Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

[Mav]

I didn't take it as a personal attack, Lods.  I took it as an assessment of the entirety of commentary but I just can't see any justification for the moral relativism. 

I think we all know that the current truce will only hold for a few days and things will return to "normal" soon enough.  The same thing has happened before in the wake of mass shootings but nothing actually changes.

[Lods]

At a political Congress/Senator level you dont get a great deal of extremism.
I don't view anything that you've written as extremist.
Biased perhaps, but you've made no secret of your disgust of Trumps behaviour and if you look back at my comments over the last eighteen months it's a bias I share.
You have to move a  fair way from centre before extremism starts.

Sure you have right wing nut jobs like Jones out there.
But if you look at comments from protestors in opposition to Trump or on social media there is no shortage of extremism to be found, some of it advocating violence...That's what I've been referring to.

Trump certainly doesn't help the situation, inflames it actually.
I just find it a bit contradictory.
Am I harder on the left?...probably, because I hold them to a higher standard.
They seek to be held to a higher standard.
The core of their message is a stand against hate.

[Mav]

Ordinarily, I'd agree that extreme social media outlets shouldn't be associated with a mainstream political party.  But Trump has actively courted Brietbart and Infowars and treats "news" from those outlets as fact, launching a twitter tirade accusing Obama of bugging Trump Tower phones on the strength of them, for example.  He also is loath to disassociate himself from KKK and AltRight groups, doing the minimum possible after being challenged to do so.  Gateway Pundit, a fake news site, was given White House press credentials; Paul Ryan knocked an application by Gateway Pundit for Congressional press accreditation on the head. 

On the other hand, Bernie Sanders has been quick to disassociate himself from extreme "Bernie Bros".  Hillary didn't need to do so as she is hardly a lightning rod for leftist radicals.  She's probably more conservative than Malcolm Turnbull and the far left is a mythical creature in the US with fewer sightings than the Yowie.

[Mav]

Slam dunk!

[flash=200,200]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6_ckWZCHW4&sns=em[/flash]

[Mav]

Looks like Donald Trump Jnr has just wrecked his daddy's attempts to put the "Russia thing" behind him.

The NYT has reported that DT Jnr agreed to a meeting with a Russian lawyer (who NYT says has links to the Kremlin) shortly after Trump and Clinton had just clinched the nominations of their respective parties.  She was offering up dirt on Clinton.  He brought the then campaign manager Paul Manafort and Trump's son-in-law and principal adviser Jared Kushner to the meeting in Trump Tower.  He claims that she didn't have anything and wanted to talk about the suspended adoption program of Russian orphans, so the meeting wrapped up in only 20 minutes.

He denied that he knew the identity of the lawyer or that she had any links to the Russian government.

But the NYT has just broken another story that 3 sources confirm that the meeting was set up because of an email in which DT Jnr was told that the lawyer had information that the Russian government wanted to give to the Trump campaign!

By the way, the woman lawyer involved has a very Russian name and thick Russian accent and the Russian orphan program was suspended by Putin who was outraged by US sanctions following the Ukraine intervention. 

I wonder if Trump will pardon his son and any associates who may become targets of prosecutors.  There's some precedent for doing so.  President HW Bush pardoned Casper Weinberger to head off a prosecution over the Iran-Contra affair.  Politically, it would usually be poison but I can imagine Trump defiantly asserting that his family and associates are the subject of a witchhunt and he has to act to stop his government being destroyed by the dark state.  His base would eat it up.

[Mav]

Wow, it's kicking off big time!  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/po...inton.html.

Not only does little Donald face legal trouble, but also he has ripped away daddy's standard defence that there's never been any evidence of collusion between his campaign and the Russians.  He has also put Jared Kushner's nuts in the grinder as well.  Kushner failed to disclose this meeting on his first 2 national security forms that are sworn under penalty of perjury.  He only disclosed it in his 3rd go after Paul Manafort disclosed it in his form.

How ironic that Trump, who continually banged on about Hillary's emails, is now being skewered by emails.

[Mav]

Little Donald swears he didn't tell daddy about the meeting.  We're supposed to assume that Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, and his son-in-law didn't do so either.  But there's an interesting juxtaposition with Trump teasing a big announcement of Clinton dirt 4 days after this meeting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trum...mg00000009.

Coincidence?

[LP]

So this new leak, I presume coming from the Trump side of politics, is it designed to hurt Turnbull and benefit Abbott?

[Lods]

So this new leak, I presume coming from the Trump side of politics, is it designed to hurt Turnbull and benefit Abbott?

Hurts Turnbull to some extent. He's basically  saying "make a show of it, but only take a few if that's what you want to do. Just don't make us look bad by going back on the deal".....but it's Trump who looks like a goose (as usual).
More likely the purpose of the leak was to embarrass Trump.

Having said that...this bit from Malcolm wasn't good.

We will take more. We will take anyone that you want us to take. The only people that we do not take are people who come by boat. So we would rather take a not very attractive guy that help you out then to take a Noble [sic] Peace Prize winner that comes by boat. That is the point.

[LP]

So do you think the current Whitehouse would prefer Turnbull or Abbott?

Who do you prefer if the shit hits the fan in North Korea?