Unless something truly spectacular occurs, there will be no witnesses and the remainder of the Senate action will be perfunctory. It’s likely that the GOP will continue to vote in lockstep with all 53 votes to end this matter as fast as it can. It now appears that the Right Wingers are also trying to lean on Red-leaning Dems like Manchin and Jones to vote for acquittal as well.

The one upside here is that everyone gets to vote on the Senate as well as the presidency, so if people don’t stay home, there’s a strong chance that we can hold multiple GOP senators responsible for their behavior here.

It’s fairly certain at this point that the Republicans simply don’t care about the facts in this matter or anything else as relates to the Pence White House. They like the results they’re getting from Mike Pence instituting Ted Cruz policies from that incompetent administration.

Based on the comments of Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, I would not bet on even a single Republican rebelling from the rest of the 53 Senators. They’ll watch the angry Right Wing response over this weekend, and then they’ll vote with an easy majority to acquit.

This will be followed by Trump’s “Revenge” against the Democrats over the next several months, which we can only understand to be vicious negative campaigning and multiple draconian Executive Orders from Mike Pence. And it will all still come down to whether Dems show up in the swing states in November.

Watching the full interview, Hemmer was really working to sneak in the Far Right memes. He played the card of “just asking” about why angry Right Wing Republicans couldn’t just call Hunter Biden if the Dems call John Bolton. Van Hollen had to school him on the notion of how witness testimony works (the witness needs to be a material fact witness to the actual crime under investigation – which is Pence’s childish spokesman’s attempt to goon it up at Ukraine, not the conspiracy theory from Fox News that motivated him to try to goon it up).

Hemmer also tried to play up the notion of Doug Jones already giving some thoughts on which articles he’d support, and Van Hollen had to school him on the fact that the Senators are meant to simply evaluate the case and not pre-judge it. (Hemmer was obviously trying to trap Van Hollen into making a pre-judgment so he could then accuse Dems of hypocrisy for challenging McConnell’s already announced conclusions.)

And of course Hemmer brought up the upcoming caucuses and primaries. But it wasn’t just to somehow defend McConnell’s attempt to make the trial unlivable for everyone. Hemmer was also trying to scaremonger about the Dem Senators who are running this year for President. It’s the familiar meme of “You’re gonna lose Iowa and New Hampshire because you’re stuck in the Senate!” And Van Hollen accurately pushed back on that and once again schooled Hemmer.

I note that McConnell’s vicious new rules are intended not to make the trial go faster but rather to make the situation intolerable for everyone involved. By setting up 12 hour days (not counting breaks and not counting the obvious interruptions they will be facing), McConnell is wildly extending what had been 6 hour sessions in the Clinton trial, and working to make sure that the big conclusions are relegated to late night, when almost nobody would be watching. (The Dem team is now trying to reconfigure their presentation to front-load as much as they can for each day, as a result, with no notice or time to prepare). And McConnell is setting up any situation of witnesses to keep damaging material behind closed doors. This is NOT the way it was handled with the Clinton trial, and it indicates just how terrified McConnell is of the public actually hearing from someone like Bolton.

McSally is panicking, as she’s way behind in fundraising, and she’s up against a popular candidate in Mark Kelly. No surprise that she’s trying to play Pence White House games.

Let’s also remember that McSally is not an elected Senator. She actually LOST her only race for the Senate and was forced to concede several days after the midterm election day in 2018, once her advisors pointed out that she had no chance. And then she was appointed to fill John McCain’s vacant seat, essentially as a slap to the face of Arizonans who had voted against her for the Senate. So she’s not even a first term Senator. She’s a lame duck appointee, who’s desperate to keep the seat. Hopefully, Mark Kelly will be able to win this seat in November, and then McSally can return to civilian life.

Eyes and I normally agree, but I do need to provide some counter here.

1. Medicare and SS can be stabilized through very simple tweaks. Just remove the salary cap and make a tiny increase to employer side payroll taxes. I believe the retirement age issue is already being dealt with (it’s going up by a little). These tweaks could and should have been done years ago, but Republicans refused to allow them. Partly due to them all signing the nonsensical Grover Norquist pledge, and partly due to the Right Wing hoping to destabilize, defund, delegitimize and then discard these programs.

