Impeachment 2: Impeach Harder

by Therese Odell, posted in Uncategorized

It’s Wednesday. It is one week until the inauguration. The President is being impeached for the second time. Here is a link that will take you to a bunch of pictures of piles of puppies.

Political Crap: Return of impeachment corner

UPDATE: It’s done.

Welcome to Donald Juniper Trump’s Impeachment Day, The Sequel! As I am typing this, the House of Representatives has started debates on impeaching President Vulgarian for a historic second time, and are expected to vote to do exactly that sometime this afternoon or evening.

This time around, thanks to the whole “inciting a rabid crowd to insurrectionist violence” thing, some Republicans have actually found their spines, and are expected to vote to impeach, too, preventing this from being a wholly partisan effort. Liz Cheney, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House put out a statement that read:

“On January 6, 2021, a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our Republic. 

“Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. 

“I will vote to impeach the President.”

And now Trump leg-humper Jim Jordan is moving to strip her of her conference chair to punish her. But Cheney is not the only Republican to do the right thing, she is joined in the House by John Katko, Adam Kinzinger, Fred Upton, and Jaime Herrera Beutler. But more intriguingly, she might also be joined by — RECORD SCRATCH — Mitch McConnell?

According to a shocking and welcome New York Times story, “Senator Mitch McConnell has concluded that President Trump committed impeachable offenses and believes that Democrats’ move to impeach him will make it easier to purge Mr. Trump from the party, according to people familiar with Mr. McConnell’s thinking.”

Now, this still doesn’t mean a whole lot — McConnell has told the House that he won’t begin an impeachment trial in the Senate until at least the 19th, one day before Joe Biden is inaugurated. Additionally, to convict President Double Impeachment, the Senate will need to find at least 17 Republicans to side with the Democrats. But! McConnell could technically move up the trial date, by invoking emergency powers (as I was writing this, he announced he will not, but he still could! COME ON, MITCH!), and some reports suggest there might be a dozen Senate Republicans ready to convict, and maybe even up to 20 (!).

The truth is, McConnell and the Senate Republicans and those few brave House Republicans’ stances are not entirely surprising. President Doofus only has a week left in office and is of no use to them anymore. Additionally, they were there when the mob stormed the Capitol, they were there, their lives being threatened. It was very real for them. The question is will they take the gamble that President Doom’s power will be diminished enough once he leaves office that a vote to convict won’t hurt them with his lunatic base two, four, or six years from now? Stay tuned, it’s a fast-moving issue.

As for the House debates, they are interesting so far: the Democrats are reminding everyone that HUNDREDS OF VIOLENT INSURRECTIONISTS STORMED THE CAPITOL AT THE PRESIDENT’S ENCOURAGEMENT AND KILLED PEOPLE while the Republicans’ arguments almost entirely boil down to “now, now, now, we’re doing this impeachment thing too quickly. Calm down,” and, “UNITY!” but what they are not doing is defending President Asshole because, honestly, how can you?

You should read the one article of impeachment against President Riot drawn up by the Democrats for yourself — it’s very brief and to the point — but it basically says that by spending months lying about the outcome of the 2020 election, calling officials in Georgia and pushing them to find illegal votes and standing at the Ellipse in Washington D.C. in front of his “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, where he told his violent and rabid supporters: “We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country any more,” President Traitor incited violence and threatened our one entire branch of the government, the peaceful transition of power and our very democracy.

I finally read the speech for myself, and if you’d like to put yourself through that surreal and painful experience, here’s a link to the full one hour and 13-minute speech.

But here are a few highlights — and I know this is a lot of text, but the whole speech is a LOT more, including tons of false allegations about the election, and digressions on Oprah and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s weight?

Anyway:

All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats, which is what they’re doing and stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.

I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do. This is from the number one or certainly one of the top constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We’re supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our constitution and protect our constitution. States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people.

I just spoke to Mike. I said, ‘Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage,’ and then we’re stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot, and we have to live with that for four more years. We’re just not going to let that happen.

We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. If he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our constitution.

Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.

We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.* Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections, but whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period. We’ve set it on a much straighter course, a much … I thought four more years. I thought it would be easy.

*It should be noted that this is the line the Republicans keep pointing to, that he used “peacefully” once so therefore he can’t be held responsible for what happened next. LOL OK. And Don Corleone was just making a very generous offer.

Today, we see a very important event though, because right over there, right there, we see the event going to take place. And I’m going to be watching, because history is going to be made. We’re going to see whether or not we have great and courageous leaders or whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of themselves throughout history, throughout eternity, they’ll be ashamed. And you know what? If they do the wrong thing, we should never ever forget that they did. Never forget. We should never ever forget. With only three of the seven states in question, we win the presidency of the United States.

