'Like Air, I'll Rise.' Wonkagenda For Thurs., July 18, 2019

Trump says more racist stuff, Rand Paul is a cheap jerk, and kiwis cockblock penguins. Your morning news brief!

Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today.

During another Nuremberg-style rally in North Carolina, Trump riled up his sycophants to chant "send her back," a reference to Somali-born Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. In a series of racist comments,Trump falsely claimed that Omar was sympathetic to terrorist groups, and that the four progressive minority female reps informally known as "The Squad" were part of the "militant hard left" and should "leave" the country. In response, Omar tweeted a poem from Maya Angelou, followed by "I am where I belong," with a photo of herself at the Speaker's podium.

You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still,… https: //t.co/1Y1XFfCQqw

— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1563411358.0 

Before waddling off to inhale Diet Cokes and double cheeseburgers, Trump made other insulting and disparaging comments about his critics and policy ideals, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, the Green New Deal, immigration, and the investigations into his ALLEGED abuses of power.

Bomb-throwing Texas Rep. Al Green's latest attempt to #IMPEACH Donald Trump died on the House floor, 332-95. As usual, Trump claimed he was totally exonerated and whined that efforts to investigate his ALLEGED abuses of power and obstruction of justice were a "ridiculous and time consuming project." Of the 95 Democrats voting to impeach Trump, the Washington Post gossips that a number of senior Democratic leaders urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to refer the bill to the House Judiciary Committee , but were ultimately shot down due to concerns that the party would be seen as trying to remove Trump from office rather than taking the next step in the investigative process.

The House Oversight Committee found Attorney General Bill Bar and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for failing to cough up documents related to the administration's reportedly abandoned attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

Republicans may scuttle another Trump judicial nominee because he's not conservative enough. Politico reports that Halil Suleyman “Sul" Ozerden, a personal friend of ACTING White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, keeps having his opinions overturned by other conservative courts and there's concern that Ozerden's ruling on the Obamacare birth control mandate might not go the way Republicans would like.

The Agriculture Department is sweeping a potential climate change response under the rug in fear that the proposed multiyear plan to minimize and adapt to our increasingly fucked up planet might validate actual science. Thanks, dicks.

Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee killed a bill to the 9/11 Victim's Compensation Fund. Paul and Lee are bitching that there's no money to pay for the bill, and the cheap assholes want to tack on an amendment that offsets the cost . New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a co-sponsor of the bill, is insisting that Mitch McConnell hold a full vote in the Senate after rumors began spreading that it could be snuck into a bill on the debt ceiling. In an appearance on Fox News, Jon Stewart called Paul and Lee hypocrites noting that there was no shortage of support for the $1.5 trillion Trump tax cuts (for the super rich), but, "He stands up at the last minute after 15 years of blood, sweat and tears from the 9/11 community to say that it's all over now. Now we're going to balance the budget on the backs of the 9/11 first responder community." [ Video ]

Jon Stewart rips Rand Paul's 'virtue signaling' in blocking 9/11 victim fund    youtu.be   

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she'll put some kind of spending deal on the House floor by next Thursday, just in time for Senate to vote by the August recess. While Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin iron out the details of a bill to keep the credit system from collapsing, Senate Republicans praying Trump won't throw a tantrum and destroy global financial markets of the Democrat's demand for parity on defense and domestic spending.

Microsoft says it's warned political parties more than 740 times since August that some Not American assholes are trying to hack into their shit. Microsoft isn't offering much in the way of details, but it does say all the usual suspects are here, including Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

Former Illinois rep. and shitty Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel says he was a progressive before it was cool, and offers some #thoughts about winning in 2020. Meh.

 The NRA's top public affairs director just left the gun humping organization, further jeopardizing the ability of gun fetishists to meddle in the 2020 election.

The AP reports the Trump 2020 strategy is to lean into racism like George Wallace in 1968 in the hope that his vanilla shake can bring all the suburbanites to the yard. Behind closed doors Trump has talked with aides about what is essentially a "it takes one to know one" approach, calling his critics racist whenever they point to the dictionary definition of racist.

 The GOP just killed a third-party web-based donor platform that had been encroaching on its own similar system for small dollar donors. "Give.GOP" had built a database of GOP candidates for yokels in the hollers to cough up their Trump Bucks©, but the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the Republican Governors Association felt the site took away from their own poorly named platform, WinRed. In an ironic twist, the GOP argues Give.GOP is a scam, but its owner contends the site is a "free-market solution" to the party's funny money problems. This is one of those wonky stories about daggers in smokey rooms, and we've got popcorn.

A man ran into an anime studio in Kyoto, Japan, spraying what's believed to be gasoline and shouting "You Die!" shortly before the building burst into flames. The AP reports 13 people are confirmed dead, another 10 are presumed dead, and 36 are being treated for injuries of varying severity.

After Joe Biden rambled some grandpa bullshit about a push-up contest with Trump during a debate, last night Sean Hannity challenged Joe Biden to a push-up contest. I'm taking bets as to what will hit the mat first: Hannity's turkey neck, man boobs, or his gut. Maybe naked Geraldo can judge?

The Washington Post has more gossip on that NBC tape of Trump partying in Mar-a-Lago with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A producer who witnessed the 36-hour shitshow described the party as "weird," and describes Trump acting like a rich douchebag obsessed with playing grabass and eye-fucking "calendar girls."

Gabe Sherman gossips that shit will hit the fan when almost 2,000 pages of documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case hit the streets within the next few days. Sherman gossips that Epstein liked to collect the names and numbers of politicos, entrepreneurs and business creeps (think Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Bill Clinton, and Prince Andrew) and beg them to visit his private fantasy island ( AKA: "Pedophile Island" ). Then there's the rumors the Bush 43 DOJ was told to lay off Epstein as he might have been an Israeli Mossad agent.

LOLOL, early this morning British MPs voted to block the next prime minister from closing Parliament in an attempt to shove through a "no-deal" Brexit in response to threats made by child-punching jackass Boris Johnson.

MPs vote to block the next UK PM shutting down Parliament in order to push through a no-deal #Brexit, by 315 votes… https: //t.co/15PqNTyI3t

— BBC Politics (@BBC Politics) 1563453782.0 

Little blue penguins invaded a New Zealand sushi shop and tried to have some sexy times, but some cop came along and cock blocked them before they could bone. [ Video ]

Peckish penguins pop by sushi shop    youtu.be   

Samantha Bee took a trip down memory lane to jog our memories on all the horribly racist things coming out of the GOP and Trump World this week. There's been A LOT.

A Rundown of Trump's Racist Racisms | Full Frontal on TBS    www.youtube.com   

And here's your morning Nice Time: RIVER OTTER SNUGGLES! 

River Otter Snuggle Session    www.youtube.com   

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