It’s more than interesting to watch these despicable men beginning to openly panic about what’s coming next for them. Between Giuliani and Bolton, I’m unsure which one is more of a loose cannon for the Pence White House. And let’s not forget Pompeo trying to find an exit ramp for himself.

With Bolton, it’s sadly unlikely that he’ll actually do anything – he’s always been more bluster than anything else. But he could blow this entire situation up in a heartbeat if he releases what he certainly has – documents showing the craven work that the Pence White House was trying to do in Ukraine.

With Giuliani, it’s looking more and more likely that he could be indicted on multiple charges – which will be a sad ending to his career. But it’s an ending he openly chose for himself. The question is whether he goes the Manafort “good soldier” route and keeps his mouth shut (not likely given his frantic need for attention) or whether he starts blabbing about how much Pence and his childish spokesman knew about Giuliani’s dark work. He could even add to the dumpster fire building around Devin Nunes.

The wildest part about all of Giuliani’s whacked obsession with Joe Biden is that he has the man backwards. Biden’s history isn’t one of graft and viciousness. It’s one of constantly compromising and acting like he knows better. Which is why the Ukrainian attempt to influence him failed. The Burisma guys thought they could buff their tarred image by hiring Biden’s son to show they were on the up and up and to curry favor. Instead, the whole thing backfired on them when Biden refused to play. It’s no wonder that they’re angry with him. But if they had anything on Biden, it would have come out when the actual prosecutor was hired following Shokin’s dismissal. Instead, the investigation showed the Bidens did nothing wrong. And what this situation is revealing more than anything else is just how terrified the Pence White House is of running against Joe Biden next year.

I wonder if Mr. White is aware of where he is posting his trolling comments.

But I do find it interesting that angry Right Wingers feel they must sling the insults and labelling. One would think that Mr. White feels emboldened by the comments of Pence’s childish spokesman to just let that inner hater fly.

Bemused makes a good point we need to remember.

The start of the current refusal to work across the aisle did not begin with Trump squeaking through the swing states in 2016. (And the current situation hasn’t been one of obstruction – it’s been one of angry Right Wingers trying to ram through truly horrible appointees and policies and the Dems doing anything they could to try to deal with it.)

I would argue that the collapse of cooperation began during the Reagan Administration, and could even be seen to have begun during Nixon. Because much of Reagan and both Bushes’ people were from the Nixon team. When they got power again in 1981, they immediately moved to consolidate what they had – appointing despicable people like Haig, Meese, Watt, and the risible Anne Gorsuch, and establishing the infamous litmus test for appointing Far Right judges. (The test was built after the Right Wing was disappointed by Warren Burger, who was a solid Republican but who didn’t completely rule that way on the bench. So the Right Wing worked to be sure that judicial appointees would be examined a LOT more closely.)

When Reagan’s White House was exposed for massive corruption and appropriately investigated (with many people being indicted and jailed), the Right Wing was triggered. So when Bill Clinton had the temerity to win in 1992 (really thanks to Ross Perot deliberately spoiling the race for Bush), the Right Wing went after him with guns blazing. ANYTHING Clinton did that could justify an investigation or an impeachment was leapt at, until he was finally stupid enough to lie under oath about his unfaithfulness and stupid enough to pressure others to be quiet about it. At the same time, the Republicans had regrouped under Newt Gingrich, who made clear that he didn’t just see the Democratic Party as debate opponents. He saw the Democrats as ENEMIES and he treated them as such. Once Gingrich became the Speaker, he worked to block anything and everything that Clinton tried to do unless it was completely on Gingrich’s terms. The same approach was taken by Republicans in the Senate. So hundreds of judicial appointees were effectively blocked from consideration, including Elena Kagan. Instead, the Republicans focused themselves on impeaching Clinton in an act of outright hatred. I note that Mitch McConnell voted to convict Clinton in that impeachment, and that Lindsey Graham voted in the House for three of the articles. When Clinton’s second term ended, all of his pending appointments lapsed, just as the Republicans had hoped.

