NEW: Democrats expected to unveil articles of impeachment against Trump Tuesday, focusing on abuse of power, obstruction of Congress @rachaelmbade @mikedebonis @eliseviebeck @ToluseO https://t.co/8BZML3Gwr0
— Emily Guskin (@EmGusk) December 10, 2019
Notably, Trump is meeting Russia’s foreign minister tomorrow. https://t.co/I64KHWvCjl
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) December 10, 2019
Trump/Lavrov meeting in the Oval office will be “closed press” pic.twitter.com/ryOfpou1Rj
— Jérôme Cartillier (@jcartillier) December 10, 2019
So it appears there will be a mtg with Trump, and once again, the news comes from Moscow. https://t.co/lUyoMaplLo
— Bianna Golodryga (@biannagolodryga) December 9, 2019
Annual performance review with Trump & Pence at the WH.
Then onto Congress for #MoscowMitch, #LeningradLindsay, and a host of others.
Word is that he'll attend the weekly @GOP Congressional meeting to give the team fresh orders from Putin. https://t.co/kLDTmW5lHl
— dengre (@denngree) December 10, 2019
Here's what Trump may be up to meeting Lavrov in a "closed press" Oval meeting tomorrow, the day after Putin met Zelensky at #NormandySummit to resolve Russia-Ukraine war. It's always been about sanctions, which entails absolving Russia of election attack, rehab'ing pariah Putin. https://t.co/xNc6kcJJCW
— Paula Chertok? (@PaulaChertok) December 10, 2019
I think for Christmas, he's gonna give him Afghanistan ??
Lavrov will drop some small bit of info that POTUS will tweet before the end of the day https://t.co/T4qoM5SS1o
— Molly McKew (@MollyMcKew) December 9, 2019
Caving to inferior-but-independent-and-ruthless powers is the essence of Mr. ArtoftheDeal. He always caves.
— Aki Peritz (@AkiPeritz) December 10, 2019
SFAW
#TreasonTrump should be a hashtag, if it isn’t already. [No, I have no idea how Twitter works. So sue me.] It’ll be a trifecta with #MoscowMitch (or #TraitorTurtle), and #LeningradLindsey.
zhena gogolia
Someone needs to front-page Eric Swalwell’s 5 minutes yesterday laying out the whole conspiracy. Every U.S. citizen needs to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kAn7hhi4SU
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
And Cillizza, too
ETA: By the way, has anyone EVER seen the Traitor-in-Chief’s “long form” birth certificate? I certainly haven’t. Considering that his mother came here to have her “anchor baby,” maybe Sheriff Joe can send a team to
HawaiiNYC to investigate.laura
The second Oval Office meeting with Lavrov. American press barred from covering it. The follow-on from yesterday’s meeting between Putin and Zelensky.
Half of us have our hair on fire over this and half seem to think this is great. Cillizza opines both sides.
American Democracy literally hangs by a slender thread.
PST
My dog got me up, as usual, for a walk at the crepuscule of dawn. I should start taking pictures. The play of dawn light on clouds behind the tall buildings and many cranes is dramatic.
Snarki, child of Loki
#TrumpTreason or #TraitorTrump
It’s really sad how ‘standards’ have fallen since the days of Benedict Arnold, also, too.
donnah
Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress seem to be the two elements. They aren’t going for bribery. I hope these are the most provable and carry the most weight.
I’m glad Swalwell dropped out of the Presidential race. He’s done well on this and other committees.
Snarki, child of Loki
@SFAW: Trump put up a “birth certificate” during his pre-presidential obsession with Obama’s BC.
It said that Trump was born in JAMAICA.
Explains why he’s such a jerk chicken.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Fake news! No quid pro quo! This process is unfair! Fake news! Lyin’ Adam Schiff! No smocking gun! Read the transcript! Hearsay! No witnesses! Perfect call! Somebody do something!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!
SFAW
@Snarki, child of Loki:
At least Arnold gave something up (i.e., his leg) in service of his country. The only sacrifice(s) that the Traitor-in-Chief has made is/are a few rounds of golf and (maybe) a couple of scoops of ice cream.
Dorothy A. Winsor
On twitter, Terry Kanefield is doing Cliff Notes on the Judiciary Committee Report.
