How Much For The Little Island. Wonkagenda For Fri., Aug. 16, 2019

Trump wants to buy Greenland, why not. Your morning news brief!

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

 Wall Street's roller coaster ride over the last few days has left Trump World nauseous about 2020. Publicly the administration has decided to blame the media and the Federal Reserve for driving America's economic engine off the fiscal cliff, but the Washington Post reports Trump is calling his super rich friends and crying about being blamed for ruining Christmas. Apparently, nobody in the administration believes all the mountains of evidence that show Trump's nationalist trade policies are causing a global recession, and they think planning for a recession would actually cause one. All this funny money news has Trump's 2020 campaign biting their nails and staring at the "reset" button as Trump has based his entire re-election campaign on the economy. (And racism.)

Last night Seth Meyers took A Closer Look at Trump pissing in his tighty whities about the very real possibility that he's tanked the economy Obama spent eight years fixing, and now has nothing tolielean on.

Trump Freaks Out About the Possibility of A Recession: A Closer Look    www.youtube.com 

 Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland from Denmark. The Washington Post notes nobody inside the administration knows if he's even serious,but he keeps bringing it up to exasperated aides and rambling about natural resources. Republican shitlords are already pressing to "Make Greenland American Already." Late this morning Greenland's Foreign Minister Lone Bagger told Reuters, "We are open for business, but we're not for sale. "

Fun Fact: For several years national security officials have cautioned that the rapid melting of polar ice has caused a race to stake out territory in the great white north between Russia, China, and the US. US military officials have cited Greenland as a good spot for a (bigger) US military base. Earlier this week the first ever national survey of Greenlanders found that 90 percent of islanders believe climate change is happening, and they're freaking out. (Don't know what's up with that other 10 percent.)

And so the dream died https: //t.co/FOQ9lvCFAi

— Jonathan Lemire (@Jonathan Lemire) 1565953660.0 

The Hollywood Reporter got its hands on a bunch of EMAILS from Trump Treasury officials and Fox News sleaze weasels from 2017 and 2018 showing the TV talking heads advising and strategizing with their former idiot box colleagues who now guide US fiscal policy. A lot of the emails iron out talking points between administration officials and the talking heads, strategizing to jam through the Trump tax cuts (for the super rich), and making sure social media shitpostings are in line with the administration's narratives.

A report from the State Department's inspector general has found that the department's leaders have been harassing and mistreating staffers, and accusing them of being disloyal to the administration. The report goes on say that leaders often bitched about "Obama holdovers" and career civil servants being members of THE DEEP STATE when they complained about administration officials doing stupid crap that would hurt the country. [ Report ]

A traditionally conservative construction workers union is throwing its hammers down at an administration proposal to create cheap labor and new job-training programs. The union is pissed that a shady program being peddled by Labor Secretary Alex Acosta will take food off their plates, and flood construction sites with dumbass scabs who are willing to work for less than the prevailing wage. With construction workers claiming the administration is reneging on a promise not to stab them in the back, some are even threatening not to endorse any 2020 candidates.

After Trump strong-armed Israel into blocking reps Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from visiting the country, this morning Israel's Interior Minister Aryeh Deri reversed course and said he would stamp Rep. Rashida Tlaib's passport so she could visit her grandmother in the West Bank. This comes amid widespread condemnation for the administrations of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from everyone from pro-Israeli lobbying groups, senior Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and even obnoxious administration apologists who scribbled op-eds bemoaning Bibi for being a pussy.

At another rambling campaign rally Trump fat shamed one of his own supporters, and claimed that everyone is going to lose their 401(k) if they don't vote for him. He also claimed he was curing childhood cancer and AIDS.

Iowa Republican white supremacist Rep. Steve King went on an insane Twitter tirade yesterday evening after Republican and Democratic leaders began calling for him to "You're Fired" himself for saying rape and incest make the world. King accused Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of trying to kill "little black babies, little brown babies, little Asian babies -- both born and unborn," accused Joe Biden of plagiarism, and insulted Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Julian Castro, and his 2020 Democratic opponent JD Scholten, and called Republican reps Liz Cheney and Randy Feenstra baby-killing RINOs.