When W took office after the contested 2000 election, the same angry Right Wingers who had been blocking appointees and legislation during Clinton’s years suddenly demanded that the Democrats confirm a whole raft of terrible appointees. The Dems responded by mostly caving in as usual, but they did hold the line against a few really bad judges. They still allowed despicables like Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Norton to take office and do real damage within their departments. The Dems also allowed two terrible Supreme Court appointments in Roberts and Alito to go through, despite obvious bias on both men’s parts. The real legacy of the W White House, past those court appointments, was the collapse of the US economy under the weight of graft and greed, and the creation of ISIS and other extreme militant groups in the Middle East thanks to the viciousness of our actions there.

When President Obama took office, Bemused is correct to note that the Republicans publicly stated that their intention was to block every single thing that the Democrats did. I would only note that McConnell didn’t come up with this on his own. He was instructed to do so by Newt Gingrich at the infamous leadership meeting held while President Obama’s massive inauguration was happening. The intention was to make sure that the Dems would have to fight dearly to get anything done, and that the Republicans could just lay back and campaign on whichever outcome happened. If the Dems got anything accomplished, it would be the hardest and most unpleasant roads to get there. The GOP could then campaign either that the Dems couldn’t get anything done (the preferred outcome) or that if anything got through, that the GOP didn’t vote for it. This extended to the court appointments again – and President Obama was only able to get two appointments to the Supreme Court done before the Senate switched to the GOP in 2014. Because of constant GOP obstruction in the Senate over every single court appointee, Harry Reid revised the voting rules to allow the Dems to start getting judges into long-vacant positions in 2013-14. Once the GOP took the Senate, that door was closed and it was clear that McConnell would block everything and everyone he could.

Which brings us to the current miserable epoch, when the Pence White House and McConnell have worked happily to ram through as many terrible judges as they could, including a stolen Supreme Court seat.

If I see any change at all in the current configuration, it’s not in the fact of the obstruction – it’s in the zeal with which the Right Wingers are doing it. It’s in the level of anger they are showing. I’ve heard of sore losers before, but never a sore winner. From the moment that Trump squeaked through three years ago, we’ve been seeing these guys really work to rub everyone’s noses in it.

They’re doing that so they can have nice clips on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. They never had any intention of listening to these witnesses. Look what happened with David Holmes when was pointing the facts out to Jim Jordan today. Jordan just smirked and talked over him, even after being repeatedly chastised by Schiff. Because he didn’t care what Holmes had to say. Jordan’s purpose had already been served.

What we’ll see over the next couple of weeks will be a round robin of Right Wing bloviating about how the Dems didn’t prove anything and about how this really should be about the Bidens, Burisma and all the nonsense they can spew about Ukraine in 2016. Which will allow the Right Wing to keep its counter narrative alive up into the election campaign, to hopefully depress turnout in the swing states as voters shrug their shoulders and assume, once again, that everybody is corrupt.

It is my fervent hope that enough swing state Dems have had enough of this viciousness for us to be able to see a positive change next year. We are all depending on it. If those voters stay home again and allow Mike Pence to wreak four more years of havok, I honestly don’t believe we’d recognize the country afterward.

I wouldn’t break out the champagne yet re next November. I would push as hard as possible to motivate EVERYONE to vote, particularly in the swing states. Assume that every deplorable is going to vote early and often because they will. Assume that you cannot count on your neighbor to vote. If you’re going to assume, then assume that it’s up to you and that you should vote like your life depends on it. Because it does.

If people show up all over the place and vote, we have a chance to elect a new president and to change the majority in the Senate, and we absolutely need to do both things. If a President Castro were to take office but still be facing a GOP majority in the Senate, we can guarantee that not only will no legislation get passed, but no appointees would likely be confirmed.

