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Here's an interesting article offering a view on why Kamala Harris and her campaign from wealthy Uber executives and such did not resound with working class people:
https://jacobin.com/2024/12/democrats-o … linton-dlc

The 2009 movie where Scotty nearly drowns in the watercooling pipes after a transporter mishap struck me as the moment when STAR TREK seemed to re-embrace comedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSGV2kFhZvU&t=348s

The moment where STRANGE NEW WORLDS seemed to re-embrace comedy on TV for me was the Enterprise Bingo segment in Season 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH4GjcAIvV8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p27sDWHBksg

Well, I think, in this scenario, Tom would have to wear the suit, but SMALLVILLE VOLUME 2 would still have Clark and Lois returning to Smallville after being unceremoniously laid off or fired from the Daily Planet.

I am super-behind on STAR WARS and I honestly don't know if I'll ever get caught up. I never got around to watching CLONE WARS and I'm currently rewatching the MTV SCREAM series. However, I'm sorry TV has been a mixed bag. It does seem like a waste of time to set so much TV during the short-lived period of the New Republic when we know it all ends in Luke giving up and becoming a hermit. It seems like TV is trying to stay out of the way and leave a clean slate for that new Rey feature film, a bit like the ABC and Netflix Marvel shows trying to steer clear of the movies' territory.

The theme park rides sound like a lot of fun! Did you get to interact with any of the performers playing the characters?

I remember riding the Star Tours ride at Universal Studios a lot when I was a child. I'm sure the experiences today are even more advanced, immersive and compelling.

I did want more of John Henry and Nat and longed for their return... but the show camouflaged it well enough and made it so that the absences, as you said, felt more like story focus than cast unavailability. It'd be interesting to rewatch the series and see which ones are the big budget ones and which ones have been budget-reduced. Certainly, the premiere and the finale are the big spenders.

QuinnSlidr will get an automatic email on Wednesday morning with his login details.

God help me.

Out of love, gratitude and respect for Slider_Quinn21, QuinnSlidr's ban will be lifted on Wednesday morning (Eastern Time).

But my mental health really cannot handle any more discussions getting derailed into unproven conspiracy theories and weird accusations of insufficient loyalty to Democrats or fealty to Republicans for the crime of criticizing Democrats and how they lost the election. There probably isn't a single poster here whom QuinnSlidr hasn't accused of treachery or fascism because they didn't buy into his talking points. I only have so much energy in a day and shouldn't be devoting so much of it to monitoring and moderating and addressing this behaviour. I have a day job and my mother needs a lot of attention and care. The only reason I am posting right now is because I am ill at home for the day after my COVID vaccination.

Out of deference to Slider_Quinn21, the ban will be lifted on Wednesday. Because, well, I respect Slider_Quinn21 and I am honour-bound to try things his way even if I foresee only exhaustion and grief waiting for me.

dYou have repeatedly accused anyone who doesn't share your political talking points of being a Trump supporter or a Republican, and now you have done the same with me. I tried to have a sensible, serious discussion about Biden's use of his pardon power, you turned it into another campaign of accusing another poster, in this case, me:

I didn't tell you to respect Republicans. I am absolutely sick of your harassment. You have repeatedly mischaracterized other people's posts, deliberately and willfully.

On multiple occasions, you have falsely accused posters of being racists or Republicans and Trump supporters when they didn't share your talking points of choice or weren't as fervently supportive of the Democratic National Party as you demanded.

You have harassed people for reporting that Kamala Harris lost the election and for not buying into your unproven conspiracy theories.

You are now harassing me by claiming that I demand you respect Republicans when I try to discuss how much threat Biden must see in Trump for Biden to pardon his son Hunter.

This is a clear pattern of harassment in your behaviour.

You have been warned about all your forms of harassment repeatedly, you have been warned that any further harassment in any form will lead to a ban and I am sick of warning you.

This is your final warning, I will not speak to you about it again.

I was not asking you to respect Republicans; I was asking you to show some respect for how Trump is going to use law enforcement agencies to target Democrats and their families and take the threat seriously instead of treating it like a joke.

Biden pardoned Hunter.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/president-joe … =116358693

He broke his morals, he broke his code, he broke his ethics, he had no choice. Trump is coming after the Bidens, he had to try to save his son.

Now that it's been six months since I had COVID-19, I am getting my next dose of the COVID vaccine on Sunday.

