KerleyQ

Sonny probably "confesses his sins" in an empty church in yet another of his deep meaningful "talking to God" scenes.

Personally, I don't think he's acting like a doddering old fool, but if he is, it's not Quinn's doing - it's his family. They've pushed back so hard against his marriage, including being very hurtful towards him (which Ridge seems intent on upping), that he's now pushing back. That's on them, not Quinn.

I just watched that Cuomo/KAC clip. Geez, she really is shameless. I like that he tried, but then he just kind of gave in and let her control the conversation.

He's definitely trying to pretend that his whole separation from Trump is no big deal, but I'm not buying it. For example, he says that he really hasn't been acting in any capacity for the transition team, but he's been appearing on TV to speak for Trump. I'm guessing that, like everyone else around Trump, he had to sign a pretty extensive NDA, and so he's going to pretend this isn't any big thing. (Although he does slip some language into his interviews about the split that make it sound like it's about the intelligence stuff without actually saying it.) I asked him if Mexico would pay us later like he's paying the people who worked on is D.C hotel later. Oddly, no response. And he's selling it as "to get it built quick." Do they not get that saying that is an acknowledgement, by Trump, that there's no guarantee that Mexico will pay for it, and, in fact, it will take a long time to negotiate it? In other words, we're on the hook for it, and he has zero strategy to change that, no matter how much he spouts off to the contrary. I keep thinking that, if he continues to piss the intelligence people off, it won't be long before they're instrumental in bringing his ass down. I can't wait. One has a wife who is currently undergoing cancer treatment where they're located. And people are defending him without reading into the whole thing. He's not just clearing out political favor appointed ambassadors, but long term established diplomats. He doesn't want anyone who even once exchanged a "hello" with President Obama to be employed come 1/20. When a man is petty enough to refuse to keep a children's playground on the White House grounds because it was the idea of his predecessor, nothing is off limits. Yes. I have a whole heaping helping of loathing for KAC, because this is all just a damn paycheck to her. She was as critical of Trump as anyone until he was the one signing her checks. She's not some true believer who is just wrong and ill-informed - she's soulless for cash. Never mind that the man she's out there shilling her ass for might blow up the planet her children live on. At least before they get blown up, they'll have every material need met. Agreed. All he had going for him was money. And now we know even that was an illusion. Not even not to leave, just not to build a future plant in another country. So he's trying to intimidate foreign companies out of doing business in other foreign countries. Exactly what I was thinking. He's said, often, that he doesn't need intelligence briefings, on account of how smart he is and all. The information has been available to him, but he had to be publicly pressured to finally agree to meet with the intelligence people today. He saw what kind of cash the Koch's were willing to pay for that spine.

I haven't seen any scenes of TJ since then, but, seriously, TJ, don't feel bad. If it hadn't been that night, Morgan eventually would have died trying to make toast while he showered or via a tragic shoe-tying accident.

I think Michael/Sabrina could have been good, but only if they were going to keep him anti-Sonny/Carly for a while. They had chemistry, and her having his back while he maintained his anger at his parents and, maybe, tried to undermine them via their businesses, would have been good. But then they went and used her as part of their approach to reuniting Michael/Sonny, and it kind of all went to hell.

Who needs guns when his Brown Shirts will be there? (I initially mistyped it as "Brown Shits." I may need to use that going forward.)

My thing with Liam is, yes, he gets to have concerns, and some of his points are valid - what Quinn did to him was awful, and, in general, I think that a significant other is within their rights to express if they're not comfortable with the notion of you posing in lingerie. But, a few things: One, you get to express your concern/discomfort, you don't get to keep harping or try to make the decision for your significant other, it's ultimately her call if she chooses to pose for and post those pictures. Two, regardless of your concerns, you don't get to just keep showing up at her place of employment to bitch about it. Three, it's rather rich to talk about how the sight of Steffy in her lingerie is "supposed to be only for me," when she's married to your brother. You're doing all kinds of things with Steffy that are supposed to be "only for" her husband, asshat. And, four, as has been stated so many times over the past few months or so - when he had a chance to see Quinn punished for her actions towards him, when Steffy urged him to have her punished, Liam took a pass. He can't think she's that big of a danger to anyone when he took a pass on having her prosecuted when he had the chance. Not to mention, his issue with Quinn has zero to do with what she did to him. Zero. He has no problem showing up and getting in her face without fearing that she's going to kidnap him again, and he doesn't think Steffy is in any physical danger from working with Quinn. His entire issue is that he's afraid that, despite the fact that he's pissed all over Steffy's leg, she might decide, if she's around Wyatt enough, to stay with her husband.

