27bored

My question is what did they expect Don Jr to do if they were going after his dad? No, he’s not just going to sit there and shit on his dad like the rest of you do every freaking day. Meghan, your dad has said plenty of things we could go in on, but nobody expects you to be a good sport about his critics bashing him, neither in life or death. Plus, y’all sound silly pulling receipts on shit we’ve already discussed ad nauseum, especially when some of you have said things in the past that you’d rather not talk about. And Don Jr was right that no one has been attacked more than Trump. It’s not a favor to Trump to admit that; it’s just a fact.

Yeah it’s a good song. I just watched her do it on SNL and...yeah. That was ass, but to be fair it’s not a performance record. It might work in stark settings, but that’s not a big enough song to work with a big crowd. I heard someone say that they think it’s a bit unfair that the only reason people take her seriously is because she wears baggy clothes and isn’t trying to be sexy. Well, I think that’s part of her appeal. I think the 2010s will go down in history as the decade of the death of the sexpot pop star, starting with Lady Gaga. I’ve thought Gaga was several things — smart, weird, funny, ridiculous, crazy — but never sexy. Camille Paglia wrote a scathing article about her years ago and it’s more true now than it was then. Billie Eilish is kind of that come full circle. Even though I do think if she sticks around another four years and remains a pop star I think she’s going to tart it up a la Halsey, for now her whole South Florida Chic look works. It works to play up her vague Euro vibe as well. Brits don’t require their pop stars to be sex kittens the way we do, which is nice.

I have to slightly revisit my opinion about Billie Eilish. Well, partly. I’m not sold on her yet, but I think I get it a little. I just listened to “bad guy” and, I kinda feel like that’s pop perfection. Like, I really think that song is going to be around in ten years, even if she’s a has been by that point. And by the way, pop perfection isn’t necessarily saying the song is great on its own. It’s saying it works as a piece of product. I can see that song in commercials, movie trailers, TV shows, trendy clothing stores, clubs...everywhere. Pop music is supposed to have a ubiquity and a bigness and that’s been missing. Her vibe is like Fiona Apple Gone Trap. I’m not convinced that there’s a lot of talent there, I get the feeling her brother is the maestro and she just hits her marks — mostly due to age and inexperience rather than having a vision, since she’s really just Lana del Rey by way of Lorde — but I can respect it because it’s working.

I think all three are true to some extent. I think what’s striking is that these are pop artists doing this. We’re used to hip-hop artists dripping out songs here and there; Drake has made a career out of it. But for a long time pop has been more project based, and that’s not due to how people consume music these days but more so how music is marketed. For me, the perception of the strategy is a bit troublesome. Say what you will about the album format, I think that’s a fallback excuse for most artists. I think many artists are trying to catch a hit before rolling out an album because it helps first week sales and the perception of success. Think Nicki Minaj for example. She spent a year dropping out singles that didn’t really do anything before releasing her last album, and the perception was she was trying to find a hit to ride into her album. Conversely, Drake did it and found success. I think many artists are trying to do it because of him. Of all the streams he has for Scorpion, like 3/4 of them are God’s Plan, Nice For What, I’m Upset, and whatever that song was with the stupid dance. I can’t remember right now. And that’s on an album with 25 (?) tracks. Now that I think of it, Country artists have been able to do it too, even though they don’t try it as much. Sam Hunt rode Body Like A Back Road for a good year without releasing an album. Bebe Rexha definitely got mileage out of Meant To Be before she released an album. I can’t say she’s really had a hit since. I hear you. The music industry got over for years on selling albums based on one or two good songs. That being said, people are kind of being everywhere just off one or two songs and it’s pretty annoying. I just think having a cute song is what it is, but it doesn’t mean more than that. I think that’s one of the main differences between Beyonce and Rihanna. Beyonce gave up her ubiquity to be able to make albums. Rihanna has always been a singles artist. Low-key that might be why she hasn’t released her album yet. She doesn’t have a hit single yet. I feel bad for artists like Sheryl Crow. She’s a pop singer-songwriter, talented, but she’s white and aging. There’s really no place for her in pop music today, mainstream pop music, and even though she’s a serviceable contemporary Country/roots singer, she doesn’t have the built-up goodwill from that audience to be able to just put out albums and tour. Plus, she’s seen by many as a Hollywood liberal, so I doubt she’s going to endear herself to that crowd anyway. IJS.