In the event that the Dems show up to vote across the country, and in the event that they somehow wind up with majorities in both houses plus the White House, I’d recommend a 100 Days strategy. I’d say that the Congress and the new White House should work to accomplish the following within that first hundred days:

1. Pass DACA, essentially in the form that President Obama started it, with none of the bigoted conditions the Right Wing has tried to demand in exchange for not throwing all the DACA enrollees out of the Us;

2. Pass the payroll tax modifications that have been recommended for the past 20 years to stabilize Social Security and Medicare (ie lifting the cap and making a minute adjustment to the employer side). This would end the whole Right Wing discussion of gutting those programs for another few decades;

3. Pass an adjustment to the federal tax code to fix the vindictive tax hikes the GOP inflicted in 2018, restoring the individual exemptions and deductions for itemizers including the state tax deduction, and raising the corporate tax rate to 30%;

4. Confirm a series of sane judges to multiple vacancies, as a first step toward correcting the horrifying trend of the Pence White House’s terrible appointments;

5. Begin the long process of cleaning up the mess across the executive branch, beginning with the appointment of dedicated professionals who care about the work their departments do to help ordinary people. Which will be a huge breath of fresh air after the series of gargoyles inflicted on these departments by Pence, most of whom being people who don’t even think their department should even exist.

How’s that for a start?

I think we can count on Carlson, Ingraham and the gang to double down on the cheap shots, and to play the victim about it. They’ll say that Vindman is trying to restrict their right to free speech and they’ll effectively dare him to sue.

In spite of nearly all of the pillars of their defense notions being wiped out today, Fox News is playing that one soundbite of “I want nothing” and they’re using the quick clips of Jordan and the others screaming and pounding the table while announcing their conspiracy theories. All completely predictable.

This will now down to whether the Dems can turn out their voters in the swing states or if the GOP will succeed in depressing the turnout again. Both sides will use this situation to rally their respective bases, just as both sides will use the Kavanaugh ram. I fully expect to see Pence’s childish spokesman gloating for much of next year at having headed off the whole thing the second it hit the Senate.

I honestly don’t know that Gutfeld’s opinion about anything matters. Is there anyone who cares what he thinks about what TV shows he wants to watch? Perhaps his time might better be spent dealing with the massive sexual harassment situation that developed with Tyrus. Given that Gutfeld’s weekend show is where Tyrus is usually seen on the network, one would think Gutfeld would have some idea what was going on…

It’s typical of Fox News that they would frantically lie to paper over this sudden hospital visit. Particularly when they spent so much time in 2016 jumping up and down about how they thought Hillary Clinton was hiding a “secret illness”.

Given that we cannot trust the Pence White House to say the truth about anything, we really have no way of knowing whether it was severe chest pains or something else that motivated Pence’s childish spokesman to suddenly run to Walter Reed. But we do know that it would have had to be severe for him to do this with no notice. This is a man who doesn’t like doctors and is a germaphobe. And also a man who has noticeably gained a massive amount of weight in the past three years and does not exercise. I’m honestly shocked that this is the first time he’s been forced to see a doctor about it.

If Trump were to keel over today, it would not really change anything at the Pence White House anyway, given that Pence sets all the policy. So I don’t see that anything would change until we hopefully vote Pence out next November.

And I’ll finally note that I have no personal preference about what happens with the health of Pence’s childish spokesman. I don’t wish good or ill to him. I do feel sorry for him, given the tremendous negativity he’s generated for everyone, but I don’t empathize with him. If he’s suffering, it’s nothing compared to the suffering he’s gleefully caused others. And if he’s worried about his healthcare, then maybe he can take that up with the millions of people whose coverage he’s been taking away.

It’s nice that Areu has an opinion. It’s nice that Fox News pays her to say her opinion. It’s typical that Fox News would then trumpet her personal opinion as though it was indicative of anyone else. Cavuto is of course lying when he states that “a good many” Dems feel as Areu does.

She’s also wildly mistaken in her statements. As a simple primer for her, the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings were constitutionally mandated. Would she have preferred for Kavanaugh to just have been rammed onto the Supreme Court without even a hearing? And did she think confirmation hearings would have been “a waste of time” for Merrick Garland?

