Season 23

[Hanahope]

Episode 1

Starts off with Rick Caruso who complained he didn’t win mayor of Los Angeles (after changing parties twice) and how he would have totally beaten those fires into submission before they burned the Palisades to the ground.  Sure Jan.

 

Then we got Erin Perrine and Larry Wilmore. Erin makes the false equivalency that hundreds of thousands of people donating a million to Harris means the same as a couple billionaires giving the same to Trump.  Or that pardoning hunter biden was the same as pardoning people convicted of serious crimes.  Or something about influence which was also ridiculous.  Larry tried to push back a little but he was not very effective.

Bill is right.  Baldoni can play Luigi in the movie.  
 

so far, doesn’t sound like bill will push back much against trump.  Guess we will see.  
 

Not sure what more fire trucks would do if the problem was lack of water.  
 

Edited January 25 by Hanahope

[DoctorAtomic]

The problem wasn't lack of water afaik. The problem was with so many people trying to get at the water, the pressure died, so the water couldn't get out. I don't know if there would have been enough water anyway to stem the fires, but not having access to water is bad. It's also a systemic failure of risk management that's been rife throughout the country going back to way before Katrina. 

I think Bill is pushing back fine. His opening point was that Trump doesn't know how the government works. He doesn't. What he's not doing is going bonkers over every stupid thing Trump says or does, and it drives me up the wall that everyone in the media is taking him seriously. Out of nowhere he's bloviating about Greenland. No. That's ridiculous. Fix everything you said you were to do first, and then talk about that. 

No, you can't amend the constitution by an executive order, and it was summarily thrown out of court. That's stupid. Just say it's stupid. Which I think Bill kind of did.

Ro was making a good point about the administration stopping medical research, and from my own life, withholding duly contracted federal funding, but instead, everyone is clutching their pearls over nonsense orders that won't amount to anything. But they cut him off to screech about whatever perceived wrongs the Democrats did.  

4 hours ago, Hanahope said:

Then we got Erin Perrine and Larry Wilmore. Erin makes the false equivalency that hundreds of thousands of people donating a million to Harris means the same as a couple billionaires giving the same to Trump.

She was bit much. The problem is the money in politics. No one should have to raise a billion dollars to mount a campaign. Don't hate the player; hate the game. What was Harris supposed to do? 

4 hours ago, Hanahope said:

Or that pardoning hunter biden was the same as pardoning people convicted of serious crimes.  

It's not the same at all. And everyone on the planet knows had Don Jr got caught in some shady deals in 2017, for example, Trump would have pardoned him instantly. I don't know if I agree with the blanket pardons, but that's another discussion. If they weren't pardoned, would this DOJ be harassing them? Quite possibly. Look at those poor people in Georgia with what Guliani did to them. It's not like Biden didn't have any reasoning there. 

I'm surprised they didn't talk about Ramaswamy being pushed out of doge. On paper, it's not a bad idea, but Musk has a conflict of interest, and I don't think they're approaching the issue in good faith. 

Seriously though, Larry's Plan B joke was complete solid gold. 

[iMonrey]

18 hours ago, Hanahope said:

Then we got Erin Perrine and Larry Wilmore.

I haven't watched this show in a couple of years. For some reason, this episode showed up on YouTube in its entirety and I watched it. Same old, same old. The right wing panelist is always a motormouth who has to talk at 2x speed. It reeks of defensiveness when they do that, which makes whatever they say so disingenuous. 

[heatherchandler]

14 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

Ro was making a good point about the administration stopping medical research, and from my own life, withholding duly contracted federal funding

I missed that, what was he saying?

[Hanahope]

So that was in episode 2 with Stephen A. Smith and Ro Khana.  Ro said that Trump ordered cancer research stopped. I’ve been trying to find support for that.  Apparently it’s from his order restriction on suspending NIH research grant reviews which is believed will affect the budget for cancer research.  
 

The biggest complaint in Episode 2 was the continued harping on the Dems for so-called virtue signaling where I guess some people were more concerned with pronouns than getting the best message out.  I didn’t see that myself but maybe it was more obvious to those behind the scenes.  Clearly oftentimes the right message did not go out and the Dems need to do better on that. 

Edited January 26 by Hanahope

[DoctorAtomic]

36 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

The right wing panelist is always a motormouth who has to talk at 2x speed.

You should try when Sarah Isgur is on. Seriously, I'm not saying that in a 'take my wife. please' was. She doesn't do that and she actually knows what she's talking about. And she doesn't whatabout. 

22 minutes ago, heatherchandler said:

I missed that, what was he saying?

