That'd be nice. So far all you've sent us is a bunch of oil execs.

It's not my fault the actors don't follow through.

Ya gotta feel a little bad for oil expats though. All of that effort spent to make the IRS forget them, and it turns out they were the only people who ever cared.

I haven't followed this but, yes, oil execs don't get nearly enough credit for all of the good work they do.

yup, those rolexes aren't gonna mail themselves to regulators by themselves.

Well, I mean, they have an assistant to do that. But someone needs to hire them.

Er, well, there's a hiring committee.

Huh.

That reminds me, my favorite bootlickerism ever has to be "capitalists deserve to take a bigger share, because they take all of the risk"

I mean

Other than when the worker gambles on what education to buy, because nobody knows what employers are going to want 4-8 years in the future.
And when the worker gambles on a company to join, because they might be mismanaged into a dead end career or a layoff.
And when the worker gambles on signing a lease or buying a house so they can live near their employer, which might fire them or lay them off at any time for any reason.

But I mean, those aren't real risks. That's just "whole family dies of exposure" levels of risk. It's nothing compared to the risk taken by a certified investor, almost a whole day of yacht mooring fees. Thank God they're able to amortize that risk over hundreds of investments, just like how workers can amortize their risks over hundreds of jobs.

You know, you conservatives are a bunch of pathetic hypocrites. Just look at how all the MAGA zombies in the comment section of Ron Paul's criticism of Trump's emergency funding of his border wall. Pretty much all A decent number of them seem to follow the same pathetic line of reasoning, where they rationalize what Ron Paul tells them is unconstitutional, saying it is necessary to "stop the illegals from destroying the constitution". Do you have the slightest idea what a moral and ethical principle is??

There also seem to be an alarming number of people in that comment section who are saying that "Congress is the enemy", "Congress corrupted the constitution" (?), and that we should "build a wall around DC and fill it with the bodies of Congressmen". Hmm, I wonder who else railed against his government's elected legislature.

What conservatives believe: "We need to violate the constitution in order to stop people from voting for unconstitutional things!"

Hmm

Most of them are probably russians anyway.

I like him most of the Democrat early candidates and hope he wins the support of the liberals, but he won't because liberals are thoroughly committed to bootlicking the rich. Politicians like him are going to be not electable in America until after our impending civil war.

You realize the literal opposite is true, right? When there's no social support, people are more desperate for work so they're willing to tolerate lower pay and worse conditions so they can do things like eat, afford a mattress, keep their landlord from burning everything they own.

Hey, good on Ron Paul for telling the fascists to their face that their president is a fascist. But fascists don't operate on reason, so it's kind of barking up the wrong tree while the squirrel watches from the bird feeder.

Well, Michael Cohen is promising to tomorrow deliver hard incriminating evidence of Trump's complicity in crimes. Let's hope he does and forces the hand of congress to impeach him.



Don't try to downplay how stupid pro-Trump Americans are

No, he doesn't.



Back when this thread started I figured that Republicans would eventually impeach Trump once he became too inconvenient. After the last two years, I'm now convinced that Trump is the hill they're all going to die on. Signs are pretty strong they are all complicit in laundering foreign money into US politics and acting in the interests of foreign oligarchs, variously Russian, Saudi, Israeli, and others.

Damn, I guess prostitutes really don't care who their clients are.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-blessed-russias-nra-operation-us-intel-report-says

I guess it really is as bad as it seems.

In terms of local politics, I wonder if this helps explain the Virginia "blue shift". I mean, Virginia has a massive amount of the U.S. intelligence community.

ya it’s real weird how a club that prides itself on arming itself against America doesn’t seem to have a problem working with foreign oligarchs to undermine American sovereignty

oops sorry, I always forget. The ones waving the confederate flag and arming themselves against America are patriots. It’s kinda like how brits call chips crisps. Americans call traitors patriots. Right?

Well to some the Confederacy is the *good* part of American history, so...

btw, if you ever visit the South you might be tricked into thinking there isn't lots of racism here. Having lived here for a while, I can promise you there still is a huge amount of racism. It's just a bit more buried than it used to be.

This is the only place I've lived where I've seen like real harassment of someone for being black. Never seen anything like it.

WRT Elon Musk, dude was court ordered to stop tweeting about anything which could effect stock prices without approval. Since he keeps ****ing violating SEC rules by being a massive idiot and saying false things which bump the stock price.

So he goes and makes more tweets without approval about production estimates. So, yeah, dude's probably gonna get the hammer.

I don't know how stupid you have to be to keep acting a certain way after being court ordered. It's a special kind of stupid, hard to quantify.

Tesla basically squandered their first mover advantage. All of the major car manufacturers are tooling up for electric cars, and regardless of their ridiculous valuation there’s not much Tesla can do that these more experienced companies with deeper supply chains can’t.

So what’s the game here? Go out in a blaze of glory? Tank your valuation low enough that a grown up car company can afford to buy him out?

Like what we were talking about earlier, re: porter. What’s Tesla’s strategy? Their strategy is their product. Making something that other car companies don’t think is worth making. Well, now everyone is making electric cars, so what’s Tesla’s strategy? They literally don’t have one. They’re just trying to do what other people are going, better, more cheaply, whatever. And they’re gonna **** it up because they’re a tiny company that’s never made a real car before. Just high end sports cars which, by the way, are all really super jank across the board, so Tesla never learned how to do the kinds of fit and finish you see in normal cars.

Like, really. Why would you take the risk on a Tesla when boring companies like GM/Ford/Honda/Toyota/etc. are making the exact same car?

