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TemporalFlux wrote:

Some “what if” scenarios being gamed out:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/ … uxbndlbing

They all happen in some reality.  Will the roulette ball land in our slot?  It will be war.

Again, I think we need to discuss what "war" is.  It can be a "civil war" but it probably can't be a civil war like the last one we had.  This isn't North vs South or East vs West or anything like that.  There are Trump people and Biden people in every state.  In the "battleground states", it's close to 50/50.  So what would "war" even look like?  Neighbors shooting their neighbors with the wrong sign?  Trump might control the military, but he doesn't control every person in the military.  He can order the military to bomb blue cities, but they don't have to listen.  Same with the national guard.  Same with the police.  So I don't know who the "war" would be between.  There have to be "sides" to a war, and there aren't easily-distinguished sides in this war.  You can't look at someone and know who they voted for.

If you're talking about riots, then yeah.  I could see that either way.  If Trump throws out legit ballots to win, there will be protests and riots.  If Trump tries to throw out legit ballots to win and anyone stops him, there will be protests and ballots.

But there have been protests this whole time and there hasn't been anything like war.  Trump people have protested.  Biden people have protested.  And they've gone (mostly) peacefully.

Is there a chance that lone wolves could bring assault weapons to protests like we saw with that one kid?  And that people could die?  Sure.  But while I know there are people that are devoted to Trump, I haven't seen anyone willing to die for him.  I don't know if a 63-year-old retired housewife who watches OAN is going to take up arms and suicide bomb a DNC building.

If you're talking about political war....then absolutely.  And at that point, it depends on how much the Republicans are willing to "die" for Trump.  If they commit a crime for him and it doesn't work, they go to jail.  He can't protect them and might not protect them even if he wins.  All these scenarios assume that Republicans are willing to burn the country down to protect Donald Trump.  And while they were happy to vote to keep him in office, throwing out democracy for him is something completely different.  I'm happy to vote for Joe Biden, but I'm not going to fight for him.  I certainly wouldn't go to jail for him or die for him.

And it all depends on how things go.  Which is why it is 100% imperative that every Democrat vote early and, if in any way possible, vote in person.  Mail-in ballots have already been denied for administrative reasons, and there's plenty of time to re-send.  I'm going to vote as soon as they open in person and will encourage everyone I know to do so.

People should assume that every vote by mail is either going to count for Trump or be thrown out.

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TemporalFlux wrote:

Well, Berlanti is spreading out from CW - his Green Lantern series and Strange Adventures are going to HBOmax (which will also host Titans and Doom Patrol).  The CW is kind of losing its grip on DC even before this.  HBOmax is sucking up the oxygen.

Yeah and what's weird about the HBOMax DC shows is that they aren't connected either.  Even though Doom Patrol literally spun off from Titans with a backdoor pilot, they didn't even stay in the same continuity.  No more Titans and Doom Patrol crossovers.  Same with Stargirl and Swamp Thing.  As popular as the Arrowverse was, no one really did much with the idea of interconnected comic book shows.

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https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/superg … 234779394/

Interesting.  So Arrow and Supergirl will be gone.  Batwoman is obviously in some sort of state of chaos.  Legends is only *barely* in the Arrowverse (like Stargirl or Black Lightning).  Flash seems to be on its last legs, narratively.

I wonder if this is the beginning of the end.  There's a scenario where Flash ends soon.  Superman & Lois is about to start and Batwoman is rebooting with their season two so those two shows could keep it going for a long time.  But I wonder if, like the DC movies, these shows might not be all that connected.  There was a tie between Supergirl and Batwoman but all that ended with Kate Kane.

I'll be interested in what they decide to do.  Does this make Green Arrow and the Canaries more likely to move forward?  Or less likely?  Will Stargirl join Earth Prime?  Will Swamp Thing get picked up and added?  Or will they let this thing run its course on a smaller scale once Flash ends?

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Max Landis is a monster and allegedly a rapist, but I do like his perspective on Superman.  He said in a popular video that if you're a Kryptonian on Earth, you can either save the Earth or rule it.  Those are your options.  And instead of absolute power corrupting him absolutely, absolute power has absolved him of all of the darkness that seems to affect other heroes. 

I haven't read the boys but I have had the comic version explained to me.  The way I understood it (and this was before I saw the show so it might be wrong) is that the Boys are an actual part of the government, and that they essentially step in to do the "the sun's getting low" stuff from Age of Ultron except with short-term powers and punching instead of whatever Black Widow did.

I don't know if that's exactly what the Boys is in the comics, but I think there's more room for good stuff there.  What if Superman was traditional Superman, but using his powers made him a little crazy?  What if all superheroes were the Hulk and needed a little help getting out of Hulk mode.  Then there's still the insanity and carnage from superhero fights but the heroes don't necessarily have to be bad guys.  And the good guys are people who want to save people and do good, and they throw themselves in front of gods to make that happen.

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I can see that.  I do wish the show did some more positive stuff in this world.  I get what they're trying to do.  That, like athletes and actors and politicians, absolute power and love corrupts absolutely.  And I find the idea of superheroes who suck at their job (the Homelander plane crash being the best example) and a group of people with no powers who bring them in.

But while the Boys are heroic, I'd love to see examples of good superheroes (other than Starlight) in this universe.  I don't necessarily need Civil War every week, but it'd be nice to see some more of the superheroes you're talking about.

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ireactions wrote:

If Republicans are drummed out of government, they made it happen. They have the White House and the Senate, yet they are incapable of crisis response, allowing a pandemic to shatter their economy and populace and choosing an inept delusional as their leader. They have made it quite clear for four years that despite holding government, they are unable to govern and have no interest in governance.

Agreed 100%.  But I don't think a one-party system is much better.  I also don't think such a thing would last very long.  I think it'll be more of a rebrand to get away from the Trump stuff.

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TemporalFlux wrote:

If the Democrats win full control, they have been very open about their plans to stack the courts, stack the House, stack the Senate and stack the electoral college.  No Republican will have control of any level of the federal government ever again.  And then we’ll have exactly what America was before the Revolution - rule by one “family”.

I think there's a real concern for this, but I don't even think they need to stack anything for it to happen.  For all the Republicans' celebrations of the Electoral College and the Democrats' condemnations of it, the EC is what's going to lock up Democratic power in the White House for a long time.  Once Texas flips (and it's only a matter of time), the Republicans in their current state have zero chance.  Right now, they essentially need to sweep every swing state to barely win.  If Texas is blue, they'd need to start flipping blue states...not just purple ones.

But I think there's an out for all this chaos.  Maybe a few.

1. The GOP in its current form dies and something replaces it.  We're probably due for something like this.  The Whigs died off.  Democrats and Republicans have rebranded before.  Maybe it'll still be called Republicans or something similar, but Trump could end up killing off the GOP as we know it (win or lose) and something would rise from the ashes.  Because the current strategy of "mostly uneducated white people" is not a strong one.  I think there are plenty of avenues to get people who are tired of both parties.  And if the Republicans rebrand, the Democrats could do the same.  Could be positive change.

2. The Democrats are on the verge of their own civil war.  There's a decent chance that the Democratic Party breaks into two - we'll call it the Biden Party and the Bernie Party for lack of better terms.  That would also help the Republicans either hold out for longer or help their new party gain traction.  I could see a timeline where the Republicans die, the Democrats take over and then schism, and then the Republicans come back.  Three parties for a time until we get back to two.

