Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things we may be talking about today.
Around the same time the Kremlin was ramping up its election fuckery campaign in 2016, Paul Manafort's right-hand douche noodle, Rick Gates, tried to hire an Israeli spy company to hoover up social media data and build "intelligence dossiers" on Trump's opponents and potential Republican delegates, then use that info to swing the election in favor of Donald Trump.
Trump says he's not going to "You're Fired" Rod Rosenstein after a private meeting aboard Air Force One. Even though Trump has spent the past year shitting all over Rosenstein, they're best friends now and they're going to go golfing at one of his Russian-funded golf casinos, then hit up a Hooters (for wings).
Here's your regularly scheduled horror story: Trump's baby jails are still a thing, and increasing in size. We're up to 13,000 kids and infants now. #MAGA.
The Trump administration is letting gas companies use more ethanol in gasoline year round. The policy is being pushed by Iowa Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst who want to sell more corn from massive farms, and making strange bedfellows of the American Petroleum Institute and the National Wildlife Federation who argue high ethanol damages engines and creates thicker smog. Don't forget to pack your goggles and respirators next summer!
Rapey McPrivilege was officially sworn in a primetime special that we didn't watch (the Eighth Amendment still bans the use of Cruel and Unusual punishment). We're hearing Trump apologized for all the libs making his little snowflake cry, but the whole thing was boring and stupid, and ol' Bart'O didn't even show off his killer keg stand skills.
Since Paul Ryan is retiring to a great lobbying gig he really doesn't care if the looming government spending bill is picked up, or if Trump gets his goddamn wall, but whatever happens is probably going to be real bad.
The new GOP line is to call protesters "an angry mob" in order to make it seem like all the JOOOOZ, womynsts, and negros marching in the street for equal rights are part of an effort to physically beat lawmakers into submitting to the will of the people, unlike the great, silent minority of scared, old white people.
New GOP super PAC attack ads are painting Democrats as angry terrorists trying to take over the country with hairy legged transsexual Arab socialists who want all the men to wear penis cages and pledge allegiance to Hillary Clinton and Andrea Dworkin.
Politico has an awesome infographic about how Republicans are using dark money and super PACs to fund hit jobs against wackjob ex-con candidates like Don Blankenship, as well as bitter fights for Martha McSally and at-risk Illinois House seats.
The Alaska GOP is so mad about Lisa Murkowski's inability to support Rapey McPrivilege that they're considering taking "action" against her in the upcoming elections.
Richard Linklater has a brilliant new attack ad calling Texas Republican Sen. Ted cruz a spineless liar for licking Donald Trump's ass. [Video]
After a jury in Chicago found a cop guilty of second-degree murder on Friday, Trump gave a speech to a big crowd of cops and said they should engage in illegal stop-and-frisk procedures, and threatened to send federal agents into Chicago to stop the rash of gun violence. Fun Fact: Chicago cops have engaged in a form of stop-and-frisk since a 2015 agreement with the ACLU. So...whatever.
Mike Pompeo was just publicly spanked like a rotten stepchild by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi for the Trump administration's accusations of election fuckery and its trade war. Pompeo was hoping to nudge China into helping Trump have another photo op in North Korea, but like a Roomba smearing dog shit, Pompeo seems to have made things worse.
The Chinese are laughing in the face of Trump's trade war through a series of economic gambles, and by routing products through other countries, dumping products on middlemen, or simply calling products a different things to avoid tariffs. There's even a Facebook-like website to help companies avoid Trump's trade war.
Emerging markets in Not America are struggling to stay afloat as Trump's trade war creates more instability in the global economy. As a result, the IMF has lowered its projected global economic growth rate for 2019, with the IMF's chief economist adding, "We've gotten some bad news and the probability we'd attach to further bad news has gone up." HURRAY!
Surprise! A viral video of a woman squirting bleach on dudes manspreading on the St. Petersburg subway is actually a Kremlin-sponsored social media campaign to rile up MRAs. Now at least one Russian politician is calling to criminalize feminism.
Investigative outlet Bellingcat has confirmed the identity of the second GRU officer sent to the UK to assassinate Sergei Skripal as Dr. Yevgenyevich Mishkin. Bellingcat is expected to release further information later today.
Bulgarian journalist Viktoria Marinova was found raped and murdered in a park Sunday. Police officials say that the crime had no connection to her work highlighting corruption, but many EU lawmakers and press freedom advocates aren't buying it and note the growing number of attacks on and assassinations of journalists throughout Europe.
Fox News is raking in ad money from lobbying groups desperate to get Trump's attention during "executive time." They're not even trying to be slick about it, many ads contain direct pleas to the God-Emperor.
Former Trump whisperer Hope Hicks just landed a sweet new gig at Fox as an executive VP and comms director.
Verizon is now patting itself on the back for screwing California firefighters trying to fight wildfires. Heaven forbid anyone find out how shittily the telecom industry behaves.
In a letter to the House and Senate commerce committees, Apple is denying it was the victim of the Chinese God-tier hardware hack reported by Bloomberg last week. DHS is now backing up the denials, and no other reporting outlets have confirmed the story, but that's also kind of what happened in the Snowden leaks.
After extensive pressure from engineers, Google has bailed out of a bid for a massive Pentagon contract to create a cloud for the DOD. A Google spox said that Uncle Sam couldn't prove that Google's tech wouldn't be used to create killer robots.
Perhaps the most embarrassing thing about the data breach of Google+ being reported by the WSJ is that people were still using Google+. It's maddening that Google tried to hide the breach, but since nobody uses Google+ it's actually really just kind of sad.
And here's your morning Nice Time! Scottish Wildcat kittens!
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