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Where Things Stand: Schiff Makes Bolton The Senate’s Problem 
Happy Friday, January 10. House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Thursday evening that he doesn’t plan to subpoena former National Security Adviser John Bolton for testimony before an impending Senate impeachment trial. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following.
Unmitigated Horror
It now seems very clear that that Ukrainian airliner that crashed after takeoff from Tehran was accidentally shot down by the Iranian military, almost certainly on some kind of hair trigger alert awaiting possible US retaliation after the volley of missiles which were retaliation for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani.
This was pretty clear on the basis of logic and probability. Even as aerophobe, I know that airliner crashes are extremely, extremely rare. In those rare instances, they seldom fall out of the sky on fire as this one did. The fact that this happened basically at the exact moment when the Iranians would have been awaiting US retaliation from the air in response to their missile attack makes the probabilities pretty clear.
Is It Time to Send the Articles?
We’re back to this question of when Nancy Pelosi is going to send the articles of impeachment, now going on a month old, to the Senate. One relatively prominent member of the Democratic caucus, Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA), actually went off message and then had to walk back his remarks this morning. So is it time? Is it time for Speaker Pelosi to go ahead and get on with it?
I can’t see any reason to rush this. Really none at all.
Where Things Stand: Is Pelosi’s Caucus Growing Restless?
Happy Thursday, January 9. A House Democrat signaled earlier this morning that there might be an element of restlessness swelling within House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) caucus over her prolonged possession of the articles of impeachment. Hours later, he walked it back. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following today.
TPM Reader BF disagrees with JB about who was pushing who on Trump’s decision to kill Qasem Solemaini …
No, no, no. JB is wrong here. This isn’t about Pompeo or some other lone actor talking Trump into something. And it isn’t about Trump surprising everyone by choosing a throw-away option.
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The Age of Dissimulation
I’ve written a few times that opacity, extortion and confusion are the hallmarks of Trumpism. I’ve spent the last couple months trying to draw these ideas together for a larger project. Part of this story centers on the ways American politics and specifically America’s relations abroad have been subsumed under fuzzy or opaque ties with a series of foreign powers — specifically ones where power is personalized in either strongman or familial rule, where political power is bundled together with wealth.