Impeach the Motherfucker!

Thank you for your service, now get the fuck out:

[Lt. Col. Alex] Vindman, a decorated veteran who was born in Ukraine, was escorted out of the White House by security and told his services were no longer needed, according to Vindman’s lawyer, David Pressman.

His twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, a National Security Council attorney, was also fired and walked off the White House grounds alongside him.

Gotta give it up for Trump and the mobster touch of canning Alex’s brother.

Oh, hey, this just in — here’s Collins’ statement:

I Bet Susan and Lisa are SadPost + Comments (51)

I thought he would be all talk, but he came through on Article 1. Good for him. It’s now a bipartisan vote. I wonder what the Senate’s version of the Amash shunning will be?

Update: Here’s his floor speech. Quite good.

A Good Word for MittPost + Comments (225)

Here’s her full statement on why she won’t vote for witnesses, but the tl;dr is some nonsense about the trial being too politicized, she’s tearful about how John Roberts has been attacked, etc. Don’t waste your beautiful minds trying to make sense of it. Some words had to be formed into sentences, those sentences formed into paragraphs, all in the form of statement, to keep her sinecure intact.

The only thing left is to take this vote and hammer away at all the senators who were part of it. It’s Democrats’ turn to wrap ourselves in the flag, quote the Constitution, and amp up the traitor rhetoric that Republicans love to use at every convenient occasion.

Also, I realize I’m really leaning on this song but I’m not aware of any better expression of the absurdity of the feigned outrage that we’ve been seeing.

Lisa Murkowski’s Diamond TearsPost + Comments (89)

The latest is that the final impeachment vote could be delayed until the middle of next week, after the SOTU.

If I were a Republican putting party over country (is that redundant?), I would be of two minds on that. First, if Trump skates today, the notion that his SOTU could be summarized as anything but “boo-yah, suck on that Nancy” are dim, and only his advisors Al, Dan and Van (Adderall, Percodan and Ativan) really know what else he would say once he feels that he got away with it. Better to still have him in the dock so he reads the prompter.

On the other hand, the minute Trump is acquitted, the value of the Bolton revelations are diminished, since there’s no possibility that they can be used as leverage against Collins, McSally, et. al.

So yeah, it’s hard out there for the traitorous Republican Senators, but don’t worry, their retirement wingnut welfare jobs are totally safe.

Drippity Do DahPost + Comments (30)

The post title is from a song by Clem Snide, that has this lyric:

They asked him

“Hey, where’s this bus going?”

And he said, “well, I’m really not sure”

“Well then how will you know where to get off?”

And he said, “the place with the most allure”

It looks like the place with the most allure, at the moment, is no testimony from Bolton. Aides are saying that the only firm vote for witnesses is Mittens, and the Angel Moroni and his wife both know that firmness is not his strong suit. Murkowski is meeting with McConnell this morning to stare slowly at the swinging watch, and the Post is casting McConnell’s position as he “did not yet have” the votes to block Democrats from calling witnesses.

If I had to put money on it, I’d bet that Bolton doesn’t testify. Letting Democrats ask Bolton questions under oath is just too dangerous to the whole enterprise. Though, I have to admit that not letting him testify will lead to hundreds of campaign ads smashing the weaker Republicans who don’t vote that way, so I’m not 100% sure.

It’s pretty common to know how something is going to turn out in the end. The ring had to go back into the fires of Mordor, Harry had to kill Voldemort, Samantha and Endora had to burn Darren at the stake after one martini too many, and Trump’s gonna skate. But god damn can there be a lot of filler material in the middle.

Open thread.

I Love The UnknownPost + Comments (96)

Unbelievable:

Just after President Trump’s defense lawyers ended arguments in their Senate trial Tuesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein suggested she could vote to acquit him, despite serious concerns about his character.

“Nine months left to go, the people should judge. We are a republic, we are based on the will of the people — the people should judge,” Feinstein said Tuesday, after the president’s team finished a three-day presentation in his defense. “That was my view and it still is my view.”

