Saint Brett. Wonkagenda For Wed., Sept. 26, 2018
Grassley schedules the vote, Rod Rosenstein goes to The Boardroom, and Republicans try to scuttle Trump-Russia. Your morning news brief!
Morning Wonketariat! Strap the fuck in, it's gonna be a shitshow.
Lawyers for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford have come forward with four witnesses who corroborate her allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh that date back to 2012. The declarations include Ford's husband and three close friends, one of whom recalls Ford opening up about her experience following the "light" sentencing of Brock Turner.
Chuck Grassley has scheduled a Senate Judiciary Committee vote for Brett Kavanaugh on Friday morning. Grassley is only giving Senators five minutes to question Dr. Blasey. Yesterday Trump accused Democrats of playing a "con game," and insulted the women accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Wouldn't want anyone tarnishing the virginity of St. Brett!
Maricopa sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell has been tapped by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Dr. Blasey. (Although it's still very unclear whether she'll question Kavanaugh and whether Democrats will get to ask questions at all.) This way it doesn't seem like a bunch of rich, old white men are making a sequel to "Requiem for a Dream."
Politico reports there hasn't been much coordination between attorneys for Dr. Blasey and Senate Democrats, and there's no way to know what the hell is going to happen tomorrow.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein is accusing Kavanaugh of misleading the Senate during his time investigating Clinton conspiracy theories for Ken Starr. According to records in the National Archives, in 1995 Kavanaugh and a colleague asked inappropriate questions about a Vince Foster witness's sex life as part of grand jury proceedings, then blabbed embarrassing information to Chris Ruddy .
People who went to college with Kavanaugh are calling bullshit on the virginal crap he pulled Monday night, calling him a "sloppy," and "stumbling drunk" who was "aggressive and belligerent." A roommate of Deborah Ramirez recalls a frat-pledging Kavanaugh standing outside a library wearing a superhero cape and an old leather football helmet hopping up to women on one foot and grabbing his crotch singing, "I'm a geek, I'm a geek, I'm a power tool. When I sing this song, I look like a fool."
People in Trump's White House say he might decide to keep Rod Rosenstein tomorrow, but nobody really knows what the hell is going on in the shattered disco ball Trump calls his "like, really good brain." Some White House officials told WaPo Rosenstein should wear "some Depends," while others rolled their their eyes and called Trump a whiny baby.
The chairman of the House Judiciary, Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, wants to subpoena the DOJ for memos from Andrew McCabe about Rod Rosenstein's 25th Amendment joke/conversation/whatever.
Trey Gowdy and Bob Goodlatte want James Comey, Sally Yates, and Loretta Lynch to testify before their respective committees about bias in the FBI, as well as a host of other people on the fringes of Trump-Russia. Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight committees are livid and say Republicans never bothered to notify them about any of this Benghazi-style crap.
Natasha Bertrand writes Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch just quietly put his crooked finger on the scale of a pending SCOTUS case that could invalidate any state trying to pick up the fragments of the Trump-Russia investigation should Trump weasel his way out of the Mueller probe.
Here's a handy run-down on Noel Francisco, the conservative party hack who clerked for Scalia and worked on the Florida recount with Ted Cruz, and is likely to take over the Trump-Russia investigation if Rod Rosenstein is quit-fired.
For years congressional Republicans have helped ICE pay its bills by taking money from other government programs, like FEMA. In defense of shifting money from disaster recovery efforts to baby jails, the office of Kansas Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder, chairman of the Appropriations Homeland Security subcommittee, said it's normal, and it's not like anybody died.
A government transparency group FOIA'd DHS for documents on Trump's baby jails and discovered DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen knew family separations were the intended policy and specifically ordered DHS to carry them out. Did Nielsen lie to Congressunder oath?
In a debate between Democratic Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen and Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the decidedly pro-Trump bomb-throwing Blackburn backed every single major Trump policy and talking point while glossing over her bona fides as a backbench Tea Party crank. For his part, Bredesen distanced himself from progressives by touting his independent streak, and refused to back Chuck Schumer.
