The Frankish Reich

Hey Wacka, maybe I ran into you there. I visited that "camp" many times back when I had a federal job in the Bay Area. Really nice place to live, provided your allowed outside the gates.

Right! We'll add $4 trillion to the deficit and NOT ONE PENNY MORE!

which is, of course, much worse for pregnant women.

He did seem to get a bit more fit during the presidential run. There were rumors of Ozempic. Now he looks like a bloated old man. Which is after all the truth.

Escalatorgate! You could see the momentary panic in his eyes as he contemplated having to walk the stairs. Meanwhile, Melania, heels and all, doesn't miss a beat, leaving the old codger behind as she troops up the escalator... Must have been an attempt to humiliate him by the evil UN forces!

You make a good point. Remember, RFK Jr. came to this point from his past as an environmental crusader. Clean water, clean air, clean food, etc., etc. We've seen all of that put on the back burner because big ag and coal and whatever are seen as politically aligned with Trump. Meanwhile, he hates big pharma, so the focus is on that.

I had no idea she was still alive. I never understood her motivation. In some ways it is like what we're seeing today: a cultural moment, and a dangerous one.

Yes, but there is something called the replication crisis, primarily in "softer" fields like psychology.

I can't see this ending until Putin is gone. He is now dug in so deep that he can't negotiate away territorial gains, and NATO/the US similarly can't reward him with anything more than official recognition of Crimea as Russian territory. It is an utterly irrational war from Russia's national perspective, but it may be totally rational from Putin's perspective if he is correct that "losing" would mean the end of his rule.

I get that, but if you're in a division where you can go 6-0 or 5-1 against your divisional opponents, that goes a long way toward getting a bye and having home field.

Gutfeld can be funny. Someone should pay him to come over to Fox (OTA) late night and we'll see. But please, leave the horrific sidekicks behind. He was funny with Andy Levy on his old Red Eye show.

So let me provide a straight answer to two straight questions: Fairness Doctrine: a relic of a bygone era when the lines of over the air communication were limited by VHF/UHF bandwidth. Limited access meant you couldn't let some Larry Ellison come in and simply overwhelm everyone else with stronger and stronger signals. We have cable, we have streamers, we have blogs, we have podcasts, we have ... football forums for God's sake. We shouldn't do anything about network late-night talk shows other than let the market decide. We should, however, think about whether the current model (large networks providing less and less original programming, built on a layer of "local" stations that increasingly aren't "local" at all but rather are made up of large conglomerates like Tegna and Sinclair. That's where the whole "licensing" and "in the public interest" thing comes in. It was built on the idea of things like local news and local carriage of EBS systems (I still occasionally catch the "this is only a test" and it brings back a wave of nostalgia), etc., none of which anyone really relies on anymore. See, B-Man, not so difficult to answer with (1) your own (2) reasoned (3) opinion.

EDIT: sorry, I see you were directing that to B-Man. It is frustrating. He typically waits to re-post someone's tweet in the MAGA echosphere. Otherwise he runs the risk of getting out over his skis and posting something contrary to his Dear Leader's opinion. It just happened yesterday...

Which was? Sorry, I missed it. I am not one to shy away from a question directed to me.

You did say that the whole "Trump is trying to cancel Jimmy Kimmel!" thing was overblown, and the fact that he was back on the air showed that it was just ABC making an internal decision. Trump's post just destroys your old narrative, doesn't it? I'm not Rainman; I don't save your old posts. But I do remember them ... ... So back to the point: should the FCC exert its full power to try to get local stations and/or ABC not to carry Kimmel's show anymore? Presumably you have an opinion and can answer either: A. Yes, because [explain] B. No, because [explain] No posting somebody else's tweets to talk for you. I wanna hear it straight from the B-Man! I think this is the way Charlie Kirk said we should argue, right?

So @B-Man, do you think the FCC should continue to try to penalize ABC or the local affiliates who didn't preempt him? Because yesterday you were applauding how measured and hands-off and grown-up the Administration was in letting him back on.

Yes, Comey indictment is coming. Because: 1. The statute of limitations on his alleged perjury (or whatever else) is about to run. 2. Trump's US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia apparently refused to present (or re-present, we don't know) it to the Grand Jury, presumably because it was such a weak case. 3. Trump therefore fired that U.S. Attorney and installed his own toady, someone who has had little criminal law experience and obviously is brand new to whatever "investigation" there was here. 4. Trump posted on social media that everyone from Pam Bondi on down had better indict him or, presumably, suffer a similar fate. Total perversion of the federal criminal justice system. And don't give me "but whatabout" Jack Smith. That is at least the proper way to go about an investigation in which the powers that be are conflicted out. This is just flat-out a Trump-mandated indictment.

Perfectly fair. Belief is belief, and I am not one to criticize it. I just stepped in here to correct what I thought was a misrepresentation of Catholic doctrine. Those years of Catholic school stick with you ... Words have meaning only in a social context.

Why don't you ask our Bonnie friend? Oh, and by the way:

From the two posts? Try "from the 69.6k posts." Bills Rainman of all people should have a little historical context at the ready. I know Sherpa was raised Catholic and now is more in the evangelical Christian camp, having rejected non-Biblical Catholic theology. Imagine that! I've never even PM'd him about his beliefs.

True. But I think the person this was directed to - the guy with the Catholic College banner - is drawing on it. Catholic doctrine is both more and less "inclusive." Catholic theologians have a hard time believing that a society completely cut off from Christians is necessarily eternally doomed. They also have problems with the souls of all those who came before Christ, including all the Jews from which Christ emerged. Dante kind of posited all those rings of hell to deal with this. Mormons have an easy fix: they go back through genealogical records and convert people who've died (after all, had they known the true word they would have chosen to follow it) and even marry the dead to each other. Evangelical type Christians kind of ignore the implications that those who lived completely pure and innocent lives are doomed just because the missionaries didn't make it to the next stop upriver.

Your theology profs at St Bonnie's did a poor job of teaching you. That is not Catholic doctrine. Not to get all epistemological on you, but ... ... you are unwittingly falling into the What is a Woman? trap.

Nor did the one you called when ABC restored Jimmy Kimmel. Remember, like, umm, yesterday when you said Kimmel's quick return proves that the government isn't out to shut him down?

I think that's advertising revenue. The locals get local ad spots during network programming - even during the Super Bowl if I'm not mistaken - and they sell lots of ads during local news, etc. Mostly the wrong consumers at this point, but still very profitable. From an economic perspective, it's pure rent-seeking on the part of the Sinclairs of the world. I imagine the big 3.75 (ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX) have evaluated whether it makes sense to even keep the over-the-air thing going. They're all ready to jump ship with their Peacocks and Hulus gaining market penetration.

I'm sorry, I'm not like you, I don't file away every perceived slight in the recesses of my brain. Whatever. It was a fairness doctrine claim. Which was kind of my point.