Some thoughts.
V-Log: Idle, Incoherent Rambling About #Impeachment & #Writing A #Novel
Some thoughts.
Tag: impeachment
Impeachment Coverage Request: A Dynamic Chart Of The Status Of The Senate’s Sentiment On Impeachment
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I just don’t have the resources to do this myself. But here’s want I want.
— An intuitive, feature rich chart (a circle?) that you can study that gives the audience some sense of where each of the 100 Senators stand on impeachment.
— It would be set up so the one person who really has the most power in all of this — the 67th Senator — would be really focused on. Whomever falls as the 67 Senator relative to both party affiliation and alphabet would be the one person we would learn the most about.
— It would be dynamic, so it would change as we rush towards the actual trial and vote.
It’s just too complicated for me to do alone because the vote is done in alphabetical order, so Republicans and Democrats are scattered across the actual vote as it proceeds.
Chop, chop, someone do this.
Why The Racist, Misogynist Fascist MAGA Asshats Want The Whistleblower To Testify In Person So Bad
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
Trump’s going all in on having the Whistleblower come forth personally and testify in public — even though Trump himself was such a wussy he wouldn’t give Mueller in-person answers to his questions. But, then, hypocrisy is very on-brand for MAGA, so there you go.
Here are my person hot takes on why Trump’s so wrapped up in this idea of being able to see his foe on TV testifying in person before Congress.
They Want A Mueller Moment
What MAGA shitheads took away from Mueller’s “poor optics” during his testimony before Congress was they have a chance of winning not on the facts but because we live in a media age and how something plays on TV is far more important than anything else. Even though we have enough to impeach and convict Trump as it is — they think if they can only get the Whistleblower in front of Lindsey Graham for 11 hours, all their troubles will go away.
They Want To ‘Kavanaugh’ Him
MAGA fuckwits want to do to the Whistleblower what they feel was done to Justice Kavanaugh. They want to swap out policy differences for facts, however. They want to prove a point — at least in their own minds — that the only reason why Democrats were so hard on Kavanaugh is they did not have politics on their side so they played dirty. Given that Republicans hate that someone may have bested them at their own ratfucking (at least in their own minds) they have a near-sexual craving to repay the favor to Democrats. If they can get women screaming at Democrat Senators in elevators over some personal issue in the Whistleblower’s past, dipshit traitor Republicans will cackle themselves to sleep at night.
They Want To Focus Their Hate On Him Personally
This is kind of the darkest part of all of this. This is the worst case scenario. They are so wrapped up in their own overheated, overwrought rhetoric that they are blinded to what might happen if someone took it the wrong way and physically harmed the Whistleblower. (Hint — it would be bad politics, to say the least.) But in the moment, they don’t care. They have bloodlust at this point and when it sinks in what a horrific mistake they’ve made, it will be far, far too late. They will pontificate on how Trump was “just joking” and he “can’t be held responsible” for the actions of a mentally-ill person, but they will say in the same fucking breath that OBVIOUSLY we have to stop the impeachment process because people are dying.
A Most Dangerous Game — Republicans’ Trump Whistleblower Gotterdammerung Strategy
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
Well, buckle up. Trump’s now goading anyone who will listen to out the whistlebower so he can turn around and rant about every aspect of the poor guy’s life on Twitter. The fact that the guy’s name is bouncing around the MAGA-InfoWars Bullshit Echo Chamber and Trump feels he doesn’t have the political cover to do anything about it is obviously really beginning to eat away at him.
Trump allies keep queuing the information up for him to retweet — namely Sen. Rand Paul — and for some reason Trump’s yet to take the bait. So, what I predicted would happen is, in fact, happening. The pressure is now slowly rising. Trump is stoking it as much as possible, too. Since he can’t rant about the personal life of the whistleblower, he rants about how he can’t do it in the guise of how the press knows the name and won’t publicize t so he can get the poor guy murdered with a “joke.”
At this point, the issue how, exactly, the name becomes so widely known that Trump feels he can blurt it out on Twitter. This is when the Trump Train becomes the Crazy Train. If I was playing music at this part of the Trump movie, I would play Motorhead’s The Ace Of Spades over a montage of the procession of events we’re now seeing unfold before our very eyes. The average person — especially those not on Twitter — has no idea what is about to happen.
