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and the GOP has shed its last vestige not only of patriotic adherence to democratic norms, but to its dignity as well.

The fawn-a-thon we saw yesterday is something seen only in dictatorships.

Welcome to America.

This is a make-or-break moment for American democracy.

In The New York Times, Yascha Mounk writes:

“Mr. Trump, Fox News and Republicans in Congress seem to be actively using falsehoods to prepare an assault on the institutions that allow American democracy to function. . . the pundits and politicians who have helped to delegitimize Mr. Mueller and his investigation over the past weeks are making themselves active accomplices in a deliberate assault on our democracy. “

Rep. Devin Nunes presides over a lawless GOP cabal within the House Intelligence Committee, which plans sedition via an orchestrated attempt to accuse the FBI of criminality.

We’re watching a slow-mo, now faster and faster mo, coup unfold by the GOP. It is attempting to overthrow the rule of law in America.

Sen. Mark Warner on Wednesday nobly attempted to put the GOP on notice.

Rep. Adam Schiff to Rachel Maddow:

“There are two categories of Republicans in Congress: those who will burn down the House to protect Trump, and those who will stand mute while they do it.”

neglects to mention in this story on the shadow investigation that GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee are running on “The Dossier” that the dossier was originally commissioned by Republicans.

The GOP simply does not care about anything except doing what its sociopathic megadonors demand:

At Truth Out, William Rivers Pitt encapsulates:

“Let the elderly wither, let the infirm wilt, let the students stumble, let the teachers flail, let the seas rise and the skies boil, let the future be only for the gilded few and everything else can fall to dust. They got what they came for, and the paymasters are pleased.”

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo describes the Vice-President’s paean to His Supreme Leadership Trump’s divine rule as “something out of 1930s Russia or perhaps North Korea.”

An enduring image of beauty, amid the horrors of Trump and the current GOP.

I recently interviewed Janice Cohen Adelson, a member of New York City Ballet’s debut performance Nutcracker in February 1954.

Le Clercq’s Dewdrop in the Waltz of the Flowers:

“Everything was so pointed and sharp and crisp and radiant. . . she was a dragonfly. She’s in that itty-bitty tutu, and that radiant face. That exquisite but different face. She glowed. I always felt that there was this sparkly halo about her.”

To save his sorry hide from a country-club jail, Mini Me Trump goes once more to the totalitarian well in his remarks the other night.

The Trump crime family is now openly pursuing a coup against American democracy.

“An appeal to the heart of autocracy,” ex CIA-head Michael Hayden describes it, talking to Don Lemon.

It’s very interesting that we’re hearing conservative Republicans like Hayden and Woolsey sound an alarm about Trump and White House, Inc.

And yet the current GOP Congress will follow Trump anywhere, as long as the path is paved with tax cuts for the super-wealthy and crippling attacks on the American middle and working classes.

That’s what the GOP is attempting to pull off, where government agency officers are purged for the crime of being a Democrat.

Just look at what Sen. Grassley and the House GOP committees are in the process of doing.

And the GOP President is be shielded from any legal scrutiny or accountability whatsoever.