Chairslinger

I mean, anything that is not a Confederate flag, with a golden T with a dark figure hanging by a rope from it is considered pragmatic, moderate GOP nowadays, right?

Oh, I definitely agree. DeSantis is basically a creation of the "anybody but Trump" crowd that doesn't want Trump, but also doesn't have the balls to come out and actually criticize him. So after Florida was the one non-disaster for them in 2020 they went all in on DeSantis without ever considering whether he would be good at ground level politics. Saying that, and that I never considered him a real threat to Trump at all, this past week has knocked him far down from even where he was before. McConnell style Republicans I am sure are already blaming "our side" for stamping out any hope they had of nominating someone other than Trump....but that was never going to happen anyway. They will blame the indictment for why everyone flocked back to Trump(just as they did with the Mar-a-Lago raid) but the truth is they love Trump because of their fetid base and everything their propaganda machine has conditioned them to love for the past 3 decades. They could have ended this all with a few more votes in the Senate a few years ago.

Is it clear what the hierarchy of this new....thing is going to be? It sounds less like a sale and more like a merger. Reminds me of..... This is the sale we have been waiting for.....but not.....

Ronny vows to get to the bottom of how Disney outsmarted him. Do you think DeSantis realizes just how small this all makes him look? Especially with him already tumbling in the polls because his ostensible base apparently finds criminal indictabilty to be a big drawing point. It's like if Stone Cold Steve Austin was walking to the ring to face The Rock in the main event of Wrestlemania....then a fan jumped the railing and got into a sloppy hockey fight with Austin and the end of the PPV is just about that now..... A lot can happen before the voting starts in the primary, but DeSantis sure looks cooked already. Greater than 50% chance that he never even officially announces for '24 now, imho.

Yeah, it's interesting that one of the mid to large sized companies didn't step in to basically make it their show with whatever marketing mojo E3 has left. I guess it just goes to show how dead E3 is that someone like Ubi is not interested in stepping in and using the show for their own benefit. Compared to whatever stand alone event they might hold on their own, you would think they would get more eyeballs on their stuff at E3 just from antiquated Millennials like us tuning in for the Blockbuster nostalgia

As Jason said, keep in mind that was a flashback to the Dominion War. Not only did Section 31 create the virus during the war we have examples of complicit, otherwise good Starfleet officers looking the other way during that time. Starfleet intelligence, Starfleet medical, and even Admiral Ross were all shown turning a blind eye to what they were doing. And it certainly has reflections in the real world. Britain started the war with the ideal of precision bombing but once their airforce was cut to tatters in daylight raids they switched to nighttime carpet bombing. When the United States later entered the war they basically went through the exact same process as Britain had before them. When millions of your own people are dying, what is and is not acceptable to do to the other side gets pretty malleable. In the Pale Moonlight, Battle of AR-557, this very question was a big part of the last 2 or 3 seasons of DS9. On that point, I liked the storyline. I am not sure if it was intentional, but as we know the TOS with the Klingons and then TNG with the Romulans were meant to mirror the Cold War as it was going on at the time. DS9 decided to borrow from WWII for the Dominion War. What this storyline on Picard kind of reminded me of was having parallels to the United States bringing in Nazi scientists after the war for Operation Paperclip. As for the Changling double agent, I am kind of wondering if there is more to it than that. What if what we are seeing is the shrapnel from experimentation to imbue Section 31 agents(solids) WITH the ability to shapeshit, not the other way around.

Hannity: So you say you will release your infrastructure plan within two weeks.... *Camera cuts back to a red faced Trump squatting on top of a table, straining, with his pants around his ankles*

Agreed. If Trump were taken off the ballots and was spending his nights in a cell bloc the Republican base would still write him in to 50% of the vote, at least. If we were to entertain the hypothetical you are really exploring it's the GOP's worst nightmare. What are they after Trump is gone? After a decade of being his personal cum rag I don't think anyone in the party truly knows the answer to that question. That's why they keep running back to him despite being a 3 time loser.