SFAW
@Snarki, child of Loki:
I never saw it. I think you might be making it all up, to cover for the Traitor-in-Chief. As you always do. [I’d also call you a “commie,” but in some quarters, that’s no longer a bad thing.]
But in case the alleged BC appears, maybe Assrocket, or one of his
moronsminions can check the kerning on the purported “birth certificate.”OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: The trump Golf Count stands at 228 with 107 days on the links confirmed. I’m pretty sure he’s not denying himself any ice cream either.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
You might be right about the ice cream, but I thought I recalled one weekend where he had to stay
homein the White House because he thought Congress was being mean to him. Of course, it would not surprise me if I were wrong about that.zhena gogolia
@donnah:
Do we know this is all they’re doing? I thought they were going to keep working on them.
SFAW
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Thanks very much! A good, concise read.
sdhays
@SFAW: He’s claimed before that his father is German. Maybe it was an instance of him not lying/getting confused by his brainworms.
We need to get to the bottom of this.
JR
Obstruction of Congress, really? The “moderate” democrats need to learn a thing or two about messaging. Maybe they can talk to the guys who got kicked out in 2010 about bucking/holding up party agenda.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia:
God, it looks as if you’re right. Why are they pulling their punches?
SFAW
@sdhays:
And maybe I play hoops better than Kareem, Jordan, and LeBron, all rolled into one.
Anne Laurie
Because if they wait for Trump to stop committing new crimes before charging him, we’ll be waiting a looooong time.
Better to impeach on the strongest couple of charges, right now, and lance the nasty GOP boil on our suffering nation’s butt.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Morning tweet from Charlie Pierce (less than 10 minutes ago)
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
germy
Wasn’t Russia ruined by their adventures in that destroyer of empires? Maybe if #45 tries to give it to them, they’ll regift it to China?
germy
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
germy
Shalimar
I’m glad Trump always caves to petty dictators. If he actually followed through with any of his threats against North Korea, it would leave millions dead.
Lapassionara
@OzarkHillbilly: Has anyone seen Trump playing golf since the trip to Walter Reed?
germy
@Shalimar: I think it was someone here who said #45 is afraid starting a war would mean too much work for him.
Baud
@Shalimar:
Agreed. I’ve said from the beginning, if we can get to 2021 with no nuclear war, that’ll be a win.
Gin & Tonic
@laura:
Not just a follow-on, a Trumpian humiliation for Zelenskyy. Russia briefs the US President on the status of talks to resolve a conflict which for the last five fucking years it has said it is not a party to, while the leader of the country which has lost 13,000 lives in defense of its territorial integrity gets no say.
A fucking travesty.
OzarkHillbilly
@Lapassionara: His last visit to a course was 11/30-12/1, they say he played golf on the 30th.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: I’ve got a theory on that, which may appear in a post later as an aside. I think Pelosi wants to wrap the inquiry up and send it to the senate sooner rather than later in part because the Trump/GOP impeachment defense is to project the crimes they’re guilty of onto Biden. Will it work? One hopes not, but this country elected Donald Fucking Trump, so who knows? Maybe Pelosi figures it’s better to see if that attack lands now rather than after the party chooses a nominee.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: That’s a good point.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The Ds are on the TV now issuing their articles of impeachment. Only two: obstruction of justice and abuse of power.
I’m surprised bribery isn’t in there since it’s specifically mentioned in the Constitution, but Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler are better at this than I am.
OzarkHillbilly
‘We were lied to’: bankruptcy leaves truckers stranded as holidays near
I wonder how many trump loving truckers can do the math.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Too many bribery vs. extortion debates, is my guess.
germy
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
You said what I was thinking.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: I think she’s just following the KISS Principle: Keep It Simple Stupid. Considering how short the attention span of the American electorate, I suspect she’s right to.
Betty Cracker
@germy: Honest to dog, that would not surprise me. Pirro is a braying loon who sounds like the world’s most obnoxious barfly, but she’s braying Trump’s praises, which is qualification enough.
