Castle Magus

The ball game is not over yet, though. Not even close.

Pelosi threatens to delay Senate impeachment trial

( Excerpt behind cut )

I mean, if there is a legitimate way to keep the tainted Trumpublican Senate out of the loop on this, I am all for it, but I feel like anything like that is a delaying measure, at best. And I don't believe that there's any amount of time that will pass or any amount of maneuvering that can be done that would, somehow, someway, miracle of miracles, convince the Trumpanzees on the Senate to do the right thing. They are already bound and determined to illegitimately acquit Trump, and I don't think there's a damn thing anyone else can do about that, save vote them out of office en masse when the time comes.

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And, just for the hell of it, here are some takes by some famous and semi-famous dudes I follow on social media.

( Wil Wheaton )

( Dan Rather )

And here is a Seth Abramson thread for good measure.

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All in all, I eagerly await the day I can finally see Donald Trump behind bars where he so richly deserves to be, whether that is months from now or years from now, assuming he doesn't (or I don't) die first.

Fuck Donald Trump. To hell with Donald Trump forever. Fuck anyone who still supports Donald Trump. To hell forever with anyone who still supports Donald Trump.

Here is another Seth Abramson thread. I'll let it and him speak for themselves. Because god damn.

(And yet, even this won't matter all that much, either. This is just another thimbleful in the ocean of Trumpish malfeasance, both what has already come to light and what still has yet to do so.)

As with the previous "Seth Abramson rants about David Axelrod" Twitter thread I posted, I think this is more Mr. Axelrod saying that this is what is going to happen, not that it is what should happen, and I don't necessarily disagree entirely. That said, Mr. Abramson is not wrong, either.

It's just that Trump and the Trumpanzees are going to do everything in their power, probably successfully, to try to make everyone forget about the impeachment once it's over, except insofar as Trump can use it to his own advantage, which he will most certainly try to do. (And his base, the real source of all of America's problems, will suck it right down through the sewer pipe directly connecting their lips and Trump's anus, and they will ask for even more, as usual.)

That said, I don't know one way or the other if David Axelrod is just calling it like he sees it, or if he has some sort of sinister ulterior motive here or what, as several people under this and the other thread have said. I kind of don't believe that's the case, but I could be wrong.

Also, just generally speaking, I don't have any faith in the Congressional Democrats to not completely shit the bed with the way they handle the impeachment and the inevitable aftermath (i.e. Trump's acquittal), as depressing and frustrating as that is to say. As usual, as always, I hope that I am 100% entirely wrong and that I will be pleasantly surprised by the good guys actually winning this one.

Trump mocking a disabled reporter? A-OK just fine no problem, say the Trumpanzees.

Trump ordering "illegal" children held in concentration camps? A-OK just fine no problem, say the Trumpanzees. "I really don't care do u?" says Melania Trump.

Trump supporters mocking Chelsea Clinton and Malia and Sasha Obama and calling them dogs or apes or whatever? Well, clearly, that's just all in good fun, right?

This Pamela Karlan person saying Barron Trump won't ever be a literal baron? Holy fuck circle the wagons and get out the hangin' ropes and witch-burning wood, say the hypocritical, as always, Trumpanzees. "Should be ashamed" of her "pandering" says hypocritical Melania Trump.

This is one of the Seth Abramson's longer and more important threads of late.

Thread Reader version (though there's still something wonky with the Thread Reader site lately).

The gist: Trump and his defense team are going to try to fling a whole lot of utter horseshit against the wall and hope that just enough of it sticks (and it won't take much at all, given that the Trumpublican-controlled Senate is already highly favorable to Trump), and in doing so, they're going to dig up some old, ostensibly legitimate dirt related to the Democrats from back in 2016 and try to fraudulently conflate that with Trump's own dumbfuck conspiracy theories.

And, yet, despite Seth Abramson's efforts to pre-debunk it all here (which I fully agree with), it's still probably going to be enough to get Trump off the hook. Like I said, his fellow criminals and lickspittles and potential Putin-blackmailees in the Trumpublican-controlled Senate are already predisposed to acquit him, even if Trump were to come in using absolutely nothing but the Bart Simpson defense or the Chewbacca defense. If Trump comes to them with anything even just a smidgen more believable than that, they're going to pounce on it like a cat on a catnip toy. The Trumpublican Senate is going to acquit Trump, that is just all there is to it. Doesn't matter how blatantly obvious it is that Trump is guilty as shit. He is going to be acquitted. That is the sad, disgusting, frustrating, enraging reality of the situation, and there's basically nothing that the rest of us can do about it, except to vote all of the complicit Trumpanzee assholes out of office as soon as possible. (And good luck getting that to actually happen. I've voted against Richard Burr and Thom Tillis every opportunity I've had to do so, and yet, there they are, in the Senate, fucking everything up.)

(EDIT)

Here are a couple of followup threads. (EDIT 3) And a third I didn't see initially. (/EDIT 3)

The above is a big part of why Trump continues getting away with all of his dogshit. The Left is too busy sniping and backbiting at each other over petty, stupid shit and getting their jimmies rustled to offer a coordinated front against Trump.

