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Nunes Says He Held Russia Hearings Alone in His Apartment and They Went Great |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Tuesday, 06 February 2018 14:54 |
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Borowitz writes: "Representative Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Wednesday that he just spent several days alone in his apartment holding hearings on President Donald J. Trump's ties to Russia and that those hearings 'went really great.'"
Devin Nunes. (photo: Melina Mara/WP/Getty Images)
Nunes Says He Held Russia Hearings Alone in His Apartment and They Went Great
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
06 February 18
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 epresentative Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Wednesday that he just spent several days alone in his apartment holding hearings on President Donald J. Trump’s ties to Russia and that those hearings “went really great.”
“Having concluded several days of hearings on my own in my apartment, I am one hundred per cent satisfied that the President had no involvement with the Russians,” Nunes said. “Now it’s time to move on.”
While Nunes would not reveal who testified at the hearings in his apartment, he called their testimony “credible and productive.”
“I didn’t know what to expect when the hearings started, but, take my word for it, they were really, really good,” he said.
The disclosure that Nunes had conducted the Russia hearings alone in his apartment drew howls of protest from Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. “No one on the committee was invited to these hearings,” Schiff said. “I can’t believe that Devin keeps trying to get away with this crap.”
Nunes, however, pushed back against Schiff’s rebuke. “If Adam had ever seen my apartment, he would know there was not enough room to fit the whole committee in there,” he said.
After speaking to reporters, Nunes headed to the White House, where Trump presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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FOCUS: Donald Trump's Very Soviet Fixation on Applause |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=46742"><span class="small">Masha Gessen, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Tuesday, 06 February 2018 12:54 |
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Gessen writes: "I sometimes joke that growing up in the Soviet Union prepared me for working as a journalist in the United States."
Joseph Stalin and Donald Trump. (photo: Getty Images)
Donald Trump's Very Soviet Fixation on Applause
By Masha Gessen, The New Yorker
06 February 18
 sometimes joke that growing up in the Soviet Union prepared me for working as a journalist in the United States. That joke has become less funny now that the President is positioning applause as a central issue of American politics. On Monday, before a crowd at a manufacturing plant, in Ohio, Donald Trump criticized Democrats who did not applaud during his first State of the Union address. “They were like death and un-American,” he said. “Un-American. Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?”
In Soviet politics, too, applause was a central issue—sometimes, it seemed, the central issue. Whenever the Politburo or the Central Committee of the Supreme Soviet or the Party Congress had a session, the newspaper would fill with endless metres of incomprehensible gray copy, in which the only lines that made any sense were the parenthetical clauses describing applause. The Soviet papers had more ways to describe applause than they had for any other event in society or nature.
“Applause” was your vanilla clapping.
“Enthusiastic applause” (literally: “stormy applause”) took the description up a notch. No enthusiastic—much less stormy—emotion was actually in evidence: Soviet apparatchiks usually stood still, mechanically touching their hands together. But “stormy applause” did last a bit longer than plain applause.
“Thunderous applause” was even more enthusiastic than “enthusiastic applause.”
“Enthusiastic applause transitioning to an ovation” was even bigger and longer and often involved standing.
“Enthusiastic long-lasting applause transitioning to an ovation. Everybody stands.” You get the idea. In my recollection, this was often the last line of a newspaper report, but a media-dictionary entry compiled by a Russian media outlet offers more options. (This was compiled years ago; all the people involved with that project have long since lost their jobs.) “Enthusiastic applause that refuses to quiet down, transitioning to an ovation. Everyone stands. Audience member spontaneously shouts out, ‘Glory to the party of Lenin!’ ” “Enthusiastic applause that refuses to quiet down, transitioning to an ovation. Everyone stands and sings ‘The Internationale.’ ”
Naturally, this emphasis on clapping led to a kind of applause inflation. Here, for example, is a two-and-a-half-minute clip of Joseph Stalin giving a speech in 1937, at the height of the Great Terror. Stalin is speaking at a campaign event. (Russia had fake elections then, too.) You can observe the progression from “applause,” which lasts five seconds, to “enthusiastic applause,” which lasts fifteen seconds, to “enthusiastic applause transitioning to an ovation,” which lasts twenty-two seconds, to a finale that consists of three short bursts of “applause” before turning into “enthusiastic applause transitioning to an ovation. Everybody stands.”
