As far as Nunes can tell, none of us have even met with Trump

[PerkingFaintly]

Devin Nunes Gets A Pretty Basic Fact Wrong In Defending His Memo
Nunes suggested that Donald Trump had never met with George Papadopoulos. There's a photo of them sitting at the same table.
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/devin-nunes-memo_us_5a788b57e4b01fe513a60603

And we certainly didn't have a national security meeting right here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3150505-The-one-in-which-Trump-orders-his-staff-to-fire-Mueller-and-they-give-him-the-finger?pg=1

Oh I think they shall.

Just keep on keeping on. It's a race now.

theintercept.com/2018/02/08/donald-trump-nuclear-war/

Yes. Well...........

Maybe the parade followed by a firework display will suffice as distraction?

Who can tell?

So. Looks like Sen Rand Paul (GOP) is filibustering (live on CSpan) to an empty Senate Chamber to block the vote on the CR/budget. Apparently he wanted to add an amendment to the bill and the Senate Leaders said 'no'. So he's thrown his toys out the pram.

Shutdown likely, agencies have been told to prepare.

cozie you'll be glad to know we've made contingency plans for Yosemite!

I also heard today that a 'Pentagon Official' has said that whilst Trump may get his parade, it may not be in Wash DC.

Ooooh, that would be a loverly sight. A few random tanks and troops parading down Main Street in Beaver Bottom KY whilst Trump reviews the troops from the back of a flat-bed Ford truck. Just his speed!

Good.

(I hope it didn't involve too much spirituous liquor!)

Manu Raju
@mkraj
NEW DETAILS about Nunes' push to target Steele dossier, including hauling McCain associate before committee as attorney lashed out at staff for divulging details of testimony to another lawyer. He was hit with a subpoena after
complaining. w/ @jeremyherb.

<a class="break-all" href="https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/02/08/politics/devin-nunes-tactics-dossier-russia-investigation/index.html#click=t.co/SRPQStevF5" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/02/08/politics/devin-nunes-tactics-dossier-russia-investigation/index.html#click=t.co/SRPQStevF5

[alSo trump has until tomorrow (Friday) to decide whether to release the dem’s memo]

I was talking to my Bellwether friend a short while ago and he opined:

'Things have come to a pretty pass when you place your reliance on someone with the nickname 'Mad Dog'!

(Note to the purists: I'm aware that he doesn't like to be called that.)

cozie There will be copious amounts of spiritous liquor involved, yes. But then again, there always is!

There's an RV park just outside the park so if we can't get into our reserved spot in the Park we'll get a site there. Upside...full hookups!

That's my gal,

Richard Blumenthal
‏
Verified account

@SenBlumenthal

Glad Chairman Grassley is acceding to our calls for hearings, but we'll need subpoenas for witnesses – especially Kushner, Trump, Jr. – and documents. The big question: when will Chairman Grassley issue those subpoenas and to whom?

Sneaky.

www.palmerreport.com/analysis/gop-porter-senator/7823/

Government shutdown:

The Associated Press
@AP
BREAKING: The U.S. government shut down at midnight, as Congress misses deadline to pass spending bill.

Matt Viser
@mviser
“How come you were against Obama’s deficits but you’re not against Republican deficits?” Rand Paul asks on the Senate floor. “Isn’t that the very definition of intellectual dishonesty?"

And

Brian Schatz
@brianschatz
These guys just blew a hole in the deficit 1.5 trillion dollars wide for basically no economic reason and sure enough now they are talking about cutting social security.
And

Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
! Charlie Dent: "When Rand Paul pulls a stunt like this, [it’s] easy to understand why it's difficult to be Rand Paul's next door neighbor."

www.politico.com/story/2018/02/08/government-shutdown-dumbest-ever-400988

And

Pedro da Costa
@pdacosta
Gentle reminder: John McCain has publicly stated #RandPaul 'is now working for Vladimir Putin'

www.politico.com/story/2017/03/mccain-rand-paul-is-now-working-for-vladimir-putin-236106

And

shauna
@goldengateblond
CNN: “Second shutdown of the Trump era!”
MSNBC: “Second shutdown of the Trump era!”
FOX: "President Hillary did emails!”

More smears/coordination/obstruction

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Wow! -Senator Mark Warner got caught having extensive contact with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch. Warner did not want a “paper trail” on a “private” meeting (in London) he requested with Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame. All tied into Crooked Hillary.

And

Julian Assange ⌛
@JulianAssange
When the sun shines it gets warner.

And this is how it's being received by trumpsters

Jack Murphy
@RealJack
BREAKING: It literally never ends...

