Jonathan Chait, writing for New York Magazine, predicts this whole Ukraine scandal just might be Trump’s downfall.

Trump responded to the threat of impeachment by reaffirming why he deserves it. He told reporters impeachment (a mechanism in the Constitution) “shouldn’t be allowed. There should be a way of stopping it. Maybe legally through the courts.” And he told a private audience the media reporting the story were “animals” and “scum” and said the CIA officer who filed the complaint (through approved legal channels) committed “treason” and implied that he should be executed. L’état, c’est Trump, as always.

Part of Trump’s rage stemmed from what appeared to be genuine surprise that the record of him pressuring Zelensky failed to win the approbation he expected. Hadn’t Zelensky flattered him and noted his great electoral victory? Didn’t his counterpart meekly submit to Trump’s demands? How could this be received as anything other than the “perfect” conversation Trump had promised it would be?

Representative Mark Meadows, one of Trump’s more slavish followers, observed in the president’s defense, “He didn’t see anything wrong with the conversation he had with a foreign leader.” That is probably accurate. Trump has a finely honed antenna for assessing winner versus loser, or loyal versus disloyal. But the formulation of moral concepts is not a function he can perform. His brain is no more capable of distinguishing right from wrong than your microwave oven can tell you what’s on Netflix. No American president has more richly deserved impeachment.

Pomplamoose is know for doing really cool and interesting mashups. This one is great.

Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams are Made of This and The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army have never sounded better.

Way better than you might expect.

Mark Frauenfelder, writing in Boing Boing, points to a cool bit audio.

Saskia Maarleveld is an audiobook narrator and voiceover actress. If you listen to audiobooks, her voice will sound familiar. Here, she reads the whistleblower complaint released by the House Intelligence Committee. Listening to it, as opposed to just reading it, makes it even more damning to Trump and his sycophants.

Patrick Rhone speaking the truth.

Increasingly, I feel the most dangerous divide in our nation is between those who read and those who don’t.

Look, up in the sky ... it's @BrandonJRouth as Superman! Take flight in the #DCTV Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, starting December on @TheCWSupergirl, @CWBatwoman, @CW_TheFlash, @CW_Arrow and @TheCW_Legends. pic.twitter.com/KsTFLDvgdY

— Superman (@Superman) September 27, 2019

This looks pretty good.

David Roth, writing for The Concourse in Deadspin, believes it’s a problem that the president can’t talk or think.

It is a problem for President Donald Trump that it’s often impossible to tell what the hell he’s talking about. This is not one of those signature Trump defects that can readily be spun into a secret strength or as a subtle bit of advanced dealcraft that only experts and initiates can appreciate. His mind is a television that changes channels every three seconds and where every channel has an infomercial on it; it cycles day and night without ever quite cohering into a signal. There is plenty of noise, though, and because Trump so utterly lacks discernment he is constantly interrupting himself with some new bit or blurt. As a result, his average sentence is a parade of wild upstage moves in which whatever thought he’s had most recently is forever blundering into past the one he had just begun to express-imagine one of those halftime shows at a NBA game in which people throw down wild dunks after leaping off trampolines except there’s a new guy jumping on the trampoline every second and there are frequent midair collisions. Trump also only knows about a hundred words, about a third of which refer to volume or size.

Trump cannot ever keep his story straight because he never fully knew what it was in the first place. He knows it is about him, and the things that keep happening to him, but beyond that he never knows, and will never know; he is conspiring and scheming constantly, but so ineffectually and in such a state of flummoxed confusion and utterly abject ignorance that the endgame is never anything but unclear. Trump is always trying to get over, to win and keep winning, but also he doesn’t know what the rules are, or what the game even is, and also someone-it’s not important who, it would be unfair to point fingers-has eaten the racecar, the thimble, all of the little plastic hotels, and a third of the cards in Community Chest. It can be difficult to prove that any of Trump’s many howlingly overt acts of malfeasance are intentional because everything he does-from the first grasping moments to his last seething ones, all through his endless expanses of executive time-feels like and fundamentally is an accident.

