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Billy_TParticipantAlso, on the issue of the TV writers versus Martin: It’s highly subjective, of course, but for me, based on reading just that series, Martin isn’t really a good writer. But he’s very good at making you want to turn the pages. He tells a story you want to stay with. I couldn’t put his books down, all the while recognizing that his prose wasn’t good. It’s clunky, needlessly repetitive in too many places and every book could have used a strong editor to rein him in. He needed his own Maxwell Perkins. But what all too often happens in the book business is . . . once you’re a star, editors tend to leave you alone. On a first book? They can tear your work apart, mercilessly.
Most fans don’t get the chance to read the TV scripts. I never have. So I can’t compare the two. But the results on the screen make me think they’re better when they’re being guided by the books, even with their deviations, etc.
Billy_TParticipantI watched the latest episode again, and i liked it a lot less. Too many plot contrivances.
And i dont like what they’ve done to Arya. She should be smarter. They’ve made her seem pretty dum.
Good series, enjoyable series, but the writers/producers have failed this season. Big fail, imho. My question is, is that because the writers were never that good, and it was all George RR Martin? Or is the main problem the producers decision to shorten the season.
w
vI usually wait awhile before rewatching them. Sometimes the next year. But it might be helpful.
The TV show is all on its own now, and that may have a lot to do with this not seeming to fit together as well as it once did. It’s not really Martin’s story anymore. It’s the two guys who are reportedly also working on an already controversial show about a confederacy-won-the-war alternative show.
Perhaps the main reason Martin hasn’t finished his series is that he tends to have all kinds of different projects going at the same time . . . and/or he just can’t figure out how to bring it all to a close in a way that he feels good about. He started the whole thing back in 1991, and it took him five years to write the first book. It was published in 1996. Last one came out in 2011. I’ve finished three of my own novels of in less than five years, but they’re admittedly much shorter. His tend to be in the 700-800 page range.
I wish the show had be able to follow the books, instead of outpacing them. But Martin’s methods made that impossible.
Billy_TParticipantAnd, at the risk of belaboring the point — I’ve had waaay too much coffee this morning — here’s another major factor:
From what we know of the GOT universe, the wights tend not to travel alone or in small groups. When we see them at this stage of the story, they’re a part of that mass army we saw at Hardhome. Which means, Jon and his band weren’t going to be able to go guerilla and pick them off one by one. They were almost certain to meet them as part of a massed army, and that should have been a factor in their planning. To me, knowing this, knowing the size of that zombie army . . . . that would have nixed the plan from the start.
Anyway, the sun goes out soon. I blame Cersei.
Billy_TParticipantI’m fine with the “bring back a wight” idea.
In fact I don’t know what’s supposedly wrong it, to be honest.
For me, two main reasons:
1. The impossible odds (up front) with that very small band of men, going up against an army of the dead, capturing just one wight without ending up an unwilling part of that army.
2. That Cersei would believe that just one wight proves the threat of a massive and growing army of the dead is real.
It’s like, if your point is to demonstrate that a certain kind of offense will get the Rams to the Super Bowl, you won’t convince anyone, really, if you cite one successful play. They’re gonna want to see a critical mass of plays working, etc.
Billy_TParticipantOne of my current (bingeing) favorites is Person of Interest. It’s a Sci-Fi story set in New York that doesn’t make its Sci-Fi aspects hard to imagine as actually existing now. The foundational premise is mass surveillance via an AI “machine.” But it gets ahead of its skis at times when it sets up confrontations between enemies and heroes. When it has impossible numbers of enemies, armed to the teeth, facing off against the very small band of regulars.
You know I have been wanting to watch that series for awhile but just haven’t done it yet. I know that Johnathan Nolan was a creator and I’m a fan of his(as my quote tag reveals)and so one of these days I have to do it. I want to see if it’s on Netflix because I’d like to start at the beginning.
Yes, it’s on Netflix. That’s how I’m rewatching it now. I love it, despite the sometimes impossible story-lines.
If you do start watching, give it a bit of time. It’s not one of those series that hits the ground running. It has a lot of complicated back stories, needs a bit of build-up and, IMO, it doesn’t really take off until they add the character of Shaw, played by Sarah Shahi. I think that’s in season two. But the show gains sustainable momentum toward the latter part of season one. You likely won’t want to stop watching it from that point on.
I wish CBS had hung in there with it longer. If memory serves, it made it through five seasons, but there was enough material for more. It was nowhere near past its prime, IMO.