Over the next fifteen years, it appears, applause became largely panic-driven; contemporary accounts show that people feared that the first person to stop clapping would be the first to be hauled off to jail. Failure to applaud could certainly be considered treason. So they went on and on, shouting “Long live Comrade Stalin,” “Glory to our beloved Comrade Stalin,” and “Glory to the revolution,” clapping until the palms of their hands bled. At the same time, the crowd seemed preternaturally attuned to the orator-in-chief: watching footage from the nineteen-forties and fifties, one wonders about how people knew at which moment to begin clapping in unison, and marvels at how quickly and completely they quieted down as soon as Stalin opened his mouth to speak.
A generation later, that discipline was gone. Here is Leonid Brezhnev speaking, or trying to speak, at the opening of a Komsomol (Communist Youth League) congress, in 1974. The thousands of people in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses will not stop clapping. Brezhnev is helpless to control them. There seems to be confusion between the applauders and the applauded: Brezhnev tries signalling to the crowd, joining the crowd, sitting, standing, smiling—all for naught.
This was no longer the era of terror, and the Komsomol members no longer feared being accused of treason or sent to jail. Nor did they necessarily think that clapping their hands together was the best way of expressing love of their country. They just had nothing better to do: once they stopped clapping, they would have to sit down and listen to hours of mind-numbing speeches that, the following day, would cover the endless pages of newspapers with incomprehensible gray words, among which only the lines “applause,” “enthusiastic applause,” and “enthusiastic applause transitioning to an ovation, everybody stands” stood out like something resembling the language of human communication.
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FOCUS: Trump's Comey Problem |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Tuesday, 06 February 2018 11:27 |
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Pierce writes: "Over at Lawfareblog, they've gotten a hold of a cache of e-mails from inside the FBI from the immediate aftermath of the president*'s firing of director James Comey."
Former FBI director James Comey testifying in Washington on May 3, 2017. (photo: AP)
Trump's Comey Problem
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
06 February 18
The president*'s decision to fire the FBI director may be his worst decision to date.
 ver at Lawfareblog, they’ve gotten a hold of a cache of e-mails from inside the FBI from the immediate aftermath of the president*’s firing of director James Comey. These are significant in a couple of ways: first, the release of these e-mails can fairly be seen as a counterstroke against the president* and his congressional dogsled team, and second, they give a pretty good look at the kind of chaos that Comey’s firing occasioned in the Bureau’s rank and file.
When President Trump fired James Comey as FBI director last May, the special agent in charge of the Detroit field office, David Gelios, wrote an email to his staff: “ I just saw CNN reporting that Director Comey has been fired by President Trump. I have no notification from HQ of any such thing. If I receive any information from HQ, I will advise. I’d ask all to stand by for clarification of this reporting. I am only sending this because I want everyone to know I have received no HQ confirmation of the reporting. I hope this is an instance of fake news.”
Oh, and the e-mails also provide further evidence that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is an utterly truthless drone whose daily briefings are unworthy of serious attention. At the time Comey was fired, the White House line, peddled by SarahHuck and by the vulgar talking yam for whom she works, was that agents in the Bureau had “lost confidence” in Comey’s leadership. (At the time, the president*, of course, would undercut his own outrageous lie by telling Lester Holt that he canned Comey over the Russia thing.) These e-mails show a sense of outrage among the grunts in the field offices on whose behalf Sanders and Trump presumed to speak.
Before detailing the story these documents tell, let’s pause a moment over the story they do not tell. They contain not a word that supports the notion that the FBI was in turmoil. They contain not a word that reflects gratitude to the president for removing a nut job. There is literally not a single sentence in any of these communications that reflects criticism of Comey’s leadership of the FBI. Not one special agent in charge describes Comey’s removal as some kind of opportunity for new leadership. And if any FBI official really got on the phone with Sanders to express gratitude or thanks “for the president’s decision,” nobody reported that to his or her staff.
They also reveal the confusion within the Bureau as they tried to get Comey, who was on the west coast at the time, back to Washington. This occasioned a fit from the president*, whom everybody sensibly ignored.
