Bartimaeus

Reportedly, Obama went to Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to try to form a strong bipartisan response to Russian election meddling, but the Senator did not have much interest and all we got was a watered down and Russia-unspecific message instead. If the FBI did "try to take him out", then that should be investigated; if the Clinton campaign did try to collude with Russia, that should be investigated as well. If there is an actual legal basis for investigation, I'm of the opinion that it should be investigated. After all, the Mueller probe already more than paid for itself (literally, in terms of money regained by the federal government from those whom it convicted). On the matter of Trump, I think Mueller, a Republican himself, has shown himself to be an exemplary and even-handed investigator and prosecutor, and he has a record before this Russian probe that speaks to that excellence both in terms of his actual work as well as the praise he drew from all sides of the political spectrum when he was appointed. If there's not enough evidence for collusion, there's not enough evidence for collusion, and I'm fine with that. Trump clearly had corrupt intent regardless, but we knew that even before this report - you don't ask for foreign countries to dig up dirt on your political opponents on stinking Twitter, but clearly, his supporters did not care and he got elected anyways, so corrupt intent is just part of his game. Regardless, Mueller clearly intended to give this report to Congress to make the judgement themselves, since it's standing Department of Justice policy - although not exactly law - that the president cannot be indicted except by Congress. But as I've said before, I think we're at the point where Republican congressional leaders simply don't care so long as their voting base doesn't care, so unless this does something drastic to Trump's approval numbers (unlikely), we've still got two more years of this madhouse klepto/kakistocracy.

His principal summary that Trump and every media outlet were using to declare "NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION" was completely and utterly bogus in the face of reading the actual (his redacted!) report, and he has continued to try to obfuscate matters since then up until today. Just today, he insisted that Trump "fully cooperated" with Mueller...even though he repeatedly refused to be interviewed. That's a very gracious interpretation of "full cooperation". How has he come across well?

A few fun headlines from the redacted Mueller report I've seen so far: "Barr says he ‘disagreed’ with Mueller on whether Trump obstructed justice ahead of redacted report release" ...Which is to say, Mueller believed Trump did obstruct justice, . "The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests." Alternative way of framing this: "The woman's efforts to have her husband killed were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the hitman who the woman hired declined to carry out orders or accede to her requests." "President Trump reacted negatively to the special counsel's appointment. He told advisors that it was the end of his presidency, sought to have Attorney General Jeff Sessions unrecuse from the Russia investigation and to have the Special Council removed, and engaged in efforts to curtail the Special Council's investigation and prevent the disclosure of evidence to it, including through public and private contacts with potential witnesses"

What Christians are you referring to? Catholics tend to love their gaudy symbols. Iconoclasm. I think it's considered one of the big causes for the break between eastern Orthodoxy and western Catholicism, although I think there's also some debate about exactly how much. There was also a smaller split I think with Catholics and Protestants, though it was less iconoclasm and more 'getting rid of the excesses' Also, you may be thinking of the part about worshipping false idols, which just means that god doesn't care whether you pray at a golden statue as long as it's HIS golden statue. From what I recall, there was a period of time after the Western Roman Empire had fallen, but after which Roman Emperor Justinian had again retaken Italy and integrated it back into the (previously Eastern) Roman Empire, that the Roman Empire had outlawed all kinds of icons - of saints, of God, of Jesus, etc. The western part of the Roman Empire, especially in Italy, had no interest in enforcing this policy, leading to increasing religious and political autonomy from Constantinople. It also didn't help that the Roman Empire had more literally started to lose territory in Italy in the couple of centuries beyond Justinian, among other reasons leading to the pope eventually looking for protection elsewhere and subsequently embracing and crowning the German/Frankish king Charlemagne as the "Holy" Roman Emperor while rejecting Roman Empress Irene (funnily enough, an iconophile herself). As Gorth mentioned, the Great Schism (a couple of centuries later) would be the more or less official point in time that Orthodoxy and Catholicism were completely divorced from one another. (edit): Also, "a smaller split I think with Catholics and Protestants"? Not sure that you can call the Reformation "a small split", really, .

What Christians are you referring to? Catholics tend to love their gaudy symbols. Iconoclasm. I think it's considered one of the big causes for the break between eastern Orthodoxy and western Catholicism, although I think there's also some debate about exactly how much.

(except non-ironically) I presume you have specific headlines you've seen in mind, but it's more difficult to Google for random-but-relevant headlines that have both "Michelle Obama" and "Trump" in them than I expected. The big two I keep seeing are her angry at him for starting the birther conspiracy theory, and criticism over his myriad of misogynist...incidents.

