Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

He really is that stupid.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / Release the Memo: 24 Hours Later

Release the Memo: 24 Hours Later

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Late yesterday evening I addressed the quickly developing disinformation campaign being called release the memo after the hashtag of the same name. I specifically wrote:

Apparently Congressman Nunes, or folks working for/with him on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, have produced a four page memo alleging significant abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the Obama Administration, specifically the Department of Justice and the FBI, against Republicans. The memo is supposedly classified. This has led to the creation of a release the memo hashtag (click at your own risk of sanity). This would seem to explain Sean Hannity’s opening tease on Fox News tonight.

And:

It is hard to get decent info at this point, but if I’m following all this correctly the memo being referred to is the result of Congressman Nunes’ monomania regarding lawful unmasking by the Obama Administration in 2015 and 2016 and the attempt to create a controversy and scandal over FISA violations as reported by the chronically wrong and easily duped John Solomon at The Hill, as well as his equally odious, one sided, and misleading reporting on the text messages between two FBI officials during the campaign.

 

Twenty-four hours later we have more clarity on exactly how the alleged memo was created and the purpose to which it is being put. Hamilton68, funded by the German Marshall Fund to track Russian active measures on social media, has been tracking the release the memo hashtag.

Natasha Bertrand at Business Insider has further details.

Russia-linked Twitter bots have jumped on the bandwagon.

#ReleaseTheMemo is the top-trending hashtag among Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations, according to Hamilton 68, a website launched last year that says it tracks Russian propaganda in near-real time.

The frequency with which the accounts have been promoting the hashtag has spiked by 233,000% over the past 48 hours, according to the site. The accounts’ references to the “memo,” meanwhile, have increased by 68,000%.

The most-shared domain among the accounts has been WikiLeaks, and the most-shared URL has been a link to WikiLeaks’ “submit” page.

WikiLeaks said on Thursday that it would reward anyone with access to the “FISA abuse memo” who chooses to submit it to the site. The Russia-linked accounts have evidently been sharing the “submit” page to push the memo’s release.

Bret Schafer, a communications coordinator at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy who tracks the Hamilton 68 accounts, said he “certainly can’t remember” the last time the researchers had seen a topic “promoted to this level” by the Russia-linked bots and trolls.

“On a normal day, our top hashtag is typically used around 400 times in a 48-hour period by the network we track,” he said in an email on Friday.

“As of right now, #ReleaseTheMemo has been used over 3,000 times (and five other related hashtags are in the top 10),” he said. “In total, they’ve easily shared more than 4,500 hashtags on the topic in the past two days, and our top URL is Assange’s offer to pay for a copy of the memo. That certainly seems to be a sign of a coordinated effort by the bots and trolls.”

Congressman Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Permanent Committee on Intelligence – and the only member of that committee to actually successfully prosecute an espionage case – had this to say:

a profoundly misleading set of talking points drafted by Republican staff attacking the FBI and its handling of the investigation. Rife with factual inaccuracies and referencing highly classified materials that most of Republican Intelligence Committee members were forced to acknowledge they had never read, this is meant only to give Republican House members a distorted view of the FBI. This may help carry White House water, but it is a deep disservice to our law enforcement professionals.”

Where does this leave our beleaguered hero Congressman Nunes, the chairman of the House Select Permanent Committee on Intelligence? According to GOP strategist Rick Wilson he’s right in the thick of things.

Also, OpSec people, OpSec!!!!!

Wilson’s anonymous source has now been verified by subsequent reporting.

One thing about that document: Republican staffers wrote it.

Even the most plugged-in news consumer could be forgiven for thinking the classified memo is an executive branch document that exposes wrongdoing within the Justice Department and the FBI. It isn’t.

The document, which alleges abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during the FBI’s quiet counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in the final months of the 2016 election, was actually compiled by Republican staffers on the House Intelligence Committee. That committee voted along partisan lines this week to allow any member of Congress to take a peek at the document themselves. Republican members soon flocked to a secure room to read the memo written by their allies — and then ran to tell the press about it.