3. The Democrats are really bad at this game.  This election should be an absolute landslide, but they make things difficult on themselves.  They made things difficult on themselves in 2016.  They even made things difficult for themselves when they had a supermajority.  They're usually in a position to get things done, but they usually blow it.

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pilight wrote:

I doubt it affects the election much.  Filling court seats was already a big issue and nobody thought RBG would serve four more years.  The seat will probably be filled before the election anyway.

Yeah but if you're a Republican who isn't in the cult of Trump, what reason is there to hold your nose and vote for him?  He's already given you three, and there's only an outside chance he'd get one more.  If you're a 2A or an abortion voter, Trumps already given you everything you want.  There's no reason to vote for him.

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RBG died.

I do wonder how this effects the election.  One of the reasons to vote for Trump would be for the Court.  If they rush through a confirmation, there's less reason to vote for Trump.  You might think you got 3 justices out and it doesn't matter after that.  Maybe Breyer retires or dies in the next four years, but RBG's spot was the jewel.  I'm fairly certain a lot of conservatives would happily trade a Biden win for another justice and call it a day.

But McConnell sucks.  And Lindsey Graham is showing him to be the piece of shit we all knew him to be.

RIP Justice Ginsburg.  You did a hell of a job.

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Interesting.  I actually didn't know that.  Although with the loss of Chadwick Boseman, maybe they will try and replace him with a black Reed Richards.  I do think William Jackson Harper would be a great Reed Richards.  He could also be a great Black Panther now that I think about it.  He plays brainy well, and he's already ripped.

But, yeah, there's that theory that at some point, humanity will have enough racial mixing that we'll all be one race at some point.  So I don't have any problem with this.  They could also not have the tie to Reed Richards if they really don't want to.  I wonder if the time travel in Endgame will result in this (the Avengers create time travel which wasn't supposed to exist...more "Tony Stark" consequences).

I also read yesterday that WandaVision is still on track and might be the first part of Phase Four.  After more than a year without any MCU, it'll be interesting to see if they have a resurgence or if people will have moved on by now.

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I don't think Biden is a lock.  I'll just start with that.

But if things go the way they should, Biden should absolutely win.  538 has Biden at a 75% chance of winning and that's including Rasmussen polls (which are getting more biased and thus more wrong since 2016).  That also includes built-in shenanigans from both the coronavirus and the Trump administration (as best they could).  I would think if this were a normal election, it'd be much closer to the 84% that we see from the Economist.  Maybe higher.

I would 100% hope that as many people go and vote as soon as the early voting happens.  I'm going to make sure I can go day one.  Get your vote in, in person, and if something is wrong with your voter record, you have time to try and sort it out.  If you're worried about violence or lines or coronavirus, you can pick your location.  In Texas, they give a status on how long the wait is at each place and you can vote at any of them.  If you see people with guns or you see a line or you're worried about cleanliness, you can go somewhere else.

I know people don't have unlimited free time, especially from work...especially now.  But you have time to work with your boss/supervisor and get time off.  If you can easily get away, you could only miss an hour of work and you have a month to swap shifts with someone, pick up some extra time to make up for any lost pay, etc.  There will be people that will have to get off for election day - volunteer to swap shifts with them so you can vote early. 

There are ways to make it work.  Every time I've voted early, I was in and out in less than 10 minutes.  I've done it every single elections I've been eligible for.

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pilight wrote:

Also, the polls are tightening.  Biden's virtual campaigning isn't working.

Well the national polls are tightening.  The swing state polls are holding pretty steady.  The midwest and Arizona look like locks for Biden.  If they are, Biden just needs one of: North Carolina (Trump barely winning), Georgia (Trump barely winning), Ohio (Trump barely winning), Pennsylvania (Biden winning by above the margin of error), or Florida (Biden barely winning) to win.

The thought is that Trump's just solidifying his lead in red states because any bump he's gotten in the national polls isn't showing up in the swing state ones.

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ireactions wrote:

But I like the BIRDS OF PREY movie exactly like it is except that it has the wrong name and it has a few expletives that, if cut, would have allowed teen girls to watch it in theatres.

I would also add that, if it were me, I'd have moved the movie out of Gotham.  Again, this is a movie within the underground of Gotham and featuring the Gotham PD where there are no A-list Batman villains nor any real mention of Batman himself.

If this was all happening anywhere else, then there's no narrative issue.  You can even have a plot where Sionis has moved out of Gotham because it got too weird and moved to a place that was more-easily conquered.  The one plot change you'd have to make is the whole "everyone in town wants to kill Harley" but you could either have that at the beginning of the movie before she moves or give any other reason why Harley is hated (my thought - Harley goes "home" after the breakup and the town hates her because their claim to fame is being home to Harley Quinn).

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Did you intentionally quote Joss Whedon's Superman? big_smile

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Would there be violence?  I would think so.

Anything I would consider all out war?  I don't see it.  I know people are going to be upset and mad, but I just don't know if people are willing to fight to the death over Donald Trump.  On either side.  Because we get this every election - people saying they'd move to Canada if so-and-so didn't win.  No one ever does.  Because moving to Canada is hard and expensive, and they don't want any more Americans up there right now.

I think there would be protests and looting in either case.  And violent celebrations like when a country wins the World Cup or when a city wins the Super Bowl.

But again, I don't think people are willing to die for Donald Trump.  And there would still be police and the national guard and even the military to quickly put anything down before anything got out of hand.

I think we get big and tough and have a lot of bluster when we're online.  But when it comes down to it, are people going to endanger their lives because the guy they like didn't win the presidency?  Endanger their kids lives?  Burn down all the things they claim to love in some sort of temper tantrum because they didn't get what they wanted?

I hope everyone is better than that.

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Chaser!  Whoa, blast from the past!

And just for the record, I don't think this has any chance of happening.  But I think as far as unrealistic chances to revive the show, I think this one works.  I don't really have any interested in a Harley Quinn-style, violent and adult cartoon.  But they've been able to do animation during the pandemic, and I could see studios trying to get more animation projects in while they're profitable.  If they happened to ask Jerry and he happened to think Sliders, I think it would work.

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RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

honestly, I dont think anyone would use the brand for an animated show.  It requires permissions, and reduces ownership of the new thing.   As a sequel of the original, people would want live action.   As a reboot, I don't think anyone would see the value of putting it under the  brand.

Oh I 100% agree and have made this same argument myself.  I don't think there's any reason for any creator to make a new version of Sliders.  You can essentially do the same concept for free without much tweaking.

My thought is only this: if Sliders were ever going to come back, it would be via Jerry O'Connell.  Torme and the other creators are either too old or too out of the game for anything to have happened.  Jerry is the only one who seems noticeably interested in a return because he'd be the star and he has fond memories of the experience.  If Sliders were ever going to return, he'd have to be the champion.

And since Jerry is on Star Trek: Lower Decks, he has the ability to make the right networking connections in animation.  He could find the right talent to either recruit someone to make a demo reel for him or at least hire the right people to get the show done the right way.

Animation also fixes several problems that a live-action story cannot.  Jerry O'Connell could voice a 20-something Quinn when he cannot do that in live action.  JRD can voice Arturo without possibly hurting himself in the process.  And most importantly, they could do all this without a huge time commitment on their part (since Sabrina and Cleavant have their own things going on).

