrat his whole life, would periodically get mailings from the GOP asking for donations. He would write on them “pardon Dick Nixon? The American people would never stand for such a thing”, which I believe is a quote from good old Jerry Ford, across the solicitation and send it back, usually stuffed with whatever junk mail he’d received at his office that day. He did that for YEARS, DECADES even. Never got tired of it.
He could be difficult in many ways, resenting his older brother for things he’d done to my dad when Dad was 5, but occasionally it went to good effect.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@gogol’s wife: Did you see the BroadwayCon panel where Jackson said one of the strangest stage door experiences he’s had are the people who tell him “Benny, you were great as George Washington!”
Miss Bianca
@debbie: My comic actress avatar. How she managed to be fluty and booming at the same time is one of those vocal tricks I’ve been trying to cultivate for years. I’ve almost managed to get her dying fall on “Ohhhh, Mr. DRIFTwoooood” dialed in.
Villago Delenda Est
@Splitting Image: Given all the criminal activities of Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II that went unpunished and for all practical purposes unnoticed, it’s a tough call.
Shana
@efgoldman: The problem is that they’ve done away with earmarks. If you were trying to get someone to vote for something you could always threaten to not vote for their pet project in their district when we had earmarks. Now no one has any leverage over the crazys. It’s how LBJ got so much accomplished.
Baud
@efgoldman:
I think that’s been proven many times since 2010.
amk
barney bern.
redshirt
@Baud: Since 1776 and earlier.
Baud
@amk: Where is that quote from?
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
When I worked in radio, my colleagues all joked that I never needed a mic to be heard. My nickname was Stentoria.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: And you didn’t go with that for your nym here?
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: Cleek’s Law. All about spite.
divF
@efgoldman: One of my favorite big brassy Broadway stage voices is Janis Paige (“Stereophonic Sound”, from the movie Silk Stockings)
EriktheRed
@Redshift:
That’s okay, Reagan’s 2nd term was my first vote.
Mr Stagger Lee
@srv: Marco Rubio seems to me the Theon Greyjoy of the GOP now, I think he will become the Honorable Senator from Florida, Senator Reek.
Matt McIrvin
@redshirt: I did think it was interesting to see Captain America go as far off the rails as he does in that movie.
I understand that the comics story that this was loosely inspired by tried to make the conflict one in which both sides could be sympathetic, but bungled it by making Tony’s actions so over-the-top tyrannical that only moral idiots could side with him (but that, bafflingly, the creators didn’t seem to recognize this).
The movie did a much better job than that of balancing the audience’s sympathies. I think Tony had the better case on principle, the one place where he really crosses a line before the climax being his treatment of Scarlet Witch… whereas Steve, the old lawful-good Boy Scout, is mostly running on gut instinct and personal affinity, and committing crime after crime in the process, digging himself deeper into a hole. But he stumbles into being mostly right about the bad guy’s plot.
guachi
New Top Gear on BBC with new cast.
Lots of comments on one thread I read about how Chris Evans, the new lead host, needs to stop yelling and shout less. It’s not sexist when people say this about Hillary Clinton; it’s a sign she is substituting volume for emotion.
“Lots of yelling by Evans.”
“Chris Evans needs to shout less.”
“Chris E seemed to shout every word.”
“Chris E is too shouty.”
“I’d be hard-pressed to listen to Evans shouting even if he was telling me I just WON A MILLION DOLLARS WOW!!!111oneoneone”
When we say Clinton should shout less, it isn’t because we are misogynistic, it’s because she should shout less (like Chris Evans on Top Gear – who should also be fired because he stinks)
redshirt
Shouting Octopi!
Jeffro
@Lamh36: boo, disagree…me and Jeffro Jr saw it Friday, and we both thought it rocked! A little jarring seeing ____, _____, and _____ jump onto Apocalypse’s team without a second thought, but still – loads of fun!
Jeffro
@redshirt: let me unconvince you!
? Martin
@redshirt: Avengers must have been when the studio realized they could not only thread individual character movies into a collective film, but that they could green-light enough movies to build a story arc that covered both the individual characters and collectives. That’s what really committed them to the infinity stones arc and a set of threads they can now pull on. We’re right now in the middle of that, which is pretty interesting because it means they have enough developed characters to pull the Avengers apart and start to deal with actor replacements and to pull properties together in the process (Guardians/Avengers/Spider Man). I’m guessing X-Men is a lost cause, though maybe after this turd there will be some new discussions.
Now their biggest risk is not overwhelming the audience. As a non-comics person, I feel like I’m missing out on a fair bit of the story because the character development can’t quite be as thorough as it needs to be, and 2 films per year is a big commitment for the audience. To their credit, they’re doing a pretty solid job with the films. Some have been just okay, but there’s enough really good ones to keep the audience putting their money up front.
Tom
@gogol’s wife: I love Robson Green!
Did you see him in season 3 of Being Human (UK version)? He’s amazing as this working-class werewolf.
Tom
@? Martin: I’m looking forward to the GOTG/Avengers crossover just to see Rocket and Stark have a snark duel.
Anne Laurie
@Oldgold:
Absolutely. But Ford pardoning Nixon is what gave the Repubs the idea that they could get away with sweeping all the Iran-Contra treason under the frig.
We needed a Truth & Reconciliation Committee; we got Move Along Nothing to See Here.
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin: The interesting thing to me is how they’ve taken plot elements developed in the 60’s and 70’s and adapted them to the 10’s. For example, Ultron was, in the comics back in the 60’s, developed by Hank Pym (Ant Man/Yellowjacket), but in the movies, developed by Tony Stark (and Bruce Banner). Yet in both, Vision is a creation of Ultron himself who turns on Ultron and fights side by side with the Avengers.
Barbara
@Redshift: Although it’s not as if I take a precise count, I saw (and heard) less evidence of high turnout for Rolling Thunder than in years past.
Barbara
@efgoldman: It’s going to happen. That is, he is going to get turfed unless he too wants to preside over a government shutdown. Basically, until the House stops being a gerrymandered house of horrors, there is a good chance that every Speaker of the House for the foreseeable future will have as much tenure as the prime minister of successive Italian governments in the two generations after WWII. And Ryan is a fraud — his hissy fit over Trump’s association with white supremacists doesn’t make up for the fact that he is more than willing to benefit from and has never spoken out against the not very subtle racism of Republican controlled states, but especially voter suppression aimed at minorities.
Matt McIrvin
@? Martin:
I never saw Ant-Man, but watching Civil War yesterday, I felt as if Ant-Man’s scenes in the movie were actually going out of their way to deal with people not having seen Ant-Man. (Most of the other characters have never seen this guy before, either, so they can introduce him in much the same way they do Black Panther and Spider-Man.)
Though if I hadn’t seen Avengers: Age of Ultron or CA: The Winter Soldier, there would have been far more to catch up on.
Matt McIrvin
@Villago Delenda Est: While I’m not a comics guy, I vaguely know that in the comics there was a romance between Vision and Scarlet Witch, which gave their scenes together in the movie an additional, ultimately unsettling quality (and gave Cap’s reaction to the situation more emotional punch).
Bardgaijin
@srv:
That article about Brock suing Bernie is from MARCH..