Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things we may be talking about today.
BREAKING NEWS: HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT
And, now, you're regularly scheduled Wonkagenda...
Trump has ANOTHER GODDAMN INTERVIEW this morning, this time with the New York Post. For perhaps the first time, someone who wasn't John Barron rambled to the Post that Rod Rosenstein belongs in jail, and threatened to add "abuse of power" to his laundry list of criminal offenses by investigating Democrats who investigate him. It's a nothing burger of an interview.
Jerome Corsi went on Ari Melber's show for a fuckbonkers interview where he admits he's geriatric rat fuck who lied to Congress. Corsi then says says he's not interested in a presidential pardon for lying to federal investigators or Congress, or for conspiring with Roger Stone and Wikileaks to subvert democracy, and that he still believes Obama is a secret Muslim who killed Jack Kennedy with Lee Harvey Oswald and the Cigarette Smoking Man on the grassy knoll. [Full Interview]
Corsi also appears to be the jackoff behind the whole Hillary health scare. The Daily Beast painstakingly pieced together a bunch of crap between Corsi and the conservative echo chamber that culminated in Trump ranting about her "stamina" in August of 2016.
WaPo is reporting that Mueller is very interested in Trump's late night chats with Roger Stone during the 2016 campaign. Stone tells WaPo that Trump tried to act like a bootleg James Bond, calling from blocked phone numbers or Chris Ruddy's phone, to kvetch about Killary. Stone says HIS EMAILS "prove nothing other than, like every other politico and political reporter in America, I was curious to know what it was that WikiLeaks had."
The WSJ has more ALLEGED details on how Paul Manafort's plea agreement fell apart. Manafort apparently lied about blood money he got from Konstantin Kilimnik, a shady Russian oligarch from Ukraine who has also been indicted for ALLEGEDLY intimidating witnesses in the Trump-Russia probe.
The Daily Beast reports that Mueller's team is also digging into Psy Group, an Israeli intel firm that hoovers up social media data, after uncovering more extensive contacts between Manafort's former lackey Rick Gates, Erik Prince, George Nader, and (drum roll, please!) DJTJ!
The toxic stooge Trump installed in the EPA, Andrew Wheeler, says the Trump administration is sick of mother nature telling them what's best for the environment, and it was Obama's DEEP STATE lawn gnomes who created that global warming report Trump tried to bury last week.
Nobody wants to be Trump's UN ambassador, and now Trump wants to demote the position of UN ambassador out of the White House cabinet, per Mike Pompeo's request. Politico reports that Pompeo wants MOAR POWER, and has complained about being a limp, second banana to Nikki Haley.
Trump's nominee for the USDA's civil rights office, Naomi Churchill Earp, told senators that she'd like to set up a pilot program that would speed up handling of sexual harassment complaints to "triage them in a way to separate sexual assault from the silliness that goes on as part of harassment." This prompted Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow to shit a brick, and the USDA to send out a spox to run damage control.
For once Republicans in the Senate are bucking Trump and killing support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen after the Trump administration refused to let CIA Director Gina Haspel brief the Senate on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Don't worry though, the Trump administration says it's going to let the Saudis spend up to $15 billion for anti-ballistic missile systems to stop the starving Houthi rebels from launching bootleg mortars.
The WSJ has a thinkery piece on how the housing market may be in the middle of a nasty slump, and that could be another signal that the economy is about to slip into the toilet.
The IRS is giving a handy to big businesses who bitched about having to pay their fair share in taxes. The new rules make it easier for banks and tech companies to deduct some money they paid in Not American taxes, which Republican-aligned lobbyists had complained was a "double-taxation issue," and a motivating factor in moving their businesses overseas.
In a move that seems designed to get Trump to shut the fuck up for five minutes, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the US central bank could slow interest rate hikes, a 180 degree shift from last month when he warned against rising inflation. Later today the Fed is expected to release minutes from its last meeting on Nov. 7 and Nov. 8; you can expect markets to fly all over the place (again). While you wait, check out this WaPo analysis of Trump's assault on the Fed, and how he doesn't know the difference between the US government and a family business.