A live action continuation is essentially off the table now.  It's too confusing and too muddled and the cast is too up in the air.  A reboot doesn't make sense logistically because it's too easy to do without the rights.  But an animated series gives Jerry an avenue, allows for a more flexible continuity, and allows for the ease of getting the actors back without a full acting commitment.  If it's ever going to happen, I feel like animation is the only road.

And, yeah, there are drawbacks.  It's not the preferred way.  But I've been watching a lot of animation this year, and I think it can be done really well.

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As long as the polling is even vaguely correct, none of this matters.  If you look at state polling, Biden already has more than 270 electoral votes even with Ohio, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina still in play.  Biden's likely voters need to vote and their votes need to count, but if that happens, all of this is essentially just stuff to talk about until Biden takes the White House.

I was starting to waver a little bit around the convention, but I'm back to supreme confidence in Biden's victory.  He has so many avenues to victory and Trump really only has one (win all the swing states and flip at least one Biden state).  That state might be Pennsylvania (which Biden is still winning but is now within the margin of error), but then Biden needs just about any state and it's over.

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So this morning I had a thought that was so simple that I was confident we'd talked about it before.  But I searched and it doesn't look like we've ever talked about it broadly (it was only mentioned once)

But with the popularity of shows like Rick & Morty and Star Trek: Lower Decks, why hasn't the idea of a Sliders animated series been discussed?  I know the real-world answer is "No one is really working on Sliders" but I think it might make a ton more sense than doing any sort of live action story.  They could do it in the style of Rick and Morty (which is becoming more popular, see Lower Decks) - goofy and out there, or they could do computer animation and take it more seriously like Rebels and Clone Wars.  Or something in the middle.

But Jerry's working on Lower Decks.  He's probably meeting the right people, and if he was ever truly interested in resurrecting the show, animation might make the most sense.  He could play Quinn at 20 or 40 or whatever.  You could get back JRD who could work safely from home.  And I think it would be easier to do more high-concept storylines because you could have a Russian army walking by the White House without having to do it small scale or use camera tricks. 

I even think they could make it kid-friendly and still make it work.  There's already a built in avenue to teach about history and science.  I don't mean full infotainment, but the Clone Wars was for kids but still handled mature and adult topics.

What do we think?

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And to catch up from 8 months ago....on the title.

I don't understand the titling either.  Birds of Prey is a cool title, and I think there's a version of this movie that works both as a Harley movie and a jumping off point for a Birds of Prey franchise.  But since this movie has no idea what it wants to be, I blame it all on a lack of focus.

I think they could've easily taken some notes from the Harley cartoon.  I think it would be interesting if Harley, after Suicide Squad, tries to go back to being a straight up villain.  She finds herself in a situation where her plan is working.  She and Joker have Batman incapacitated (so no need for Affleck, a body double would do) and they're about to release Joker gas across the whole city.  When she realizes....why is she doing this?  She doesn't *really* want to hurt people.  She is months away from saving the world from Enchantress...she liked being the good guy.  So she rewires the device, rescues Batman, and blows up the Joker's hideout instead of releasing the gas.  Is Joker dead?  Maybe - the movie won't say.  Where's Batman the rest of the movie - recuperating.

So with no Batman, Harley decides to try and recreate the team she had with the Suicide Squad.  But instead of people like them, she tries to find people like her.  A lounge singer who's in too deep with a mobster.  A vigilante out for revenge.  A pickpocket.  A cop who doesn't get the respect she deserves.  And a woman she and her ex really hurt.  No one trusts her, but she's able to prove to them that she's trying to be good.  She wants to be heroic.  And gets them to fight as a team.  And at the end of the movie, Harley realizes that she's not the right person to lead this team - Barbara is.  She shouldn't even be on the team - she's not a hero and she's not a villain.  She's her own thing.  Maybe she even turns herself in so that she can be back on THE Suicide Squad.

And so you have a Harley vehicle that has a clear connection to the rest of the universe (direct connections to both the first and forthcoming Suicide Squad movies, a Batman tie in that explains his absence, etc) while also sending the characters in a new direction.  Now there's a Birds of Prey team ready to protect Gotham.  Now Harley has grown as a character.  There's a vision from point A to point B and point B to point C and D.

But I wouldn't have called that Birds of Prey either.

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So I finally saw Birds of Prey.  I think the movie itself was fine, but I just kept thinking that it was incomplete.  I think the tone and the aesthetic are good.  I think if all the DC films were like this, it would've accomplished what Snyder seems to have wanted to do.  It feels like a world where Shazam and Superman and the Flash can exist with street level heroes.

The problem is that it's another movie set in Gotham where they don't really do anything with it.  They mention Joker but the entire movie takes place in Gotham's underbelly.  Where's Penguin and Riddler and Two-Face?  And not even just not shown - there's no clue of any of them existing.  Batman is briefly referenced but where is he?  And outside of the one in-joke to Boomerang, where is the reference to Suicide Squad?  Where's Waller?  Where's Flagg?  Is Harley wanted by any of them?

I mean, heck, where's Katana?  She's a badass female hero.  Why not throw her on the team?  She wasn't used in the last movie - flesh her out here?

I know it's a spinoff and Iron Man doesn't drop in to say hi in Ant-Man.  But this is a huge DC universe - why not go all out?  If you can't get Affleck or Leto, that's fine.  Get someone else.  Bring in Barbara Gordon or Jason Todd or Tim Drake.  Tease another movie.  Hint at the bigger established Gotham.  A ton of people were after Harley but they were all nobodies. 

I get it - DC is doing standalone films now with a light connection to everything else.  But at least use something from the movie Harley debuted in.  If you want it to be Girl Powered, Katana and Waller and Ivy and Batgirl are all women that would fit naturally into this story.  Instead you have a movie that barely features the Birds of Prey themselves in a plot about the Gotham underworld with just one comic book character.  It just felt like a missed opportunity.

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Transmodiar wrote:
ireactions wrote:

Chadwick Boseman has passed away.
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/chad … 234753232/

This hits hard because he is my age (a few months younger) and I was recently diagnosed with cancer. Fortunately, my medical outcome looks a little rosier.

Shit, man.  Here's to a quick and full recovery.  Kick its ass.

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Very sad.  This one shook me up more than most celebrity deaths because he seemed like such a nice guy, and he did so much even though he must've been mad at the world and felt so, so sick.

I have thoughts on the effects on the MCU, but I'll save them for a more appropriate time.

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Nate Silver wrote the other day that we're starting to see more polls with a post-convention bounce for Biden.  He said that the online polls don't usually show such bounces and that there weren't many phone polls to show it.

The idea that the polls are moving at all is crazy to me.  I don't understand it.  What could anyone have said at either convention that would change anyone's mind at all?  I listened to Biden's speech and it didn't tell me anything new or anything important.  The only question mark I can see in the population is:

- Traditional conservatives who will either not vote or vote for Trump deciding if it's worth the trouble of going to the polls in a pandemic to do so
- Progressives who are either going to vote for Biden or throw their vote away on a joke vote or something like that

That's really it.  I can't see anyone possibly going back and forth between Biden and Trump because they're so diametrically opposed to each other.  It would be like choosing to get burgers for dinner or drive 1000 miles, renting a boat, and going deep sea fishing.

