Jim Acosta: American Hero. Wonkagenda For Thurs., Nov. 8, 2018

Another mass shooting, the White House revokes Jim Acosta's press pass, and House Republicans start stabbing each other in the face. Your morning news brief.

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

Thirteen people are dead this following another mass shooting, this time at a Los Angeles area bar. The dead include the suspect and a sheriff's sergeant. The gunman reportedly threw smoke bombs inside the crowded Thousand Oaks Borderline bar during college night. Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean called the shooting, a "horrific incident" that is "part of the horrors that are happening in our country and everywhere." According to the LA Times, some of the victims andwitnesses were present at last year's mass shooting in Las Vegas.

After Trump threw a nationally televised temper tantrum in front of a bunch of reporters doing their jobs by asking questions he didn't want to answer, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta lost his "hard pass"to the White House. Trump's White House says Acosta"placed his hands" on an aide who was trying to snatch away the microphone during the presser, butthe instant replay shows that's bullshit. CNN is standing behind Acosta 1,000,000 percent, issuing a statement that said the White House acted in "retaliation," and that "Sarah Sanders lied," and "provided fraudulent accusations and cited an incident that never happened." Last night Acosta recorded a video of the Secret Service taking his press creds and denying him access to the White House. Multiple reporters are clapping back at Trump, his White House, and the right-wing blowhards clutching their pearlsabout Acosta's "wrestling," including the conservativeDaily Caller's Chuck Ross who called it, "ridiculous," adding, "...after Trump joked about Gianforte bodyslamming Ben Jacobs the White House can't bust out the fainting couch now." And now Sarah Sanders has released a doctored video from InfoWars to make it appear the contact was more violent than it really was.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized this morning with three broken ribs after a fall in her office yesterday. A SCOTUS spokesperson says "Tests showed that she fractured three ribs on her left side and she was admitted for observation and treatment." Yr Wonkette hopes for a swift recovery and return to judicial badassery.

Republicans are bracing for political war with the Democrats who are already threatening to launch a slew of investigations at Trump, his White House, and his minions. Trump is now "in desperate need" of more TV lawyers to fight a flood of subpoenas, according to some advisers, and looking to pit Democrats against each other. Yesterday Mitch McConnell tried to dodge reporters, but eventually surrendered and whined, “The Democrats in the House will have to decide just how much presidential harassment they think is good strategy."

 Gabe Sherman gossips that Trump loves Matthew Whittaker, the new acting director of the DOJ, because he is a big sportsballer who will toe the Trump line and help him obstruct the Trump-Russia probe before Mueller has a chance to indict DJTJ.

Trump's HHS is trying to slut shame insurance companies who decide to opt in to abortion coverage , provided they don't have a problem with Jeebus having sads. The new rules segregate medical coverage and abortion expenditures so that customers can see just how much an insurance company is paying for HOOORS. Some legal nerds think this illegal, but it's not like "legal" or "ethical" are words in the tiny Trump dictionary.

Efforts at repealing the ACA are effectively dead with the fall of the Republican House. Conservatives talking heads are already trying to spin their huge embarrassing failure while Democrats plot an expansion of healthcare measures. 

 Trump may have just lost his trade war now that Democrats have taken the House. With a number of Republicans already skeptical of stupid crap like NAFTA 2: The Milk Mafia Boogaloo, and flyover country feeling pinched by Trump'spoor tax tariffs, it's looking unlikely Trump will find a way spin a win -- but that won't stop him from trying to blame everything on China (again).

Trump seems to have forgotten all about the "caravan" of Mexican Muslims threatening to invade 'Merica with their taco trucks.Fox News has a brief story calling them filthy poors, but hasn't really touched the story since the election -- back when it was a grave threat to national security. This morning Politico reports that Trump is considering a "comprehensive" executive order that will block asylum-seeking immigrants from entering the country as soon as the end of the week.

A number of clean energy ballot initiatives were curb stomped by big energy companies that smothered local races with cash. There were some bright spots where the people voted to put the needs of the Earth first, but not many.

