Teflon Don

I couldn't have picked a better couple days to stay home sick from work, than yesterday and today, with the impeachment hearings going on in the background. Hoarse Whisperer has been doing a great play-by-play job throughout, so check it out if you're interested in more granular detail, and throw him a few shekels for his effort.

European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland is currently testifying, and as many live observers are noting, his demeanor is that of a man who is at peace with what he needs to do. He saw how lifelong ratfucker Roger Stone's time finally ran out last week. Stone is looking at fifty (50!) years in Club Fed, a life sentence. Paul Manafort is doing his stretch right now, and will be in his late seventies -- and broke like a muthafuckin' joke) by the time he's released.

Rudy Giuliani is in the midst of a very slow-motion process of being thrown under the proverbial bus. At 75 years of age and currently going through an expensive and messy divorce from Wife #3, Fruity Gee is surely aware that his best days are now and forever truly behind him. Even if he finds a way to weasel out of major trouble, he knows that he will only be accepted by people that he knows are scumbags. That's all he has left. That "America's Mayor" shit is long gone.

So Sondland sees all that and has adjusted his tack accordingly. He's just a standard doofus with way too much money who thought he'd buy his way into the in-crowd. Well, ya got in, Gordo. How's the weather?

Sondland is now dragging Giuliani and Mike Pompeo and Mick Mulvaney and Dear Leader himself into the ever-widening web of implications. Pompeo and Mulvaney have been trying to find a way to jump ship for months, and Gordo just shanked 'em both real good. They're balls-deep in this, and will be lucky if all they lose is their political careers.

I would only add a few "slightly larger picture" details that are being exposed more and more as this process works through:

• Ukraine is not a member of the European Union. So what exactly is Sondland's official role in all this? Why is he the mediator for these surreptitious transactions with a country not in his diplomatic portfolio? Not to mention the fact that Sondland is a certifiable dipshit -- he testifies that he took no notes of any of his conversations (but gee, he wishes he would have), and he literally held a discussion with POTUS out in the open at a restaurant in Ukraine, on an unsecured line, loud enough for everyone within earshot to overhear what Trump was saying. Again, if you wrote this into a spy novel or a James Bond script, you'd be laughed out of the pitch meeting. It's waaayyyyy too stupid to be remotely believable. And yet Gordo cheerfully attests to all that. Winning!
• Rudy Giuliani has no official role in the United States government at all. He is famously (infamously?) working "for free" on Trump's behalf. It should be clear by now why all that is extremely problematic. As cumbersome and tedious as the appointment-confirmation process might be -- especially to a STRAPPING MAN OF ACTION like Dear Leader -- all of this is why you have that process.
  
  Instead, you have a doddering freelancer, working on the direct behalf of another doddering freelancer, rather than that of, you know, the fucking United States of America. So it's not just that POTUS is explicitly using tools of bribery and extortion on a foreign leader to extract concessions that benefit him personally, it's that his pro bono henchman is subverting national security and foreign policy to work his own side-hustle with whichever Ukrainian oligarch-owned gas company wants to come around and do business.
• This is a case study in how the ongoing undermining of the foreign service corps will have national security repercussions for decades. These shitheads chased out all the competent non-partisan personnel, whose expertise is quiet but essential to day-to-day operations and actionable intel, and replaced them with dipshit lackeys, whose only role is to receive and deliver thick envelopes. The lackeys will be gone at some point in the near- to short-term. It will be very difficult, and take years, to round up a new cadre of professionals, and get them trained and deployed. In the meantime, we will have no operational presence to speak of, in many volatile regions. Feel safer now?
• You hate to use tired clichés such as "scratches the surface" or "tip of the iceberg" with this. It will become clearer when (if) the tax returns are made public. Ukraine is just a small example of how American foreign policy has been monetized -- not for the country's benefit, but for Trump and his family. The Saudis are happy to to just funnel money through the failson-in-law, and get whatever they want -- including American military personnel, who now are apparently mercenaries working for a medieval shithole. Turkey certainly gave him some consideration, in return for his abject betrayal of the Kurds, who fought side-by-side with Americans, and are now being mercilessly slaughtered as you read this. The other side of that coin is the shakedown protection racket, which we just tried on the South Koreans yesterday, walking out of "negotiations" per Genius Q. Dealmaker's super-great how-to manual on MAKING THAT DEAL. Instead of having their protection fees quadrupled overnight, the South Koreans opted instead to sign a security agreement -- wait for it -- with China. And so the Asian century continues apace, without us.
  
  But the point is, Ukraine is just one part of the elephant here -- the trunk, the tail, an ear, whatever. There's a lot more to be uncovered, and the inquiry is probably going to have to be limited in time and scope, for various political considerations. I dunno, if only someone had proposed that this process be started MONTHS EARLIER.

Anyway, the real problem here is that the Republican party politicians, and their disgusting, increasingly anti-American base, won't budge for any of this. Again, you could have indisputably real video of Trump literally robbing a bank and shooting everyone in it -- guards, tellers, customers, his fellow robbers -- and they'd find an excuse for it.

All of the above is a problem for the nation, just as a going concern. But the stubborn obstructionism of Republican politicians, too terrified or stupid to simply observe what's in front of them and do what they know is the right thing, that is a clear and imminent danger. And you're never going to undo the brainwashing of the Fox cult, even if you found a way to pull the plug on the network tomorrow. That damage is done.