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Yeah.  I understand that Trump's going to do whatever he's going to do, but I think it's crucial not to play directly into his hands.  I think whether or not you believe in the true concept of defunding the police, that the movement is harmful to Joe Biden.  I think regardless of whether or not the protests should happen, I think the ensuing violence (caused by whoever it's caused by) is harmful to Joe Biden.  And whether you want the police defunded or you want massive social change or you want the virus to slow, the best course of action will always start with electing Joe Biden.  No matter what your Step 2 is, Step 1 is getting Trump out of office.

BLM is inspiring, but at some point, it needs accountable leadership.  Every single BLM event needs to be overwhelmingly geared toward voting and voter registration.  Protests in October should be guiding people to early voting locations and ballot boxes.  Because no matter what you want or what you're fighting for, it's all for not if Trump gets re-elected.  Getting Black Lives Matter written on the NBA court is huge and important.  But like Chris Paul did the other day, every interview needs to veer toward getting people registered to vote and out to vote.  Because all the progress is lost if Trump wins.

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I watched both Obamas speeches, Kamala's speech, and Biden's speech.  Even Hillary's speech.

I thought they were all good.  I hadn't heard a full Kamala speech before, but I thought she gave a really nice, really tough, really humanizing speech.  I think Barack's speech was the best, and I respected how much Hillary teased herself in her speech. 

The thing that was the biggest deal to me was Biden's speech.  Not the content - we knew that.  But the speech himself.  He spoke for 24 minutes uninterrupted with very few verbal mistakes (well within the confines of a normal speaker) and the right tone throughout.  The talking points on Fox News were "he's reading off a teleprompter, how hard is that?" but that's not even the point.  My grandfather had the sort of cognitive decline they accuse him of, and there's no way he could speak continually for 24 straight minutes.  He'd momentarily forget where he was or what he was doing, and it would be noticeable.  The fact that he spoke that well tells me he's almost certainly fine as far as dementia goes.  In decline?  Maybe.  But certainly not in any danger right now.

I think it's funny because the Republicans have essentially set the bar so low for Joe that if he doesn't drool, Biden wins the night.  And various videos combated the "how hard is it to speak on a teleprompter" with tons of videos of Trump messing up while reading a teleprompter.

******

I'm going to veer off for just a moment into Informant territory.  How weird is it that there was an officer-involved shooting in a swing state the week of the Republican National Convention?  Seems like just about perfect timing for Trump.  I don't think Trump's team is capable of keeping that a secret, but it certainly helps the GOP at the perfect time in just about the perfect place.  Hmm.

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ireactions wrote:

Snyder cut trailer: https://youtu.be/z6512XKKNkU

I'm not a huge fan of Zack Snyder, but I think that when a studio hires Zack Snyder, they should expect a Zack Snyder movie instead of a Joss Whedon movie and as much as I enjoyed JUSTICE LEAGUE (and I enoyed it a lot) -- WB, Geoff Johns, Diane Nelson and Jon Berg should have just let Snyder make the movie he was hired to make and let his team complete it instead of bringing in Whedon to change it. Would a Snyder film have been more successful? It would have at least had the benefit of standing or falling on its on merits.

So.....I don't get it. 

I understand why everything happened the way that it did.  WB was all in with Zack Snyder because they spent the early 2000s wasting most of their IP.  They had the Dark Knight the same year the MCU started.  They had the better movie, and the better cast of characters, but they were so late to the party that they had to try and catch up.  So they give Snyder full reign to get the universe kickstarted.  And because there was no one there with a love for the characters, Snyder's pitch of "EVERYONE IS BATMAN" worked because Batman was successful both critically and financially.  And because they were so rushed to compete with Marvel, they didn't have time to see if BvS worked.  It got a standing ovation internally and that was good enough.

But then like they did with everything before and after, they panicked.  And instead of letting Snyder do his thing, they literally got the Avengers guy to put a cheap Halloween costume on Zack Snyder's movie.

And now there's a pandemic and HBO Max needs content and they can give him a few million bucks to finish his movie.  A hundred things had to go this exact way for us to get here....


....but here's the thing.  I cannot get excited about this movie.  Because we saw it.  Sure, there were some dumb things that were obviously added by Whedon, but Whedon also gave us the first likable version of Superman.  I think there are fun character beats that I think were Whedon.  And I think the biggest thing is...Whedon was given a broken movie.  I don't think Whedon would've made the Justice League that his name is attached to.  It's completely unfair to refer to the theatrical version as Whedon's.  One is Whedon/Snyder and one is Snyder.  Snyder had a hand in both.

We aren't getting a totally new film.  It's the Ultimate Edition of BvS again.  Sure, it cleaned some stuff up, but the Ultimate Edition didn't solve my biggest problems with BvS.  And the Snyder Cut isn't going to solve my biggest problems with Justice League.  I mean, heck, Snyder essentially outlined his version for the Justice League trilogy and it sounded terrible.

I admire Zack Snyder because I think his vision is uncompromised.  And I'm glad that he's getting to finish his version of the movie because I'm sure he feels like he's going to finally heal from what was a very horrible and traumatic time in his life.  But BvS was Snyder's vision.  Snyder likes cool visuals and fun action sequences, but he doesn't have any interest in real character.  And that's why all his characters are essentially the same.  They're all Batman.  But not even the real Batman - a stylized version of Batman that only vaguely corresponds to the comic version.

I watched the trailer and it's just a new coat of paint on a movie we've already seen.  So I watched it and haven't thought about it since.

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It's crazy, but I think it's necessary.  The film shouldn't rely on a cheap trick (some sort of newspaper clipping of Bruce Wayne or something) to pull off the Flashpoint-level shock that Batman has changed (in the comics, that it's Thomas and not Bruce, here that it's Michael Keaton and not Ben Affleck).  So it could be a simple scene shot with Affleck out of costume and filmed at his easiest convenience to establish that Affleck is Wayne before transitioning to Keaton as Wayne.  Think of it as the Tom Welling approach.

I guess the biggest question is...who will be playing the Flash?

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I think it works, but AoS did a good-enough job in the last two seasons of simply ignoring the movies (in retaliation for themselves being ignored) that just about any theory works.  I did have my own thoughts, but it requires spoilers:

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There's a moment in the last couple episodes that they discuss the idea that they're no longer in the same universe - that they're on a diverging timeline.  Although this doesn't exactly jive with what we understand about this via Endgame, I was actually thinking at the time that it was a fairly genius way of dealing with everything.  They'd literally chart their own course and end up in a completely different universe - maybe on where there are no Avengers or Fury or anyone they'd need to step around.

It worked well enough in my head that I actually was a bit disappointed when it didn't happen.

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Boom! Very nice to see ACTION

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ireactions wrote:

Anyone who would survive being infected by COVID-19 and isn't in proximity to the elderly needs to prepare protective gear and sanitizers in advance and vote early and in person. Anyone who must vote by mail needs to put their ballot in a ballot box. Anyone who can't reach a ballot box needs to mail on the day early voting is open.

I'm sure the Biden campaign is doing something like this, but they also need to be arranging for people to go around and pick up mail from people and deliver them to a ballot box or polling location.  If Trump wants to go after the post office, then Biden can create their own post office.

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Okay if Lower Decks is canon, then Trek can incorporate the Orville with minimal changes.

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I was sure they were.  This isn't necessarily going to be easy because the Republicans are good at this, but it's not exactly hard either.  I saw that there was a big social media push to make sure people send in their mail-in votes by October 22 to give the system enough time to get in and get in on time.  Hopefully this helps people get it done.  I also saw a campaign about the different ways to make sure your mail-in vote gets counted so, on some level, the Democrats are in the right area.

