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Season 23

Hanahope

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Hanahope

Hanahope

(edited)

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 by Hanahope
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DoctorAtomic

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. 

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iMonrey

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. 

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Hanahope

Hanahope

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(edited)

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 by Hanahope
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DoctorAtomic

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. 

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aghst

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.

 

 

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Hanahope

Hanahope

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(edited)

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 by Hanahope
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aghst

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.

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DoctorAtomic

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. 

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Hanahope

Hanahope

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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.  

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Shrek

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.

 

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Shrek

Shrek

(edited)
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 by Shrek
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DoctorAtomic

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. 

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rwlevin

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.

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Shrek

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.

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Shrek

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.

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DoctorAtomic

DoctorAtomic

I just don't really get the trans issue in terms of why it's just so prominent. How many trans athletes are there? 50? Also, isn't the NCAA a private corporation? They can set their own rules on who is eligible for what. I suppose the federal government could sue them, but I don't see that they'd have standing. 

I didn't really hear Harris talking about trans issues at all during the campaign. "I can't think of anything" was probably her biggest blunder that could have cost votes. I just would like to see how many people switched from Biden 2020 or stayed home because of 'trans'. 

At this point, it's seems overly obsessive. The Lakers playing the Aces is a false narrative. I just don't see it. 

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aghst

aghst

It shouldn't have been a factor in the election but Trump spent millions to run those ads, pictures of trans men or men in drag standing over smaller women or maybe girls.

So the subtext of those images was that these trans men were a threat to women or taking advantage of them in female competitions.

If you remember, conservatives started on this a few years back with state laws barring trans from using school bathrooms for girls.  They were laughed at for trying to make such a big deal but they kept at it with these anti LGBTQ laws and messaging.

Trump in his first term was relatively friendly or indifferent to LGBTQ rights.  He supposedly knew a lot of gay people when he was living in NYC.

But conservatives believed they could exploit the issue and there were some polls showing those trans prison ads having impact.

It shouldn't have been an important issue but maybe people reacted in a negative way, let their prejudices guide them in voting.

 

 

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sistermagpie

sistermagpie

(edited)

According to a recent study from UCLA, in 2023, grades K-12, there were 5 trans athletes competing on girls' teams in the US.

But trans people are an attractive target since there's so few of them a lot of people don't think it's important to protect them, but they're the tip of the spear for a much bigger fight for rigid gender roles and misogyny.

Edited by sistermagpie
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aghst

aghst

1 hour ago, sugarbaker design said:

Fear. That's all. Simply fear. One side is stoking fear that creepy men will be invading high school and college girls' locker rooms across the country.


But you’d think Bill would be more sophisticated than to fall for such crude messaging.

Yet he thinks the Democrats were too beholden to the woke mob and didn’t come out forcefully against trans men competing in girls and women’s sports because they chose to die on the hill of trans rights.

 

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DoctorAtomic

DoctorAtomic

20 hours ago, sugarbaker design said:

One side is stoking fear that creepy men will be invading high school and college girls' locker rooms across the country.

They did that in the 80s too. It didn't happen then and it's not happening now. I don't know how hard it is to say, 'knock it off. This isn't happening.' And really, I agree with Bill a lot, but it's disturbing his obsession here. 

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aghst

aghst

First thing that comes to mind about the latest episode, which included a panel guest who called herself leftist MAGA and a Trump supporter, is that her first name is Batya and maybe she goes by "Bat" as in "bat-shit insane."

She claims leftists are for the working class and Trump using tariffs to bring back manufacturing would make the middle class have more of the wealth and income in the GDP.

Yes, Trump is all about helping the middle class.🙄

That's what he claims and he convinced a lot of non-college, rural people to vote for him.

But the tax cuts he's planning are going to make corporations and the richest people better off, so it's going to INCREASE inequality, not reduce it.

She said she doesn't support what Musk is doing but obviously Trump has let Musk find all the low-hanging fruit, which are all the probationary employees of the federal government that they can fire easily.

They're going to claim that DOGE made all these savings and along with the tariffs they can now pay for another $4-5 trillion tax cuts which heavily benefit the rich.

 

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DoctorAtomic

DoctorAtomic

First of all, that woman was a child. "Leftist" is not a thing, and Bill needs to tell her to knock it off. Leftist means you're a Soviet sympathizer because that's what it really was during the cold war. Just increasing the volume of your voice doesn't automatically give heft to your vapidity. On the other hand, have her on. Now I know more about how these people are thinking. You're not going to get someone so delusional to vote differently, further underscoring my point about focusing on people who didn't vote in 2024 to vote in 2026. 

