Pentagon Hates The Troops. Wonkagenda For Friday, Aug. 17, 2018
Trump's military parade is canceled, the intel community strikes back, and beer saves a life. Your morning news brief.
Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today.
Before we get started, it's Friday, have some fluffy flamingos!
The jury in the Paul Manafort's first Ukrainian blood money trial needed clarification on a few things, like the definition of "reasonable doubt," because juries are full of very stable geniuses.
Mueller's team has "well over" 1,000 proposed exhibits" for Manafort's next trial on money laundering, foreign fuckery, and witness tampering next month. LOCK HIM UP!
Trump wants to "You're Fired" security clearances of more former intelligence officials who criticized him or are accusing him of being addicted to Russian pee hookers. It's like the Saturday Night Massacre, but it just keeps going.
Badass Ret. Navy Admiral William McRaven wrote a very short letter to Trump asking him to please revoke his security clearance since all the cool kids are doing it. McRaven is a former SEAL, led the raid on Bin Laden, and is the guy who told you to make your damn bed if you want to change the world.
Chuck Schumer is threatening to throw the book at the National Archives for taking too long to releasing hundreds of thousands of documents with Brett Kavanaugh's name on them.
The Pentagon is frantically mashing the pause button in an attempt to derail Trump's military parade after CNBC reported internal estimates at $92 million. Why does the Pentagon hate America?
Trump's space farce is dividing key Republicans in the House and Senate. Naturally the Tea Party whack jobs are leading the charge to make an army of space rangers.
In a not-at-all shocking move, Mick Mulvaney told Mike Pompeo to tell Trump to claw back $3 billion in foreign aid already approved by Congress after discovering a loophole. That money was only going to clean up the mess we left in Middle Eastern "shithole" countries.
During a Senate hearing FCC chair and piece of shit Ajit Pai admitted to lying to Congress about a cyberattack last year during the FCC's commenting period on killing net neutrality, and he's still trying to blame it all on former FCC CIO Dr. David Bray.
The Department of Education is investigating whether or not Ohio State University officials dragged their asses while investigating complaints from wrestlers that the team doctor sexually abused them. Well, at least until Betsy DeVos says those boys were asking for it with those skin-tight singlets.
Wildfires aren't the only thing invading national forests after the Fish and Wild Life Service killed Obama-era bans on pesticides and genetically engineered crops in wildlife refuges. This way Uncle Sam gives a handout to big agri-businesses, and Yogi can steal freakishly large picnic baskets that glow in the dark. Win-win!
Earlier this week Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed "environmental terrorist groups" for California's wildfires during an appearance on Breitbart Radio, but yesterday hecontradicted himself when confronted by a gaggle of reporters and said "of course" climate change is screwing up the environment. And environmentalists breathe out CO2, so there you go.
Jeff Sessions isn't a fan of 3D-printed guns . In a statement Sessions say anyone making undetectable plastic guns will be "prosecuted to the fullest extent." Son of a gun...
Trump's White House wants to "salute" the "heroes" of ICE next week for their tireless efforts to kidnap Mexican babies.
The New York Times has a rather depressing story about how Trump has turned boring policy meetings into a reality show where aides shower him with golden praises, then let him ramble on spewing half-truths and nonsense.
After Axios brushed off its knees, it filed this less than interesting story about Trump's favorite presidential powers.
Early this morning Trump tweeted that he thinks it'd be swell if corporations only had to report earnings twice a year instead of quarterly, that way they could make (and hide) even more money! What could go wrong?
Hardcore conservatives are cozying up to rightwing conspiracy website Big League Politics, in an effort to beg for more money via email blasts to believers in QAnon.
According to a new WaPo analysis of campaign finance reports, the wage gap extends even into the midterms as women lag behind male candidates in fundraising by about 17% -- despite a record number of female candidates this year. Do you want a bunch of dudes swinging their dicks on Capitol Hill? Because this is how you get a bunch of dudes swinging dicks on Capitol Hill!
