This Just In

New video showing what really happened with Jim Acosta and that WH Intern.

Once Upon A Time

...we had a president who wasn't a whiny-butt pussy about every-fuckin'-thing.

Memorial Day, 2010

When Trump flies to France and then drops out of the ceremony at a military cemetery because of “rain” we must remember he’s a liar.

It could just be that he’s having a bad hair day that could be made much worse by the weather.

— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) November 10, 2018

Today's Tweet

Stoopid Nixon says what

Fact Check:
FY2018: $700 billion
FY2019: $716 billion

FY2010: $721 billion
FY2011: $717 billion

"I'll never forgive him for what he did to our United States military by not funding it properly...What he did to our country made this country unsafe." pic.twitter.com/aih0PgAR9K

— 💙Koko ✊🏻✊🏾✊🏿💙 (@Kokomothegreat) November 9, 2018

Podcast

The Professional Left

ProLeftPod.com

"...we've got this thing called the Senate? Just get a leash and call 'em your bitch"

Don't forget the swag

Today's Poem

You'll never change a mind
Unopened
But you can slip a mad man
Water
From the well he's poisoned.

-- Grant Peeples

Today's Tweet

He's a cornered wounded animal.

Spock (Star Trek S02, E03): "Your logic was impeccable, Captain - we are in grave danger."

A disrespectful sloth who degrades the institution of the American Presidency.
Guys gotta go... pic.twitter.com/jILzqRM0QZ

— Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) November 9, 2018

Be Amazed

Maybe 52,000 years ago.

Sarah Kaplan, WaPo:

Radio isotope dating of a calcite crust that covers part of the image revealed that it is more than 40,000 years old, and possibly as old as 52,000 years. Even the more recent date would make the image older than any painted representation of an animal that has been found.
- and -

“Maybe it’s universal,” said Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist at Griffith University in Australia. “Art ... is something that we as humans just do."

Turning Of The Worms

The Press Poodles have been feeling their oats lately. There's still plenty of reflexive Both Sides nonsense, but it seems like the editors and producers are showing signs of reading their Driftglass ('bout fuckin' time), and are starting to accelerate their organizations' movement in a much better direction.

(Along those lines, I need to make a sincere plea to the bosses at NPR: Please, guys, fire Mara Liason at your earliest opportunity. She's just fucking awful.)

Anyway, Cult45 put on a little circus the other day, which turned into quite the spectacle.

Vox:

Press secretary Sarah Sanders shared an altered video on Wednesday evening that appears to have originated with far-right conspiracy site Infowars to justify banning CNN reporter Jim Acosta from the White House after a tense exchange with President Donald Trump.

- and -

But Trump’s attacks on Acosta during the news conference weren’t enough for the White House. Later in the day, Sanders posted a string of tweets in which she accused Acosta of “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.”

When Trump insulted Acosta at the press conference, a White House intern approached him and tried to physically remove a microphone from his hands. Their arms touched as the woman reached across Acosta’s body to grab the microphone he was holding in his hand.

Looking back at the video, it does not in fact show Acosta “placing his hands” on the woman. But about 90 minutes after she posted her string of tweets, Infowars editor Paul Joseph Watson tweeted out a video of the incident that was doctored to make it look like Acosta chopped the woman’s arm with his hand.

1) Took @PressSec Sarah Sanders' video of briefing
2) Tinted red and made transparent over CSPAN video
3) Red motion is when they doctored video speed
4) Sped up to make Jim Acosta's motion look like a chop
5) I've edited video for 15+ years
6) The White House doctored it pic.twitter.com/q6arkYSx0V

— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) November 8, 2018

There's a long tradition of government skullduggery when it comes to the "optics" of their operations.

Here are a few examples from a book called "The Commissar Vanishes":

The Daddy State is always with us. Even in times we consider some kind of "golden age of democracy", there are people who feel the need to dictate instead of compromise - who insist on manipulating our belief instead of showing us what's real.

Today's Pix

click it

The Scores

Doctor Maddow knows her shit.

Quick note: Dave Bratt taught economics, with a hardcore Unfettered Free Market bias, at Randolph-Macon (a branch office of Koch Brothers Universities Inc) before winning his seat in 2014. The guy's as phony as chicken lips.