Billy_TParticipantOne of my current (bingeing) favorites is Person of Interest. It’s a Sci-Fi story set in New York that doesn’t make its Sci-Fi aspects hard to imagine as actually existing now. The foundational premise is mass surveillance via an AI “machine.” But it gets ahead of its skis at times when it sets up confrontations between enemies and heroes. When it has impossible numbers of enemies, armed to the teeth, facing off against the very small band of regulars.
I really, really like the show, but I wish it didn’t do that, and I find it unnecessary . . . to push the plot, create suspense, thrills, interesting dynamics, etc. etc. I just see no need to corner heroes in such a way that their escape means we basically have to suspend our disbelief many times over.
A pet peeve of mine . . .
Billy_TParticipantYeah, PA . . . “silly” is a fair critique. Too many impossible matters of time travel, especially, from Gendry’s speed in reaching the wall, to the speed of the ravens alerting Dany, to her flight to the exact right place to save the day.
If I’m the writer, I don’t concoct the “bring back one wight for proof” story at all. It never made any sense within the context of the GOT universe. Far too risky, after what we all saw with the massacre at Hardhome. Sending a small troop of mortals to find a needle in the haystack of thousands and thousands of wights, and their white walker masters?
If they needed to get a dragon to the Night King, there had to be a better way.
One of the things that happens with a lot of fantasy shows . . . . and I mean this within the logic of the story itself . . . they often tend to set up impossible odds when that’s just not necessary. You can create stories of struggle, conflict, overcoming the odds, without them being impossible to overcome. By definition, the impossible part means you can’t. So they should dial that back a bit and make it crazy hard, but at least doable. The audience will find that thrilling and exciting too, and it won’t see it as “silly,” unless you set up enemies and circumstances that just shouldn’t ever be overcome. Again, even within the universe of the story.
Billy_TParticipantThis may be taking the easy way out, but . . . . I personally got frustrated watching the slow trudging from one part of Westeros to the next in years past. I think those episodes took too much time to get anywhere, literally and figuratively.
But this season has the opposite problem. So . . . um, well. There’s gotta be a middle ground there, right? And I say that as someone who can’t stand that kind of assessment in most political matters. As in, public policy is naturally better if it’s somewhere “in the middle.” Aside from that being all relative, “the center” as usually defined by our two parties almost always means grotesquely ineffective mush.
But when it comes to art and mapping out a TV series . . . well, I think there’s some merit in finding that sweet spot between trudging through the tundra for weeks and weeks and instantly arriving as if Scotty beamed them across Westeros.
Billy_TParticipantAgain, I love the show, so my own criticism always has that in mind. But I think this critique is pretty much spot on, and the author also ends it with praise. Frustration spelled out before that, but ends it with praise. Worth a read:
Excerpt:
A criticism commonly levied at recent episodes of Game of Thrones is that characters suddenly appear to have developed the ability to teleport from one side of Westeros to the other with no more than a crinkling of their noses.
Jon was in Winterfell. Then Dragonstone. Then all of a sudden he was north of the Wall on some hairbrained scheme to kidnap a Wight. Whereas previous seasons would have dwelled on the minutiae of trudging from place to place, mining rich seams of character development along the way, this one has more world-ending matters to deal with than spending five episodes watching Jon and chums amble up a snowy hill. So it doesn’t bother. And while I reject the “teleportation” criticism – they don’t tend to show characters on the toilet either, because that too would be irrelevant to the plot – it is indicative of a deeper issue with the current series: that it’s become blindingly obvious seven episodes is simply not enough. The producers’ decision to shorten the episode count from 10 did make each episode a thrilling set piece. The problem is that they’ve been trying to cram so much into each, little things like “logic” and “character” have burst out of the seams.
Billy_TParticipantEpic. I loved the episode, even though it was crazy and impossible and filled with plot holes galore.
But, I hate the idea of Zombie Dragons. I mean, and I knew it was coming. I knew Zombie Dragon had to follow the best dragon rescue scene, evah. But the writers just stepped in it when they sent that small group on their wild ghoul chase, and there’s just no way to rationalize that, so you have to make up for it with an epic dragon rescue. The whole series was pointing toward that . . . though I’m not sure Martin would have ever set it up that way.
Next Sunday is gonna be soooo wild.
Speaking of time, Business Insider has a map (prior to this episode) of all the Jon Snow travels, compared to the White Walkers and the Wights. Martin didn’t explain this in the books, if memory serves, but, sheeesh!! One team must live on coffee and Red Bull, while the other prefers a different kind of buzz.
map shows how far Jon Snow has traveled compared to the White Walkers on ‘Game of Thrones’
Billy_TParticipant. But it would seem, at least on the surface, that corporate interests have aligned with the insurance industry, for some bizarre reason . . . I haven’t figured that one out yet.