The problem with that is that while plenty of others have strongly criticized Trump, Michelle herself has not been particularly openly critical of him (probably to avoid legacy and politicization issues being the wife of the previous president - even if she had criticism that was totally right, immediately trying to make your successor look poor is a bad look for everyone involved). Her analogy didn't even seem particularly directed at Trump - it was more about how broken as a nation we are, and Trump is simply the figurehead of one side of it.

The Crown of Thorns was saved from the fire by a fight-fighting priest: "Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain of the Paris Fire Brigade, saved the Blessed Sacrament and the Crown of Thorns from the burning cathedral on Monday night when he bravely went in with firefighters. Fournier "went with the firefighters into Notre Dame Cathedral to save the Crown of Thorns and the Blessed Sacrament". It was brought to Paris in 1238 by French monarch Louis IX. The hallowed object was contained in an elaborate gold case which was stored in the cathedral's treasury and is only occasionally displayed for people to see." Original article: https://news.sky.com/story/revealed-fearless-priest-saved-priceless-relics-from-burning-notre-dame-11695316 Even though the relic is very unlikely to truly be *the* crown of thorns that Jesus allegedly wore, it is still a 1500+ year old relic.

Bernie's town hall with Fox News: A few deflections, some perhaps overly roundabout answers so that he could make his point before actually answering the given question (happened more in the first half than the second, I thought), but watching this, I remember why I liked Sanders so much in 2016. The general disinclination to attack or label others except by and on their actual ideas and stances, a strong desire to get to work on the things that a great majority of people would like to immediately get worked on (and not just worked on, but also work through in the serious and difficult manner they require) rather than obsessing with the stupid divisive wedge issues that dominate our politics today (on a side-note, I'm shocked that they didn't try to string him up on guns given all the recent massacres and his lighter than usual stance vs. guns compared to his peers - would've been a great opportunity to get him in a bad light with both progressives and conservatives...especially because it seemed like they had a few gotchas lined up for him), and honestly, I think I just like his personality and his style of oration...for the most part. He's not the perfect man for the job, not by any means - there will undoubtedly be issues with his specific plans for dealing with these things, and of course there will be, just like there is with every candidate and their sky-high "promises" and "plans". The man's a bit of an idealist, but he has the good sense to say that a lot of these things will be difficult to deal with in a way that works sensibly for the majority of people, which is absolutely true - especially if there is no unity between us, if we remain as polarized as we are (especially needlessly on issues where we actually agree to a great degree). I remember why I voted for him in 2016, and I'm getting ready to do so again if there's not a darned compelling argument in favor of someone else. Let's have an agenda to deal with and, yes, seriously work on the stuff that a strong majority of the U.S. - us - agree needs to be worked on. Even if we end up arguing for years about the specifics of the things that need to be worked on, I can be content that, at the very least, they'll have been the pressing issues worth arguing about rather than the absolute nonsense that has been going on for years now.

Just the opposite: the only thing (new) Star Wars is good for is laughing. Palpatine implausibly coming back could very well be a return to the golden age of Star Wars comedy (aka the prequels), and I'm all for it as someone that couldn't muster up any desire at all to watch The Last Jedi. Honestly, though, I'm not sure that anyone can really quite replicate George Lucas' knack for unintentionally and hilariously bad writing (that sort of thing can be hard to replicate without it coming across as intentionally bad which just isn't the same after all), but I remain an optimist. Bringing back Ian McDiarmid, who is always a great performer even if and perhaps especially when nothing his character is doing makes a lick of sense, is surely a good start, though. If that's a troll by the director, I'll be pretty sad.

I've already seen jokes on the main reddit thread for the teaser about "woodoo hide" and "Emperor Palpatine Surgical Reconstruction Center" and "Palpatine's behind it all!".

A couple of months ago, I finally sat down and properly watched the Lion King for the first time since it came out (not having been the biggest fan of it then). It was...kind of mediocre? Not as bad as I was expecting or remembered, but I still just don't care for it. Surprisingly, I also liked Timon and Pumbaa (I really disliked them when I first watched it, but it's been many years and I've grown as a movie-watcher since - properly executed comic relief characters shouldn't necessarily be anathema, especially ones that add value to themes and character/story arcs and are just generally likeable characters), and I also kind of liked Scar as a performer. I think the main problem was Simba being an arrogant dumb dumb for the first half of the film, then switching to full out cowardice for most of the rest, and then driving it home with the almost always dumb "I'm the rightful heir" plot device finally making him "turn into the perfect man after which he does everything perfectly without error". When a film's meaningful screen time is about 95% the protagonist, the protagonist should ideally be likeable, and Simba was the opposite for me, and that's really how it began and ended.

Yeah, see the hidden image at the bottom of my post. Yes, Gronk did retire for real.

Tom Brady is retiring.

