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Yeah, I think it's an important question to ask since I feel like that's the most important question for Star Wars to answer.  It seems like Rey is going to start a new Jedi, but I don't see how her new approach would be any more or less successful.  What did she learn in the sequels?  That Jedi should be able to love?  Would Jedi being able to love have done anything?  If Anakin and Padme were openly married in the prequels, I think Palpatine would've manipulated Anakin the exact same way.  She wouldn't be any less of a pull on him, and he wouldn't be any less worried that she would die.

To me, the Jedi thought they were the best person for every job, but that wasn't really the reason they fell.  I think the reason they fell was that they underestimated Sidious.  They knew about him in the Phantom Menace and, unless I'm missing something, never really looked for him.  They would go after him if there was an opportunity, but I would think finding Sidious would've been their top priority.  Mace Windu and a group of Jedi Knights should've been out in the galaxy looking for him.

I get that he's hiding and it would be difficult to find him.  But it doesn't seem like the Jedi even tried.  Sidious had a great plan, and he executed it.  I don't know if any of the issues that Luke or Rey or even Dooku had with the Jedi would've fixed that.

To be fair, I don't know how many people watch TV live anymore.  I assume if people were going to tune in and their desired speaker hadn't spoken yet, they'll either 1) watch it on youtube 2) see it on Facebook/Twitter/whatever 3) see it on their local news or national news of choice.

I'm sure there is a segment of the population in battleground states that don't have social media or the internet and only watch television live, but I think it's more important that Harris (and Walz) speak live to them than Obama.

I've used ChatGPT a little bit.  What I've mostly used it for is recipes for overnight oats and workout regimen ideas.  Basically a slightly smarter version of google.

Again, we need to be careful about the language we use.  Trump and his campaign were involved in illegal activities, and I think he *attempted* voter fraud.  But voter fraud involves using fake votes for a candidate or throwing out legitimate votes for an opponent.  There has been very low numbers of true voter fraud in any election and nowhere near enough to change any results.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ap-looked-20 … wijLJ8GxNj

The Trump campaign (and Republicans in general) are responsible for gerrymandering, voter suppression, manipulation of facts and news that harm Trump's opponents), and tons of election interference.  But I wouldn't consider any of that to be voter fraud.

The difference, in my opinion, is that accusations of voter fraud hurts democracy and undermines our elections.  Trump is a criminal responsible for all kinds of election-related crimes.  But we have to be very clear when we talk, otherwise we open up the idea that democracy is broken.  And it is not.  Our elections are secure enough that true voter fraud is extremely rare, and that's a good thing.  If Trump stole an election then it opens up the idea that Biden stole an election and Harris can steal an election.  And I don't want to go down that path.

Trump did a lot of bad things in 2016 and 2020, but he won in 2016 and lost in 2020.

I mean you're both right. 

- Hillary did mangle her campaign.  She misused resources to go for a landslide against Trump (and essentially doing a victory lap) and completely ignored the Blue Wall.  If she had done what Harris is doing (focusing on the battleground states), I think she would've won.  She also cut off the legs of her own campaign by forcing the Democrats to clear the path for her in the primaries.  If she'd run a true primary, I think either her weakness would've been exposed or she would've come out a stronger candidate.  Instead, she struggled to beat Bernie, and even worse, pissed off all the Bernie people. 

- And of course QuinnSlidr is correct that the electoral college is stupid.  My vote doesn't matter.  Grizzlor's vote doesn't matter.  I don't know where QuinnSlidr is but I doubt their vote matters.  About 100,000 votes scattered around 7 states are all that's going to matter.  It is stupid.  But it also isn't changing.  There's a really outside chance that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact makes it irrelevant, but that's probably the only hope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ … te_Compact

- Grizzlor is also right that he called the Biden thing before anyone else, and that's the only hope the Democrats had.  I agree that if Biden had stayed in, this week would've been morose.  I think Biden did fine last night, but I'm so much happier with Harris (and she wouldn't have been in my top 5 Democratic candidates honestly).  The party and the country needed a new face, and if she wins, that will be most of the way.  I agreed with Grizzlor but I felt like complaining about Biden was like complaining about the Electoral College.  I figured he was the guy and there was no reason to even worry about it.

- I do think Grizzlor is wrong about Warnock.  I think he's great.  I've also softened on Hillary in the last few years.  I still think she was absolutely the wrong candidate for 2016, and I don't think she should've been made into the hero that she's ended up being.  But I think she deserved a spot.

- I was thinking last night that it would've been super interesting if Harris didn't have any of the former presidents or candidates speak.  No Clintons or Obamas.  Maybe no Biden.  Just young and exciting Democrats who can speak to modern issues and the future of the party, not the past.  Or maybe structure it like Night One - Obamas and Biden (the past).  Night Two is your Warnocks and your AOCs and your Mayor Petes (the present).  And maybe Night Three is the future - really young, really diverse speakers talking about the future.  And then Night Four is Walz and Harris to bring it back together?

