This has turned into a discussion essentially about tastes, which I really am hesitant to enter because I don't want to make anybody feel like they're wrong for liking something. Everything you described in the Ultimate Edition sounds like contrived convenience masquerading as cleverness, the type of villainous…

I'm not saying the movie doesn't establish reasons for the fight, I'm saying that Luthor doesn't really do anything to encourage Batman to engage and Batman's personal reasoning is frequently portrayed as justified or even heroic. Sure, Luthor tries to manipulate Batman, but none of it ever works and Batman's…

That is part of the way the film tried to set up its ambiguity, because it was desperately trying to create a conflicted scenario in which every side had validation. Alfred being Bruce's ethical barometer is frequently used to externalize internal conflict in Batman stories. What isn't common are apocalyptic…

Jerry can be right about Rick's influence and still be insecure and incompetent. I think the reason so many people hate Jerry (myself included) is that, all though every character in that family is broken in some way, Jerry's the only one that's working against Rick. Part of the grim truth of the show is that Rick…

Occupy Wall Street didn't happen overnight and there were high levels of economic and political unrest around the time that script was written. Direct relation to OWS or not, anti-establishment forces are very clearly framed as the enemies in Dark Knight Rises.

In February they banned coal imports from North Korea (which is their biggest export - and China was formerly their largest trade partner for said export), and yesterday China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said he hoped China and the US could, "meet each other half way to find a fundamental plan to resolve the security…

They issued new trade sanctions earlier this year and have recently expressed a desire to open talks between the US and UN on a coordinated response to North Korea.

As long as abortion is legal in this country, the Democrats are always going to lose voters on this issue because they're the party of law over religion/emotion. Acquiescing to some districts won't work either, because party affiliation will always associate a candidate with the actions of others in more liberal…

I hope it is, because as history has proven healthcare > deficit. They were so desperate to repeal right now because they know once any healthcare system gets established, it is almost impossible to remove. Your average citizen will always prioritize health over government debt.

I hope you're right about that, and his unpopularity prevents the GOP establishment from ramming through their agenda. Because I get the feeling we're going to find out fairly soon…

I don't doubt they'll do something with tax reform, likely something regressive and unproductive. But they can't execute their big ambitions with healthcare tying up much of the budget, and a lot of their strategy hinged on eliminating those costs to free up tax cuts.

It's a rock and a hard place situation. Both Trump's policies and the GOP's policies are fundamentally flawed and bad news for the economy. But by their powers combined, we hit this awkward equilibrium on the razor's edge where neither can be enacted and the specter of Obama keeps things stable. If you remove Trump,…

That's kind of my whole point though. They can't fuck up the tax code because they failed to pass healthcare reform because of a vacuum of leadership in the current administration. You have to think with an establishment Republican in charge they push that agenda through in the proper sequence and we plunge into…

The economy is flourishing, unemployment continues to shrink, and somewhat shockingly the bold/ignorant approach towards North Korea has finally motivated China to act. There's a lot to hate about this administration (a whole lot), but it hasn't been the catastrophe many people predicted, primarily because it has been…

'The [Meuller Investigation] confirmed the ouster on Thursday, with a
spokesperson saying, “After much consideration, it was mutually
determined that it would be more cost effective and logistically
practical for the [Trump family] to [rot in jail for treason].”'

'However they also believed in giving fairly wide variance or independence by preacher or institution so a monolithic view of them is probably unfair.' - this is a great summation of the SBC structure. The churches practically compete amongst each other over congregation size and offering takes, with Revival…

That's a pretty compelling exchange. Perhaps it's time I finally read Catch-22.

Because the propaganda they are sold tells them Clinton is the antichrist, and before that Obama. Trump presents a conundrum for evangelicals, drawing a line between those that actually follow the bible and those that just follow the leader. Cult is a good word to describe those that go with the latter, because any…

While I won't deny some of the people in my old church were racist, it always seemed to me that was just because I lived in the south and there were a lot of racists around the boondocks. The church was actually quite open minded (by comparison) and an important step in my development. I moved on years later because…

The thing that angers me so much, as a former southern baptist skunk, is that if you actually read the damn book you see this is the exact thing Jesus spent basically his entire life trying to fix: Institutional corruption. His gospel was one of inclusion, he preached the need to give up material things and help even…