And for some reason, Mitch and the group, they don’t want to put it in there. And they don’t realize that that’s going to be the end of the Republican party as we know it, but it’s never going to be the end of us, never. Let them get out. Let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength.

Two months ago, we had a massive crowd come down to Washington. I said, ‘What are they there for.’ ‘Sir, they’re there for you.’ We have nothing to do with it. These groups, they’re forming all over the United States. And we got to remember, in a year from now, you’re going to start working on Congress. And we got to get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world, we got to get rid of them. We got to get rid of them.

The radical left knows exactly what they’re doing. They’re ruthless and it’s time that somebody did something about it. And Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our constitution and for the good of our country. And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I’m not hearing good stories.

The Republicans have to get tougher. You’re not going to have a Republican party if you don’t get tougher. They want to play so straight, they want to play so, ‘Sir, yes, the United States, the constitution doesn’t allow me to send them back to the States.’ Well, I say, ‘Yes, it does because the constitution says you have to protect our country and you have to protect our constitution and you can’t vote on fraud,’ and fraud breaks up everything, doesn’t it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to.

We must stop the steal and then we must ensure that such outrageous election fraud never happens again, can never be allowed to happen again, but we’re going forward. We’ll take care of going forward. We got to take care of going back. Don’t let them talk, ‘Okay, well we promise,’ I’ve had a lot of people, ‘Sir, you’re at 96 percent for four years.’ I said, ‘I’m not interested right now. I’m interested in right there.’

Our brightest days are before us, our greatest achievements still wait. I think one of our great achievements will be election security because nobody, until I came along, had any idea how corrupt our elections were. And again, most people would stand there at 9:00 in the evening and say, ‘I want to thank you very much,’ and they go off to some other life, but I said, ‘Something’s wrong here. Something’s really wrong. Can’t have happened.’ And we fight. We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.

Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans for our movement, for our children and for our beloved country and I say this, despite all that’s happened, the best is yet to come.

So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give … The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you all for being here, this is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you.

And then this happened:

They tried to replace the American flag on the Capitol building with a TRUMP flag, you guys. I mean, come on.

Additionally — and this might have to wait until after we deal with the Inciter-in-Chief — there is more and more evidence coming forward that not only was there some sort of coordination in the attack, but that it might have been an inside job.

A few terrifying new bits of information:

Rep. Mikie Sherrill says that she saw Congressmen leading some people through the building the day before the siege and believed it was “reconnaissance for the next day.”

This alarming accusation combined with this video of the insurrectionists revealing they have plans and schematics of the building is … not great.

Then there is the upsetting claim by Rep. James Clyburn that it wasn’t his very public House Majority Leader office that was attacked, but his second, private office that is not publicly known. It’s as if the rioters knew exactly where to try to find him … :

Finally, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a member of the “Squad,” revealed that when she and her staff got to her office, they discovered their panic buttons had been ripped out:

 

 

These accusations suggest a bigger, much darker story about what took place at the Capitol one week ago, a story that we need to brace ourselves for in the coming weeks, months, and years.

Meanwhile, one week from right this moment, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be the President and the Vice President of the United States. Hold tight.

Going Viral

Over 4,400 Americans died of COVID yesterday, breaking yet another record. That’s 1,597 more dead than died on 9/11. We are somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 deaths shy of 400,000 dead. We are likely to hit that mark sometime in the next few days.

Good news: Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine results should be known soon. Bad news: production is not nearly ramped up enough.

We’ve given the gorillas in the San Diego Zoo COVID.

Bruce Willis is an anti-masker asshole.

My buddy and former Bachelorette (and Bachelor in Paradise and Bachelor Winter Games) contestant Michael Garofalo says that a security guard in his apartment building attacked him when he asked him to put on a mask. The guard yelled “I don’t have to listen to the Jews and your Marxist agenda,” swatted the phone out of Michael’s hand, and then punched him on the side of the head. Michael, who is diabetic, is getting tested for COVID, and the apartment management company says the guard will no longer be at that apartment building but won’t say if he’s been fired or just moved.

Ellen DeGeneres returned to her show yesterday and talked openly about her experience with the virus.

TV and film permits plunged in Los Angeles in December. Huh! Why?

Call Your Mother, which premieres tonight, takes place in a maskless post-COVID world because “we had enough of that.” That said, the virus does have a primary place in the show, as the isolation from quarantine is one of the reasons the lead character reinserts herself into her adult kids’ lives.

NBC seems to think the Olympics are happening this year.

All Other TV News

America’s Dad Tom Hanks will host the inauguration of Uncle Joe. Celebrating America, a primetime special that will air on ABC, NBC, and CBS will feature performances by Justin Timberlake, Demi Lovato, Jon Bon Jovi, and Ant Clemons with more performers to be announced soon. Holding my breath for the Pelican 212 announcement.

We finally know what Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series is going to be about … sorta. From Amazon:

“Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.”