Has anybody noticed a trend with pop artists of promoting singles without an album? Notably Halsey’s doing it. She’s released like six songs this year and still no album. Camila Cabello has like five songs in rotation right now and none of them, other than the one with Shawn Mendes, is really working. (I think; not sure how the latest one is doing). Selena Gomez has released two singles. Some others I’m forgetting, but yeah. What gives?

That’s hilarious. Those weren’t his points. Sunny called herself listing things Trump has done as if it proves itself and Newt disagreed. You (the general you) can’t bring up talking points and then be a bad sport when someone disagrees. It’s childish, and more to the point, you have a guest on your show. If they had just yelled at him and talked him down, other Republicans would get the signal not to go talk to the shrill yentas on The View. Plus, you (the general you) can’t spend every day whining about Trump being a meany-head and then can’t sit through ten minutes of a Republican expressing an opinion you dislike without getting obstinate and rude.

I didn’t say Ronan Farrow got a Pulitzer but he didn’t deserve it...just to hate on him. I said what I said because it was mentioned to me as proof of his bonafides.

My opinion of Ronan is more dispassionate than any of the View panels opinion of Trump, but they don’t have to explain why they take everything he does personally. And I didn’t mention his Pulitzer, but it doesn’t mean he’s a great journalist because he has one. And even if I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, it’s still somewhat telling that Ronan will be 32 this year and has been with the same person eight years. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but there’s still a lack of perspective due to lack of experience. He’s probably never sexually anything’d anyone. Watching his interview, it seemed like he was begging the question to a big extent, and given the nature and severity of sexual misconduct, Ronan’s disposition didn’t sit well with me. It didn’t sit well because I felt he was looking at this as an allegory of powerful men vs helpless women who have found their courage. He even said as much. Without getting into a lengthy explanation that would veer far off topic, and for the sake of brevity, Ronan just seems like someone who judges people who have what he doesn’t and/or doesn’t want. He said the woman who accused Lauer of rape doesn’t characterize her subsequent encounters with him as an affair. Uh, she was having sex with a married man. I’m not saying she is, but it would be very easy to spin a consensual encounter into a rape if you’re pretty sure the person you’re telling isn’t going to question it. People who have had sex understand this. People who have had bad dates and bad fights and bad break-ups understand that sometimes people can be spiteful and petty and vindictive when they’re hurt; the last thing they need a self-righteous enabler felling them that what they’re doing is some kind of public service. And, people who haven’t been sheltered most of their lives know that being an adult is hard sometimes, but that’s no excuse not to be one. Women who prioritize their careers over their self-respect make a choice to do so even if it’s not done gladly, and women who would rather gossip around the office or gab under the promise of anonymity to a reporter make a choice not to treat serious allegations seriously and it’s nobody’s fault but their own. I think as long as it’s a famous man being accused, he doesn’t care how credible the accusers are. He just likes that they’re “brave” enough to come forward.

Lack of empathy and lack of perspective. Like I said, he seems like the type to transcribe whatever horror story a victim tells him. Not having a discernible BS filter doesn’t give me confidence in anyone’s reporting. I don’t know if they’re celibate, but again, I get sheltered vibes from Ronan. Any man who has had an active sex life and had relationships knows better. You’re tempting karma by being the patron saint for accusatory women everywhere, and if I’m giving him credit that he knows that, my guess is he has few if any people in his past and/or personal life who could blab about him. I’m sure, but I doubt they care how honest the story is as long as it’s a good one.

LOL, I didn’t assume he was gay, though his handsome prettiness makes sense now. Still not buying dude has ever had the sex, though.

Ronan Farrow looks like a handsome woman. I don’t think I’ll be buying the book, though. I get the feeling he’s never had sex, and that mixed with the obvious Woody Allen thing, makes this endeavor to “expose” sexual predators a little precious. I get the feeling he’s going to write down whatever a “victim” tells him, and that doesn’t make me trust his instincts as a journalist. Meghan getting all huffy about that stupid video someone made where they superimposed his face on a shooter was rich. And Whoopi saying Trump hasn’t condemned it yet was equally stupid. You can’t trash talk the President day-in, day-out and expect him to be exquisitely sensitive to your feelings. Whoopi you won’t even say his name. The media constantly goes after him for being sexist, racist, xenophobic, etc. So he’s supposed to rush out to defend a group of people who hate him? And Meghan, once again, these people arguing with you on social media DO NOT LIKE YOU. They think you’re a turncoat, approval-seeking, spoiled rich girl who isn’t as smart or tough as she thinks she is. So by them “defending” the video, they’re saying FUCK YOU. WE DON’T LIKE YOU. WE HOPE YOUR FEELINGS ARE HURT. It has nothing to do with conservatives being hypocrites. Of course, they may find it ironic that the media is so scandalized by the video while constantly attacking Trump with seemingly no regard for what a crazy person might think or say or do after being inundated with negative coverage every day. But that isn’t an endorsement, and had the shoe been on the other foot with Obama, Meghan’s right that conservatives would be outraged. The question is, though, would liberals give two shits about “conservatives being outraged” or would they shrug it off?