I don't know.  I know the Clintons and Obamas are big draws and still popular, but I think it would be a great signal to try and show that Democrats are the party of the future.  Especially as Trump looks older and is constantly talking about the past.

I would really love it if Swift would go ahead and endorse Harris.  I understand not wanting to be overly political, but it would be really great.  I know celebrity endorsements are pretty worthless, but she has a really devoted fanbase.  They're already mobilizing for Harris, but I'd love to move it from unofficial to official.

Both of those are great and ease my tensions a bit.  I'm glad that the Harris camp isn't going into this naively.  I hope they're also boosting security at vulnerable polling places and making sure that the votes themselves are secured.

If that's the case, I feel pretty good.  Harris leads in the states she needs, and if there's a low chance that Trump can pull something out of his hat, a win is a win and that's all I've wanted for the last six+ years,

******

Good news / bad news from polling

Bad news - Harris' momentum has slowed down and regressed a bit in the polls.  Still strong some places, but Trump has regained solid-ish leads in Georgia and Nevada.  I don't know if the honeymoon slowed down or if Harris has topped out some places.  Trump has made slight gains in the last week or so but still down a sizeable chunk to Harris nationally.

Good news - North Carolina might be more in play than Georgia.  With the foolishness happening in Georgia, I'd be happy to swap the two states, let Trump have Georgia and let Harris get the election.  If Harris gets NC and the rest of the polls hold, I'm cool with a 297-241 win.  And with the convention starting today, I read a story that says polls don't move a ton after the conventions are over.  If Harris can get a bump from the DNC, history says that a lot of voters will have made up their minds.  Early voters will be able to vote in about a month.

I didn't realize Clinton was actually losing going into the DNC so Harris is already in a better place than she was.  She's in a worse place than Biden but not by much.  Assuming the convention goes well (hope the protests don't mess anything up) and the debate(s) go well, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic.

Rogan's weird.  I think people associate him with Trump, but I think he falls more into the RFK Jr. crowd.  I've never listened to him or his podcast (I don't watch MMA so I don't see him there either), but the sense I get from reading others is that he's much more in the RFK camp.  Now since RFK and MAGA overlaps, I assume he needs to keep those people happy.

He's actually been in trouble with MAGA before and had to backstep what people assumed was an endorsement of RFK.  Interestingly enough, Kyle Rittenhouse had to do the same thing when he was bullied by MAGA after he said Trump wasn't pro-gun enough.

That's disappointing but not necessarily surprising. As ireactions has said, this show wasn't promoted very well, and even strong Trek fans might never give it a chance.

I do agree with QuinnSlidr that enthusiasm for Harris is close to what it is for Trump.  I also wonder if there are portions of Trump's coalition that are fracturing a bit.  Some people don't love the Vance pick.  Some of the white supremacists don't love that Vance has a non-white wife.  He's losing momentum with some of the blue collar workers as he attacks unions.  He's lost some of the "anti-Biden" vote (although I assume a lot of that was also anti-Harris). 

People love to vote against someone as much as they love to vote for someone, and at the moment, I don't think the average person hates Harris.  I think they either don't know anything about her or like her a little bit.  Her approval is actually above water in a lot of polls which seems crazy at this polarizing time.

My point was that Trump still seems to be peaking, and he's still losing in the polls.  Since he doesn't ever reach out to the center, he's going to struggle to make up that difference.

But even then, I think there's all types of scenarios where Trump wins.  Whether it be Election Day chaos, post-election day chaos, shy Trump voters, polling errors, or whatever.

She needs to start meeting the criticism.  She needs to lay out her policy plans, and she needs to start doing interviews / press conferences.

Well, maybe.  I think it's going to be way too close going into election day, but Harris had some polls over the weekend that were just below the margin of error.  There's still "meat on the bone" for her to get a little higher and take her over the margin of error.  But trends would need to continue.

What might be a little scary for the Trump campaign is that Trump's popularity really hasn't dropped.  His numbers are almost identical today as they were when Biden dropped out (43.5% on July 21 and 43.3% today).  That means he's holding on to what he received from the assassination attempt and the convention.  He really hasn't dropped from that point.  Maybe he won't...but he really hasn't started losing voters yet.

What if he does?  Then there's a chance that, as far as polls go, Harris could be in really good shape.  That doesn't take into account *sample error* which could still lean toward Trump.

She's right below the margin of error in those states in the latest polling.  The polling averages are also a little lower than that, but the trends are going in the right direction.  You're right about that, of course (assuming NE-2 which must not be taken for granted - it would be the most important district in the country if she keeps the blue wall.

But I would be absolutely terrified at 270-268.  I know that we have things in place to protect an electoral win, but Trump has been working on this for four years.  He's going to give this thing his best shot...not before Election Day but *after* it.  I think he wants to overturn the election, maybe even more than winning it outright.  He feels like he was cheated, and he wants to cheat someone else.

So even if the blue wall moved to comfortably in her column, even with polling errors baked in, we need to get at least two of Nevada/Georgia/Arizona/North Carolina.  I think Trump is capable of flipping a state (and if she only gets Arizona and Nevada on top of the blue wall, Trump could simply flip Pennsylvania and win) so Harris needs to not only get to 270 but get high enough above 270 that Trump can't screw us all out of it.

