I Like Money. You Like Money Too? Wonkagenda For Wed., Dec. 5, 2018

Michael Flynn flips, Trump ruins Christmas, and North Carolina gets crazy. Your morning news brief!

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

One of a dozen stories about Trump acting "presidential" for George HW Bush's funeral would go here if we cared. Bush wasn't awesome, Trump is a spiteful moron, and we're not wasting your time with stupid stories. Consider this our hat tip for this "national day of mourning," and our warning that the post office is fucking closed.

Michael Flynn has been such a good boy that Robert Mueller isn't asking to LOCK HIM UP . Last night Mueller released a heavily redacted sentencing memo for Flynn that left legal Twitter in a bit of a flutter as everyone tried to speculate all the things he might squealing about. Nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia? Russian fuckery? Trump's pee hooker problem? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Roger Stone is pleading The Fifth after members of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked for documents related to his time on the 2016 Trump campaign. Stone is now running all over the media landscape and talking to anyone who will listen in a desperate attempt to convince people that he's more than a rat-fucking sleazebag with Richard Nixon tattooed on his back.

Yesterday markets fell off a cliff AGAIN after Trump started shitposting that he was a "tariff man." Shortly thereafter, the world realize he'd cutno deal with China to end his trade war, and pencil pushers faced a hard truth: Trump has no grasp on the most basic concepts of economics and he is bringing the global economy closer to -- at best -- an economic recession. 

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has signed an order extending troop deployments to the Southern border through January in order to push back the horde of Mexican-Muslims babies attempting to invade San Diego with taco trucks. It remains unclear what the majority of soldiers are actually doing beyond missing their families for the holidays.

Republicans seem to be throwing in the towel on the farm bill. The rumor mill on the Hill is that the 2018 farm bill will not only legalize hemp, it will also let hemp producers apply for federal subsidies. There's nothing about work requirements for SNAP recipients (thank Crom!), but that's not stopping the Trump administration! Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says they still want to rob from the plates of the poor, and give it to the rich.

With so many women coming into Congress you'd think that the old men who just lost their jobs might try to protect their legacies by passing a sexual harassment bill. According to Roll Call, some members of the old boys club don't think they should be held personally liable for games of grab-ass.

A Texas newspaper is suing the Calhoun Port Authority in Port Lavaca for giving super gross disgraced former bro-caucus Rep. Blake Farenthold a cushy job and taxpayer dollars to keep playing grab-ass. According to the paper's attorney, the port doesn't want to go to trial because we'd learn how they ALLEGEDLY hired Farenthold illegally, despite his history of being a boozy creeper.

Politico is reporting that former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick has decided he's not running in 2020 because he's making way more money in the private sector than he ever would wading into the swamp.

Michael Avenatti has finally decided to fuck right off with his 2020 crap after it became impossible to get booked on any late night cable news shows. In a statement posted to Twitter, Avenatti says his decision is out of respect for his family, and yada, yada, yada.

Axios' co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen took a break from gargling Trump's balls to write 800 mindless words about Democrats running in 2020. Apparently there's a lot of them! Some of them are women, and some of them are men. Some are rich, and and some are brown. Some wear hats, and some have cats. There's even some who like cats in hats who hunt rats! But none of them are as useless as Axios.

Y'all better grab a chair and check out this story in the New Yorker about the electoral clusterfuck in North Carolina's 9th.It involves backstabbing rednecks, yokels criming, "wads of cash,"video games,"harvesting ballots," bribes -- and that's on top of the vote rigging!

Little Rock, Arkansas, just elected 35-year-old Frank Scott for mayor, and now all the white supremacists are angry a majority of voters didn't see a problem voting for a black guy. 

Georgia will be able to keep rigging its elections after Republican Brad Raffensperger won a run-off to succeed Brian Kemp as secretary of state.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is rattling his sabers and threatening a new arms race following Trump's announcement he'll pull out of the landmark INF Treaty that banned medium-range ballistic missiles. This follows reports from NATO that Russia had already broken the treaty by recreating and testing the very same missiles. Remember, duck and cover!

Deaths from terrorism declined for the third straight year, according to some nerds at the Institute for Economics & Peace who wrote this year's 2018 Global Terrorism Index. The report says overall terrorism events are down 27 percent this year, but notes "far-right terrorism is a growing concern." REALLY? We hadn't noticed!

Trump's TV lawyer and "cyber advisor" Rudy Giuliani accidentally misspelled something in a tweet last week that automagically created a link to a nonexistent website. A web designer promptly bought the rights to that website and wrote, "Donald J. Trump is a traitor to our country" on its front page. Because he's a very stable genius, Giuliani then accused someone of  invading his text  (LOLOL), and started railing about "anti-Trumpers" at Time Magazine.

The Chicago branch of The Satanic Temple has installed a "snaketivity" scene depicting an arm holding an apple with a snake coiled around it inside the rotunda of the Illinois State Capitol. A plaque on the display reads, "Knowledge Is The Greatest Gift." You're welcome, America!

And here's your morning Nice Time! A FLUFFY ICE BEAR!

 

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