Businesses receive subsidies when they pay for insurance for employees. I am not sure of the details on that or how it works.
BUT single payer could not be gathering steam if it were universally opposed by business interests.
And btw a lot of this is just me getting my vote in on this or that topic. If WV wants to talk about the mega-corps that’s fine with me, not that he should care either way if it;s fine with me or not.
I was just saying why I don’t use that particular terminology. We’re all allies whatever which way we put it, and purity of terminology is for purists, or for the pure, which actually don’t exist. (Yes I am a pure purist about the existence of the pure.)More good points. But, in the spirit of just being plain obnoxious, I’m a pure purist about the non-existence of the pure. I don’t think there is such a species seeking that sort of thing. But that’s purely conjectural, I suppose.
I guess that’s one of those Barber of Seville kinds of cone-em-drums . . .
Billy_TParticipantAre we really in Alex-Jones Territory if we wonder about the influence of the Bildergers/Tri-lateral folks? The CIA/NSA folks? The Mega-Corpse? Etc.
Well no, not for most of those, that’s not Alex Jones stuff. You can add the Koch brothers to that. The “mega corpse” one isn’t in that territory because Jones would never go there. I do think that one’s too big though. THe american corporate/business world is just simply not unitary enough to conspire on anything. That’s like saying all scientists lie about climate change. At that point IMO you’re really in the murkier territory of interests and policies. That is, it’s in xyz’s interests to have xyz policies. Even that doesn’t hold as unitary. I mean, is Ben and Jerry’s really the same as Exxon?
Corporate interests aren’t necessarily “unitary” as you mention. You’ve talked about that for some time now. But the capitalist system established itself as the first unified economic system in history. Nothing prior to it ever sought the kind of total legal and social control it now enjoys, and its innate impulses force it to pursue more and more unification. Prior to its destruction of previous economic systems, which were independent of one another, and mostly limited to the local, you actually had, ironically, “free markets.” The whole deal for capitalism is to control those markets under one standardized set of rules, acceptable currencies, trade agreements, international ruling bodies and so on. Again, all of that is unprecedented.
To me, that’s naturally going to lead to a great deal of “same page” decision-making, but that doesn’t necessarily mean conspiracies, which is your point, unless I misread you.
One example of a seeming conflict of corporate interests is the battle against Medicare for All or Single Payer. One would think it would be an awesome deal for most capitalist businesses. The public would pick up the tab for health insurance entirely. No more burden for individual companies. The obvious opposition to that is the private insurance industry itself. But it would seem, at least on the surface, that corporate interests have aligned with the insurance industry, for some bizarre reason . . . I haven’t figured that one out yet.
Billy_TParticipantWell ok, if that is how “conspiracy theory” is defined in academia, so be it. It basically only applies to the Alex Jones nutcase-theories.
I would only caution we must be wary of lumping everyone who wrestles with notions of concentrated power into that nutcase-group.
We know there are very very powerful groups in the country and the world and they wield a lot of power. Are we really in Alex-Jones Territory if we wonder about the influence of the Bildergers/Tri-lateral folks? The CIA/NSA folks? The Mega-Corpse? Etc.
One of the problems I see, is, this is beyond scientific study. At least it looks that way to me. How does one ‘study’ what the Rothschilds are doing? Or the Rockefellas or Morgans or the mega-corpse lobbyists? How does one study the corporotacracy scientifically? And if one is wedded to sciency-thot then perhaps one is very quick to dismiss ‘conspiracy ideas’ ?
w
vYes, there are obviously powerful groups who control vast amounts of resources and seek to maintain and grow that power. I think the Alex Jones nutcase stuff kicks in most often when people bring old myths into the present. The one about the Rothchilds, for instance, goes back to the battle of Waterloo.
This happens innocently and not so innocently. There are plenty of people who question these things out of sincere, authentic motives and very best intentions, from the pov of a strong moral compass, and I’d put the posters here in that category.
Billy_TParticipant1. Is there an existential threat to the participants if they don’t act? As in, if they do nothing, what are the consequences?
I would say that this is interesting discussion. I have hesitations with your #1 though. The issue is not always just threat. Often real conspiracies are based on gain, not threat, real or imagined. So for example CEO Bernard Ebbers who was convicted of using fraudulent accounting to deceive investors about the economic standing of Worldcom. It’s a conspiracy because he could not do that himself–it was a group effort. He wasn’t under threat because of protections for companies like that (golden parachutes, bankruptcy laws)…it was just greed.