Hey, Ghost Adventures fans, you might want to look into a Discovery+ subscription if you want to be among the first to watch Zak and Aaron wandering around in the dark screaming at nothing.

Univision is launching PrendeTV, a streaming service with “100% Spanish-language programming, debuting with over 30 channels and 10,000 hours of video-on-demand content in Spanish from global partners.” No date yet for when it debuts.

Here is an incomplete list of All My Children actors’ current gigs. Curious they didn’t include Kim Delaney and her new role on General Hospital, working with her former All My Children brother, or, you know, Kelly Ripa.

I WANT TO SEE ALL OF THESE MOVIES REMADE WITH DANNY MCBRIDE AND WALTON GOGGINS IMMEDIATELY PLEASE.

Satchel and Jackson Lee, Spike and Tonya Lewis Lee’s children, will be the Golden Globe presenters this year. 

Get well soon, Dustin Diamond.

R.I.P. CNN Airport Network: 1991-2021

Renewals

  • The Offenders has been renewed for a second season at BBC and Amazon.

Cancellations

In Development

  • Pooch Perfect, a dog grooming competition show, is in the works at ABC. Rebel Wilson will host and Lisa Vanderpump, celebrity dog groomer Jorge Bendersky and veterinarian Dr. Callie Harris will judge.
  • Comedies American Auto and Grand Crew have been given series orders at NBC, as has drama La Brea.
  • Acts of Crime, a crime procedural from Sam Esmail, is being developed at ABC.
  • Smoakland, a comedy about a cannabis grower, is being developed at Freeform.
  • Fire on the Prairie, a book about Chicago’s first Black mayor Harold Washington is being developed into a limited series.
  • Redeemer, a drama from Nic Pizzolatto with Matthew McConaughey, is not moving forward at FX.

Casting News

Mark Your Calendars

  • The Walking Dead returns on February 28 on AMC.
  • Temptation Island will return to USA on February 16.
  • Judas and the Black Messiah will stream on HBO Max on February 12.
  • Bliss will premiere on Amazon on February 5.
  • The Last Paradiso will stream on Netflix on February 5.
  • The Night Caller will premiere on Sundance Now on January 19.

R.I.P.

Jessica Campbell, Actress who played Tammy Metzler in Election (and who stole that movie) and starred in a few episodes of Freaks & Geeks

WATCH THIS

The Goldbergs: Beverly plans a murder-mystery party in the winter premiere. 7 p.m., ABC

American Housewife: Katie’s mentor and friend moves to Westport. Winter premiere. 7:30 p.m., ABC

The Conners: Ben’s mom (played by Candace Bergen) arrives with some bad news and shocking information in the winter premiere. 8 p.m., ABC

Call Your Mother: Kyra Sedgwick stars in this new comedy about an empty-nester who reinserts herself into her adult children’s lives. Series premiere. 8:30 p.m., ABC

SEAL Team: Jason pushes the Bravo team to extreme lengths to find Ray in the winter premiere. 8 p.m., CBS

S.W.A.T.: The team searches for an arsonist and sniper. Winter premiere. 9 p.m., CBS

Chicago Med: Dr. Halstead has to make a life-or-death decision. Winter premiere. 7 p.m., NBC

Chicago Fire: Mouch is left shaken after a ladder mishap in the winter premiere. 8 p.m., NBC

Chicago P.D.: Upton is approached with a job offer from the FBI. Winter premiere. 9 p.m., NBC

Night Stalker: A look into the reign of terror by serial killer Richard Ramirez. Series premiere. Netflix

Married at First Sight: Is a three-hour season premiere really necessary? OK. 7 p.m., Lifetime

Late Night:

  • Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: Riz Ahmed, Angela Bassett, Jacob Collier featuring Daniel Caesar
  • Late Night with Seth Meyers: Rachel Brosnahan, Bobby Moynihan
  • The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Samantha Bee, Paul Mescal
  • The Late Late Show with James Corden: Paul Bettany, Lennie James
  • Jimmy Kimmel Live: Bryan Cranston, Carrie Coon, Beach Bunny
  • The Daily Show: The Daily Social Distancing Show
  • Watch What Happens Live: Paula Abdul, Braunwyn Windham-Burke
  • A Little Late with Lily Singh: Rainn Wilson

WEDS. 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30
ABC The Goldbergs
(new)		 American Housewife
(new)		 The Conners
(new)		 Call Your Mother
(new)		 The Chase
(repeat)
CBS The Price is Right at Night
(new)		 SEAL Team
(new)		 S.W.A.T.
(new)
CW Riverdale
(repeat)		 Nancy Drew
(repeat)		 Local
FOX The Masked Dancer
(new)		 Name That Tune
(new)		 News/Local
NBC Chicago Med
(new)		 Chicago Fire
(new)		 Chicago P.D.
(new)

Leave a Reply