Despite a budget-strapped season, SUPERMAN AND LOIS has been pretty solid and effective at making the isolated episodes with lavish effects feel spectacular enough that the quieter, cheaper episodes are also okay.

There's a lot more happening that I hope to type about in the next few days.

Democrats seemed to think in 2020 that Trump was a spent force and weren't too concerned about disqualifying or imprisoning him.

That was clearly a mistake.

I've been pondering the Doomsday scenario -- and my conclusion that it might have been best if Davis Bloome's beast had not been called Doomsday and instead called Ruin or World Killer or Armageddon or even just "the Beast".

The problem is that "Doomsday" in the Superman mythology has a certain brand identity, and that brand identity is defined by SUPERMAN #75 where every page is a full-page panel and 90 percent of the issue is Superman fighting Doomsday.

The name is synonymous with an extended superpowered brawl, and despite SMALLVILLE clearly conveying that Doomsday is largely offscreen, too big for the camera, only ever going to be shown in obscured or dimly lit or appendage-focused shots -- it simply couldn't overcome the brand expectation of the name "Doomsday".

It might have been best to call "the Beast" and describe it as "an early surviving prototype of the Doomsday project" to explain that this wasn't the full-blown Doomsday but an earlier model from Zod's deranged genetics experiments.

But I concede that the SMALLVILLE writers probably saw the mythic power of the Doomsday name, and thought they could explain what fans could expect clearly. They... couldn't.

There's certainly a lot of disagreement in Democrat circles. Did they swing too far to the right in pursuing Republican voters? Has the Democrat party moved too far to the left in cultural attitudes? Has going too far one way or the other or not far enough cost them the capacity to become a majoritarian party?

I am not sure, but all of these contradictory and opposing takes have mostly one commonality: the working class is a the voting bloc that Democrats need to pursue instead of Never Trumpers or women or minorities or specific communities. People who work for a living are in sufficient numbers to vote Democrats into office and while these other groups have serious deprivations in civil liberties and societal (in)equalities, their numbers are like SLIDERS fandom -- not large enough to go mainstream for majoritarian success.

The other key factor that I've mentioned before that keeps coming up: the majority of voters are not getting their news from pro-democracy sources like MSNBC or Slate.com or The New Republic or even newspapers and TV news. They're getting their news from social media: podcasts and influencers. The Democratic Party in 2024 seemed to barely exist here while Republicans seemed to rule that space. If Democrats want to win elections, they need to start existing in a louder, wider, larger network of pro-democracy news media and social media that's present and prominent even when there isn't an election.

I am really hoping this post will not receive a response insisting that the defeated Democrats in 2024 are a majoritarian success by some Byzantine metric of something or other that doesn't correspond to reality.

A wise man once remarked: it's possible to commit no errors and still lose. Kamala Harris was a good candidate. But -- and this is something that's going to happen to all of us at various points in life -- she was outmatched by the challenges and circumstances.

She had 107 days, and she understandably operated on a low-risk, narrow strategy trying to eke out a small victory via swing states and the blue wall. It didn't work, but she came close. As vote counts come in, it's become pretty clear: a two point shift towards her in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania would have meant a Democrat victory.

107 days is not a lot. Kamala had to deal with Biden's foreign policy where voters, alienated by Biden's support of Israel, didn't feel comfortable voting for Kamala and where many voted for no one. Kamala had to deal with how the Democratic Party was a machine built on big money donors whose corporations are exploiting the very people from whom Democrats need votes, preventing her from offering a more transformational vision of her presidency. Kamala was facing a global anti-incumbent wave.

It was just too much for a 107 day campaign with the VP of the current administration being parachuted in last minute, too late to deal with serious issues in the entire party and offer a vision to address it, too late to have a new strategy that wasn't about running close and hoping to be slightly ahead enough to win.

Which is why, even though Kamala lost... I don't blame her. While I agree with a lot of the Kamala-criticism, I feel it's more criticism of the party than the politician, whose head must have been spinning. The problems were and are structural and systemic and take a lot more than 107 days to sort out.

You are gravely mistaken to think "Maybe he'll come back" was an expression of anything but dread, and your thinly-veiled election denialism is thinly-veiled, conspicuous and obvious: every editorial that examines the election results is met with your sneering, cultlike brag about how the losing candidate was too perfect to have lost.

