My first thought—"Wasn't he in Predator 2?" No, you insensitive clod, that's Ruben Blades. My mistake. He's a good choice then.

I've read footnotes about academic political science works arguing that a big reason why America isn't more of a social welfare state is because of racial attitudes. Economic dispossession apparently engenders racial animus; Trump appealed to both.

I'd like to see that. I hear National Review has gotten into some interesting contortions in covering Trump, not endorsing him outright but going after the anti-Trumpers.

Just a guess: Trump had a recognized brand as a successful business person who was wealthy, so he didn't need to grovel for money to special interests, and the needs-to-die idea that America should be run like a business, plus the saying it how it is unPCness.. Sanders did not have a TV show for a dozen years. Now, if…

I'll remain optimistic and think he won because his economic message resonated more to a larger group of non-racist people, who nevertheless made the moral mistake of ignoring and condoning the discrimination and misogyny. If such a thing can be measured, I await the poli-sci quantitative data on which had the greater…

True. Maybe I mean the media's ideology of "balance" has screwed up journalistic integrity and the concept and need for objective truth. Republicans aren't the only ones who firmly believe in destructive, fact-free things.

But I would say the environment itself is toxic and can't shake its partisan rep, regardless of the good people and shows in it. It's why a lot of misinformed people think the false equivalency of MSNBC being the Fox of the left, and that's not helped by its producers and talent doing stuff that is sensationalistic,…

Hell, I think I'm on sure-footed ground when I contend that Trump won because of his message of economic populism through government, which is a liberal position.

Cable news needs to go. It helped spawn the hyper-polarization that took over Twitter and other social media. Do the thought experiment: what if Murdoch and Ailes had never been born? How would our country be different?

Yeah, "liberalism has failed." That's why Barack Obama objectively made America and Americans' lives worse, and how Donald Trump is objectively doing a fantastic job.

I didn't really follow the case because of the little-girl-being-killed ickiness factor; you may be right. I did think of the media's role in this, but perhaps you can find another less tawdry case that excoriates the media with relation to women.

Planet Earth II came to an end last night, with the episode, "Cities", about animal wildlife in our urban worlds. Very smart to introduce the human animal's environment for the last episode. It makes you simultaneously think of human beings and their cities as just another animal and its habitat, and also recognize…

Unlike with OJ, this case had no wider cultural, political, and socioeconomic things to say about America, unless little girl beauty pageants are a bigger and more influential thing than I think. So this is just meretricious true crime for the sake of it.

Legion is in this category.

How do you know about the utopian novel I'm writing?

Him?

I hope this new-for-TV writing system catches on. It feels closer to writing in other mediums, where there's a greater degree of artistic control and revision. Though the temporal hothouse of writing on the fly while filming episodes has its advantages as well.

Okay, everyone: CALL YOUR MOTHER! What, she hasn't heard from you in a while and misses talking to you, you ungrateful jerks.

And this 2012 New Republic profile of Paul Ryan, entitled "How Paul Ryan Convinced Washington of His Genius", is once again making the rounds. It talks about how a former fitness instructor came to be seen as a policy wonk when all he really was was a hard Randian. He had help burnishing his reputation: liberal…

Oh thank God cafes being forced to close down from this socialist burden can now switch the sign to "We're Open" again. It's just May and her trusted dog Rusty making all the burgers and coffee, and they need customers!