I think she's on pace for that, but we'll see.

See, maybe I'm desensitized to Trump, but I didn't think it was Hindenburg level.  I'm with Lawrence O'Donnell - the media needs to be better at fact checking Trump live if they're going to air his stuff.  There need to be follow-up questions and there needs to accountability, or his stuff shouldn't be aired.  If Trump wants to completely control these events, then they can air exclusively on Ben Shapiro's podcast.  If he wants free airtime, then he needs to agree to face difficult questions (to be fair, like he did in the Black Journalists event).

A lot of far-right people are talking about what a disaster Trump's campaign has been.  I don't know if it's true or not, but it sounds like he has no ground game and hasn't been advertising at all.  I haven't watched much of the Olympics but I heard Harris ads are being shown constantly.  I know every time I open YouTube, I get a Harris ad.  She campaigned in Arizona, and he campaigned in Montana.

I wonder if he is shifting towards post-election nonsense.  If that's the case, Harris needs to stay the course.  If she can win all six battleground states (and even North Carolina), I don't know if Trump's going to be able to cause enough chaos.  I worry about election day chaos so I hope Harris voters vote early.

Its just frustrating because it was one of the primary reasons she went with Walz over Shapiro.  Maybe not the only reason but one of the primary ones.  They barely gave her 48 hours of good will over it.

I really liked his dig about Vance getting off the couch - it was funnier than any line Trump has ever issued.  I listened to most of his speech and he came across really well.  I think he's going to appeal to people - maybe even some Trump people who have tired him but likes someone willing to "fight/attack" the other side. 

The polls continue to look pretty good.  It'll be interesting to see if this announcement and/or the battleground state tour moves the polls any.  I think if the election ended today, according to the 538 polling averages, Harris would win by the dreaded 270-268.  But she's pretty close in Georgia and Arizona, within striking distance in North Carolina, and it looks about tied in Nevada.  It doesn't appear that there are any states that Harris might be able to flip even if she increases her popularity a decent amount.  There's been no polling in South Carolina, but any even remotely pink state (Texas, Iowa, Florida, Ohio) seem pretty much in Trump's camp.  319 looks like Harris' ceiling (and would be amazing).

I still wish they'd been more pragmatic about the electoral math.  I don't know if Walz appeals much to independents or moderates, but I think he'd be a great VP if she can find a way to win.

Yeah, the new apes movie, which takes place "generations" after the last movie has the apes still moving and acting like apes.  They look more like "real" intelligent apes, but I agree that they've sorta lost whatever metaphor they were going for.  I don't know what the message is in "Kingdom".

I would like it to about how we can be different but still work together.  Maybe that's where it's going.

I haven't seen War, but I read the full synopsis online.  What's weird is I don't feel like humanity "deserves" what happens to it other than vague "man is bad" stuff.  And the apes, while shown as being given their own shot, aren't any better than the humans.  They're just as bloodthirsty and eager for control or whatever.  Some of the times, the humans aren't even the aggressors.

In Rise, the whole thing starts out as something altruistic.  There are bad humans, sure.  But it all comes from a good place (unless I'm forgetting about something sinister).  This isn't a situation like most robot apocalypses where humanity has enslaved something or someone.  It's just our world with a guy trying to help his father and others like him.

In Dawn, the bad guy isn't necessarily a bad guy.  He's just desperate for things to go back to how they were.  And he's grieving.  I only partially remember the movie and I'm sure he did something unforgivable at some point, but his heart is in the right place from what I remember.

I know in War it's a ruthless military leader.  But at the same time, humanity has been ravaged and there's a struggle for resources.  Humanity is up against a virus that is constantly evolving and killing / stealing the humanity of everyone.  I understood why they did some of the things they did, but it's not for me.

In Kingdom, it at least feels like we're moving to some kind of hopeful future.  I doubt that's where it goes because it needs to eventually get around to the astronauts returning, but I thought the original movies ended in a cool place with apes and humans living together.  I would like to see the movies go in that direction, and have the bad guys people that are xenophobic or whatever.  It seems like every movie is "ITS US OR THEM" and it doesn't need to be that way.

Planet of the Apes has always been a bit of a fascination with me.  Which is weird because I don't think I love any of the movies.  But I have seen all of them - the five original movies, the reboot, and the four new reboot movies.  That's ten movies of a series I like but don't love.

The problem is that the original series was a warning about nuclear war.  The first movie is more direct with the famous "you maniacs!  You blew it up!" scene.  The second movie also revolves around a nuclear bomb and (spoiler alert for a movie that was made before I was born) ends with the Earth being fully destroyed.  The next two show how we got to a planet of the apes.  And in that version, humans have taken on apes as pets/helpers after a virus wipes out all cats and dogs.  It's basically the same as a robot apocalypse - we "enslave" these intelligent beings to make our lives easier, and there's an uprising.  In an attempt to calm things down, the government turns to nuclear weapons and the apes win the war.  If there's an explanation for how it gets flipped, I don't remember it.  I think it's just supposed to be evolution.  The first smart ape in the revolution is the son of two intelligent apes that went back in time - the rest of the apes just learn to talk by being around him?

