Do Us A Favor, Though: Get Wonkette Merch For Everyone On Your Holiday List

OK, listen up you HUMAN SCUM! It's your Doktor Zoom, and we need to have a word. A word about MOVING PRODUCT.

Yr Wonkette has t-shirts and coffee mugs and shot glasses to move, and you, our beloved readers, have holiday shopping needs. Let's see if we can't come to a mutually beneficial arrangement, OK? Sure would be a shame if we had to withhold military aid to you because you aren't buying Wonkette merch for all your relatives, and selected frenemies. So if you know what's good for you (snark and politics and stuff), you'll do your patriotic duty and GO SHOPPING. (Haha, remember when, in a more innocent era, we thought that was as bad and stupid and vulgar as it could get?)

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Hot: That New Joe Biden Ad. Not: FIGHTING A AUDIENCE, JOE.

This is not a post about supporting Joe Biden or not supporting Joe Biden or anything like that. We are already tired of your fucking circular firing squad, and at this point, we just hope somebody survives it and has the energy/reputation left to beat Trump next November.

But hey, did y'all see that Joe Biden ad that dropped last night, capitalizing on world leaders at NATO mocking and LOLing at Donald Trump, about how the entire world is laughing at our dumbass president, with alllll those clips of Trump getting laughed at by everybody who ever lived? It is a good fuckin' ad! It is the kind of ad every Dem who can afford it should be running right now, not least because it'll get right under Trump's thin loserbaby skin.

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Naming And Shaming The 71 House Republicans Who Just Took Russia's Side In Ukraine War

Rachel Maddow's Wednesday night show alerted us to a little vote that happened in the House this week that most didn't notice, what with Trump crying himself to sleep on Air Force One after Justin Trudeau made fun of him, and oh yeah, impeachment.

The House voted this week on H.R. 546 -- just a simple resolution, really. It was introduced by Democratic Rep. Albio Sires of New Jersey and says NO, Donald Trump, you cannot try to sneak your boyfriend Vladimir Putin back into the Group of Seven (G7), not even as a guest and definitely not as a member, no matter how much he begs and/or promises you more sweet election interference in 2020. (As Yahoo! News notes, Russia decided to quit the group for good in 2017, because of how they definitely don't want to be invited to your party, you fuckin' betcha no they never. Yahoo! News also reports that French President Emmanuel Macron actually agreed with Trump at the NATO summit that they should invite Russia to the G7 next year as a guest. Emmanuel, WHAT R U DOIN?)

It passed, of course. But 71 (71!) House Republicans voted against it.

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Loser Gov Matt Bevin Sad Black People Stole His KY Election :(

Thanks to the "power of Donald Trump," Republican incumbent Matt Bevin managed a triumphant second place finish in last month's Kentucky governor's race. Bevin gave a series of exit interviews on talk radio yesterday where he described his loss as a "surprise." That's interesting because Bevin was recently ranked the least popular governor in the US. He even bragged that it was "a sad, sad day for Democrats when they can't beat somebody like that." Well, Andy Beshear called his bluff and Kentucky will soon have a governor the residents don't loathe. But Bevin is still gobsmacked by the Democrat's "dirty tricks," which involved engaging the public and convincing them to vote for you. We call that "canvassing" but Bevin claims it's "harvesting" votes, like what Dr. Frankenstein does in graveyards.

BEVIN: The left, those who think of a different ideological bent, they are getting so good at harvesting votes in the urban communities. They were able to go into urban communities where people are densely populated on college campuses and public housing projects.

"Urban communities" are inconvenient truths for Republicans. People live there, unlike the empty acres of land where the GOP dominates, and worse those "people" are often minorities, sometimes even in Kentucky. The Founders intended for each white man to receive exactly one vote. The slaves they rode to their polling places weren't supposed to have a say in government. That leads to chaos or Republicans losing elections. The Democrats were so diabolical they didn't just stop with Kool-Aid rallies at housing projects. They even went to college campuses, which are filled with eligible voters. It's like they were running a competent campaign.

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Recipe Hub

Recipe Hub: Some Baked Stuffed Shrimp For Your Feast Of Seven Fishes, Or For Whenever

It is cheap, easy and also impressive.

