#this fcking impeachment

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Impeachment, Episode 5: If You Go After The King

PLAIDDER: Hey, Conn.

CONN: Hello, stranger.

PLAIDDER: Leave me alone. I’ve been busy.

CONN: You’ve been hiding.

PLAIDDER: OK, fine. I’ve been taking a break from all...this. I don’t think I’ve really missed anything. 

CONN: How can you say--

PLAIDDER: For the first week, you know, I thought it actually would matter how things went in the impeachment hearings. And maybe it did, some. But not enough.

CONN: You were waiting for your Republicans to turn on him, weren’t you.

PLAIDDER: No. But I thought public opinion might shift, or something. Now, it’s just...you know, I don’t expect a lot of surprises at this point. The House will impeach and the Senate will acquit and the Russians will collude and this son of a bitch will be reelected in 2020 and that’s the end of the American experiment.

CONN: Please don’t tell me you regret your Nancy Pelosi’s doing this.

PLAIDDER: Oh no. No, not at all. We had to.

CONN: That’s a relief.

PLAIDDER: You know, they say, if you go after the king, you better not miss. But you understand better than most that sometimes--

CONN: Sometimes, you just have to go after the king. 

PLAIDDER: No matter what.

CONN: No matter what.

PLAIDDER: What actually depresses me most about all this, Conn, is watching everyone second-guess what the Democrats are doing. Everyone wants to be the one to have found the flaw in the strategy that will have led to the final defeat. This is what frustrates me about the mainstream media--the “good” media, the ones that actually try to be factually accurate and halfway responsible. There’s always this narrative, where for a while one side is up, and then that side is down and the other side is up, and so no matter what’s actually happening, you think you’re winning one week and the next week you’re plunged into despair.

CONN: Our repeater chains really aren’t that sophisticated.

PLAIDDER: I didn’t want them to be. Your country’s never going to have social media; you already have telepathy.

CONN: So this week, the story is the Democrats are down, eh? 

PLAIDDER: Yeah. Knowing that this is the narrative somehow doesn’t protect me from it emotionally. But all week it’s been “what the Democrats should do that they’re not doing” or “what the Democrats shouldn’t do that they are doing” or “why the whole process is broken and our country is fucked up beyond all repair” or...and I’m sick of it. 

CONN: Do you really think they could be doing a better job with this?

PLAIDDER: No. I don’t. This is what drives me nuts. When Pelosi was staving off impeachment, everyone I knew was like, what is this weak sauce, what are they waiting for, he gives proof of impeachability every day, this is what we always do, we keep our powder dry till it’s too late to use it, this party will never do anything right as long as they’re taking money from corporations, etc. etc. etc. Now we’re actually doing it, and everyone wants to talk about why it’s not working. 

CONN: How is it not working? All the evidence--

PLAIDDER: I know. I know. They have no evidence, they have no logical or coherent defense of him, they have nothing, everything during the Intelligence Committee hearings went our way. But to the people who support him, it doesn’t matter what the evidence shows. It doesn’t matter what the law is. It doesn’t matter what the Constitution says. If he does it, it’s right. 

CONN: And you don’t understand that.

PLAIDDER: I have never felt that way about any politician. When it comes to politics, I don’t fall in love.

CONN: Not even with your Mr. Obama?

PLAIDDER: Look, I’m not gonna say I was immune to his magic, or Bill Clinton’s either. But when Bill Clinton was accused of having an affair with a White House intern, I was like, well that’s not implausible. I hoped he was telling us the truth about that, but I was ultimately not really surprised to discover that he wasn’t. Obama promised to close Guantanamo and he didn’t. Obama deported all kinds of people. Obama was fine with undeclared drone warfare. Nobody’s perfect. Nobody’s ideal. Nobody’s a hero.

CONN: None of that stops you from wanting them to be. That’s why you get mad at them, when they inevitably betray your hopes.

PLAIDDER: My point is, Conn, Buttercup came into this presidency with about 35-40% approval and that’s where he’ll be when he finally leaves it, no matter what happens. And 35-40% approval is good enough to keep the Congressional Republicans fawning around him licking his boots. It’s disgusting. It’s depressing.

CONN: Well then why did you want this impeachment, if it doesn’t matter?

PLAIDDER: You can be a real pain in the gleacha, you know that?

CONN: Maybe, but I’m cheaper than your therapist.

PLAIDDER: Yeah, all right. We had to do it. Because you have to do what you CAN do, even if it doesn’t matter. Before you get to the...scary shit...you have to exhaust the constitutional remedies.

CONN: Exactly.

PLAIDDER: If we hadn’t done this, we’d always have told ourselves that was our mistake. Now we’re doing it, and whatever happens, at least we don’t have to beat ourselves up for not having been willing to take the risk.

CONN: And may I remind you that you don’t know what’ll happen.

PLAIDDER: I think I do, Conn.

CONN: You didn’t predict how the shutdown would end. 

PLAIDDER: Yeah, you were closer but you were wrong. They didn’t vote to override his veto.

CONN: Because he realized it was a danger and decided not to give them the choice. If he comes to think there’s a real chance he will be removed, he’ll run. He’s not a brave man.

PLAIDDER: But there is no real chance of his being removed-

CONN: --yet.

PLAIDDER: NO! NO MORE YETS! I AM SICK OF YET! THERE ARE NO YETS IN THIS COUNTRY! WE ARE YETLESS! AMERICA HAS A MASSIVE YET DEFICIT!

CONN: Friend, I can see you’re upset, but let me tell you: you don’t know. Nobody knows. People have opinions but they don’t know. Did anyone know that your Mr. Giuliani was going to go to Ukraine this week to continue soliciting bribes and propagating Russian disinformation while the hearings were going on?

PLAIDDER: NOBODY CARES!

CONN: Your Rep. Matt Gaetz, he of the Great SCIF Sit-In, is on record saying that it’s “weird.”

PLAIDDER: So what. Buttercup will tweet at him and he’ll walk it back.

CONN: But did you expect that?

PLAIDDER: No. No, to be honest, I did not expect that.

CONN: Your Senator Kennedy can’t seem to decide whether he’s all in on the propaganda or not. He keeps going back and forth. 

PLAIDDER: What does that get us?

CONN: Nothing tangible. The report on that investigation your William Barr started into the Mueller investigation is due to be released today. Have you read it?

PLAIDDER: No, they haven’t dropped it yet. 

CONN: Why not?

PLAIDDER: I don’t know, maybe they got held up at Kinko’s.

CONN: You don’t think it might be because they’re desperately trying to massage it into a vindication of Trump’s “hoax” narrative even though they know they can’t?

PLAIDDER: Of course it might be. Or it may be they’re planning to dump it at 5 after the impeachment hearings are over.

CONN: If it’s going to vindicate their man, wouldn’t they drop it now and pull focus?

PLAIDDER: Conn--

CONN: YOU MADE ME RESILIENT. You MADE ME an optimist. YOU made me capable of preserving my faith in democratic institutions and diplomacy through EVERYTHING. Through imprisonment and mindforcing and torture. Maybe I SHOULD stop hoping but I can’t because you made hope unkillable in me. Why are you yelling at me? I am who I am because you need me to be that way.

PLAIDDER: I know. I know.

CONN: And I say, do not throw yourself into a pit of despair just because he has not been defeated YET.

PLAIDDER: All right, Conn. Point taken. 

CONN: They’re doing what you want them to do and what you know is right. They’re going after the king. No matter what.

PLAIDDER: No matter what.

CONN: The consequences will be what they will be. But this was the right thing to do and they’re doing it. Can’t you celebrate that?

PLAIDDER: I guess I can try.