I really did like that Bill asked why we have to go back to a manufacturing economy. I always ask that and never see it addressed. I will concede that 'because people saw a thriving middle class in the 70s due to these jobs and want that again' is a good answer. Ok, but --

1 hour ago, Hanahope said:

She also forgot the main reason that manufacturing succeeded in the US, and that was LABOR UNIONS.  Which the GOP is absolutely against these days.

For one. For the other, it's not just these days. Reagan broke the unions, or the shift away from the unions started with him. Too bad we never had a pro union president since that would stand in a picket line to show his support for unions. Fourth, 'going back' never works. The real work is about what skilled, union jobs look like in the 21st century. Clinton wanted to get coal miners to learn how to code and she got eaten alive. Well, there's less coal jobs now and that program got killed in 2016.

I live in a nonunion red state, but the governor is investing in skilled jobs, professional certificates, vocational training, and the like, where a 4 year degree isn't necessary. I'm literally writing a funding proposal about how do get high school seniors involved and hands on training. It's not really just or only manufacturing. That's the direction you want to go in. Sure, we still want to make the best cars; we really don't, but that requires outsourced manufacturing and resources still. And there's only so many cars you can buy. Everyone agrees that AI and robots are going to do those jobs anyway. You want to get people skilled in repairing and programming them.

Let's still invest in infrastructure and construction. That's plenty of jobs too. When's the next Infrastructure Week? There's where you should be analyzing whether regulations are being prohibitive or not. There's no rail anywhere except the northeast.

Bringing this or that back just capitalizes on nostalgia and doesn't address real problems. Biden did try at least. It's going to take time, but no one really seems to want to dig into that work. 

 

 

I like the governor, but I have to ask, you've done all these great things; how did PA break for Trump then? 

Hanahope

Hanahope

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1 hour ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I like the governor, but I have to ask, you've done all these great things; how did PA break for Trump then? 

PA is definitely purple.  it flips and flops.  2 1/2  years ago, statewide seats went to dems. last year, they went gop.  we shall see how they go in 26.  its all about turnout sometimes.  the dems are lucky they have some time because right now, i know a lot that are pretty disgusted.  

1 hour ago, DoctorAtomic said:

Let's still invest in infrastructure and construction. That's plenty of jobs too. When's the next Infrastructure Week?

heh, i wonder how many we will get and will anything get done on that.  last time, it was a joke.

 

Shrek

Shrek

While she was a screaming lunatic, she did highlight the one big issue the Dems face going forward & that is that she could not be moved from the Republican (Trump) talking points or view of the world & what they stand for, no matter how ridiculous or outrageous that view is. They all do it & not one of them has the moral compass or will to say anything different, they all talk & say the exact same things & they all, every man, woman & racist among them will not be budged. Whereas the Dems are all over the place, all pulling in different directions with different priorities. 

Look at the way they have defied the court over deporting supposed criminals, which IMO was just a test to see what if anything would happen if they just ignored court orders. I'll tell you what, nothing, zilch zero, nada & the reason for this is that all they need to say is "DJT, the U.S. president told us to do it" and guess who has immunity from everything while in office.

The next thing to be tested will be presidential pardons, trust me.

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iMonrey

iMonrey

On 3/10/2025 at 10:00 PM, aghst said:

But you’d think Bill would be more sophisticated than to fall for such crude messaging.

Yet he thinks the Democrats were too beholden to the woke mob and didn’t come out forcefully against trans men competing in girls and women’s sports because they chose to die on the hill of trans rights.

It all circles back around the Berkley dis-invite which he apparently will never get over, and which has caused him to obsess endlessly over the "woke mob" and "snowflakes." He is transitioning into a MAGA Republican before our very eyes.

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wknt3

wknt3

On 3/23/2025 at 11:18 AM, iMonrey said:

It all circles back around the Berkley dis-invite which he apparently will never get over, and which has caused him to obsess endlessly over the "woke mob" and "snowflakes." He is transitioning into a MAGA Republican before our very eyes.

Worse than that unfortunately. If he was to go full MAGA he would get a spot on Fox News while playing smaller and smaller venues and the mainstream industry would slowly forget about him. Instead he's another cranky old white male comedian who wants us to believe that the excesses of wokeness and performative activeness should be treated as seriously as authoritarianism and deliberate destruction and cruelty because he needs to write some new material or can't book some of the younger, hotter guests that bring better demos. A true believer is better than someone who knows what's up but is more upset about their minor personal inconveniences.

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