2. The Pence White House did not give “populist tax cuts” really to anyone. The Republican Tax Transfer of 2017 RAISED taxes for Middle Class Employees and Blue State residents. Skyrocketed them, in fact. Working class families saw negligible difference from the rates. And at the same time, the big corps and the super wealthy got GIANT TAX CUTS. Which, yes, are generating massive deficits. And those deficits are intentional as well – allowing the Right Wing to follow the plan discussed in #1 above.

3. An actual Single Payer healthcare system would be a better idea in the US, as it has been in many countries around the world. We just haven’t reached the point where enough Americans are comfortable with having it. I believe we’ll get there, but it won’t be for another few actual presidents.

4. Dems already have several electable candidates. Any one of the Dems in the race could win in November. It’s simply a matter of whether the 2-3 million active Dem voters across the swing states have learned their lesson about having stayed home in 2016.

The only decent part of this disaster is that most Americans are fully aware of what is happening here.

They know that this entire mess was instigated by the Pence White House out of its panic and desperation to distract everyone from the ongoing impeachment. They know that the Iraqis begged Pence’s group NOT to launch strikes as they would lead to extreme anger in the country. They know that the protests at the US Embassy were more than justified. They know that the additional US strike at the airport was an obvious attempt at provocation. And they know the launches this past evening were Iran’s attempt to save face more than anything else.

The real question is what Pence will do now. His childish spokesman appears to have no clue where to go from here. My fervent hope is that everyone just stands down at the moment with the rocket strikes and that Iran takes the rest of this up with the UN and the International Criminal Court.

I don’t like to be disrespectful, but who really cares what Dan Bongino thinks about anything? He’s an unimportant person who doesn’t know much about these subjects. I’d just ignore him and save the energy.

Nobody should be surprised at this move. They’ve been telegraphing it for a week, and the general wish to get into hostilities with Iran has been their MO from the second they took over the White House.

And let’s be clear about the chain of events here. Following another disastrous year for the Pence White House, capped by Pence’s childish spokesman getting himself impeached, the Right Wing has gone into full wag-the-dog mode and launched multiple provocative actions in the Middle East. Against the repeated urging of the Iraqi leadership (who we effectively installed there after we invaded in the early 2000s), the Pence White House murderously bombed multiple targets. As a result, a large number of protestors stormed the US embassy in Baghdad – a reaction the Iraqi leadership had predicted would likely happen, and apparently did not oppose, given that their citizens were angry about the Americans’ behavior. And then the Pence White House responds to the protests by launching another attack – this time against not only Iraqis but also a higher level Iranian. And now we not only have Iraq infuriated but Iran as well.

Of course, I wouldn’t expect the result to necessarily be the whole USA rallying around the flag – particularly when the situation is this blatant. It’s more likely that the Right Wing outlets like Fox News will frantically wave the flag and their arms, but everyone else will calmly step back and then continue with the normal coverage of the continuing impeachment of Pence’s childish spokesman.

If anything, the latest behavior just clarifies the urgent need for EVERYONE to show up and vote in November.

And at the same time, they’re bringing in Right Wing shill Ron Meyer on another show to say that Joe Biden’s campaign is “cooked” and that either Warren or Sanders will be the nominee and then of course lose horribly to that wonderfully popular and unbeatable Donald Trump.

Anyone notice the pattern here? Or maybe it’s just a coincidence that angry Right Wingers always present the scenarios as Heads Trump Wins and Tails EVERYONE ELSE Loses.

Eyes is correct – we’ll know more after the first few caucuses and primaries, and we’ll have a pretty solid picture of how it will play out as of Super Tuesday. Anything anyone predicts before then is pointless.

What a surprise! Fox News is trying to really push the Wag The Dog story! I suppose we should be shocked, shocked by their brazen attempt to distract everyone from the fact that Trump has been impeached.

And let’s be very clear about the protestors – they’re justifiably angry about the US dropping bombs on them – a situation the Iraqi government that WE INSTALLED had repeatedly warned the Pence White House was likely to occur. This is not a war situation – it’s a desperate attempt by the Pence White House to wave their arms and yell as loud as they can. Thankfully, so far it doesn’t appear that anyone outside Fox News is buying the line.