Just in general, NIH review panels are halted. So currently submitted grants are on hold. Ro said that diabetes research was halted, and I also saw that the NIH budget proposal from the administration is to be cut by a third. Ro was trying to bring up the issue but was cut off because Bill interrupted about Democrats being too woke about trans kids or whatever. Like I was saying, Congress has to authorize a budget, so that may be all for nothing.

And Congress isn't going back to normal order any time soon, so there will be nothing going on until the CR is due, and probably the government will shut down for a week while they flail around and basically pass another resolution. 

I do agree with Bill in not going bonkers over everything because most will end up being nothing; FEMA isn't being dissolved, but there are some things like cutting funding that can happen. 

I don't think Ro is a particularly good guest. Someone a little stronger might have been able to press the topic. 

[DoctorAtomic]

I forgot to add that I liked Stephen A.'s analogy of the Rooney rule to DEI. I couldn't get why Bill couldn't understand. 

[aghst]

On 1/26/2025 at 10:29 AM, Hanahope said:

The biggest complaint in Episode 2 was the continued harping on the Dems for so-called virtue signaling where I guess some people were more concerned with pronouns than getting the best message out.  I didn’t see that myself but maybe it was more obvious to those behind the scenes.  Clearly oftentimes the right message did not go out and the Dems need to do better on that. 

For Bill, woke is worse than MAGA.

 

 

[Hanahope]

Ep 3 - I think Peggy Noonan was nothing but an echo chamber for Bill, not much substance.

The panel is underestimating Elon.  He’s more dangerous than they give him credit for.  And they still don’t seem to get that just because trump doesn’t have a filter that doesn’t make him a good president, just an unfiltered idiot who doesn’t take the time to be a decent person.  
 

I do agree that Gen Z doesn’t realize that dictators are bad ideas .  They soon will.  
 

was Bill trying to say that Europe was used to invasion by immigrants?  I wasn’t sure.  
 

and bill, you are not that much older than me, but a lot of things you didn’t see growing up, I and my friends did.  And believe me, things were not all that great before then just because you didn’t see them.

Edited February 2 by Hanahope

[aghst]

Elon has interns from his startup companies going around examining systems at the Treasury, the GSA and other big agencies to try to hack them.

I don't know if they even have clearances.  There's social media posts about them, one is some 19 year old Canadian.  Or maybe he's older but they're all in their early 20s at most.

Now there's talk about Elon putting the Treasury on the block chain.  That's a major change.  How does that get done without congressional approval?

If Democrats aren't going to court to contest these kinds of moves, that's huge political malpractice.

[DoctorAtomic]

11 hours ago, aghst said:

How does that get done without congressional approval?

If Democrats aren't going to court to contest these kinds of moves, that's huge political malpractice.

I think they are going to court because I don't think you can just dissolve agencies unless it's in the law that created them. They went to court over birthright citizenship and that got thrown out, then for the freezing of federal grants that were already awarded, and that got thrown out. 

Everything is just a complete mess. The main concern for me is that something could fall through the cracks that may be considered minor in terms of national news, but still has a big impact on a lot of people. 

[Hanahope]

48 minutes ago, DoctorAtomic said:

Everything is just a complete mess. The main concern for me is that something could fall through the cracks that may be considered minor in terms of national news, but still has a big impact on a lot of people. 

yeah, that is a big concern.  there's so much stuff being signed via executive order or just being done that the dems (the only opposition, the gop sure isn't doing anything but enjoying watching everything get broken) can only do so much and its terrifying what might slip through the cracks and hurt people before an injunction is filed.  

[Shrek]

Just now, Hanahope said:

yeah, that is a big concern.  there's so much stuff being signed via executive order or just being done that the dems (the only opposition, the gop sure isn't doing anything but enjoying watching everything get broken) can only do so much and its terrifying what might slip through the cracks and hurt people before an injunction is filed.  

He doesn't care. The plan is obviously to just write executive orders until the world runs out of ink & see what sticks, then any legal halts will be taken all the way to the SC where he can't lose because he has immunity from anything, but you just know there will be stuff that falls through the cracks anyway. 

We're only 2 weeks into a minimum 4-year term (not a chance it stops there) and just about the only thing he hasn't done that other dictators have is shoot his political opponents. Watching the videos of people being arrested and dragged away in the middle of the night regardless of their immigration status & where they are (churches etc.) is just 2 steps away from Kristallnacht except with brown people instead of Jews.

 

[Hanahope]

Bill is wrong about Fetterman.  He may have been a left’s voice until he sided with the gop on several votes.  I don’t think many on the left trust him anymore.