But the simplest truth here is that Areu’s personal opinion isn’t just wrong – it’s irrelevant. Fox News can trumpet her all they want, just like they did with Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen shamefully demanding that President Obama not run for re-election in 2012. It won’t make a difference. And history will record these many attempts by Fox News to rewrite it.

Given that Pence is already the statesman in the White House, it would make no difference if he were to be publicly acknowledged for the vicious work he’s already doing.

I continue to be amazed at how panicked the Right Wing is becoming over these hearings. One would think they’d quiet down a bit if they wanted us to think they were just bored and disinterested.

And I have to thank Michela for the comic posting. I needed a laugh and that was a good one.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Nunes was told to pull that stunt by someone at Fox News. It was frankly nonsensical – the one thing I wish Schiff would have done a little different would have been to simply note that Stefanik was going to have time during the individual questioning period, and that Nunes could have donated his question time from then to her.

It’s interesting that Fox News is so frantic to tell their viewers the impeachment inquiry is a “dud” that they are devoting hour after hour to repeating that line and discussing the hearings. One would think that if the hearings really were a “dud”, there would be no need for Fox News to spend any time at all on them. Instead, we keep seeing these breathless faces desperately shouting about how these hearings are such a disaster, etc. One might conclude that the lady doth protest too much.

How about the simpler answer? That the Pence White House is terrified of the Dem candidates, particularly Joe Biden, and figured they could get away with gooning it up in this matter.

This is part of Fox News’ strategy to try to discourage Dems from working to win Florida in 2020. Kind of a heavy lift for the GOP, as they only carried the state in 2016 and 2018 due to Dem voter apathy. If the Dems show up in 2020, particularly the Puerto Ricans who were forced to move to Florida after the Pence White House abandoned them, we may see a very different result.

No surprise here. Of course the Pence White House and its sycophants in Right Wing media want some harm to come to the person who has had the temerity to force them to deal with this discussion at all. And presumably this show of force (and whatever unfortunate ramifications happen for the whistleblower) will serve to discourage anyone else from making the mistake this guy did.

Just as the Right Wing viciously attacked Professor Ford last year for having the temerity to publicly state what Brett Kavanaugh did to her. The Right Wing played that situation as one where Kavanaugh was somehow the victim rather than the perpetrator and where Ford was somehow a terrible person. In the end, Kavanaugh was given his political reward and now unjustly holds one of the highest judicial seats in the nation in spite of his bias and partisanship. And Professor Ford lives in fear of her life and has been forced to move multiple times and is unable to resume the teaching that had been her occupation. In other words, her life has been destroyed. Is it any wonder that nobody else wants to come forward to discuss Brett Kavanaugh?

If anything, this latest tantrum just shows that Hannity is beginning to openly panic about 2020. He’s fully aware that most of the country is fed up with the viciousness, and he has no answer for the now voluminous and appropriate criticisms of how the Right Wing has comported itself for the past decade.

Regarding Burisma and the Bidens, Hannity and the Right Wing have deliberately obfuscated the actual facts of the matter. Burisma was indeed a shady company and was linked with corruption in Ukraine – but this was during several years before Hunter Biden was ever asked to join their board. While that corruption was going on, the Ukrainian prosecutor Shokin was noted for his unwillingness to handle it. Shokin was frankly a part of the corruption. At some point late in the Obama presidency and years after the company had committed its various and sundry actions, Burisma contracted with Hunter Biden to become a highly paid member of their board. By pretty much all accounts, Hunter Biden was paid a lot to do practically nothing for them. I’m fairly sure that they thought this appointment would be seen by the Obama presidency as a “good faith” gesture, and that presumably Joe Biden would be influenced by it. Instead, the Obama White House sided with the international community and demanded that the corruption in Ukraine be examined – and part of this involved dumping an obviously corrupt prosecutor who was refusing to investigate companies like Burisma. Biden’s trip to tell the Ukrainians this message was ordered by President Obama, who in turn was working in cooperation with a lot of other countries – essentially telling Ukraine to clean up their act or risk losing their funding. When Biden told the Ukrainians to do this, they tried to laugh him off, as he discussed in the clip Fox keeps playing of him. They figured he’d never do this and figured that he had no power to tell them anything. Biden of course told them to call Obama if they doubted him and gave them a deadline to fire the corrupt prosecutor. The Ukrainians thought twice and backed down, firing Shokin and installing an actual prosecutor.