Mark Warner, a Democratic Senator and head of the Russian probe in Senate Intel Committee, texted with a lobbyist of a Russian oligarch in an attempt to set up a meeting with dossier author Christopher Steele last year.

Lou Dobbs
@LouDobbs
Dimms & Deep State Subversion- @Jim_Jordan: Why did Senator Mark Warner try to meet Christopher Steele by himself? Why did he go through a Russian oligarch’s lobbyist? This is why we need a 2nd Special Counsel. @realDonaldTrump #MAGA #TrumpTrain #Dobbs

But

Donald Trump Jr. Just Provided Proof That He Is Colluding With Fox News And Putin To Kill The Russia Investigaton

www.politicususa.com/2018/02/08/donald-trump-jr-fox-news-colluding-russia-smear-sen-mark-warner.html

And

Andrew Lawrence‏
@ndrew_lawrence
Um, HOLY SHIT

But remember a week ago when Assange tried to DM Hannity with dirt on Mark Warner

Guess where "leaked texts" from Mark Warner just showed up

twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/961752645684924416

Matt Scharfstein 🇺🇸
@MattAsherS

This is how Putin & Trump wage war. #InformationWarfare

Step 1: @FoxNews, Trump or Putin decides they want some non-public info.

Step 2: Someone gets hacked.

Step 3: Wikileaks releases the hacked information.

Step 4: Fox News/trolls breathlessly push the leak.

Step 5: Repeat

And

Pwn All The Things
@pwnallthethings

1. Assange accidentally DMs a fake hannity account claiming to have dirt on SSCI Ranking member @MarkWarner
2. A week later Hannity claims to have a bunch of hacked SMSes from Mark Warner.

It's a mystery

What constantly blows my mind is not just how they are all acting in such bad faith here, but how fucking incompetent they all are at it.

And

Clint Watts
@selectedwisdom
Recap, Trump’s CIA Director calls Wikileaks/Assange hostile actor, Assange mistakenly tips fake Hannity account on Warner dirt, 10 days later Warner texts surface FoxNews - if FoxNews worked with Assange to get texts, @FoxNews working with enemy of US

Julian Assange Offered Hannity Impersonator ‘News’ About Top Democrat

The head of Wikileaks told @SeanHannity_ to seek ‘other channels’ for information on Sen. Mark Warner of the Trump-Russia investigation. ‘@SeanHannity_’ was a woman in Texas.

www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-thought-he-was-messaging-sean-hannity-when-he-offered-news-on-democrat-investigating-trump-russia

But!

Marco Rubio‏Verified account
@marcorubio
Sen.Warner fully disclosed this to the committee four months ago.Has had zero impact on our work. fxn.ws/2nXIdM6 #FoxNews

www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/08/democratic-sen-mark-warner-texted-with-russian-oligarch-lobbyist-in-effort-to-contact-dossier-author-christopher-steele.html

Update on shutdown:

Caroline O.
@RVAwonk
#BREAKING: Two hours into the second government shutdown of 2018, the Senate has passed a budget bill. Now, the bill is headed to the House — where its future is uncertain. #shutdown2018

FBI surveillance of Carter Page might have picked up Bannon

The former Trump campaign adviser says he spoke to Trump aide Steve Bannon about Russia in January 2017, at a time when the FBI had a controversial warrant to monitor Page's communications.

www.politico.com/story/2018/02/08/carter-page-steve-bannon-fbi-communications-398992

WH staff incompetencies continued:

Gabriel Sherman
@gabrielsherman
Wow, Porter’s ex wife Jennie Willobough tells Anderson Cooper that Porter called her a few days ago and asked her to “downplay” the allegations she made against him.

The Hill‏Verified account
@thehill
Kelly condemns domestic violence in memo to White House staff hill.cm/pNXo2b5

Ashley Feinberg
@ashleyfeinberg
john kelly putting out a statement clarifying that he thinks domestic violence is bad is almost as good as when sean spicer had to put out a statement clarifying that he thinks hitler was also, in fact, bad

Stephanie Ruhle
‏*@SRuhle*
In a 2016 court-martial, General Kelly appeared as a character witness of a Marine accused of sexually harassing 2 subordinates. Kelly praised the colonel as a “superb Marine officer”- kelly played down accusations & believed the officer served a greater goal

• per NYT

And

Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
Trump was 'agitated' this week over John Kelly, NYT reports.