Last week, for Thanksgiving, I met my immediate family down in Rhode Island to see my extended family. As lovely as Thanksgiving dinner is, turkey is just never on our food priority list when we go back there. Rhode Island may be small, but it has some truly glorious food and beverages, most of which cannot actually be found outside of the state. Clamcakes I understand, they're definitely more of a thing you eat when you are only a few miles away from the sea, but I still don't understand how the rest of the country has slept on coffee milk. They have salted caramel milk at my grocery store now, but I still have to get my Eclipse coffee syrup shipped to me, like a fool? It's not right.

Every time we go back, one of our biggest priorities is going to Twin Oaks in Cranston. I grew up going to Twin Oaks. It is the restaurant where they gave me a Shirley Temple with my very own glass of maraschino cherries every time I came in with my parents, it is the restaurant where my uncle bit a guy's nose off one time, and it remains one of my favorite restaurants in the whole world. And every time we go there, my mother, sister and I all get the baked stuffed shrimp. Other than the weird conversation I had at a bar with a guy who said he was in max with Ted Bundy and had, I shit you not, an Italian flag neck tattoo, putting those shrimp in my face was the highlight of my trip.

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Nice Time

It Is Very Punk To Like Kittycats, Okay?

Cats are pretty punk all on their own, thank you very much.

Welcome again to your weekly escape from all the nastiness out there! Let's dive right into the kitties and puppies and stuff, shall we? A quick reminder to folks who wonder when THEIR lovely pet pics will be featured in Nice Things: Check the date on that calander next to little Beto up there. I have a LOT of your kitty and doggy and ferret pics, and I may not get to 'em all immediately, or ever. But I will try! Yes, you can post or email more, but only if you promise you'll at least try to be patient!

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Media/Entertainment

If Your Lady Is Jealous Of 'Alexa,' You Might Want To Run

Open thread hate read!

There are a lot of good reasons to not have an Alexa or whatever the Google version of Alexa is in your home. Like, for one, the thing where they are always listening to and spying on you all of the time and the thing where people can hack them with lasers. That is all pretty terrifying.

A bad reason, I guess, to not have an Alexa, would be because you are so insanely jealous that the idea of your husband asking a robotic lady voice about the weather sends you into a spiral. You wouldn't think that would be a thing for anyone, but it is, I guess, a thing for Helen Ellis, who wrote an essay titled "I'm Not Jealous, I'm Territorial" for Roxane Gay's Gay Mag — which is chock full of more red flags than you can shake... a red flag at.

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popular

Tucker Carlson Dazzled By 'Sanity' Of White Nationalist Talking Points

That tracks.

Meet Pete D'Abrosca! Pete D'Abrosca is a Republican running for a Congressional seat in North Carolina's 7th district. He is also a big proponent of the white nationalist "Great Replacement" theory and an advocate of banning immigration entirely, on account of how he is sick and tired of seeing white people replaced with "peasants." Yes, he actually says "peasants," like he is Margeaux on Punky Brewster or some shit.

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Healthcare

Alan Keyes Wants YOU To Drink Bleach (Do Not Do That, You Will Die!)

For real, do not drink magic bleach.

Hey! Remember Alan Keyes? The Black Republican guy who runs for President and isn't Herman Cain or Ben Carson? The gay-hating guy with the crazy eyes who used to work for Reagan? Who once moved to Chicago briefly in hopes of stealing Senator Barack Obama's seat (SPOILER: It did not work out)? Well he's back, and he's now in the dangerous snake oil game. I'd say "Surprise!," but it actually seems pretty apt.

As first reported by Kelly Weill of the Daily Beast, Keyes has been using his new platform on the internet TV station IAMtv (which probably isn't related to the I AM Activity cult, but who knows anymore!) to promote the use of "Miracle Mineral Solution" (MMS) as a cure for almost everything.

The other name for Miracle Mineral Solution, however, is chlorine dioxide, and it is primarily used to bleach things. As you may have guessed, it is not safe to drink and several people have died or gotten sick from trying to drink it.

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News

Your Weekly Top Ten's Wonkette Toddler Picture Isn't Sideways, YOU ARE SIDEWAYS

YOU COME READ YOUR TOP TEN STORIES RIGHT NOW!

LOOK, IT IS A NEW WONKETTE TODDLER PRESSURE LION OF CUTENESS FOR YOUR TOP TEN POST. That is the type of thing that encourages you to give us donations. And yes, it is sideways and yes we could fix it but also yes, we don't feel like it because yes, we have shit to do because yes we write this on Friday afternoons and yes that means there's an alcoholic beverage burning a hole in our refrigerator.