There is no analysis, there is no review, merely ad hominem derision towards anyone discussing how Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election to which you react as though it were stated as a defamatory slur as opposed to a factual matter of public record.

Your goal is obvious: you want people to be uncomfortable saying that Kamala lost and fear your reprisal.

This will no longer be tolerated. This is a thread about current events existing in reality. The unpleasant but observable reality is that Donald Trump won the 2024 election and will be president again. No one trying to discuss this unhappy reality should have to deal with overt hostility or subtle microaggressions from you being offended by discussion of widely reported, loser-conceded election results.

If you are not at all the person described in my summary, why are you so insulted?

Your denial that Trump defeated the Democrats in 2024 shows a total inability to deal with the obvious and unfortunate reality that Kamala isn't going to be President.

I see your supposed about-face for what it truly is: a passive-aggressive, veiled harassment due to your anger over your unproven conspiracy theory not being permitted on this board.

You spent months sneering and jeering at anyone and everyone who had doubts about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, bragging about how they would win the 2024 election. When they lost, you decided to post unproven stories about the voting machines being hacked by satellites to continue your mockery and ridicule and try to avoid being on the receiving end. You were told that election denialism would get you banned.

Now you are angry whenever anyone describes the Democratic defeat of 2024 as an observable fact and a matter of public record. You are triggered because your preferred response -- it was hacked, it was rigged, it was cheated, they actually won -- was identified as abuse and harassment and conversation hijacking that was going to -- and still can -- get you banned from this board.

You decided you would leave and find some other community. I see the search went well since you're back.

And now, fuming over how your conspiratorial wings have been clipped, you're now choosing the path of passive-aggressive microaggressions towards anyone who engages in critical review of why Democrats lost the 2024 election because if you made your preferred response to that conceded-by-Kamala reality, it would be your last post on this board for awhile.

Perhaps you're thinking if you just colour in the lines long enough and gradually escalate, you can seamlessly resume your curtailed behaviours. You'd be mistaken.

Perhaps you simply have nowhere else to go because you can't find a community that will discuss politics in your preferred fashion where the Democratic Party is a cult and you are a slavish disciple and the Democratic defeat of 2024 is denied and ignored.

No one who thinks air-gapped voting machines can be hacked by satellite has any capacity to evaluate what is and isn't a credible news source. Your measure of credibility at this point is whatever supports your cult.

It is very obvious that your comments were and are designed to intimidate people discussing how Democrats lost the election. You want to make it uncomfortable for anyone who can address unpleasant but provable reality.

You want people -- and you've targeted me -- to be walking on eggshells, afraid to mention that Democrats lost the 2024 election, worried about what harassment you'll unleash in response.

It is very obvious in your responses how triggered and offended you are that anyone dares to cite how Democrats lost in 2024 without bringing up your pet conspiracy theory.

Your election denialism is not welcome here. Your rebranded and thinly-veiled election denialism is not welcome here. Your hostility towards people discussing widely-reported and conceded election results and current events is not welcome here. Your cult is not welcome here.

Some interesting analysis on where Kamala Harris' campaign faltered. Critical review is always preferable to cult-like obsequious fawning.

MSNBC is clearly no longer penetrating the consciousness of the electorate when Republicans have taken over social media and dominate the airwaves, and social media is unfortunately far more ubiquitous than MSNBC.

But speaking of MSNBC, here's an argument from them for Democrats to run on economic populism.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opi … rcna180615

It actually has some actionable ideas and perspectives as opposed to another pointless "Democrats should change nothing about their losing strategy / Kamala was great / no ideas for how Democrats can win going forward" essay.

It seems to me that the nonsense on the left wing spectrum is coming from anyone who has an ongoing history of harassing others for discussing how Democrats lost the 2024 election, anyone who demands Democrats change nothing about their current trajectory of losing the 2024 election, anyone has no real ideas on how Democrats can win after losing the 2024 election but feels they must regularly convey how they lack any ideas for Democrats to win while belittling anyone else who tries to come up with any.

Democrats lost the election in 2024. That is the current factual premise for political discussion about Democrats in this thread. The Democrat defeat of 2024 is a current event of public record. Anyone who is offended and triggered by discussion of how Democrats lost in 2024 should really seek some other community to discuss politics in their preferred manner.

The upshot of this editorial: Kamala Harris was a great candidate, Democrats couldn't and shouldn't do anything differently to win elections from now on. What exactly is the point of this? Kamala Harris isn't going to be president, so describing her merits is pointless. If this person -- or anyone, really -- won't discuss and can't think of what Democrats might do to stop losing elections, then I wonder why they bothered to write a column at all.

