Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others." – Aristotle

Things are happening fast n' furious in Washington, and Little Sister Resister is keeping her pulse on it. Count on LSR to digest the full banquet of news for you.


When last I wrote, Speaker Pelosi had just announced the commencement of an Impeachment Inquiry after a brave whistleblower came forward with credible allegations of wrongdoing by the President* of the United States.

The next morning, on Wednesday, September 25, an unredacted summary of TRUMP's phone call to Ukraine President Zelensky was released by the Whitewash House. It wasn't the word-for-word transcript; it was a summary. In it, there was damning evidence of abuse of power.

Here is the phone call summary. And here is PBS's annotation. My first thought, as PBS notes, is that the time stamp indicates a 30-minute conversation. The memo is awfully short for 30 minutes, even accounting for translation. The next thought I had was, wow! It's both surprising and not at all surprising that the Moron-in-Chief actually thought that this summary would exonerate him. Instead, he handed the People a silver platter piled with High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Dave Whamond

The next morning, Thursday September 26, the whistleblower complaint was released to the public. It's quite the read! Here it is if you haven't read it yet. I was still in bed on Thursday morning when it came in, and I took my time tasting every word. The New York Times has annotated it here.

The whistleblower complaint corroborates the rough transcript released by the Whitewash House.

It's evident that a lot of people are implicated in the scandal, not the least of which is Rudy Giuliani, TЯUMP's personal lawyer, and Bill Barr, TЯUMP's personal lawyer Attorney General of the United States. Today saw the first casualty of those implicated in the complaint, Kurt Volker, U.S. envoy to Ukraine, has left his position. Volker has already been called to give a deposition, as has four other State Department officials. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been subpoenaed, too.

The whistleblower complaint not only illustrates Don the Con's corruption and abuse of power, it also outlines a coordinated cover-up, implemented by several people in the administration, including placing the transcript of the phone call on a super-secret server. This is evidence of consciousness of guilt.

About the same time that the whistleblower letter was released to we the people, we had our first de facto impeachment hearing, when acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified to Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the House Intelligence Committee about the letter and how it was handled. Poorly. It was handled poorly. Acting DNI Maguire received the letter and took this complaint implicating criminal activity by the President* of the United States directly to.... the President* of the United States.

His defense, in part, is that he received the letter on his second day on the job; he was "still using Garmin to get to work." The Late Show with Stephen Colbert's response:




But in the same testimony, Maguire affirmed that the whistleblower acted in good faith and did the right thing.

SCROTUS has been deflated and small (in his presser while still at the UN; he could barely muster energy for his usual "the incredible wall.....I won the electoral college....but Hillary's emails...witch hunt...no collus...ZZzzz"). Of course, he tried lying and deflecting during the 48-minute-long statement. And he was typically neurologically impaired. He couldn't think of the phrase "first-hand" at the very beginning of his weird treatment of the whistleblower scandal at 2:40. He lied throughout his remarks, so much so that MSNBC cut away, calling out his lies. See his rambling speech here. He threw Pence under the bus at 17:24 and #PresidentPelosi started trending on Twitter. *sigh* wouldn't that be just dreamy?

On Twitter, he's angry. It's the usual yelling for the most part, but there was one especially bizarro tweet today. It's hard to discribe how much is wrong' with this tweet.

To show you how dishonest the LameStream Media is, I used the word Liddle’, not Liddle, in discribing Corrupt Congressman Liddle’ Adam Schiff. Low ratings @CNN purposely took the hyphen out and said I spelled the word little wrong. A small but never ending situation with CNN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2019

Journalists will start digging up all kinds of stuff. Here's an early one: A photo of Jared Kushner and President Zalenksy together. First published by Laura Rozen (click tweet to see photo):

Had noted the other night that on Ukrainegate, Kushner and Ivanka suddenly seem to be invisible. But I was wrong. Not invisible.

— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) September 26, 2019

It has been reported that the super-secret server has been used to store transcripts of calls with Putie and MBS as well. Hmmmmm.....

Late today, it became known that NRA president Wayne LaPierre has pledged money to help King Twit dig out of this mess. Or, as some analysts see it, pledged money that creates a whole new world of corrupt acts, including perhaps an outright pay-for-play scheme.

And quite alarmingly, at a going-away UN breakfast for career U.S. diplomatic workers (traditionally some of the hardest-working, patriotic, and non-partisan government employees there are), Benedict Donald basically called for the execution of the whistleblower and "the person who gave the whistleblower the information," calling their actions "lies and treason." Hear the audio taken by an attendee: Los Angeles Times. Disgusting behavior -- the very behavior that whistleblower laws are made to protect against. Talk about sending a chill throughout the intelligence community or anyone else who would be put in the position to speak out...

Our whistleblower is a courageous American hero and patriot! No one knows who the person is, and though there will be attempts to find his or her identity, we shouldn't find out. This person's safety is at stake. I envision a day 20-30 years from now, when we finally learn the identity, like we did when we learned that Mark Felt was Watergate's Deep Throat.

Congress is in recess for the next two weeks, but undoubtedly the committee chairs will stay on and work hard on this mess. The Iowa caucus is just four months away.

I leave you with the wise words of Dan Rather, who has been a voice of reason and calm throughout the last two and a half years.  He echos what I have strived to do throughout the months on this blog. Stay with me while we travel this road.



Here's the text if the link is broken for you:

Dan Rather

September 26 at 7:11 PM 

I am stunned. And I like to think I do not stun easily. 

I find myself at moments almost speechless - granted not a quality one associates with former or even current news anchors. 

This is a story unlike any I have ever seen. Its contours seem to entangle this administration like a giant squid around a submarine in an old science fiction film, tentacles prying apart what once seemed solid. With a spectacle like this, it's sometimes important to pause and try to take in as wide a picture as possible. There is so much we do not know, but what we know already is gravely striking. What the president, his lawyer, and others have already copped to would be enough to almost roll credits in a mob film. I apologize for the multiple cinematic allusions, but this story defies the imagination normally required for real life. 

For most of my life, my job was to try to make sense of events, big and small, in real time. Sort of like a play by play broadcaster relating to an audience what is transpiring, often ad libbing as new details emerge. 

I find myself wondering what it would be like to be in the midst of this story, either on the ground in Washington or in an anchor chair, tapping the incoming rivers of information from reporters, on Capitol Hill, at the White House, and at other perches necessary for covering this rapidly metastasizing narrative. 

What I return to, as I think back at other moments of crisis and uncertainty, is the need as a reporter and as a citizen to remain steady. Now steadiness should not be confused with apathy or detachment. We need to be engaged, with a steely determination to get to the bottom of what seems to be but the tip of a proverbial iceberg. There are many leads to follow, many new angles emerging. We cannot afford to lose grasp of the threads of the much bigger story arc. 

This is unprecedented. This is dangerous. But this is also necessary. We cannot panic in the face of what we confront, or get overwhelmed by details. We must breathe deep, take stock, see all for what it is, methodically and fairly uncover right from wrong, truth from fiction, and ultimately we must persevere, for the sake of our nation.

Stay tuned, Brother and Sister Resisters!