Vorlonagent

Being female doesn't disqualify the 1998 Gozilla. There are a few female kaiju. Not many though. The genuine Godzilla was raising a juvenile of its same species in some of the sillier Toho Studios movies. Some fans argue that this means the Godzilla that appeared that every classic 50s and 60s Godzilla movie after the first was female. (reminder: Godzilla died in his first movie. Those fans argue that the dead Godzilla was the male) That's before we talk about Mothra.

Nobody has posted Maxim 37 yet? "There is no overkill. Only 'Open fire' and 'Time to reload'."

That wasn't Godzilla. It was just a mutant iguana. Some people who didn't know any better thought it was Godzilla. How fickle fame! It wasn't even a Kaiju. Kaiju swat combat aircraft. They aren't killed by them.

One can just as rightly say that it is Obama that is standing in the way of Congress' agenda. Who you blame is much a function of partisanship as anything else Gridlock can be a surprisingly good thing. It means Congress is not making many new laws. It creates a stable taxation, legal and regulatory environment. Business likes that. The US budget deficit is down from its obscene 2009 and 2010 levels and gridlock is why. Nobody can embark on new spending sprees which drive the deficit up, nobody dares change Sequester, which clips federal programs back toward a balanced budget and the stable business environment brings in more tax revenue. 20 years ago, gridlock combined with a boom/bubble economy to give us a budget surplus.

Obama took pushing the limits of executive power an important bit further. You may recall some aspects of the Affordable Care Act were due to kick in right before a difficult election and Obama just suspended them till it was more convenient. Neat trick but the law gave him no wiggle room with respect to when parts of it came online and he's not the Legislature. Obama had no Constitutional authority to do that. Obama has refused to enforce the law. When he took office, gay marriage had a federal law prohibiting it and no supreme court decision overturning the law. Constitutionally he was bound to uphold the law. But not said "nope. not gonna do it. It's unconstitutional". That may sound OK, especially when the law was later ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court, but Obama is not the Judiciary. Obama had no Constitutional authority to do that. These examples of themselves may seem benign or trivial, but they will be built on, pushing a little further each time. The ability to suspend a law is the ability to suspend equality before the law. The Separation of Powers are there to limit the power any Branch of government accrues to itself (checks and balances). This is serious stuff that Obama is messing with. One would think a someone who taught Constitutional Law would be familiar with US Government 101 concepts like Rule of Law or Separation of Powers, and their importance in maintaining a stable Republic/Democracy. His actions do not always bear that out.

Will anybody tell him "no"?

That's if Ms. Clinton chooses to allow the Constitution to limit her options. President Obama didn't always. That's before we talk about contributions to the Clinton Foundation altering US policy...

I'm less worried by Trump, but it's definitely a pick-your-poison election. With Ms. Clinton, I believe her life is on a self-destructive path and I don't want her taking the US along for the ride.

Godzilla is...

"Tedd? Box isn't lying. The Emissary of Magic really is dense as 3 feet of neutronium."

I see myself rightly carrying some responsibility. Obviously not for your emotional state, but I an am responsible for violating board posting rules while having as close to a shouting match with you as we'd ever want to see again on this board. My part in that is...well...my part.

I apparently missed that debate. Or most of it anyway if one post I'm thinking of came from that. I'm probably happier. "Government nannies" was intended to connote the common-usage phrase "nanny state", so I thought it would pass muster. OTOH, letting my invective stray toward insult phrases is a bad habit I'll want to keep a closer reign on. I've gone over that line at least once here. I much prefer to live or die by my reasoning in any event. It's not like being one of very few conservatives on a liberal board is a new experience...

To be clear: I was not bragging. I regret the stress our butting heads caused you.

Well that should function as a warning in any case. Strap in. It's going to be a bumpy ride. The US has been told not to be great over the last 40 years. Most of the things that make the US great have been demonized: Free market capitalism, advancement based on merit, religion as a moral compass. This is not to say that US capitalism is innocent of exploitation. I'm not saying that "merit" was always objective or that religion hasn't harbored prejudice wearing the mask of morality. I know better than that. I'm saying we've thrown these aspects of US greatness out as fundamentally flawed and are now wondering why the US is faltering. It's in vogue to favor of government nannies interfering in our lives to try to make everything "fair" and "nice". "Fair" and "nice" incentivize mediocrity. It's good to eliminate prejudice, but the long-term result has to be people competing as equals not set-asides for every minority checkbox. Greatness is now seen as a zero-sum game. For you to get it, you have to take it from me. We see this most easily with demands from the US Left that we "tax the rich" ever more heavily. As if handing government more money and power will actually do the rank and file any good. Into this climate we have political elites who seem more interested in personal privilege and prestige. There's a lot of populist anger abroad in the US as failure becomes the norm and the elites put more concern into their Washington social lives. It is this frustration that drove the primary candidacies of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Trump is an awful standard-bearer for the very real and justified conservative-populist anger abroad in the US. I don't have any use for him. But I can understand why other people in the US do. There is point to his campaign slogan "make America great." A better one would be "Dare to be great once more".

"Should" is the operative word. I've shut down the original politics thread while doing exactly what you suggest (I was not perfect about it but I did admit and apologize for those times I overreached)

This is a political topic. I have a strong minority opinion which history has shown will ruffle feathers, cause arguments and otherwise annoy the majority, including the Moderator. Permission to rant freely?

There is still hope for wacky hijinks ensuing...

They aren't formulated by Dan. Dan 's process is he puts up a post asking for ideas. He has a 1-character poll, a 2-character poll and a transformation sequence poll. I forget all the categories he has but those three occur each month for sure. I think there's one other at least. Backers can post ideas in the discussion system Patreon attaches to each creator post. They can also vote for the the ideas they like using the "like" (heart-icon) function for each post. Dan later holds a runoff between the highest 4 vote-getters for each poll. Sometimes he will do his own thing as well. Since I'm a $5/month backer, I don't really track what I get to do that a $3 or $1 backer can't.

I thought Dan was aiming for cute, not sexy. That's how I saw it anyway so of course Dan meant whatever I happened to see in his work.

Rhoda is better built than she sometimes appears. She was at one point approached by a men's magazine and I don't think they wanted her for an article...

Dick Morris (Full disclosure a conservative source these days) has observed several times that Trump gets in trouble for the things he said, but Clinton gets in trouble for the things she did...

Magic has to be at least somewhat slow to fill in low-pressure zones or Ellen and Nanase's "fly all over the place and use up magic" tactic would not have worked against not-Tengue.

That's what the name always connoted to me. But if it's pronounced "mopperville", it would go a ways to explain the bathrooms...

Catgirlageddon MallCatGirlageddon TinyMallCatGirlageddon (alternately MallKittenGirlageddon) TinyFairydollCatMallGirlageddon...

B5 has had a very sadly high death rate among its cast members. We just lost the guy who played Garibaldi (temporarily blanking on his name) earlier this year.