Yeah, I don't think George Lucas really understood that circa 1999.

Michael Avenatti arrested for alleged $20 million extortion scheme against Nike, embezzling client's money, defrauding bank: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/25/michael-avenatti-to-be-charged-with-wire-and-bank-fraud.html Y'all remember when this piece of work was considering running for president?

Based on the Attorney General's summarization, that does seem to be the case. From his statement, the general idea appears to be that there is insufficient evidence for the "collusion" charge (whatever that would actually be legally), and that because the "collusion" charge cannot be proven, it is also difficult to realistically pursue an obstruction of justice charge resulting from it, no matter what Trump's done that explicitly looks like exactly that. If there's not enough evidence, there's not enough evidence. So...vote in a year and a half. It does beg the question of why Trump has been acting so insanely guilty over the past two years (all starting with begging for Comey's loyalty and to close any investigation into him, then firing him when he refused and publicly explaining that it was because of "the Russia thing"). Hoping we get some explanation of that here sooner or later.

I'm nearly movie illiterate in terms of classic film, but that being Shere Khan makes so much sense. The second he opened up his mouth in All About Eve, I immediately laughed and remarked to the other person I was watching with about him having the most absurdly pompous, condescending voice.

All About Eve (1950). Knew absolutely nothing about this one going into it, besides that it was well-reviewed. I very much liked it.

Mueller's report has been filed. (e): and smjjames beat me by seconds. Brutal, .

They need 270 electoral votes for it to go into force, they're at 181 now (89 to go) with 158 others in various stages of pending (some of them with a realistic path, some of them not...for the time being). That's the thing about once it goes through for a state - they only need one election that gives a state trifecta at worst (i.e. with zero Republican support) for it to go through, and once it's through, the Republicans will need a state trifecta to overturn it (well, once again, assuming zero Democratic support). Right now, Delaware (3) and New Mexico (5) are awaiting governor's signature and likely to be approved soon. After that...a few other states seem likely to jump on board sooner or later (like Oregon and Michigan), but yeah, it'll still be a while before it happens, if ever.

It's theoretically supposed to benefit Democrats, but I am curious to see how that actually works in practice. There's a lot of disenfranchised people on both sides that are either taken for granted or simply ignored in the presidential race because of the electoral college. It makes me wonder how a popular vote election will affect the margins in places like California when people - on both sides - realize that their vote will actually affect the vote totals, which then have an effect on who's elected. Interesting thing about this National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is that it's not *that* easy to overturn once enacted, so when - if - it ever comes to be, it could seriously change the reality of our elections for a time to come. To overturn in any given state effectively requires a state trifecta, so if the Democrats find that it actually ends up harming them instead of helping, they could find it very difficult to overturn it in all but the bluest of states, and then a few red trifecta states could jump in and reinforce it, effectively taking their place and reinstating it. It's hard to see us going back to the electoral college once it passes that threshold. Will be very interesting to see how that affects national politics if it comes to be. I'm more interested in ranked choice voting to actually introduce the possibility of third parties, but that's almost certainly even farther off than this compact (and I assume it all has to be state-enacted - think states are guaranteed the right to hold their own elections how they want, right?).

And on that note... Guard Dog, how do you feel about (the mostly Democrat-led) effort to eliminate the electoral college in favor of using the popular vote to elect the president instead?

I'm a Windows 7 user.

For me, the difference is that from Steam's perspective, there is no such thing as "Steam exclusives". Steam does not offer exclusivity deals: Valve is perfectly fine with publishers also selling their games on GOG, Humble Bundle, their own service, the Microsoft Store, etc. In cases where a game is "exclusive" to Steam, it just means the publisher is crappy and hasn't bothered pursuing other avenues, and that's, quite frankly, not Valve's/Steam's fault, but rather the publishers' - yell at them all you like for it. Hard me to direct much ire at Steam outside of recognizing the fact that Steam is the most dominant distributor on a number of levels. With exclusivity deals on the EGS, the blame falls pretty squarely on both the distributor for offering such deals as well as the publisher for accepting them. A big screw-you to both parties involved here. I assume Obsidian wasn't a part of the decision. It took me long enough to get used to Steam, I am not allowing another garbanzo beans app be constantly up and running on my PC unless they make a really compelling argument, of which the EGS has done the exact opposite from a consumer perspective (quite contrary it seems from a publisher/developer view based on these exclusivity deals becoming more and more common...but that does not affect me and therefore does not serve as a compelling argument). So...2020. I am perfectly fine with people not wanting to play a game if it's a Steam exclusive. Personally, I've grown to hate Steam more and more over the years (I think it peaked around 2009-2011), so I barely buy anything on there, either. It's still an option for games that are only there because of publisher decision, though.