KerleyQ

I completely agree. What I wonder about the whole incident, though, is this - isn't she under Secret Service protection? (I thought I remember reading that she was put under protection at some point during the campaign, ahead of her siblings, naturally). I find the logistics of her family flying commercial in coach with the SS confusing. Wouldn't it have been safer to use the Trump jet? Or rent another private plane if her father was using his? It just seems to me like it would be a difficult scenario for the SS to properly manage and secure. They can't control who else books that flight, for example. And, yes, this person made himself known before takeoff (and wasn't violent), so they were removed and the situation was fine, but what happens if someone who intends to do her actual physical harm waits until the plane is in the air, say, over an ocean when they can't quickly land the plane (she was going to Hawaii, right)? That puts not only her and her children in danger, but everyone else on that plane, as well. This is why the First Family doesn't fly commercial.

I said the same thing during this past week, and my husband burst my bubble - all the previous Presidents have aged like shit because they're taking the job seriously, losing sleep, stressing, and they feel the deep responsibility of it all. Cheetos? He's not going to be stressing, and he's not going to feel the weight of the responsibility, because he simply won't do the stuff he doesn't want to do. Mike Pence is going to be the one who turbo ages. (And I hope that fucker looks like complete shit by June). I'm hoping Cheetos's reign stresses out Paul Ryan and prematurely ages him, too. You know that vain shit will hate that.

I think it's especially rich when you consider the Trump crowd's reaction to something like a football player taking a knee during the Anthem. They were triggered and melting down all the hell over the place. I asked more than one if they needed a safe space. As long as they exist. God knows we need them. Whenever my brother texts me links from various fake news sites, I always respond with something like "yeah, I'm not clicking on that, I refuse to contribute to Breitbart's revenue for shilling lies." Happy holidays, everyone! And my gift to you - go add the "De-Trumpify" extension if you're on Chrome. The names it has come up with for him so far are amazing. I'm partial to "President-Elect Tiny Gloves," "Deflated Football," and "Brightly Burning Trash Fire," but they're all so good. Combined with the extension that replaces pictures of him with pictures of kittens, it makes reading about him slightly less tedious.

Sigh... Because this has been happening all over (or at all)? The main special snowflake I've seen begging for a safe space was our Pres-Elect, after the theater people were big old meanies to his VP.

You've got to love his proud "I'm not politically correct!" statement on this. Yes, you should totally be proud that you're a complete piece of shit who is entertained by hoping for people to die because they've committed the unpardonable sin of being A) from a different political party, and B) a different race. I'm not a violent person, but I'd proudly punch this asshat in the face and, when he cried about it, I'd respond "Hey, I'm not politically correct. Deal with it."

Exactly what I was going to say - it's a false equivalency to pretend that the liberals are just as bad as the white supremacists. This entire election season has been ruled by the false equivalency. You'd think that, if the white supremacists aren't ashamed of their behavior and beliefs, they wouldn't need to keep trying to create these false equivalencies to prop themselves up. Could it be that they know they're shitty human beings and they need to try to bring everyone else down to their level?

I'm jealous! Spending a large portion of the day at that Margarita stand in Mexico seems like the perfect way to "celebrate" this hot mess. Then go hit Soarin' Over the World to get ideas on where to move. (Or, if you're feeling more morose, go hop on Mission: Space and puke up all that booze. Because nothing honors his inauguration quite like vomiting.)

"Who said we have cookies? When were these cookies supposedly bought? How come you're not mentioning the cookies that Hillary selfishly horded to give to the Saudis instead of allowing children to have Christmas cookies? Why can't we talk about that?" I tweeted at him that this is exactly the kind of thing that people consider when making a decision as to whether or not to run for President. And, yes, Eric can donate his own money. He can volunteer his services to St. Jude to help raise funds through them. He can provide a free rental at one of his properties to hold a fundraising event. The only thing he can't do is use his charity as a way to facilitate access to the President in exchange for donations (while also using at least a portion of those donations to line his own pockets). It's amazing what a burden it is to the Trump family to not behave unethically.