Trump is so very, very close to being comfortable ranting all day about every aspect of the whistleblower to such an extent that any normal non-fuckwit MAGA fascist racist misogynist — will be taken aback by how dangerous Trump’s rhetoric has become. It’s all going to come to a head one way another. Either Sen. Lindsey Graham calls on the whistleblower to testify in public under oath for 11 hours to distract from the impeachment process or the poor guy is literally murdered in cold blood by a fucking MAGA dipshit with an AR-15 who wants to martyr themselves for the Der Fuhrer.
Republicans will clutch their pearls and say the MAGA assassin was OBVIOUSLY mentally ill and the president can’t be held accountable for that guys actions, and besides, we OBVIOUSLY need to end the impeachment process immediately because people are dying.
While I generally have grown extremely jaded with Trump president, I have a least a minor amount of hope that if this unlikely — but not impossible — scenario occurs, Trump’s political days will be numbered. But, who knows, really.
All I do know is that things are on the cusp of growing far more surreal and dark than we could have ever imagined.
So What’s The Delay On MAGA Shitheads Outing The Trump Whistleblower?
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
When last we saw the rabid racist misogynist mob that is MAGA, they were teeheeing about learning the identity of the Trump whistle blower. As is my nature, I assumed the absolute worst-case scenario. And, as is also often the case, that worst-case scenario did not happen.
For the moment, outside of bullshit echo-chamber of the extreme Far Right, the Whistleblower continues to enjoy a measure of “practical obscurity.” This likely to change at any moment, however. I suspect what may be happening is two things. One, for the moment cooler heads have prevailed given that it’s like, a Federal crime and stuff, to out someone like the so-called Orange Crush. But I suspect I’m giving the shit head Republican leadership way, way, way too much credit. They’re probably doing extensive oppo on the guy was we speak.
They already have a few days worth of talking points built-in. Apparently the guy has some job-related connection to both Joe Biden and….gasp…Susan Rice. Republicans just babbling about that at the top of their lungs at every opportunity would cause Maggie Haberman of The New York Times to ever-so-seriously tell hayseed rubes like me in fly overstates that OBVIOUSLY Republicans are winning the impeachment messaging battle and Trump’s political genius shines through yet the fuck again. And, besides, you didn’t even read the link, did you, dipshit.
And that, in itself, may be true to a certain extent. But the issue of how, exactly, the poor guy’s name will be pushed into the mainstream is, in itself, a significant issue. I still think Trump, who has the willpower of a 2-year-old will blurt the name on Twitter one morning and “joke” that MAGA should teach the guy a lesson about crossing House Trump. (Or some sort of bullshit dog whistle nonsense.)
There’s a good chance the guy will be murdered in cold blood by a over zealous MAGA asshole with an AR-15 and then Republicans will have to, at long last, defend Trump murdering someone (indirectly.) They will say that Trump was joking and that he can’t be held responsible for the actions of someone who is obviously mentally unstable. But they will also babble on about how OBVIOUSLY we can’t continue the impeachment proceedings because people are getting hurt.
I would like to think this messaging won’t work but for maybe about 24 hours. As it sinks in what has just happened, you might see that only base-concentric political strategy come back to bite Trump and his sycophantic Republicans in the ass. What good is a cult base if the entire non-cult electorate hates you on an visceral level. I guess Republican Senators will believe that as long as they can get past the primary they still have a good shot in the general. And, of course, they must at least have some hope that a politically pardoned Trump will AGAIN directly meddle in the 2020 election and save their ass that way.
Remember, the moment Trump is acquitted, he’s going to become extremely brazen. He will bribe Electors. He will pardon anyone he wants to pardon. He will indict Joe Biden (or whomever). He will at last be free of any semblance of political restraint. The ICE Camps will be weaponized and he will began to rant about the need for a new Constitutional Convention to “balance the budget.”
I guess the point is, the stakes could not be higher when it comes to impeachment. The Republicans are so craven that they simply will not be able to control themselves now that they now the Whistleblower’s name. It’s just a matter of how and when at this point. They crave the opportunity to “kavanaugh” him to such an extent that Maggie Haberman is writing story after story about the poor guy’s character flaws since birth. The risk is, of course, that things will get out of control because, well, Donald Fucking Trump is a ranting lunatic.
The clock is ticking.
I welcome feedback. If you ain’t got haters, you ain’t poppin.
migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.
Fuck MAGA. Fuck Trump.
V-Log: Want To Start A #Podcast About #Impeachment
Please ping me on Twitter at @bumgarls if you’re interested.
V-Log: A Deep Dive Into The State Of Impeachment
This starts off about the novel I’m writing then goes into a deep dive about the state of impeachment.
