edit: Ummmmmmm, the forensicnews link wanted me to download a PHP file. Uh oh. edit 2: I didn't download, obvz, but it seems to be working now. Hmmm. Don't visit forensicnews, probably, I think it's been compromised. :(

I'm not gonna make a separate post, so here's a quick summary of the looooong history of Russia, Trump, Manafort & co.

And here's a nice, new model for comparing Trump's behavior to that of any previous presidency. Best excerpt:

Most of all, Trump proposes a presidency that elevates the expressive and personal dimensions of the office over everything else. It is one in which the institutional office and the personality of its occupant are almost entirely merged—merged in their interests, in their impulses, in their finances, and in their public character. In elevating the expressive, vanity-plate dimensions of the office and making it a personal vehicle for the public self-expression of the officeholders, he proposes sublimating nearly all other traditional features of the presidency: its management functions; its expectation of good-faith execution of law; its expectation of ethical conduct, truthfulness, and service. This vision of the presidency thus unsurprisingly produces a genuinely novel set of deployments of the executive’s traditional powers, ones that are profoundly different from those of prior presidents.

Someday, the general public will learn that the president is probably in a joint legal defense agreement with a known member of Putin's inner circle, Dmytro Firtash. Well, some of the general public. If he's re-elected, there won't even be incentive for him to coverup his crimes, things will move more and more into the open. Plus, without needing to spend time on the coverup, you can do alllllll the crimes.

Without dwelling too much on the impeachment "trial", I'd like to quickly point out that...

1) At least one of Trump's impeachment defense lawyers, Sekulow, should actually be serving as fact witness:

On October 2, 2019, Jay Sekulow, personal counsel to the President, informed President Trump’s former attorney John Dowd that he had discussed with President Trump “the issue of representation” and that President Trump “consents to allowing your representation of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman.”This email was sent three days after the Committee sent Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman a request to voluntarily produce records and testify before the investigating Committees.

On October 3, the day after Mr. Sekulow’s letter was sent to Mr. Dowd, Mr. Dowd wrote to the Committee to clarify that he represented Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, advising that,“Mssrs. Parnas and Fruman assisted Mr. Giuliani in connection with his representation of President Trump.”

2) Another two on Trump's defense team, Starr & Dershowitz, have defended Jeffrey Epstein against prior pedo sex slave charges. Dershowitz was even implicated by Prince Andrew's accuser, and was on television saying things like "Well, no, I did get a massage at Epstein's place, but my underwear were on the whole time! And it was an older Russian woman, no one young...". Yoikes.

3) STILL, there has yet to be any sort of coherent rebuke of the allegations levied against President Trump in the articles of impeachment. The GOP playbook, in a nutshell, is attacking the impeachment process and constitutionality, deflecting by slandering democrats and impeachment witnesses, attempting to obstruct any further investigating, and basically just saying, "No, YOU'RE the ones lying!", without addressing any specifics whatsoever.

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

- 1984