Yes. Trump is an accident. I like to think of it as a car crash everyone slows down to gawk at. He’s a spectacle of incompetence. He’s a horse in a hospital.

Roth then goes on to explain how Trump forms his worldview. Spoiler: it’s by watching television. He then explains perfectly what Fox News does.

The more worrying part of all this is that there is fundamentally nothing to know about most of what he talks about. Every rank thought-chunk that clears his blowhole is either some legacy beef or bigotry or something Trump learns from his television shows, which feed him attenuated suspicions, a list of ominous what-abouts that hint at some sort of outcome but stop well short of it, and a bunch of leading questions that, by design, cannot be answered. All of this is supposed to shore up a worldview and generate specific political outcomes, but mostly it aims to create a mood-a coiled and claustrophobic sense of being under siege, by someone-more than it does to answer any of the questions it hints at. It doesn’t really add up to anything, but also it can’t; the game is to accumulate.When Trump is stressed, the deficits inherent in all this are especially plain. What would Trump do, if handed this purloined DNC server? What would he even hope to find in it? Even the element of the story that involves Joe Biden and his son, which involves real and knowable facts, has been so degraded by its immersion in the garbage-whirlpool of conservative media and so muddled by Trump’s limp n’ lazy brain that the man who first reported it can barely recognize it. Nothing adds up to anything and all the fragments, which look like they should connect, don’t. Trump transparently doesn’t know where it ends. He’s the story’s hero, but mostly he’s just a customer.

Exactly. Trump consumes the conservative media, blurts it out constantly, and then can’t fathom why his voice vomit doesn’t completely exonerate him from wrongdoing when he obviously did the wrongdoing.

So, the White House released a memo of a conversation Trump had with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. I’m not sure what the purpose of doing this was because it clearly makes Trump look like he’s doing the mob shakedown thing.

Kevin Drum has a perfect abridged version of the memo, and I’ll reprint it here:

TRUMP: Congratulations.

ZELENSKY: Thank you. You were a great example to us. We’re going to drain the swamp.

TRUMP: That’s very nice. You know, we do a lot for Ukraine.Way more than those yakky Europeans.

ZELENSKY: Yes indeed. I especially want to thank you for your support in the area of defense. We are ready to buy more weapons from you.

TRUMP: I would like you to do us a favor though. Please look into the DNC server hack. Our attorney general will be calling you about that.

ZELENSKY: Sure, sure, anything for you. I’m appointing a new ambassador so we can continue our strategic partnership.

TRUMP: That’s great. I’d also like you to investigate Joe Biden’s son. Rudy Giuliani and our attorney general will be calling you about that.

ZELENSKY: Sure, sure. The next prosecutor general will be 100 percent my candidate. He or she will look into this. And don’t worry about the old ambassador. She was an Obama fan and she’s being recalled.<

TRUMP: Great. I’ll have Giuliani and Barr call you. Your economy is going to get better and better, I predict.

ZELENSKY: The last time I was in New York I stayed at the Trump Tower. We’ll be very serious about that investigation of Biden’s son.

TRUMP: Good. Giuliani and Barr will call you.

So basically, instead of exonerating the president, it basically has blown up in his dumb orange face. Now, apparently, he’s shocked this didn’t work. According to Kaitlan Collins and Jim Acosta, writing for CNN, Trump doesn’t understand why the memo did not deescalate the problem and really doesn’t want to be impeached.

But people close to him said he is not welcoming this impeachment fight. The President who keeps a careful watch on his approval numbers was unhappy.A source close to the White House who routinely speaks with Trump confirmed he does not want to be impeached.

This is only about optics. He’s going to go down in the history books as the third President ever to be impeached. Unless he resigns. Which he should.

I’ll make a short case for it. Trump never wanted to be president. Trump only looks out for himself and his immediate family. Trump is going to be impeached, and while he likely will not be removed from office by the Senate, the corruption, self-dealing, and incompetence will be presented for the world to see. That is bad optics. Trump should resign before formal articles of impeachment are presented and to guarantee a full Ford-like pardon of Nixon by Pence. The only downside to this plan is that he will immediately be arrested as a co-conspirator in regards to the Stormy Daniels payout. Michael Cohen says hi. Maybe he can flee to North Korea or Russia.