It's fucking embarrassing. Forget journalistic integrity. The amount of care Hannity is providing for Donald there blows right past the level of defense lawyer and into the realm of assisted living facility nurse....

Not a great week for the Meatball. Went from being the presumed rival of Trump for the GOP presidential nomination to screaming, "You haven't seen the last of meeeee, Mouse!" as he scurried away like a vanquished 80's afternoon cartoon villain.

He really looks like a panel opens somewhere on his torso to reveal a Men in Black alien....

When people would say that DeSantis could be more dangerous than Trump because he's smarter I just laughed. DeSantis is just as dumb as Trump, he's just less brash. Say less shit and more carefully and you are going to sound less dumb, usually. He isn't smart Trump, he is just Trump without the charisma.

Oh, I think personal revelation and whatever the hell their Pastor says on Sundays does the heavy lifting for most of Protestants, too. Your average Protestant's understanding of what's in the Bible is about equivalent to someone's understanding of Grimm's Fairy Tales after watching Disney's Cinderella.

No, see, you're not supposed to actually read it. You are just supposed to assert that within it's murky, unknowable depths lies the basis for your randomly cobbled together morals and world views constructed from your own personal environment and cultural upbringing.

It is fucking uncanny how the GOP goes from being Machiavelli when it comes to destroying Democratic opponents into being Charlie Brown with the football when trying to figure out how to sink Trump. They seem to think they can tip toe past Trump to the nomination....

Yeah, why do these discussions always ignore the tiny little sticky whicket that the inverse means that being president means you can commit any crimes and get away with it? This is an especially important point for Trump as he broke the law to help himself win. So, much like his pardons for people who helped him win '16 illegitimately, are we saying we should just let him cheat to win, and then accept that the mere fact that he wins shields him from all crimes....including the ones he broke to help him win?! Nothing slippery about that slope

After episode 4 my opinion was basically that people need to stop worrying about whether s3 would be any good at all, and start considering how it might stack up against the best seasons of Star Trek ever. If it can end as strong as it started, I think I would put it up there somewhere with TNG s3-6 and DS9 s5-7. Has anyone else here watched the 12 Monkey's series? Terry Matalas was a showrunner for that, as well. At this point s3 almost feels like an unofficial reunion for that show. Shaw, Sneed, and Krinn were all main cast members on the show(as was Picard's father from last season.). Really interested to see if Amanda Schull, Emily Hampshire, or Brooke Williams show up at some point. Also, it is probably just convergent art/direction style from Matalas but the Red Forest from 12 Monkey's seems very reminiscent of whatever is happening to Jack, and tell me if this bad guy mask/outfit from 12 Monkey's doesn't look a little familiar...... And as a side note, that big guy behind Vadic is looking like he is going to be introduced next week(guess work from a close watch of some of the previews) as muscle. Looking like he might be the Beta to Vadic's Alpha. Will be funny if it turns out to be Tom Noonan as he played a similar role in 12 Monkeys and is also a very tall man. To bring it back to what I said at the top. With such a strong start to the season I am pretty confident that we will get a strong ending. I think the endings for s1 and s2 were pretty good to begin with(the moments with Data and Q respectively are some of my favorites in all of New Trek....it was the getting there that had some questionable moments). Also, 12 Monkey's had a very strong ending, so that bodes well for the show, as well. Terry Matalas is giving me big Manny Coto season 4 of Enterprise vibes right now. I am really impressed with what he is doing and it should be a no brainer to put him in charge of at least one show going forward imho.

Lordy, there were more tapes. Well, one more, at least. Pretty impressive that they were able to keep this under wraps. I don't think even a hint of this has been leaked to reporters before now.

I could see a valid argument about quibbling over lockdown, but the thing about Labour seems to be pure political coordination.

Titan escaping the Nebula and hip checking the Shrike on the way out..... That was a hell of an episode. They really pulled off the tricky feat of making a great standalone episode situated within a heavily serialized season. You might miss a beat or two, but you could definitely watch that as a great standalone episode and appreciate it as one of the classic Star Trek Kobayashi Maru "escape" episodes like Booby Trap, Starship Down, Galaxy's Child, etc.