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It's a TV budget, but I feel like they put a lot of effort into it.  They did a good job with the time travel stuff, making it feel like they're in different time periods.  But with different inhuman powers and sci-fi weapons, it also looked pretty solid for TV.

Shots looked CGI when they got too ambitious, but I definitely didn't feel like the budget was hamstringing them.

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I enjoyed the Agents of SHIELD finale.  The show came so far, and I think it grew into a really solid companion piece to the MCU.  It was the little stepsister of the movies, but I think it found it's place.  Season one wasn't sustainable, and it had to do its own thing.  And even when the movies abandoned it, it was able to find ways to be interesting and cover relevant ground.

I wish they could've kept the connections to the movies, even just in special event episodes, but I understand why things went the way they did.  And maybe it was for the best.

*
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I was surprised that they didn't have any big cameos.  No Peggy Carter.  No Nick Fury (not even a young version unless I missed it).  I knew they wouldn't get an Avenger (even a minor one), but someone connected to the show made sense. 

But even without that, it was a good show with a good ending.  I'll miss it.

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ireactions wrote:

Even then, Slider_Quinn21, Salon and Lifehacker think that the sabotage of the mail can be bypassed if Biden's voters simply vote as soon as possible and the Democrat convention will reportedly feature guidance on how to fight the post office and do everything possible to get ballots counted.

This is sorta what I don't understand.  The Democrats have Trump's playbook, and they know all the plays that Trump a) can do and b) is capable of.  There won't be any surprises in November.

So I don't know why they aren't doing more things that directly oppose what Trump would do.  Focusing on making mail-in voting more reliable should be secondary to making sure that in-person voting can be done safely.  In-person votes aren't affected by Post Office shenanigans.  That should be the focus.  There should be massive online campaigns to get people to early voting locations as much as possible.  Coordinating volunteers to let people know the quick and safe places people can vote.  Coordinating ways to get off work to do so.  And if that's not possible, coordinating to get people in and out as quickly and safely as possible.  Biden-branded hand sanitizers, masks, gloves, and face shields.  Yes we're talking about 60 million voters during a worldwide pandemic, but they have the money, they have the resources, and they still have the time.

If a car burglar is on your street, you don't just put up a camera and hope to nab him in the act.  Sure, do that.  And get a car alarm.  But the safest thing to do is just put your car in the garage.

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FiveThirtyEight came out with their election forecast and gives Biden a 71% chance to win at this exact moment in time.  They're an interesting site because they seemed to give Trump the most chance in 2016.  The bad news is that the numbers aren't all that different from 2016.  The good news is that as long as nothing big happens between now and November, that number will just go up (seems like they're leaving about 20% of Trump's chances to stuff like Covid and August/September/October surprises - they say if the election was today it'd be 91%).

What's interesting is a something I never hear talked about - they've adjusted from what they learned in 2016.  So they're doing their best to take as much of what they've learned and adjusted it.  Secret Trump voters, lying to polls, voter suppression.  I think most people (mostly Trump people) assume that polls have the same flaws they had.

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I think it's the best choice.  He was backed into a corner in a bit to select a black woman (especially after his recent gaffes).  I don't know if she solidifies the black vote like Obama did (she has her own warts), but she was the best combination of actual experience and has been the vetted the hardest.

And I think Joe could've picked just about anyone and I don't think it would've done much to his votes.  People that are turned off by this pick weren't going to vote for him anyway, and people that liked the pick would've found another reason.  Sunrise, sunset.

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The GOP is broken.  There's no argument there.  The problem is that the GOP is so broken that we can't see that the Democratic Party is also broken.  Maybe irreparably broken.  They had four years to come up with the best plan to beat Donald Trump.  They had four years against a corrupt, dangerous, hateable monster of a president to come up with their hero.  Four years for every Josh Lyman in the country to go out and find their version of Matt Santos.  Or if you want an example from real life, for the next Barack Obama - someone who came out of nowhere and, faults or no, inspires people.

Because Barack Obama would destroy Trump in an election even more than Biden is.

And in four years, who was the primary Democratic voice against Donald Trump?  Pelosi maybe?  Bernie?  AOC?  Schiff? 

When Trump won, I was expecting two things to happen.  Neither did (so take anything I ever say with a grain of salt).  I expected the Republicans to support Trump until it made sense for them not to, and then they could replace him with Mike Pence (someone much more palatable to them and conservatives).  "You had your chance, Donald, but you blew it" and they'd help vote him out for the guy that made more sense. 

I also expected the Democrats to get their champion.  Someone who made their name attacking Trump.  Trump would be the dragon, and 2016-2020 would be a series of jousting tournaments to determine the brave knight that would take on the dragon alone.

And....Joe Biden?

They had four years to come up with something, and they picked Obama's VP?  Broken.  In fact, if you ignore the miracle that Obama was, then the Democratic choices have been pretty uninspired since 2000.  Gore.  Uninspired.  Kerry. Uninspired.  Clinton was supposed to win in 2008 - much like 2016, the field stepped back and expected her to run away with it - Obama was the no-name guy who she was supposed to easily run over so that the race looked like an actual race.  We all know how I feel about Hillary as a candidate.

I get why Biden is the choice.  He's recognizable.  He easily recalls a better time.  He's popular with the right groups.  And I think this is key, his age actually allows him to be a simple 4-year stabilizing force so that the country can breathe again and to give experience to Mayor Pete or Andrew Yang or Kamala Harris or even AOC.

But, man, I was expecting a better gauntlet for 4 years.  I was expecting this election to have the perfect candidate.  And while I probably like Biden more than most of you, he's definitely not that.

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I think there's a difference between worrying that Biden is worse than Trump and being worried about Biden in general.  I worry about Biden in general.  I hope that whoever he picks for VP is ready to take control of the nation if that becomes necessary.  I hope the people that he picks for his cabinet are ready for heavy lifting.  Secretary of State will be huge.  Because I have serious doubts that Biden can handle all that.  And we'll need a lot handled.

But essentially nothing could happen that would make Biden sink below Biden.  Nothing Biden could do would make me less confident in a Biden 2020 administration than a Trump one.  Again, Biden could be in a coma, drooling all day, and he'd be both more qualified and better at the job of president.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried.

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If I were on the Biden team, I'd be doing everything I could to get people out to vote in person and early.  I don't know if if's the case everywhere, but I've voted early in every presidential election (disclaimer: I'm white).  And I'm fairly sure that, at least where I live, you can essentially vote wherever you want when you're early vote.  I've never been in a line, and I usually go after work.  So if the Biden team can send volunteers to certain places to a) make sure everything is as clean and organized as possible and 2) they get people in and out as quickly as possible.

If Trump's going to go after mail-in voting, Biden should make sure mail-in voting is as good as possible, but I'd also make sure that as few people as possible are mail-in voting.

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ireactions wrote:

Slider_Quinn21! This is Trump's plot! Oh my God, how can we stop it?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … a=taps_top

... how do you fight the post office?

I think that's plausible, but two things give me pause about it.  The first is that everyone assumes Trump does better than the polls think he will.  The story assumes that Trump is winning those three states before mail-in balloting - which somehow assumes that the entire difference in polling (6+ points in all three states) is made up of Democrats who will mail in their ballots.

But why are we assuming that only democrats will mail-in vote?