If the memo does eventually go public, it won’t end well for Republicans, Susan Hennessey, the executive editor of the legal commentary site Lawfare, argued Friday. “After causing completely unnecessary chaos today, this memo will be released in some redacted [form] in a few weeks and prove to be an utter embarrassment to Nunes personally, the [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] majority, and frankly to US House of Representatives,” Hennessey predict

What I estimated last night was correct.

Since these (the Simpson transcripts just released by HPSCI) basically shoot everything Congressman Nunes, Congressman Gaetz, Congressman DeSantis, Congressman Jordan, and several other GOP members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Oversight, Justice, or other committees have been saying about the Special Counsel and his investigation and the FBI’s role in the counterintelligence investigation pertaining to the President that was begun in July 2016, they needed to do something to change the narrative. Enter the four page classified memo supposedly alleging that the Obama Administration, the DOJ, the FBI, and other parts of the US Intel Community were all conspiring against Republicans and conservatives in general and the President, his businesses, and his campaign in specific. Leaked to Fox News and teed up for Sean Hannity’s diatribe for an audience of one this evening. Given what happened the last time that Congressman Nunes tried to get creative in screening fire for the President, I fully expect that if this memo is ever declassified it won’t survive first contact with the actual subject matter experts the news media brings in to consult on it. Except, of course, for Fox News, talk radio, the alt-right news media (Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, etc) and social media crowd, Wikileaks, RT, and Sputnik. They’ll all, amazingly, have the exact same talking points. As will the White House, the President on twitter, and the aforementioned GOP members of Congress. This amount of coincidence takes a lot of work!

This is a desperate play to try to change the subject, to try to divert the news media’s attention, and it appears to have been fed to one of the specific Fox News personalities that we know are tailoring their programming directly to and for the President. Anyone want to estimate the over/under that Congressman Nunes actually either gave Hannity the memo he cobbled together or just read it to him, despite the fact that it was classified because it cherry picks material from classified DOJ, FBI, and US Intelligence Community information? Finally, releasing a partisan staff product memo isn’t going to answer any actual questions.

The only way to put the issue to bed would be to declassify and release the FISA warrant application. That is not going to happen. And you’ll notice that Congressman Nunes, nor his exceedingly shrill partners in crime – Congressman Gaetz, Congressman DeSantis, Congressman King (IA), Congressman Meadows,  Congressman Jordan, Congressman Zeldin, Sean Hannity, Wikileakes, etc – are actually calling for that to happen. All they want is Congressman Nunes cherry picked material disseminated to create maximum outrage and diversion. Which is, apparently, what Russian state media, Russian intelligence funded trolls, Russian controlled bots, Russia’s fellow travelers on the alt-right, the Fox News personalities who are programming their shows to speak to an audience of one (the President), and these members of Congress all want. This is a strange convergence of interests. And this is why they are all using the exact same talking points, messaging, and language. A lot of work went into creating this coincidence.

Updated at 9:26 PM EST

Here’s an example of the clear eyed, quality thinking that has gone into releasing the memo:

Genius!

Stay frosty (or warm if you’re where it’s cold)!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  3. 3.

    Redshift

    “I have here in my hand a list…” Actual McCarthy tactics from the treason weasels who try to tar any mention of Russia as McCarthyism.

  5. 5.

    Gin & Tonic

    Russia’s fellow travelers on the alt-right

    Don’t forget Russia’s fellow travelers on the “left”.

  6. 6.

    Adam L Silverman

    Just added this as an update. They’re not sending their best, though some, I assume, are fine people…

  8. 8.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    If they’re so concerned about FISA abuse then why did Nunes, Zeldin, Gaetz, DeSantis
    vote to reauthorize it just 7 days ago.

    crocodile tears.

  9. 9.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: Actually so far those usual suspects have been pretty good. Either quiet or pointing out why this is stupid. At least as far as I saw as I try not to go looking for that stuff.

