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Pies4shaw ![Leo Leo](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_leo.gif)
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![](images/transdot.gif) Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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David ![Libra Libra](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_libra.gif)
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Wokko ![Pisces Pisces](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_pisces.gif)
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Oh look, it's another sexual assault allegation in the lead up to an election. ![Rolling Eyes](images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif) |
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Skids ![Cancer Cancer](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_cancer.gif)
![](images/transdot.gif) Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
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pietillidie
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We've seen it all before and discussed it all before.
You're talking about a complex problem like you do sports betting, rashly jumping on board and manically anticipating glory. But we all know we won't hear a peep out of you if the gamble fails.
As someone who knows a little bit about the Koreas, I'm actually all up for taking an unorthodox approach with North Korea because it is so wedged in time and space. More importantly, South Korea has a liberal president who is willing to do what he can to thaw relations, in contrast to successive nutty conservative governments. And this Kim just might be different. He might not be, but he might be.
However, we still have to bear in mind the basic facts: North Korea is a pariah state trapped between China, Russia and Western allies, and it survives solely by maintaining menace and playing sides. Unless this equation changes dramatically, this photo op will remain nothing but Trumpian narcissism.
After Iraq, people surely ought to be very cautious about dabbling in things they don't understand. Trump gives the impression he can try his hand at anything without consequences, but mistakes in this arena could trigger regional war or worse. Even a bad mishap could easily crash the global economy. This isn't just another Trump business bankruptcy.
Just imagine for a moment an idiotic mistake coincides with an unexpected turn of events (remember, China, Russia, Japan and SK are also involved), or Trump is manipulated by much more knowledgeable people within the Republican party as George W. was. Trump is at once clueless and friendless; don't think it can't happen.
That said, the most likely outcome is this: North Korea knows Trump is simply trying to grab glory, and will oblige for their own ends up to a point, after which the status quo will resume. I can't see much harm coming from this, although others argue Kim is using it to simply tighten his grip.
But you have to acknowledge and own the risks with due seriousness, not jump aboard a situation you know virtually nothing about for quick glory while leaving everyone else with the adult worry. _________________ In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Culprit ![Cancer Cancer](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_cancer.gif)
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All's great, Trumps even going to cure cancer now. |
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David ![Libra Libra](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_libra.gif)
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pietillidie wrote: | That said, the most likely outcome is this: North Korea knows Trump is simply trying to grab glory, and will oblige for their own ends up to a point, after which the status quo will resume. I can't see much harm coming from this, although others argue Kim is using it to simply tighten his grip. |
I agree with this, although I hold a little more hope. Perhaps Kim sees this as an opportunity for North Korea to become more integrated within the international sphere and perhaps to work towards a formal agreement that leads to the reduction of sanctions. Yes, we've been there before, but any opportunities for such a trajectory should be grasped. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Pies4shaw ![Leo Leo](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_leo.gif)
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What's the point of North Korea if it can't be nuked? |
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stui magpie ![Gemini Gemini](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_gemini.gif)
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^
It reminds us of the benefits of a 1 party "socialist" state? _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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stui magpie ![Gemini Gemini](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_gemini.gif)
![](images/transdot.gif) Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
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Pies4shaw ![Leo Leo](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_leo.gif)
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49100778
US President Donald Trump's claim that he was "totally exonerated" by special counsel Robert Mueller was rejected by Mr Mueller in a hearing on Wednesday.
Mr Mueller said he had not exonerated Mr Trump of obstruction of justice.
As for the analysis of "winners and losers":
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/24/20708503/robert-mueller-testimony-winners-losers
Loser: President Trump
You might think Trump would be cheered by Mueller’s weakness and the Democrats’ weak strategy. And indeed, a Trump ally described the mood inside the White House as “euphoria” to Politico.
But the president shouldn’t be too happy: The hearing brought more attention to his unconscionable conduct over the course of the Russia investigation. And one of the few breakout moments of the day made clear that he might still end up getting indicted.
During the House Judiciary half of the hearing, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) asked Mueller about a potential Trump indictment on obstruction of justice charges. Specifically, he asked if Trump could potentially be indicted after he leaves office, when OLC ruling on indicting sitting presidents no longer protects him.
The former special counsel’s answer was simple: “Yes.”
This probably is not the answer the GOP members of the committee wanted. One of the key GOP arguments was that because Mueller didn’t indict Trump, he should be considered exonerated due to “the presumption of innocence” in the criminal justice system. Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) was the most forceful advocate of this view.
But if Mueller still thinks Trump could be tried after he leaves office, this analysis no longer makes sense. Mueller didn’t conclude that there was insufficient evidence to try Trump, but rather that Trump could not legally be prosecuted. It’s also really bad for Trump personally: It’s now firmly established that if he loses the 2020 election, he could be charged if the next president’s Justice Department opts to pursue it.