And now the Pence White House has dropped bombs on Iraq and Syria and is acting shocked, shocked when angry protestors are making their feelings about that clear at the US Embassy. (I thought the whole point of invading and nearly destroying the country 17 years ago was to give them “freedom”. Guess that doesn’t mean they should have the freedom to actually express themselves. Predictably, Pence and his childish spokesman are blaming everything on Iran and sending more troops there. Something we all saw in “Wag the Dog”.

I’m betting that Fox News tries to make this the BIG story for the next week or two and that they try to instigate a military confrontation. It doesn’t look like anyone else is falling for it, though. CNN has properly noted that this is a matter of protests following ill-advised and murderous US airstrikes inside Iraq, and that this could all have been avoided if the Pence White House could have acted with some common sense.

This is nothing more than another nonsensical attempt by Fox News to keep the deplorables stirred up over the “liberal media” myth. It’s as silly as their attempt last year to attack “First Man” because they thought it didn’t include the American flag on the moon.

I really wonder the source of the constant anger for Right Wingers. Why is it that they must always act as though they are somehow an injured party and that they are somehow entitled to revenge for their imagined slights?

This nonsense has to stop at some point.

Both Biden and Clinton’s comments were about creating new jobs for workers who would otherwise be worried about losing their livelihoods due to the continuing decline of industries like coal mining. But for the Right Wing, isolated phrases are taken out of context to make the speaker sound as though they don’t care about those workers. This should have been called out when it was played in 2016 and it should be called out today. The simpler way to put it is to say that these deliberate misreads are LIES.

This is why I have needed to simplify my response when dealing with angry Right Wingers who continue to inflict these falsehoods – to something easy for them to understand, like : “NO. YOU ARE LYING. STOP DOING THAT. AND STOP PROMOTING HATRED AND BIGOTRY. SHAME ON YOU.”

Payne also made blatantly false statements about the “media” supposedly “trying to talk the economy into a recession last year”. And that’s NOT what happened at all.

In reality, the economy has mostly continued to recover from the W Recession, along the same trajectory it was on with President Obama. In 2018, there was a sugar high effect from the GOP Tax Transfer, as the super-wealthy received massive tax cuts. There was also a sugar high factor that came from some goosed-down withholding on people’s weekly paychecks starting in January 2018, so that working class and middle class employees saw a bit more every week, and then of course spent it.

But 2018 also included a terrible final quarter, where Pence’s childish spokesman undid all the gains of the first three quarters by instigating a massive tariff war with China and gloating about it. This wasn’t “the media” talking anyone into a problem – it was Pence’s childish spokesman.

2019 saw the stock market recover from that hole, which is why the year’s results look better in the short term. 2019 also saw the working class and particularly the middle class suddenly realize in March that the Tax Transfer had actually hurt them in many cases. People’s expected tax refunds in 2019 were replaced in millions of cases by large tax bills, since their tax burdens had been increased but their deductions had been erased – and the lowered withholding only meant that they owed even more. And those voters are going to get a reminder of how bad the Tax Transfer hurt them again in 2020 – and one would think they’d remember that hit when they go to the polls in November.

Fox News should ask itself why the Pence White House continues to be so unpopular in spite of the economy continuing to benefit from the improvement seen under President Obama. Under normal circumstances, Pence should be at an 80 percent approval at this time. The reality is that the Pence White House has been hateful to everyone but its limited base, and most voters aren’t happy with them. And the thing about voters who are feeling relatively comfortable when they get into a voting booth is that they tend to remember that this was the White House that put children in cages, that cheerled bigotry and that skyrocketed their taxes. Not to mention that this White House was just impeached for abuse of power and obstruction.

Gaetz continues his record of behaving like an angry Frat boy – the one who enjoys hazing the pledges, drinking way too much and then pawing the women who come to the parties before getting slapped and then announcing that he never liked them anyway. The only place I can think he will have a career after he’s done with his stint in Congress is on Fox News – which is probably what he has in mind. Like Ted Cruz, he’s engineered his career to set up for that.