  11. 11.

    Reformed Panty Sniffer

    Al these machinations by Republicans to divert the Mueller investigation make me wonder how many members of Congress are themselves somehow involved with the Russians. What kind of kompromat does Putin have on them? I read somewhere that Nunes has had some financial dealings with Russian entities in the past. Who else in Congress?

  14. 14.

    Frankensteinbeck

    We are way past ‘boy who cried wolf’ territory. This will play with the people who would echo any stupid thing without caring what it is, and with no one else. By all means, release the memo, so we can laugh at how stupid it is.

  16. 16.

    AnotherBruce

    So this proves correlation between Hannity on Fox News, Nunes, Assange, soon to be Trump and the Russians? Aw hell skip “correlation” and call it collusion.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dmsilev: Actually, I saw someone reference that in terms of the White House staff. That as this initial batch of folks are worn down and leave over the next few weeks, they’re going to be replaced by the B, C, and D listers. Frightening thought, isn’t it?

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Washington Post:

    Administration officials acknowledged that many federal employees were not notified until Thursday or Friday that they could be affected, much later than would be typical. In 2013, more than 800,000 federal employees were sent home without pay for 16 days. The reason many weren’t given more advance warning this time is because senior administration officials said they didn’t realize the shutdown threat was real until days ago.

    What’s next, “the dog ate my homework appropriations bill”?

  21. 21.

    Dave

    @Adam L Silverman: There is something I’m missing here. Lets just play pretend that some part of this is true on or more if the FISA applications was initiated as a result of information brought forward in the Steele dossier. Why would this matter? As in would it matter legally at all or is it merely a straw table for desperate idiots to pound even if it was true?

  22. 22.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Jon Wertheim
    ‏Verified account @jon_wertheim

    Upset alert…Lauren Davis, pride of Cleveland, playing like a river on fire, taking on number #1 Halep #AustralianOpen

    5 replies 10 retweets 44 likes

    okay, that’s funny.

    Tai
    ‏ @phillyphantai

    This match between Simona Halep and Lauren Davis is EVERYTHING!!! 2 Lil powerhouses out there…this is a great match! #AusOpen #HalepVsDavis #WTA ???

    1 reply 1 retweet 1 like

    Grrl power

  23. 23.

    dmsilev

    @Adam L Silverman: I saw an analysis somewhere noting that turnover in this White House is far higher than is normal for the first year of a Presidency. And the first year or two are usually the most productive.

  26. 26.

    Adam L Silverman

    @AnotherBruce: I’m not sure it proves anything. As in what we have counts as actual evidence that is actionable in a court of law. It is certainly enough for intelligence analysis purposes. As I’ve repeatedly said: this much coincidence takes a lot of work.

  27. 27.

    SFAW

    I half-expect they’ll say they hacked that memo from Hitlary’s server. Along with a ton of Rosatom e-mails to her, and her confession that she murdered Vince Foster with her bare hands (or her fangs).

    On the other hand, I keep hoping for the day that Mueller goes on primetime TV and say “And YOU get a treason indictment, and YOU get a treason indictment, and YOU get one …” usw. That would be cool.

  30. 30.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    and we’re tied again: 8-8 in the 3rd set

    Ben Rothenberg
    ‏Verified account @BenRothenberg

    Have wondered for a while now why Lauren Davis hasn’t become more of a cult favorite. Undersized player with an entertaining game, sweet personality and lots of quirks.

    22 replies 6 retweets 71 likes

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Dave: Correct. Despite both the Senate Judiciary transcript and the HSPCI transcripts of Simpson’s testimonies indicating that when Steele took his initial memo to the FBI they indicated that they’d already opened the counterintelligence investigation because they had a source from within the campaign. That source has been identified as Papadapolous who got drunk and bragged about what the Russians had and wanted to do to help the campaign to the Australian High Commissioner at a pub in London. The latter gentlemen informed Australian intel, which then notified the US intel community through the Five Eyes network.