I can see your hesitations. I probably didn’t amplify that aspect enough when I mentioned risk/reward with the second one. That’s about the “gain” part. Bernard Ebbers and his helpers must have calculated that the risk was worth the reward, that the gain they sought, out of greed, was significant enough to warrant the risk.
Though, I’m guessing, plenty of exceptions exist where the greed part and the lust for that gain overwhelm a logical appraisal of risk. Wall Street seems rampant with this. Though I’m also guessing that these guys think they can get away with it, that they’re too smart to get caught, etc. And perhaps the risk may even add to the thrill of it all?
Jumping out of airplanes and rolling the dice on insider trading, perhaps? Though that may be a stretch . . . But I’d also guess that coming up with a group all on the same page with these psychological traits would be rather rare, which would also make the conspiracy less likely to hold together, etc.
Billy_TParticipantZN,
What’s your take on this?
The conclusion regarding whether or not a “conspiracy” has taken place should draw from several key elements:
1. Is there an existential threat to the participants if they don’t act? As in, if they do nothing, what are the consequences?
2. If they do act, what is the risk/reward ratio? As in, do they gain enough by acting to justify the risk? This calculation strikes me as most pertinent to public figures, where risk of exposure is higher on their list than in some other walks of life.
3. Can they achieve their desired goals though some other action, one that is legal, carries no punishment, etc.?It’s all going to come down to a calculation regarding an “if this, then that” scenario. For inaction and action. For consequences and exposure.
Going back to the Iraq war and 9/11, for example, inaction (prior to the attacks of that day) posed zero threat to the participants. Not invading Iraq posed no threat to Bush, Cheney and company, especially not existentially. And, as already mentioned, the ruling class just never blows up its own assets to get what it wants. As far as I know, there is no example of that in history.
Sidenote: Your comment about Dulles? Was that facetious or your actual belief? Would be interested in reading more on that topic.
Billy_TParticipantThe question would be what specific laws are broken by what actions.
And of course, the Russia/Trump thing is about more than just hacking the dems. It fact it was about more than just the election. There was all sorts of connections covering all sorts of things.
But all gets down to, what laws if any were broken.
.
Agreed. I think this is waaaay bigger than the hack of the DNC, and that’s not even that much of a concern for me. I am worried, however, that they probed election systems in a coupla dozen states, and “friendly” black hat guys showed how easy those are to hack. The Russians, or some other country, or some American corporation(s), may well go for it next time. And I’m definitely worried about Eric Prince and his family. Hell, the guy has a private army, and is trying to get Trump to privatize the war in Afghanistan for him.
Well, to clarify. Much of our war machine is already privatized. He wants this accelerated in his favor. He also has private intel companies . . . and more and more of that aspect of government is being farmed out for profits.
Piece by piece, America is selling off its public assets and losing accountability. More and more, our reality is looking like a J.J Abrams TV show. The Future is Now, etc.
(One of my favorite TV shows for bingeing right now is Person of Interest. If you guys add it to your Netflix queue, give it a bit of time. IMO, it really picks up steam in Season Two, and gets much better with the addition of Sarah Shahi.)
Billy_TParticipantThe only reason they’re against him (IMO) if they are, is cuz he’s crazy, incredibly ignorant, and liable to get us into a nuclear war with North Korea or Iran or some other target. Aside from that, his policy ideas sync up with the powers that be very well, especially on the economy.
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Well, I am not a hundred percent ‘sure’ of any of this, but i do think there is a ‘they’ and I do think ‘they’ are fighting against Trump in some way. They loved Hillary and they dont like Trump. I suspect its not that they think he’s “nutz”. I think it has to do with Russia and his ideas that are a bit like Buchanons. Trump seems to want a bigger military and he seems to be a hawk when it comes to N.Korea and Iran, but other than that, I’m not sure he wants to spread the Empire as much as Hillary and that group. But i dunno. Could be he just pissed off some bigwigs in the CIA.
w
vTrump had to have made Military Complex contractors ecstatic on his trip to the Middle East. He helped broker a deal for 115 billion dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, and in a very strange brag, said he got them a really good deal. He actually seems to have tried to lower the price so the Saudis would go for it. He also fawned all over the Saudis and the other Arab dictators, has a real thing for the crackpot leader of the Philippines, Duterte, and has threatened to go to war against Venezuela, directly, and insinuated he might invade Mexico. He threatened Venezuela with invasion recently, and Mexico in his first week in office.
He’s more of a hawk than the very hawkish Clinton. I don’t want either party in power. But Trump is more likely to get us into war. He also recently bragged about how our nuclear capabilities are greater than ever, thanks to him, and he promised to radically increase the size and power of the military, especially the Navy. If anyone expected that Trump would be in the Ron Paul, non-intervention mode . . . they must be greatly disappointed right now. He strikes me more like Dr. Strangelove.