CONN: That’s the spirit!

PLAIDDER: All right, Conn, thanks for coming in. See you next episode.

#this fcking impeachment #the current catastrophe #conn mac emer #impeachment

[yobaba30]

Per John Dean -->

  Let’s impeach him now and NOT send it to the Senate ... rather keep investigating in the House, and add such supplemental articles as needed! Just let it hang over his head. If the worst happens and he is re-elected, send it to the Senate. But keep investigating!!

tRUmp WILL be impeached ... going back into investigation mode will make his fcking head explode. AND in the meantime begin the impeachment inquiry into PENCE, BARR, MCCONNELL, NUNES, GAETZ, JORDAN, GRAHAM etc. etc. - the possibilities are endless ...

[theunemployedrogue]

That tweet about how you have to pass a personality test to get a job making minimum wage but the leaders of our country are praised for being fcking evil and immature as shit haunts me. The president can get impeached and suffer less consequences than a cashier getting a write-up at McDonald's. I wake up in a cold sweat every night because I'm one fuck-up away from poverty, meanwhile Tr*** and Muskrat and all the other evil multi-billionaires are probably dining on literal human flesh for kicks and sleeping soundly. God I can't take it much longer. For me there is nothing empowering or courageous about continuing to merely survive and suffer in this sick society "against the odds".

#negative #i'm not someone who can rise above the odds I'm just not

[gifsbysimplysonia]

Whingin on a bad day

Today was fcking rough.

For weeks now, I haven't been able to sleep a whole night through. I wake up somewhere in between 2:30 and 3:30 am and due to the nature of my mind, I'm unable to quiet it back down to get back to sleep. I take Benadryl, sleep gummies, even a medicine my parents suggested called chanca. And I'll knock OUT but always wake up in the middle of the night and then be unable to get back to sleep. It's frustrating and being tired all the time ain't awesome. 

Especially on the days I have to go into the office because I'm surrounded by loud sales people, most of whom are men and also rude af. Whether it's them speaking loudly about The Mandalorian with NO REGARD as to whether anyone else has see it. Whether it's me at my desk having to hear them half a floor away from me comparing the Hong Kong protests to the impeachment hearings. Whether it's them talking about video games, wrestling, the moving people they need to hire to help their family move NEXT YEAR....these men have no regard for anyone around them and

To the point I asked to move back to my old seat, waaaaaaaay on the other end of the floor, removed from all the sales people and where it is blissfully quiet. My boss moved me and my co-worker FROM that island of bliss to integrate the team better and I honestly just dislike everyone else so much more now. I now know what entitlement sounds and looks like. Yesterday a dude came back from breakfast and burped out loud. Just...burped. Didn't care to excuse himself of apologize to me and my co-worker. Nah. Just sat his ass down to continue bullsh!tting and not working. 

All this to explain that when I don't sleep and my irritability is heightened? Going to the office is even more trying and hard to deal with. Yesterday EVERYTHING made me wanna snap. Cuz on top of being exhausted, I also had a horrible headache. Got home and a Zyrtec helped dull it immensely so I was grateful and able to get to sleep just from being so tired.

BUT ....woke up at 3:30 this morning with a SPLITTING FCKING HEADACHE yet again. And I couldn't get back to sleep. Ibuprofen made no difference. When my alarm went off at 5:45 I decided I was gonna work from home. It was my co-worker's WFH day and weirdly she also had a terrible headache. She said her head felt huge.

Oh and I forgot to mention how on Monday, my left eye started twitching. Going nuts under my left eye. I'm reminded now cuz in addition to telling me how her head felt, she said her eye started going too. We are now convinced the ugly, weird, filthy looking vents we sit under at work and that have started kicking on now with a buzzing SO LOUD we were afraid they were gonna explode...well, we think they are poisoning us lol. 

More likely, even though my weather app said no pollen and moderate air quality today, something is setting off our allergies. Cuz my poor brother woke up miserable and with his head sideways which always means BAD headache. Checked in with the Padres and yep, their heads also wanted to explode. None of us are allergic to anything specific, of course, but we have all been to an allergist who told us we have generic allergies. Because of course lol.

Then at the job today, the system we do EVERYTHING in glitched up in significant ways, enough to impact us. Like, change the entire way we do our jobs cuz the glitches are so bad. And when we complained we got snapped at, like, "well we can't fix everything." 

*blink blink*

Oh. And this morning I spilled probably half of my brand new bottle of Black Cherry Chutney nail polish that I JUST RECEIVED YESTERDAY. Cuz when I finished painting my nails last night, my dumb ass didn't screw the cap on all the way. So when I grabbed the 3 bottles this morning to move them,,,,whoosh. The nail polish dropped and whipped across the floor. I used up an entire and brand new bottle of nail polish remover AND RUINED a full sized white towel scrubbing and trying to get it out. You can still see where it spilled tho. And my dumb ass once again didn't realize cleaning that up would mess up the nails I just painted last night cuz I was panicking about the carpet staining but honestly, who cares about my nails? I'm just so tired of being a screw up todayyyyyyyyy.

S I G H.

I just wanna sleep like a solid 7 hours, wake up headache free and get to be happy lol 

But right now, curled up in the fetal position as the medicine wears off and the pounding comes back full force, I'm really just craving validation and hugs lol. Like send a handsome bearded boy with a nice booty my way to lie to me and tell me all the ways in which I'm NOT useless or gross or dumb cuz my heart would appreciate it, plz n thx.

Send me some sleepytime vibes y'all, I can't keep doing this. 

#personal

[angrycleverhedgehog]

Me while healthy: wtf is this madness America is going thru who is this child pedophile running for office we have no standards in this society why isn't the orange troll in the White House impeached yet I'm going to fcking march right up to that pennsylvaniass monument and fcking tell him a piece of my mind this is outrageous y'all we ought to do something this is so--- Me while sick: I don't have time for this. Where's my mallet

#sick #cold #flu

[thenewviewerdaily]

Hollywood Demands Impeachment After Mueller Testimony: 'NO MORE F*CKING AROUND'

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/07/24/hollywood-demands-impeachment-after-mueller-testimony-no-more-fcking-around/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Impeachment: Episode 2, Following the Strongest

PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to This Fucking Impeachment, Weekend Edition. With me in the studio is Conn mac Emer. Conn, thanks for coming in on a weekend, I couldn’t get Gill to do it.

CONN: It is my pleasure. I mean that.

PLAIDDER: Thanks, I appreciate--

CONN: I LIVE FOR THIS.

PLAIDDER: Oooook...Conn, events that have unfolded since our last episode reminded me of one we taped during the government shutdown, which was called “The Art of the Possible.”

CONN: Oh yeah. I remember that.

PLAIDDER: Good. I wanted to--

CONN: That’s the one where you were arguing with me up one side and down the other and then just about an hour after that episode aired it turned out that I was ENTIRELY CORRECT.

PLAIDDER: Not entirely, friend. You were right about this part--Kleark, can you run the clip--

CONN: Look, with a process like this, it’s like a dance between what actually happens and what people believe is possible. Sometimes a thing has to actually happen before people believe it can happen.

PLAIDDER: Like that asshole becoming President of the United States.

CONN: Exactly. And sometimes, a thing can’t happen until enough people start to believe it could happen.

PLAIDDER: With you so far, friend.

PLAIDDER: But on the other hand, you did make the following predictions--Kleark, can we have clip #2 please--

CONN: When he loses the support of his party, he will go. Either they will impeach and remove him, or–and I think this much more likely–they will promise him that if he resigns they will not put him in jail. And he will do it.

PLAIDDER:--thanks, Kleark--and these predictions have NOT come true.