    But even if the FBI and DOJ had included some material from the Steele dossier, or at that point the first few memos as that’s all that existed at that time in mid 2016, it wouldn’t matter. A FISA warrant is still a warrant. Law enforcement, in this case the FBI vetted by the DOJ office that does QA/QC on FISA warrant requests, puts down the probable cause that justifies asking for the warrant. Not irrefutable facts as evidence at trial. So including material from Steele’s investigation wouldn’t be a problem. The FBI, like law enforcement across the US when seeking warrants, includes material as probable cause from a wide range of informants. A lot of whom are criminals who are working as confidential informants. If that’s okay, then certainly referring to material provided by a highly decorated allied intelligence agent is okay too.

  37. 37.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SFAW: I’m waiting for the investigation into how the Clinton Foundation was used to defraud Dutch tulip investors before the crash. In 1673 1637.

  38. 38.

    Anonymous At Work

    I say, release the memo. Democrats then subpoena the authors, put them under Oath, and turn over all their time to Schiff. Much merriment ensues?

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: Daddy bought him out of multiple DUIs. Daddy then bought him a state of Florida legislative seat. Daddy then bought him his current seat in the House.

    I think I’m beginning to see a pattern.

  46. 46.

    dmsilev

    @Adam L Silverman: No worries, I’m good Still a bit shell-shocked from spending several hours yesterday arguing with my computer (translating a 25 page manuscript filled with figures and equations from Word to LaTeX. It’s the sort of experience H.P. Lovecraft wrote about).

  49. 49.

    SFAW

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m waiting for the investigation into how the Clinton Foundation was used to defraud Dutch tulip investors before the crash. In 1673.

    Their perfidy knows no bounds. And Obama’s as well, because he apparently let them use his time machine.

    History’s Greatest Monsters, indeed.

  55. 55.

    dmsilev

    @Corner Stone: The niche market for videos of people being beaten with rolled-up copies of Physical Review Letters is (hopefully) quite small. Though, Internet Rule 34 says that it does exist.

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

  58. 58.

    divF

    @dmsilev:

    translating a 25 page manuscript filled with figures and equations from Word to LaTeX

    My sincerest sympathies.
    ETA: I try to get my scientific collaborators to write proposals in LaTeX. I win that argument less than 50% of the time, unfortunately. Then they regret it when it is crunch time and you have six authors passing around a Word document.

  59. 59.

    NotMax

    Four page memo. Translation:

    Title page. Two extra-wide margined pages of 36-point type, triple-spaced, plus a few words on the last page.

  62. 62.

    SFAW

    @dmsilev:

    That would make it Hillary’s fault that all those video-gamer types can’t buy new graphics cards right now.

    Mining cryptocurrency? I must be older than I thought, because I thought you had to have something tangible to mine. No, I don’t want an explanation of what it means.

    But I also note the similarity of “blockchain” to “chain migration,” and am wondering if it’s all a scheme by illegal brown people to rob our nation of its precious bodily fluids.

  63. 63.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    #TrumpShutdown
    416K Tweets

    Pretty overwhelming. The shithead is hitting the fan.

  64. 64.

    Yarrow

    Doug Jones: "as of right now I'll be voting for the CR."He says CHIP is too big to pass up.— Paul Kane (@pkcapitol) January 20, 2018

    Another reporter said a Republican Senator said they’re “hopeful” because some Dems have broken ranks. I think it’s just Schumer giving some permission to vote yes. Still not enough votes.

  68. 68.

    Cermet

    Makes one nostalgic for the anthrax mad man murderer (the south African rightwing nutcase) and his letter writing campaign to congressman – assuming he realized he had even crazier nut jobs now running congress and decided to thin the heard in order so he could, again, be the craziest nut case remaining. He’d be one busy letter writer with today’s huge number of congress/white house loons.