Republicans don't hate mail-in votes.  The story even says so.  Trump mailed in his vote.  Rich white conservatives aren't going to want to drive to a polling place in the pandemic either.  Mail-in voting is hated by Trump, but it's supported by everyone else.  So I don't see any reason to believe that mail-in votes would be much different from the rest of the votes.  They should be ~50% Biden and ~44% for Trump.

The second is the math, again.  Trump's margin of victory is *so small* - I went to 270 to win and did their default map.  Then I gave Trump those three states - Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  He's barely ahead in Ohio so you give him that.  Even with all that, the election is essentially tied (233-232 Trump) with Arizona (Biden +3.7), Georgia (Trump +0.7), Florida (Biden +5.8), and North Carolina (Biden +2.1).  Trump would need to win 3 of those 4 states to get to 270.  And that's even in the mail-in theft scenario.

When you look at it that way, it's not a super plausible scenario.  It's a fear piece.  Now they're right if things fall exactly the way they think and things fall the way they did in 2016 and democrats are the majority of people who mail in their votes then sure.  But I think Georgia is up for grabs.  I think *Texas* is up for grabs.  I think Florida is becoming a lost cause.  I think Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are in the same boat.  All the doomsday scenarios are dependent on a close race, but this doesn't seem like it's a close race at the moment.

Yes, the race could tighten.  Yes things could change.  But on August 4, I don't think Trump's close enough for any of the "steal the election" scenarios unless he's directly changing votes.  And like we've seen, I don't think Trump is capable of pulling that off.  Sideshow Bob couldn't, and he's way smarter than Trump smile

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Well, I think some of that is certainly possible, but I think we're allowing our nightmares to get the best of us.  We have to remember a couple of things that would drastically harm Trump's ability to do certain things:

1. If Trump is out, Republicans cannot help him scorch the Earth.  He may be leaving, but they aren't.  If Trump is setting fire to the Lincoln Bedroom and forcing himself to be carried out by the secret service or puts tanks in front of polling places, the Republicans will have to live with those images for decades.  It would put nearly every Republican politician in danger for the near future because it wouldn't just represent Trump - it would represent *them*.  I think that's part of the reason why Gore and Hillary didn't put up more of a fight than they did - it would reflect poorly on Democrats to do so.  So while, yes, Trump himself could potentially throw a fit, he wouldn't get support from anyone that wants to be in politics in 2021 and beyond.

That also might include his children.  If Ivanka or Don Jr. or Eric Trump want to be in politics, they can't be involved with a guy who threw the world's biggest hissy fit.  Same with Jared Kushner.  Trump can throw a temper tantrum, but it would tarnish the Trump name forever.  There's a really good chance that Trump's too narcissistic to care about his kids, but if they're fighting on it (because, again, they might want to have lives in the United States going forward), then it makes it harder.

Also remember that Trump's approval rating is hovering around 40%.  I think we like to think of Trump's MAGA people as all being indoctrinated wackos who worship him, but that number isn't anywhere near that 40%.  People support Trump because he's good for the economy or whatever - and setting fire to the country on his way out isn't going to be good for the economy.  Yes, you'd absolutely get white supremacists and evangelicals marching on behalf of Trump, but how many people is that in reality?

2. Trump's own incompetence.  People see Trump as this dictator figure who will pull off a suppression campaign with military precision.  But look at his presidency and tell me where he's shown any ability to pull that off.  He had a chance to do it in 2018 as a trial run, and the Republicans lost big.  His government, despite having control of the House and Senate for the first two years of his presidency, passed nothing.  He didn't repeal or replace Obamacare.  He didn't build a beautiful wall and Mexico didn't pay for it.  And even though it would've benefited him in every way to deal with the pandemic effectively, he botched that too.

Even when you look at his criminal enterprises, he's inefficient and sloppy.  He didn't win on Russia and Ukraine because the Democrats couldn't prove it - he won on technicalities.  He's winning on tax returns because of technicalities.

Trump doesn't know what he's doing and the people around him don't know what they're doing.  Trump might actively want to send the military to polling places, but he's just as likely to send them to the wrong polling locations or the wrong states entirely.  Nothing he's done so far has indicated that anyone in his administration is capable of pulling off a successful voter suppression organization, especially if he's lost support from the party.  And with the electoral map looking the way it is, he'll need to pull off something that he's just not capable of pulling off in my opinion.

***********

All that being said, Biden's team needs to keep up enthusiasm and do everything in his power to get people out voting early and voting in person.  There's plenty of time to organize efforts at a community level.  If people need to plan ahead, they can plan ahead.  How people can find time between the opening of early voting and the close of it.  How people can get their mail in ballots in quickly and efficiently.  There's tons of time to be working out kinks, and they know the Republican playbook.

With the map the way it is, if Trump is able to pull off a suppression campaign and win, Biden is going to have plenty of share of the blame because there's ways around everything Trump would try.

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Nice!!

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Agreed - hope it isn't true.  Although moving to streaming only can't be good for its future hopes.  I know some shows on streaming-only get longer runs, but it seems like most of these shows are 3-4 seasons and then go away. 

My favorite idea is still for CBS to buy the series and have it seamlessly reset in the Trek universe.

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The Clone Wars was fantastic.  On to Rebels!

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Trump tweeted inferring that he'd delay the election.  Something the Constitution is fairly clear that he cannot do.  It's a very desperate move that shows he knows he doesn't stand much of a chance.  It's looking very bad for him in Florida, and if he loses Florida, he essentially needs to win Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  He's losing all those states too.

Trump's best chance is to hack into the election records and physically change votes.  I don't think there was any evidence of that in 2016.  He can stifle mail in voting and throw out voter eligibility, but it would need to be on a massive scale (10-15% of the total voters in the country).  And it would need to be vastly more successful than anything he's been able to pull off in the last four years.

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Grizzlor wrote:

Biden is at 49.6, Trump is at 41.2.  Biden is literally polling at 50%, with TEN 10% of the poll undecided.

I think there are no undecideds.  In my opinion, the undecideds on these polls know exactly who they're voting for.  If anything, these are the people that are either a) Trump voters who are embarrassed to say they support Trump and b) Bernie Bros and progressives who are too stubborn to admit that they're voting Biden.

I'm sure there's a portion of the population trying to decide which cartoon character they're going to vote for, but at the end of the day, I don't think anyone that's going to vote for Trump or Biden is still deciding.  I think the vast majority of people decided four years ago and nothing that happened in the last four years will impact.

If you think I'm wrong, ask yourself what it would take for you to change your vote between now and November.

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You guys are all assuming that Trump is capable in any way.  He's not.  I think he's tried and failed a ton.  I don't think he intentionally allowed any of his business ventures to fail - I think he likes to win and winning means success. 

The problem is that he is incapable.  It isn't that he's not trying.  It's that he's trying and failing.  He gets bad information from bad sources, and everyone around him has either been fired or sucks as bad as he does.  I think he absolutely wants his presidency to be a success.  He wants to be the best.  He wants to be re-elected.  He just doesn't have any idea how to do any of that.

Again, look back at the Wallace interview.  He legitimately thought that he US had the lowest mortality rate in the world.  No one who knows they're wrong would insist on bringing up the data.  If you get caught in a lie, you don't demand proof.  You move on.  He didn't which means he believed the lie.

I think he doesn't know how to work.  He doesn't know how anything works.  He doesn't understand the problem and so he has no means of fixing it.  So he asks someone dumb like Jared Kushner to fix it for him.  And they either come up with nothing or some ridiculous plan that won't work.  And then he asks Jared for a status update and Jared either lies or makes something up.  And Trump buys it.  When someone says that he's failing, someone tells him that it's fake news.

