Off Topic Thread 4.0

Squidgy Black wrote: »

What does everyone think of the whole Mueller investigation over the last couple of days, with Cohen folding like a deckchair?

It's been interesting. Cohen folded months ago, but it looks like the special prosecutors have been extremely careful in drip feeding information and working from the very outside of the conspiracy in, closing all the potential exits along the way.

It's all pretty complicated. There appears to have been a good deal of trade craft going on in the background. In a very basic way - the special counsel has a bunch of charges against Trump surrogates. They've gotten indictments on some but stayed silent on others - in particular those which incriminate Trump.

The Trump surrogates (Manafort etc.,) have been communicating through their legal teams with Trump's legal team. Corsi admitted on Tuesday that his legal team and Trump's are cooperating with each other.

The prosecutors gave Trump's surrogates an impression of the direction the investigation was going which was intentionally misleading. As a result, Trump gave an affidavit answering questions by the prosecutor believing that he was safe to mislead them - based on his false understanding of the evidence that they have through what his surrogates have shared with him.

It now appears that he has committed perjury which is a felony, but so far - he is only guilty of lying under oath, the full details of what it is that he was trying to conceal has yet to be released. We've seen snippets, it may just be collusion relating to the DNC hack and the subsequent cover up but given that Deutsch bank have been raided and a tax lawyer Trump used previously has been raided at the same time this week it's starting to look a lot more broad.

A supreme court judge recently retired in the US who was the father of a senior Deutsch bank executive. It's believed this happened as he would have had to recuse himself from any decision relating to Trump, Deutsch bank and money laundering which would have left the bench leaning away from the GOP.

Getting him off the bench and a replacement (ideally one with strong views of executive power) was critical for them, hence the entire debacle with Kavanaugh.

It looks like the hand Trump is playing is to obstruct and deny and when prosecuted to argue that as President he can only be prosecuted by the senate (who won't do it as a republican majority). This will ultimately end up in the Supreme Court which he has stacked in his favour. I doubt very much that Trump will run again, and if Republicans find a strong candidate and can secure the presidency, they'll stay on this course and pardon the investigation away labelling it a witch hunt.

The scandal may grow too great for the Republicans before that, but it looks like they are badly exposed (they were also hacked by the Russians, but that info has never been released) and will attempt to ride their luck, hiding behind the idea that they have a duty to support the president and hoping they can swing the 2020 elections their way.

It's going to get really messy now. By January we'll have a better idea of the charges against Trump, if they are devastating and the republicans refuse to budge there will be protests. If it's bad and justice isn't served we're in similar territory to where Turkey were just before Erdogan rounded up the judges and faked a coup.

Clegg wrote: »

I see Newstalk have given Peter Casey a job. As good a reason as any to stop listening completely.

The traveller furore was one thing, but the man himself just appears to be a waffler. Campaigned for the Presidency but didn't seem to have a notion as to what the powers of the office actually were.

Newstalk is a real mongrel channel. Seems to be courting the right now but would have been one of the more liberal channels much of the last decade.

I think it's a terrible idea. The guy is a spoofer. He took a situation with a lot of anger between two distinctive communities and tried to drag it into the gutter for the sake of an already failed presidential bid. It takes a wicked kind of vanity to consciously stir and then stoke an issue just to make you look slightly better than your rich acquaintances that are also competing for the same prize.

There was a contempt to his comments after the campaign and a sincere bitterness that I'm convinced has lost him a lot of that 23% he pissed on the curtains to earn.

I reckon this has a decent chance of alienating a lot of Newstalk listeners, it certainly has for me. Worse though, it gives Casey a platform from which to launch a legitimate political career in the lead up to the next general. For Newstalk this fills the grumpy, older, tell it like it is, right wing, white male advocate, George Hook spot.

Hook was just too toxic for the station to stand by and in his attempts to alienate and offend large parts of society (for the amusement of a few) he ended up burning his wings and crashing out of media with a permanently tarnished reputation. I'd say he gets filthy looks in public, probably a fair bit of support at times too sadly enough.

Newstalk obviously feel there is still a market for that type of personality - but much like George, I suspect that they are flying too close to the sun for their own good with Casey. My hope is that this fails quickly, but lasts just long enough to similarly tarnish Casey's reputation.

awec wrote: »

What is it with kids toys and toilet functions?

Trying to normalise it from a young age so it doesn't turn into a fetish...