Americans already got the message of what the Pence White House and its childish spokesman really think of them. Forced pleasantries aside, the stench of hatred is pretty overwhelming.

And I think by now that deplorables have learned not to dare throwing these nonsense talking points at me. I no longer have them at my dinner table and I do not tolerate their bigotry when I encounter it in public. The only response they are likely to get is a loud, firm “NO. STOP LYING. YOU ARE KNOWINGLY SUPPORTING BIGOTRY AND LIES. SHAME ON YOU.”

I found it extremely interesting that Fox News and the general pile of Right Wing media played the impeachment vote as “bipartisan” opposition and that “only Democrats” voted for it. That’s flat out untrue.

If the opposition can really be called “bipartisan” with Van Drew (on the verge of switching parties), Peterson and Golden joining (and Gabbard refusing to show any spine), then the vote in favor must also be considered effectively bipartisan, with Justin Amash being a noteworthy Republican sticking his neck out about this.

It’s true that the GOP frantically moved to get him to “independent” status before these votes were held, but let’s just stay with the parties these guys were in when they were elected during the last time the voters were able to choose. Amash was elected as a Republican in November 2018 and only was pushed out as of June 2019. I’d consider him effectively a Republican vote in favor of impeachment.

So either we consider this to have been “bipartisan” on both sides of the issue – OR we can consider this to be a scenario where it was completely on party lines, with the Republicans refusing to admit anything. But the Right Wing doesn’t get to have this both ways.

McConnell is not the only Right Winger who’s been smug enough to openly declare what they’re doing these days. Mulvaney and Sondland have also openly stated what’s been going on. It’s not like any of this is a mystery to anyone.

The Pence White House was gooning it up with the new president of Ukraine, figuring that they could get away with it since they’d just gotten away with all the shenanigans from 2016. Their assumption, which isn’t an unreasonable one, was that they could just do it again, given that they had a dedicated Right Wing media machine and a lot of terrified Republican legislators to run cover for them. And from what we can see, that’s what is now happening.

It’s nice that Pelosi is running a delaying action here, but the outcome is really not in doubt and it never has been.

Stephen Miller is a despicable man who has committed vicious acts and frankly hate crimes against multiple ethnic groups. He has cloaked his hatred in the language of bigoted white nationalism and he has gloated about the vicious actions he has taken. Any morally decent society would simply shun him.

This is a man who speaks with hatred about immigrants, who gleefully endorses vicious treatment of asylum seekers and who pursues the most hateful course possible, whenever possible. And this is a man who has been confirmed by those who have dealt with him and by his own written words to be a blatant racist.

The fact that Fox News is trying to normalize him is telling. The fact that Fox News thinks that going just a little short of Miller’s viciousness is okay, as in going just to the “Tucker Carlson” level, is also telling. This is part of a long-term strategy to move the center of debate in this nation WAY over to the Far Right.

In reality, both Carlson and Miller are extremists and both should be ashamed of themselves.

Eyes makes a good point. The viciousness of angry Right Wingers has gotten to an extremely dangerous point – where we have plenty of these guys openly making dark comments about a “civil war” and about using their guns to kill those with whom they disagree.

We just had a few of these people show up at an Armenian genocide commemoration in Los Angeles because they wanted to scream at Adam Schiff. So they disrupted the event, screamed profanity and tried to get into fistfights with a group of Armenian Americans who included elderly survivors and family members. When they were finally ejected from the event, they stomped outside and gloated about having done what they did. (They also repeated blatant lies about Schiff’s record that angry Right Wingers have been trying to throw around the internet without success.)

These people bristle for some reason when they are appropriately described as deplorable. And then they go and do things like this that justify the description yet again.

When this miserable epoch of our history is concluded, and I do hope that those active Dem voters in the swing states can make that the case as soon as possible, the deplorables must be faced with the consequences of their bigotry and viciousness. I frankly do not every want to hear another angry Right Winger talk about morality or values again. If they do it in front of me, my response has become a simple “NO. YOU VOTED FOR HATRED. YOU ACTED WITH HATRED AND VICIOUSNESS AND BIGOTRY. SHAME ON YOU.”