Imagine that you woke up onboard a Russian nuclear submarine.  Sirens are going off, lights are flashing, and you're all alone.  You get a message that says the submarine is speeding toward a trench and they won't be able to save you unless you turn it around.  You look around and see a bunch of buttons with characters in Russian.  You don't know what any of the buttons do.

If you die, it isn't because you weren't trying.  It will be a failure on your part, but you were way in over your head.  You might pray that someone saves you.  You might frantically press buttons hoping something will work.  You might just sit back and accept your fate. 

And maybe the radio keeps popping up and saying you're doing a great job.  Maybe a button you press turns off the sirens and the lights even though you're still in danger.  You would have no idea.  You're Trump.

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ireactions wrote:

Trump isn't trying. He cancelled his convention because it was clear that no one would attend. He has still taken no direct action to produce protective equipment and supplies or provide a federal response plan or to enact social distancing and use of masks. He has recommended untested drugs, suggested injecting bleach, insisted that the virus will go away on its own even when it's topped 140,000 deaths. He is unwilling to do anything about the pandemic because its mere existence reflects on him poorly and disrupts his delusional world of magical thinking.

I think he's trying.  I just don't think he knows what he's doing.  All the people in his circle don't know what they're doing.  His son-in-law is in charge of everything, and he has no qualifications.

If he didn't care, he wouldn't have worn a mask.  He wouldn't have gone through with the shutdown.  He wouldn't have done anything.  But he's done enough to show that he's trying but hasn't done nearly enough because he's confused.

In the event of an electoral defeat, Trump's immunity to prosecution expires at noon on January 20, 2021, a day he is undoubtedly dreading.

More reason to think he'll find somewhere to take asylum, and that's where he'll be election night.

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Grizzlor wrote:

This guy has become the flashpoint on just about everything.  Violent protests, coronavirus surges, Russian bounties, massive unemployment, I could go on and on.  Even when he shouldn't be in the middle of it, he keeps interjecting himself, misguiding his supporters and haters to take stupid sides and go to war.

I agree with this.

But to be fair, I think we also inject Trump into everything.  I follow a very select few of what I consider to be reasonable people who are truly conservative/Republicans that are wary of (but not fully against or fully supportive) Trump.  I do this because I feel like I need to at least understand where these people are coming from.  In the age of "block everyone who disagrees with you", I try to at least be educated so I don't start believing that everyone agrees with me.  I think that's how radicalization happens.

And these people get frustrated because people make everything about Trump.  Does he suck?  Yes.  Is he doing a terrible job?  Yes.  But I think we too often drag him into situations that he doesn't belong.  For example, there was a widely circulated video of a great lightning strike behind the Statue of Liberty.  That quickly devolved into Trump.  Trump didn't say anything about it (or maybe he did, I don't follow him) and the event itself had nothing to do with Trump.  And the conservatives I follow were exhausted by the idea that a cool weather shot ended up getting political.  I know there's symbolism there, but I think we need to be enjoying moments that Trump isn't affecting and not making *more* things about him.

The sad thing for us is that I think Trump is actually trying.  Covid is going terrible for him, and unlike BLM, there's no political reason for him to handle it the way he is.  I just think he's in over his head and has no idea what he's doing, and he's surrounded himself with sycophants that don't know what they're doing.  So it's just this circular disaster that he can't pull his way out of.

Biden, for his faults, at least has an inkling of what he's doing.  But more importantly, he can surround himself with people who know what they're doing.  And he's capable of replacing people who don't.

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Trump's only path to victory is to make incredibly big improvements across the board by November.  Improvements in the economy, in jobs, in housing, in healthcare.  He might need to completely end the Pandemic by November if he wants to win.

Since he doesn't know how to do any of that...

What's funny is that Trump's best chance was to do his job well, and he still couldn't do that.

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Change doesn't only have to come from Congress.  Change can simply come about from rejoining the Paris Accords.  Helping shift the country towards cleaner energy.  Working with our allies on pandemic prevention and response.  Stuff like that is easily done from the executive branch.  Trump has done next to nothing legislation-wise, but we've still felt the impact of his presidency.

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If Biden wins, it'll be up to a lot of people to hold him to any progressive ideals he's discussed.  Even if they're not in his cabinet or administration, he's going to need to listen to all the progressives that have helped him get elected.  A man of his age in whatever health he's in is going to need a lot of help, and I'd like to see his administration full of young and diverse people looking to make positive change and undo any harm Trump has done.  We may not expect Biden to get a lot of change done himself, but people he hires can absolutely help.

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I'll put that clip up against any Sleepy Joe video the MAGAs want to throw at him.  I don't think Trump has dementia, but I don't have any idea why he was given that test.  Maybe he asked for it and his doctors gave it to him for a laugh.  If it wasn't a real test, we know that Trump wasted at least (per him) 30 minutes to an hour messing around with a meaningless test.  If it was real, he's either showing symptoms of dementia, Alzheimers or Parkinsons.

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TemporalFlux wrote:

People are scared to tell anyone they’re voting for Trump, though.

Putting a sign in your yard is one thing, but an anonymous poll?  I don't know if there's enough people that trend that way.  And if they did, where would they end up?  Would they go as far as to say they're voting for Biden?  To impress some random pollster?  Or would you say undecided?  Or say they won't vote?  Because Biden is usually winning states by higher than the undecided level of votes.

Are Trump voters screwing with the polls to make it look like Biden is going to win?  Maybe.  But I also don't see the point in that.  Because voter suppression works the other way.  Why would fiscal conservatives that don't like Trump that much bother going to vote if he's going to get crushed?  You'd only hold your nose and vote if you thought it would matter.  Sure, the hardcore MAGAs will go no matter what, but how many of those people are there?

Transmodiar wrote:

If Covid wasn't around Biden would be in terrible shape; he's a bully and a hothead, just not as big of one as our Cheeto-in-Chief.

I absolutely agree that Biden isn't doing much to gain votes, but Biden was winning before this all started.  So was Bernie.  So was Warren.  So was Mayor Pete.  So was Yang.  They were all winning.  "Vote Blue no matter who" was and still is in full force.  So whether it was Biden or Popeye or Tony Soprano or John Kerry or Liz Warren or or whoever, the result was trending the same way.

Can it turn around?  Sure.  Can Biden mess it up?  Absolutely.  But Biden has so many things going for him. The one (1) thing that Trump can brag about is the economy, and it's only going to get worse.  Covid isn't going to get better no matter how much he decides to flip-flop on masks.  The school thing can only backfire on him (if nothing happens, he won't get enough points - if anything goes wrong, it torpedoes him with the middle class).  And Trump isn't going to be able to get the level of crazy momentum he got from rallies because people are going to be just as hesitant to show up as they were in Tulsa.  Biden has BLM rallying for his cause, and Obama is already more active for him than he was for Hillary so I would expect the black vote to be back in play (which helps him in Michigan and Pennsylvania).

Yes, Trump is losing more than Biden is winning.  But ireactions is right, this is the strategy that anyone would've taken.

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Transmodiar wrote:

What does it say that Trump has to have failed SO badly in managing the COVID-19 crisis for Biden to have any shot unseating him in November?