The short answer is no, that wouldn’t be described as federal income tax. Payroll taxes aren’t the same thing. Again: the short answer is that’s not solely income tax. If you take $50K and apply it as income with nothing but a standard deduction, you’d pay $2-3K in federal income tax. Rand’s point is valid given that most Americans don’t make that amount of money with nothing other than a standard deduction. Unless of course they do absolutely no tax planning or research and just hand off their W-2 to their mom to file at the same time she does hers, but whose fault is that?

Not to get too off-topic, but I think he tried to explain it and he got cut off. Basically, other than the money deducted from your check that you never see, most people making $50K usually are able to deduct enough so that they wind up being owed by the government. It’s rare to see someone who can only claim the standard deduction for longer than a year or two.

The audience jeering Rand Paul when he said most people who make under $50K don’t pay federal income taxes made me eye-roll. He was right.

I took your post to be sarcasm because it seemed obvious they bungled the phrase and meant “cry wolf” but say “call wolf”. If you were being sincere, I do apologize. Sometimes it’s hard to discern seriousness from sarcasm on the boards. To answer your question: I think what happens is phrases get mixed up. It’s possible for people to mix up cry wolf and calling foul, which in political terms means to accuse someone wrong, I.e. making an insensitive comment.

I agree, but I also think Abby and likely Meghan would be more palatable if Whoopi, Joy, and Sunny weren’t so one note. I’ve said this before but all they do is bash Trump and Republicans. That’s more boring than aggravating, but what it does is makes any comment to the contrary seem like water-carrying. Even a measured, non-pugilistic conservative would look bad in this dynamic, so it’s hard for me to hold it against Abby and Meghan too much. I think the lesson is an imperfect fit in politics, but it does still apply. If you spend every week calling someone a racist, that accusation isn’t going to have the same impact in week 134 than it did it in week one. Right or wrong, shit gets old after a while and then you start looking just as bad.

The woman’s story isn’t the easiest to digest. Matt Lauer says they hooked up in Sochi back in 2014. This woman says she had a few shots and wound up being anally raped in his hotel room one night and wound up bleeding for the next few days. On one hand if he did violate her in this way he has every reason to lie about it now and claim it was consensual. What reason would she have to lie about something like that three years later? The wrinkle is she continued sleeping with him after this incident. And not just sleep with him, initiate certain encounters, and proceeded to tell “a million people” (her words) at the office. Whoopi’s point seemed to be that Lauer had no business fooling around with this woman in the first place. Not saying she’s smart enough to reason this out, but there’s no need to raise the question if you don’t fuck around on your wife in the first place. I got the feeling Whoopi doesn’t buy her story, and she has good reason not to. Instead of making that argument and risk “victim-blaming”, she made the more convenient argument.

Meghan is pretty easily thrown off by bullshit, but she had a point. She just didn’t know how to make it. First of all, it’s apples and oranges to compare the Benghazi investigation to this impeachment inquiry. For starters, that was an actual investigation in which legally effectuated subpoenas weren’t being honored by the State department. And they were stonewalled for months; Democrats are complaining after like three days. But more importantly, the House doesn’t have generic Oversight over the executive branch that all they have to do is send a letter and get what they want. It has to be pursuant to an investigation. Which is the other big thing I think Meghan missed, but maybe Abby was going to say. If they want documents and people to testify, hold a floor vote to open an impeachment inquiry and that way you have a basis to issue a subpoena. Trump gets to tell them to fuck off because they’re doing an end run around the process. Where Meghan’s point is valid is where she’s saying Democrats can’t call an impeachment inquiry then immediately start doing closed-door hearings while publicly demanding for information Trump not only has no obligation to give, but at this point is right not to. You don’t have to help people make a case against you. Period.

