It’s tempting to make fun of this garbage, but you have to remember that there’s only one thing this guy is any kind of good at, and it’s branding. When he does it, it looks like this, and it often works. So watch out for this crap.

So, a few things to know, here.

1. Is the wall under construction? Short answer: No, not really. Longer answer: He got some funding last year for some repairs to existing walls/fences, and to extend some of the existing fence, so, sorta? (FactCheck.org, NBC News, NPR.)
2. Crime rates are down significantly already, and have been falling steadily and dramatically for a couple of decades now. (Pew Research, Vox, Brennan Center.)
3. Specifically at the southern border, crime has been falling steadily over the last few years. (CBP.gov, FactCheck.org, Brookings Institution)

Heads up, y’all. McConnell’s finally allowing a vote on bills to reopen the government.

Via @SenateCloakroom: “The Senate has proceeded to H.R.268, Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2019. Votes Scheduled: At 2:30 pm on Thursday, January 24th, the Senate will proceed to 2 votes on the following in relation to H.R.268, Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2019: 1. Motion to invoke cloture on Amendment #5 | 2. Motion to invoke cloture on Amendment #6.”

One of the votes is for Trump’s “compromise” (which is not actually a compromise but a bunch of empty “promises” he will promptly backslide on) and one is for one of the House bills for govt. funding, but no funding for the wall. (Still sorting out which is which.)

Read this Twitter thread for instructions. TL;DR? Call your GOP senators (if you have them), particularly if your senator is Tillis, Gardner, Murkowski, Collins or Capito, and tell them to vote YES on the House bill and NO on the Trump compromise bill.

Americans toss the idea of impeaching a president around pretty casually in conversation. We demand it, we talk about it like it’s a one-and-done kind of thing.

It is not. It really, really isn’t.

You can read about how federal impeachment works on Wikipedia, but very basically, the House Judiciary Committee first investigates if a president has committed impeachable offenses of some sort. “Impeachable offenses” are defined pretty vaguely in the Constitution: “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

So first the House Judiciary investigates. Investigation can take quite awhile – months, easily. If they find something they think is an “impeachable offense,” usually some kind of crime, the Judiciary will issue articles of impeachment with specific allegations. The articles of impeachment are sent on to the full House of Representatives.

The House debates the various allegations and votes on the articles of impeachment. A simple majority vote is needed to pass the articles. After that, folks from the House of Representatives present the case to the Senate.

The Senate holds a trial. The House presents the prosecution case, and the president would have his lawyers defend him. After hearing the case, the Senate deliberates among themselves, and they need a two-thirds super majority to convict the president.

Once the president is convicted, he’s out. This is a process that can take months. Clinton’s impeachment took just over a year, and I don’t think that’s counting whatever investigations the House Judiciary did at the time.

Impeaching a president is a lengthy, cumbersome, drama-filled process, and one that is not generally undertaken lightly by Congress.

Another thing to consider: The United States has never actually impeached and convicted a president before. We’ve never kicked a president out of office.

We’ve impeached two presidents in the House, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, but they were both acquitted in the Senate. We started to impeach Richard Nixon, but he resigned before we really got going.

We’ve had 45 presidents over the course of 242 years. Some of them were pretty frickin’ awful. A few of them were monsters. And we’ve never kicked a single one out of office by impeachment.

I’m pointing this out to you because I want you to understand that impeaching a president and removing them from office has a momentous weight of history bearing down on it. This is the kind of action that stamps its mark on history for generations.

This is, as Joe Biden might say, a big fuckin’ deal.

Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do it. I’m not saying Trump doesn’t deserve it. (If anyone does, I’m pretty sure it’s him.) I’m just saying, this is not a thing you just up and do.

So if you’re one of the many, many people or news pundits out there who’s all “He should be impeached, why aren’t we impeaching him, we should do it tomorrow, yaddayaddayadda,” hey, take a breath. This isn’t going out for ice cream, man.

It’s probably gonna happen. We’ll probably at least try to impeach Trump. But it’s going to take a minute. Nobody changes the arc of history overnight.

Featured photo: US Capitol Building, by Martin Falbisoner. CC BY-SA 3.0. Source and licensing.

Maaaan. They’re doing another Ghostbusters sequel/reboot/thing.

This one’s going to be in the Bill Murray/Dan Aykroyd/etc. “universe,” not a sequel to the 2016 Ghostbusters, and I just, uugh.

I enjoyed the 2016 Ghostbusters. It was funny and fun, Chris Hemsworth was a gem, and Kate McKinnon’s Jillian was the best. I thought it had a few problems. Leslie Jones was pretty underserved by her character, for starters. They should have given her something better to work with. But overall? Good movie. Laughed my ass off.

Then the Internet’s Pissbaby Men’s League got their knickers all in a twist over the movie because – *gasp!* – there were girls in it. If you don’t remember, it turned into a whole bullshit thing. They deliberately tanked the scores for the movie on review sites. If you mentioned the movie on social media (particularly Twitter), pissbabies ganged up on you and shat all over your account.

It was endless. They chased Leslie Jones off Twitter with horrific, racist abuse. Parts of Twitter and Reddit were wall-to-wall fat jokes and hate for Melissa McCarthy.

All because they put girls in a Ghostbusters movie.

Now they’re doing this sequel/reboot/whatever thing in the “original universe” and there’s already pissbabies crowing about it on Twitter and shitting up women’s tweets about it. And I just…

If I have to listen to one more crybaby who’s mad because he’s such a socially-inept trash person that he can’t get laid so he’s mad about women doing literally anything and turns up for every new inclusive nerd thing to shit all over it, my hand to god, I will lose my entire damn mind.

See, here’s the thing: I grew up watching Ghostbusters. I loved the first movie, I loved the cartoon, I even loved the considerably less-than-stellar Ghostbusters II. I had the toys, I think I even dressed as a Ghostbuster for Halloween once. I loved Ghostbusters 2016.

I want to love this new movie (assuming it even gets made, which is up in the air, since they’ve been trying to make a third Ghostbusters for like 30 years and it hasn’t happened yet).

But now Ghostbusters is a thing. And if I go see the movie, or talk about it, I have to feel like I’m somehow supporting or encouraging the Pissbaby Men’s League. Like, I just want to watch people be funny and fight ghosts with weird laser guns.

I’m living in a golden age of nerddom, and all the nerdy things I love are getting more and more inclusive of women and non-white and non-straight/cis people (well, that one’s moving a bit slower, but we’re getting there), and I feel like the things I love are now more available for more people to love, which is awesome. Except every time someone tries to open up a new realm of nerddom for more people to enjoy, this little clique of assholes rages up and shits all over everyone, and ruins it.

It’s just so tedious and tiresome.

So, assuming they manage to make a new Ghostbusters, I dunno. I probably won’t bother watching it in the theater. Not sure I’ll bother renting it or even Netflixing it. I just can’t stand the idea of encouraging these assholes anymore.