There is a lot that they can't do though: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-model-3-design-profits-20181017-story.html


Auto manufacturing requires a lot of solid execution on mature technology. The mentality of the California start up is too obsessed with doing bleeding edge stuff, and paying for the developments costs and issues with huge growth. The auto industry has too much NRE and too low profit margins to do that. In fairness, electric luxury cars are the very best way to do with with cars, but it's still the wrong attitude. They won't be able to branch out to other sectors, and as soon as their demographic saturates, they are going to fail and get bought by someone else.

Michael Cohen's testimony.

Oof.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/us/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-dance-video.html

I love that anyone would be upset that another person is far cooler than them. What a pathos: those damn liberals are having fun.

[quote=Michael Cohen]
Mr. Trumpdirected me to find a straw bidder to purchase a portrait of him that was being auctionedat anArtHamptons Event. The objective was to ensure that hisportrait, which was going to be auctioned last, would go for the highest price of any portrait that afternoon. The portrait was purchased by the fake bidder for $60,000. Mr. Trump directed the Trump Foundation, which is supposed to be a charitable organization, to repay the fake bidder, despite keeping the art for himself.Please see Exhibit 3Bto my testimony.
[/quote]

Lmao! This Donald Trump guy would be the first to have his seller account banned from eBay for shill bidding.

[quote=Michael Cohen]
He finished the conversation with the following comment. “You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.”I find it ironic,President Trump,that you arein Vietnam right now.
[/quote]

owned

Serious, non-political question: why is this not a breach of privilege?

IANAMM, but

[quote=Washington Post]
Cohen has a duty to maintain confidentiality about his interactions with Trump. Second, he’s bound by attorney-client privilege.

What’s the difference? The latter is narrower, protecting only communications between the two that’s centered on getting legal advice. Privilege is also maintained until waived by the client (here, Trump) or by a court order.

“Cohen can’t volunteer information that is either subject to this duty of confidentiality or is covered by the privilege,” Margulies said. “With respect to all that stuff, he’s obliged to keep his mouth shut, and he can discuss those matters only pursuant to a court order.”

Two asterisks that apply here. The first is one way in which attorney-client privilege can be overridden. There’s a crime-fraud exception, which removes claims of privilege from any communication aimed at furthering or covering up an illegal act. Any issues related to crimes to which Cohen has already admitted — for example, the hush-money payments — Margulies figures that congressional investigators could mandate that Cohen discuss.

The other asterisk is that only communications about legal advice are privileged.

“There’s an open question as to how much of what Cohen did was actually legal in character,” Margulies said. “You can be a fixer and do jobs for someone and happen to be a lawyer, as Cohen was. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re providing legal advice.”

All of that said, Cohen doesn’t get to simply decide that conversations he had with Trump should be exempt from privilege. Even that discussion of the hush-money payments might not be cleared under crime fraud: Perhaps, Margulies pointed out, Trump could prove that he wasn’t involved in the payments and therefore any conversations weren’t exempted.

Cohen may not even be allowed to answer questions related broadly to his work for Trump. If he were asked how many hush-money agreements existed, that might breach privilege simply because it would reveal information about his conversations with Trump.

If Cohen simply threw caution to the wind and revealed information that is clearly privileged, the ramifications would be limited. Margulies noted that he might be disbarred, but that’s going to happen anyway. Trump could sue, perhaps, but Cohen likely doesn’t have much money to give him. (He might have insurance against such suits, though, Margulies pointed out.)
[/quote]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/26/what-michael-cohen-can-cant-likely-wont-talk-about-while-hes-capitol-hill

(And yeah, I believe he's been disbarred, at least as of yesterday)

Yeah there’s not really any consequences for lawyers breaching professional ethics other than disbarment.

What about the value of any given testimony? Is it tainted, like illegally obtained evidence?

[Edit: I mean, the guy has already been convicted of lying to congress, it's not like his word means much anymore.]

[Edit 2: It seems like the democrats are so eager to get rid of trump they're squandering their opportunities by jumping on them too quickly and without proper preparation or a long-term plan. It's like when you're working on something and don't do it the right way and keep trying to "make it work" until eventually it becomes unusable, instead of just waiting and getting the right parts/tools]

Interesting how meth use & addiction is extremely high among Mexican immigrants, and how it's used as an aide to work long hours. Something many people forget; methamphetamine is a cheap work aid.

I'm sure the fascists will draw all of the wrong conclusions from this.

Weird, I remember reading about some teenager who worked as an assembly line technician in a Silicon Valley chip plant back in the 70s, saying he could only do the job coked up.

Well, he was convicted under a plea bargain, so....

Liberals

https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/able-bodied-adults-without-dependents-abawds

Never knew this before. For many people, SNAP benefits depend on you being employed. Some people might think this is good because of their irrational beliefs about employment and "handouts", but this is actually a bad thing. You see, if you get SNAP benefits depends on you being employed.. then quitting your job just because more expensive. This adds to the monopsony power of employers, meaning workers will tolerate higher amounts of mistreatment, poor conditions, wage theft etc.

In fact, the entire propaganda machine about benefits programs makes a bunch of sense with this in mind. Red states make it harder to be unemployed.

You don't think it's important to incentivize doctors to actually *see* patients they might otherwise choose not to? As it is, doctors don't really like dealing with MediCaid because it's a slow-moving bureaucracy that that doesn't even pay the full bill.

...for any reason, including to start your own business.

By which I mean “potential future competitor to our godless oligarchs”