 Beto has rebooted his campaign with a firy message about their being "too many guns." Instead of RUNNING FOR THE FUCKING SENATE where he could actually make a difference, Beto is calling for mandatory gun buybacks and licensing. 

The Daily Show's Trevor Noah wanted to see what Democratic presidential candidates were shoving into their cornholes while farting around Iowa.

Democratic Candidates Hit the Iowa State Fair | The Daily Show    www.youtube.com   

The Republican mayor of El Paso, Texas, tells Frontline he is very butt-hurt after Trump called him a "RINO" during his visit last week -- you know, the visit about "comforting"victims of a massacre. The mayor says Trump threw a tantrum after he corrected him for saying all the taco trucks invading the southern border had given El Paso one of the highest rates of violent crime until THE WALL (or "fence," or "peaches") was built (in 2009). In a February love fest with his supporters Trump said the mayor of El Paso was "full of crap" for saying THE WALL didn't deter violent anchor babies from catapulting themselves into the US with blood avocados. In response, the mayor tells Frontline, "I've been to a proctologist and I'm doing much better."

President Trump Calls El Paso Mayor a “RINO” in a Private Meeting | FRONTLINE    www.youtube.com 

The WSJ reports a growing number of hospitals and firehouses throughout the Midwest have begun installing Safe Haven Baby Boxes so that new parents can abandon their babies like they were dropping off a library book. Simply open up the trap door, place the baby inside, press a button and walk away! The whole contraption looks an air-cooled toaster oven (for babies), and supporters argue that it's a lot better than throwing babies in the trash.

An investigation by the Chicago Tribune has found Illinois prison officials suspended an inmate education program and removed 200 books from prison libraries for "racial" content late last year. Prison officials felt books about diversity and inclusion like "The Souls of Black Folk," "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," memoirs of Frederick Douglas and Henry Louis Gates Jr, and a children's book called "My Daddy Is In Jail" were a little too racist (because they are about black people). The program and books have since been reinstated under the state's new Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker.

A bunch of Connecticut newspapers pooled their resources together to create a database of 95 cases of alleged child sexual abuse in 30 states that were connected to the Boys and Girls Club over the last 70 years. The reporters are still digging, and asking people with any information to come forward via a confidential questionnaire. CT Insider details the true scope of this project, and how multiple news outlets volunteered their time, money, and reporters. 

 Advertisers have a secret list of dirty words so their content doesn't appear next to things that make people sad. Words like "Trump," "Obama," "Shooting," "Murder," "Accident," "Suicide," "Crime," or "Rape" are all part of the ever growing lists. The result is two-fold: It's a lot harder for newspapers to keep the lights on as the blacklisted words are often found in hard news stories, and those stories that make it through filters are generally inoffensive clickbait and useless celebrity gossip.

Ashley Feinberg got her hands on audio from that town hall New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet held with the paper's ink-stained wretches earlier this week. The TLDR from the transcript is that Baquet doesn't think the Old Grey Lady has a problem, it's the readers and subscribers who are senile and incompetent.

Buzzfeed reports "Crime Junkie," a popular true crime podcast , has suddenly started making episodes magically disapear after they were accused of plagiarism. In a social media post, the hosts of the podcasts say source material for the episodes "could no longer be found or properly cited."

The NRA is having one hell of a time trying to snuff out all the people who are pushing for gun control right now. Can't imagine why!

As the Chinese government continues to amass thousands of riot police a few miles outside of Hong Kong, protesters are planning on pulling all of their money out of their banks and converting it to US dollars in order to protect their own assets, and shove a big, fat, middle finger in the face of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Anderson Cooper sat down with Stephen Colbert to ask a serious question about life, the universe, and everything, and (as always) Colbert kept it real. I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING!

You said "what punishment of gods are not gifts. Do you really believe that?" @andersoncooper, choking back tears,… https: //t.co/8A2cy4nwXl

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@Anderson Cooper 360°) 1565921159.0 

And here's your morning Nice Time: IT'S LIL BUB! 

Clean, Cuddle and Crash with Lil BUB    youtu.be 

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