I still remember sitting in my car that day, in the pick up line at my son's elementary school. The radio station I was listening to was broadcasting President Obama's speech. By about a minute into it, I had tears running down my face. As I looked around, I noticed that the woman in the car behind me was sobbing. As the line curved around, I could see cars across from me where parents had their hands over their faces, or their heads down on the steering wheel. It's been four years, and I can still hear President Obama's voice cracking. I cannot, in any situation, imagine Trump moving people like that. I can imagine crying over something he's said or done, but not in the same way. He doesn't have empathy. I know people like to give President Obama grief over the "if I had a son..." line about Trayvon Martin, but the man has empathy. He is able to feel things for people who aren't related to him beyond being fellow human beings. Trump can feign indignation over an attack or a shooting, but he always gets right to the point of his statement (tweet), and that is to promote himself. We're not going to see his voice crack or any tears roll down his face because innocent people were killed or injured. We're not going to hear months later how he spent a day in an elementary school, talking to grieving families, playing with young children who had just lost a sibling to violence. He is simply not going to take this job to hear the way every POTUS before him has. It's only ever going to be about him. Any comforting of people, if he even deems it worthy of being done, will be handled by Pence or Ivanka. Any speeches he makes (or statements he tweets) will focus on the perpetrators, regardless of whether he has enough information to know anything about them. They will invariably blame one of a few groups - "radical Islamic terrorism," Illegal immigrants, refugees, or Black Lives Matter. I'm guessing the first will be his "go to" for every incident, before any information comes in at all.

I shudder to think of a parent who has just lost their child being "comforted" by that asshat. I doubt he'd show up for it, and he'd probably just tweet something self-congratulatory, like he's done after other tragedies (his victory lap over the Pulse shooting comes to mind). I saw a headline this morning that Pam Bondi is being named to a position in Trump's administration. So, how is that whole "no more corruption!" thing working out for the people who voted for Trump (or third party, or stayed home) because Hillary was just too corrupt? This woman was supposed to investigate the blatant fraud perpetrated by Trump, via his "University." Instead, she got a nice campaign donation from Trump (paid by the Trump Foundation, because what else is a charitable foundation for, if not paying bribes to elected officials?), a Trump hosted fundraiser, and she dropped the fraud investigation. Now? Her "investment" in ignoring Trump's fraud has elevated her all the way to a position in the White House. Phew. Thank God we ditched the corruption bullet, right?

It amazes me that someone like these two would have an issue that is deeply important to them, like his healthcare, and they don't do the research to make sure that they're voting for the best solution to their issue. They just listen to whatever propaganda their party of choice puts out and assume they'll be fine. I can't relate to that at all.

I think you're right, that was on The Daily Show. My hope is that the Dems finally get aggressive about countering misinformation, and they start spending the next 20-ish months getting the word out to people in each state specifically about what the ACA means for them, what the repeal means for them, and why, if applicable, the ACA hasn't worked for their state (i.e. because the GOP leaders in their state undermined it, often at financial cost to the state, just because they wanted to be contrary to President Obama). Get the word out, campaign their asses off, and get control of Congress before they finish the three year process of dismantling the ACA completely. They should also spend this time planning how to fix the areas of the ACA that need some work, and present a complete plan to the voters, explaining the specifics, how it's meant to work, how their state can make it work, and comparing it to their situation if the current Congress is allowed to complete its plan to dismantle the ACA with no plan to replace it beyond "erasing borders" and state pools for pre-existing coverage (both of which are shitty plans that benefit the insurance companies while placing more financial and logistical stress on the citizens). Make sure the citizens in each state understand that the plan in their state, whatever it's called IS "Obamacare." (Hi, Kentucky voters!) And they absolutely need to hammer away at Ryan's plans for Medicare and Social Security. Stop letting that lying, disingenuous douchebag get away with things like "Social Security is increasing our defecit" and "Obamacare has almost bankrupted Medicare." And, for the love of God, hold Trump's feet to the fire. He promised over and over that "Obamacare will be replaced with something great." Harp on that. Keep calling him out, demanding to know what his "something great" is. Do not let him turtle up and pretend that Pence, Ryan, and McConnell aren't screwing over citizens of this country with his consent.

Yes, definitely this. I hope they don't revisit it.