It’s all about the optics. And money.

Today is the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album and to celebrate, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and their collaborators have released a new video for “Here Comes The Sun.” From a statement:

The “Here Comes The Sun” music video welcomes the viewer into Abbey Road Studios’ Studio Two, where The Beatles famously recorded most of Abbey Road, to experience a unique and moving sunrise above the band’s instruments and gear. Working closely with Apple Corps Ltd., the video is directed by Trunk Animation’s director team Alasdair + Jock (Alasdair Brotherston and Jock Mooney) and produced by Trunk’s Maria Manton. The video’s sun centerpiece was filmed as it was meticulously crafted on-set in Abbey Road’s Studio Two. The video features photos from the Apple Corps archive, and photos and footage shot by Linda McCartney supplied by Paul McCartney.

Michael Wade with the three basics:

• Mindfulness. Watch your drift. Pay attention to the small things. Get the “incrementals” going in the right direction.

• Self-Discipline. Restrain or eliminate any behavior that you know is negative. Stop making excuses.

• Nobility. Act in such a manner that if nobleness were a crime, you’d be easily convicted.

Albums I Wish Existed features albums that could have been made, perhaps should have been made, and now they are made, by a man who just seems to be doing what he can to make the world a better place for those of us who love music.

The guy seems to know everything about every artist on the planet, and seems also to know about obscure cuts and rarities and special pressings, and he goes about locating these cuts, cleans them up if they need it, and puts together albums out of what he’s put together.

Here’s a few to get your appetite wet:

AC/DC — Rock in Peace
Cheap Trick — In Color (Steve Albini mix)
KISS - Ozone
The Eagles — Dirty Laundry
The Eagles — Sunset Grill

This is one of the better Classroom Instruments bits from Fallon’s Tonight Show.

Dan Amrich, writing in kotaku, tells the tale of him and his wife preparing to visit Disneyland’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. They spent a lot of time planning, making costumes and accessories and then, surprisingly, being rewarded.

Cosplay! Who knew?

A. G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, printed the contents of a speech he made at Brown University. In it, he told an astounding story.

To give you a sense of what this retreat looks like on the ground, let me tell you a story I’ve never shared publicly before. Two years ago, we got a call from a United States government official warning us of the imminent arrest of a New York Times reporter based in Egypt named Declan Walsh. Though the news was alarming, the call was actually fairly standard. Over the years, we’ve received countless such warnings from American diplomats, military leaders and national security officials.

But this particular call took a surprising and distressing turn. We learned the official was passing along this warning without the knowledge or permission of the Trump administration. Rather than trying to stop the Egyptian government or assist the reporter, the official believed, the Trump administration intended to sit on the information and let the arrest be carried out. The official feared being punished for even alerting us to the danger.

Unable to count on our own government to prevent the arrest or help free Declan if he were imprisoned, we turned to his native country, Ireland, for help. Within an hour, Irish diplomats traveled to his house and safely escorted him to the airport before Egyptian forces could detain him.

We hate to imagine what would have happened had that brave official not risked their career to alert us to the threat.

I know exactly what would have happened. He would have been killed and the Trump Administration would disavow in knowledge and actively encourage it. In fact, he goes on to outline exactly their position

Eighteen months later, another of our reporters, David Kirkpatrick, arrived in Egypt and was detained and deported in apparent retaliation for exposing information that was embarrassing to the Egyptian government. When we protested the move, a senior official at the United States Embassy in Cairo openly voiced the cynical worldview behind the Trump administration’s tolerance for such crackdowns. “What did you expect would happen to him?” he said. “His reporting made the government look bad.”

The Trump administration hates the free press. Truth is important. Only tyrants want to control the truth.

David Leonhardt, writing in The New York Times, outlines Donald J. Trump in forty sentences. I deem it worthwhile enough to repost here.

Sometimes it’s worth stepping back to look at the full picture.

