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.

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.

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.

It's trendy to suggest that Trump's attempt at stealing the election has finished off what was left of our democracy. But after everything we've been through in the past four years, I just don't buy that his endgame has been any more harmful than the rest of what he's done to us.

First of all, Trump DID manage to rig the 2016 election. The media largely swept that inconvenient fact under the rug when the evidence started to emerge shortly after he "won" because they were too excited at the ratings that a Trump presidency would give them.

But the reality is that Trump's successful theft of the 2016 election was obviously more harmful to the sanctity of our democracy than his failed theft of the 2020 election. It's just that the media now wants to get ratings out of his failed 2020 attempt.

Trump has spent four years systematically chewing at the fabric of every aspect of our democracy. We don't even know what our democracy is going to look like after this. His tantrum about losing, and zero-chance attempt at overturning it, is just a footnote at the end.

We've all known for four years now that if Trump lost the 2020 election, he'd try to overturn it by any illegal means possible. If you were paying attention, you also knew that if he got blown out, he would have zero chance of overturning it. This isn't some gasp-worthy surprise.

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

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.

1 of 52

As our national civics lesson continues to unfold on its march toward our 59th Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2021 and Donald Trump’s second term, 45’s unmasking exercise (that’s a large part of what his first term had to be) continues toward its big climax.

2 of 52

In his 2017 Inaugural Address, President Trump proclaimed on behalf of his administration, “we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people.”

3 of 52

From my very biased vantage point, here’s how I like to think of that sentence.

It likely was the announcement of his two-pronged military campaign.

The first prong is obvious; it’s against foreign interference.

4 of 52

As we now clearly see, nothing short of a military campaign would suffice when global influencers have totally co-opted elements of our two major political parties.

5 of 52

The other prong has an internal focus: Washington, D.C.

Last week, @CleCityCouncil started reviewing Mayor Frank Jackson’s proposed city budget for 2021. There was robust discussion, and Documenters were there to cover it. Here’s a thread of what we learned last week about the #CLEBudget

First, it helps to know where we are in the budget process. From today through Feb. 24, the council will meet about the General Fund budget. The council will then agree on a budget with their changes (if any); 15 days after doing so, they can vote to make the budget official.

In other words, there’s still time to use your voice! The #refundcleveland tool can help. Create the #CLEBudget you want and send it to your council member. Click “Change the Budget” on the homepage and follow the on-screen instructions from there.

Want to know the budget basics? Our #CLEBudget primer details the timeline, different types of budgets and the funds involved, and defines budget-related terms. It can be a helpful guide during City Council’s discussions.

And don’t forget: all these meetings are livestreamed on City Council’s YouTube channel. They’re slated to start at 9 a.m. every business day from today through the 24th. You can also follow along with #CLEDocumenters live-tweet threads and

#Justin A day before the @MyMDC_T EOC, the party Treasurer General says he is unable to fund travel costs for delegates to congress because the money was allegedly stolen. We share contents of the letter from #ChiefNdlovu

“My office has been inundated with calls from concerned EOC delegates who by now should have received their Provincial transport allocation.
It has come to my attention that some of our members may not be able to travel to the EOC due to lack of funding.”

Equally I have received allegations that the Treasury is refusing to make payments for EOC, nothing could be further from the truth. I would like to take this opportunity as your Deputy Treasurer to inform you that as treasury we are not able to pay due to the fact that...

that funds were withdrawn from the party account on the 18th December 2020, we are still pursuing and trying to get some Standing Committee members who were involved in the unapproved transfer to return the money to the Party.
I was left a bit shocked to learn that the SG expects

Treasury to release money when he is the one who transferred all the money out of the account without my explicit approval. Perhaps the SG must inform members where the money is. I certainly do not have any knowledge of who he sent the money to or what has happened to those funds