Big Ball Of Violence. Wonkagenda for Thurs., Aug. 1, 2019
Dem debates, #MoscowMitch strikes again, and Jeffrey Epstein wanted to freeze his wiener. Your morning news brief!
Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today.
The second Democratic debate was a cartoonish big ball of violence with every candidate attacking one another in the hopes that they could knock their colleagues down a polling point or two. Even members of the audience were attacking as protesters interrupted candidates several times throughout the evening. Former vice president Joe Biden took a beating on everything from criminal justice and immigration to healthcare and women's rights, leaving it to news outlets to 'splain why he didn't support a childcare tax credit for rich people back in the 1980s. Biden called Sen. Kamala Harris's recently released healthcare plan a load of MALARKEY, only to have Kamala uppercut him on his ties to big pharma. When Sen. Corey Booker said Biden was an "architect of mass incarceration," Biden said Booker was a shitty mayor for letting the Newark Police Department use stop-and-frisk. The Washington Post thinks the biggest winners last night were senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, while The New York Times thinks Joe Biden did a great job simply by staying alive through the night. [ Transcript / Fact Check / NPR Analysis ]
July Democratic Debates - Night Two | The Daily Show www.youtube.com
Former Fox News talking head, super rich GOP donor, and close friend of Mitch McConnell Kelly Craft has been confirmed as your new UN ambassador. Republicans defended Craft against reports that she's A Idiot who was derelict from her job as the US ambassador to Canada. Democratic Senator Bob Menendez said, "Never in our nation's history have we nominated such an underqualified person to this critical post."
William Perry Pendley is your new ACTING director of the Bureau of Land Management. Pendley is a Reaganite who doesn't think BLM should even exist, and has built a career suing the agency on behalf of oil and gas companies, screwing native people, fighting to end rules protecting endangered species, and demanding Uncle Sam pave over all the fucking trees and their fucking detritus with asphalt. The fucking woodland critters keep ruining his azalea bushes!
The administration sent Donald Trump's only black friend, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, up to Baltimore to defend Trump's racist shitposting by saying the city suffered socio-economic "cancer." NPR notes that Carson was initially supposed to hold forth in a field across from a multi-million dollar affordable housing complex that was renovated under the Obama administration, but the owner's property, the Morning Star Baptist Church, actually chased Carson off into an alley.
Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Richard Neal has an op-ed where he gripes that his committee needs Trump's tax returns in order to restore some semblance of faith in the tax system. Is he still being audited? Did he even pay his taxes? Why is Trump even hiding his tax returns? What the hell is he hiding anyway?
Conservative rags are clutching their pearls after Sen. Rand Paul declared the death of the Tea Party during a tantrum on the Senate floor. Paul was crying about Senate Republicans signing onto that super massive two-year spending bill. The bill is expected to narrowly pass this morning, but nobody is sure what will happen if the Tea Party crazies manage to scuttle the bill since the House is already in recess.
Sen. Paul Blasts Both Parties for Budget Deal, Declares the Death of the Tea Party www.youtube.com
Senate Republicans can't wait to get away from Washington for the August recess. They're sick and tired of rationalizing Trump's racist shitposting, and they'd really appreciate if you don't bother them at the town halls they don't intend to have. As Mitt Romney says, if they felt Trump was racist, they'd call Trump a racist. HARUMPH!
Politico has an interesting story about a former staffer of #MoscowMitch McConnell lobbying for Russian aluminum company Rusal to build a super huge plant in Kentucky.
Republican leaders are starting to get a little worried about all the GOP congressmembers retiring. Even though we're over a year out, seven Republicans are deciding to quit-fire themselves from politics, and Politico reports at least another half-dozen may be on the way out, including INDICTED reps Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins. The wave of departures has even caused some political wizards to reconsider their earlier forecasts.
The New York Times has an easily missed piece about how the super rich are taking helicopters everywhere because they're too good to sit in traffic with the rest of us proles.
Before he became a convicted sex offender and an alleged pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein was besties with Donald Trump. However, all that changed when Epstein and Trump got into a fight over a mansion that Trump would inevitably sell to some Russians (natch). Curiously, Trump is the only one of Epstein's former friends who was willing to talk about how much Epstein was a creepazoid -- which is weird since Trump says he's never talked to the FBI.
After Trump undercut Epstein for a mansion, Epstein spent the better part of the early 2000's hoping to impregnate as many women as possible. Per the New York Times, Epstein's idea was to seed the human race with as many of his brats as possible, and he dreamed of having "20 women at a time impregnated at his 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch in a tiny town outside Sante Fe." He even talked about freezing his head and his dick so he could come back in the future and keep on fucking! Epstein does not seem to have dozens of kids that we know of, so zero points for follow-through.
Woodstock's 50th anniversary has been officially canceled after a bunch of headliners, like Miley Cyrus and Jay-Z, bailed out following yet another change of venue. The organizers are asking artists to donate their fees to Head Count, a non-profit that encourages voter registration. Anyone who lives in the past can travel to Bethel, New York, on Aug. 15-18 to relive their glory days at an intimate gathering with John Fogerty, Ringo Starr, and the Doobie Brothers.
Samantha Bee 'splained how the trillion dollar student debt crisis affects almost everyone and why Julian Castro is so adamant that decriminalizing immigration isn't a bad thing, and sent Allana Harkin to Kentucky find out why #MoscowMitch is considered trash among his constituents AND to talk to Amy McGrath!
Student Loan Debt: It's Not Just For Millennials Anymore! | Full Frontal on TBS www.youtube.com
And here's your morning Nice Time: RED PANDAS!
Red Panda Milwaukee County Zoo Birth Announcement www.youtube.com
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