I think Meghan’s point is that you don’t get to do impeachment inquiries behind closed doors. You’re trying to sell the American people on the idea that this President needs to be removed, the previous election undone, you don’t get to just treat this like business as usual. Sunny likely would’ve said that, even though she knows better. Jim Jordan’s point was that during a formal inquiry the minority has certain “rights” as far as the proceedings go (like suggesting certain people get subpoenaed). By not holding a vote on opening a formal inquiry, Pelosi is holding all of the cards. It’s probably also to play the optics game of seeing how compliant the administration is going to be without a formal investigation so that when they get rebuffed, Schiff and others can run in front of the cameras and say Trump is obstructing and obviously hiding something. That’s why Meghan said what she did. Everybody but her and Abby don’t care as long as they get Trump, but there’s a reason why Jim Jordan said it was a kangaroo court.

Not to get too off-topic even though they did discuss this on the show, but I...kinda think the death threats thing is bullshit. I think Trump made that comment about how we used to deal with spies and then it became this story of people threatening the whistleblower’s life. I think it’s a smoke screen to keep the attention off the whistleblower and the Intelligence community and the report that they changed whistleblower protocol to allow secondhand reports the same month this was reported. And the lingering question of the whistleblower leaked to members of the House, i.e. Adam Schiff, before the report came out.

It’s neither one of those things. If Sunny is a competent attorney, she understands that any and every defendant has a right to confront their accuser. Of course this is true in a typical court setting, but the whistleblower has triggered an impeachment inquiry of the President. He or she should’ve minded their business if they’re going to be precious about being scrutinized and questioned. But if this makes its way to the Senate, nobody is going to care about how mean Trump looks for wanting to confront this person or even him calling them a spy. They’re going to have to cowboy up and answer some questions.

Once again Sunny proves she’s just one of the Plays-A-Lawyer-On-TV types who only exist to bless whatever petty legal theory someone comes up with against Trump. She said by Trump wanting to meet the whistleblower it is “witness tampering”. No it’s not! Sunny, the individuals who had permission to have access to the transcript/summary of the President’s call with Zelensky at the very least broke protocol (which would likely cost them their job, their security clearance, and their pension) and possibly broke the law by sharing the details of the call with the whistleblower in the first place. And you know that. And second of all, I love all of them clucking about how horrible it was for Trump to claim impeachment would cause a “civil war”. Political journalists have been using the “civil war” analogy for years, if not decades, and you yentas have not once complained about it. Shut up, especially you Meghan. They don’t like you. Stop trying to show you can be a hyper-sensitive schoolmarm like the rest of them. It just makes you wide and uninteresting.

Yeah, that is the one rule when issuing apologies. Don’t follow it with a “but”. I felt it important to explain myself and respond because, well, to be honest I thought it was fairly obvious I was joking around and not really coming for either one of them. I said maybe, maybe not because I wasn’t referring to two men, even though I have Definitely called men hoes before. And “unless, you know” was stream of conscience given the poster’s comment. It made me think about J. Lo’s last minor hit, Dinero, featuring Cardi B...who has admitted she likes being a hoe...who has admitted she would sleep with guys then steal from them...who allegedly slept with a few DJs in exchange for them playing her songs...who routinely calls other women hoes in her songs...whose debut album went 3X Platinum...who is the first female artist ever to have every song on her album be certified Gold or Platinum...who just won a Grammy for Best Rap Album. I’m just saying. And, though I might be pressing the issue, let me say I love women, especially ones who can play the Bad Bitch role. I’m firmly on the side of women doing what they have to do to get their money. I don’t criticize women for that. Men like Jay Z and Diddy have snaked people to amass wealth and fame and power and they get applauded for it. If a woman manages to beat the game by sleeping her way to the top, I say you can’t knock the hustle. All I ever want is for them to be real about it and not pawn it off as a sexism/misogyny issue when some women are more than willing to sleep with a guy to get ahead. In those scenarios, I usually look down more at the guy who is so lame he has to barter for sex.

I meant no offense, so I do apologize, but I wasn’t being literal by calling them hoes. It’s just funny to refer to a group of people that way — funny to me, that is. Some of my favorite YouTubers routinely refer to their viewers as “hoes”. It’s meant to be more shady than literal. Would I say that about two men? Well, maybe, maybe not, but then again, I wouldn’t call a group of women whores (in the literal sense) just to slight them and their accomplishments. Unless, you know... That said, I think it’s cool that they got two women who can put on a show, but I don’t know how relevant they are in 2019. Neither one has a back catalog full of English hits that would get people excited to watch IMHO. The draw for them is likely going to be Shakira’s belly dancing and J. Lo’s, uh, dancing.