To expect Senators to suddenly change their minds because it's the right thing to do is unrealistic in this political climate. To go to all the trouble of starting the impeachment process with no plan to combat that seems quixotic. Well, here's the other piece of the puzzle on how to get a more honest vote in the Senate: root out those who are complicit.

I've been swinging back and forth emotionally between "Yay! It's finally happening!" and "This is going to be a lot like Fitzmas, isn't it?" given the Senate situation. This just goes to show that more than one crowd in town can play the long game. It seems Pelosi, Schiff & co. have a long game set up and they are just getting started.

I'm back on the "Yay! It's finally happening!" train today.

that are moneyed up and 'having overlapping interests' with some of the players and activities being investigated. It's depressing that no one is going to call them on it, or maybe no one has a way to call them on it. When it comes to the vote, for some it won't just be about staying in lockstep with the party.

I hope we start seeing more articles like this. Shine a light on these cockroaches.

Time: Thursday morning, nine a.m.

Fiona Hill: British-born American foreign affairs specialist and a former official at the National Security Council specializing in the former Soviet Union, Russian and European affairs. She's the one who gave us the Bolton 'drug deal' and 'hand grenade' quotes. She will be giving testimony tomorrow morning that is likely to be a bit of a contrast from what we heard from Sondland today.


On Sondland being a counterintelligence risk (and a massive egotist)
https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1193004790650998784

On Sondland and Giuliani making a mess of foreign policy (naturally)
https://twitter.com/cjcmichel/status/1183929368659279873
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1183934049498349568

With a righteous smackdown of the Ukraine 2016 CT
https://twitter.com/janestreet/status/1192934610314973190

And not taking any guff from Castor, who gets a well deserved smackdown from her counsel
https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1192981525027082246

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/20/who-is-fiona-hill-why-does-her-public-testimony-matter/


Also appearing Thursday is David Holmes, the State Department guy (counselor for political affairs, Ukraine) who let everyone know about overhearing Sondland's restaurant phone call.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29816407/david-holmes-ukraine-testimony-gordon-sondland-trump-phone-call/

Are these people last in line this week, when we are gasping and just about out of steam and attention span? Yep.

Are they boring and skippable? NOPE!

rather than serving the citizens of the US with useful information and updates from our nation's capital, it's being used as a propaganda mouthpiece to attack them. Watch out, citizen! YOU could be next!

He points out all of the reforms Ukraine is trying to get passed to fight corruption and that the very first one is to add provisions for impeachment to their constitution. Heck says this shows how much integrity Zelensky had to start with his own office as first priority.

Reminds Volker no one wants to be involved in an impeachment, but here we are weighing important decisions about our republic, a republic if we can keep it. Denny Heck is a thoughtful and eloquent man.

Then Jordan opens his mouth and sounds like a needle ripping across a vinyl record, sigh.

I am struck by the number of people chiming in from all over the world. There are people halfway across the globe, up in the middle of the night to watch this. It just underlines how glad we all should be that Pelosi, Schiff & co are working so hard to get the job done and get it done right.

It was all retweets - a way to try to get around being accused of direct tweets intimidating witnesses. It's a transparent workaround, and it was obviously coordinated given the amount of material other Repubs quickly gave him to work with.

This one scam alone just boggles the mind. Link to the Mother Jones article mentioned:

Donald Trump Has Never Explained a Mysterious $50 Million Loan. Is It Evidence of Tax Fraud?

referenced in the thread conversation:

Something fishy?



Long, detailed story showing that Solomon is a piece of work, to put it kindly. He has a reputation going back enough years that what happened at The Hill should not have surprised anyone.

Source: Newsweek

"We really learned the hard way in Germany that walls shouldn't be a political solution," Philip Husemann, the managing director of Die Offene Gesellshaft, told Newsweek in an interview on Monday. "Of course, that is the big message we want to send."

Their missive, however, was quickly intercepted by Secret Service members, who were "very clear that they could not accept or deliver this quite heavy letter to President Trump," Husemann said.

Of course, the activist said, he and his fellow organizers had already anticipated that the White House might reject their gift.

"One thing which is interesting is that any gift that the president accepts or gets or receives is automatically not his property, but public property," Husemann said. "So, therefore, we thought, okay, this is not just a present to the president, but to the people, the citizens of the United States."

Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/berlin-wall-message-donald-trump-white-house-u-s-mexico-border-tour-1472460