The Coming Of The Republican Gotterdammerung Impeachment Strategy
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I continue to struggle as to what the endgame for this catastrophic clusterfuck is going to be. All things being equal, it would appear that Trump will be impeached and acquitted in the Senate. He will grow even more brazen in his tyranny afterwards with election meddling and Republicans will finally get the Russian-style managed democracy they so desperately crave.
And yet.
Something surreal is going on with Republicans. I can only suspect it has something to do with Trump freaking out at the prospect of getting impeached at all. This is yet another indication that Trump is not, in fact, the political genius that New York Times Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman would have haysee rubes in flyover states like me believe. That he would grow so completely rabid at the idea of even being impeached does not bode well for anyone involved.
So I might suggest that you pause to consider that what may bring down House Trump — and Pence for that matter — may not be impeachment but Trump’s reaction to it. Or, more specifically, it won’t even be Trump’s reaction to it, it will be the violence associated with it. To put it another way, we are racing at an alarming rate towards people dying in a Republican Gotterdammerung strategy. Their thinking is that if they can inflict enough pain on the opposition in guise of people dying that that will cause the whole impeachment process to come to an end. They will make the case that we can’t even impeach Trump because people are dying. This is, of course, a completely fucked up, bonkers line of reasoning that comes more from House Trump believing its own FOX News coverage than anything else.
I find it dubious that if there was some sort of co-ordinated, violent and bloody attack on the part of MAGA truebelivers that average Americans would throw up their hands and give up on impeachment. What’s more likely to happen is the 60% of the population that isn’t MAGA would flip the fuck out. The political ground under the entire House Trump would buckle.
It would not happen right away. Republicans would for about 24 hours tell us all that they can’t be blamed for the actions of “mentally ill” people. The moment, however, that they started to say, “Of course we can’t impeach Trump if people are dying” is the moment they may, for once, face serious political consquences.
Remember there may come a point where the absolute fear of Republican Senators of being primaried from someone on the MAGA Right will equal their absolute fear that they won’t win a general election. It’s that type of high stakes conundrum that leaves me scratching my head. They have no shame and only care about power for power’s sake. So there’s a least a small chance that their high stakes gotterdammerung strategy might not QUITE work out the way they hope.
Who knows. I know I don’t.
The key point is the nation can’t sustain this state of crisis for any long duration of time. The fever is going to break one way or another. Either with people getting hurt or Trump finally be forced out of off, or maybe both. All I know is I hope no one gets hurt. But I’m not going to let insane Republicans cower me into submission either.
Thinking The Unthinkable — What Happens When There’s Impeachment Violence?
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
It pains me to no end to have to talk about this. But we have to prepare ourselves for impeachment-related violence. This is a classic desperate move of extremists — they think that if they raise the stakes high enough that the general public will cower in fear and stop the impeachment process altogether.
The only problem with this strategy is it’s a high risk – high reward one. And violence of the sort Trump supporters want is almost totally alien to the American political experience. While substantial impeachment-related violence might dominate a news cycle or two, there would come a point when a lot of people who have previously tuned out would suddenly sit up and take notice. And not in a way that Trump would like.
This is yet ANOTHER example of how Trump is NOT a political genius as The New York Times‘ Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman would have us believe. Trump is so stupid — and rapidly cracking under the strain of impeachment — that he sees violence in his defence as a quick fix that will make all his troubles go away. He is so stupid that he doesn’t realize that his firebreak is the average person’s general political indifference. As long as the economy is going well they generally don’t care. If people start dying as part of some crazed gotterdammerung strategy on the part of House Trump, there’s a real chance of radicalizing — at least momentarily — a huge swath of the moderates who otherwise would give Mad King Trump a pass at least until election day 2020.
In other words — when politics involves death and destruction, Americans generally don’t appreciate it. Violence that can be directly pinned on the overheated rhetoric of the Right will initially give us as nation pause for thought, yes, but the moment the Right goes from, “Can’t blame us, it’s just crazy people!” to “Well, guess we can’t have stop the impeachment process now…” they’re likely to get considerable pushback.
But the key issue is — it’s only going to get worse as we grow closer and closer to Trump actually being impeached. In fact, that’s pretty much Trump’s last trick — to go transactional in his crazypants tweets. While I’m reluctant to count Trump out, when he is directing MAGA to kill people in his defense via his Twitter feed that would, well, take things to the next level.
Who knows what happens next. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
V-Log: #Impeachment, #Writing A #Novel & Thoughts On Susan Orlean
by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
This one is a fun one. Enjoy.
You must be logged in to post a comment.