It's only "voting fraud" if it benefits the Dems ("voting fraud" is often also fictional or greatly exaggerated). Any fraud that benefits the GOP is given cute little euphemisms so they can continue to pretend they have some moral upper hand. That is what makes me angriest about that video - the lack of anyone telling that old bitch to shut her trap. I would not have been able to not say something. Partial credit to the cashier who started to try to say something, but then he backed down as soon as she turned on him. He should have followed that up with hitting the security button to get someone over there to haul her angry racist bitchy ass out of there. Not to mention that his behavior was likely the reason they took the drone in the first place. Even if he did have any hand in its return (and he most definitely did not) it would have been in service of cleaning up his own mess. I'm not going to fall over to praise the asshat if he shits on the floor and then makes a half-hearted "someone should clean that up...no, you know what, just leave it there! Who cares!" effort at cleaning it.

Tom Arnold says he got a voicemail from one of Trump's people threatening a lawsuit over the tapes. Arnold's response seems to be that he's going to let it all spill out. That should lead to a patented Trump Twitter meltdown.

I'm going to be so disappointed if we don't even get a moment "after that cheap ass hole just gave me a fucking string?" jealousy flitting across Katies sour face.

True. I should have said more that it's the comedians and their crew who are being the real journalists. (And that crew extends to include the journalists who don't specifically work for them regularly but are contributing material for stories). Oliver's pool of journalistic sources is outstanding, and they're doing serious work - digging and covering unique stories in a very indepth manner, cultivating their own sources and information instead of just pulling what is already out there reported elsewhere. They're amazing.

That's pretty much his vision of it, I'm sure.

I agree. I hope it didn't come off that I was speculating, because I do think that any politician's underage kids should be off limits, and in particular, it shouldn't be OK to speculate about something like that based on the poor kid seeming shy and overwhelmed when faced with the screaming hordes and cameras at rallies. But, given that the speculation is out there and public knowledge, it makes that "retard" comment by him a big deal, if it's released. Because parents who have autistic children themselves are not going to take kindly to the idea that someone who may have a child on the spectrum himself used that word (especially to describe that child, if that's what happened). In other words, in this case, it doesn't even matter whether the speculation is true (and I wouldn't hazard a guess either way). It won't be a good look for him, regardless. And he can't clear up the speculation as true or false in conjunction with the video, because that is a huge no-win situation.

And, honestly, real equality would be treating Maya just like any other soap character - which includes cheating or being cheated on, divorce, etc. Just shoveling her off into boring happy married person who is obsessed with having baby after baby is kind of condescending, in my opinion.

Watching that, this thing is all kinds of hinky. I seriously wonder, was the Ambassador told that this "off duty officer" was his security by someone? It's just so weird to me that this guy is just pacing back there, by himself, as the Ambassador is speaking, and nobody seems to think anything of it. Something is off here, and this was almost definitely not a one man thing. I'm so sorry you have to worry about all of this as you're recovering. It's inexcusable in this country for people to need to suffer any economic anxiety over health care. Paul Ryan tweeted today about how deductibles have gone up and up under ObamaCare, like it's a feature of the law. I responded "and who's raised them? The insurance companies who donate to your campaigns? I wonder why you don't call them out." I honestly believe that, aside from the racist aspects of the GOP attacks on President Obama, the ACA has actually been their biggest concern and the driving force behind their animosity. I'd love to see a breakdown of campaign contributions from the big insurance companies over the years, to see if there is a great increase once President Obama was elected. Obviously, the insurance companies do not want us to get to a point where we have a single payer system. The best way for them to fight that was to get their bought and paid for GOP candidates (at state and federal levels) to undermine the ACA as much as possible, while acting like the undermining they're doing is a "feature" of the law, and not just their bullshit. So we have GOP controlled states who refused to expand Medicare even when, in some cases, refusing to do so actually cost them a decent chunk of federal money. When the people who would have benefited from that expansion in their states find themselves screwed over, they're told it's because of ObamaCare. Insurance companies, meanwhile, raise deductibles and co-pays (like my husband's employer provided plan, which randomly raised the ER co-pay from $75 to $500 last year) on all plans, even those that have nothing to do with the ACA marketplace, and the word put out is that it's "because of ObamaCare." People are having difficulties with their insurance, they're finding they have to pay too much, and they're being told it's the fault of the ACA, and they believe it. So they vote for the politician who tells them "we're going to repeal ObamaCare." The GOP could not, under any circumstances, let the people fully see how good the ACA could be for them, because then they'd have no leg to stand on when they campaigned on repealing it. I've been saying this for a while now - the real journalists are the comedians. I think it's in large part because they don't have the same fear as the journalists have of losing access. They don't need a press pass or to get any face to face time with Trump to cover him. He provides all the material they need in his rallies and over social media, and his talking heads provide the rest in their appearances on Fox, CNN, etc. This frees them up, and, as a result, they're being more direct and actually fact checking his shit, while the media is busy trying to play his game. I think that the only thing in what Tom Arnold describes that could be an issue for them is the "retard" comment. And, even that depends on the context and which son he said it about. If he was talking about Barron, given the speculation that he's on the Autism spectrum, that could be an issue for some. I know of a few of his supporters who have special needs children (a couple with autistic children and one whose child has Downs). If Trump called his young, possibly autistic, child a "retard," that would be a huge thing to them. Hearing a rumor he said it won't get them, but that tape released, and seeing him smiling and calling his child that, so it's undeniable that he said it? That would be too much for them and, I'm guessing, many like them. Not his whole base, obviously, but it would make a difference to some of them. Now, if he was "jokingly" calling Junior or Eric that because they messed something up or said something dumb? I think they'd still be offended, but it wouldn't be as big of a deal. They'd shrug it off as "a lot of people stupidly use that as an insult, and, hopefully, he'll learn from this not to do so in the future." I think that this particular era of celebrity culture is one where it's all about what you have, who you know, and how many social media followers you have, and not genuine hard work and talent. And there's not much dignity to it. Yes, there has always been a celebrity culture, but it's never been like this, in my opinion. Sadly, I think you're right. Some of them would accept him raping someone. As for the abortion? There's different rules for the wealthy and the rest of us. Trump can have a mistress (or a rape victim) get an abortion, because, well, he's rich and powerful. None of them hold his telling Marla to abort Tiffany against him. They look at it as some gold digger got pregnant on purpose to trap him and make money. And that label will always be "radical Islamic terrorism" when it comes to something bad happening in the world. Hell, he'll probably start branding school shootings with it, even though the odds are incredibly low that the school shooter fits the bill.