CONN: Yet.

PLAIDDER: I KNEW YOU WERE--

CONN: I know you knew. I just didn’t want to disappoint.

PLAIDDER: Well, anyway, indeed, I have started to think you might be right about some of this.

CONN: I am right about ALL of it.

PLAIDDER: I’ve started to think that impeachability might be like electability.

CONN: In our country we have neither of these concepts.

PLAIDDER: It’s basically our version of “most people follow the strongest.”

CONN: Oh. I get it.

PLAIDDER: So then--

CONN: No, wait, I don’t.

PLAIDDER: OK. “Electability” is something people talk about as if it is some kind concrete thing. In fact, “electability” is ‘real’ in that it can have real-world effects, but it is not ‘real’ in that it is not based on any material givens. Electability is a product of the collective imagination. It is self-creating, self-sustaining, and (sometimes) self-defeating. You become electable when enough people believe that you are electable. Anxiety about “electability” is a real problem in Democratic primaries, because it leads people to vote for whoever’s considered the most “electable” candidate instead of the one they want. Then, when the most “electable” person wins the primary, everyone’s depressed at how middle of the road and boring and Republican-lite they are, and they don’t turn out, and that’s how you get things like Buttercup winning that fucking election.

CONN: And Biden was supposed to be your most “electable” candidate?

PLAIDDER: Yes. Because he was an old white man who stood next to Obama for 8 years.

CONN: Your country truly is a magical and bizarre place.

PLAIDDER: I know. Anyway, what was beginning to happen before all this came out is that perceptions of “electability” were starting to change. The fact that Elizabeth Warren’s events are drawing large crowds has led people to start wondering whether she might actually be “electable.” This has led to her rising in the polls, and to Biden dropping--because people who liked her all along but thought she wasn’t “electable” are now starting to back her. I think her campaign managers understand this. They have been working very hard to create “electability” for her and it seems to be working.

CONN: So in your country, people won’t vote for their candidate if they don’t think that candidate will win.

PLAIDDER: Not everyone, but--

CONN: Thus ensuring that their candidate doesn’t win.

PLAIDDER: Friend, if you will allow me to quote “Waving Through A Window” from the musical Dear Evan Hansen, liberal voters in this country have learned to slam on the brakes before they’ve even turned the key.

CONN: I don’t understand any of that sentence.

PLAIDDER: Ironically, Buttercup’s election has sort of broken the electability thing, because now people are like, well fuck, ANYONE can be electable.

CONN: But this show is about impeachment...?

PLAIDDER: I’m coming to that. I think all those public opinion polls they did showing Americans didn’t support Buttercup’s impeachment worked the same way. I think people said they were against impeachment because they thought too many other people were against impeachment. As long as they thought impeachment didn’t have enough popular support, they didn’t want to support impeachment either. Because they thought that if impeachment really WAS that unpopular, impeaching Buttercup would only screw up the 2020 elections. But, like, half of those people with whom impeachment was supposed to be “unpopular” were people thinking, I so fucking WANT this guy impeached but not if it’s gonna cost us the House in 2020. In fact I think that impeachment hasn’t really been “unpopular;” it’s just that too many people thought it was impossible.

CONN: But you don’t have any evidence for this.

PLAIDDER: I do not. But I do know that some early polling suggests that now that it looks like it’s actually going to happen, impeachment is suddenly becoming more “popular.” Here’s one by Politico/Morning Consult showing a 7 point jump in people who want Buttercup impeached. Democratic support for it has increased 13%--but Republican support for it has doubled (from 5% to 10%, but still) and now 39% of independents also want him impeached.

CONN: That’s one poll.

PLAIDDER: Five thirty-eight has more.

CONN: They say it’s all still preliminary.

PLAIDDER: Dude, which of us is supposed to be the optimist here?

CONN: Friend, I am EXPLODING with optimism at this moment, but not because of polling. Or because of what’s happening with “impeachability.”

PLAIDDER: All right then, what lit your optimism fuse today?

CONN: You have forgotten something very important in this art of the possible.

PLAIDDER: All right, what?

CONN: Your president’s enablers, cronies, and craven toadies need to believe that it’s possible that his power over them might come to an end.

PLAIDDER: OK, so electability, impeachability, and...

CONN: Let’s call it destructability.

PLAIDDER: I like it!

CONN: I think your president’s destructability index is on the rise. I think it will only accelerate from here.

PLAIDDER: There’s no polling for that.

CONN: No. But if you look at the stories coming out now, you can clearly see that people who have been tolerating this monster for years purely out of fear of the consequences are starting to imagine a world in which he is no longer in power. And they would like to enter that world without having been utterly despoiled of their dignity and self-respect.

PLAIDDER: I wouldn’t have thought they still had any.

CONN: Friend, the number of people in the world who are as completely solipsistic and thoroughly amoral as your president is very small. Most people care something about the good opinion of their fellow-humans, even if it’s only their families and friends. It’s one thing to go along with a corrupt regime thinking that nobody will ever know about the thousand little compromises you made and the scores of presidential evils you concealed. It’s another to lie awake at night thinking about what will happen when the man you’ve been servicing has been brought down and now everyone who helped him is going to be dragged through the mire.

PLAIDDER: But is anyone really imagining that, apart from people like you and me?

CONN: Well, there’s already been one resignation. You don’t resign over a scandal if you still trust your boss to protect you. Also someone is telling the press about the calls with Mohammad Bin Salman and Vladimir Putin which were also stored on that classified server--presumably in hopes that someone else will be held responsible for it.

PLAIDDER: I kind of want to know how that Jamal Khashoggi conversation went, but I also kind of really, really don’t.

CONN: Steve Schwarzman, one of these “unofficial” envoys that your president seems to have used so much, is now contradicting your president in public--because he’s afraid of being drawn into this. Your Secretary of State has been subpoenaed. John Bolton appears to have been involved in all this--he’s just left on very bad terms. Meanwhile, your president is wildly flailing around looking for people he can throw to the wolves--starting, amazingly, with his own vice president. Which was bad strategy, because everyone ELSE watches that and says, “If the boss has already turned on his #2, he will CERTAINLY turn on me.” And so they’ve started to turn on your president, pre-emptively.

PLAIDDER: Because mostly people follow the strongest.

CONN: Yes.

PLAIDDER: But nobody REALLY knows who’s the strongest.

CONN: Exactly.

PLAIDDER: So people who stop believing he’s the strongest, stop following him.

CONN: Correct.

PLAIDDER: And if enough people stop following...

CONN: Then those 35 Republican Senators who have always hated him will throw him onto the pyre and act like they’re the ones who saved the country from him.

PLAIDDER: Well. I guess we’ll see.

CONN: YOU will see that I am correct.

PLAIDDER: Yeah, maybe.

CONN: You want to bet against me? Just to make it interesting.

PLAIDDER: Well, we’re out of time for now. Tune in...I dunno, could be 4 hours from now, for our next episode of This Fucking Impeachment!

#the current catastrophe #impeachment #this fcking impeachment #conn mac emer

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Impeachment: Episode 3, Ambassados and Ambassadon’ts

PLAIDDER: Good morning and welcome to the most imaginary of the Sunday morning talk shows, This Fcking Impeachment! With me in the studio is...uh...

CONN: I’m sorry, I meant to tidy up before you arrived, but I got sidetracked by the--

PLAIDDER: Conn...since our last episode...have you been...living here?

CONN: I cannot deny it.

PLAIDDER: Conn--

CONN: There’s been fnaa going down EVERY DAY! I just wanted to be READY!

PLAIDDER: Well, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to the studio, there’s a lot going on out there and I find all of this exhausting. But I did want to...