I hope Mr. Abramson takes up Ms. Chalupa's offer to talk about this directly, so that if he did get something wrong, he can correct it and apologize for it. And if he didn't get anything wrong, which seems consistent with what was said in the CNN article he posted containing direct quotes from Alexandra Chalpua herself, then well... I don't know what her or her sister are on about, honestly.

(EDIT 3)

However, Abramson's entire point was that if things she is directly quoted as saying in publicly available interviews are there for him to access, they're there for Trump's defense team to access as well (which, as stated in Abramson's original thread [which all the Chalupa-defenders currently dogpiling on Abramson obviously have not actually read], Team Trump is already doing that). It doesn't matter a single flying fuck what sort of "understanding" or "clearing the air" Abramson and Chalupa may come to (or not) behind closed doors speaking to each other privately, if that ever even happens, because Trump's team is already taking her already publicly available quotes and are planning to twist them all out of context and inappropriately apply them to Trump's defense. And Abramson's point is that even if Chalupa thinks she is 100% in the clear and goes into any potential testimony believing that this alone makes her somehow impregnable, she's going to be in for a huge shock when Team Trump (and Team Trump's allies in the Senate) drags her through the mud all over again, if she's not prepared to effectively shut them down. But they (i.e. Chalupa's sister Andrea and whoever this Sarah Kendzior is) just seem to be mostly interested in nothing but calling Abramson a liar and sending Twitter attack dogs after him. I mean, it seems to me like they should be on the same team here, but they're currently at each others throats, which is utterly fucking asinine.

(/EDIT 3)

In any case, one way or the other, the bottom line is that Donald Trump and his defense are still going to use that shit in his "defense," whether it's 100% false or only 98% false (and the less false it is, the better for Trump it is, even if it has fuck all to do with Trump [I mean, you know, outside of Trump's connection to Paul Manafort, since Trump and Manafort were secretly doing crimes together at the time]), so everyone who is opposed to Trump had goddamn well better get their ducks in a fucking row and be prepared to handle it.

(EDIT 2) And shit like the above is why I utterly hate Twitter with the passion of a million suns, because Twitter is where bullshit crosstalk and people talking at each other rather than with each other like that thrives best. If Twitter headquarters and all of its servers and codebase exploded right now, I would not shed a single tear. Everyone who "relies" on Twitter would find other, hopefully better means to communicate. (/EDIT 2)

(/EDIT)

Via Seth Abramson thread: "Trump lunches with two of his biggest Senate GOP critics"

Also, this: "Romney calls lunch with Trump 'delightful'"

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Trump, alone, or even Trump, with his little inner circle of criminal co-conspirators, have never been the real danger, extremely dangerous though they might be.

The real danger lies in every GOP member of Congress, House and Senate, and the objective fact that they are all wholly owned by Trump and Putin and will do everything in their power to preserve Trump's own power. It is appalling. It is obvious. It is disgusting. It is blatant. It is depressing. It is brazen. It is enraging. It is ridiculous. It is insane. If not for these Trumpublican Congressasshats, Trump would have been removed from office years ago.

Here's the thing I'm not sure about, though... have the GOP/Republicans always been this despicable, willing to do whatever evil thing they have to to get what they want? Looking at least as far back as Sarah Palin (blatantly drumming up anti-terrorist fears with regards to Obama) and George W. Bush (used lies to start the Iraq War) indicates that maybe this is the case. Or does all this recent Trump-asskissing and Trump-bootlicking occur as a result of some heinous kompromat that Putin managed to get on all these shitbags when (never forget) Russia hacked them at the same time Russia hacked the DNC, but for whatever reason didn't release any of the RNC stuff to Wikileaks (unlike the DNC), for the purpose of using it to control them as he seems to be doing now?

In any case, Trump is doing anything and everything in his power to directly aid Russia, and has been doing so since before becoming POTUS, and the Trumpublicans in Congress are doing everything in their power to directly aid Trump, which directly aids Russia, and have been doing so ever since Trump was nominated (probably thanks to Russian interference and disinformation, same as the reason why Trump was elected), and it's just... like... Jesus fucking Christ already. How much longer until this nightmare finally ends with them all in prison, or, most likely failing that, no longer serving in government, at the very least?

(EDIT) Of course, I'm wrong here. The real danger lies in all the clueless, gullible, moronic "normal people" who keep repeatedly electing these asshats to power. (/EDIT)

So, apparently, Donald Trump had a "secret"/"unplanned"/"unscheduled" hospital visit over the weekend or some shit? Oh wait, crap, I posted the wrong link there.

Trump people, of course, say there's nothing to worry about. Routine checkup or whatever. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't (not that I would give the slightest shit if Trump did have some kind of health-related emergency), but given that Trump and his people lie constantly, who really knows what's going on. I was going to add "besides them," but most of the time I don't even think they know what's really going on.