AOC is a better choice, but of course, she’s a woman.

 

[Pike Ludwell]

.

Edited Monday at 01:35 AM by Pike Ludwell

[Shrek]

3 hours ago, Hanahope said:

 

AOC is a better choice, but of course, she’s a woman.

 

It has nothing to do with her being a woman & everything to do with her being an extremist & people see her as being one step short of a communist, which puts off a lot of people. She makes Bernie seem like a moderate and even when she's calm, she comes across as angry & loud.

I don't think Fetterman is the answer either.

Edited Sunday at 08:46 PM by Shrek

[Mr. R0b0t]

26 minutes ago, Shrek said:

It has nothing to do with her being a woman & everything to do with her being an extremist

Is she an extremist, or just smeared as one?

[DoctorAtomic]

8 hours ago, Pike Ludwell said:

It was actually pretty narrow, like Rahm was saying. It's an important point because it relates to whether there's a mandate or not.

The election was narrow and the gop does not have a mandate, but Bill correctly pointed out that Trump won all the swing states. It looks more lopsided than it was because you're winner take all in the electoral college. 

Which leads me to my point that I just don't think 'woke' torpedoed the election nearly as much as Bill makes it out to be. I didn't really see Harris talking about 'woke' issues. 

It's that the voting public is stupid and needs to be told that whatever is important to them is the most important issue ever because everyone is super special. Way too many resources were blown on the 'undecided voter'; like Bill said, 100 days or 10,000 years, they're still going to be undecided. Because they're stupid. The election was blown because people stayed home. Maybe 'woke' had something to do with that, but there's been a general global conservative trend that's more to do with economics imo. Even though the economy was basically fine; elections aren't about issues anymore. People needed to be told how to feel, not 'get our policies out'. 

Fetterman or not, and I take Carville's point, there needs to be someone pointing out stupid things and saying they're stupid. Not saying the sky is falling all the time; actual things that are stupid. And then shrug your shoulders, 'well this is what you voted for.' 

AOC isn't 35 yet iirc so she couldn't run for president. I've seen her in a few hearings, and she doesn't strike me as extreme. 

[Hanahope]

When you have people believing the lies told by Trump, like news story of the recently fired park ranger who thought Trump would make IVF free, I don’t think the left want someone like that.  They don’t want someone who lies to the public to get votes. 
 Yes they want someone that speaks the to the people.  If not AOC, maybe Waltz or Pritzker.  
 

[DoctorAtomic]

Not lie to the public, but you do need to get the most votes if you want to win. That person thinking IVF would be free is an idiot, but a voting idiot. 

[rwlevin]

20 hours ago, Hanahope said:

Bill is wrong about Fetterman.  He may have been a left’s voice until he sided with the gop on several votes.  I don’t think many on the left trust him anymore.

AOC is a better choice, but of course, she’s a woman.

I’ve said this once and I’ll keep saying it. It’s Mayor Pete. He talks plainly, he talks sense. He doesn’t fight or yell and he actually gets people to change their opinions. And they actually like him on Fox News.

[Shrek]

17 hours ago, Mr. R0b0t said:

Is she an extremist, or just smeared as one?

She may just be smeared as one, but I personally find her annoying in the extreme & I can't put my finger on why specifically. Anyway, she's under 60 years old so she has no chance.

One of the biggest Democratic problems as I see it the lack of coherence, everybody seems to be off talking about their own little problems or pet talking point.

[DoctorAtomic]

2 hours ago, Shrek said:

One of the biggest Democratic problems as I see it the lack of coherence, everybody seems to be off talking about their own little problems or pet talking point.

That's what I'm saying about getting someone out there to just say stupid things are stupid. Trotting out Schumer isn't cutting it. 

So maybe it should be Mayor Pete. 

[Shrek]

25 minutes ago, DoctorAtomic said:

That's what I'm saying about getting someone out there to just say stupid things are stupid. Trotting out Schumer isn't cutting it. 

So maybe it should be Mayor Pete. 

Sure why not? As long as Trump doesn't run for a third term or just refuse to leave before he's carried out in a box, they have nobody with the same pull either.

JDV has less chance of being the next Republican nominee than anyone within the Trump crime family & someone needs to start calling them just that, in fact every member of the Democrats needs to start using that immediately & stop being so nice & polite.

At the moment all the Dems are off on their own tangent & are achieving nothing. They have nothing to lose but are too busy pussyfooting around everything to be effective.

[Hanahope]

4 minutes ago, Shrek said:

They have nothing to lose but are too busy pussyfooting around everything to be effective.

That is absolutely the truth.