House of Representatives: Democrats in da house!

[GreyhoundFan]

Dumb and Dumber are trying to go after Nancy. I love her reply:

 

 

[Audrey2]

Hmmm... Can we go after Trump's dealer next? I have read suspicions with all the sniffing he does... course Trump's is much more likely to be real than what Pelosi and Schiffs is, but the true believers still won't care.

[onekidanddone]

RIP Representative Elijah Cummings. 
A sad day for the people of Maryland and the country. 
 

[nelliebelle1197]

On 10/14/2019 at 11:27 AM, Audrey2 said:

Hmmm... Can we go after Trump's dealer next? I have read suspicions with all the sniffing he does... course Trump's is much more likely to be real than what Pelosi and Schiffs is, but the true believers still won't care.

According to a former apprentice staffer, he snorts adderall

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump tried to insult ‘unhinged’ Pelosi with an image. She made it her Twitter cover photo."

Spoiler

The image was meant to be an insult — “Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” Trump wrote as a caption. But instead, it ended up as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Twitter cover photo.

The photo is striking: Pelosi (D-Calif.), in electric blue, the only woman visible at the table, standing across from a homogeneous row of men, pointing her finger at the president.

To Democrats, what the photo conveyed was clear: the speaker “literally standing up to the president” after the House overwhelmingly voted to condemn his decision to pull out of northern Syria. The stunning moment marked the latest episode in the long-running theatrical feud between Pelosi and the president, ending, like others, with the Democratic leader reclaiming Trump’s insult as a badge of pride.

“Can a woman beat Donald Trump? Yes,” Democratic presidential contender Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wrote on Twitter. “@SpeakerPelosi does it every day.”

Trump’s “unhinged meltdown” comment, which he tweeted with the photo, came after Pelosi walked out on a White House meeting regarding Trump’s decision to pull troops out of northern Syria, leaving Kurdish fighters previously allied with the U.S. vulnerable to a Turkish offensive. House lawmakers voted 354-60-4 to denounce Trump’s decision in a bipartisan resolution on Wednesday.

During the meeting, Trump reportedly called Pelosi a “third-rate politician,” labeled former defense secretary Jim Mattis the “world’s most overrated general” and brushed off concerns about the Islamic State taking advantage of the U.S. military’s withdrawal from the region. Pressed on a strategy going forward, Trump said his plan was “to keep the American people safe,” to which Pelosi retorted: “That’s not a plan. That’s a goal.”

As she got up and left, Trump reportedly yelled, “See you at the polls.”

“I think now we have to pray for his health,” Pelosi said afterward, “because this was a very serious meltdown on the part of the president.”

Later, when Trump attempted to use the photo to depict Pelosi as the one who had the real “meltdown,” even some conservatives questioned why Trump believed the photo would be perceived the same way by others.

“That would happen to be a woman standing up and asserting herself at a table full of men. I understand such a scene may cause a meltdown but I assure you it’s not on Speaker Pelosi’s behalf,” wrote Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to current and former Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Jim DeMint (S.C.). Carpenter questioned how a Republican president could have driven her to “speak up for Nancy Pelosi? I mean, really."

Meghan McCain, daughter of late Republican senator John McCain, questioned why “tough women who don’t put up with s---" get labeled as “unhinged.” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.) commented: “Someone is definitely nervous and unhinged. But it’s not @SpeakerPelosi.”

Others, meanwhile, challenged a common observation made by political commentators: that Trump is skilled at controlling the narrative in the news media.

“People say Trump, for all his failings, is a media genius,” wrote Rick Hasen, a political science professor at the University of California at Irvine School of Law. “So how could he have thought posting this picture of Pelosi standing up to Trump in a room full of old white men was a good idea for him?”

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham later defended Trump’s behavior during the meeting and disputed Pelosi’s account, saying the speaker “had no intention of listening or contributing to an important meeting on national security issues.”

“While Democratic leadership chose to storm out and get in front of the cameras to whine, everyone else in the meeting chose to stay in the room and work on behalf of this country,” Grisham said in a statement. Reporters were not allowed in the meeting.

Trump’s attempts to mock or insult Pelosi have backfired before — often after contentious meetings like the one Wednesday.

The feud between the two leaders escalated during the government shutdown, as Pelosi portrayed him as childish, inexperienced and selfish, strolling out of one of their first meetings in December 2018 wearing a red-hot coat, shades and a smirk fit for a meme. She described Trump’s obsession with the wall as “manhood thing for him — as if manhood could ever be associated with him,” and belittled the president in comments to colleagues.