In the new series of films, they start in the past.  James Franco's character is trying to cure his father's Alzheimer's and comes up with a virus designed to repair the brain.  There are some evil human characters, but the whole thing ends up sorta being an accident.  The virus fails to cure the father - but it does make apes intelligent.  Not only that, it kills humans.  The movie ends with Caesar (the helper ape to Franco) turning a few apes intelligent and leading them out of San Francisco.  The twist comes at the end when a pilot neighbor to Franco catches the virus and spreads it around the world - it kills people and makes ape intelligent - Planet of the Apes.

The sequels are about Caesar leading his new group of apes as they gain power and the humans lose it.  In all instances, there's a powerful/desperate human leading a military group of humans, they fight the apes, and the humans lose.

And I get that humans generally suck.  Our leaders are bad.  Our militaries are bad.  But it's weird for movies to present the idea that humanity needs to be wiped out and replaced with something that's better.  I like stuff like Star Trek where humanity finally passes the test.  Even in post-apocalyptic stories, I like for us to learn a lesson and get better.  No one ever gets better in Planet of the Apes movies - some people try and everyone ends up dead.

In this new movie, there seems to be at least an attempt for both sides to live in some kind of harmony.  And that's a better message to me.

Ha, this is more about my allegiance to The Weekly Planet podcast.  I've started watching every movie they do an episode on.  Even ones I wouldn't otherwise watch

It was on Hulu so I gave it a shot.  I think all the movies are well done, and this one was less upsetting than the second one.

My question is...has Harris already lost the voters who think the economy is bad?  In other words, does the performance of the economy matter?

I saw an opinion article on USA Today that was from a conservative columnist who said "I have been attacking Biden but we should really be afraid of Harris."  The point of her article was that she'd attacked Biden as being far-left and a radical socialist for four years, but he's pretty moderate and it's actually Harris who's the far-left socialist.

If I had any interest in getting in a dialogue with someone like that, I would ask "So you admit you lied about Biden, but you want people to believe you now?"

The problem with MAGA and the GOP is that everything is a hyperbole.  Trump is the greatest president ever.  He had the greatest economy ever.  This is the greatest persecution ever.  Biden is the worst president ever.  It's the worst economy ever.  The border is the worst ever.

And the problem with that is that you've already played your card.  There's nowhere to go but up from the worst ever.  People get tired of hyperbole, and if you want to shift your attack, you have to admit you lied the first time.  Biden can't be the worst if Harris was the worst.  And, again, they've been saying this for years.  So anyone who's going to listen to Trump or Mike Johnson or Ted Cruz has already been convinced.

The stock market goes up and down, and it's already really up under Biden.  Maybe there are people who liked Trump but switched to Biden because the economy was doing better than Trump was saying, but I don't know how many of those there are.  Maybe the economy will be the tiebreaker for undecideds - it's a very important metric, but hopefully those people know that Trump doesn't have any sort of magic ability to improve the economy.  And if he did, he probably wouldn't have gone bankrupt so many times.

Forgot to comment on this.  This is something.  Nate has been really cold on Biden, and his model has been way more pessimistic on Biden than most places.  If he has her with a greater chance to win than Trump, that's pretty big.  Now the difference is minor, and it's basically a coin flip race in Nate's model, but it's pretty big.

And everyone is right, she's winning in a lot of polls now.

That's not my understanding.  The DC case hasn't been dismissed, and there's a hearing in a couple of weeks on how to proceed.  What could happen, based on my limited understanding of these matters, is that the Supreme Court required them to have hearings on whether the acts that are under the indictment were official acts or not.  What that could mean is that the government has to lay all its cards on the table, including calling witnesses, to present their evidence.  It would mean giving the defense a ton of insight into what they're planning on doing, but it would also get a ton of evidence out into the public consciousness.

It was basically what democrats were clinging to when the immunity decision was announced.  It feels like a huge risk/reward proposition - they could obviously get voters huge details on what Trump was trying to do in 2020.  It could also a) give the defense a huge advantage if the case ever proceeds and b) backfire and actually help Trump.

For me, I'm sorta hoping to just take it off the table unless there's something about Pence's testimony or some other evidence that would change enough minds to keep him out of the White House.  At this point, all I really care about is beating him in November.  If he never pays for any of his crimes, whatever.

I absolutely love Buttigieg.  I think he'd be great, and I think he can absolutely be president some day.  But in an election where evangelicals are already going to extra motivated, I think running a ticket of a black woman and a gay man is going to cause extra issues.  As much as I love Shapiro, I'm a little bit nervous about not having a Christian man on the ticket.

I know it's not the way it should be, but I think Pete needs to wait until some of the Trump anti-LGBT firestorm dies down.  Add him to the Harris cabinet (Secretary of State?) and keep building up his resume.

