StrangeSox

Jared was on the email chain and in the meeting where they explicitly tried to collude with Russia though

Spicey might be coming back?!

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 31, 2017 -> 02:33 PM) Trump says there is no chaos. He's now the Iraqi Defense Minister. Stable Administration No White House Chaos wait that was a typo, let me fix it Stable Administration? No, White House Chaos!

Spicer campaigned to never hire Mooch. Priebus campaigned to never hire Mooch. Trump hired Mooch. Spicer quits. Mooch gets Priebus fired. Trump makes Kelly his Chief of Staff. Kelly gets Mooch fired.

Mooch was so busy being an 80's guy he forgot to cure his doucheitis

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 31, 2017 -> 01:56 PM) That was awesome. I wonder what happened. He couldn't have lied on a form or anything. That is standard operation procedure for this administration. What a horrible hire. Sad. Probably was one of Kelly's conditions for taking CoS, and now he gets to come in on a narrative of being a moderating influence. Scary thing is that we're pretty much left with the Bannon/white nationalist crew and the multiple ex-generals as the only influences on Trump. Still going to laugh about Mooch blowing up his own life like a moron thoug

LA has made a deal for the 2028 Olympics, Paris gets 2024.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Jul 31, 2017 -> 11:40 AM) Oh you know they're going to get at least one dragon that way. It's a Chekhov's ballista. Euron's navy has a bunch of flame missiles launching all over the place. Why is what is essentially just a large crossbow supposed to be some sort of ace in the hole?? QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 31, 2017 -> 11:41 AM) It's not just the actual physics of the show like time and distance. It also is just that it set up years of confronting you with how impossible it was to actually suceed vs those who had power. How those pulling the strings would overwhelm you. And to an extent I see them doing the "unless you are willing to push the stakes" aspect of that, there just seems like too many deus ex machina now. Euron's fleet being this indestructible force after years of us being told the greyjoys were basically a nuisance that largely sucked at fighting (and with onlly half the island). Arya will destroy entire houses. 5 houses will fall with small army in the course of a single battle. Plot armor is extremely powerful, my friend. And why the hell is Jorah back? Who cares about his character anymore? His arc was pretty much wrapped up.

Also why is Dany skeptical about an army of the undead? She's got dragons that hatched magically and is the "unburnt" because she miraculously is immune to fire.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Jul 31, 2017 -> 11:23 AM) Isn't the Iron Bank in Braavos, the "Free City of Braavos," on the show though? I'm not entirely sure that it's consistent that the Iron Bank would be like "we can't support Dany because she freed slaves in Slavers Bay and if she wins the Iron Throne she will spread those ideas to Westeros where slavery is already illegal?" That scene didn't work for me. But that scene kind of points to a larger issue. Cersei literally destroyed the Sept of Baelor, killing a popular Pope and popular Queen in the process. She's calling it "an accident" but there's no way that everybody doesn't know the truth of the matter - that Cersei did this. That act makes her the Mad Queen. But she is able to hand wave it away by being like "remember how crazy Aerys was? What if Dany is mad!" Or, "yeah, we haven't paid bills in awhile and, yeah, that caused you to bankroll Stannis. But Dany is anti-slavery! And something about Lannisters always paying their debts!" The point is that it doesn't make narrative sense for Cersei to continue to be able to persuade and consolidate her power. She started this season in a terrible spot, after having committed a straight up atrocity (that should have actually led to a popular revolt against her right?) and in 3 episodes, she's more powerful than she, or the Lannisters, have been at literally any other point in the show. They could be depicting the Iron Bank similar to how things worked here during slavery. Slavery wasn't legal in NYC or Britain, but both places sure got wealthy off of all the trade generated by it. I'm not sure they really established a large global trade economy from Slaver's Bay that would involve Braavos, but that could potentially be how that would work. Or it's just more sloppy writing and plot holes. Definitely agree on it not making sense for Cersei to be gaining power again right now, which is part of the reason I'm pretty bored with her story line. If her dumb "secret weapon" ballistas actually manage to kill a dragon I'll be entirely done with that part of the story and ready for The Night King stuff.

The number of counties with zero providers on the exchanges is dropping. If Nevada's governor had signed that state's Medicaid buy-in option, it'd be much lower.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 30, 2017 -> 09:53 PM) Yeah I have to say the "physics" of this world are being bent so much it's starting to lose the thread for me. Apparently Euron's fleet has teleportation powers and what the hell happened to Highgarden's entire army? They weren't involved in the siege of Casterly Rock, so where were they?

Trump White House threatening to not approve anything until Senate votes on healthcare again. We've got to fund the federal government and raise the debt ceiling but the end of September which is a grand total of 18 remaining days of legislation I think. Reminder that Mulvaney is insane enough that he's okay with default. https://twitter.com/politico/status/8916891...src=twsrc%5Etfw

Private prison threatens to close unless the state fills up 300 more beds https://twitter.com/KeeganNYC/status/890541...src=twsrc%5Etfw Abolish all private prisons

Kelly is as unhinged and paranoid as the rest of them

He does. Gonna need a replacement at DHS now. Shortest serving CoS in history.

Reince out General Kelly is new chief of staff, placing yet another military man in a civilian position

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 28, 2017 -> 02:58 PM) I especially love the gloating article in the trib from some douchebag wisconsin person thanking illinois for not installing "real reforms" so that they could get FoxConn. Foxconn is a welfare queen. We need to cut off their welfare and get them a job. I work too hard to have a company like foxconn freeloading. It's going to be built in southern Wisconsin so a lot of the jobs will be filled by Illinois people anyways lol great job Walker!

Foxconn, Taiwanese manufacturing firm known for making iPhones and having to install suicide nets to stop their employees from killing themselves, announced yesterday that they're building a factory in Wisconsin. This new factory will bring 3,000 jobs to the state, but Foxxconn is receiving $3,000,000,000 in tax incentives in the form of up to $200M/year for up to 15 years in direct payments from Wisconsin taxpayers to Foxconn. This doesn't include any local tax breaks they'll be receiving. An overwhelming majority of these 3k jobs will be low wage, low/no benefit work. http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politic...ears/519687001/

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jul 28, 2017 -> 12:15 PM) Well well well. Another old Trump tweet. Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump Follow More Obama's complaints about Republicans stopping his agenda are BS since he had full control for two years. He can never take responsibility. Three years to the day

McCain's statement in which he explains that he voted no because "skinny repeal" didn't go far enough in killing the ACA

^^ We need a more representative democracy than we have (wish list: abolish gerrymandering, the Senate, electoral college; expand HoR to keep representative:constitutents ratio even; switch from FTPT elections to something else e.g. proportional representation), but direct democracy isn't the solution imo.

HSA's are great as another tax-advantaged investment vehicle for higher income earners (you can basically treat is as an IRA once you hit retirement age and make withdrawals), not so great as health care policy. I'm disappointed but not surprised to see the initial dem response this morning is as tepid as "public option in places with few insurers" rather than going all-in on Medicare-for-all or at least a national public option plan.

Hassan won NH by 1000 votes. That's really what the vote last night came down to. NH GOP has been busy pushing voter suppression efforts since the election.

BAH GAWD IS THAT STEVE AUSTIN'S MUSIC?! https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/890815543258865664