“I was trying to be the mom,” she said, as The Washington Post reported. “I can’t explain it to you. It was so wild. It goes to show you: You get into a tickle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you.”

When Pelosi delayed Trump’s scheduled State of the Union address to the House the following month, Trump returned the jab by canceling Pelosi’s and other top Democrats’ scheduled trip to visit an Afghanistan war zone, describing it as a “public relations event.” But Democrats and national security experts noted that trips to war zones are typically kept secret for security purposes, and that its purpose was to show appreciation to the troops. Pelosi questioned whether “perhaps the president’s inexperience” kept him from understanding that.

Her second viral meme-generating moment rolled around shortly thereafter. In February, when the State of the Union address finally happened and Trump urged “unity,” appearing to signal a truce with the speaker, there was Pelosi in the background: her lips pursed, her hands clapping at him like a set of jaws.

The unity, of course, didn’t quite happen. By May, when it was Trump’s turn to storm out of a meeting with Pelosi, he resorted to calling her a nickname for the first time: “Crazy Nancy.” He described her as “a mess” and himself as an “extremely stable genius.” Pelosi said she was praying for the president, and urged his family, the administration or his staff to “have an intervention” with Trump for the “good of the country.”

On Wednesday, both Pelosi and Trump said they were praying for each other now, each somehow managing to transform a religious offering into an insult. “Pray for her, she is a very sick person!” Trump tweeted, just after releasing the photo of Pelosi pointing at him.

Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, for one, appeared to identify with Trump’s position in the photo on Twitter.

“Looks like she owned you on #NationalBossDay,” she said, referring to Wednesday’s national day of appreciation for bosses. “Been there.”

 

[apple1]

2 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

RIP Representative Elijah Cummings. 
A sad day for the people of Maryland and the country. 
 

Thank you for posting this. A big loss for the nation as well.

[fraurosena]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump tried to insult ‘unhinged’ Pelosi with an image. She made it her Twitter cover photo."

  Hide contents

The image was meant to be an insult — “Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” Trump wrote as a caption. But instead, it ended up as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Twitter cover photo.

The photo is striking: Pelosi (D-Calif.), in electric blue, the only woman visible at the table, standing across from a homogeneous row of men, pointing her finger at the president.

To Democrats, what the photo conveyed was clear: the speaker “literally standing up to the president” after the House overwhelmingly voted to condemn his decision to pull out of northern Syria. The stunning moment marked the latest episode in the long-running theatrical feud between Pelosi and the president, ending, like others, with the Democratic leader reclaiming Trump’s insult as a badge of pride.

“Can a woman beat Donald Trump? Yes,” Democratic presidential contender Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wrote on Twitter. “@SpeakerPelosi does it every day.”

Trump’s “unhinged meltdown” comment, which he tweeted with the photo, came after Pelosi walked out on a White House meeting regarding Trump’s decision to pull troops out of northern Syria, leaving Kurdish fighters previously allied with the U.S. vulnerable to a Turkish offensive. House lawmakers voted 354-60-4 to denounce Trump’s decision in a bipartisan resolution on Wednesday.

During the meeting, Trump reportedly called Pelosi a “third-rate politician,” labeled former defense secretary Jim Mattis the “world’s most overrated general” and brushed off concerns about the Islamic State taking advantage of the U.S. military’s withdrawal from the region. Pressed on a strategy going forward, Trump said his plan was “to keep the American people safe,” to which Pelosi retorted: “That’s not a plan. That’s a goal.”

As she got up and left, Trump reportedly yelled, “See you at the polls.”

“I think now we have to pray for his health,” Pelosi said afterward, “because this was a very serious meltdown on the part of the president.”

Later, when Trump attempted to use the photo to depict Pelosi as the one who had the real “meltdown,” even some conservatives questioned why Trump believed the photo would be perceived the same way by others.

“That would happen to be a woman standing up and asserting herself at a table full of men. I understand such a scene may cause a meltdown but I assure you it’s not on Speaker Pelosi’s behalf,” wrote Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to current and former Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Jim DeMint (S.C.). Carpenter questioned how a Republican president could have driven her to “speak up for Nancy Pelosi? I mean, really."

Meghan McCain, daughter of late Republican senator John McCain, questioned why “tough women who don’t put up with s---" get labeled as “unhinged.” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.) commented: “Someone is definitely nervous and unhinged. But it’s not @SpeakerPelosi.”

Others, meanwhile, challenged a common observation made by political commentators: that Trump is skilled at controlling the narrative in the news media.

“People say Trump, for all his failings, is a media genius,” wrote Rick Hasen, a political science professor at the University of California at Irvine School of Law. “So how could he have thought posting this picture of Pelosi standing up to Trump in a room full of old white men was a good idea for him?”

