No, Pelosi can’t just magically refuse to seat seditious republicans. Courts would overrule it, and she’d look toothless. There are NEVER any magic wands in politics, on either side. Stop listening to pundits who promote simplistic magic wand solutions as if they were real.

The media spent years pretending Trump could magically pardon his co-conspirators, consequence-free, at any time, even though nothing works that way. Now the media is pretending the GOP can magically filibuster, consequence-free, at any time. Nothing works that way. It gets old.

Every media pundit understands that there are always consequences to every move in politics. Yet they always frame the Republicans as being able to magically do anything they want, with no consequences, to try to scare/enrage you into staying tuned in.

"But the Republicans are indeed getting away with it all..." No they're not. They lost the Senate, the House, and the presidency. Their top leaders in the House are at each others' throats. They're out of power, adrift, losing donors. These are the consequences for their antics.

The catch is, it's just not the consequences you want. Because even as TV pundits convinced you that republicans were magically winning, liberal Twitter pundits convinced you that republicans could be defeated by imaginary simplistic magic wand solutions.

So now the pundits have spun you around to where you don't even realize your side won the election, you don't realize the Democrats are going be able to pass everything they want to pass, and you're pissed at Democratic leaders for imaginary reasons.

Please stop asking me what happens if Mike Pence calls for a "ten day window" or whatever. NOTHING happens. Nothing a fucking thing. He doesn't have that ability. It would be like me calling for giraffes to grow wings. Please stop asking me about obviously imaginary things.

Those of you who insist on fretting and panicking over imaginary bullshit are becoming a real liability to our side. You're ensuring that those of us who want to fight and win important battles, are instead stuck babysitting your panicky asses. PLEASE STOP. You're hurting us.

Some of you panickers have become such a gullible and pathetic joke, even Ted Cruz is laughing at you now. He knows he can't magically overturn the election with imaginary procedures. He's laughing his ass off at you for being gullible enough to fall for it. You're the joke now.

You fucking panickers are doing REAL HARM to our side. You make us weak. You hand the republicans leverage over us that they don't have. You derail our agenda. You make sure we get nowhere. You're my enemy. You always have been. Please go away, panickers, I detest you.

I do not want people in my audience who go around searching for imaginary things to panic over. I just don't. I never have. I never will. Sorry. That kind of shit makes me want to vomit. I will never be a babysitter for people who think it's cute to panic. Makes me nauseated.

Since everyone is still talking about how successful of an evil genius henchman Bill Barr was, let's catalog all the times he corruptly tried to help Trump but fell flat on his face:

Barr tried to get the case against Michael Flynn thrown out, but this effort failed entirely. Trump ended up having to pardon Flynn, to clean up Barr's failure.

Barr tried to get Roger Stone's prison sentence reduced to the minimum, but Stone ended up getting the multi-year sentence he was always going to get. Trump had to commute Stone's sentence, to clean up Barr's failure.

After Michael Cohen was let out on house arrest due to the pandemic, Barr tried throwing him back in prison to prevent him from publishing his anti-Trump book. But a judge quickly freed Cohen, who succeeded in publishing his book.

Barr tried to install his own guy as head of the SDNY, presumably to stop the arrest of Steve Bannon. But Barr blew it, the SDNY remained in proper hands, and Bannon ended up getting arrested.

Everyone calm down. While we don’t know why witnesses weren’t called, we know that the Democrats didn’t “cave.” They’re not hapless idiots. They’re savvy fighters, and they must have had a damn good reason for this. Stop blindly attacking them and let this play out.

For insurance, the DC Attorney General let it be known last night that he’s looking to criminally charge Trump for the insurrection. That’s infinitely more important than impeachment. Perhaps he asked the Democrats not to screw up his prosecution by calling his witnesses.

It’s also possible that one or more of the witnesses changed their story, and therefore it would have backfired.

There are all kinds of plausible explanations for what just happened. “Democrats stupidly caved” is NOT one of them, because these Democrats are NOT stupid or cavers.

We really, really, really need to learn to avoid jumping straight into the “all hope is lost” and “Democrats just stupidly caved” routines. Neither of those things ever ends up being true. When we fatalistically yell that stuff, WE are the ones (unwittingly) causing harm.

