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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[LarryBnDC]

http://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/11/18/yes-its-ok-to-speculate-on-the-presidents-health-071399

I’m going with he fell and broke his hip in the shower.

Busted hip from slip and fall would be like manna for the WH gang. Easier to explain and run with than this...

https://heavy.com/news/2019/11/trump-chest-pain/

[NeedsAdjustments]

Republicans previewed an early rebuttal on Monday in the form of a meandering but at times caustic 11-page letter from Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin. On the eve of testimony by Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, a national security aide, Mr. Johnson suggested the colonel perhaps participated “in the ongoing effort to sabotage” the president’s policies “and if possible, remove him from office.”

...

The letter comes after the top Republicans on the House Oversight and Intelligence Committees requested Mr. Johnson provide them with “any firsthand information you have about President Trump’s actions toward Ukraine.” The Wisconsin Republican traveled to Ukraine as part of a delegation attending Mr. Zelensky’s inauguration this year and joined phone calls between Mr. Trump and Mr. Sondland, who is to testify publicly on Wednesday.

The senator has said that after Mr. Sondland told him the security aid was linked to investigations, he confronted Mr. Trump in a phone call in late August. The president, Mr. Johnson said, flatly denied it so vigorously that he uttered a number of curse words and insisted that he “barely knew” Mr. Sondland.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/us/politics/trump-impeachment.html

So...sorry.  Sen. Johnson is admitting that Sondland told him the aid was linked to investigations of Biden but now as numerous other people have said the same thing, he accuses one of them of being part of some deep state conspiracy to get Trump removed from office because obviously, when Trump denied it all by getting mad and using lots of curse words he must have been telling the truth.  I mean, you can't argue with the "I barely knew him" defense, right?

This is the story Republicans are hanging their defense on?

Wow.

[josh]

Setting aside the Ukraine bribery/coercion issue, for a moment, and ignoring the ongoing complete failure of either this administration's following security protocols even somewhat or the GOP-controlled Senate's keeping even the pretense of consistency on the topic...

If, as seems increasingly likely it is demonstrated that President Trump lied in his sworn statement to then-Special Prosecutor Mueller, that sure sounds like the equivalent in action (lying in a federal investigation) to what Bliil Clinton was ultimately nailed for when they impeached him.

And over a far more serious issue, vis-a-vis federal safety/security and Putin's boys vs. a White House intern. What then?! Will any of the Senate GOP members illustrate integrity and vote to convict Trump if he is demonstrably guilty?

[josh]

[NeedsAdjustments]

If, as seems increasingly likely it is demonstrated that President Trump lied in his sworn statement to then-Special Prosecutor Mueller, that sure sounds like the equivalent in action (lying in a federal investigation) to what Bliil Clinton was ultimately nailed for when they impeached him.

And over a far more serious issue, vis-a-vis federal safety/security and Putin's boys vs. a White House intern. What then?! Will any of the Senate GOP members illustrate integrity and vote to convict Trump if he is demonstrably guilty?

This is why I said earlier that if this is true, it is an accusation that becomes a lot harder to defend as "bad but not impeachable" for the GOP.

Which is not to say of course that they would not say exactly that.

This is one I think the "president" will get away with though.  In his answers Trump hides behind the "I do not recall..." and even though there are multiple witnesses that can dispute what he said I think impeachment on this basis would require some kind of documentation.  Mueller himself essentially said in testimony that he thought Trump lied to him so if there was anything documented in his investigation material that proved it, I think Mueller would have said so. 

[NeedsAdjustments]

Today's hearings are I fear another example of how Democrats don't know how to play the game.  These hearings are no longer about fact finding.  They have the facts.  They are about shifting public opinion enough to at least get a real trial on the impeachment articles in the Senate.

And yet today they are mashing all this testimony together, not giving any bombshells room to land.  Vindman is a star witness of theirs.  Volker should have to sit through a full day of questioning on his own considering all of the inconsistencies in his story.  And why are all these people being questioned in pairs?  Why not focus on one and let them feel the heat?

Democrats seem more concerned about being expeditious, but they are running to a finish line where there will be no winner.  Everyone knows where this is going if they can't get more Americans to support Trump's removal. 

It might be that they think they won't really get anywhere until they get a Bolton or a Mulvaney (or even a Giuliani) in front of them, and they are just trying to get there.  And Sondland is probably the biggest fish right now.  But they are only doing Trump favors trying to get this done as soon as possible.