Agreed. I suspect Pence's position was the result of some behind the scenes negotiating between Trump's kids and the GOP - he names Pence, he gets their overt support. He was kind of the perfect sacrificial lamb to what they thought would be a losing cause - he had lost popularity in his state, making him vulnerable in the next election, so his pick cleared the way for them to put someone else in line there, but he's party man so that, in the event of Trump's win, they had a VP who will toe the party line however far right Paul and Mitch want to push it. There was no way someone like Paul Ryan was going to take that VP spot. He wants to run for POTUS at some point, and a second failed VP bid would have damaged his chances, and he wanted to maintain his power as Speaker. They needed a party stooge who was expendable but loyal, and that is exactly who Pence is. Now that the situation is what it is, they'll publicly support him in anything he does, playing dumb when he does something out of line or unethical (so, you know, on a daily basis). In the background? Like you said, the knives are out, they're being sharpened. They will just make sure that, whatever their plan is to divest themselves of him, it won't look like it was their plan. They'll look like the disappointed "oh, shucks, we were so with him, but this is just too damning," loyal supporters who were "just as let down by what he's done as the American people are, gosh darnit!" Their hands will be all over whatever it is, but they'll cover it like crazy and guys like Gowdy will run whatever investigation occurs, making sure that the appropriate rocks are left un-turned. (And that investigation will be singular and will not last, in its entirety, as long as Hillary sat for questioning in one hearing.)

I'm assuming something like this is why we have Brooke being dragged into this as Katie's sounding board instead of just talking to Eric herself. It's like they want her on the periphery of the story, so she's in place for some reveal, but they don't want her "in" the story until it's time for that reveal. I kind of wonder if we'll see Katie team up with Ridge on the "seduce Quinn" plan because it gives Katie a two-fer - interfering in the Eric/Quinn relationship and a little swipe of revenge at her sister for taking Bill and then dumping him for Ridge (and for Ridge and Bill both preferring her to Katie). I can just envision Katie pretending to be concerned about her sister and repeatedly mentally debating with herself (and Ridge, maybe Liam, too) as to whether it's right to tell Brooke or keep her in the dark, while we all know she's really biding her time to let that bomb explode in Brooke's face at just the right time.