After the president fired Comey there was some uncertainty about whether Comey, as a former FBI employee, would have to pay his way home from LAX or would be able to use the director’s plane. NBC recently reported that an irate Trump called McCabe a day after the firing asking why Comey had been permitted to return to Washington on an FBI plane. McCabe indicated that he hadn’t been consulted about the use of the plane but, had anyone asked, he would have approved the request. Thanks to one of these emails, we now have a small window into what went on at the FBI at the time. On May 11, Gregory Cox, assistant director of the Critical Incident Response Group, emailed all of the Critical Incident Response Group thanking “all who were involved in efforts to bring home former Director Comey from Los Angeles on Tuesday evening.” The apparent defiance may be subtle, but it is unmistakable. Cox may not have known that his email dealt with a point the president had personally raised with the acting director, but he thanked his people for doing the right thing by Comey irrespective of politics he was surely aware of in a generic sense.
I don’t minimize how thoroughly Comey bungled at the end of the 2016 presidential campaign. If what he’s doing now is atonement, that’s only right. He has a lot for which he should atone. But the sense of dislocation in these e-mails shows where the current propaganda war against the FBI first took root. It’s where the water first went muddy.
It is the most elemental form of the ongoing damage that is no worse than even money to keep us from ever knowing everything about the Russian ratfcking of the 2016 presidential election, and to prevent us from taking the steps we need to prevent the same thing happening in 2018 and 2020. This, of course, may be the whole point.
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Panic Time: Democratic Cash Swamps House Republicans |
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Tuesday, 06 February 2018 09:31 |
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Schneider writes: "More than 40 House Republican incumbents were outraised in the final quarter of 2017 by one - or several - of their Democratic opponents."
Republicans, despite a recent uptick in the polls since the beginning of the year, face significant structural challenges, the fundraising figures show. (photo: Getty Images)
Panic Time: Democratic Cash Swamps House Republicans
By Elena Schneider, Politico
06 February 18
The latest fundraising figures have been released, and the results are grim for Republicans.
s it time for Republicans to start freaking out?
More than 40 House Republican incumbents were outraised in the final quarter of 2017 by one — or several — of their Democratic opponents, according to the latest round of fundraising numbers. And of that group, more than a dozen had less cash on hand than their Democratic challengers.
For the GOP, here’s the really disturbing part: The trendline is getting worse, not better. Despite the myriad advantages of incumbency and control of Congress, there are more House members with less cash on hand than their Democratic challengers than the quarter before.
“Those numbers should be concerning for all Republicans,” said Mike DuHaime, a GOP consultant based in New Jersey. “This is going to be the most challenging political environment since 2006, so you have to be ready. And lot of these members came in after 2006, so for many, this will be the most challenging environment they’ve ever run in. And that’s going to prove difficult.”
A flood of Democratic money poured into House races across the country in 2017, provided in large part by small-dollar, online contributors animated by opposition to President Donald Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress. More than 80 Democratic challengers in Republican-held districts have at least $250,000 in cash on hand at the end of the year — a sign that the House battlefield may be wider than previously thought.
Republicans, despite a recent uptick in the polls since the beginning of the year, face significant structural challenges, the fundraising figures show. A slew of recent retirements in expensive media markets, such as New Jersey and California, will force Republicans to spend more to defend open seats as they bid farewell to well-funded incumbents. But Republicans believe that the tax bill — passed in late December, so too late to affect these financial reports — will help them rebound in the first quarter of 2018.
John J. Faso of New York, who was first elected in 2016, is among the Republican members facing several cash-flush opponents. Democrats Antonio Delgado, an attorney, and Pat Ryan, a technology executive and veteran, both outraised the freshman congressman, while Delgado and yet another Democrat, businessman Brian Flynn, lead Faso in cash on hand.
Tom Garrett (R-Va.) was outraised by three Democratic opponents, all of whom also hold more cash in the bank than the freshman congressman.
Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), who’s cruised to reelection since the late 1980s, is facing two well-funded Democrats. Harley Rouda, a businessman, and Hans Keirstead, a stem-cell researcher, topped Rohrabacher in fundraising last quarter, while Rouda now holds a cash-on-hand advantage over the congressman. Rohrabacher’s traditionally Republican district in Orange County narrowly backed Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Four Democratic House members raised less money than their Republican challengers, including Matt Cartwright, who’s defending a slice of eastern Pennsylvania that swung hard in favor of Trump in 2016. He was outraised by John Chrin, a self-funding former investment banker.
Republicans acknowledged that some members are out of practice, leaving them behind with just over nine months left before Election Day.
“Sitting and dialing and pushing for money — they’re not used to doing that, and most of them don’t like to,” said Rob Stutzman, a California-based GOP consultant. “So some of this is fat, flabby and out-of-shape fundraising muscles. Those are districts where we should be raising more.”
Republican strategists stressed that falling behind in cash on hand — the amount sitting in a member’s bank account — is a serious problem because “the only thing that matters is cash on hand, and the Republican incumbent members who have Democratic challengers with a cash-on-hand advantage need to work harder and raise more money,” said Corry Bliss, executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the flagship outside group tasked with maintaining the GOP’s majority in the House.
But Republicans, including Bliss, also noted that the money raised by Democrats will first be spent in potentially bruising primaries, draining Democrats’ war chests ahead of the general election.
Democrats “will spend their money [in] a June primary trying to make new friends, only to lose in November,” said Cam Savage, a GOP consultant advising Faso, who added that the congressman won by an 8-point margin in 2016.
Democrats, however, believe that the fundraising surge won’t diminish after the primaries because the “biggest injection of energy for Democrats is reading the front page every day, and that’s not going away,” said John Lapp, a Democratic consultant who ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's independent-expenditure unit in the 2006 cycle. “The Democratic surge in fundraising is just another example of the Democratic surge in energy in this election overall, and that energy is being monetized.”
Not every House Republican is getting outraised: The party still has its share of campaign-cash powerhouses, including among its most vulnerable members. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), whose district backed Clinton by 10 points in 2016, continues to lead more than half a dozen Democrats jockeying to take her on in November.
Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) holds five times more cash in the bank than his likely Democratic opponent, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, in his South Florida district, which Clinton won by the second-widest margin of any GOP-held House seat in 2016.
“Part of what sustains a candidate in a difficult environment is a strong personal brand, but for those trying to build a brand for the first time while trying to dodge a hail of bullets — let’s just say that’s complicated,” said Josh Penry, a Republican strategist based in Colorado. “The candidates who have an established strong, independent voice are in a different and stronger place than those without one.”
At least one Republican got the message in the most recent quarter: John Culberson of Texas. The Houston-area congressman finished the summer with less cash on hand than two Democrats, but by Christmas, Culberson had raised more money than all of his potential opponents.
Republicans also believe that passing tax reform in late December — only weeks before the close of the year — “should help” with the first quarter of 2018, Stutzman said. And the party's chances of holding on to the House appear to have ticked up over the past month. What was once a double-digit deficit in generic ballot polling is down to 7 points, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
“The Republican Party needed a win in a big way, and the tax bill was a win,” said Danny Laub, a GOP consultant. “From a donor perspective, I do think the tax bill is certainly a positive for fundraising.”
Former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) said Republicans have “put together some basic wins for their base that will be articulated very clearly in November, and it’ll be classic language — Republicans voted for less taxes, and Democrats wanted amnesty and shut down the government.”
Republican outside groups can also shore up weak GOP members. The Congressional Leadership Fund and American Action Network, its sister organization, raised more than $66 million in 2017, and “January [2018] was, by far, the best month we’ve had this cycle,” Bliss said.
That outside-group commitment worries Lapp, who said that “when you look at $35 million the Koch brothers spent on that tax plan, then you know they are similarly getting ready to go to spend that kind of dark, special-interest money in the general election.”
Andy Kim, who served on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, raised more money than Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), a self-funder who has easily won reelection since 2014.
“We have a ton of momentum in the district,” Kim said, noting that a thousand volunteers are working with his campaign. “That’s what happens when you’re running against the lead author on the Trumpcare bill and the only New Jersey congressman who voted for the tax bill.”
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hree Januarys ago, Gov. Rick Snyder described a River of Opportunity all Michiganders could enter as long as the state improved third-grade reading proficiency.
