Let The Eagle Soar. Wonkagenda For Tues., Sept. 11, 2018
Susan Collins loves wire hangers, Trump's LOW RATINGS reach new low, and Pat Robertson shakes Jesus at Hurricane Florence. Your morning news brief!
Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today.
Before we get started, we feel it necessary to note that today is the 17th anniversary of 9/11. This morning, Trump woke up at the buttcrack of dawn and tweeted this stunning tribute to the thousands of people who lost their lives, and those first responders who continue to struggle with debilitating health effects.
“We have found nothing to show collusion between President Trump & Russia, absolutely zero, but every day we get more documentation showing collusion between the FBI & DOJ, the Hillary campaign, foreign spies & Russians, incredible." @SaraCarterDC @LouDobbs
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2018
More nuggets are dropping out of Bob Woodward's new book, like how Trump went ripshit on John Dowdwhen he heard Robert Mueller's team subpoenaed Deutsche Bank. There's also a tidbit about how Trump told Gary Cohn to "Just run the presses -- print money," to solve the federal deficit. He's got, like, a really good brain.
Trump's White House says it won't use lie detector tests to find out who wrote THE OP-ED because, according to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, they're all "focused" on stealing papers off Trump's desk.
George Papadopoulos started running his mouth on Twitter about a #DeepState British conspiracy to make him look like a drunk idiot, and accused the Australian ambassador to the UK of "wearing women's fishnets."
The judge presiding over the Maria Butina case denied her bail and imposed a gag order , telling her defense attorney, "Your work defending your client needs to happen in this courtroom, not on the public airwaves," following rants to the right-wing press about Uncle Sam calling Butina a whooooore.
Congress struck a bipartisan deal to avoid a government shutdown next month with three spending bills to fund the Energy and Veterans departments and the legislative branch. AMAZING.
House Republicans dropped their bill to make the Trump trillion dollar tax cut (for the super rich) permanent. The bill also includes various savings schemes intended to trick old people into supporting additional tax cuts for corporations.
Almost 50 House Republicans want Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act introduced by Democrats back in July before it expires at the end of the month. Goddammit, it's VAWA AGAIN???
Backed by a fact-check by Fox News , the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers corrected Trump's erroneous tweet about GDP growth during yesterday's White House press briefing and stated, "At some point somebody probably conveyed it to [Mr. Trump] adding a zero to that, and they shouldn't have done that." TREASON?
Trump tweeted out a heavily edited video of Obama talking about jobs going to Mexico from a PBS town hall, so PBS tweeted out the entire entire video. The morale of the story is don't fuck with Sesame Street.
A super conservative US District Court in Arkansas has just taken a giant dump on Roe V. Wade in upholding two laws in Texas and Missouri that make it unnecessarily difficult to obtain abortions.
Susan Collins bemoaned to a conservative media outlet that political groups are threatening to withhold money from herif she votes for/against Brett Kavanaugh. Leave it to Susan Collins to think, "No, MORE wire hangers!"
A new report by the heads of the former 9/11 commission says Trump's abandonment of US allies and foreign aid has emboldened Russia and China to screw around with the rest of the world, and may be allowing terrorist groups to flourish. Thanks, Trump.
Trump's LOW RATINGS are falling even deeper into the political toilet this morning according to new job approval ratings from CNN, Quinnipiac, Gallup and Rasmussen, one of which shows 60% of people find Trump dishonest, and 55% believe he's unfit to serve.
A new analysis by Politico has found the #BlueWave threatens the majority of old white guys in Congress , with women and people of color, many of them first time candidates, poised to dramatically reshape the legislative branch. Fun Fact: it was only seven years ago that women in the House got their first bathroom.
An official investigation by the USPS inspector general has been launched to find out how Abigail Spanberger's full, unredacted SF86 was released to Paul Ryan's Super PAC. Spanberger, a former CIA officer, is the Democrat challenging House Freedom crazy Rep. Dave Brat in the Virginia 7th. HMMMM
The House Rules Committee doesn't really want to write any new rules in the event that the House changes hands; and with so many Republican chairman retiring, the House Freedom crazies are trying to dig their way into powerful subcommittees like ticks on a fat, old dog.
In a 4-0 ruling, the FEC is allowing federal campaigns and national political parties to accept free cyber security services from Microsoft ahead of the 2018 elections. The FEC says Microsoft would be acting out of a business interest, not trying to peddle influence with current/future lawmakers or skirt campaign finance laws with a loophole large enough to sail a ship through.
The Daily Beast is reporting that Mike Nearman, a Republican state rep in Oregon, is the leader of an anti-immigrant hate group with ties to a white nationalist organization whose leader has espoused the benefits of eugenics. #MAGA
Two Australian fire fighters were shot by hunters while working with US Forest Service personnel to fight wildfires in Washington state. According to a report by the US Forest Service, "The incident personnel watched with binoculars as one of the two individuals put a scoped rifle on a bi-pod and looked up the mountain toward them."
An "extremely dangerous" Category 4 Hurricane Florence is about to rip the Carolinas a new asshole as early as Friday, and more than 1.5 million people have already been evacuated . With the National Hurricane Center warning the storm could intensify to a Category 5 before it makes landfall, Pat Robertson is screaming at the sky , telling it to stay away from his Christian Broadcasting Network -- OR ELSE.
In speaking with the uberconservative Federalist Society, Trump's resident war machine, John Bolton, said the US will hold discussions with France and the UK about a possible military response in Syria if the Assad regime carries out additional chemical weapons attacks. In recent days Assad's forces have resumed dropping barrel bombs on civilians and anti-Assad militants.
US intelligence analysts tell NBC News that they have strong evidence that Russia was behind the mysterious attacks on US diplomatic missions in Cuba and China last year.
Today is the 17th anniversary of the attacks on September 11th, so it was only natural that Fox and Friends bring out Rudy Giuliani to remind everyone about 9/11, and all the things he did on 9/11, 9/11, 9/11.
The NRA owned the libs by putting a KKK hood on Thomas the Tank Engine to protest children's programing becoming ethnically diverse. Clearly Dana Loesch isn't a fan of the Biggie Smalls mash-up.
A new studysuggeststhat the blood of young people might help old people live longer,thus validating the abso-fucking-lutely creepy myth of "blood boys" used by Silicon Valley whack-jobs, like Peter Thiel.
And here's your morning Nice Time! BABY CONDORS!
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I saw one in the Grand Canyon, up fairly close! It was looking at us humans with undisguised contempt. Smart bird.
"...it was only seven years ago that women in the House got their first bathroom."Haven't you heard? Misogyny is dead, just like racism!