CONN: It’s all right to light candles in here, isn’t it? I mean, the whole place is imaginary...

PLAIDDER: Is that...have you built a shrine to former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch?

CONN: I might have.

PLAIDDER: Conn...you’re taking this all very seriously. I think maybe you need a break. Look, Mrs. P is reading Redemption again, why don’t you just go back to your embassy and hang out in the earlier chapters for a while?

CONN: Oh, sure. I’ll just go back to my cozy little embassy and my ugly yellow sweaters and my tea and my friendly banter with Spindern, shall I?

PLAIDDER: I guess...I mean I guess this version of you can’t forget...

CONN: No, I cannot. And so...I mean it was bad enough for me dealing with a shadow foreign policy being promulgated in secret by my one subordinate. This poor Marie ni hOabhanobhaitch was being suborned from above and around as well as below. You can’t fire someone who doesn’t work for you. 

PLAIDDER: Especially when you don’t actually know what they’re doing.

CONN: It makes my blood boil. Being an ambassador is thurking hard. 

PLAIDDER: I know. I mean, I honestly think that for the duration of Redemption you were the hardest working man on the island. 

CONN: Since nobody works harder than Aine.

PLAIDDER: Indeed not. I want you to know I’m even more proud of you now than I was before, now that I’m watching this mess unfold. You were a really good ambassador.

CONN: Since you say it.

PLAIDDER: You WERE. It’s true you did some things that weren’t, strictly speaking, entirely above board or explicitly authorized...

CONN: That’s part of the job. That’s why they have a human doing this job instead of just negotiating everything via email. You’re there, you’re on the ground, you know more than your superiors do. I knew what the Seat’s goals were when they sent me, and I worked to accomplish them. And I didn’t tell them 100% of how I was doing that, because it wouldn’t have helped anyone for them to know. There’s always stuff that happens in back rooms, off the record. That’s not what’s horrifying about all this.

PLAIDDER: So speaking as an ambassador who was not corrupt, could you explain for our non-ambassador readers some of these ambassa-dos and ambassa-don’ts?

CONN: All right: first of all, DO have a clear idea of what your diplomatic mission is and what your goals are. And then DON’T do things that will undermine those goals.

PLAIDDER: So, for instance, Marie Yovanovitch’s diplomatic mission...

CONN: Well, here’s what it says on the website of the US Embassy in Ukraine:

“The United States established diplomatic relations with Ukraine in 1991, following its independence from the Soviet Union. The United States attaches great importance to the success of Ukraine’s transition to a modern democratic state with a flourishing market economy. U.S. policy is centered on realizing and strengthening a democratic, prosperous, and secure Ukraine more closely integrated into Europe and Euro-Atlantic structures.”

Put in slightly less...

PLAIDDER: Diplomatic?

CONN:...obscure language, the goal of the official diplomatic mission to the Ukraine was to stop Russia from taking the place over and thus rebuilding the former Soviet empire under new management. To keep Ukraine an ally of the US instead of a Russian puppet. Basic geopolitics. I mean you could argue about the wisdom of all that but that’s Congress’s job. As the ambassador, it’s not your job to set the goals; it’s your job to pursue them. 

PLAIDDER: Right. 

CONN: But here’s the thing. Marie Yovanovitch was carrying out the official mission. Nobody told her that there was a completely different unofficial mission to Ukraine being led by your Mr. Giuliani. That information was shared, evidently, only with this Kurt Volker and this Bill Taylor and this Gordon Sundland. And if you look at this group of shadow diplomats you realize they all have one thing in common--

PLAIDDER: They’re all men.

CONN: All right, two things. One, they’re all men; two, none of them are ambassadors.

PLAIDDER: Well, I mean...they’re diplomats, aren’t they?

CONN: Yes. But any diplomatic mission to another nation is led by the ambassador. All these other people--the envoys, the charges d’affaires--the ambassador outranks them. They take their orders from the ambassador. At least they’re supposed to.

PLAIDDER: So who did they put in as ambassador to the Ukraine after they fired Yovanovitch?

CONN: Nobody.

PLAIDDER: What?

CONN: Nobody. There is no ambassador at that embassy now. It is being run by William Taylor, the charge d’affaires. Better known to you as the man who texted Gordon Sundland telling him he thought it was crazy to hold up security aid over help with a political campaign. 

PLAIDDER: Isn’t Gordon Sondland an ambassador?

CONN: He’s your ambassador to the European Union. He was never the ambassador to the Ukraine. He shouldn’t have been doing ANY of this.

PLAIDDER: But I thought Kurt Volker--

CONN: Kurt Volker was an envoy. A part-time, UNPAID envoy. 

PLAIDDER: That’s weird.

CONN: ALL OF THIS IS WEIRD! But that’s what happens when the REAL mission is something that can’t be acknowledged in public. The REAL mission, led by the REAL ambassador, your Mr. Giuliani, appears to have been to use the power and the purse of the United States to force the new president of Ukraine to fabricate evidence that would shore up a clutch of baseless conspiracy theories which would then allow your President to tilt the next election in his favor by smearing, not only his most likely political opponent, but all of the government agencies who provided the evidence of Russia’s interference in your last presidential election. 

PLAIDDER: And you can’t put that on the website.

CONN: No you cannot. You cannot be seen to be pursuing those goals at all, because they are THOROUGHLY CORRUPT. They do not advance ANY foreign policy objective. They only benefit one man, viz., your president. That’s what corruption is. When you just say, thurk it, I don’t care about the thurking mission any more, I don’t care about my thurking country, from now on all I care about is me. 

PLAIDDER: So they had their official ambassador pursuing the official mission, and then they had their corrupt mission...and I guess really this whole house of cards started falling when they decided that the official mission was getting in the way of the corrupt mission. 

CONN: Exactly. 

PLAIDDER: Thanks for explaining that.

CONN: You’re welcome. Now. Can you explain something to me?

PLAIDDER: I will attempt it.

CONN: Why, of all the people who could have been chosen to lead this important though entirely corrupt diplomatic mission, did your president choose Mr. Giuliani?

PLAIDDER: *sigh*

CONN: Oh dear. This is going to take a while, isn’t it.

PLAIDDER: So it’s like this. Rudy Giuliani was the mayor of New York City in September of 2001. When the Twin Towers were destroyed on September 11, Giuliani became an American hero. And to some extent, legitimately. You can’t imagine the kind of shock it was. We hadn’t had an attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941. Nobody had ever imagined this, nobody had ever planned for it. Our President at the time--who is now, regrettably, only the SECOND worst president of the past half-century--utterly failed this test. He froze like a deer in the headlights, then disappeared from public view. Rudy Giuliani was out there in the spotlight doing his job, leading his city through something no mayor of New York had ever had to deal with. Even some New Yorkers who hated him for other reasons at least felt reassured that he was on the case and would get them through this. 

CONN: I’m very surprised to hear it.

PLAIDDER: Of course you are. Because I don’t know what happened, but at some point in the past eighteen years Rudy Giuliani became a decomposing husk within which the remnants of his former self have turned into a festering ball of insanity and corruption. He and Buttercup go back a ways because they were both big men in New York in the 1980s and they got to be friends. So Giuliani was one of the relatively few big-name Republicans willing to stump for him in 2016, before anyone believed he would be elected. And during that campaign, Giuliani just...abased himself. I mean Buttercup went low, he went lower. He just...I mean...he crawled, he toadied, he literally slavered. It was disgusting. But it earned him Buttercup’s favor. And I do not know why--I do not know why, Conn--these men who abase themselves before Buttercup seem to become consumed by some passion that I cannot call love but which seems to have some of its features, including infatuation and recklessness and a willingness to sacrifice one’s own good for the good of the beloved. I mean I’ve never seen anything like--

PLAIDDER:

CONN: Friend, are you all right?