I agree about the honeymoon period, but could it last a couple more months?  People seem to be energized by a non-Trump/Biden candidate, and honeymoon.  Harris' own VP approval rating honeymoon lasted almost eight months.  My hope is that Harris wins before people even really know if they like her or not.

As far as turnout goes, I think you're forgetting that the true power the Democrats have is anti-Trump, not pro-Harris.  The anti-Trump people will turn out whether it's Biden, Harris, or me on the ballot.  They'd show up if they had to write Harris in.  A ton of people in this country love Trump, but a ton of people hate him.  Both are equally excited to show up.  Also, since the shift in the electorate, Democrats do better with people who are more likely to vote.  I'll let 538 explain from this article: https://abcnews.go.com/538/harris-trump … =112494481

Basically, Trump has a really rabid group of people who almost never vote in anything else.  They're also less likely to vote in ways that are more convenient (by mail, voting early, etc) so something like weather in rural Pennsylvania on election day can actually make a difference.

I think you're right, and I think she will.  But I think she's doing the right thing and hammering him on being weak and cowardly.  MAGA will eat up whatever excuse he has, but undecideds won't.  She needs to make that point instead of quickly accepting any offer Trump makes so that the news can report day after day that she's sticking to the original agreement and Trump wants a friendly crowd on a friendly network.  Then she can hammer him on it during the debate too.

I'm also a little nervous about Trump's legal stuff popping up.  I wonder if that will break up some of the momentum that Harris has now.  Trump campaigned better and raised money better during his trials, and as much as I'd love the population to learn more about his election interference case, I wonder if it's better to just let it lie until after the election.

Ha I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'll take it

One of my coworkers who is a huge Trek guy said he thinks Prodigy is the best of the new Trek.  I think it has the most heart of any of the new Trek shows, and it uses classic Trek stories to tell stories of the week while also doing an overarching story.  It has the same love for Trek that Lower Decks does but does it earnestly instead of with humor (I love them both).  I'd forgotten how much I liked it when I saw season 2 was finally available.

*********

I need detective ireactions to let me know if the news I saw this weekend about The Orville season 4 starting production is true or not.

Yeah I think she could make it work, but I had trouble even understanding the tone they were going for in the trailer.  What is it supposed to be?

Also, I can't remember how her arc ended on Discovery.  I know they visited the Guardian, but did she go back to her universe?  Did she go back in time?  Is she still in the future?  I honestly can't remember

I don't know about that.  I think Fantastic Four can be a big hit, and the 60s retro-future could be fun.  The MCU desperately needs fresh blood and new ideas, and this is one of their best bets.  I mean they made Thor work.  They made Guardians of the Galaxy into one of the best parts of the MCU.  Captain America is pretty lame, and they made two of his movies into some of the best in the franchise. 

Remember that the MCU started with the junk that was lying around that no one else wanted.  No one knew who Iron Man was in 2007, and 12 years later, there were grown men crying at his death.

The Fantastic Four might not have succeeded in the past (although the early 2000s movies aren't awful), but they have a huge following for a reason.  They still have to make a good movie, but I think Feige is turning the ship around.  There's almost no new TV coming down the pike, and they're streamlining the movies.

******

On RDJ.  A lot of people are mad about this, but I think we need to figure out what this is before we get upset.  Remember that Dr Doom rarely shows his face.  Could this be a situation where Downey Jr becomes unrecognizable (think his recent job on The Sympathizer) and then it's just voice work?  And while it seems desperate, people forget that RDJ is a legitimately great actor.  He did a bunch of popcorn movies, but he's one of the best actors on the planet.  And they need a very strong actor to play Doom, or it isn't going to work.

So he might be played by RDJ but you might not even know.  He could disappear into the role and truly become Doom.

Alternatively, there's also two things at play:

- RDJ could be playing a variant of Tony that goes by the name Victor Von Doom.  Maybe Tony's parents fled to Latveria, took over there, and had a son named Victor instead of Tony.  So you have this familiar face that the Avengers are going to have this emotional connection that Victor can take advantage of.  How would Peter, for example, punch a guy with Tony's face?  If Victor somehow knows about Tony, he could literally take over the world by assuming Tony's identity and just taking over.  The world would hand itself to him.  So it adds a second layer to a typical bad guy if they know he's technically Tony.

- It could be a trick.  Maybe it's a Tony variant that takes over the Doom persona and then the real-life Doom kills him.  Basically the same thing they did with the Mandarin.  That way they could have their cake and eat it too.  I know it would be slightly redundant, but imagine a super-smart evil Tony Stark Doom who brings the Avengers to their knees and then the real Doom shows up and wipes out Tony without any effort. 

There are ways to make this work, and I think we need to give them a chance.  Same with Thunderbolts.  All the actors on that project are good, and the team up could be fun.  The MCU is definitely in a downturn, but the movies have still been pretty good.  If they pivot away from some of the bad TV stuff and focus their attention back on movies, I don't see any reason to think they can't recapture the magic.