He has pressured a foreign leader to interfere in the 2020 American presidential election.

He urged a foreign country to intervene in the 2016 presidential election.

He divulged classified information to foreign officials.

He publicly undermined American intelligence agents while standing next to a hostile foreign autocrat.

He hired a national security adviser whom he knew had secretly worked as a foreign lobbyist.

He encourages foreign leaders to enrich him and his family by staying at his hotels.

He genuflects to murderous dictators.

He has alienated America’s closest allies.

He lied to the American people about his company’s business dealings in Russia.

He tells new lies virtually every week — about the economy, voter fraud, even the weather.

He spends hours on end watching television and days on end staying at resorts.

He often declines to read briefing books or perform other basic functions of a president’s job.

He has aides, as well as members of his own party in Congress, who mock him behind his back as unfit for office.

He has repeatedly denigrated a deceased United States senator who was a war hero.

He insulted a Gold Star family — the survivors of American troops killed in action.

He described a former first lady, not long after she died, as “nasty.”

He described white supremacists as “some very fine people.”

He told four women of color, all citizens and members of Congress, to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.”

He made a joke about Pocahontas during a ceremony honoring Native American World War II veterans.

He launched his political career by falsely claiming that the first black president was not really American.

He launched his presidential campaign by describing Mexicans as “rapists.”

He has described women, variously, as “a dog,” “a pig” and “horseface,” as well as “bleeding badly from a facelift” and having “blood coming out of her wherever.”

He has been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by multiple women.

He enthusiastically campaigned for a Senate candidate who was accused of molesting multiple teenage girls.

He waved around his arms, while giving a speech, to ridicule a physically disabled person.

He has encouraged his supporters to commit violence against his political opponents.

He has called for his opponents and critics to be investigated and jailed.

He uses a phrase popular with dictators — “the enemy of the people” — to describe journalists.

He attempts to undermine any independent source of information that he does not like, including judges, scientists, journalists, election officials, the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Congressional Budget Office and the National Weather Service.

He has tried to harass the chairman of the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates.

He said that a judge could not be objective because of his Mexican heritage.

He obstructed justice by trying to influence an investigation into his presidential campaign.

He violated federal law by directing his lawyer to pay $280,000 in hush money to cover up two apparent extramarital affairs.

He made his fortune partly through wide-scale financial fraud.

He has refused to release his tax returns.

He falsely accused his predecessor of wiretapping him.

He claimed that federal law-enforcement agents and prosecutors regularly fabricated evidence, thereby damaging the credibility of criminal investigations across the country.

He has ordered children to be physically separated from their parents.

He has suggested that America is no different from or better than Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

He has called America a “hellhole.”

He is the president of the United States, and he is a threat to virtually everything that the United States should stand for.

Nicholas Bate on RIG (Random Idea Generator)

During showers, in synaptic gaps and on walks along the beach with an excited dog, ideas are formed. The RIG (Random Idea Generator) embedded deep in your brain loves to engage but it needs space, a spark of stimulation and a little encouragement. It believes Less is More, Slow is Fast and There is Always a Solution. RIG will work in the rain, loves the quiet of a church and craves a nap. RIG is squashed, trampled and exhausted by e-mail over-load, notifications and conference calls. And RIG finds the bizarre bullet syntax of PPT debilitating. Love your RIG today.

Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris, Greg Miller, and Carol D. Leonnig, writing in The Washington Post, tells the familiar tale of someone thinking the President of the United States did something so wrong as to use an official whistleblower complaint, and now the White House is blocking the investigation. This is kind of a big deal.

The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said.

Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer who was elected in a landslide in May.

That call is already under investigation by House Democrats who are examining whether Trump and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to manipulate the Ukrainian government into helping Trump’s reelection campaign. Lawmakers have demanded a full transcript and a list of participants on the call.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

The Democrats’ investigation was launched earlier this month, before revelations that a U.S. intelligence official, who previously worked in the White House, had lodged a complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community. The Washington Post first reported on Wednesday that the complaint had to do with a “promise” that Trump made when communicating with a foreign leader.