Anyway!

Before we count down the top ten stories of the week, here is your obligatory money beg, because if you love Wonkette, we need you to SUPPORT WONKETTE. Give us money to keep the lights on up in here! Better yet? SUBSCRIBE MONTHLY! Or up your subscription! Thank you, we love you, you pay our rent, especially because of the pic of Wonkette toddler right there doing PRESSURE LION.

Also, have you been to the Wonkette Flea Market lately, in order to find some rare finds? We have all kinds of merches, like t-shirts and coffee cups featuring your favorite candidates, and also just Wonkette-branded swag. Maybe there is some you do not have! GO FIND OUT.

Ready to count down the top stories? Yes, you are.

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Politics

Do Us A Favor, Though: Get Wonkette Merch For Everyone On Your Holiday List

Just say Feck It, through The Gift Shop

OK, listen up you HUMAN SCUM! It's your Doktor Zoom, and we need to have a word. A word about MOVING PRODUCT.

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National Politics

Bill Barr Said A Cussy!

WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

Somebody send a criminal referral to the #BeBest Justice Department of No Cussing, because Attorney General Bill Barr is mad enough to say a cuss!

Specifically, he said the "BS" word, while whining about how all these mean people think he's an el cheapo Big Lots regional theater understudy transmogrification of the Roy Cohn figure Donald Trump really wants, as he traipses around the globe trying (and failing) to get people to make up conspiracy theories about the origins of the Russia investigation in service of his braindead master.

Barr said the verified cuss in a New York magazine profile of himself:

"That's all bullshit," Barr said to me in his office of the skepticism surrounding his overseas meetings, which he said were necessary under the circumstances. "This is a case where we're asking for assistance and information, some of which is sensitive or classified information."

GRUMBLE GRUMBLE GRRR ARGH!

Hey you guys this is Bill Barr:

Giphy

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News

Detained Teen Died Of Flu. And Of Border Patrol Not Giving A Sh*t

America: The Great Again Chronicles.

ProPublica has published a horrifying investigative piece on the last day in the life of Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, the 16-year-old Guatemalan boy who died in Border Patrol detention May 20. Carlos was the sixth detained child to die in less than a year -- following a decade of no child deaths in immigration detention. And while the other kids at least made it to a hospital before they died, Carlos was the only child to die in a Border Patrol facility. This story includes some gruesome details and may make you want to throw your computer out a window.

And here's a surprise: Video of the cell where Carlos died shows US Customs and Border Protection flat-out lied about important aspects of his death. CBP said in a press release that he was found dead by CPB officers during a routine safety check, about an hour after a prior check confirmed he was just fine.

Not quite.

The cellblock video shows Carlos writhing for at least 25 minutes on the floor and a concrete bench. It shows him staggering to the toilet and collapsing on the floor, where he remained in the same position for the next four and a half hours.

Agents didn't discover the death during a safety check; rather, Carlos's cellmate woke in the morning, found him dead, a pool of blood around his head, and got the attention of guards. CBP logs show an agent "checked" on him three times in the early morning hours, but apparently didn't enter the cell, even though Carlos was seriously ill.

The video shows the only way CBP officials could have missed Carlos' crisis is that they weren't looking. His agony was apparent, even in grainy black and white, making clear the agent charged with monitoring him failed to perform adequate checks, if he even checked at all. The coroner who performed an autopsy on Carlos said she was told the agent occasionally looked into the cell through the window

Carlos's teacher back in Guatemala, Jose Morales Pereira, didn't see the video, but told ProPublica that if someone had a sick animal, they'd at least check on it to make sure it was breathing and not in distress.

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Ukraine

Aw, Rudy Giuliani Thinks He's Helping!

Shine on, you batshit crazy diamond!

Rudy Giuliani can't stop, won't stop. The man is under investigation by the pit bulls at SDNY for possible failure to disclose his representation of a foreign government official. His associates just got indicted on a massive campaign finance scheme undertaken in the interest of former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, with whom Giuliani himself has worked for the past year. Giuliani's phone records just showed up in the House Intelligence Committee report. And, not for nothing, but his client is getting impeached for leaning on the Ukrainian government to smear Joe Biden in exchange for foreign aid.

So naturally this crazy sumbitch is out there on Twitter confessing that Trump's concerns about corruption were only ever about Joe Biden and explicitly threatening to withhold American foreign aid if the Ukrainians don't investigate Trump's likely 2020 opponent.