The Michigan number looks like a real outlier.  There's no question, no matter what poll you're looking at, that the race has tightened.  But it's still a 50/50 deal at best for Harris.  We're going to need across-the-board polling to show that the race is competitive (where Harris is winning as many polls as she's losing) in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and hopefully North Carolina before we start getting too excited.  As it stands now, we'd need a Dem+3 polling error for her to comfortably win.

Now to be fair, Trump's already gotten a bump from the convention and the assassination attempt.  He's had a few gaffes recently that could cost him votes, including all the Vance stuff.  And Harris still could get a bump from her VP pick and the convention.

******

The black journalist thing seems really bad.  This could possibly cost him votes, but my understanding is that a lot of people in the black community actually don't consider her to be black.  I saw some commentary from black people that noted that her Atlanta rally was "too ghetto" - I don't know if Trump insulting her "blackness" is as cut and dry as we think.  I think there's some complications, and I think Trump's comments might actually strengthen him with some parts of the black community that don't consider her to be black either.

Now I think she needs to go to the same event (not on Zoom) and handle tough questions comfortably and confidently.  She could really show the difference and score major points.

I'll take my coke when I move to Canada.

Didn't you originally write a long post about Deadpool and Wolverine?  Maybe you just started with "I saw Deadpool and Wolverine" and I jumped out.  Let me talk briefly about the X-Men and then get into Deadpool and Wolverine, which I saw last night.

Timeline Stuff

I think Days of Future Past is a really cool movie.  I think I love the concept of the movie more than the movie itself, but I think it's cool that they had these prequel characters that everyone loved and they tied it together with these later versions people already loved.  And they tied it together with this mostly-immortal character that everyone universally loved.  I know it isn't fully comic accurate, but I think it makes a lot of sense.  Wolverine was alive in both periods and could be the bridge.

And because it's a cool idea, I'm willing to suspend my belief that McAvoy and Stewart are the same guy.  I think the problem with Days of Future Past is that they didn't stop there.  Like Logan is a great ending for Wolverine, I think Days of Future Past could've been a great ending to X-Men.  I understand striking while the iron is hot with the First Class cast and grabbing characters like McKellen and Stewart while they're still young-ish, but I wonder if they should've done a trilogy of "young X-Men" films set in the 60s and 70s and finished with Days of Future Past.

You know me, loving glut in movies, but it actually might've been cool to have parallel movies setting up Days of Future Past.  A trilogy of "First Class" movies setting up Sentinels in the background, and a post-apocalyptic movie with Sentinels taking out mutants.  Give the older cast one more solo movie to set this movie up, now that interest was re-ignited in the X-Men and give fans an Empire Strikes Back moment where the heroes lose.  Show the young cast setting up a world where mutants can thrive and show the older cast showing a world where it all falls apart.  Then, Days of Future Past can hit the ground running without any exposition.  But that might've been too much.

Because I think you can suspend your belief that the characters will age to look like their "original trilogy" selves, and maybe there are some suspensions of belief that can happen.  Maybe there are two characters named Emma that have diamond powers.  Maybe there were Cyclops-looking mutants in the 60s that weren't Scott Summers.  Maybe there are two guys named Bolivar Trask that look completely different.

I'm willing to throw all the hate on Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix for taking it to the extreme and bringing the timelines too close together.  It's fun to do period pieces in the 80s and 90s but if they wanted to move to a younger version of the cast, they should've just stayed in the 60s.

The X-Men Films

In anticipation of Deadpool and Wolverine, I watched three movies: Deadpool 2 (I've seen the first Deadpool multiple times but I'd only seen 2 once), Logan, and First Class.  For the rest of the movies, I watched summaries on YouTube.  And while I've seen every entry in the series, I don't know how many times I've sat down and watched most of these films a second time.  There were swaths of the movies that I didn't remember.  The original trilogy has been on cable TV for most of my life, and I've seen bits and pieces here and there.  But that's about it.

The original trilogy feels of its time, dated in a way.  The Wolverine Origins movie is fun in places but pretty bad.  The Wolverine is really good but also very forgettable.  The last two McAvoy movies are bad and forgettable.  New Mutants was just nothing.  So to me, this is a series with some real high points but a lot of low points.  I think the three movies I watched were all really good.  The ones I skipped could probably be skipped for a reason.

At the same time, you can't really skip stuff.  The podcast The Weekly Planet noted how funny it would be if you'd watched the Wolverine solo trilogy (Origins, The Wolverine, and Logan) and that's it.  It's one character who literally progresses from youth to death in three movies, but it would be nonsense.  It's a solo trilogy that depends on you knowing characters that don't appear in any of the movies of the trilogy.  You have to have seen The Last Stand for The Wolverine to make sense.  And Professor X makes cameos in the first two movies without any real clarity on who he is, and then he's one of the most important characters in Logan.  There's an end-credits scene in The Wolverine that gets followed up in a different movie.  If you don't see that movie, two characters you don't know show up and warn Logan about an apocalypse that happens off screen, I guess.