PLAIDDER: Sorry, I’m just realizing that I have in fact seen this before.

CONN: Where?

PLAIDDER: This is how all of Lythril’s minions feel about her. They can’t really love her because she would never return it. And they know she will erase them if they ever displease her. And yet they fawn on her and obsess over her and try to outdo each other in their self-abasement and devotion to someone who definitely will never see them as equals, or even really as human. They do not protect themselves from her. They just render themselves up to her entirely, and she destroys them, and they just...love it.

CONN: It’s simple enough, friend. 

PLAIDDER: Really?

CONN: They worship her power. They love power and they know that she wields a kind of pure, irresistible, unadulterated power that they can’t handle. They can never HAVE it; but they want to be as near to it as they can get. 

PLAIDDER: Maybe that’s it. Buttercup is their dark user, and they’re the minions.

CONN: Well this is why I printed out this photo of Marie Yovanovitch. She’s not a minion. She knows what corruption is and she decided to fight it instead of serving it. We diplomats, you know, we can’t be shriias. But we have our own code. We have our own bright and dark. You know, with maybe more gray area in there than you would be happy about. But still. In all this, you find the light where you can. And why not set it up here where everyone can see it?

PLAIDDER: All right, Conn. But please. I beg of you. Help me clean up the remains of your last twelve Nauchtian breakfast stacks and then let’s go for a walk or something, all right?

CONN: All right.

PLAIDDER: The next episode is going to happen soon enough, I’m pretty sure.

#the current catastrophe #this fcking impeachment #conn mac emer

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Impeachment: Episode 4, Irregular Channels

PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to the least influential of the Sunday morning talk shows! With me in the studio today is imaginary talking head Conn mac Emer. Conn, welcome back to the show.

CONN: About thurking time. 

PLAIDDER: I’ve been busy, and also despairing over the fate of the republic.

CONN: There’s so much that’s happened since the last episode, I don’t even know where to start. 

PLAIDDER: Well don’t start with Yovanovitch, I already ran a piece on her.

CONN: Yes. I saw. Your president and all his lackeys are all lucky that I am imaginary.

PLAIDDER: I know. And now they’re all, well, her testimony was irrelevant because she didn’t actually witness any of the--

CONN: Well, of course she didn’t. They got rid of her precisely so that she wouldn’t. Anyway, she has the same story to tell that al of the other men are telling, it’s just a different phase.

PLAIDDER: And what story is that?

CONN: The story of the irregular channel.

PLAIDDER: Ah. Yes. You remember how Buttercup tweeted about his ��absolute right” to appoint whatever ambassadors he wants, and then Yovanovitch said, sure, but why didn’t he just recall me then instead of letting these jackasses smear me for a year and a half? I’m paraphrasing, of course.

CONN: I do remember.

PLAIDDER: My guess is that you have an answer to this question. 

CONN: Indeed I thurking do.

PLAIDDER: So I think some of our readers might like to know, before we get into this, that while you were serving as the Ideiren ambassador to the Nation, someone in your embassy decided to create an “irregular channel.”

CONN: Isn’t that a spoiler?

PLAIDDER: We don’t have to get into the details. Let me just ask: in your experience, why do people open up “irregular channels”? If you’re a head of state, and you already have an ambassador whose job it is to advance foreign policy in that country, why would you open an “irregular channel” between yourself and that country’s leader?

CONN: There are two possible reasons you might do that. One is risky but, for better or worse, a fairly common diplomatic tactic. The other is corrupt.

PLAIDDER: Let’s take the first reason first.

CONN: There are certain goals that you, the head of state, might wish to accomplish, but which would be difficult to do through official channels. So for instance, during the IRA hunger strike in 1980-81, there were negotiations to try to resolve it going on between the British parliament and the IRA, through a back channel created by MI-6.  

PLAIDDER: Why through a back channel?

CONN: For the same reason this kind of thing is usually done through a back channel. The government in question wants to be able to say, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.” So when--as it must--that government DOES negotiate with the terrorists, it has to be done in such a way that the head of state and the party in power can deny knowledge of it. In fact the IRA negotiator was told that if the government’s offer to the strikers was ever leaked to the media, they would deny any knowledge of it. 

PLAIDDER: And at around the same time, Jimmy Carter’s government was negotiating for the release of the hostages in Iran--

CONN: --also, initially, through a back channel. 

PLAIDDER: Why do governments negotiate with terrorists?

CONN: Because you can’t resolve a conflict without negotiation. 

PLAIDDER: I think you CAN--

CONN: You can if you don’t mind killing people.

PLAIDDER: All right.

CONN: My point is: with a lot of acute crises like that there’s a public-facing policy and a private policy. But they’re working *together,* is my point. Everyone has the same goals and everyone’s doing their part to get to the same outcome. The final stages of the Iranian hostage negotiations were done through normal State Department channels. Everyone involved knew what was going on and they were all working together.

PLAIDDER: As opposed to this Ukraine situation--

CONN: Where Yovanovitch was kept in the dark about everything Giuliani and his friends were doing until some of the Ukrainian officials she worked with told her about it. 

PLAIDDER: OK. So that brings us to the second reason you would create a back channel. 

CONN: The second reason to create a back channel is that you want to do something corrupt or criminal and you don’t want anyone apart from your accomplices to know about it.

PLAIDDER: Can you just talk about what “something corrupt” means? I fear an increasing number of Americans are unclear on the concept.

CONN: All right. So. One reason this is confusing is the perception people have, which is not totally wrong, that all politicians are ultimately motivated by self-interest. And many of them are; but there’s a difference between ambition and corruption. It’s one thing to take a course of action because you think it will benefit, or at least please, the people who voted for you, or people who might later vote for you. It’s quite another thing to do something purely because it will benefit you. 

It’s easier to see the difference when there’s money involved. If you’re a head of state and you’re taking people’s tax money out of the treasury and buying yourself palaces with it, people can tell that’s corrupt. 

PLAIDDER: One would like to hope.

CONN: Well, in this case, your president was using people’s tax money to try to buy himself another four years in office. That’s just as corrupt as just stealing that money and putting it in the bank.

PLAIDDER: Because it only benefits him.

CONN: Exactly.

PLAIDDER: And hurts the country he’s supposed to be working for.

CONN: Right.

PLAIDDER: So how does this answer the question of why they had to smear Marie Yovanovitch instead of just recalling her?

CONN: Well, first of all, Yovanovitch is obviously not going to get involved in something like this. Leaving aside questions of personal integrity, she is experienced enough and smart enough to know that the whole thing will blow up in the faces of anyone involved. 

PLAIDDER: Right. So they have to get rid of her. But why doesn’t Buttercup just recall her, in that case, and put in someone else?

CONN: You’re assuming that this whole mess was masterminded by a single person. A single intelligent person.

PLAIDDER: Yes. I am. Always a mistake with this crew, but I keep making it.

CONN: Your president wasn’t just gratifying his own corrupt desires here. He was also being played by Ukranians who wanted to gratify their own corrupt desires and used him to do it; and also by--

PLAIDDER: Vladimir Putin.

CONN: Perhaps not directly or personally, but yes. The smear campaign against Yovanovitch not only removes her from that post, it ensures she’ll never have a high-level post in this administration again. That’s what Lutsenko and his corrupt friends want. It also means there’s no American ambassador to Ukraine--because ambassadors have to be confirmed by the Senate, and support for Ukraine is one of the few things both parties can agree on, and they would want to make sure whoever went into that post was actually good at their job. That benefits Vladimir Putin.