Subtle! So much for the argument that Donald Trump has a deep-seated loathing of corruption in all its forms and seeks only to ensure that American tax dollars support strong civic government.

And Rudy sent the tweet FROM UKRAINE, where he's been holding a series of meetings with the most rancidly corrupt dregs from the former regime, which the Ukrainian people overwhelmingly just tossed out at the ballot box. It's truly amazing that a 75-year-old man whose main form of exercise appears to be philandering is still spry enough to kick himself in the dick all day long.

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Post-Racial America

Nikki Haley So Sad Dylann Roof Made Confederate Flag All Racist

The flag was such a symbol of diversity and inclusion before 2015.

Well, damn, Nikki Haley is going to be president. We're not any happier about that than you are, but we only have ourselves to blame. Our 2020 Democratic nominee -- based on the current top four candidates -- has a 75 percent chance of being over 70, a 75 percent chance of being male, and a 100 percent chance of being white. I don't have a problem with old white people. I used to leave cookies out for one every Christmas. I'm sure I'll vote for the old guy who's not Trump. I'm just worried. I've lived through Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. (Hillary won that shit. Don't @ me.)

Haley is a woman of color and under 50. She's who you'd think would lead a party with a diverse electorate. She's also the former governor of my home state of South Carolina. She was a Republican who did lots of Republican things, but she demonstrated some humanity in 2015 after Dylann Roof murdered nine black people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. She jeopardized her political capital with the very people who put her in office and ordered the Confederate flag removed from the statehouse.

You can tell Haley has higher political ambitions these days than stroking Donald Trump because she's trying to strike the right balance between doing right by black people and doing right by racists. She sat down for an interview this week with Kentucky colonel Glenn Beck and dropped a load of "Lost Cause" bullshit right on our clean floor.

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Impeachment

Lindsey Graham Openly Disobeys Trump. TREASON?

OBAMA NETFLIX?

We often discuss what a Trump-licking shithole Lindsey Graham is. Recently we talked about how Graham was gonna open a super-serious investigation into the Biden conspiracy theories that everybody knows are conspiracy theories, even the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee know they are conspiracy theories. This even though a long time ago, Graham and Biden used to be friends. Real friends.

But Graham apparently has found one Trump order he cannot follow, at least until Trump shows him some more kompromat, ALLEGEDLY.

O RLY? Is Adam Schiff gonna testify in the Senate? Is Joe Biden? Is Hunter Biden? Is Nancy Pelosi? Is Lindsey Graham going to follow this decree from his highness who HEREBY ORDERS it?

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Media/Entertainment

David Brooks: When I Was A Teenage Socialist

He gave the government plenty. Why did it want more?

Bernie Sanders has succeeded in making socialism so cool even David Brooks now admits he was socialist-curious in college. Brooks details his experiments with collectivism in his latest New York Times column. It was a long time ago, when Brooks was young and hip. He read "magazines like The Nation and old issues of The New Masses" like every over-educated asshole in a Woody Allen movie. Brooks offers YouTube proof of his socialism, but his editors must've goofed because the link just rick-rolls you to a 1990 video where Brooks is a radical writer for the Wall Street Journal.

BROOKS: I get why ... socialist concerns are popular. Why do we have to live with such poverty and inequality? Why can't we put people over profits? What is the best life in the most just society? Socialism is the most compelling secular religion of all time. It gives you an egalitarian ideal to sacrifice and live for.

Brooks was cured of all his empathy once he became a journalist, which admittedly is a known risk.

BROOKS: I quickly noticed that the government officials I was covering were not capable of planning the society they hoped to create. It wasn't because they were bad or stupid. The world is just too complicated.

I'm fairly certain the world was complicated when these officials were elected. Maybe they were just bad or stupid. Brooks claims he was a socialist until he "saw how it worked," but he has no firsthand experience seeing actual socialism fail. He didn't spend summers backpacking through Venezuela. The rest of his column just devolves into a love letter to romanticized free market capitalism and the American dream.

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Class War

Trump Was Holding Up California's OWN MONEY For The Homeless So Gavin Newsom Told Him To Get Bent

And there's some good damn programs gonna get funded too!

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that he's taking action to release half a billion dollars in funding to address homelessness. The money is part of a $650 million package of emergency funding already approved by state legislators, but held up because the Trump administration has dragged its feet on releasing data that would allow the money to be spent. Cities and counties can begin applying for funding immediately.

