Yep. Even my favorite feminist Tammy Bruce last night said that she truly believes that McConnell wants to be the minority leader and is willing to lose the Senate to prevent Trump from having a successful presidency.  I shit you not.

Wow!  Does McConnell have a thing about Presidents?  He also promised to prevent Obama from having a successful presidency. 

Interesting concept, can't say I agree.  As the President is discovering, running the US government (and actually getting something accomplished) is MUCH different that running a family owned business.  Don't believe the President is evil, do believe we are seeing the Peter Principal in action.

Who, exactly, is pulling these strings? By name is preferred.

I don't buy into this entire thing being orchestrated or being some big, masterful plan.

Moore lost because he was a bad candidate. Him losing is a good thing for the Republicans. Yes, the Republicans have only the slightest of a majority in the Senate, but it's still a majority. If Republicans put up good, strong candidates in 2018 then they should actually gain seats in the Senate.

Agree the conspiracy theories are over the top, sort of like blaming the Establishment for all that is wrong.

Moore was a poor choice of candidate. Moving aside the predator charges, he still had significant baggage that would have been detrimental to the Republicans. This isn't a mortal blow to the Republicans, however it is another in a long line of missed opportunities. That was a Senate seat they should have easily won in perhaps the reddest of red states. 

The Democrats now have a golden opportunity, if they can find those "good, strong candidates" to run they do have an excellent chance of making up ground.  Unfortunately, I'm not all that encouraged they will do so.  The Dems need a direction and message, just saying they are anti-Trump is not going to do it.

This is interesting:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/937007006526959618

Had to read that three times, still not sure what the President means. 

Actually, he did but didn't out it all.  I know a lady who was involved with that investigation and she said the decision was made not to press it.  But there was plenty of evidence of him having committed crimes, including perjury, lying and obstruction.  But given the political environment at the time, there was zero chance of him being removed from office, so it would have just prolonged the circus.

Do tell!!!  My second cousin knows that her hairdresser has a client that says Bill Clinton was completely innocent!  (said in pure jest).

But beside the fact President Clinton was elected (twice) means that the voters knew and didn't care.  At least I've heard similar logic from the current President.  That being said, I'd rate President Clinton somewhere below pond scum.  Was a talented politician however.

Have you ever heard of the Community Reinvestment Act?

Sure have, and I'm sure you know that the poster boy of bad lending practice, Countrywide, was not subject to the CRA.

Andrew Cuomo (N.Y. AG) admitted that banks were forced to make affirmative action sub prime loans.
Janet Reno prosecuted several banks that refused or resisted.

There is a difference between affirmative action and FORCING lenders to make bad loans.  There isn't a single law, regulation or guidance that forces a lender to make a load they know is bad.  Whether they wish to do so however is a different matter!   

Given a choice of making a safe profit, or being prosecuted, even the most honest and ethical businessmen will choose the profit.  And we all know not all businessmen are angels.

This is true!

AIG was kind of a special case, and even today experts are debating what went wrong there.  But IMNSHO, much of their problem resulted from overzealous Federal Regulators and the fact that they invested in REITS and SWAPS that had AAA ratings because the government guaranteed them.  Ratings are meaningless when the government guarantees them).And when everything went to shit, the Feds stepped in and screwed AIG.  (This is all from memory.  I am sure you will want to make corrections and additions).

Again, follow the money, AIG was an insurance company, yes they were highly regulated, whether that was overzealous is a matter of opinion.  Mortgage backed securities, and particularly derivatives where hardly regulated at all.  Agree that much of the ratings from the likes of Moodys, et all were garbage, but the government (Freddie and Fannie) did not guarantee all mortgages securities, far from it.  Add up the total values of the first mortgages and compare that to the value of the secondary instruments and you will see that that value of the initial mortgages was dwarfed by the value of the derivatives and Mortgage Backed Securities. 

It's worse than that.  Anyone that gets their news from dozens of sources is going to have a warped view, unless one of their sources is Fox.

I agree that Fox is biased, but I rarely, if ever, find that they refuse to cover a subject because it goes against their "agenda".  They might not pound on it endlessly, but they will cover it.  The others completely ignore what they don't like.

That is a an interesting observation.  Personally, I think CNN has the widest coverage of topics than anyone else.  That by no means says they are the most objective in their coverage.