I replied to Pence with "since you're so happy about this, please explain to me how my Mom, who has a chronic heart problem covered by the ACA, will survive." Of course, I could have also mentioned the small mercy that my cousin, who lost her child to cancer this year, didn't also end up losing her home, because she had coverage for her children under the ACA. I was laughing at my uncle the other day, "explaining" to one of my aunts about how the citizens of the countries who have national healthcare (and he specifically mentioned Canada and England) loathe their system, can rarely get care, and, when they do, it's substandard. He swears up and down "we vacation in Canada all the time, and we always make it a point to get out and speak to as many locals as we can to ask them about the system. And I've always been fascinated with England, so I research and reach out to people who live there to get their take." (BTW, if you knew my uncle, this would be even more ridiculous than it reads without knowing him.) Meanwhile, it takes months here to get in with specialists, and I live in the Chicago area, so I can't even imagine what it must be like for people in less populated areas who need very specific specialists. And, here, you're constantly at the whim of the insurance companies. For example, my son is a type 1 diabetic. He was diagnosed 7 years ago. In those 7 years, we've had to switch glucose meters 7 times and insulin brands 4 times, all because of the insurance company's changing deals with manufacturers. We constantly have to have his doctor's office do battle with the insurance company to get adequate supplies of insulin and test strips. I've also had to switch medications for a chronic health issue multiple times. And, now, they won't even work with CVS any more, so I have to find a different pharmacy, which will be a huge pain for many reasons, including that I have to clear any changes in pharmacy with my pain clinic before they'll prescribe for me there. So, if it takes me a while to figure out which non-CVS pharmacy in our area works best for us, I'll have to keep getting approval from the clinic to try out various locations. The only people who benefit from the system the GOP would like to stick with are the insurance companies. They made damn sure they undermined the ACA (with huge assists from the GOP in the states where they held enough control to affect it) so that people would believe that the problem was the ACA when, really, the problem is the same problem that existed before the ACA - insurance companies are greedy and don't give even a half a fuck if we stay healthy or are able to afford to stay healthy. Who knew, a year ago, that Rand Paul was the hero we all need?

With Anna and Patrick, though, it was pretty obvious that they were missing something. Not to mention that story being written heavily depended on them not catching onto the obvious. I mean, they couldn't be all happy and moving forward, playing one big happy family with Sabrina and Sam, if they thought there was reason to believe that something was off with Robin. There's no story line that depends on Laura and Lulu (and Nik when he was alive) ignoring the red flags with Lucky. Admittedly, JJ isn't around, so they can't play any payoff to it yet, but there's zero reason that we shouldn't have them acknowledge that they're concerned about his mental and emotional health. Hell, with Lulu's obsession with Charlotte, now would be an excellent time for Laura to have a conversation with Kevin about how she is worried that both of her kids have inherited her (and Luke's) mental health issues. She could mention how Lucky has separated himself from his sons because of this "Spencer darkness" BS, and Lulu has gone in the opposite direction, first with her desire to track down an embryo she believed to be hers with Stavros, and now obsessed Charlotte, not able to be rational and smart about how she approaches the situation. There are chances to show that Lucky's absence from the boys' lives is because of depression or any other condition, but there's been zero intention, by any writers, to make it so. His most recent bow out was a combination of "the darkness" and "well, I want to let Liz have a chance to have a real family with Jason and my sons." And he didn't even seem particularly torn over it. He may have been a little wistful, but that was about it. Basically, the writers seem to have split the Spencer kids down the middle, by gender. Since Lucky is Luke's son, this is just how he is (and it's an extension of that insulting retcon that Luke never wanted to be a father or enjoyed being part of a settled down family). And since Lulu is Laura's daughter, she's focused on being a wife and mother. Never mind that the categorizations of both Luke and Laura are beyond simplistic and ignore the total history of the characters, both as individuals and together, but that's what they've decided.

I saw a tweet yesterday saying "I saw Charles Manson was trending and assumed he was being appointed to a position in Trump's administration." I don't get how the entirety of the population, including the media (seriously, media, what the hell??), isn't freaking the fuck out over the fact that the Pres-Elect is actively undermining and picking a fight with our Intelligence and Security agencies. He's also undermining our highest law enforcement agency. Isn't he the same rotting mango who ran on a heavily pro-law enforcement stance? I saw someone talking about Trump's lies back during the campaign. As they pointed out, most of his lies aren't even strategic - meaning he tells lies that have very little upside for him if they're believed and which are easily proven false. The sad part is, his cult members have proven that "strategic" lying measurement completely useless, because they do believe everything he says and completely disregard even the easy and obvious proof that he's lying. So his lies have all of the upside and none of the risk. Of course, that's from his point of view. To the rest of the country (hell, the rest of the world), his lies are nothing but downside and risk. Assange is covering his ass, and Trump's given him the playbook to do so. The media and Trump's supporters don't care about truth, logic, or what you've said and done before that contradicts what you're saying and doing now.