While more federal money to help with California's homelessness crisis would help, this delay has nothing to do with Trump demanding Newsom investigate Joe Biden. The San Jose Mercury News explains how the federal government managed to prevent California from spending its own damn money:

The governor accused the Trump administration of trying to politicize the issue and preventing the funding from getting to local officials who can put it to use. State law says that funding allocations ultimately must be based off homeless counts approved by the federal government. But Newsom's office says Trump's team has been sitting on the data for months.

So instead, California will use preliminary homeless estimates to distribute $500 million and wait for the final numbers to allocate the remainder of the funds.

What? The feds are holding up routine government data at a time when Donald Trump is routinely attacking California for supposedly not doing enough about homelessness? Pardon us while we locate our shocked faces. Also not surprising: The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is responsible for the data on homelessness, didn't return the Mercury News's request for comment. Ben Carson was probably shopping for furniture.

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Ukraine

Senate Intel Committee Knows GOP Ukraine Conspiracy Theories Are Horsesh*t But SHHHHH DON'T TELL!

Maybe they'll release their report when committee chair Richard Burr is done spreading Russian propaganda for Donald Trump.

Look, it's more news you probably missed this week because there are too many newses!

But first, we need to do a quick review:

Every journalist who has looked into spurious conspiracy theories that UKRAINE was the REAL COLLUSION in 2016 has found that it's bullshit. (Ken Vogel's New York Times piece on the Bidens and Ukraine was debunked within HOURS. Vogel's 2017 Politico piece, which started it all, and which Republicans referred to incessantly during the impeachment hearings, admitted that there was "little evidence of a top-down effort by Ukraine" to fuck with our election. Finally, John Solomon does not get to be included among "journalists," because that's not quite what he does for a living.)
Donald Trump's first homeland security advisor, Tom Bossert, has specifically said that Trump's "Ukraine stoled the DNC server and buried it in the backyard" conspiracy theory is fully debunked horseshit, and expressed distress that people fill the president's brain with things like that. "It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again," said Bossert in September, confirming Trump is very stupid.
Many impeachment witnesses, most notably Dr. Fiona Hill, who used to work for the Trump administration as the National Security Council's top Russia adviser, informed Congress that conspiracy theories about Ukraine meddling in the 2016 election are bullshit, and also Russian propaganda. Hill said this in her opening statement, right to Devin Nunes's face.
Democratic lawyer Daniel Goldman repeatedly showed a slide during those hearings with a quote from a Vladimir Putin press conference in early 2017, where Putin can be seen personally planting the seeds of the conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine and not Russia that attacked our election in 2016, to help Hillary Clinton steal the election from herself.
The intelligence community has specifically briefed the United States Senate and told them that shit is a Kremlin conspiracy theory, thereby strongly implying that Republicans like Senator John Kennedy and Devin Nunes and Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump really need to STFU about it.

That's a pretty consistent and strong record.

But did you know that the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee has also studied the issue and made that same determination for itself? And that there is a report on that sitting at the office of the Director of National Intelligence that mysteriously hasn't been cleared for release, even though it is all finished?

WHOA IF TRUE! (It is true.)

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Tech

President Bigly Cyberbrain Uses Unencrypted Phone, For Privacy

Russia, if you're listening ... AND WE KNOW YOU ARE.

BUT HER BLOODY EMAILS! While the State Department continues to send threatening letters to former Hillary Clinton staffers about retroactively classified emails from literally 10 years ago, Donald Trump and his team of dipshits are spilling the country's national security secrets over unsecured cellphone lines. The Washington Post reports that Commander OpSec and his personal attorney Rudy Loose Lips have likely supplied Russia (and China, and Israel, and Saudi Arabia ... ) with mountains of delicious intel as they plotted their Ukraine scheme over unencrypted commercial phones. About which the GOP says ... NOTHING. Because all their howling about Hillary Clinton's private server was bullshit, of course.

In fact, Trump has made a habit of yammering on his personal Obamaphone from the minute he waddled into the White House. Convinced that his nightly sexxxxx chats with studmuffin Sean Hannity were no one's business but his own, Trump refused to use a landline which would log the calls. Because he didn't want mean old John Kelly to find out about them and stop him from taking national security advice based on howler monkey noises from Jeanine Pirro on a bender.

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