Billy_TParticipantJust in case you might care to read these, WV . . . Here are the emails themselves:
I think this is the first in the chain:
On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:36 AM, Rob Goldstone wrote:
Good morning
Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin.
What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?
I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.
Best
Rob Goldstone
And Don Jr. response:
On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:53, Donald Trump Jr. wrote:
Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?
Best,
Don
Sent from my iPhone
Billy_TParticipantWV,
The big deal is that they knowingly took a meeting with Russians, for the express purpose of gaining dirt on Clinton FROM the Russian government . . . including a Russian spy in the room, lied about it, lied again about it, and again, and then finally published the email chain proving this all happened, cuz the NYT was about to. The emails are damning.
The pattern for Trump and his team has been endless lies about their Russian connections, then admitting they met, but saying they never discussed the election; then admitting they discussed the election, once they were outed, but then saying so what. But if there’s nothing to this, why the endless lies? Why did Sessions, Flynn, Manafort and Kushner ALL lie about Russia on their security forms? Which, btw, is a felony. Why did they lie if there’s no collusion here, or no crooked financial deals?
Billy_TParticipantBT, i havent looked at any of this Trump Jr. stuff so i dont really know shit about it. All i know is he met with some Rooskies and they discussed…what?…some anti-Hillary stuff? Is that it?
Why is that a big deal? Dum it down for me. Make it simple.
w
vHere’s a good run down of the evolving explanations for why the meeting took place, and who was in it. The author tries to add a little levity by using an analogy from Ocean’s Eleven.
Donald Trump Jr lied first that the meeting never happened; then that the meeting was only about adoption; then that no one else was there; then that only three people were there, and so on. He lied at least three times in public, and Trump Sr. lied several times about who crafted those lies and when. The prez was responsible for at least one of them.
It ended up being roughly eight people in the meeting, including a Russian spy, and a Russian lawyer with direct connection to the Kremlin. Donald Jr, Kushner and Trump’s then campaign manager, Manafort, all attended the meeting, which was held at Trump Tower.
Under pressure because the NYT was about the publish the email chain that detailed this, Trump Jr. published it himself. It clearly shows that they took the meeting because they were being promised dirt on Clinton FROM the Russian government. That’s stated explicitly, as is the fact that Russia wanted to help Trump win.
Again, this is all in the emails which Trump Jr published. They can’t call it “fake news,” cuz he published them. As mentioned, the quid pro quo was an attempt to get America to drop sanctions on Russia pertaining to the Magnitsky Act. That was the Russian woman’s specialty.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/11/politics/donald-trump-jr-russia-new-york-times/index.html
CNN)This paragraph, from The New York Times’ latest scoop on a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer, is completely and totally damning:
“Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.”
Remember that Don Jr. has changed his story since the Times reported a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya on Saturday.
Version 1: The meeting was primarily about adoptions. Don Jr. didn’t mention anything about the election to the Times.
Version 2: The impetus for the meeting was the promise of negative information about Hillary Clinton. But Don Jr. said in a statement he didn’t know who it was he was meeting with.
CNN has not verified the Times report, and we’ll see if a Version 3 emerges. But Version 2 is wholly undermined by the latest Times reporting.
The idea that Don Jr. didn’t know the identity of the person he was meeting with preserved the possibility that he walked into the meeting totally blind. All he knew was that he was meeting with a friend of a friend — the meeting had been brokered by someone Don Jr. met in Russia during a Miss Universe pageant — who had information about Clinton.
But, according to the Times, Don Jr. received an email from the same person who set up the meeting making clear that the material was part of a Russian government effort to help his father’s candidacy.
So, even if he didn’t know the exact name or identity of the Russian lawyer he was to meet with, he knew — if he read his email — that whatever he was told in the meeting was part of a foreign government’s efforts to help choose its preferred candidate in the 2016 election.
Sit with that for a minute: The eldest son of the de facto Republican presidential nominee reportedly met with someone he knew was peddling information as part of a Russian government effort to elect his dad.
That’s stunning. There’s just no other word for it.
RELATED: White House: Trump didn’t know about his son’s meeting with Russian lawyer
Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., said in a statement following the story that it was “much ado about nothing.”
And I’m sure there will be spin and explanations. The whole thing was a nothing-burger! Don Jr. quickly sniffed out the fact that the information Veselnitskaya was telling him was useless. So who cares?Billy_TParticipantI just saw this last night, and thought it was a recent development. It perked my ears up a bit. In searching for it, I see it was from April. Which dampens my enthusiasm somewhat. Is it possible that Mueller is sitting on this while he completes the investigation more deeply and widely? Or is this bunk?