Trump had a hissy fit on Twitter this morning about Wray, whose remarks reflected the content of the actual IG report, not the Fox News happy talk. So yeah, even though he’s straight out of central casting, Trump wants to replace him.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I feel for all the trump hating truckers.
germy
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yep. There are always the minority of them that act as human shields to prevent us from letting our indignation take control.
It sucks being moral.
Immanentize
@Baud: my understanding (meager though it is) is that these are just the first of the articles, with more possible later this week or later this year. That would follow the Nixon precedent of ratcheting up pressures over a period of time.
But who really knows.
p.a.
Trump admin corruption reminds me of Stalin’s “one death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic” comment.
p.s. Is that comment documented, or apochryphal?
Gin & Tonic
@p.a.: It is attributed to Stalin, but not well-documented enough to be certain.
OzarkHillbilly
@p.a.: I am reading Bloodlands right now. Pretty sure that quote comes up in it, tho I can’t say for sure as I’m reading a lot of different stuff right now.
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s cheery reading for the holiday season.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: When I was picking up concrete last week I had a couple guys load it up for me. One of them said, “I like your stickers. I like your hat too.” The other smiled and nodded in agreement.
It doesn’t happen often but it does happen more often than I would expect. Nice to know I am not alone out here.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Sweet. You guys need a secret handshake or something.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: Speaking as one who thinks the holidays are just another pothole in the road of life I can only say, “Yep, a real page turner.” Seriously, a very good book.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Finally got to read about that Houston PD Chief. What can I say. Why don’t you stop beating around the bush Chief, and tell us how you really feel.
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes, of course it is. Timothy Snyder is not just an excellent historian (with a reading knowledge of eight languages), but an excellent writer as well. It’s just a really tough subject.
Miss Bianca
@Gin & Tonic: I listened to that book on audio. Man, it was a hard read. I kept thinking that his descriptions of the starvation in Ukraine sounded like a horror movie.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: My wife got it on audio, she didn’t last 2 days.
Gin & Tonic
@Miss Bianca: Snyder had access to a lot of archives after the demise of the Soviet Union, but the pioneering work on the famine (Holodomor) was done by Robert Conquest in Harvest of Sorrow. Although, admittedly, Snyder’s focus was the period after that.
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: Understandable. If you don’t have some connection to that time and place, it’s hard to get through. I struggled with and stalled out in a book on the Great Leap Forward for pretty much that reason – deprivation and starvation and death, on and on, page after page, in a country I have no ancestral links to (well, not in the last 800 years, anyway.)
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: An old friend’s family came over from Lithuania post WWII. They lived it. I only got to hear a couple stories 2nd hand after her mother’s death. Her father ended up being conscripted into the Wehrmacht as a doctor and followed the campaigns back and forth across the eastern front, leaving his wife behind to survive as best she could (and almost didn’t, another worthy story). After the war, they were not exactly welcome in Stalin’s USSR and managed to escape, ending up here, becoming a small town doctor and raising 4 kids.
jonas
Like the midwestern farmers who are trying to figure out how to liquidate their bankrupt farms this holiday season, they can do the numbers. And they don’t care. “Yeah, he destroyed my life with his stupid economic policies. On the other hand, libs and minorities are being pwned daily, so it’s really been worth it.”
J R in WV
@Gin & Tonic:
Yeah, as a youth, I read the Rise and Fall by Shirer, more detail about the Holocaust than I care to remember, Leon Uris’ novels about the Warsaw Uprising and the creation wars of Israel…
Then I gave it up, although I have read some great autobiographical work on WW II in the S Pacific. Shame so much Human history is so splattered with horror. Doesn’t speak well of our species.
But then, there are lots of kind people and acts not well documented, because kindness isn’t as remarkable as all those towering pyramids of skulls created by several different cultures.
Mike in Pasadena
@OzarkHillbilly: The truckers will blame Obama.
Gin & Tonic
@J R in WV: Sometimes heading down one of these rabbit holes revealed by a thread here yields a gold nugget. To wit, economist and Sovietologist Peter Wiles, writing in The New York Review of Books in an exchange with Robert Conquest about an obscure point of 1930’s Soviet demography: “Pedantry is a duty, nay a pleasure, at all times.”
Tehanu
@Gin & Tonic:
Damn right. I’m so sick of that fat bastard Dump and his smirking KGB handler.