One of the people he called to express dissatisfaction, according to those close to him, was none other than Reince Priebus.

www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/us/politics/kelly-trump.html

And

Natasha Bertrand
@NatashaBertrand
Wow. White House officials were scrambling to muster outside support for Porter through Tuesday night, and told Hatch that the accusations were the product of a Lewandowski-led smear campaign, per @lachlan @swin24

www.thedailybeast.com/trump-white-house-fingered-corey-lewandowski-in-rob-porter-smear-campaign/

(don't forget:

Shimon Prokupecz
@ShimonPro
CNN: White House communications director Hope Hicks, who has been in a romantic relationship with Rob Porter, was involved in crafting the response to the allegations of domestic abuse leveled against Porter on Tuesday. )

And

Leonie haimson
@leoniehaimson
Dozens at White House lack permanent security clearances but aside from Kushner this article doesn’t say who - or why for any of them

www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/dozens-at-white-house-lack-permanent-security-clearances/2018/02/08/50e3cfd6-0d15-11e8-8890-372e2047c935_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.5948f193bfc6

Chris Hayes‏Verified account
@chrislhayes
They literally ran an entire campaign about their opponent’s supposedly sloppy handling of classified material.

And

Mother Jones
@MotherJones
CBS just released footage of Omarosa's bizarre, tear-strewn Trump confessional bit.ly/2Ede8yS

CBS News
@CBSNews
Omarosa: I wouldn't vote for Trump again "in a million years, never" cbsn.ws/2nV83jJ

Kumail Nanjiani
@kumailn
A person who worked for the President until a month ago is now on a reality show talking about how dangerous our President is.

We are living in all of the alternate universes at once.

stephen nazi miller's take, which was echoed by Raj Shah earlier in the presser:

Stephen Miller
@StephenMilIer
We all hate the boss who fired us from our job. Now, imagine if he fired you FOUR freaken times! #Omarosa

In conclusion:

David Roth
@davidjroth
It's weird how every single person that works for Trump is ultimately revealed as someone disgusting enough to work for Trump.

Does not see any irony. For him, it’s only some children, not all. It is he that is creating a great deal of worshipping with fear. His world is not just and there is little peace.

Fox News @FoxNews
9m9 minutes ago
More
.@POTUS: “Let us seek to build a more just and peaceful world where every child can grow up without violence, worship without fear, and reach their God-given potential.”

Social media:

Damian Collins‏Verified account
@DamianCollins
Excellent meeting today in Washington with @SenatorBurr and @MarkWarner discussing our @CommonsCMS fake news inquiry

[dm link: t.co/0Gn3xERb3H ]

Mark Warner
@MarkWarner
Russian election interference is a threat not just to the United States, but to all Western democracies. @SenatorBurr and I are working with our British counterparts to combat this real and continuing threat

And

Carole Cadwalladr
@carolecadwalla
Exciting. @profcarroll about to give evidence to British MPs on his legal case against Cambridge Analytica. Read the background here. Watch live in 30 mins on www.parliamentlive.tv . This is going to be good....

www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/01/cambridge-analytica-big-data-facebook-trump-voters?CMP=share_btn_tw

And

Live threading of it here (it took place yesterday):

David Carroll 🦅
@profcarroll
MP hammering YT's Juniper Downs on their dispute over the recommendation research methodology from @guardian and the "self-fulfilling prophecy" of the recommendation engine that biased "what people want to watch" — "we see abandonment of the service" when YT doesn't do this.

twitter.com/profcarroll/status/961614030539509761

And

J.J. Patrick‏
@J_amesp
If you don’t want to hear that the UK Brexit referendum was targeted by the Kremlin, don’t read this thread.

If you would like a concise summary of why the Fake News Inquiry just turned a corner on Brexit/Russia read on...

1. The UK's Fake News Inquiry, chaired by MP Damian Collins, has travelled to Washington to interview Social Media giants about Russian influence on Brexit.
2. Initially it was claimed there had been no Russian activity in Brexit at all, despite already growing evidence to the contrary.

Prior to the evidence session Twitter had written to Collins in January, stating they had already uncovered some Russian accounts.

1. Collins also met with Senator Mark Warner, a leading figure in the Russia Probe in the US Senate, who has slammed the tech companies for their role in the Kremlin's attack on the 2016 presidential election.

1. Collins described the meeting as "excellent", while Warner tweeted: "Russian election interference is a threat not just to the United States, but to all Western democracies. *@SenatorBurr* and I are working with our British counterparts to combat this real and continuing threat”

1. Though YouTube's evidence session focused primarily on questions surrounding advertisements and direct payments from Russia relating to Brexit, which unsurprisingly has not yet yielded a result, they have been ordered to look again and provide the committee with more info

1. In of itself, steps to strip income from extreme and untruthful content providers linked to Russia (like Britain First and Prison Planet) confirms the streaming giant is well aware the problems on its platform are not as clear cut as ad buys in roubles because of its structure

1. Twitter essentially reiterated its previously written response to Collins, saying it had so far found a limited number of accounts active during Brexit, directly connected to the Kremlin-funded Internet Research Agency (IRA) - the troll farm in in St Petersburg, same as the US

1. It is already known the IRA directly spent $1,000 on Twitter ads during Brexit, but significant questions remain around foreign funding during the referendum, specifically centred around the Leave groups connected to Nigel Farage.