Personally, I’m not getting why the Trump Jr meeting with the Russian spies didn’t already sink Trump Sr. We have the emails to prove collusion right there. For any other politician, that would have led to impeachment and removal. It’s only because Trump seems to have nine lives times a thousand that it didn’t sink him.
It doesn’t matter at all that there was supposedly no pot of gold there as advertised. We know Trump Jr, Kushner and Manafort took the meeting with the Russians because they believed they would receive dirt on HRC — and, the quid pro quo was the Magnitsky Act/sanctions. Anyone saying, “But there was no there there!” should consider how many people are in jail because they did something similar. Drugs, arms sales, sex slavery, etc. etc. . . . It doesn’t matter if it ends up being a dead end. If the police or the FBI catch a person attempting to engage in these things, and they don’t get off on a defense like entrapment? They go to jail.
I’m really puzzled why that revelation wasn’t the final straw . . . other than the fact we’ve had about a thousand of those moments since Trump came down the elevator and preached Birtherism.
Billy_TParticipantI honestly can’t think of any instance in American history where it was necessary.
Well they faked the moon landing to distact attention from the recognition that the world is actually flat.
So it’s not like they’ve NEVER done that.
Oh, you’re just saying that cuz you were wrong about the White Walkers.
Ah, wait a second. That was me being wrong. Um, never mind.
Billy_TParticipantBannon isn’t gone.
His move back to Breitbart was coordinated in Wed and Thurs.
He was back at work at Breitbart on Fri eve.
Trump needed an external attack vector to hammer “disloyal Republicans”
That is absolutely what he is doing. He flat out said so in an interview with the Weekly Standard. Breitbart is going after “wayward” Republicans – as well as Democrats, obviously. He got frustrated with the slow pace of the “American carnage” that he forecast through Trump’s inauguration address, and thinks he can apply more pressure to achieve that from his propaganda machine than from inside the White House which he thinks is gummed up with Establishment types. “Globalists” like Ivanka and Jared.
“I feel jacked up,” he says. “Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”
Bannon tells The Weekly Standard that he can be more effective without the constraints of the White House. “I can fight better on the outside. I can’t fight too many Democrats on the inside like I can on the outside.”
And, he says, Trump encouraged him to take on the Republican establishment. “I said, ‘look, I’ll focus on going after the establishment.’ He said, ‘good, I need that.’ I said, ‘look, I’ll always be here covering for you.’”
This is a time to get the popcorn ready because Breitbart is going to be dictating the news cycles now. He is going to set the table regularly for what the hairdos are going to talk and write about. He claims he has already succeeded in permanently realigning politics in this country, and has set the stage to blow up the establishment in earnest. And like he said, he KNOWS stuff now that can be used as pressure points. From outside the government, he thinks he has clear shots to purge the party. So we are going to see over the next year whether Bannon is a shrewd manipulator, or a victim of his own hubris.
I think his resignation leaves McMaster as the only person in the White House who can say anything to Trump. I have no handle on that guy yet, but he is the one to watch on the inside now.
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Who are the players in this earthly-existential-drama, Zooey? Is that even a reasonable question? And who are the puppets and who are the puppet-masters?
I keep trying to formulate a model of ‘the situation’ or ‘the reality’.
I mean, ya got the Alt-right/Breitbart-right folks like Bannon. I dont really know who/what they are, but they remind me a lot of the Pat Buchannon folks — ultimately RightWing Corporate-Capitalists who do not get along with the rightwing establishment globalists. They are a bit more isolationists (except for Israel/Iran, maybe)
Then ya got yer Establishment Reps. Pro-corporate-capitalist Neocon/NeoLibs.
Then ya got yer Evangelical Rightwing Christians. Its all about abortion to most of them.
Then ya got yer Hillary-Globalist-Pro-Corporate Dems. The DNC. (I think the establishment Reps and the Hillary Globalists make up a big part of this thing i call ‘the deep state’. The deep state does not like Trump.)
Then ya got yer Bernie Dems. I dunno how big a group the progressives are.
What other factions are in this pile of politics? Thousands of smaller groups, i guess.
w
vI know you asked Zooey, and not me . . . . but, my own two cents is you have most of that right. Good summary. But I don’t think “the deep state” is against Trump for any reason other than they think he’s nutz. It’s the opposite of what his fanboys think — that he’s a threat to their power, etc. No. He wants what they want: a much bigger military, neoliberal economic policies, massive tax cuts for the rich, accelerated privatization of public goods, services and assets, including public schools and national parks . . . and major deregulation.
