THAT dossier (updated)

Rachel Maddow and Malcolm Nance have been talking about the Steele dossier today. The Trump apologists keep going there as well: They continually remind us that the thing was compiled as oppo research -- as though the magic phrase "oppo research" automatically discredits everything in the document.

Excuse me, but isn't oppo research of value only if the uncovered dirt is true?

And forgive me for being logical, but isn't oppo research useful only if it is released before the election?

And pardon my penchant for consistency, but how can the Trumpers argue that oppo research is a bad thing when Christopher Steele does it but a fine thing when Donald Trump Jr. does it?

Explain: Why should the phrase "oppo research" cause us to disregard the dossier?

I haven't seen the Maddow segment yet; I will soon. If curiosity compels you to re-read the thing-in-itself, remember: On the day of the document's release, this humble blog was your only source for a full OCR scan of the entire Steele Dossier. No, it's not letter-perfect; I wasn't using the world's best software. But it's still very readable, and you can even transform the document into an audio file via a text-to-speech app (if you're into that sort of thing).

Here it is.

And here is the Palmer Report's summary of what we learned from Maddow:

Glenn Simpson from Fusion GPS testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in what ended up being ten hours of closed hearings on Monday. The upshot is that the company firmly stands behind the research in the Trump-Russia dossier. Now the public has begun calling for transcripts of the testimony to be released. Simpson has said he has no problem with his testimony being released. Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican Chair of that committee, was asked about it during a town hall tonight.

Rachel Maddow ended up airing the relevant portion of that town hall during her MSNBC show. Grassley affirmed that he’ll have the committee vote on whether to release the transcripts, and he stated that barring any hang-ups, he doesn’t see any reason why he won’t vote “yes” himself. The committee has eleven Republicans and nine Democrats, so it would only take Grassley and one other Republican voting “yes” (along with all of the Democrats) for the transcripts to be released.

That sounds jolly. Of course, the Republicans were hoping to use Simpson's testimony as a weapon against Hillary Clinton. If the testimony provided anything useful along those lines, we would have heard all about it by now.

Not many minutes ago, the Washington Examiner published a story which gives me the impression that Grassley really will release the transcript.

Update: I've now seen the Maddow show. Basically, the news is that MSNBC contacted Fusion GPS, which confirms that they stand by the dossier. Also, it appears very likely that Grassley will indeed vote to release the transcripts. At this point, even Donnie must be starting to understand the dangers of pissing off the GOP Establishment.

I've decided to embed a video of Malcolm Nance speaking about the dossier on Maddow's show. Confirmatory evidence may exist within the documents that GPS Fusion handed over to investigators. Trump, as you may have noticed, is acting GUILTY AS HELL.

Elsewhere...

Not much of a crowd. Daily Kos published a couple of pics of the crowd for Trump's rally. Do these images accurately depict the scene? If so -- WOW.

That's it? That's it?

During the speech, Trump genuinely seemed to be under the impression that he was speaking to a multitude. He even asked the "fire marshal" to squeeze in a few more people. Was he delusional, or was he putting on an act for the cameras?

This incident illustrates why the country will never forget Trump's lies about his inauguration crowd. What was startling was not the paucity of the audience on that January day but the man's psychotic insistence that the throng was larger than it actually was. This man's need to be loved gave us the heebie-jeebies.

Trump could have made the issue go away in one day, simply by making a civilized, mildly self-effacing statement. Something like this:

"Many of the people who attend inaugurations come from the DC area. I didn't win this part of the country, so they didn't show up to see me take the oath. I recognize that the burden is on me to earn their respect. With humility in my heart, I plan to do just that during the next four years."

Boom. Problem solved. The media would have loved those words.

Instead, Trump forced poor Sean Spicer to issue a ludicrous proclamation that the 2017 inauguration crowd was the largest ever, despite indisputable photographic evidence to the contrary.

And now the Trumpers are pretending that the Phoenix event was more popular than the last three Super Bowls put together, even though there have probably been better-attended lectures on early Aramaic phoneme shifts. This man's ego problems would be hilarious if he did not wield so much power.