Except that the people who control Congress have zero inclination to make any waves as long as he gives them exactly what they want (signing off on whatever awful legislation they create to screw over the average citizen and appointing the most batshit regressive justices to the SC money can buy). Sure, they'd wildly prefer Pence, and he's their safety net, but they're not going to risk angering his horde of cult members unless he forces their hand by going against them on something they refuse to compromise on. Exactly why he wants to include his own staff there. He needs someone who answers to and is beholden to him and him alone. Because it's what his Muslim-hating cult members want to hear. Made in China, Vietnam, or Mexico. You know, to go along with his "MadeInTheUSA" hashtag.

Oh, we all know he won't. Russia is already blaming it on NATO. So, you know, this is going to get ugly. (And my cynical side says that Putin arranged it, just based on the timing. This is exactly the kind of thing he'd have no problem doing to stir things up when he thinks he has an advantage to press. Even if this guy was one of his friends, it's a small sacrifice to him for his own greater good.) Looks like the EC is most definitely not coming through with that birthday present for me.

And that is why the GOP has been undermining education and cultivating the low information voters. Then, when a Democrat proposes or (God forbid!) implements something that could be good for the average citizen, the GOP sandbags it in any way possible. In this case, they refused to expand Medicaid in various GOP controlled states. And, I suspect, they also worked with their insurance industry donors to manipulate the premiums in some markets to make it so that, to the low information voter, it looked like Obamacare was making insurance more expensive and even harder to get. In reality, Obamacare would have been a good first step in insurance reform, if implemented properly by all states and not undermined by the insurance industry like that. But, if it was allowed to fly on its own and succeed, it might just be a hop, skip, and a jump to single payer universal healthcare, which the GOP (and their donors) do not want. To their credit, it works, masterfully. I've seen an acquaintance state, firmly, that she now has to pay a $1,000 co-pay for an office visit with a specialist, thanks to Obamacare. You can't convince her that this is not a thing.

If anything, he's unlearned over the years. I think he hit a point, well over a decade ago, probably close to two decades ago, where he understood that his devotion to his job was a bad thing for the people around him. I'm referring to when he left Brenda at the altar. Yes, he did it in a shitty manner, but I think he knew he needed to do it that way to not give her a chance to talk him out of it. But, now? Now, he just feels like everyone should just accept that this is his life. He pays lip service, for about 5 minutes, to feeling bad about however he hurts a loved one, but then it's just back to "why you bringing up old stuff"?

To be fair, Quinn didn't seek this out. Ridge barged in on her, in her own home, in the process of setting up a surprise for her husband. And he was the one who had the poor manners to remain there, staring at her, not handing her a towel when she requested one. At that point, she decided to regain the upper hand by confidently flaunting it instead of doing what he, no doubt, hoped she'd do - cower and break down in embarrassment.

And to that, I say, honey, cash up front and make sure you remember your pepper spray. I've often said I would love to hear how Trump and his kids talk about his supporters when no one else is listening. I'd be willing to bet that there's a lot of mocking. I think that's probably the most likely feeling - fear. Trump isn't just a buffoon. If that was the case, I think the reaction would largely be laughter. But, if anyone has paid attention to what he's saying, to his connection to Putin, etc, then they know this isn't a joke, and it doesn't only affect us. About a year or so ago, I saw a clip from a talk one of the Duck Dynasty guys gave. At some point, he started talking about how if you're an atheist, and some bad guys break into your house, ties you up, rapes and kills your family, how do you have a frame of reference for "right or wrong" to react to it? I was just stunned. And angry. Who the hell is he to decide that, because someone doesn't share his faith, they are incapable of understanding right and wrong, or of feeling emotion seeing anyone, let alone people they love, raped and killed? What kind of conceited, selfish asshole thinks like that? I saw the reaction from a Trump supporter (possibly one of the Russian bots who "follows" him on Twitter) to China taking the drone that amounted to "see, maybe being friends with Putin wouldn't be such a bad idea if he can help us fend off China's aggressions." I'm guessing that is exactly Putin's plan - use Trump to stir China up and make them anxious, then use their reactions and anxiety as a selling point to cleave to Putin to protect us from China's puzzling, out of the blue, aggression.

Yep. I think it's a somewhat common tactic of people who are trying to get their way to try to appear "reasonable" by offering up an alternative that they know won't really be taken. In this case, they know that it's not likely that people are going to default to "Happy Hanukkah," so they feel completely confident saying "Oh, I'd have no problem with it if everyone said that." It's just a way to "team up" to defeat their real gripe, while not having any intention of honoring their "team up."