'Bart O'Kavanaugh.' Wonkagenda For Mon., Sept. 17, 2018

Whoooole bunch of Kavanaugh coming down the pike.

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

Christine Blasey Ford, a California professor who trains grad students in clinical psychology, has come forward as the woman accusing Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault in the 1980s in a sobering account in WaPo. Though she initially tried to maintain her privacy, this morning Ford's lawyer appeared on the Today Show and said Ford considers Kavanaugh's actions "attempted rape," and that she'swilling to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

CNN has a copy of the redacted letter Ford originally sent to Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Following the WaPo story, Feinstein released a statement in support of Ford that called for attacks against her character to stop.

Outgoing Republican Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake have said they want to hear what Ford has to say, noting their opposition to ramming Kavanaugh through the nominating process. Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans are still holding up the 65 pussies Kavanaugh says he didn't grab in high school.

Kavanaugh's old high school buddy Mark Judge tried to defend Kavanaughin a soft interview in the conservative Weekly Standard. Judge says Kavanaugh would never drunkenly try to rape women, but then someone picked up Judge's book and found the part about "Bart O'Kananaugh" blowing chunks in someone's car before passing out at a party while they both attended a yuppie all-boys prep school.

While his parents paid for him to drink like a fish at Yale, Brett Kavanaugh was a member of an all-male secret club called "Tit and Clit." Unlike more notorious secret societies and frats, TNC was just a bunch of boozed-out wannabes.

 Paul Manafort claimed to be a hipster hairdresser in Ukraine in order to hide $30 million worth of blood money from Uncle Sam, and that's just business as usual. You see, in former Soviet Russia, corruption does you!

Fun Fact: According to court documents, Paul Manafort used Ben Shapiro to write pro-Russian propaganda in Breitbart for him back in 2012. HHHAAAAAAAAA of course he did.

The ranking Democrat on the House Intel Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, went on Meet the Press to laugh in the faces of all the crooks trying to lie to Robert Mueller, telling NBC's Chuck Todd, "Anyone who gets indicted by Bob Muller goes down."

FEMA head William "Brock" Long was making the rounds on the Sunday shows , pushing back against calls to resign for being a grifty bastard, and doubling down on Trump's claim that 3,000 people didn't die in Puerto Rico . In an appearance on Meet the Press, Long said, "FEMA doesn't count deaths. And if you take what's going on with Florence, the deaths that are verified by the local county coroners are the ones that we take."

Trump is reportedly getting ready to kick Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to the curb after the "Mad Dog" kept biting Trump's hand and ignoring orders to appear on "Fox & Friends." Aides say that neocon warhawks and Trumpian sycophants keep trying to undermine Mattis's primary mission of preventing Trump from tweeting us into World War III.

A Border Patrol agent in Laredo, Texas, is accused of being a serial killer after one of his victims escaped execution and flagged down a state trooper. According to local officials , all the victims were sex workers, and the agent has confessed to at least two murders.

A 55-year-old ICE agent in Oregon was arrested and charged with multiple accounts of sodomizing an underage female relative between 2009 and 2013.

The House Judiciary Committee quietly passed a resolution that would keep federal judges from ruling against Trump administration policies by forcing those rulings to stay between two parties . This way nobody can stop Trump's Muslim ban.

A 48-year-old deaf and disabled man from Nigeria who has lived in the US for over 30 years by staying in group support homes and performing odd jobs for churches and the local community faces deportation due to logistics hiccups. Immigration officials report that he has complied with all US officials' directions, and has no criminal record, but immigration advocates stress that he's not capable of understanding his situation, and that deportation would be a "death sentence." #MAGA.

The knife industry has ripped a page out of NRAs playbook and is pressuring state legislatures to roll back laws regulating fixed-blade and pocket knifes, so don't be surprised if you see Crocodile Dundee stalking the Wal-Mart trying to play "Knifey-Spoony." 

Trump aides tell Axios that Trump has come to realize he'll never get the 115th Congress to pay for his stupid Tortilla Curtain along the Mexican border. Wasn't Mexico was supposed to pay for it?

On Saturday Trump's trade war took another step in the wrong direction after two officials came forward and said Trump was going to impose another $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods. Righteously pissed Chinese officials are weighing their options including canceling a visit to Washington, and blaming Trump for all the new economic hardships faced by the middle-class.

After Trump told Tucker Carlson that the US wouldn't defend Montenegro from a Russian invasion, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg had to call up the president of Montenegro and reassure him that an attack on one is still an attack on all, even if Trump doesn't realize it. This is fine...

 Julian Assange tried to get a Russian visa back in 2010, according to a new report in AP that sheds new light on all the dirty laundry Assange has been collecting while he's been holed up in Ecuador's London embassy.

 Time Magazine has been bought by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne Benioff, for $190 million. The two continue the trend of super rich Silicon Valley CEOs collecting major media outlets like baseball cards.

After Vulture published a piece about Soon-Yi Previn defending Woody Allen written by one of Allen's longtime friends, Ronan and Dylan Farrow called Soon-Yi's accusations of abuse at the hands of Mia Farrow a big, fat, crock of shit.

FEMA will test a new "presidential alert" system later this week that pushes text messages to your phone in the event of emergencies. It's the same idea as the Emergency Alert System that gives you AMBER alerts, or warns about dangerous weather, except the messages are from Trump and you can't opt out.

Hillary Clinton has a new op-ed in the Atlantic this morning that lays out how Trump has been turning our republic into a monarchy and she has one word of advice: Fight.

And here's your morning Nice Time! Sea otters!

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