Now that everyone has forgotten about all the mass shootings of kids and country music fans, the Trump administration plans to announce a ban on so-called "bump stocks." CNN reports that anyone who owns a bump stock would be forced to "destroy or surrender" their cheap and dirty auto-fire accessory within 90 days. And y'all thought Obama was coming for your guns? PUH-LEASE.
The VA has decided it's not going to pay student veterans the money it owes them because it would literally be too complicated and delay payments even longer. Note that student veterans are about to be kicked out of school for not being able to pay their tuition. THIS. IS. SOME. BULLSHIT.
The Senate Judiciary Committee cancelled a slew of judicial hearings after Republican Sen. Jeff Flake grew a spine and demanded a bill to protect Robert Mueller, but the bill was blocked by Republican Sen. Mike Lee who complained it was unconstitutional. Flake's now pissing off Republican leaders who are desperate to continue packing the courts with business-friendly and openly racist conservatives who think gaymosexuals should piss in the closet.
The farm bill may be about to drop, and the rumor mill on the Hill is that there won't be stricter work requirements for people who get food stamps, or cuts to SNAP, but they're held up on a number of "thorny" issues, like Republicans demanding deforestation in California to stop wildfires.
A conservative rag spoke with Arizona's seat-filling Republican Senator Jon Kyl, and he whines that being in the Senate (again) is "hard." Kyl's comments come amid more speculation that he'll piss off back to his posh K Street office and help right-wing trolls shitpost on Facebook for oodles of Ameros.
John Kerry still won't say if he's running. #HesRunning.
Nancy Pelosi was nominated to chair the Democratic party in the House yesterday, but the New York Times frames it like the progressive caucus cut out her uterus. She got 203 votes and only needs needs another 18 before the January vote, but everyone's acting like she didn't just make her critics to sit down and STFU for five minutes.
German police officials raided Deutsche Bank's offices in Frankfurt on suspicions that it had helped clients set up tax shelters to launder money. Prosecutors have cited revelations in the "Panama Papers" and "Offshore Leaks" as evidence that the bank was helping big businesses and super rich people hide money from Uncle Sam, John Bull, and der Deutsche Michel.
Trump's trade war is making Europe great again as Not America starts looking at alternatives to US steel. Pencil pushers think that, in the long run, Trump's constant meddling will cause more dramatic and volatile shifts in global market stability -- and that's very, very bad. #ThanksTrump
Reuters seems to have found a tentative schedule for the Trump-Putin meeting at the G20 on Dec. 1 in Argentina. The Kremlin is confirming the meeting, with Kremlin spox Dmitry Peskov noting that they'll talk about "the world at large." Gee whizz, there's always a Russian leak, isn't there?
Vanity Fair has a great piece on why Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandberg, is a carbon copy of all the horrible people spewing forth from Ivy league business schools who have always been more interested in their own careers than the moral quandaries of not being a shitty human being.
New emails show that Facebook wanted to charge companies to access user data, and considered strong arming businesses for access to information as early as 2012. Even though it just got caught trying to fuck a piggy bank, Facebook's brass says this isn't what it looks like, and that it doesn't sell the personal information of its 2.27 billion users for businesses and political campaigns to micro target ads (yet).
Justin Trudeau just sexed all the wallets of the Canadian press by proposing a bail out of independent journalists and struggling newspapers with a $595 million Not American dollar tax break. SPLOOSH!
In settling a lawsuit with Pabst Brewing Co., MillerCoors seems to be waved a white flag and ended the looming shitty beer wars. Pabst had claimed that MillerCoors was trying to create a monopoly in the cheap, shitty beer market, and hated fun.
ICMYI: Julian Assange now looks like a hobo, and lost his cat. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
And here's your morning Nice Time! A BABY SLOTH!
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