Trump is fine with “extreme measures” when it comes to war, and has railed against “PC” preventing our military from functioning properly. As in, he wants to take off all the gloves. The power elite, in general, wants that too. With exceptions.
The only reason they’re against him (IMO) if they are, is cuz he’s crazy, incredibly ignorant, and liable to get us into a nuclear war with North Korea or Iran or some other target. Aside from that, his policy ideas sync up with the powers that be very well, especially on the economy.
Billy_TParticipantBannon isn’t gone.
His move back to Breitbart was coordinated in Wed and Thurs.
He was back at work at Breitbart on Fri eve.
Trump needed an external attack vector to hammer “disloyal Republicans”
I agree with you on that one, Mac. Completely. Very well put, direct and to the point. It’s one of those Old Hacker style posts . . . I’d probably turn that into five pages, instead, and it wouldn’t really have added anything of import.
;>)
Billy_TParticipantYeah, I agree with Billy there. You don’t do False Flag operations in New York City destroying the assets of the economic elite when it is far easier, safer, and cheaper to do them overseas.
Moreover…and this is to me the trump card argument…if you want to go to war with Iraq, and you had this big complex, tricky stunt to pull off…you would use Iraqi pilots. Compared to the difficulty of the rest of that operation, getting Iraqi pilots and money trails would have been comparatively simple, and made a much, much better case for the invasion.
Yep. It wouldn’t have been difficult to pin some direct provocation on Hussein. And why go such a roundabout way through Al Queda, if the aim was war with Iraq?
But, the main thing is, to me: the ruling class, the ruling elite, or Mills’ “power elite,” just isn’t gonna blow up its own key assets to start a war, or even to consolidate power. They’ve never had to do that in the past to make that happen. I honestly can’t think of any instance in American history where it was necessary.
Billy_TParticipantLotsa good points, WV.
I don’t trust the government to tell us the truth about a lot of stuff. But, when it’s in the hands of “moderates,” I think it’s more a matter of what they leave out than what they divulge. As in, moderate governments tend to lie through omission. A radical-right government is going to do that, too, but will add lies of commission. Everything from “Global Warming is a hoax” to “Immigrants are pouring over our borders and raping, killing and stealing our jobs” to the slightly less unhinged “Tax cuts pay for themselves and spur growth.”
A moderate government will leave out the war stuff, and surveillance stuff, and black ops and black sites, and special deals for capitalists, and covert coups to help those capitalists take over markets, etc. etc. They won’t tell us this stuff is going on. But they tend to get sciency stuff right, and basic economic stats correct — job numbers, unemployment, GDP, etc.
IMO, we still don’t know exactly (beyond a general outline) what happened on 9-11 or why. But I think the truthers’ version is nutz, and just a radical distortion by way of commission, rather than omission. I think the government’s story since that date is a lie on the side of omission, not commission. If Trump survives, it wouldn’t surprise me if he goes after that topic too, and follows a slightly modified Alex Jones tract. The alt-right would love him for that.
Billy_TParticipantSeveral major problems with the Truthers’ argument. But just from a method’s pov, they didn’t follow the scientific method at all, and should have done what troubleshooters do. Collect the variables, do process of elimination, find the culprits. Do this in context, noting how the variables interact with one another. Instead, they jumped up and down because they found an “anomaly” or two — which, btw, generally exist in all of these situations — and stopped there. A good troubleshooter never stops with an anomaly. He or she tries to find out if it’s relevant, or active, or cancelled out by other variables, etc.
Kinda like, “Well, Ike couldn’t have caught that touchdown pass in the playoffs cuz he was wearing red socks that day. It’s impossible!” Um, well, he also had on white shoes, and Warner was in sync with him cuz he had on red socks too. You need to account for those things as well.
But on the larger picture, Matt Taibbi did the all-time best debunking of the truthers, and I was most of the way there before I read him. Main thing: You don’t do “false flags” in your own backyard, in key centers of power, if you’re the powerful. You do them elsewhere, especially overseas, where it’s a lot easier to hide your tracks and you don’t destroy ruling class assets along the way.
Beyond that, if the goal was to go to war with Iraq, America is an easy date for that sort of thing. It’s never taken much to make the beat of war drums take hold. There’s no reason for ruling class folks to undertake a “conspiracy” of an elaborate form to make that happen. A few well-placed bombs — rhetorical or real, particularly in Iraq — would suffice.
None of it Truther narrative ever added up — not scientifically, or politically, or common-sense-wise. And given that the Truther in Chief was Alex Jones . . . . I have no idea why anyone jumped on that bandwagon, evah.