Politico reports that Super PACs are figuring out all sorts of devious new ways to hide their money trails that range from "legal trickery to blatant disregard for campaign finance law." Who'd a thunk it?
A number of businesses throughout the Chicago area are closing up shops and moving to Mexico, like gun safe manufacturer Stack-On, and a company that provides steel for John Deere tractors. #MAGA.
Satanists in LA and Portland are splitting off from the Satanic Temple over co-founder Lucien Greaves' associations with neo-Nazi lawyer Marc Randazza. In a Facebook message, the splinter group stated, "We cannot stand idly by while Patriot Prayer, Proud Boys, and other white supremacist groups march in our city." Hail Satanic Antifa Super Soldiers!
A judge in Manhattan has stopped an effort by the Trump campaign to kill a lawsuit alleging "harassment and sexual discrimination" during the 2016 Trump campaign, potentially setting the stage for Omarosa to continue doing her whole "I got tapes" thing.
Oh, and Omarosa has a new tape . You can hear Lara Trump offer her $180,000 a year to STFU and take a campaign job. From campaign contributions. Is that, like, even legal?
Al Franken took to Facebook to make some witty musings about how collusion is a crime.
Be on your guard for a new wave of "spoofed" websites that use switched up characters to trick you into becoming vulnerable to cyberattacks and fake news. No biggie -- just have to be wary of any site where the letter "o" can be replaced with a zero or "l" with a one.
There's also a strange new malware that's popped up called Marap that attaches itself to other programs. Nobody is sure what it does yet, but it's not good.
GOOD NEWS! The rise of fake news, trolls, and Trumpism has created a whole new fact-checking industry that spans across multiple industries, including tech, academia, non-profits, and media. BAD NEWS! It won't actually stop liars from lying.
SUPER NICE TIME: Two guys driving a beer truck in St. Paul saved the life of man threatening to jump off a bridge by talking to him, and offering him some beers. Ben Franklin was right, BEER is proof that Crom loves us, and wants us to chill.
And here's your morning Nice Time! IT'S FIONA! She's gotten so big!
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I know exactly what small certified organic farmers do, and bathing them is pesticides is NOT what they do. They use pesticides very sparingly, if at all. The organic operation down the road practices IPA, or integrated pest management. The Wiki on this is very accurate.
I am well aware that "natural" doesn't mean harmless. A single leaf of a water hemlock will kill a cow in minutes, for instance. It also doesn't mean your food is organic, either. Inorganic pesticides kill all the micro-organisms in the soil, which are things that help plants grow. Which is why conventionally produced crops need ever increasing amounts of inorganic fertilisers, so crops can still be produced in them. Then all that extra fertiliser runs into local streams and rivers, which produce huge algae blooms which choke out all life underneath it. Check out what the "Green Revolution" did in India in the 60's and 70's. It wasn't good, and modern day farmers there are committing suicide because of it.
The idea of a certified organic farm is to use naturally produced pesticides and fertilisers that will do the least harm to the micro-biome in the soil, and by extension, the people or animals who eat the produce grown in that soil. But keeping the soils healthy is the #1 job of a certified organic farmer. Shit soils...no farm.
Almost all the soybeans grow in the US are Monsanto Round-up Ready, which are genetically modified to be immune to Round-up, which is probably going to be blacklisted in the next few years, thank Jah, if only to keep people who buy it from the hardware store from using it.
They definitely shouldn't be grown in wilderness areas.
I'm saying organic is a marketing term because, just because they're certified, doesn't mean they don't use dangerous pesticides. I frequently see organic advertised in the store as not being treated with pesticides, which is an outright lie. Naturally derived ones can be just as dangerous as synthetic ones. They weren't tested for a longer time than synthetic, because of the false belief that natural=good. Now that they're being tested more, they're being found just as toxic. They are being "continually bathed" in these pesticides, more so than conventional crops, because they are less effective, and thus require more to do less.