We should keep in mind that had there been any actual legal malfeasance by Hunter Biden or even Joe Biden with Burisma and the Ukrainians, the actual investigation that was done by the new prosecutor would have uncovered it fairly quickly. The Ukrainians would have been motivated to embarrass Biden if they could for having the temerity to challenge them. But the new prosecutor found instead that there was nothing illegal or inethical in what happened with Burisma and Hunter Biden. He did find that Burisma had a prior history of corruption, but that they were behaving themselves when Biden was on the board. (He noted that the last illegal acts had happened two years before Biden was recruited). In the aftermath of all this, the fired prosecuctor, Shokin, began making noises to any Right Winger who would listen that he was somehow fired for trying to investigate Burisma rather than the truth, which was directly the reverse of his statements. Various angry Right Wingers in the US began to listen to nonsense like Shokin’s, and began trying to foment nonsensical conspiracy theories about Ukraine as a way of distracting from the very real hacking done of the DNC by Wikileaks and their Russian sources. And various gullible (and frankly stupid) Right Wing hosts like Hannity and Glenn Beck fell for these ruses, as did cranks like Rudy Giuliani, and began peddling them in turn to their audiences – who were in turn fairly gullible about conspiracy theories like these. And the most prominent audience these guys have is Mike Pence’s childish spokesman, who was stupid enough to have Giuliani run around Europe trying to find the Fools’ Gold of this stuff. Part of that process involved “getting tough” with Ukraine – meaning that now they would try to withhold aid in the service of the conspiracy theory and on behalf of the criminals who had previously been ousted, like Shokin.

Again, let’s remember – the Obama White House was working to FIGHT corruption, and their instruction to Ukraine was intended to clean out the bad actors. The Pence White House was working to ENCOURAGE corruption, in the hopes that they could blackmail Ukrainian officials into helping them smear the Bidens. It appears that some criminal acts were committed as part of the Pence White House’s dark work here – including the exposed impeachable offenses around that phone call, and other undisclosed fraud committed by the Ukrainians around Giuliani. And let’s note that after those Ukrainians were arrested (in the process of trying to flee the US), at least one has come forward to say he will roll over on the others – which could take the investigation right back into Giuliani if not all the way into the Pence White House. So the criminal behavior was committed by the guys working with the Pence White House, and they’re frantically trying to smear the guys before them who were trying to stamp out the corruption and criminality. That’s while they’re trying in vain to make this about “process” when the House committee hearings are completely constitutional and appropriate (and attended by the very Republicans they say are being left out), or about the identity of a whistleblower (when that information is irrelevant after we’ve already had it corroborated and when it’s obvious their intention is to have that person physically attacked or worse). These guys can sing all day long about their distractions. It will not change the facts.

Finally, regarding the Bidens and Ukraine. There’s frankly nothing illegal or even unethical in Hunter Biden accepting a Board seat on a company. I would agree that we can discuss the MORALITY of accepting a giant paycheck from a company like Burisma, but that’s irrelevant as far as criminality goes. And we’ve seen that this Board seat and paycheck did nothing to save either Burisma or the corrupt prosecutor Shokin from being dealt with. All we have is a possible discussion about whether the son of a Vice President should think before accepting a Board seat and a paycheck. And in the greater scheme of things, that discussion is pretty small potatoes. Certainly the Right Wing has no issues with the relations of White House figureheads getting all kinds of perks, or they would not have allowed any of the Trumps, the Reagans or the Bushes to get away with all the goodies they received.

This is not surprising. We’ve already been aware that Trump essentially spends his day watching TV (mostly these Fox News shows), Tweeting about the TV shows he’s watched, and making incoherent public statements where he tries to throw his weight around and usually embarrasses himself.

