Today, Pro Publica published an amazing archive of over 500 videos of the attack on the Capitol posted to Parler by the insurrectionists who horrified all normal people on January 6th.  They are in sequential order and cover the time from noon until 6pm Eastern time.

The level of violence can disturb some, so be warned and cautious sharing this around.  This is significant work and preserves for all time how Americans attacked Americans because they didn’t like the result of a free and fair election and followed a profoundly corrupt man to the Capitol and now to jail for a long time.

Trump has made a hallmark of his presidency bombastic bloviating and boasting that he’s accomplished what no other president has ever accomplished.  Well, he’s finally right.  By inciting insurrection where the Capitol was attack and sacked, a Capitol Hill police officer was beaten to death, 4 other people died and hundreds of members of Congress and their staff were terrorized, Trump has most certainly accomplished what no other president has done – getting impeached.  TWICE.  In a bipartisan vote where 10 Republicans joined the Democrats, Nancy Pelosi led the race to remove him before he does more damage or gets more people killed.  The Senate, of course, is foot dragging, but with Repubs joining the Dems, the pressure is on for McConnell to do something.  Ball’s in your court again, Mitch.

Mitch McConnell signaled the end of the Trump presidency today by telling associates that he’s “pleased” that the Dems are impeaching Trump and that impeachment will make it easier to purge him from the party.  Said associates immediately leaked the comment to the press.  That’s McConnell’s way of communicating to Trump to pack his shit and get out. Clearly the money stream is drying up due to Trump’s attempted coup last week, and McConnell now sees him as a liability.  Folks, it’s over.

Looking into my Crystal Bourbon Bottle, I predict that Trump will be gone by Friday.  Republican resistance to the impeachment effort in the house is tepid at best, coming mostly from Drooler Caucus, and even McCarthy is backing away from Trump.  Having lost McConnell’s support Trump is toast.  Now it’s just a matter of how Trump leaves, and I predict he will try to resign rather than face a conviction and removal from the Senate.  The thing is, though, to purge Trump, they’ll have to convict, then vote again to disqualify him from holding any other federal offices.

“Turn out the lights, the party’s over…”

This afternoon, in the style of a banana republic, Republicans in the Senate, aided and abetted by Chief Justice John Roberts, voted to support Trump’s lawbreaking and stonewalling by acquitting him of both articles of impeachment, after not hearing one witness.  Lamar Alexander was the nail in the coffin of the impeachment attempt, siding with corruption rather than The People.  Murkowski caving on witnesses was the crowning blow. Romney was the only Republican to stand on his hind legs and vote to convict the SOB on Article 1, he voted to acquit on Article 2.  Of course, the two Shitheads from Texas sided with the criminal.  What an embarrassment.  With this acquittal, the Senate has communicated to Trump that illegally using US taxpayer money to extort a foreign government for his own personal gain is fine.  Foreign interference in US elections is welcome. Lying to and stonewalling Congress is Okey Dokey.  Smearing good public servants for personal gain is appropriate, and using private individuals to form US policy is sweet.

The outcome was really never in doubt.  Corrupt Republicans, led by henchman Mitch McConnell, resisted seeing any evidence, hearing any witnesses, or honoring their oaths to be impartial.  Despite a large number of Americans wanting a fair trial, the Senate once again followed the orders of their masters who were at once stuffing their pockets full of money and threatening to put their “heads on a pike” should they dare oppose the president of the United States King Donald I Il Douche who is beholding only to Vladimir Putin, Erdogan, and Saudi princes.

If you think Trump acted badly after Barr successfully buried the Mueller report, you ain’t seen nothing yet.  On his way to prison, Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, predicted that he wouldn’t leave office quietly.  The Senate has now guaranteed that prediction.  Without guardrails, Trump will unleash a massive effort to tilt the election toward himself, threatening opponents, and welcoming the Russians or any other foreign power who ally themselves with him.  And, if by some remote chance this massive corruption results in an electoral loss, he will declare the election invalid and declare martial law.  What comes next we’ve seen before in Germany, Italy, multiple Central American states, and Cambodia.  And none of that was pretty.

I’m sad to say that the end of the great American experiment has come.  After decades of lies and propaganda pumped out by Fox Noise, Rush Limbaugh, and other talking heads, aided by Russian intelligence, the US government, led by abjectly corrupt Republicans, has weakened our country to the point that truth is unfindable; under McConnell, the US Senate is a wasteland of weirdos, liars, morons, and the cynically corrupt.  Much of the House is the same.  Trump played millions of Americans for chumps, and after years of stupidifying, they fell for it, suspending disbelief and accepting massive gaslighting as truth.  Corruption and criminality are now the norm. The vision of the Founders is dead, led to the grave by Trump, Mitch McConnell, his corrupt Republican Party, and enabled by the corrupt majority on the Supreme Court.

Everyone, even if they deny it, knows this was not a trial in any sense of the word.  It was a sham from the moment it passed from Nancy Pelosi’s hands into McConnell’s.  But we also something else – history will not be kind to those who did this.  Generations behind us will look at this time in our history and will pinpoint the precise time of death of the most remarkable experiment in self government in world history.

Dana Milbank has a great piece in the Washington Post this morning where he describes how Republican senators made a mockery of Trump’s impeachment trial, repeatedly violating their oaths and violating Senate rules.  Many didn’t even bother to show up during the House Managers’ presentations, or if they did, smacked on chewing gum or read magazines.  As I read these descriptions, what struck me was what a poor job Chief Justice John Roberts did, not even trying to get Republicans to follow their own rules in the trial.  Trump always whines about how everything is rigged against him; well, this trial was certainly rigged in favor of him even before it started.

In voting to block all witnesses and close the record, Republicans completed their corrupt mission of acquitting Trump even as they admitted that he is guilty.  Milbank’s best line of the the piece was when he described Lamar Alexanders illogical reasoning for refusing to hear any witnesses.  Alexander’s statement was whiplash inducing as described by Milbank:

“’There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this,’ Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) declared late Thursday. But the choice of ‘what to do about what he did,’ Alexander said, should be ‘in the presidential election.’ What an elegant solution! He accepts that Trump is guilty of cheating in the election — and, therefore, his fate should be determined by the very election in which he has cheated.”

Milbank nails it in those brief sentences by pointing out the idiotic reasoning behind not only Trump’s lawyers but his enablers in the Senate.  They admit Trump is guilty, yet either say it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachability or that the election should determine his fate.  How goddam stupid – if inviting, indeed extorting a foreign government to interfere in a presidential election is not impeachable, then nothing is.  Even more stupid is saying that the election he’s trying to rig is the one in which he should be punished.

The illogic is gobsmacking.