1. Farage and his partner Arron Banks are substantively linked to Russia through a number of direct and indirect routes, not least with them constantly appearing front and centre in the Russia collusion web surrounding troubled President Donald Trump's White House administration

10. They are of course already under investigation in the UK and have also been interviewed in the Mueller probe.

The committee ordered Twitter to continue looking for Russian and Russian linked accounts.

11. Facebook's exchanges were tense, with the Social Media company deflecting any responsibility for what ads it publishes and what money it takes being poorly received by the Committee.

12. Policy director Simon Milner was challenged on accepting foreign payments during UK election campaigns, confirming the company was fully aware this was illegal yet did not prevent it from happening.

13. Committe MP Ian Lucas responded to Facebook's Milner saying: "it's a matter for you to comply with the law because you are facilitating an illegal act."

The company also stated it was struggling to examine its own data without official ackowledgement from the UK on Russia.

14. Facebook were ordered to continue examining Russian activity during Brexit and to explain whether the 30,000 accounts deleted during the Macron election were Russian too.

The company said it would respond to the committee's requests in private at the end of February.

15. As ever there’s an article with more detail at @Byline_Media (link in the tweet below), and you can pledge support to my purely crowdfunded work direct from the article. Thank you!

www.byline.com/column/67/article/2044

And

Twitter reportedly left hundreds of Russian propaganda videos, with millions of views, on its video platform Vine for months after it should have known they were posted by a Kremlin-linked troll group.

money.cnn.com/2018/02/08/media/vine-twitter-russian-troll-accounts/index.html

Rise of the alt right

Sarah Kendzior
@sarahkendzior
For the second time in less than a year, I'm set to speak at a college campus one week before a nazi does. Nasty change in political culture brought on by mainstreaming of nazis and white supremacists.

And

CBS News
@CBSNews
Black History Month posters covered up at University of Tennessee with ones referencing Hitler cbsn.ws/2nNlDWZ

And

GOP Congressional Candidate Antonio Sabato Jr. Still Thinks Obama Is Muslim

The Trump-supporting actor and congressional candidate baffled ‘The View’ with his peddling of long-debunked conspiracy theories.

www.thedailybeast.com/gop-congressional-candidate-antonio-sabato-jr-still-thinks-obama-is-muslim/?via=twitter_page

And

Qasim Rashid, Esq.
@MuslimIQ
White male privilege:
•White man runs over Arab woman—severely injuring her
•Court told its a hate crime b/c he thinks she's Muslim—court STILL releases him
•White man kills Arab woman's son
•Plot Twist: Arab family is Christian
#WhereWasHeRadicalized

wgntv.com/2018/02/07/oklahoma-man-found-guilty-of-hate-crime-in-neighbors-death/

And

ICE arrests went up in 2017, with biggest increases in Florida, northern Texas, Oklahoma

www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/02/08/ice-arrests-went-up-in-2017-with-biggest-increases-in-florida-northern-texas-oklahoma/?utm_content=buffer72d59&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

And a thread about someone leaving ICE

Jordon Dyrdahl-Roberts
@dyrbert

Seriously, fuck ICE.

So, yeah, about that.

I put in my two weeks notice.

I work at Montana Department of Labor.

There were going to be ICE subpoenas for information that would end up being used to hunt down & deport undocumented workers.

twitter.com/dyrbert/status/961397823580266496

Kyle Griffin
‏*@kylegriffin1*
The House has passed the funding bill 240-186 to end 2nd government shutdown in three weeks. The bill will now be sent to Trump to sign.

So have I got this right?

Yesterday (8 Feb) US Senator Mark Warner had a meeting with UK MP Damian Collins and the UK parliamentary Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee about fake news and Russian interference in Brexit via Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social media platforms.

Sen. Warner tweeted after the meeting: "Russian election interference is a threat not just to the United States, but to all Western democracies. @SenatorBurr and I are working with our British counterparts to combat this real and continuing threat."

The same day and today (8 & 9 Feb) US President Trump, his son Donald Trump jr, and Fox News, start pushing a new, personalized smear attempting to discredit Sen. Warner.

(The smear being just a puff of buzzwords, and not describing anything sinister the moment you look closer.)

Now, why would they do that?

They aren't even trying to be subtle anymore, are they Perking?