I wouldn’t be too concerned about whether he receives his daily briefing, given that he isn’t doing the actual job of the President anyway. That work is done by Mike Pence, who only accepted this gig when he’d previously been a Ted Cruz supporter because of the terms that Trump’s kids were offering anyone who would take it – that the VP would get to set all the domestic policy and all the foreign policy. In other words, the VP would get to do all the actual work of the Presidency. When John Kasich was presented with this offer, he famously asked what the heck Trump would be doing. And was told “He’ll be out making America great again.”

Anyone who actually follows policy work in DC will tell you that the actual policy decisions in the White House since early 2017 have been handled pretty much by Mike Pence. Trump has given himself the easier task of just Tweeting and watching TV and finding other ways to occupy his time. Which is why I’ve referred to Trump by his actual position – that of being Pence’s childish spokesman. It’s true that Trump occasionally blunders into the middle of Pence’s work, as he has with the disastrous choices Rudy Giuliani conned him into making re Ukraine. But the vast majority of policy work and appointments go through Pence’s office. Which also means that even if we removed Trump from the figurehead position, there would be no change in the actual policies, as the same man would still be driving them.

If we wish to see real change at the White House, it will only come if people show up to vote next November.

John, we would be out in traffic, chasing cars, biting tires, running around like wild people.

I’ll just second the warning Ellen is making here – the outing of the man that angry Right Wingers SAY is one of the whistleblowers (and we don’t know that their assumptions are correct at this point) is clearly intended to generate real danger for him.

(And we should remember that it’s irrelevant who the whistleblower is – as Ellen notes, the actual complaint has been repeatedly verified from multiple sources. Just as it’s irrelevant whether the first whistleblower was on the actual call – since they were getting identical accounts of the call from multiple staffers who were concerned – and now that we have the verifications, the issue is about the conduct itself, not the person who originally mentioned it.)

The obvious intention of Rush Limbaugh and disgraced predator Bill O’Reilly is to dox the man – so that he can be repeatedly harassed and likely attacked in every form, including physically, as a warning to anyone else who dares step forward and reveal the uncomfortable truths of the goon behavior of the Pence White House.

This was the same approach taken with Dr. Blasey Ford from last year, where she has repeatedly been harassed with death threats and forced to live away from home, thanks to all the angry Right Wingers who have persecuted her for having the temerity to tell the truth about Brett Kavanaugh. And in the case of Dr. Ford, that approach has helped to discourage anyone else from coming forward – as was of course their intention.

I have a very real concern that the more unhinged among the Right Wing listeners of Limbaugh and his ilk and viewers of gargoyles like Carlson may take matters farther in their own hands. If we hear of anything happening to this man, we’ll have a replay of what happened to George Tiller. And I note that predator O’Reilly has repeated his conduct with this new target. I remind everyone that O’Reilly has never apologized or taken even one iota of responsibility for what happened to Tiller. I expect neither he nor Carlson will take any responsibility if something happens to the man these guys are now targeting.

Based on their behavior over the past two weeks, it appears that the Pence White House, the childish spokesman, and the various Right Wing propaganda groups are all panicking over the upcoming impeachment proceedings. Looking past their desperate projection, it’s fairly clear that they are terrified that some Republicans will not support the goon behavior of both Pence and the infant on Twitter. So the false bravado they’re projecting is interesting but paper thin. Let’s see how they deal with the upcoming House proceedings – I’m betting we see meltdowns on a daily and even an hourly basis.

My favorite part of the Right Wing responses we’ve seen so far has been the angry blowhard pose – that those darn Democrats better not try to vote on anything or somehow all of America will be REALLY MAD AT THEM. Riiiiight. As though the Right Wing was ever anything but REALLY MAD at everyone else. Translation: The Right Wing is terrified that Trump will get the same asterisk as Bill Clinton, only with an actual series of criminal actions – and ones that may not be pardoned after he’s out of office. And that doesn’t even get into the Right Wing’s growing panic about how next year’s election could play out.