For me it was that they would rather pay 2 or 3 people each the amount I was making rather than pay me a little more. Hard to take the idea of a meritocracy seriously when you see such blatant examples of bad decision making based on pettiness and ego. By the end it almost felt like I was begging THEM to help me help them run their business better....

Third episode is as good, if not better than the first two. I don't think Lore is aboard the Shrike. In one of the previews before the season started there are some interactions with Geordi and Lore that makes me think that Lore might currently be a museum piece. It looks like maybe Lore is deactivated and on display somewhere. And he regains consciousness and starts blowing stuff up. Not sure where it goes from there. Spoiler for ep3.

I just rewatched X-Files and the two "reboot" seasons reminds me a lot of Supernatural after season 5. Which is to say that the ongoing mythology stuff is mostly blah. But the standalone, monster of the week episodes could still be quite good. I went through the show back when only 9 seasons were out(I think) and then i had to stop and wait for a new season. My interest in the show at that point was so low that I just couldn't get back into it when the next season came out. What I remember specifically is the lazy story telling of "Sam sacrifices himself for Dean then Dean sacrifices himself for Sam" ad infinitum. I was starting to suspect a meta storyline where they both were stuck in a Hell dimension since season 5 and were doomed to perpetually cause each other unending torment due to their loyalty to one another and the bad decision making that it necessitated.

Yeah, one of the more glaring question marks for the Bat'Leth was the common move(especially in DS9) where they would use the center portion as an upward uppercut to the chin type attack. By all rights, unless that weapon is bafflingly dull at that section, Worf and others should have been shaving people's faces off like a bad Nick Cage 90's Action movie. Also, my common response to Worf and how much he loves violence has went from flippant to almost conspiratorial. Check this out. Worf loves violence so much that he has killed 2 Klingon Chancellors, fought another one to the death. And been suspiciously involved in the death of 2 others. Which, unless I am miscounting, is literally every Chancellor we have ever seen depicted onscreen. He murdered Duras when Picard was deciding whether Duras or Gowron should be Chancellor. Then after singlehandedly handing Gowron the Chancellorship through his murder of Duras.....Worf killed Gowron. A year or two prior to killing Gowron, Worf fought the future Chancellor Martok to the death(and lost.....Martok declined to kill him). In hindsight, this regicide-happy individual may have not been the best person to be in charge of conducting the investigation into K'mpec's poisoning death(Worf totally unsuspiciously determined that his blood enemy Duras was the culprit). My favorite though is that the one TOS movie where Micheal Dorn shows up and Chancellor Gorkon ends up murdered! Clearly a time travelling Worf was the one who actually stole the space boots...... Worf loves violence so much that he is the leading cause of death for, like, a century's worth of Klingon Chancellors. If I were Martok I would watch my back when Ambassador Worf is out Targ hunting with him..... Obviously I am being facetious with some of these.....but the fact that Worf really did personally choose the last 2 Chancellors should probably motivate some election reform on Qo'noS......

Yeah, that's the problem with the Hobbit. It's a relatively easier target to hit, but it's continuity with LotR makes it hard to try to match on a Tolkien playlist. Having Ian McKellen as Gandalf alone makes it a tough nut to crack..... I think what you could do with the Hobbit is just do a complete departure from tone, style, and content of PJ's trilogy. Since the trilogy departed quite a bit from the book to be in line with LotR, circle back around and make a movie more in line with the book. Make a more whimsical and almost fairytale-ish version of the Hobbit. Make it one movie(as so many critics of the trilogy claimed it should have been). I can see the Hobbit, as a single "fun" film not replacing PJ's trilogy in a Tolkien rewatch.....but being a fun, quick side trip. Not to say that I would be particularly hyped for it, but I see it as at least a more feasible goal. And certainly more attainable than, say, a Lord of the Rings remake featuring Chris Pratt and Tom Hollins as Aragorn and Frodo