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham later defended Trump’s behavior during the meeting and disputed Pelosi’s account, saying the speaker “had no intention of listening or contributing to an important meeting on national security issues.”

“While Democratic leadership chose to storm out and get in front of the cameras to whine, everyone else in the meeting chose to stay in the room and work on behalf of this country,” Grisham said in a statement. Reporters were not allowed in the meeting.

Trump’s attempts to mock or insult Pelosi have backfired before — often after contentious meetings like the one Wednesday.

The feud between the two leaders escalated during the government shutdown, as Pelosi portrayed him as childish, inexperienced and selfish, strolling out of one of their first meetings in December 2018 wearing a red-hot coat, shades and a smirk fit for a meme. She described Trump’s obsession with the wall as “manhood thing for him — as if manhood could ever be associated with him,” and belittled the president in comments to colleagues.

“I was trying to be the mom,” she said, as The Washington Post reported. “I can’t explain it to you. It was so wild. It goes to show you: You get into a tickle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you.”

When Pelosi delayed Trump’s scheduled State of the Union address to the House the following month, Trump returned the jab by canceling Pelosi’s and other top Democrats’ scheduled trip to visit an Afghanistan war zone, describing it as a “public relations event.” But Democrats and national security experts noted that trips to war zones are typically kept secret for security purposes, and that its purpose was to show appreciation to the troops. Pelosi questioned whether “perhaps the president’s inexperience” kept him from understanding that.

Her second viral meme-generating moment rolled around shortly thereafter. In February, when the State of the Union address finally happened and Trump urged “unity,” appearing to signal a truce with the speaker, there was Pelosi in the background: her lips pursed, her hands clapping at him like a set of jaws.

The unity, of course, didn’t quite happen. By May, when it was Trump’s turn to storm out of a meeting with Pelosi, he resorted to calling her a nickname for the first time: “Crazy Nancy.” He described her as “a mess” and himself as an “extremely stable genius.” Pelosi said she was praying for the president, and urged his family, the administration or his staff to “have an intervention” with Trump for the “good of the country.”

On Wednesday, both Pelosi and Trump said they were praying for each other now, each somehow managing to transform a religious offering into an insult. “Pray for her, she is a very sick person!” Trump tweeted, just after releasing the photo of Pelosi pointing at him.

Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, for one, appeared to identify with Trump’s position in the photo on Twitter.

“Looks like she owned you on #NationalBossDay,” she said, referring to Wednesday’s national day of appreciation for bosses. “Been there.”

 

What I find even more striking about that photo is that Trump has moved back from the table (everyone els has their hands on or near it) as Pelosi points her finger. It's as if he's recoiling back in fear. 

[JMarie]

Just watched Randy Weber (R-TX) be interviewed by Chris Cuomo.  No, the Trump family has not sacrificed so much while The Don's in office. No, there is actually enough evidence to start the impeachment process.

I'm sorry, 14th district of Texas.

[GreyhoundFan]

Pat Bagley schools McCarthy:

 

[fraurosena]

AOC's questioning is making Zuckerberg squirm. Two things are noteworthy: 1) how he doesn't answer basic yes or no questions, and 2) his half-assed attempt at deflecting blame from himself when answering the white supremacist question.

Ugh, I just hate how he starts each and every answer with "Congresswoman..." in that condescending tone.

[fraurosena]

 

[fraurosena]

Does anyone know who that man is? I love how he refuses to be a hypocrite. Moscow Mitch’s face is priceless.

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I bet MilkDud shed a tear when his lord and master misspelled his name:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Nunes needs to go:

 

[fraurosena]

Jim Jordan is being accused again for protecting a criminal. With his track record, is it any wonder the Trumpians want him on the Intel Committee during the impeachment hearings?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

McCarthy is either a major liar or he's completely delusional. Since he's an R, he could be both.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[front hugs > duggs]

I love Dan Pfeiffer!

He has a book coming out in February, and part of the proceeds for every single book he sells goes to Stacey Abram's organization Fair Fight. This org helps fight against voter supression across the country. Apparently Republicans tried to get 175K names off the voting register in Kentucky for the recent election, and Fair Fight prevented that from happening. Beshear won Kentucky by 5k votes. 

So not only is the book likely to be amazing, but you can also help fight GOP corruption!

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Dear Rufus, it would be so gratifying to see Nunes get spanked: "Top House Democrat says ethics probe of Nunes is likely over alleged meeting with Ukrainian about Bidens"

Spoiler

A high-ranking House Democrat said Saturday it’s “quite likely” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) will face an ethics investigation over allegations that he met with an ex-Ukrainian official to obtain information about former vice president Joe Biden and his son.

Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, appeared on MSNBC where he was asked whether Nunes could face a House inquiry. “Quite likely, without question,” Smith said.

The allegation that Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, met with a former Ukrainian prosecutor last year to discuss the Bidens came from the attorney for Lev Parnas, one of two Soviet-born associates of Rudolph W. Giuliani who were indicted on charges they broke campaign finance law.

Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, told The Washington Post that Ukraine’s former top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, informed Parnas that he had met with Nunes in Vienna in December 2018.

Bondy also said that a top aide to Nunes, Derek Harvey, sometimes joined a group that met frequently in spring 2019 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Biden matter, among other topics. The group, according to Bondy, was convened by Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, and included Parnas, his business associate Igor Fruman, as well as journalist John Solomon and the husband-and-wife legal team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing.

The information about Nunes’s meeting with Shokin and Harvey’s meetings with Giuliani were first reported by CNN on Friday.

Nunes declined to comment. He did, however, strongly push back on the story to the conservative outlet Breitbart News and threatened to sue CNN for reporting it. He also threatened to sue the Daily Beast for a story linking him and Parnas.

“These demonstrably false and scandalous stories published by the Daily Beast and CNN are the perfect example of defamation and reckless disregard for the truth,” Nunes said, according to Breitbart. “I look forward to prosecuting these cases, including the media outlets, as well as the sources of their fake stories, to the fullest extent of the law.”

An individual close to Shokin also denied the story.

“This meeting never took place. Viktor Shokin doesn’t know and hasn’t even heard of this person,” said the individual, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, referring to Nunes.

Giuliani, appearing on Fox News on Saturday, also said he didn’t believe that Nunes met with Shokin.

“Devin Nunes says he didn’t meet with Shokin. I have no reason to believe that he did,” Giuliani said, adding, “If he did, there would’ve been nothing wrong with it.”

The allegation about Nunes comes as the House moves swiftly in its impeachment investigation of President Trump. The inquiry, triggered by a whistleblower’s complaint, focuses on Trump’s pressure campaign to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to publicly announce investigations into 2020 presidential rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.

At stake at the time of Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky was nearly $400 million in congressionally appropriated military aid and a long-sought invitation for a face-to-face meeting of the two leaders in Washington.

“I understand a lot of this is about Joe Biden but the bigger thing is about what President Trump and the Russians and all these people have been doing … is a systematic problem that is a threat to the country because of what Russia is doing to democracy,” Smith said in the MSNBC interview.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted, “If Devin Nunes was using taxpayer money to do ‘political errands’ in Vienna for his puppeteer, Donald Trump, an ethics investigation should be initiated and he should be required to reimburse the taxpayers.”

And in an interview with National Public Radio on Saturday, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), another member of the committee, said the panel should hear from Parnas.

“I think it would be valuable to hear from him because we want to know just how far this work extended, how many people were doing the president’s dirty work here,” Castro said.

Shokin is a key figure in Giuliani’s effort to press the Ukrainians to open an investigation into Biden.

He was fired as Ukraine’s Prosecutor General in March 2016, after a pressure campaign from Ukraine’s western allies, led by Biden. Shokin has publicly accused Biden of engineering that effort to protect his son Hunter, who was serving on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Bondy’s allegation about Nunes and Shokin appears to be part of an aggressive campaign he has mounted in recent days to persuade Democrats in Congress to call Parnas to testify. He has been tweeting directly at members of Congress, using the hashtag #LetLevSpeak. He has said Parnas would be willing to testify, provided he was given an accommodation to allow him to avoid self-incrimination. That would likely require Congress giving him immunity for his testimony.

A spokesman for Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) declined to comment on whether Parnas would be asked to testify or on the Nunes allegation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) did not respond to requests for comment.

If the House launched an ethics investigation into Nunes it would be the second time his ethics were questioned during the Trump era. In 2017, Nunes was accused of giving classified information to the White House about the Intelligence Committee’s work on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The House Ethics Committee cleared Nunes of wrongdoing in December 2017, saying he had not disclosed classified information or violated House rules when he publicly discussed foreign surveillance reports.

The new information about Nunes, if true, would suggest that by the time Giuliani spoke to Shokin in January 2019, the former prosecutor had already had a conversation with a key congressional ally of Trump.

Giuliani has cited Shokin’s unproven allegations against Biden as the central exhibit of his argument that Biden acted inappropriately in Ukraine. Giuliani first debriefed Shokin on those allegations in a Skype phone call that January that Parnas has said he helped arrange. The interview had to be conducted remotely after Shokin was denied a visa to travel to the United States because of corruption allegations.