PLAIDDER: The same way another four years of Buttercup destroying America would also benefit Putin.

CONN: Right. The same way that the overall destruction of your State Department benefits Putin. 

PLAIDDER: And the smear campaign also contributes to that.

CONN: Yes. It will mean fewer people like Yovanovitch are willing to work for this administration under any circumstances--because now they know that this could happen to any of them. 

PLAIDDER: So Buttercup has these two things that he wants. But a lot is going on here that’s much more about what Putin wants or what Yovanovitch’s Ukrainian enemies want or what Giuliani’s two goons want.

CONN: Exactly. Your president thinks he set up this back channel to get what he wants. But in fact he’s just being played by other, smarter people trying to get what they want. And that’s why they want to keep him in that job. So they can keep using him to advance their own agendas.

PLAIDDER: No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet.

CONN: What?

PLAIDDER: Never mind. 

CONN: No, really, what are you talking about?

PLAIDDER: Back in the old days, we used to call a country that was nominally politically autonomous but in fact actually controlled by the Soviet Union a puppet regime. Buttercup’s presidency is turning the US into Russia’s puppet regime. You really cannot imagine how that feels to someone who remembers the 1980s. But anyway. You were explaining how Buttercup abusing his power for personal gain isn’t the only or even the worst thing that’s happening here.

CONN: No. Because he’s also creating more opportunities for other corrupt people to get what they want. That’s the thing with an irregular channel. You’re basically creating an infrastructure for corruption. Once you’ve built it, anyone can travel through it.

PLAIDDER: Ironically, after eleventy hundred Infrastructure Weeks, this back channel is the one highway he’s actually built.

CONN: Can you answer one of my questions now?

PLAIDDER: I’ll try.

CONN: Who is Kim Kardashian?

PLAIDDER: Oh my God. 

CONN: Is she a head of state?

PLAIDDER: NO! No, my God, she is not a head of state.

CONN: So why was Ambassador Sondland discussing her with your president on that phone call from Kyiv?

PLAIDDER: Just to get this straight for our viewers...you are asking me why, when Gordon Sondland called the President of the United States on an UNSECURED CELL PHONE in a RESTAURANT in Ukraine to tell him how Zelensky had agreed to give him everything he wanted during a meeting where career diplomats were NOT ALLOWED to attend or take notes and that Zelensky “loves [Buttercup’s] ass” and will do anything Buttercup wants--why, after Buttercup talked to Sondland about this SO LOUDLY THAT HE COULD BE OVERHEARD BY PEOPLE AT THE TABLE, which let’s remember is a table in a crowded RESTAURANT, they then went on to discuss the matter of A$AP Rocky’s arrest in Sweden on assault charges with an equal amount of urgency and discretion?

CONN: Well apparently it has something to do with Kim Kardashian. 

PLAIDDER: You are referring to this passage: “During the course of the phone call from the restaurant, Sondland also consulted with Trump on another matter of importance to the president at the time: efforts to free the American rapper A$AP Rocky from jail in Sweden at the request of reality television star Kim Kardashian.“

CONN: I am.

PLAIDDER: I am sorry to have to tell you, Conn, that Kim Kardashian is the star of a TV show entitled Keeping Up With the Kardashians. 

CONN: Is...is it a news program?

PLAIDDER: NO IT IS NOT A NEWS PROGRAM!

CONN: So she’s...not a journalist.

PLAIDDER: No! She’s a celebrity!

CONN: What’s she famous for?

PLAIDDER: For being famous!

CONN: I don’t understand.

PLAIDDER: NEITHER DO I! 

CONN: Isn’t there something she must have done at some point to become--

PLAIDDER: Yes, there was, but honestly Conn, I don’t want to talk about it. You have been through enough and so have I.

CONN: But what has she got to do with American foreign policy?

PLAIDDER: NOTHING! Don’t you understand? This is what we are dealing with here. We are dealing with a man who 'reads’ Kim Kardashian’s Instagram but can’t sit through the presidential daily briefing. We have elected as President of the United States someone who is more concerned about whether Kim Kardashian thinks he’s done enough for A$AP Rocky than he is about whether Ukraine will be annexed by Russia. I mean I don’t think you can really fully appreciate this, Conn, because nobody in either Ideire OR the Nation is LIKE THIS.

CONN: Not even the Chowderhead?

PLAIDDER: NOT EVEN HIM.

CONN: Wow.

PLAIDDER: OK, we’re just going to end this here, I think. If I think about the whole Ukraine/Kardashian juxtaposition for one more second I will literally explode. Tune in next week, I’m sure there will be plenty more developments. 

#the current catastrophe #this fcking impeachment #impeachment #wof

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Impeachment: Episode One, The Fire of Union

PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to This Fucking Emergency’s exciting new spinoff: This Fucking Impeachment. With me in the studio today is the happiest imaginary man in the world. Please welcome the unpublished-fictional man, the very little-known myth, the only-to-the-select-few legend, Conn mac Emer!

CONN: WOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

PLAIDDER: I see Conn has already started celebrating...and for the first but probably not the last time, please welcome to the show another imaginary politician, the Nation’s own Gill Nileton.

GILL: I thought Ideirens couldn’t drink.

CONN: We can’t.

GILL: You kind of SEEM like you’ve been--

CONN: The exalted mood you observe in me, friend, is not the artificial product of poisonous libations, but the exhilaration of LINN SHANGHLAIM! YEEEE HAAAAAA!!

GILL: I know you told me what that means, but--

PLAIDDER: It’s an Old Tongue phrase that sort of translates as “the fire of union.”

GILL: I still don’t know what that means.

PLAIDDER: As I understand it, linn shanghlaim is used by members of the Seated Leaders to describe the experience of spontaneously and rapidly coming together to support a single piece of legislation or course of action. 

GILL: Nothing’s spontaneous in politics.

CONN: Spoken like a man who’s lived all his life under a two-party system. The Seat doesn’t have parties. We have a bunch of people who each only care about what happens in their home district. BUT. Once in a while, something happens that’s so important, for reasons either venal or noble, that everyone puts that petty local tarbfnaa aside and comes together to deal with it. And that’s linn shanghlaim, and it is the reason I get up in the thurking morning. WOOOOOO!!!

GILL: I have literally never seen you this happy.

PLAIDDER: Well you have to understand, Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that they’ve launched an impeachment inquiry.

GILL: Impeachment. This is the thing that happened to this “Bill Clinton” that I’m supposed to have been based on.

PLAIDDER: Yes. But you see, it’s also a thing that ALMOST happened to a guy named Richard Nixon that neither of you have ever heard of.

GILL: I still don’t understand.

PLAIDDER: Our...president...has just admitted that he abused the power of his office to force a third party to dig up dirt on someone who was quite possibly going to be running against him for president. 

GILL: And?

PLAIDDER: And that’s Watergate. For 40 years now every political scandal has had “gate” attached to it, in honor of the Watergate scandal. But this is actually the only scandal since Watergate that actually deserves that suffix. Because this...president...has just done EXACTLY what the House was prepared to impeach Nixon for back in 1974, only in a MUCH WORSE way. All this time everyone’s known that this jackass should be impeached but they’ve been afraid to do it because so much of this stuff is unprecedented and because this...asshole...has been using his power to gaslight everyone into thinking well, maybe this ISN’T really an impeachable offense. But here is something that everyone knows, from history, actually IS an impeachable offense and furthermore is serious enough that the prospect of getting impeached for it forced that son of a bitch to resign.

CONN: And so as soon as that became clear...WHOOSH! The fire of union!