[barton]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/18/south-dakota-meth-were-on-it-addiction-campaign

A well-meaning ad campaign apparently needed....a little tweaking.

The twitter link in the article is actually worth clicking.   Some really funny stuff.

[LarryBnDC]

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29842423/alexander-vindman-testify-impeachment-hearings-family-safety/

[LarryBnDC]

Today's hearings are I fear another example of how Democrats don't know how to play the game.  These hearings are no longer about fact finding.  They have the facts.  They are about shifting public opinion enough to at least get a real trial on the impeachment articles in the Senate.

And yet today they are mashing all this testimony together, not giving any bombshells room to land.  Vindman is a star witness of theirs.  Volker should have to sit through a full day of questioning on his own considering all of the inconsistencies in his story.  And why are all these people being questioned in pairs?  Why not focus on one and let them feel the heat?

Democrats seem more concerned about being expeditious, but they are running to a finish line where there will be no winner.  Everyone knows where this is going if they can't get more Americans to support Trump's removal. 

It might be that they think they won't really get anywhere until they get a Bolton or a Mulvaney (or even a Giuliani) in front of them, and they are just trying to get there.  And Sondland is probably the biggest fish right now.  But they are only doing Trump favors trying to get this done as soon as possible.

They are laying a foundation. Brick by brick by brick.

[barton]

It might be that they think they won't really get anywhere until they get a Bolton or a Mulvaney (or even a Giuliani) in front of them, and they are just trying to get there.  And Sondland is probably the biggest fish right now.  But they are only doing Trump favors trying to get this done as soon as possible.   

You may be correct, but I'm not sure about the national attention span.   There may be some tacticians who are thinking that too long of a hearing phase and many will lose interest, or that it will give Repubs too much time to hammer on "get on with the nation's business" nonsense or further frame it all as partisan hatchet wielding. 

[LarryBnDC]

Dems building a mountain of evidence and GOP has no Johnnie Cochrans.

[LarryBnDC]

Lt. Col. Vindman had a moment when he reminded Nunes of his title. Reminded me of “They call me MISTER Tibbs!”

[LarryBnDC]

The way the GOP and Trump are disparaging active duty military and pissing on the military code of justice  with the pardons, I have no worry about his deciding to remain in office after his term. The Joint Chiefs of Staff will bum rush his ass out the door.

[oilcan]

from the Petri dish...


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/18/lets-get-half-physical/

The good news is that everything is completely normal. The president is just doing that unremarkable thing we know and love to do, where we have a free afternoon and decide, suddenly, on a whim, to do some but not all of our annual physical, just to get a jump on it. That classic thing, an option we have, and furthermore have always known we had. As he tweeted, “Also began phase one of my yearly physical. Everything very good (great!). Will complete next year.” Very good (great!).

And it went great. Stephanie Grisham, the shadow press secretary (if there were a press secretary, she would be that, but there haven’t been any press conferences yet) confirmed to Fox News that he is “healthy as can be. I put a statement out about that. He’s got more energy than anybody in the White House. That man works from 6 a.m. until, you know, very, very late at night. He’s doing just fine.”

Just to be certain that this was definitely a thing, I telephoned my primary care physician today and asked whether I could come in and do half my physical now and half later at a time of my own choosing, and amazingly she did not immediately clear a path for me, and furthermore I think my relationship with her receptionist may be permanently strained.

“Could you see me sooner if I just did half of it and then the other half later?” I asked, and the scheduler patiently began to explain that unfortunately this was not and had never been how physicals worked.

But just because my primary care physician was unaware that this was how things worked, that does not mean that Donald Trump is not aware. He just wanted to see half of what was wrong (nothing), and he will go back later when he has a free moment. He did the important half of the physical — the doctor banged his knee with the tiny hammer but did not check to see whether it made his leg kick, took his systolic but not his diastolic blood pressure, measured half his height, and discovered that he weighs just slightly over 120 pounds! That all seems great. The results are back, and half of him is 100 percent fine!

President Trump is healthy as a horse, or half a horse, a centaur. He is fit as a fiddle...

[barton]

Recalling the way Trump jeered at Clinton's health and did a mocking imitation of Clinton stumbling before she got into a car, my sympathy for his medical issue is waning. 

I also think there's a possibility he's preparing to pull a Fred Sanford in order to make a clean slither out of the Oval Office before the heat turns up further on impeachment, tax returns, campaign fraud, etc. 



I heart Alexa Petri.