Even just tonally, it would be bizarre.  One is a full-on action movie.  The Wolverine is about a man trying to understand his place in the world.  Logan is an R-rated movie about a man who has lost everything.

So even the forgetful entries are important if you want the whole picture.  And while not as successful, there are more X-Men films than Star Wars films.  It's a huge series of films that technically all tie together.  It's impressive.

Deadpool lives in his own space

Deadpool is hard to categorize.  I think it wants to fit in, but I think Deadpool has to live in his own space.  Not only because Wade breaks the fourth wall but because its a comedy.  The scene from Deadpool 2 breaks continuity but it's a sight gag solely for the audience.  I think it's a little bizarre that they went with Colossus in the first place, but I guess you could still argue that those are two characters with similar powers and the exact same name?

Then there's the weird stuff.  I'm not sure how Deadpool's powers work.  He knows he's in a movie (or a comic book) and can talk to the audience.  He's aware that other characters are played by actors, and he's even aware that he's played by an actor named Ryan Reynolds.  Knowing that is one thing.  But has he "seen" X-Men First Class or is he just supernaturally aware that it exists?  Did he see Logan, or does he just somehow know what happened?  Does he gets some sort of pop culture data dump of movies that the audience has seen?  Or can he pop into the Fourth Wall Cinema and actually see these movies?  And when he has the music box of dead Logan from Logan, is that real?  Or just inside Wade's head.

I'll get into a little more in Deadpool and Wolverine spoilers

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Continuing on with Wade's powers...I think (but I don't know if this is consistent) that no one can hear Wade's fourth wall comments.  Either Wade doesn't say them out loud, or whatever he does say out loud makes sense in context.  Because no characters ever react to them.  When Wade is asking which version of the Professor he's going to see or asks Cable about the DC universe, no one ever stops to question what the heck Wade is talking about.  So I have to assume he's either saying nothing or saying something the characters wouldn't think anything less of.  Maybe he's whining something else to Colossus or accusing Cable of having bad breath or something.

But Cassandra Nova gets inside Wade's head.  Couldn't she see whatever is going on?  I think an interesting subplot for Deadpool and Wolverine could've been Cassandra trying to harness whatever fourth wall power that Deadpool has.  I'm assuming, in universe, that she might've just assumed they were the rumblings of a maniac.  But it's hard to say.

Deadpool MCU Chaos

One interesting scene at the beginning of the movie happens when Wade interviews with Happy Hogan to join the Avengers.  It's a funny scene that's played for both laughs and seriousness.  Wade is silly but Happy takes the process seriously.  But how did Wade get there?  Deadpool 2 implies that Wade can somehow travel in time back to our world so did he use the Cable time travel device to travel to the MCU?

The movie doesn't explain and doesn't seem to care.  It also doesn't quite explain why Wade has a change of heart later in the movie.  If he had been accepted into the MCU, would he have taken his friends with him?  Or would he have left them all behind?  Or does he truly only care about Vanessa, who he would've brought with him?  Would he have been okay leaving his other friends in their universe if it meant that they got to live?  The movie doesn't really say.

General movie thoughts

- Overall I really liked it.  Very fun.  Very funny.  Good payoffs.  I think Chris Evans is an underrated actor because he has a completely different posture as Johnny and Steve.  Even when it was implied that Evans was Cap, it didn't feel like Cap.  I thought that was a little underrated.  I also appreciated that I got some payoff from watching 50+ movies in these combined series, whether it be from cameos or easter eggs or whatever.

- I've never seen Elektra.  I think that was the only film that I hadn't seen.  I obviously haven't seen the Channing Tatum Gambit film, but duh.  I was surprised that Deadpool didn't comment on the fact that Tatum's movie never came out.  I also assume that Tatum's accent was awkward on purpose, but it got me thinking what Tatum's Remy accent would've actually been.

- I'm actually a little surprised that there weren't more cameos.  Like with Multiverse of Madness, I was led to believe there would be more cameos so I left a little disappointed.  Unless I missed something, Azazel was the only character from the First Class series to show up.  I think Pyro and Sabretooth were the only original trilogy characters to show up.  Neither version of Scott or Storm or Jean or Mystique or Charles or Magneto or Beast.  Only Johnny from either version of the Fantastic Four.  Neither version of Daredevil.  Some of these characters were referenced but didn't show up.  I get that the movie budget was $200 million, but I'm still surprised.  Some of these actors were certainly available and could've done a quick appearance.  I wasn't upset - just a little surprised.

- I did like the love letter to all the movies in the credits, including some of the smaller or forgotten movies.

- I was a little surprised they allowed the "there will only be one Blade" joke.  Not because Feige would censor Reynolds but because that one had to sting.

- I was a little surprised that Lady Deadpool didn't take off her mask, and I'm a little surprised that Deadpool didn't reference that it was Blake Lively.

- One of the few references I didn't get was all the alternate Deadpools since I'm not super familiar with the comic version of the character.