Billy_TParticipantIMO, we were the bad guys in Korea — with, of course, individual exceptions. We never should have gone. We escalated the war beyond all reason. And because of it, 2-4 million Korean civilians died. And we sided with a fascist thug dictator in the South. He had already slaughtered innocent civilians prior to our invasion, and we looked the other way when he did more of the same.
Not saying the North were the “good guys” either. But we definitely weren’t in the aggregate, from the standpoint of the powers that be. And the government in the South definitely wasn’t.
There’s a pattern, as mentioned in the article. We try our best to crush anyone who dares say no to capitalism, destroy their economy, embargo them, isolate them, and then when they have problems due to OUR destructive policies, we shout “See!! Their system can never work!! They’re brutal dictators and oppress their people!!”
Um, if we had actually lent them a helping hand instead of trying to crush them, it’s a good bet they wouldn’t have had to turn inward and go all in for “law and order,” etc.
That’s what being under siege does to a country. Just look at the way the West changed their laws during WWI and WWII. Pretty much every country in Europe, if they weren’t already taken over by the Germans, imposed their own oppressive rule. Again, that’s what being under siege does to nations.
We blew a once in a century chance when we didn’t take the peace dividend after WWII. We really could have been an agent for good instead of ill all over the globe and here. Just no more wars. No more coups. No more military proliferation and arms proliferation. Invest in humans and the planet. This shit isn’t rocket science!
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Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantPeter Dinklage urges ‘Game of Thrones’ fans to stop buying direwolf-lookalike Huskies
Peter Dinklage is pleading with Game of Thrones fans to not be hasty with their pet purchases.
In tandem with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the actor hopes to discourage Thrones fans from getting Huskies solely for their similarity to direwolves, giant animals that are a part of the hit HBO fantasy series.
In a statement from PETA, the organization says the sled dogs are in demand because of the show’s popularity. But often, it says, once owners understand the commitment the dogs require, they are abandoned. ABC7 News and KRON4 found evidence of this trend in the Bay Area.
“Please, to all of Game of Thrones’ many wonderful fans, we understand that due to the direwolves’ huge popularity, many folks are going out and buying Huskies,” Dinklage, who plays Tyrion Lannister, says in the statement from PETA. “Not only does this hurt all the deserving homeless dogs waiting for a chance at a good home in shelters, but shelters are also reporting that many of these huskies are being abandoned — as often happens when dogs are bought on impulse, without understanding their needs.”
Dinklage, a vegetarian, stressed the seriousness of pet selection. “Please, please, if you’re going to bring a dog into your family, make sure that you’re prepared for such a tremendous responsibility and remember to always, ALWAYS, adopt from a shelter,” he said.
I did a little research on huskies, cuz the narrator of my last completed novel discovers one in the snow and takes her in. Reading stuff from long-time husky owners and vets, it would seem they’re especially difficult — but with high rewards, too. Beautiful, smart and loving, but they need more than the usual amount of exercise, close attention to diet, and they tend to be escape artists. One could say, very “high maintenance.” Not at all like a Golden Retriever or other laid back breeds.
Though it’s probably safe to say, Americans don’t treat their pets well in the aggregate. They don’t take them out for exercise enough. They leave them alone far too much. And they don’t watch their diets . . . . But huskies are especially difficult along those lines. The exercise part is often more than most people can handle.
Admirable that Drinklage made that plea.
August 16, 2017 at 3:42 pm in reply to: WV, did you see the Nation article by Patrick Lawrence? #72651Billy_TParticipantWV,
Maybe this is crazy, but about the only thing that keeps me going is the belief that if there really were a level playing field, leftist philosophy and policy would win. I just see it as the best for the largest number and the planet, and it’s not at all close. So, common sense and logic says, if people have a clear choice, know everything they’re dealing with, if it’s all above board, they’re going to go with leftist stuff. Cuz, why wouldn’t they? It’s in the best interest of literally just about everyone but the 1%. And, ironically, even the 1% would be better off in many ways.
Like, peace instead of war
A truly open society, instead of a deeply surveiled one
A highly educated society, where no one is denied their human potential because they can’t afford the schooling or the training or the trades
A safe, clean environment, with safe food and water, clean air, etc.
Access for everyone to all the fruits of society, lifting all of us up . . . .If people have a choice, why wouldn’t they go for that, as opposed to the current deal where six people hold as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population, half our wildlife gone in the last 40 years, a world that overshoots its capacity now in August . . . and by 2030, will need two entire earths to meet demand.
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-earth-overshoot-day-earth-budget-2016-8
???
I’m probably just kidding myself, but it’s one of those things that keep me going. That, and the hope that the Rams will win a few games this year!!
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