Missouri and Arkansas both voted to raise the minimum wage substantially , even though local Republicans bitched about the horrors of businesses suddenly paying workers a living wage.

Democratic senators are already jockeying for position in the 2020 presidential race, likely creating even more gridlock as 13 to 14 Senators try to stand out from the crowd, posturing that Mitch McConnell said will be "fun to watch." You can expect the first soapbox speeches to start Dec. 7 when government funding expires. #TheyreRunning

Speaking of presidential ambitions, now that Beto has all this free time, money, and political capital on his hands, it's entirely possible that Beto will run in 2020. His old school campaign of barnstorming retail politics is just the kind of shtick that rural voters in Bumblefuck Iowa and New Hampshire love to see. #HesRunning

BREAKING NEWS: Early this morning Georgia Republican Rep. Karen Handel conceded to Lucy McBath, the anti-gun violence activist and mother of slain teen, Jordan Davis. McBath will now take over the former House seat of bomb-throwing scumbag, Newt Gingrich. 

The House Freedom crazies are already slitting each other's throats in order to decide who will lead Republicans to more failures over the next two years. It's no secret that reps Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy are all willing to stab each other in the face in order to seize more power, but Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Liz Cheney are also rumored to be sharpening their knives.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized for Canada's turning away of a ship full of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939. Speaking at a Remembrance Day ceremony, Trudeau stated, “We refused to help them when we could have. We contributed to sealing the cruel fates of far too many at places like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Belzec. We failed them. And for that, we are sorry."

After another near disaster involving a Soyuz rocket last week, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian space program, is apologizing for being so shitty , admitting some of its facilities are trash factories that shoot garbage into low Earth orbit. In a letter, managing director Dmitry Rogozin says Roscosmos employees are "accustomed to such conditions as normal, and this creates a habit of poor manufacturing culture and a sloppy attitude toward work." They can always get jobs in the Trump White House if they need to.

 The Fox News rank-and-file weren't happy that Hannity gave Trump a handy on stage and called working journos "fake news" the other night. After a number of Fox Staffers started squawking that Hannity was, "embarassing,"Fox said it doesn't "condone any talent participating in campaign events." That's PROBABLY why Hannity didn't appear during the network's election night coverage.(Probably.)That, or it's an acknowledgment he has no talent. While Hannity initially lied and said he doesn't "work election nights," last night Hannity apologized for being an asshole to his Fox colleagues and said he "had no idea" Trump was going to "invite" him on stage, and that it wasn't "planned."Fun Fact: Media Matters has a handy list of all the times Hannity endorsed Trumpian candidates before the election.

Let's all take a moment to laugh and cackle at Michelle Bachman having ghost sex with Harry Truman, and asking Jeebus to commit massive voter fraud during the election. LOLOLOLOLOL

 Meggles McCain has some HASHTAG thoughts about who Democrats should run in 2020 if they want to take more seats away from Republicans. SPOILER ALERT: It's Never Trump Republicans. LOL, Meggles will never vote for a Democrat!

About 20 protesters found Tucker Carlson's house and scared the crap out of his family through chants of, "We know where you sleep at night." The protest group has deleted a number of angry and vague tweets that Tucker calls threats, prompting a number of Never Trump Republicans to fan themselves from the vapors.

Paul Manafort's former son-in-law Jeffrey Yohai has been arrested on fraud charges totalling more than $21 million. The alleged criming includes selling fake Coachella tickets, pawning stolen guitars, and trying to settle a $300,000 debt with a big bag of weed. Curiously, Yohai kept bragging about being a snitch for the Trump-Russia investigation, a move law enforcement officials claim was kind of bullshit.

In the fallout from the rampant election fuckery that beleaguered Georgia voters -- including Sec. of State Brian Kemp himself -- Silicon Valley evangelists are begging for a tech-first solution to our elections. To put it simply HELL FUCKING NO, that's a bad idea!

And here's your morning Nice Time! MEERKAT PUPPERS!
 

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