Don't Boo, Vote! Wonkagenda For Mon., Nov. 5, 2018
Trump makes the midterms about scary brown people, and Republicans have a white nationalist problem. Your morning news brief!
Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today.
Trump wanted the Pentagon to order some of the soldiers being sent to the border to serve as "crowd and traffic control," and to protect Customs and Border Patrol agents from the Middle Eastern Mexican taco trucks threatening to invade, but the Pentagon rejected the insane clown Posse Comitatus violation.
During a GOTV in Chicago, Obama encouraged people to vote tomorrow, and stated, "the character of our nation is on the ballot." Oh, Bamz, we miss you!
At a rally in Montana over the weekend, Trump said Democrats will just blame Russia if they fail to wash away Republicans in a #BlueWave. He then called the Trump-Russia investigation a "hoax," and bragged about his crowd size.
Fearing unemployment, House Republicans desperately want Trump to change the subject to the economy instead of making the midterms about spooky brown refugees. However, some Senate Republicans are cool with referendum on race, and Trump officials are even making robocalls about the "cotton-pickin'" importance of voting for Ron DeSantis over Andrew Gillum.
Georgia's shifty Secretary of State and Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp says he caught Democrats trying to hack the state voter registration system (again). Kemp's accusation comes shortly after Democratic officials and election security advocates told the FBI about a glitch in the voter registration system that potentially exposes voter information. Kemp's office (not federal authorities) is investigating , and now he's screaming that Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams is under investigation without any evidence to corroborate the accusation. During his time as Secretary of State, Kemp has repeatedly refused federal audits of the state's voting systems despite a decade of shenanigans from the state Republican Party. Earlier this year Kemp told the DHS to fuck off when it offered aid to shore up the state voting systems from election fuckery.
The Boston Globe reports DHS is investigating a rash of election hacking attempts, and notes that hackers haven't been very successful. Concerns about voter fuckery are rampant this election, but mountains of historical evidence show it's far more likely that you'll be a victim of voter suppression than election meddling.
Axios says there's a growing distrust in election integrity. Fueling that dumpster fire are garbage headlines from Axios about techno fuckery that don't cite identifiable sources, as usual.Be Smart: Axios is brown nosing and sensationalist crap.
Trump threw a laughably hypocritical tantrum and accused Indiana Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly of buying Facebook ads targeting conservative voters that urges them to vote for the Libertarian candidate. The state Democratic party says they're only telling Republicans to vote for the "true conservative." Remember when the Russians bought Facebook ads and told progressives to vote for Jill Stein and Smokey McPot?
Surprise! Financial disclosures from Kris Kobach show that he's accepted thousands of Ameros from white nationalist groups that have been secretly supporting Kobach's political career since at least 2004.
After the Democrats take the House, Trump will run away to Not America for the rest of the month. First he'll head to France and stroke his war boner during the the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. After that, he'll head to Buenos Aires to shit-talk the G20, eat subpar chocolate cake with Xi Jinping, and get orders from Vladimir Putin.
China is raking in tons of cash by frontloading exports in advance of Trump's trade war -- the trade war that was supposed to be really easy to win. Earlier this morning Xi Jinping said, "Great winds and storms may upset a pond, but not an ocean," which was a nice way of telling Trump to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.
Marine Le Pen's Europeanneo-Nazis far-right nationalistsare rising in the polls, now ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron's En Marche party for the first time and exacerbating fears of a "Frexit" following next year's European Parliamentary elections. Earlier this weekend, the French territory ofNew Caledonia rejected a referendum to break off from France.
Ukrainian anti-corruption journalist Kateryna Handzyuk has died. The 33-year-old activist was the victim of an acid attack that left burns on 40 percent of her body earlier this year.
A bunch of filthy rich Muscovites were doxxed this weekend after hackers stole personal information, like names, addresses, and cell phone numbers, and dumped it onto a public database.
Youtube deleted a video from a known Russian troll who claimed USCyberCom reached out and poked his digital bits. In the video, the trollsayshe and other trolls have been dicking around in US midterm elections, and holds up some papers with candidate names, but foreign policy nerds and computer geeks are skeptical and think it may just be a double-reverse trolling attempting.
Vanity Fair has a bunch of gossip about CNN's love/hate relationship with Trump talking heads, why cable news is dominated by wall to wall Trump coverage, and why Jake Tapper thinks things aren't ever going back to "normal." At least CNN didn't air that super racist Trump ad, unlike NBC.
Author Stephen King is tired of being confused with "racist dumbbell" Steve King, and would really appreciate if you stopped voting for him.
West Point is SUPER SORRY it accidentally hurt the Air Force Academy mascot, Aurora, during its annual prank. The 22-year-old white gyrfalcon had initially been reported to have suffered life threatening injuries after cadets threw sweaters over the bird and stuffed it into a dog crate, but the bird is now expected to make a full recovery.
Here's SNL riding the blue wave...
Midterm Ad - SNL www.youtube.com
And here's your morning Nice Time! The Galapagos Reef!
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I'd play bass for that!
My first degree was in political science, so I've researched the voting rights struggle too. Getting that degree did exactly zero for the voting rights struggle.
Rallying, organizing, phone banking, marching, contributing money and VOTING OTOH makes a difference. That's my point.