Seriously, if Trump were to just suddenly drop dead right now of a heart attack or something, I would be simultaneously relieved, because that means he would no longer be the President, and disappointed, because that also means he would have escaped facing justice for all of his criminal bullshit. I would not, however, shed a single tear or lose a single night's sleep over his stupid, lying, corrupt, corpulent ass.

(EDIT) And here is a Seth Abramson thread on the matter for good measure. (/EDIT)

Another thread here.

Now, more generally speaking...

I have to admit that, on the one hand, I find Mr. Abramson's constant, persistent, incessant plugging of his books to be increasingly tiresome.

However, on the other hand, I definitely see where he's coming from, tiresome though I may find it. If I had written what I believe to be the definitive books on Trump's criminal bullshit, I'd probably be plugging the everloving shit out of them as well (hypocritically so). If I had written what I believe to be the definitive books on Trump's criminal bullshit, I'd feel more inclined to just refer people to them rather than rehash everything on my personal/professional Twitter feed as well. If I were known, as Mr. Abramson is, for regularly reporting on/predicting newsworthy items in the Trump/Russia affair six months to a year or more prior to when major mainstream media finally picks up on them (and, indeed, if I wrote what I believed to be the definitive book about them), I would want my well-deserved credit for it as well.

All that said, however, I would also realize that my constant plugging of my books, even though I believed them to be the definitive books on Trump's criminal bullshit, could be seen as offputting and annoying to the followers of my feed, so I would try to tone it down a little bit. I would try to make an effort to talk about new developments without immediately tying it into my books, and I would try to chill out with all the tooting of my own horn, no matter how well justified that horn-tooting might be, because I would be afraid that I would come off as too selfish and petty and overly concerned with sales of my books.

Now some may read my post, right here, and dismiss it as "concern trolling" on my part. And they'd be half right. I am not trolling, but I am definitely, legitimately concerned that too many people who might otherwise fully agree with Mr. Abramson are seeing nothing but the constant book plugging from him and are, as such, being cynically turned off to his message (i.e. that Trump is, has been, and always will be a blatant criminal who deserves to spend the rest of his natural life behind bars). I mean, I absolutely agree with him, otherwise, about pretty much everything he's said over the years, so far, but even for me, the incessant book plugging is becoming trite and banal. That said, though, I'm not exactly sure what else he should do. I think his books should be read... I just think he may be overdoing it a bit with the continuous self-promotion.

"BuzzFeed News sued the US government to see all the work that Mueller’s team kept secret. We have published the first installment, with revelations about the Ukraine conspiracy theory, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and more."

Found via Seth Abramson.

I want to be excited about this, but... I still think none of this kind of thing is going to accomplish much of anything in the way of finally taking Trump down, if all the stuff that has come out before hasn't already done so. As always, I hope I'm wrong, but at this point, it simply sucks too much to get one's hopes up too much that Trump may actually one day face justice for all of his criminal bullshit.

And at this point, to be perfectly frank, just Trump and just Trump's inner circle of lackeys going down won't be even remotely enough to satisfy me. For a start, I want all of the Republicans in Congress who have supported and propped up Trump, despite his blatant, brazen criminal behavior, to face the music as well, right alongside Trump and his cronies. But they won't. At worst, if Trump does eventually get brought down as he so deserves, the GOP Congressasshats will all just feign shock, harrumph about how bad Trump was, spin everything else in a way that makes them look good which all the gullible, ignorant, hateful dumbfucks in their base will suck down like shit flushed down a toilet, and then get off scot-free. Because the Republican party and the United States federal government in general is so far beyond fucked up now that it will never be properly repaired from all this Trumpian pigfuckery. Might as well just burn the whole goddamned thing to the ground and rebuild anew. *weary sigh*

(EDIT)

Some bits from the article:

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"In response to a court order, the Justice Department released the first installment of documents: hundreds of pages of summaries of FBI interviews with witnesses, available here for the first time. Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years."

dot dot dot

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"Trump supporter and associate Ted Malloch emailed Bannon before the first debate and said Trump should start by handing Hillary Clinton a 'Writ of Indictment.'"

Excerpt from the associated memo embedded in the article:

"Here is the idea:

"In his opening remarks Scene One, in other words--hand Hillary a Writ of Indictment. Have it typed out and actually hand it physically to her.

"What is INDICTMENT?

"A written accusation of one or more persons of a crime or misdemeanour, presented to, and preferred upon oath or affirmation, by a grand jury legally convoked. Say this and then add, this Indictment is on behalf of all the American people since our Justice Department will not indict you due to crony politics. I present it to you formally here tonight, and serve you on behalf of ALL the American people for you [sic] undeniable crimes against America, destruction of evidence in the form of emails, and theft of funds to your own personal benefit and enrichment."

Holy shit. What the actual fuck. The unmitigated hubris and hypocrisy on display here is ludicrous.

Seriously, just burn the whole fucking thing down and start over. Maybe even nuke the site from orbit, just to be sure.

(/EDIT)