We deserve answers as to what happened today, but we’ll get them soon enough.

I warned you from day one not to let the media suck you into the fictional notion that the impeachment trial was crucial, and that he’s “getting away with it all” if he’s not convicted in it.

No, Mike Pence can't magically do anything on January 6th. No, Louie Gohment can't force the courts to give Pence magic powers. Trump has literally zero chance of magically overturning the election. Stop panicking over imaginary things. This is getting incredibly boring.

There won’t be a civil war. No one will pull off a coup. There won’t be martial law. None of these things are real.

It’s over. But the more clear it becomes that it’s over, the fantasizers on Trump’s side, and the panickers on our side, become more hallucinatory about it.

We have a pandemic, people dying, an economic crisis, people starving, and a runoff election that’s for all the marbles. Yet you’re going to focus on IMAGINARY doomsday scenarios? None of what’s going on is real enough for you? You have to go invent more bad things? Come on.

Those of us who have fought so hard for four years, deserve better than to have our agenda derailed by the doomsday panickers on our side. They don’t care about winning, they’re just addicted to the adrenaline rush of telling themselves they’re going to lose.

In fact the panickers on our side, and the fantasizers on Trump’s side, deserve each other. Both completely removed from reality. Neither interested in helping their own side. Just a shared interest in hallucinating over laugh out loud imaginary scenarios. And of no use to anyone

Schoen is pretending courtroom "due process" must be followed--after meeting with some of the jurors to plan strategy last night.

Schoen accuses Democrats of editing videos and taking comments out of contexts, after showing edited videos of Democrats and taking their comments out of context. I guess he wanted us to know he knows what he's talking about.

Schoen is showing longer clips of Trump speeches. The additional footage doesn't help Trump's case, unless you're a racist insurrectionist.

Yeah? Well what about YOUR whataboutism?

Schoen REALLY doesn't like Senator Warren.

It's because Trumpists love attacking Senator Warren.

Gee, it's almost like he thinks Senator Warren is being impeached.

Declassified:
SELECT COMMITTEE re:ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY
DALLAS, TX., NOVEMBER 22, 1963

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the fourth victim of Presidential
assassination, preceded by Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, and William McKinley in 1901

1. President Kennedy was struck by two rifle shots fired from
behind him.

2.The shots that struck President Kennedy from behind him
were fired

New from me and @MarkMorales51: Cuomo said 'he can destroy me': NY assemblyman alleges governor threatened him over nursing homes scandal

Democratic NY Assemblyman Ron Kim told CNN that Gov. Cuomo called last Thursday to “threaten my career if I did not cover up for Melissa [DeRosa] and what she said.” Cuomo also said “I hadn't seen his wrath and that he can destroy me,” according to Kim.

Kim's wife told CNN she overheard parts of the phone call and heard Cuomo say, "Who do you think you are?" as well as the words, "my wrath," and that immediately after the phone call, her husband told her: "The governor threatened to destroy my life."

CNN first reached out to Cuomo's office for comment on TUESDAY. In a written statement, his communications director did not directly respond to or deny Kim's allegation of threats from the governor in a written statement.

Ultimately, Cuomo's office sent another statement from senior adviser Rich Azzopardi late Wednesday morning that said: "Kim's assertion that the governor said he would 'destroy him' is false."

@ProjectLincoln @tedcruz Texas failed to winterize its generation sources the last time this happened in 2011.

Now ask yourself, why?

Simple. Texas's extended power outage is a result of negligent GOP infrastructure policy.

THREAD.

@tedcruz The Texas GOP has continuously rebuffed plans to invest in better infrastructure to upgrade TX power grids.

Texas was warned to weatherize power plants.

Why didn’t they?

@tedcruz TX power companies said electricity prices are too low to provide incentives (profit) to build new plants or improve older ones. (a result of privatization of basic services.)

@tedcruz The electrical grid in Texas was deregulated, privatized, and removed from interconnected networks to avoid federal regulation and increase profits for a small number of wealthy individuals.

Go figure.

@tedcruz If TX ERCOT grid was on the national grid, or simply reinvested in their privatized infrastructure, they'd be fine by now.

They did neither, b/c it wasn't profitable.

It's a failure of TX leadership –– total, inexcusable, and utterly catastrophic.

Not fucking windmills.