I'm guessing that what she said represented his stance up until his people found out that Congress was going to pull back because of the volume of calls that flooded in opposing it. Then he made sure he got his opposition in on the record before they announced they were scrapping it, so he could take a victory lap over yet another thing he had nothing to do with.

And may all of the photographers there capture him from his worst angles (wait, is there a "good" angle on that orange mess?).

That's been my issue with buying this story from the start. There's no way he doesn't damage his relationships with Eric and Brooke by going through with this. He claims now that he's not going to actually sleep with her, just get her into a compromising position, but, it's going to be a hard sell to Brooke that nothing happened. And, even then, she might still hold it against him that he hurt Eric like this and did it all behind her back, never mind how intimate he might have to be with Quinn to get her into an appropriately incriminating position. How many times will he touch her? Kiss her? Even if it's in service of "saving" Eric and FC, going that far, behind Brooke's back, should be a deal breaker. I'm thinking it has to be intentional. Between how Ridge is pretty happily flirting with Quinn and how Bill has not blown his fuse and gone all revenge minded on Brooke and Ridge, I think that something is up here. On one hand, we have Ridge's behavior (and the pretty clear signs that, despite his insistence to the contrary, he's actually into this thing with Quinn), and, on the other, we have Bill, not being an ass to Brooke and calmly telling her that he knows this is something she needs to get past, but he's confident they belong together. He's not fighting with her or Ridge, he's not out drunkenly sexing up someone else, or crawling back to Katie. He's just waiting for her to figure it out on her own. Speaking of Bill, Wyatt did a pretty decent impression of Bill during his argument with Liam. I wasn't looking at the screen at the time, and I honestly had a moment where I thought Bill had walked in and interrupted their conversation.

Isn't Lucky actually legally Jake's father? And he is, legally and biologically, Aiden's father. And, he was the only father Cam ever knew. If the situation was reversed (obviously the Jake thing couldn't be exact, but some approximation of Liz being the kid's mother in every way that counts), then I'd think it was just as shitty for Liz to pop up with "oops! Sorry, darkness! Gotta go!" and spend years reading rocks in Ireland and meandering to other parts of the world without more than the very occasional Skype call.

And, damn it, the woman doesn't know how to smile right. Yes, yes, I would like a safe space from the nukes this assclown is daring his fellow unstable assclown to send our way. But, hey, Trump voters, you go ahead and eschew safe spaces. God speed. I was going to type almost exactly the same thing (except I'm more like 40 miles southwest of Chicago).

Honestly, I think Steffy secretly agrees with Eric. Liam's behavior over her being offered and accepting the position has opened her eyes to some degree. I think that she really is starting to ponder whether she wants to be with Liam, or if Wyatt is actually a better fit for her. It's just going to be hard for her to come to that conclusion, fully, because it's been years of her fighting to be with him, and now she finally has him.

I can just imagine him sneaking out of bed at like 3 AM and retrieving his hidden phone from under his mattress or something so he can go on a late night Twitter rant.

I think that, if they intend to get his phone away from him, they'll have to physically pry it away from him. Even then, he'll have Jared or Ivanka sneak him a new one.

I agree that there should be some story line where Liz's kids, especially Cam, have issues over all the male role models/fathers/father figures they've lost over the years. But, selfishly I don't want to see that story wasted on her relationship with Franco. I'd so much rather see that story play out when Liz finally has a good love interest, where we could see her boys resisting a relationship with a good guy because they figure he'll just turn out like all the others. The conflict is much higher stakes, to me, if they're resisting someone like, say, Matt (seriously, show, bring him back), than Franco. Of course they should resist Franco. They have to realize that, if any of the boys have a problem with Franco, a good size of the audience would be cheering the boys on there. But, if they have them being shits about Liz being in a healthy relationship with a good guy, then the audience is going to be invested in seeing that conflict resolved. Of course, the caveat there has to be that, even though this conflict is going to involve whoever she's in a relationship with, the heart of the story needs to be Liz's relationship with her sons, and not their relationship with her love interest. Obviously, the story has to be somewhat about that love interest, but it shouldn't be Liz and her boys being props in the guy's story.