[…]

After those remarks were published, Feinstein issued a statement saying she had been misunderstood.

“Before the trial I said I’d keep an open mind. Now that both sides made their cases, it’s clear the president’s actions were wrong. He withheld vital foreign assistance for personal political gain. That can’t be allowed to stand.”

Misunderstood! After the discipline of Schiff spending hours laying out his case in the most precise language, she makes a stupid off-the-cuff remark like that and has to walk it back. And it is so stupid, because the fundamental reason for impeaching Trump is that he’s meddling with the next election with the purpose of thwarting the will of the people.

Jesus, a child could understand that argument.

Just to be clear, I’m not just upset that she made a dumb comment that she had to walk back. What’s really scary is that that she might be reflecting what some other “institutionalist” Democrats in the Senate really think. Also, “Well if even San Francisco liberal DiFi has concerns about impeachment, how can I explain my vote to the voters of <purple or red state>”.

There isn’t enough alcohol in the world, there just isn’t…

Just a Soul Whose Intentions Are GoodPost + Comments (140)

Steve M has a good piece on the hurt feelings excuse that Karen Susan Collins and the rest of the “moderates” (God I hate that word in this context) are going to use for a reason not to call witnesses. Two things:

First, we all have little clichés or old saws that we use to explain human behavior. In this case, I’m going to go with either “Never teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and it annoys the pig” or “How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but they have to want to change”.

These pigs don’t want to change, and they’re pissed that Schiff, Nadler and the rest are pointing it out while they have to sit quietly and listen.

Second, you often hear people remark that, for a group that uses the expression “fuck your feelings” a lot, these people sure are delicate. That’s true, but there’s a little more to it than simply hypocrisy. It’s a result of the very effective, 30+ year project of “othering” by the conservative media. Long before Fox News, Limbaugh and others worked to make “liberal” an epithet to describe someone who is lesser than the person using the term. These fuckers couldn’t use racial epithets in public anymore, so they found a better one – it doesn’t matter what color you are, or where you came from, if you’re a god damned liberal, then fuck your feelings. But if you’re a conservative, please tread carefully, because you’re dealing with a legitimate human being who is easily damaged by lack of respect.

It would be bad enough if this attitude had been embraced by a third of the population or more, but it’s also been accepted by the mainstream media. There are hundreds of examples of this behavior, but here’s one: how many stories have been written in outlets like the Times that contain concerns that a given Senator or Congressperson is “too right wing”? Find me one, I’m sure they’re rare. That’s because these people are legitimate members of the establishment “Freedom Caucus”, and as such, they have a certain set of deeply held legitimate beliefs. But the same media outlets will shit themselves if they don’t crank out a story about Warren, AOC, Ilhan, etc. that doesn’t contain handwringing about whether any of those women are “too liberal”.

I guess this is all bloody obvious to most of us, but it’s the coronavirus of the mind that is going to kill this country.

You Coulda Said Something Nice About My ProfiterolesPost + Comments (118)

I get why Moscow Mitch is cramming the impeachment into a couple of days – it has to be done before the SOTU so Trump can declare victory from the podium. But my God what a toll that’s going to take on the older Senators. When Collins complained to the manager about her order, sent a note to Roberts to complain about Jerry Nadler, it was after midnight, for christsake. That’s way too late for the over-80 crew ( Shelby, Feinstein, Grassley, Roberts, and Inhofe) and probably pretty damn late for the over-75ers (a bunch of them).

My experience with people in their mid-80s is that they sleep a lot, and they need their sleep to get through the day. And these were relatively healthy 80-somethings, “relatively healthy” being a stretch for a few of these Senators.

Look, I’m not pissing on these people for being old. Aging sucks, I fucking hate it, and we’ll all suffer through it, if we’re lucky. We can have an argument about whether these guys should all have retired some other time. But from just a simple human perspective, we’re risking the lives of a bunch of people just to ram this thing through the Senate.

Tough on the SeniorsPost + Comments (78)