The smart money is the whole whistleblower complaint centers on President Trump promising the new president of Ukraine $250 million in armaments if he’d reopen a criminal investigation involving Joe Biden and his son.

That’s one of them high crimes Presidents get impeached for, right?

Look, Trump realizes the truth of his phone call is going to come out. He is already doing what he does when this happens: tell everyone it happened and that there was nothing wrong with it.

That’s untrue.

He’s already admitted to talking about Biden during the call.

Peter Baker, writing for The New York Times, lays it out in the first two paragraphs

President Trump acknowledged on Sunday that he discussed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Ukraine’s president as Democrats ramped up calls for an investigation into whether he improperly pressured a foreign leader to investigate a political opponent.While Mr. Trump defended his July phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as perfectly appropriate, he confirmed that Mr. Biden came up during the discussion and that he accused the former vice president of corruption tied to his son Hunter’s business activities in that former Soviet republic.

Previously, Alan Cullison of The Wall Street Journal reported Trump told the Ukraine president to work with Rudolph Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. It appears this was definitely in relation to over $250 million in security aid. The implication is Trump was withholding the money in exchange for an investigation, and when he realized the whistleblower complaint centered on this, he released the funds.

Giuliani already admitted on national television he sought an investigation on Trump’s behalf.

If Trump tried to use military aid to Ukraine as leverage, he’s no better than a fucking mob boss. The security of America and Ukraine is just a way for Trump to get revenge on his potential political enemies. He used the office of the Presidency for his own personal gain. He elevated his own personal interests over national interests. This comes as no surprise to anyone paying half attention.

And, it doesn’t matter if there was no quid pro quo. If on the phone call he asked a foreign government to investigate a political opponent, that’s it. It’s a crime. If he’s innocent, then he’d release the recording and put an end to it.

If this is what happened, and it looks entirely plausible and likely, he’s going to have to be impeached. The politics here doesn’t matter. Lay out the entire case in open hearings. Get the whistleblower to come forward. Get the audio recording and transcript of the phone call. I know the Senate isn’t going to convict him. Republicans need to be put on the record as enabling this criminal.

Maybe a few of them won’t go along.

Aron Eisenberg, the actor responsible for bringing the Ferengi Nog to life on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, has died.

Far too young.

Here’s the full program from the 2019 Fighting Illini Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, hosted by Dave Revsine, at State Farm Center honoring the third Illinois Athletics Hall of Fame class on September 20, 2019.

Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris, Greg Miller and Carol D. Leonnig, writing in The Washington Post, tells the familiar tale of someone thinking the President of the United States did something so wrong as to use official whistleblower complaint and now the White House is blocking the investigation. This is kind of a big deal.

The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said.

Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer who was elected in a landslide in May.

That call is already under investigation by House Democrats who are examining whether Trump and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to manipulate the Ukrainian government into helping Trump’s reelection campaign. Lawmakers have demanded a full transcript and a list of participants on the call.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

The Democrats’ investigation was launched earlier this month, before revelations that a U.S. intelligence official, who previously worked in the White House, had lodged a complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community. The Washington Post first reported on Wednesday that the complaint had to do with a “promise” that Trump made when communicating with a foreign leader.

The smart money is the whole whistleblower complaint centers on President Trump promising the new president of Ukraine $250 million in armaments if he’d reopen a criminal investigation involving Joe Biden and his son.

That’s one of them high crimes President’s get impeached for right?

Here, I’ll let Seth Meyers explain it to you.

🤫 pic.twitter.com/feFUkBSSyr

— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) September 20, 2019

When the Cubs tied it in the 10^th, I turned the TV off I was so pissed. I just knew the Cardinals and Carlos Martinez had just choked the win away.

I played with the dog a bit who could tell I was worked up and he calmed me down.

I took a deep breath, turned the TV back on just in time to catch Carpenter stroking one right out of the ballpark. Huge momentum shift in the game and the series.

Cubs are sinking. If they lose this four game series, they might be knocked out of the playoff picture.

Now, could the Brewers stumble a bit? Please?