I wonder why anyone produces political opinions that contain no ideas, suggestions or anything that is in any way productive or useful. Or why they think idea-free, suggestion-vacant, non-constructive responses are a worthwhile contribution in discussing what Democrats might do to start winning elections again.

Perhaps, if they have no ideas on how Democrats might do to win from now on, they could... apply their pen to some other field.

**

Speaking as someone who masks and uses vaccines, democratic people don't force others to wear headgear they don't want and get injections they don't want. Someone who believes in democracy will recommend and encourage, oppose misinformation, and respect individual choice. And given how a two point shift in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania would have won Kamala Harris the election, the Democratic Party isn't in any shape to disdain people whose votes they need.

The contempt and disdain for people who voted Trump or don't mask or don't vaccinate may be very satisfying from a personal standpoint, but it isn't very helpful in terms of political campaigns and political messaging.

**

The issue of misinformation that Slider_Quinn21 describes reflects how Republicans have now dominated the mediasphere. Voters supported health care, minimum wage increases and other progressive ballot measures but didn't support progressive candidates enough to win the election. This means that Democrats' progressive platforms are not reaching low information voters sufficiently to identify the ballot measures they want with the party that supports them.

This is also the result of a weak Democratic media presence and strategy. President Biden was distant and hidden away from the press and felt absent. Democrats have for too long only tried to be present in media in the months leading to elections and on being a strong presence in key swing states, with Harris' 107 day campaign trying to eke out a narrow victory.

Democrats need to be more present and central in media, both through current broadcast and social media networks and in producing a left of center, fact-oriented media system to compete with the right.

Slider_Quinn21 calls Trump voters "stupid voters". I am going to argue that they are "struggling voters": people with limited media exposure, who maybe can't afford to pay for online newspapers, who are seeing all their news via memes and Twitter, who are so tired from working three jobs and taking care of family that they can't seek out non-partisan or left of center media, with Republican-coverage flooding their line of sight. Democrats and left of center media needs to reach these struggling voters.

Grizzlor's take makes the most sense to me.

According to Axios, Biden's stimulus, while well-intentioned and not the sole cause of inflation, added about 3 percent for a total of 7 percent, and that addition caused the increase in federal borrowing rates.
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/10/trump- … -inflation

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco says, however, without stimulus, the economy might have tipped into deflation and been even harder for everyone -- but regardless, Democrats were associated with rising prices.
https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insi … inflation-

As a person who identifies with wokeism -- it's obviously not a winning political message and comes off as cultural policing. Even Andrew Yang of the Forward Party says so. It seems we need the non-woke vote to win. https://www.andrewyang.com/blog/abandon … -behaviors

It would probably be best to focus on making life better for the working class by serious and meaningful structural changes to challenge corporate exploitation of labour instead of a tax credit here and a subsidy there that only helps the middle class.

As much as public health is a political issue of policy, do vaccines and masks really need to be a political item anymore? Use them if you want them (which I do), no need to be offended by anyone who doesn't.

I am not saying Trump would not try to do some or all of what you fear -- I'm just questioning whether or not Trump could actually succeed or find the compliance he would need. Trump's goal is to slash the headcount of every federal agency and reduce them all to being staffed solely with loyalists led by loyalists -- except this smaller workforce would then lack the manpower, experience and ability to carry out complex schemes of conspiracy and subterfuge like election sabotage and fraud while being easy for Democrats and media and civil liberties agencies to monitor fully and totally.

Meanwhile, if Trump finds it untenable to make his cutbacks, then we have federal agencies staffed with such a wide range of people, some of whom would follow illegal or fraudulent orders; some of whom would refuse; some of whom would leak them as whistleblowers. There's also the question of whether or not police or military would follow illegal or fraudulent orders or if enough would lose confidence to dissent in the ranks.

Ultimately, if Trump tried to pull any of these, he could undoubtedly go some part of the distance, but he'd face chaos and a rise to civil war. That's bad in itself; I just don't think Trump has the masterful control to have the outcomes that he would seek from these gambits. Republicans have bowed to Trump over and over again because he served their own ambitions, but I am not sure if illegality that would lead to resistance in the ranks and civil conflict would serve them or their wish to live in luxury as professional politicians.