  74. 74.

    sdhays

    @Yarrow: That’s how I read it. If it’s not going to pass, there’s no reason for them to stick out their neck. Although if they did, then I don’t think the bill would even achieve 50 votes in the Senate, which should then pretty much end any discussion of the shutdown being Democrats’ fault. Beyond the usual “WAAAHHHH!!! It’s Democrats’ fault that they aren’t bailing us out of our own bullshit!!!! Waaahhh!!!”

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: Schumer has released Jones and three others from the whip. That’s it. McConnell, depending on how his caucus votes, needs at least 14 Democratic votes.

  76. 76.

    Adam L Silverman

    Hannity’s off the reservation again and speaking to an audience of one – the President.

  77. 77.

    NotMax

    ‘Twould be most juicy if someone at the Congressional power plant pulled the switch that shuts off the lights in the Senate chamber.

  78. 78.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    They’re not sending their best, though some, I assume, are fine people…

    Time was, most members of the house (both parties) were at least competent lawyers who could write or speak in complete sentences, proper syntax, and understood what evidence was and how to marshal it.
    But then, I’m OOOOOOOLLLLLLDD!

    Fuckem

  80. 80.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: Senators Graham, Flake, Lee, and Paul have voted no. The vote is still open for a few more minutes, but we’re heading to a shutdown.

  83. 83.

    B.B.A.

    That’s 50 yeas for cloture, which means the spin that Democrats are shutting the government down sounds slightly reasonable to the low-information voter. Sure it’s bullshit, I know that and you know that, but do the American people know that?

  86. 86.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Dave: What is in the Steele dossier is inadequate for a FISA warrant. However, it could have started things off, with much more information added. It’s that second part that is why Adam says the request won’t be declassified. (I see Adam has said somewhat more. This is the tl;dr.)

    @Adam L Silverman: Him, not he. One of those grammatical errors I loathe. I know it’s not yours.

    I’m going to disagree slightly with one of the quotes in the top post. I’m about halfway through both Simpson testimonies, and they do not “shoot down” everything all those congressmen have ever said about the subject, even accounting for exaggeration. They are fascinating documents, and they DO indicate that the Steele dossier needs to be taken seriously, for what it is, which is a collection of raw human intelligence reports that can be wound into a number of narratives. Much of the shorthand in the media and probably in the congressmen’s minds seems to take the dossier as a single narrative that can be proved or disproved. Not so.

    Simpson adds a fair bit of his impressions and interpretations of the Steele material and other things. This is additional material that needs verification. It’s plausible, but not really a confirmation of the Steele material. What would be confirmation would be additional human sources or documents that say the same or similar things.

    Nunes would like to be able to say there’s no “there” there. But Simpson undercuts that rather substantially.

    The Russian support for Nunes is interesting. It occurred to me today that Nunes’s behavior has resembled that of the Russians after their guys shot down MH17, the Malaysian airliner, over Ukraine. Toss out several misleading stories. Present fake evidence. That’s fairly generic behavior, although not the only route possible.

  88. 88.

    efgoldman

    @Anonymous At Work:

    Democrats then subpoena the authors

    I could be wrong, but I don’t think the minority members acting alone have subpoena power without a majority vote of the committee. Which they won’t get.

    ETA: Adam got there first

  92. 92.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: Yep, she isn’t needed. I’ve got a post teed up and ready to go once they close the vote and we have a final tally.

  97. 97.

    patrick II

    I watched Frank Luntz on HBO’s Vice documentary show tonight (a show I highly recommend). He was interviewing a group of Trump voters (yet again). All but one person, when asked by Luntz to name their primary news source was, named FOX news , and the one exception to that was the only guy who had come to the opinion that voting for Trump was a mistake. One old guy said that if “Trump had done half of what Obama has done they would put him in the electric chair “.
    Luntz was said he was shocked, shocked at the emotionalism of the responses he heard.
    From Wiki:

    Luntz frequently tests word and phrase choices using focus groups and interviews. His stated purpose in this is the goal of causing audiences to react based on emotion. “80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think. … If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around.