- I'm very surprised that Deadpool stayed in his own space.  I thought, for sure, that they'd end up in the MCU universe, and I'm a bit shocked that they left him where he was.  It does sort of feel like the end of the character (although you gotta think he shows up in Secret Wars).  At the same time, I guess it makes sense.  I think Reynolds wants to come back and could play this movie a bunch more, but even in Secret Wars, I don't know how the character works.  Would we really want him to break the Fourth Wall in an Avengers movie?  And would a PG-13 version of the character even make sense in an Avengers movie except as a sight gag?  So does it make sense for the next movie (if there is one) to just be a Wade solo movie?  Or maybe it's another buddy film where someone else stumbles into Wade's universe and goes on an adventure?  Spider-Man would be fun, but I assume that would be a rights nightmare.  Wade and another version of Johnny would be fun.  Maybe Wade and another fourth wall breaker in She-Hulk?  Or just bring back Cable and do the X-Force movie.  I just think this would be hard to top.

- After all the Hawkeye jokes, I wish he would've been giving the interview.  Although more Favreau is good.

- So is X-23 the one from Logan?  It was implied, but I really don't know.

- I guess it's also official that Logan is in the Deadpool universe?  Is it possible that Logan and Deadpool is in the same universe but that the rest of the X-Men series is in a separate one?  Deadpool obviously references mutants and the X-Men.  Russell could've been born before the last mutant had been born and there are no mutant kids in the rest of the Deadpool movies (I don't think?).  No one talks about it so maybe it happened that way?  I prefer for Logan to be its own thing, but I don't think it breaks too much if it was just Logan and Deadpool and everything else was separate?

- I was pretty proud of myself.  I went into this movie fairly blind.  I saw parts of the first trailer (the Super Bowl one) but I didn't see any of the subsequent trailers.  I didn't watch any of the TV spots (except when they popped on before I could change it).  I accidentally saw some of the more widely-spread set pictures (Logan and Deadpool fighting in front of the Fox marquee, obviously Logan in his yellow costume, etc).  But I avoided hearing about a bunch of the cameos, even though I could've guessed.  And that might've played into my expectations to see more.

- All in all, I really liked it.  I thought it was fun, had some good action, some good jokes, and was worth the wait.  I don't know if it means that the MCU is back because it feels like such a one-off thing.  I'm also a little surprised they didn't set anything up with the movie (new actor playing Wolverine, any mutant thing in the MCU, new Fantastic Four, etc) but I could see how it might be weird to have this movie fairly separated from the MCU and then tease anything legitimately connected.

My aunt is pretty active in Democratic politics (not important but active ) and she was on the big Harris call that broke Zoom.  I think there's a lot of enthusiasm among women which is huge.  I also think there are voters that are going to look at Trump the way they looked at Biden.  Particularly if he has any slip-ups himself.

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Trump's "you're never going to have to vote again" comments went viral over the weekend.  Scary stuff.  All of Trump's buddies came on the Sunday shows to say that Trump was "obviously kidding" or whatever.  What I legitimately don't understand about non-MAGA Republicans is this.

- Let's say that he comes out and says that he's kidding.  What percent chance are people willing to take that he's going to overthrow democracy?  5%?  1%?  0.1%?  1 out of a thousand seems like a low chance, but are people really willing to take a 1 out of 1000 chance to vote to end democracy?  And don't get me wrong - I think it's a much higher chance, but non-MAGA Republicans are so confident that the chance is 0% (obviously MAGA Republicans would be happy if Trump was a dictator).  If he says stuff like this and then people vote for it, Trump would have a legitimate case to say "this is what the people wanted."

- I understand that guys like Graham and Cotton and Sununu are defending Trump because they think it benefits them.  But what is Trump going to need the Senate for in a dictatorship?  When has Trump ever repaid any of these guys for putting their neck out for him?  These guys are spineless but they're intelligent.  Trump would absolutely have any of them executed just for Trump's amusement.  They know that, right?

- Let's pretend for a moment that Trump is a legitimate guy who actually loves America and doesn't want to ruin democracy for his own game.  Why in the heck would he *ever* joke about it so many times when people already think he's a tyrant?  At some point, even his supporters are going to start to believe him.  Why would he intentionally keep veering into this image that is hideously unpopular even among Republicans?

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I would like to see Harris on TV more.  There's so much free press that she could be getting, but I haven't really seen anything outside of the ads on YouTube.  Is she doing enough press?

Biden's campaign was a bit of a mess, but I don't know if it was a bit of a mess because they were trying to keep Joe from being out in public too much.  But Harris is everywhere now.  She's literally the ad on every YouTube video I see, and that wasn't the case before (when I got ads, it was Obama).  I know that's not going to be everyone's situation, but she's definitely out there campaigning more than Biden was, and that's great.  I hope now that they have a young and energetic candidate (who doesn't have to also run the free world), that this campaign will be a lot more dynamic.

I also love the outpouring of support for Biden for doing the right thing and putting country over ego.  I think this will cement his legacy as a great president and a great American.  I really hope Harris wins for about a billion reasons, but one of those reasons is that I think it closes the book on Biden in a way that will just be fantastic.