I don't think your scenario is farfetched in what Trump might want attempt, but the results would be messy and explosive as opposed to triumph and dominance for Trump.

The Onion buys Alex Jones' InfoWars. LOL.
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/lates … rcna180184

I was really moved by Clark surrendering to the evitable and not using time travel or a body double and such to undo the latest change to his life... but I wonder what it means, practically, now that everyone has Superman's home address. It's possible we'll just never have to deal with it as the show is so close to its final hours.

Slate offers Trump some passingly friendly advice: do nothing and coast on Biden's achievements.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … riffs.html

(We all know he won't.)

Without speaking for Slider_Quinn21, no one citing the 2024 election results -- a matter of public record -- should be harassed with unverified claims that the results are invalid. No losing Democrat and no election official have taken that stance.

The claim that Starlink was used to hack the election is false. Voting machines are not connected to the internet to that degree if at all.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024 … s-election

The supposedly missing votes are not missing, just not yet counted, and no elections agency or official has claimed there was fraud.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-2 … 68a1362518

Could there be some means of circumventing the ballots and the vote count that just hasn't come to light yet? Yes, there could be. But as it stands, voter fraud having tipped 2024 to Trump is an unproven claim.

Discussion of Democrats strategies and errors is consistently being deliberately derailed by one poster making unproven claims of voter fraud. That is a tactic of abuse and harassment to suppress criticism and review of Democratic performance. To attack anyone who voices concerns and critiques of the techniques that Democrats use to run for office. I have asked this poster to cease their abuse and harassment.

Every time this happens, I am forced to respond to each and every one of these claims to establish that this harassment is not appropriate, that these claims are not proven. And that people should be able to discuss current events and matters of public record and critique Democrats without constant persecution and misinformation where theories are falsely presented as facts.

I can't deal with it anymore. It's too stressful and upsetting and mentally draining. I also do not have time to do it anymore. I can't spend any more of my lunch breaks addressing this behaviour; I can't deal with it during my off hours and expect to get any of my other tasks done.

Having lost the election, the defunct Harris campaign is now... hitting up donors for more money!?!
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … ising.html

Oh for heaven's sake.

Against my better judgement, I've been rewatching SMALLVILLE and, to my surprise, the show is much better than I remember it being. Season 1 is good, Seasons 3, 5 and 6 are strong, and Season 8 is my favourite so far.

One near-universal criticism of Season 8 is that the entire season built to a Clark/Doomsday fight and failed to deliver with Doomsday knocking Clark across the city in one blow; Clark grabbing Doomsday and leaping into the geothermal facility that Oliver detonates with Clark throwing Doomsday to the bottom of a geothermal well with the collapsed structure entrapping Doomsday. The complaint is that the entire season built to a huge fight that consists of one punch, one leap, and an explosion.

... I don't see it. I don't see how Season 8 was offering any buildup to a big fight. At all. Throughout Season 8, Doomsday is always filmed at a distance or partially obscured or in shadow or simply off camera as he attacks. We see isolated portions of Doomsday's arms as he slashes Jimmy and claws Clark. Any full body shots are brief and darkly lit. We never get a good look at it.

To me, this is the show making it very clear: Doomsday is more of a force and a presence than an actual character. The visual language of Season 8 makes it very clear that Doomsday is a monster kept at a distance and in the dark, and there is going to be little to no overt portrayal of Doomsday except in the guise of Davis Bloome. Doomsday is a monstrosity beyond human comprehension, barely contained in human shell, so horrific that the camera on SMALLVILLE dares not look at him.

Also, the Doomsday costume doesn't really hold up well in full lighting.

I don't feel SMALLVILLE ever built up expectations that there would be a huge fight between Clark and Doomsday. If anything, it made it clear that Doomsday was going to always be a slightly out of focus, dimly lit figure. The emphasis was also on how Doomsday was more powerful than Clark and any straight fight between Clark and Doomsday would be short, brutal, and lethal for Clark -- which is why Clark's strategy was not to kill Doomsday but to bury him.

However, while that is clearly the message that SMALLVILLE conveyed to the audience, it's very clear to me that I'm in the minority and I was the only one who heard it. The universal criticism of Season 8 is that the fight with Doomsday was a huge disappointment and didn't pay off all the buildup... so clearly, the creators failed to convey the expectations they were setting to anyone but me. It's very clear to me that absolutely no one agrees with me on this.