U.S. and Ukrainian officials have said the investigation into Burisma and its CEO was actually dormant at the time of Shokin’s removal. George Kent, a top State Department official, testified to Congress that it was believed at the time that Ukrainian prosecutors in Shokin’s office had accepted bribes in exchange for halting an effort to recover assets from the company’s CEO and went unpunished — a development that helped shape the international consensus that Shokin tolerated corruption and should be removed.

Former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch testified that the Shokin visa decision was a routine one made by consular officials but that Giuliani attempted to appeal it unsuccessfully to both Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the White House. Parnas has said Giuliani’s anger over the Shokin visa helped fuel his desire to see Yovanovitch removed. She was abruptly pulled from her post earlier this year.

After the intelligence agency whistleblower’s complaint over Trump’s Ukraine pressure campaign emerged publicly, Parnas and Giuliani seemed to continue to believe that Shokin’s account could help sway Americans to support Trump’s effort to get an investigation into the Bidens.

According to people familiar with the matter, Parnas and Fruman planned to travel to Vienna on Oct. 9 and meet with Giuliani so they could organize an interview for Shokin with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. Instead, Parnas and Fruman were arrested at Dulles International Airport, as they prepared to board their flight to Europe.

 

[fraurosena]

 

Cows don’t have fingers and can’t insult Devin Nunes on Twitter, court filing says

Quote

A Democratic strategist is refusing to disclose communications that could reveal the identity of anonymous Twitter users who criticize Rep. Devin Nunes, arguing in a new court filing that the accounts are clearly satirical expressions of political speech.

Nunes, R-Tulare, has sued Twitter and anonymous social media users who run accounts known as Devin Nunes’ Cow and Devin Nunes’ Mom. Nunes’ attorney last month issued a subpoena demanding records about them from former Democratic National Committee employee Adam Parkhomenko.

In a new filing to quash the subpoena, Parkhomenko’s attorney argues that the Twitter accounts’ language “does not constitute defamation” and that courts are tasked with protecting anonymous communications in the interest of freedom of speech.

“No reasonable person would believe that Devin Nunes’ cow actually has a Twitter account, or that the hyperbole, satire and cow-related jokes it posts are serious facts,” reads the filing in Virginia’s Henrico County Circuit Court. “It is self-evident that cows are domesticated livestock animals and do not have the intelligence, language, or opposable digits needed to operate a Twitter account. Defendant ‘Devin Nunes’ Mom’ likewise posts satirical patronizing, nagging, mothering comments which ostensibly treat Mr. Nunes as a misbehaving child.”

Nunes in the Twitter lawsuit is also suing Republican political strategist Liz Mair, alleging that all of them worked together to harm his reputation during his successful 2018 reelection campaign.

In the subpoena for the communications, Nunes’ attorney Steven Biss asked for emails, text messages and direct messages on Twitter between Parkhomenko and the anonymous social media users. It was the first subpoena Nunes’ has issued in the five lawsuits he’s filed this year against news media organizations, Democratic activists, Twitter and the political research firm Fusion GPS.

Parkhomenko worked for the Democratic National Committee in 2016 and also for the TRR Group, a public relations firm that advised Nunes’ Democratic opponent Andrew Janz in 2018. Janz has been raising money to support legal defense funds for the Twitter accounts Devin Nunes’ Cow and Devin Nunes’ Mom.

Nunes has demanded that Janz force the accounts to delete messages and issue an apology to him. Janz, through attorneys, declined to take any of the demanded actions and said he had no power over the cow account.

Parkhomenko has mocked the Republican congressman on Twitter since Nunes filed defamation lawsuit in March. Though it’s unclear how Parkhomenko is related to the case, Biss’ motion to compel the communications demonstrates a belief that he could be useful in identifying the anonymous users.

Twitter also has refused to identify the authors of Devin Nunes’ Cow and Devin Nunes’ Mom.

Biss did not immediately respond to McClatchy’s emailed request for a statement. Parkhomenko declined to comment, but confirmed the accuracy of the filings to McClatchy.

 

[Becky]

I laughed out loud at that article - too many funny lines, whether intended or not.  Nunes needs to lighten up and pull up his big boy pants.  Satire and political opposition come with the position.  Besides, suing a "cow" just brings more attention to the account and the ludicrousness of his lawsuit.  

[JMarie]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/republican-running-to-challenge-rep-ilhan-omar-has-twitter-account-permanently-suspended/ar-BBXwTVY?li=AAJUkZb