PLAIDDER: Because now, by impeaching him, they’re not repeating the Clinton impeachment, they’re repeating the Nixon one. That’s what Pelosi and friends have been worried about all this time. When the Republicans impeached...let’s say, your namesake...

GILL: This Clinton.

PLAIDDER: Yes. When they impeached him, it was over a single instance of perjury, in which he lied about the fact that he had drawn a 22 year old intern into a sexual relationship with him. 

GILL: I thought they impeached him over the sex.

PLAIDDER: No. Technically, the High Crime and Misdemeanor at stake there was his lying about it under oath.

GILL: But your president lies--

PLAIDDER: Exactly. Exactly. But, you see, the Clinton impeachment was clearly politically motivated. The Republicans wouldn’t accept the fact that they’d lost the White House, so they investigated Clinton until they turned up something they could use. This, by the way, is exactly what Buttercup’s defenders are always saying the Democrats are doing now.

GILL: Which they actually are.

PLAIDDER: The difference, Gill, is that Buttercup actually is unfit to hold this office in every measurable way. He’s constantly abusing his power--not just in this phone call, but in every action he takes as President. He lies like he breathes. He upended the FBI and the Department of Justice to try to stop the Mueller investigation. He fires everyone who displays a shred of integrity or an ounce of loyalty to anything other than himself. He encourages foreign governments to bribe him by using his hotel properties. He embezzles taxpayer money by directing government entities to use his hotel properties. I cannot even list all the ways in which he has proved that he acts always and only in his own interests, even when that goes against the interests of the country he supposedly governs. He illegally blocks money that Congress has appropriated for things he doesn’t want to do or redirects money that Congress appropriated for some other purpose. He refuses to obey the law whenever it contravenes his needs, desires, or even whims. He has corrupted the entire Department of Justice and turned the Attorney General of the United States into his personal defense lawyer. He accepted help from fucking Vladimir Putin in the 2016 election and NOW--as a fucking SITTING PRESIDENT--he is actively soliciting help from Zelensky in the upcoming 2020 election. And that’s just the illegal stuff. Do not get me STARTED on the profoundly immoral things he has done with this office and to this country. He is not a president. He is a mob boss. He richly deserves to be impeached, and now at last he will be.

CONN: Look at you, drawing up the articles of impeachment already!

PLAIDDER: Every right-minded citizen of this country has had their own personal articles of impeachment drawn up for at least a year now.

GILL: I feel your pain--

PLAIDDER: Please let me never hear you say that again--

GILL: --but this seems very risky to me. They’ve already released the transcript of the phone call; and they’re right, there’s no explicit quid pro quo.

CONN: Oh friend. Do you think a man as practiced in extortion and bullying as this gleachinai is would be stupid enough to use the if-then formula? He blocks their aid, then calls--

PLAIDDER: REGARDLESS! Holding up the aid that Congress had voted to the Ukraine--for ANY reason--was ILLEGAL! He doesn’t get to DECIDE whether he disburses that aid or not! He is supposed to EXECUTE the laws that Congress passes, that is why they call it the fucking EXECUTIVE branch. He is not supposed to LEGISLATE. That’s not how this works. THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.

GILL: I think you should maybe go to commercial, stranger, you’re getting very excited.

CONN: Clearly, you’ve never watched a single episode of this show.

PLAIDDER: Fucking with that aid money is IN ITSELF an impeachable offense! We don’t even need to GET to the question of whether he did it as a quid pro quo. 

CONN: Right. Just like the fact that he asked a foreign head of state to go after his political opponent is impeachable in itself, whether or not he ALSO bribed or extorted him to do it.

PLAIDDER: Thank you. I only wish we’d done this sooner.

CONN: I don’t.

PLAIDDER: And now we come to it. You’re about to tell me that Pelosi has been playing seven-dimensional Dubh Solus all this time, aren’t you?

CONN: Yes I am.

PLAIDDER: Oh Lord.

CONN: I kept saying, not yet, not yet. And would you listen to me?

PLAIDDER: No.

CONN: No, you would not. Look. Your people don’t exactly have the concept of linn shanghlaim, but your Nancy Pelosi has been in politics all her life. She knows the fire of union when she sees it. And she also knows when she doesn’t see it. The Mueller investigation did not light that fire. Even if there hadn’t been all the chicanery around releasing the report, the fact that it was so inconclusive just threw water on everything. But she let him think he was winning. Because she knew that if he did, he’d do something worse and more dramatic. And now he has. 

PLAIDDER: But Conn...linn shanghlaim is supposed to include everybody. It’s supposed to cut across existing...well, you don’t have formal political parties, but let’s say factional divisions. But there are no Republicans on fire right now. It’s 199 Democrats and Justin Amash.

CONN: I know. We cannot expect miracles.

PLAIDDER: But Pelosi did! She kept saying she wouldn’t do this until she had bipartisan--

CONN: Friend, do you seriously believe that she ever thought for a moment that impeachment would have bipartisan support? She works with those people EVERY. DAY. 

PLAIDDER: Well then why--

CONN: Because waiting for this “bipartisan support” which was never going to appear allowed her to delay impeachment indefinitely UNTIL the right moment came along. Which is this one.

PLAIDDER: You can’t prove any of this.

CONN: Look at the results. Instead of dragging a bunch of reluctant, scared, misgiving-filled people behind her into an impeachment half of them don’t want, she’s barely one step ahead of a charging horde, all lit up with the fire of union. This is going to be unstoppable.

GILL: But isn’t thing going to play into your president’s hands? He’s supposed to love conflict, and drama, and his people are always saying impeachment is a political winner for them, and--

CONN: Gill. Friend. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.

GILL: I beg your--

CONN: LOOK AT THE RESULTS. For months now, Congress has been demanding documents and testimony and what have you and this administration’s response has been, sue me for it. Word gets out that impeachment is actually in motion and what’s the first thing that happens? The transcript of that call has been released. The whistleblower complaint is maybe going to come out tomorrow. What does that tell you?

GILL: That they’re scared.

CONN: Yes. It tells you that impeachment was the ONLY thing this crew ever took seriously. It’s the ONLY thing that was ever capable of forcing them to obey the law. They never wanted this. They feared it. That “it helps us politically” stuff was pure tarbhfnaa put out by his minions to stave it off. 

PLAIDDER: Pelosi also said that’s what he--

CONN: Because she was ALSO trying to stave it off. It was convenient for her to pretend to believe their tarbhfnaa as long as she didn’t think the time was right. But she never did. 

PLAIDDER: So she lied to us.

CONN: Friend, not all good women are shriias.

GILL: Now THAT’S the truth.

PLAIDDER: Oh boy.

CONN: Watch her and learn, Gill. Watch and learn.

PLAIDDER: Well, we’ll all be watching. It’s time to wrap up this episode of This Fucking Impeachment...but there will be more!

CONN: WOOOOHOOO! HYA GLEACH! HYA GLEACH! HYA GLEACH!!

GILL: Where in this studio can a man get a DRINK?

#this fcking emergency #this fcking impeachment #conn mac emer

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Trial, Season Finale: Anyway, Here’s Wonderwall

PLAIDDER: Hi Conn. I’m sorry about last night. I want us to part friends.

CONN: We will.

PLAIDDER: I’m sorry this is how the show is ending.

CONN: I wrote you a song.

PLAIDDER: You what?

CHANDRA: Hey, Conn, I’m finished tuning up the guitar.

PLAIDDER: What the hell is–

CHANDRA: Four bar intro and go, Conn.

[strumming]

CONN:

Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna let him off the hook.

Their eyes are open to the lies and they realize that he’s a crook.

You don’t believe that anyone can turn away the truth

But they do now.