A new Monmouth poll shows Democrat Abigail Spanberger edging out Republican Rep. Dave Brat in the Virginia 7th. Apparently people don't think Dave Brat is honest after Paul Ryan's PAC plastered her Official Personnel File all over the conservative press.
McClatchy reports that most House and Senate candidates have spentlessthan $1,000 on cyber security through the most recent FEC filing period. Most candidates don't seem to think they could be hacked or duped, and have grown lazy as the campaign season heats up despite the flashing red lights and blaring sirens.
Colorado Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper is quietly running around the country giving speeches, schmoozing the media, and raising money. People are just waiting for the two-term governor to announce #HesRunning.
A bipartisan group of senators are pressing Trump's White House to at least act like they're trying to find Austin Tice, a freelance journalist who went missing in Syria six years ago.
Some military analysts think that Trump's disastrous UN speech revealed mission creep in Syria . However, this is in contrast to recent moves by Defense Secretary Mattis to transfer Patriot missile systems in Jordan to areas contested by Russia and China.
The LAPD has been arresting people on Skid Row for felony election fraud after pictures surfaced of people offering $1 and cigarettes to homeless people to forge signatures on a petition to overturn a recently signed referendum that killed California's cash bail system.
Tomi Lahren got all butthurt and said mean things on Twitter about Michelle Obama after she heard Michelle Obama tell people to go out and vote.
Tom Arnold damaged Megyn Kelly's delicate constitution during an interview that quickly derailed after Arnold, in so many spastic words, called her a hypocrite and Trump apologist. Both of these people have rediscovered rock bottom.
A bunch of dumbass farmers in California just screwed America by signing a deal with the massive farm lobby that surrenders the right to repair. Now there's a legal precedent banning you from tinkering with the hardware and software under the hood . #MAGA
And here's your morning Nice Time! A wee little hedgehog!
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People do the strangest things. After Becky got cancer, she became a privacy fanatic and told her boyfriend not to print an obituary and not to tell anyone outside of her circle of Irish music friends in Kansas City about her cancer or her death other than her immediate family. For some reason she wanted her illness and death to remain a secret and wouldn't even let her friends come to the house and see her or visit her in hospital because the cancer ate half her face away and she looked terrible. She was actually HERE in my city in the state cancer hospital, and I didn't know it. She knew I lived here. She knew I would want to see her. She didn't want me to see her, I suppose, but we had known each other since 4h grade and she KNEW me, she knew I wouldn't care, but I guess SHE cared.
If her boyfriend hadn't organized a memorial Irish music concert in her name a short while after her death and if I hadn't found a Facebook page about it created by someone else, I would never have been able to contact anyone who knew him or gotten in touch with him and I would never have found out what happened to her, ever, because I didn't even know her boyfriend's name. I was lucky. I am still grieving, but at least I know now where she is. Her boyfriend scattered her ashes in the garden behind their house, and he and I paid for a memorial plaque to be put up in the family plot in a cemetery here in my town where the rest of her family is buried.
God, I miss her. And it's my own fault for letting so many years go by without contacting her. Alcoholism is a terrible disease, it breaks up families and friends, sometimes permanently, until it is too late, and she was a chain smoker, and it killed her. And then you reach your 50's and you forget your friends are also in their 50's and you just don't realize how time has flown by and that your friends are going to start dying. We think we are immortal, and then our friends start dying. It's such a shock. I'm 62 now, I go to more funerals than weddings. Thirty years ago it was the other way around.
I'm sorry, I seem to be suggesting that your friend might be dead, and I didn't mean to suggest that at all. It's just that I'm still grieving for my lost, beautiful friend that I let slip away from me. I hope to god you find your friend. Keep looking as hard as you can, don't give up. I didn't give up and I found mine, but I was too late.
I honestly didn't expect them to literally endorse him
https://twitter.com/SRuhle/...