  98. 98.

    B.B.A.

    Matthew Yglesias‏ @mattyglesias

    If Hillary were president, the government would be shutting down for some different and possibly more stupid reason.
    10:34 PM – 19 Jan 2018 from Washington, DC

  99. 99.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    We have arranged for a fresh onion for your belt of the month club

    Belt of the month? But I only wear braces to hold up my pants.
    (Too fast typing garbled syntax leads to)

  104. 104.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Two sources close to the president, one a White House official and the other a longtime confidant, told The Daily Beast how excited he was for the event and relayed his growing concern that the potential failure to strike a deal to keep the federal government open could keep him from “my party,” as the president has said.

    I heard someone on my TV refer to this as a planned “star-studded” gala. There are no stars mentioned in this article. Who would they be? Chachi and Reba McEntire?

  106. 106.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: I’m just waiting for them to close the vote. Apparently one of the GOP senators hasn’t voted yet. It is McConnell who has not yet voted. He’s going to enter a motion to reconsider after voting no, which gives him the option of bringing it back up without having to file for cloture. Saves him about 3 days.

  107. 107.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I knew you were old, but I didn’t realize you were Yoda.

    Fixed, so that efg can parse it better:
    “Old I knew you were , but Yoda you were I realized not.”

  114. 114.

    dmsilev

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s pretty standard for a Majority Leader. Reid used to do it fairly often, and there’d always be people whose purity exceeded their knowledge of (arcane) Senate rules and worked themselves up into a lather over it.

  115. 115.

    Peale

    @efgoldman: lol. I remember his galas with trays of catered sandwiches. Like hosting diplomats was a corporate working lunch for the procurement department. I’ll laugh if they paid 100,000 for a photo and freezer burned tilapia.

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks. I’ll probably miss it, unfortunately.

    TheHill:

    Senate Democrats emerged from a closed-door caucus meeting Friday evening asserting that President Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) were close to a funding deal but the president backed away from it.

    “There was virtually a deal, a comprehensive agreement, between Chuck Schumer and the president, and he walked away from it after he talked to his hard right,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

    Blumenthal added that the near completion of the deal, and the setback, both occurred on Friday.

    A Senate aide confirmed Blumenthal’s comments. Schumer is expected to lay out the details of the potential agreement, and his discussions with the president, from the Senate floor Friday night.

    […]

    (Emphasis added.)

    Of course Donnie blew up another deal. That’s what he does.

    “The Art of the Deal”, yeah, yeah.:

    If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  123. 123.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SFAW:

    keep hoping for the day that Mueller goes on primetime TV and say “And YOU get a treason indictment, and YOU get a treason indictment, and YOU get one …” usw. That would be cool.

    That would be a nice intro for #46, Oprah.

  129. 129.

    Another Scott

    @B.B.A.: There has to be a CR because there’s no other bill. The question is, what’s in it. They can make the CR as comprehensive as they want, or as limited as they want.

    Here’s hoping that Schumer and Durbin and all the rest play their cards right and take the hostages away while drinking Trump and the Teabaggers’ milkshake. With bells on.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  130. 130.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Another Scott:

    If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.” “The Disaster Artist.”

  132. 132.

    J R in WV

    @Corner Stone:

    Cloture is a famous Senate rule, it means closing the debate, ending discussion of the proposed bill, and requiring a vote on the merits. Cloture takes 60 votes, a supermajority. Without a vote of at least 60 members in support of cloture, the Senate can’t proceed to a vote up or down on the proposed bill.

    Cloture ends a fillibuster, which is just a fancy word for continuing the debate ad infinitum.

  140. 140.

    SFAW

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Scott Baio on the spoons

    If that mook were still getting anything other than “Unidentified male victim” parts in direct-to-DVD movies, he could afford to roll up a $50 bill.

    Oh, wait … what kind of spoon did you mean?

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