I know you're down on Biden, but Trump was a long shot to win no matter who his opponent was going to be.  We can argue all day about whether Biden is the worst candidate or a boring candidate, but he's *crushing* Trump.  Trump is going to have to work his ass off to get to 200 electoral votes at this point.  If this was Obama, Trump might struggle to get to 100 electoral votes.

I've said this so many times but the math is the math.  The US has had shifting demographics for a long time, and there just aren't enough white conservatives to justify the GOP's insane "only campaign for whites" agenda.  I live in Texas, which everyone would expect would be Trump country and I don't know one (1) person who would vote for him.  I don't even think I know someone who would lie about it and then vote for him secretly.  Polls in Texas are showing Biden up.  I don't think Biden wins Texas, but the fact that it's even in play shows how much trouble the Republicans are in.  Because if the Democrats have Texas, New York, and California, it's over.  Absolutely over.  And that's not only a real possibility - it's a near certainty.

And we can take a shit on polls all we want and point over and over again to 2016 as the main reason, but 2016 was such an aberration.  Things that are one in a million happen once every million times - it doesn't mean that the percentages were wrong if that one time happens first or fifth or whenever.  Yes, the polls were wrong, but they've never been that wrong before or since.

Trump was so bad his whole presidency that no matter who emerged from the Democratic field, he was going to lose.  That's why every single candidate (Bernie, Warren, Biden, Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, Yang, etc) was polling ahead of Trump.  The math was on their side.

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The whole Trump experience is exhausting.  I am pretty level headed and have a high tolerance for stupidity so I don't have a problem reading comment sections and going Twitter diving to try and understand what people see.  What drives me the craziest is the backwards logic people are willing to use.

Sleepy Joe.  Biden has dementia.  He's so old.  Trump is also old.  Trump took a dementia test for some reason.  And Trump is constantly golfing, either because he needs to de-stress or because he wasn't working hard in the first place.

Tara Reade.  Biden is a rapist.  Biden is a pedophile.  Trump has a whole wikipedia page devoted to his rape accusations.  He has ties to Epstein.  He regularly dates women decades and decades younger than him.

Biden was VP for 8 years.  Why didn't he fix anything?  Trump is in office *now* and isn't doing anything.

I'm sure Biden isn't a saint.  I'm sure Trump isn't actually the devil.  I'm sure there are anecdotal stories that could make both sound like either.  Sure, Biden could've done more in 40 years of service.  But at the end of the day, he at least knows what he's doing and will hire people who know what they're doing.  I watched the entire Wallace interview, and Trump is just a buffoon.  Even when he's making good points, he's a buffoon.

Two different times, he stopped the interview to fact check something he'd said.  Both times he was wrong.  But something was striking about it - he was *so* convinced he was right.  And both times, he inferred that he was *told something* about it.

It's been said many times that Trump doesn't read his briefings.  It's been surmised as well that Trump could either be illiterate or at least functionally illiterate.  My thought is that a lot of Trump's "lies" are actually things he was told by someone that he believed.  I think Trump likes to hear good news and people tell him good news to keep him in a good mood.  Or he reads it on some conservative site and believes it.

Either way, we need a change.

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Grizzlor wrote:

Well, we've brought the virus under control in NJ, NY, CT, PA, MA.  Yeah it took awhile of quite a bit of hardship, but we still did it with almost no worthwhile help from Trump.  Had he stood with the doctors, the country would be where Europe is right now, or Canada, or yes even China.  Instead we're as bad as Brazil or Russia.

Yeah but it'd be just as bad or worse in the South.  If Hillary had suggested wearing masks, I think even less people would've listened to her.  There might not even have been shutdowns as Republican governors would've worked against Hillary.  I think the divide might've even been worse because there would've been irate/irrational hate against the Clinton administration as the election draws nearer.

I don't know how a President Clinton would've made any of that better.

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Grizzlor wrote:

This virus is worse than people realize.  It may never go away, like the common cold, and infect people year after year.  Immunity, even with a vaccine, sounds unlikely to last very long.  At some point, society may just have to live with it, and those who are sickly or at risk, will be totally fucked.

Well, remember the virus evolves as well.  A "smart" virus evolves to be less deadly.  A virus that kills a bunch of people is a "dumb" virus, and evolution tends to keep those down.  Not only that, a quick-killing virus is less likely to spread.  A no-killing virus is more likely to spread and survive.

I think coronavirus will survive but like with the common cold and the flu, we'll find an equilibrium with it.  We'll live and it will live.  Yeah there will be a cold/flu/corona season, but we'll have a vaccine.  So when you get it, it'll knock you on your butt for a few days but it won't kill as many people or be as big of a problem.

ireactions wrote:

Slider_Quinn21, do you regret being against a President Hillary Clinton? And would President Clinton be worse? I think you were definitely worried and even certain that she would have dragged the US into additional wars and the very worst aspects of neoliberalism.

I don't regret being against her.  She was a bad candidate and deserved to lose.  And she played a role (if not a key role) in convincing Trump to run.  She got the exact opponent she wanted, and we're paying for it.  And I think she stymied democracy in the Democratic Party for two decades to get elected.  Obama being a miracle candidate was the only reason it didn't show up earlier.  I don't believe in any of the crap coming out of the right about her being a killer or a sex criminal or anything, but I think she's a bad person.  And I don't believe in voting for bad people.

I'm glad she lost.  I wasn't thrilled that Trump won, but I'm less mad at him and more disappointed in everyone else.  I thought the leaders in Europe and the rest of the West would step up and do more in the US' absence.  They really haven't done much.  I thought a clear enemy like Trump would spawn a new generation of politicians that want to be everything Trump isn't.  I haven't seen that.  I thought the GOP would stab him in the back the first chance they got.  They didn't.  I thought the loss would be a wakeup call that would get the Democrats to clean up their own house.  They haven't.

I think President Hillary would have done significantly better than Trump on the virus.  I think she would've listened to scientists earlier, and I think she would've worked better with everyone to get better materials and better protection.

But I think America was in a bad place for this.  People were worried about America's readiness for a pandemic in the Obama era.  Hillary wouldn't have dismantled the task force, but I don't know how much good that would've done.  America's healthcare problem would've continued under Hillary because the Republican Senate would've killed everything she tried to pass.

I think Trump has been terrible, but our problem is societal.  The problems in New York would've still happened.  And I think the issues in the South would've been worse.  People in the South are resistant to government-based lockdowns and mask requirements and school closings with Trump.  How bad would it be with Hillary?  George Floyd still would have died with Hillary so the protests would still be happening, causing issues politically.

America is really big and with really high global traffic and a citizenry that doesn't like being told what to do.  Wearing masks in Asia is commonplace.  More socialist places in Europe and Canada are more happy to follow government instructions for the common good.  America still has that rebellious spirit, and that would've happened under Hillary or Obama or Bush or whoever.  Trump made it worse, but I don't know how much worse.  The tests would've been better.  The doctors would've been more prepared.  The scientists would've been up front.  But I honestly can't say whether or not there'd be less deaths or less cases.  I think we were in trouble either way.

We love alternate history here, but I honesty don't think it'd be noticeably different if Hillary had won.  Trump is an all-time crook and phony, but he's been very ineffectual politically.  I think he's done some economic and global things that will have ramifications down the road, but I'm not one of those people that think it's going to take decades to get passed.

I don't know if that answers your question.  I don't think I would vote for her in 2016 if I had the chance, and my vote wouldn't have mattered either way if I did.