The Texas Association of Realtors is having their annual conference at the beginning of September.  Surprisingly, they’re using some common sense by making the conference virtual; good for them.  But their common sense, apparently, stops there.  They’ve invited a national political figure for their keynote speech on the subject of “Unity and Leadership”.  Take a wild guess who the speaker will be…give up?  You should because on a list of 1,000 people to discuss unity, you’d never think of this guy.  Said speaker is Trey Gowdy.  Yes, THAT Trey Gowdy, he of goofy hairstyles and baggy suits, is going to speak to Texas realtors about his groundbreaking work on unity and leadership.

Recall that Trey Gowdy led the House investigation of the tragic killings of US ambassador to Libya and 3 other Americans during a terrorist attack on the American Consulate at Benghazi.  Gowdy led that mudslinging, falsehood hurling witch hunt for two and a half years, including an 11 hour marathon grilling of Hillary Clinton, publishing an 800 page report that basically said the attack was tragic and no fault of anyone in the US government except for maybe the Republicans in Congress who had slashed the security budget for the State department during the Obama administration.

Gowdy probably ranks in the top ten of divisive, cynical Republicans from the Obama era who took a leading role in the Benghazi investigations.  He was also a proponent of the culture wars brought on by the Teabagger wave that he rode into office in 2010 after defeating mainstream Republican Bob Inglis in the South Carolina primary that year.  He also rode the Trump wave in 2016, even being floated as AG early on, but ended up on the trash heap of disappeared Republicans after he criticized Trump for falsely accusing Obama of “spying” on his campaign.  That ended his career in Congress and he now is apparently trying to stay relevant by trying out the minor speaking circuit.

That brings us back to the Texas Realtors’ #ShapingTexas conference.  As I heard earlier today, “Asking Gowdy to speak about unity is like inviting Putin to speak about American democracy”.  This is what happens when right wing politics are mainstream as it is in Texas.  Organizers will probably be shocked that most people would be offended hearing from Gowdy about “unity”.

Today:

Mike Pompeo was in on the mob boss call with Zelensky and Trump.  Also, McConnell said if the House impeaches, there will be a trial.

Rudy Giuliani has been subpoenaed to disgorge all of his documents pertaining to his involvement with Ukraine.f

Another Republican, Chris Collins, has resigned from Congress, this time just before pleading guilty to insider trading.

Trump asked Australian prime minister to help determine origins of Mueller investigation.

Trump suggests civil war if he’s impeached.  Harvard law professors says that by itself is impeachable.

Whistle blower’s attorney says Trump is endangering his client’s life.

RNC sent fake census forms to solicit money for Trump reelection campaign.

BREAKING: Bill Barr solicited foreign governments in an effort to discredit US intelligence agencies’ findings that the Russians interfered with the 2016 election.

Whew…

NBC News was invited in for an exclusive look at a western themed party at Mara Lago this weekend.  The party cost from $500 per ticket to $20,000 for a big girl table.  The charity for which they were raising money?  Themselves, silly.  This was about the Trumpettes worshipping the Demigod Donnie at his Church of Perpetual Narcissism.  The whole sordid event was one of those that you can’t unsee.

After acting Secretary of State David Whitley’s disastrous publishing of THE LIST, there are two questions that must be asked:

1. Is David Whitley a lying, radical partisan doing Greg Abbott’s bidding to suppress minority voters?
2. Or is he just simply incompetent?

The answer to both of these questions is the same – Whitley must go.  He should not be confirmed as the Secretary of State of Texas since one of that role’s prime jobs is to ensure full and fair elections.  His first major act utterly failed to do that.  Whitley is an Abbott acolyte who’s only actual government experience is deputy chief of staff and appointments maker.  He rocketed into the Secretary of State role in December when Abbott put him in the job.

Let’s not beat around the bush – Whitley published this list with great fanfare for one reason and one reason only – to create the false impression that undocumented people are voting in Texas.  That, of course, is a blatant lie.  The only evidence you need of that conclusion is the coordinated media responses to the shocking announcement by Ken Paxton and even His Orangeness himself.  The announcements didn’t say that the Secretary of State was asking counties to “study” the list, they declared that 95,000 non-citizens were registered to vote and that 58,000 did indeed vote in the 2018 election.  They did that to de-legitimize Beto O’Rourke’s very strong showing against Worst Senator in the History of Texas, Ted Cruz and to set the table for this election cycle of legislating more voter suppression to stem the tide of changing demographics in Texas. And it was a gigantic lie, as is becoming more and more obvious.

David Whitley needs to be shown the door with the toe of the Senate’s boot.  Even Republicans, the beneficiaries of the lies and voter suppression efforts in Texas, need to recognize that at some point cheating and lying won’t work effectively enough for them to maintain power and that they should rethink their radical partisan agenda.

Whitley must be rejected.

Some genius at US Strategic Command thought it would be funny to tweet a New Year’s greeting yesterday featuring the B-2 bomber that joked about dropping something “much much bigger” than the New Year’s Eve crystal ball in Times Square.  That went over like a fart in a chapel, and the post was taken down, but not before it was snatched by some astute watchers.  Here it is:

Warning: This scene contains violence.

As I watched Trump’s post election response yesterday, including the unceremonious firing of Jeff Sessions, I was reminded of this scene from the Untouchables where Robert DeNiro, as Al Capone, dispatches one of his “team” with a baseball bat for disloyalty.  The impression was reinforced for me, though, when Trump went full-on De Niro during his press conference, gloating about how Republicans (which were individually named) who refused to kiss his ring were defeated on Tuesday.  The meltdown came, thought, after members of the press started asking Trump really tough questions.  He paced, shouted at reporters, and almost walked off the stage as Jim Acosta from CNN pressed him about the racist fake caravan issue that Trump had relentlessly flogged in the run-up to election day.  The day ended with Acosta being banned from the White House and Sarah Sanders falsely accusing him of putting his hands on a WH intern when she tried to wrench a microphone out of his hand during Trump’s meltdown.  In a statement, CNN responded to Sander’s lie, calling her lie a lie.

After Sander’s false allegations, the Twitterverse erupted, attacking Sanders, and pointing out the irony of the White House accusing a reporter for touching a young female intern after defending Trump against almost two dozen accusations of actual sexual assault.

So what’s really going on here?  What’s going on is that Trump is terrified of what happens next.  The Dems can now subpoena his staffers and his sycophants.  He’s installed a goon as acting AG.  The Dems have already requested document retention of all communications between said goon and the White House for further investigation.  In January, the House will most certainly subpoena him to testify under oath about his record of partisan defense of Trump and his allies.  Mueller is coming, and I have to believe that he has disceminated his findings among other law enforcement agencies that have jurisdiction.  Trump most certainly understands that he’s in a box now that he’s lost the House.  If he fires Mueller, the House will ask him to testify before the Judiciary committee and he’ll sing like a bird.  If Trump’s goon, Matthew Whitaker, is nominated for permanent AG, that hearing in the Senate will be ugly.

Many, including me, have predicted that this presidency will not end well.   We’re getting ever closer to that end, and the strain on His Orangeness has turned him, if that’s even possible, into an even more clownish figure with his heavily made up tanning bed glow that exaggerates his raccoon eyes and ugly ducktail hair weave.  Add that to his ever increasing erratic behavior and temper tantrums, and the picture is ugly.  Really ugly.  My only question now is not how his presidency will implode, but when.  I just hope he doesn’t get a lot of innocent people killed or injured before that happens.