Buck’s question damaged the Republican strategy for the hearing — an embarrassing own goal in the short term. But it also should undermine whatever confidence the president and his allies have that they will be immune from justice forever. If I had done what they did, I’d be more than a little worried. |
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Wokko ![Pisces Pisces](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_pisces.gif)
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watt price tully ![Scorpio Scorpio](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_scorpio.gif)
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Utter rubbish. I watched it and Meuller came across as quite dignified. The republicans were simply trying to shoot the messenger because they don't like the message - go figure ![Shocked](images/smiles/icon_eek.gif) _________________ “I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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David ![Libra Libra](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_libra.gif)
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Wokko wrote: | Not even the mainstream media are trying to spin this one, it was a shitfest. Mueller looked like a rambling fool. |
Good, if so. What a huge waste of time. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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David ![Libra Libra](templates/subSilver/images/icon_mini_libra.gif)
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Here's Guy Rundle on this:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/07/25/robert-mueller-testimony-congress/
Quote: | No smoking gun in Mueller testimony, but both sides left sweating bullets
Mueller… Mueller… Mueller…
Last night, Australian time, the former special counsel, and progenitor of the, erm, Mueller report, testified before the judiciary and intelligence committees of the US House of Representatives, as to the contents of his investigation of possible collusion with foreign powers — OK, Russia. Those hoping for a smoking pistol to be laid on the table were disappointed, but they were always going to be.
Mueller, the punctilious, even fussy, former ex-FBI head — he has an appearance of being finely drawn, as if he were an Oliphant cartoon of himself — wasn’t going to offer up any new material. The hearing was made possible by the Democrats’ takeover of the House in the 2018 midterm elections, and thus their control of the House’s myriad committees. The rehearing by the legislative wing of the author of a report commissioned in the executive branch — by the attorney-general, who also has a judiciary function — is either a triumph of power-separation, or a travesty of it, your politics dependent.
Mueller had already made it clear that he had no great desire to testify, but, as a good public servant, would not shirk it for a moment. The Democrats’ game was to try and get some new angle on the obtaining of a vast tranche of Hillary Clinton’s emails, via multiple channels, something Mueller resisted by keeping his answers, where possible, to single-word length. The Republican minority on the committee wasn’t much interested in Mueller speaking at all, using the opportunity to speechify against him, trying to portray his unwilling appearance as a continuation of an FBI/establishment conspiracy, and the report itself as a first stage of such.
Much of the testimony was “meta”, focused on what the special prosecutor could and couldn’t do, and the question of whether Trump had obstructed justice during the subsequent investigation. Mueller initially told the judiciary committee that he had determined that Trump could not be prosecuted for implied criminal activity — due to the current constitutional interpretation by the Justice Department that a sitting president can’t be indicted — before later saying that he hadn’t determined whether or not Trump had committed what would be, by anyone else, illegal activity. Mueller made it known that he ultimately hadn’t sought testimony from the president himself, because of the likelihood it would have been resisted and tied up report delivery for a substantial time which is, hmmm, well.
The Republicans, in trying to portray Mueller’s investigation as the conspiracy itself, had to spend a lot of time blustering. That was always going to be risky and so it proved, with a gotcha/own goal by Colorado Republican Ken Buck, who followed up Democrat inquiries about presidential privilege by allowing Mueller to clarify that the president could be prosecuted once he had left office. Hardly earth-shattering, but it blew a hole in the “nothing to see here” strategy that the GOP were trying to put forward as a unified front, and acknowledging that potential criminality was present, which let in the notion that there might be an actual real world out there somewhere, not two competing conspiracy theories.
In that respect, for those progressives and leftists who have somehow made FBI officers the vanguard of the resistance, Mueller’s seeming implication that merely reading WikiLeaks “should be illegal”, may chasten. Or y’know, may not. The progressives in the knowledge class are so far along the road to class power as to now affix themselves to the national security state, as the reactionary insurgent nature of the right makes itself clear.
Politically, for the left, Mueller’s testimony was underwhelming — in the words of some, a “disaster”. Giving neither a clear indictment nor absolution of Trump, it thus failed to solve the Democrats’ clear problem: a growing number of reps, and the party’s base, believe impeachment to be both a duty and a political imperative. They also see ducking it as a return to old bad Dem practice. The party centre believes that such a course, absent an actual dead body, would burnish Trump’s anti-elite credentials ahead of the 2020 election and distract from holding him to account for a lack of full-time job creation, wage stagnation etc in the rust belt, and racism and anti-immigrant/Latinx sentiment in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, etc.
Currently, around 95 Dem reps are pro-impeachment, thus splitting the party fairly evenly on the question. Mueller’s testimony has only deepened that division. Still they only have themselves to blame for relying on what turned out to be Special Mueller’s Off Day. |
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