Don’t cry, don’t tell me you’re surprised that some politicians let you down.

I hoped for better from these dopes cause I’d rather try to swim than drown.

I don’t believe that right and hope can ever really lose

Not even now

Maybe

They think they’ll be the ones to save him

That after all

They’re his wonderwall

But all the paths they’ll walk today are burning

With every oath that breaks the tide is turning

They don’t believe it, but these awful things they say and do

Help to bring him down

These craven

Hacks won’t be the ones to save him

Cause no one at all

Stops a tyrant’s fall

Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you.

It’s true, I think you always knew they were never gonna get this through.

You had three million people out the day he said I do.

So where are they now?

I know the road that gets you there is winding.

And every time you fail the tears are blinding.

I really wish they could have taken care of this for you

But they don’t know how

So maybe

You save each other like you saved me

And you can all

Be your wonderwall

Maybe

You’re gonna be the ones that save here

All for one for all

You’re your wonderwall

PLAIDDER: Goodbye, Conn. Thanks for everything.

CONN: Safe home.

PLAIDDER: Yeah. You too, buddy. Safe home.

#the current catastrophe #this fcking trial #impeachment #wof

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Trial: Episode One, A Bowl of Soup

PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to the first episode of our spinoff of This Fucking Impeachment: This Fucking Trial. In it, we will discuss the trial phase of Buttercup’s impeachment, which is taking place in the Senate, aka The Greatest Deliberative Body On Earth. With me in the studio is...rather unexpectedly, Ethir mac Briobh. Hello Ethir, did I invite you?

ETHIR: No, you invited Conn, but he really needs a personal day.

PLAIDDER: I bet he does. How many Nauchtian breakfast stacks has he eaten in the past 48 hours?

ETHIR: He asked me not to tell you. 

PLAIDDER: I’m eating a scone right now, I have no wish to judge. All right, well, everyone, meet Ethir mac Briobh, another upstanding Ideiren public servant and also a celebrity lawyer and extremely popular law professor. Welcome to this mess, Ethir. 

ETHIR: I wish I could say I was pleased to be here.

PLAIDDER: I know. It’s a fucking mess, isn’t it? I’ve been thinking all day about that trial at Mypril. I’m sure you have too.

ETHIR: Actually, I was thinking about Slythe’s trial. 

PLAIDDER: Really.

ETHIR: I’d rather go through that circus in Mypril 1000 times than go through Slythe’s trial again ONCE. But that’s the one I think of as I watch this. You think the worst thing that could happen would be for your president to get off scot free. But there are worse outcomes.

PLAIDDER: Uh...yay?

ETHIR: I’m sorry. I’m not as resilient as Conn is.

PLAIDDER: Well, we can’t all be. 

ETHIR: I suppose your...viewers...won’t necessarily know about Slythe’s trial. 

PLAIDDER: A brief summary might be helpful.

ETHIR: She had been accused of practicing dark magic. Her trial was intended to function as cover for the people who were really responsible for corrupting the Order. To make sure nothing went wrong, the Seat voted to change the rules so that magic users could sit on the jury--which we normally don’t allow, for reasons you know, and which your readers don’t care about. This way, they could put enough corrupt people on the jury to ensure a guilty verdict and everything that entailed. 

PLAIDDER: You sound kind of stiff, Ethir. Are you OK? Is it just that I haven’t written you for a while?

ETHIR: Take how Conn feels right now and double that and that’s how bad it feels to me to talk about any of this.

PLAIDDER: I appreciate your being here. So.

ETHIR: Well, I knew the game was rigged. I’m not stupid. But I just thought--I mean their case was terrible. It’s hard enough to get a conviction in a dark magic case even when the defendant’s guilty. And Slythe, you know, she wasn’t like Theamh, she didn’t make enemies. Excuse--

PLAIDDER: I won’t take it personally.

ETHIR: Everyone who knew Slythe at all liked her. And then the way she stood up and denounced them all during the debate--you know--she was riding high, in terms of the ordinary people, she became a very popular figure. So much easier to love than Morat. I thought, I’m a good lawyer and a good speaker and if I just do my job well enough then they’ll just HAVE to acquit her. They’ll realize it’ll be worse in the long run if they don’t. And anyway, she’s my client, she’s a thurking hero already, and a good defense is about the only thing anyone can give her right now that matters. So I went out there and I crushed it. I did, don’t laugh--

PLAIDDER: I know you did, Ethir.

ETHIR: There were more spectators in the courtroom every day. The Cretid repeaters showed up with their cameras. I was RIVETING. Every time I looked over at the finders’ box the ordinary people were just radiating empathy for her. Those dark-hearted bitches sitting amongst them were a different story, but I thought, you know, they have to deliberate before they find. They won’t want to have to show their hand. I suppose they could mindforce the other finders but still, public sentiment--

PLAIDDER: Can we wrap up the summary? Ethir?

ETHIR: Well you know damn well we never got to deliberations. They saw what I was doing and they knew how it was going and they knew they were losing public support. I’d been thinking all along, either they convict and there’s a rebellion, or they acquit because they don’t want that. And they came up with a third option that had never occurred to me.

PLAIDDER: Which was to stage Slythe’s suicide.

ETHIR: Why did you kill her? WHY?

PLAIDDER: I’m sorry, Ethir--

ETHIR: And not even for dramatic effect. She’s just a--a footnote--

PLAIDDER: No. That’s not fair. We don’t see her death but we feel it. It was a war, Ethir. Someone had to die. And given that you fall in love with every shriia you meet, it was probably going to have to be someone you cared about. I’m sorry it hurt you. But our viewers are wondering what the takeaway is--

ETHIR: Well I’ll give you the thurking takeaway: everyone on your side is so excited about how well the House managers are doing and they’re all thinking what Theamh told me before that trial at Mypril--

PLAIDDER: Which was: “Under these conditions they could convict a bowl of soup. Even if the bowl of soup had a really good lawyer.”

ETHIR: No, the other part.

PLAIDDER: OK: “I don’t need you to get me off. I need you to make sure that WHEN they convict me, everyone watching knows I’m innocent.”

ETHIR: Right. Win in the court of public opinion. Well you know what happens when the process is rigged, the jury is corrupt, the government is in the grip of evil, and you’re winning in the court of opinion? 

PLAIDDER: Well--

ETHIR: THEY KILL YOUR CLIENT.

PLAIDDER: Not necess--

ETHIR: When they can’t afford to win OR to lose, they just kill their opponents.

PLAIDDER: All right, but...that only happened once.

ETHIR: If that trial at Mypril hadn’t been broken up, it would have happened twice. I only agreed to represent Theamh because I was in contact with Istria. I went in there knowing I wasn’t going to let that trial finish. I took their tarbhfnaa and I pulled it on THEM. 

PLAIDDER: But in this case...the client is American democracy. Doesn’t that change things? They can’t just...kill it.

ETHIR: They will do their level best.

PLAIDDER: Right about now Conn would normally--

ETHIR: Yeah, he’s not here. I loved the law. I loved it with a passionate love. I watched them corrupt it. I had to live without the rule of law while still being a lawyer. And I am--to use a phrase we’re all picking up from the locals--not OK.

PLAIDDER: At least I kept you out of Redemption.

ETHIR: At least in Redemption it wouldn’t have been my own country doing this to me.

PLAIDDER: You look like I feel, I guess.

ETHIR: I suppose I do. 

PLAIDDER: I guess I have to be the one hoping for better things.

ETHIR: Hope away. 

PLAIDDER: I don’t know how many episodes of this show we’re gonna do. But if we do, I guess I’ll see you next time.

#wof #this fcking trial #ethir mac briobh