FAKE NEWS: ‘Morning Joe,’ did you really just pretape your post-Thanksgiving banter? “The hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” did the usual day-after Thanksgiving kibitzing on the air on Friday morning, telling viewers about their turkey dinners and mentioning the big football game the night before. One problem: None of those things had actually happened at the time Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Co. started talking about them. The program that aired Friday morning was taped Wednesday, but made to look and sound as if it was airing live.”

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Flies Spread Germs Around Cities. “The insects are not only annoying by trying to land on your meal or crawling over kitchen countertops, they also carry more diseases than previously thought. And their legs and their wings are teeming with pathogens that hitch a ride after the flies land on dead carcasses or feces and then spread them to new surfaces.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: “One of the rituals of Thanksgiving weekend is heading out to see a movie. And so, with that in mind, let me do you a mitzvah: Do not see Justice League. Under any circumstances do not go to see Justice League.”

Read the whole thing.

HMM: Why Is This Bacterium Hiding in Human Tumors? Whether Fusobacterium nucleatum causes colon tumors is unknown. But a new study hints that it may be ‘an integral part of the cancer.’

LEFTIES WILL REGRET THE PRECEDENT: Targeting Ajit Pai’s children, house. I contacted Pai, who confirms this happened, and adds: “Many other issues, too, from specific online threats to the kids to harassment of my wife on her work email accounts.”

CHANGE: Mark Cuban Provides Roadmap for Trustbusting the Tech Lords of Silicon Valley.

DOES EASY DIVORCE LEAD TO MORE ASSORTATIVE MATING? “These are my words, not hers, but I think of this as yet another way that elites selfishly have pushed for looser social and sexual and romantic norms, without much worrying about the resulting broader impact on inequality and lower earners and the less educated.”

THIS IS TERRIBLE CRIMETHINK, UNLESS YOU CAN WORK IT OUT SO THAT WOMEN COME OFF AS SUPERIOR: Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal. But there’s this: “I was surprised that it matched a lot of the stereotypes that we think we have in our heads.”

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: It appears the next wave of problems for social media is “comment poisoning.” I can see a group (The Russians!!! The Russians!!!) sabotaging opponents and forcing removal of YouTube channels by simply adding offensive comments. Sez The Wall Street Journal:

“The Times of London reported that YouTube videos featuring young girls—in many cases apparently filming themselves, sometimes in underwear—drew hundreds of pedophiliac comments, including encouragement to do lewd acts and links to child-abuse content. The Times reported that the site displayed recommendations for similar videos, such as a view of naked toddlers taking a bath […] Videos, if posted innocently, might not in and of themselves violate YouTube’s terms of service; however, many comments posted by viewers clearly do.”

This is the same reason that many blogs, like AboveTheLaw have simply dropped their comment sections. The cost of policing trolls, ‘bots and spam is simply not worth the return on investment.

BECAUSE, AS A WHITE REPUBLICAN MALE, HE’S THE DESIGNATED VILLAIN IN EVERY STORY: Why is WaPo treating Joe Barton like a villain rather than a victim after someone published his nude pic? “He used laughably poor judgment in sending the photo to begin with but the recipient behaved less morally by violating his confidence than he did in sending it to her. And yet, to read WaPo, you’d think he had wronged her, not vice versa. How come?”

And suddenly lefties are skeptical about the whole concept of “revenge porn.”

THE PARTY LINE CHANGES WITH THE PARTY’S NEEDS. THAT’S WHY YOU HAVE A PARTY LINE. Kathleen Sebelius is the latest Democrat apologist to sing a new tune.

Related: Linda Tripp on the left’s reassessment of Bill Clinton: ‘They have nothing to lose, and this is now permissible.’

JOURNALISM: #PIEGATE: Sarah Sanders accused of using stock photo for Thanksgiving tweet.

They told me if Trump were elected, women would be reduced to making catty remarks about each other’s baking skills. And they were right!

GOOD FOR ERWIN CHEMERINSKY: Berkeley law prof: ‘All ideas and views can be expressed on a college campus. Period.’

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: SUNY Albany event calls Thanksgiving ‘a day of mourning.’

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OPEN THREAD: Talk about how your Thanksgiving went, or whatever else you want.

JOURNALISM: CNN Fails To Report These 24 Democrat Sex Scandals. Think of them as . . . oh, hell, you know the rest.

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THIS IS WHY THEY’RE SO EAGER TO PUSH HILLARY OFF THE STAGE: DNC Posts Lowest October Fundraising Numbers Since 2003.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Many college students going hungry, need donated food groceries and food stamps. “More than 500 UC Berkeley students have applied for food stamps since January, up from 111 in all of 2016, and just 41 the year before, said Michael Altfest, spokesman for the Alameda County Community Food Bank, which helps students fill out the forms. Last year, food bank representatives showed up once a month to help the students. Now they have to come every week to meet the need.”

Maybe Berkeley’s tuition is too high.

A NAVY THANKSGIVING

ANGELO CODEVILLA: Power, Sex, and Politics.

“Power,” Henry Kissinger observed, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Men, but mostly women, have been trading erotic services for access to power since time began.

The ruling class’s recent carrying on over a supposed epidemic of powerful grabbers and gropers runs counter to common sense and experience. If Henry, who resembled less a prince than a frog even in his youth found his connections with power and wealth sufficient to satisfy his longings, so can anyone similarly placed. . . .

First, the basics. During my eight years on the Senate staff, sex was a currency for renting rungs on ladders to power. Uninvolved and with a hygroscopic shoulder, I listened to accounts of the trade, in which some one-third of senators, male senior staff, and corresponding numbers of females seemed to be involved. I write “trade,” because not once did I hear of anyone forcing his attention. Given what seemed an endless supply of the willing, anyone who might feel compelled to do that would have been a loser otherwise unfit for survival in that demanding environment.

This, I wager, is not so different from others’ experiences in Washington. Senior female staffers were far more open than secretaries in describing their conquests of places up the ladder, especially of senators. There was some reticence only in talking about “relationships” with such as John Tower (R-Texas) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) because they were the easiest, and had so many. The prize, of course, was Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)—rooster over a veritable hen house that was, almost literally, a “chick magnet.” Access to power, or status, or the appearance thereof was on one side, sex on the other. Innocence was the one quality entirely absent on all sides.

There’s a reason they call it “Hollywood for ugly people.”

Plus:

The Clintons and the Weinsteins, yesterday’s ruling class paragons, are useful foils. When, inadvertently, photos implicate a member of the current ruling class leadership, such as Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) in beastly behavior, ruling class colleagues and media give him a pass (“he apologized!”) and use his case unfavorably to contrast the real enemies—always on the Right: President Donald Trump and Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore. “They are disqualified from office because they haven’t even admitted their guilt!”

In short, penalties for breaches of any item of political correctness are and will remain what they have been in the past, without exception: thinly veiled excuses to harm whoever stands in the way of the ruling class’s members.

This fact ceased to be a secret some time ago and explains the difficulty of having to maintain the authority of P.C.’s strictures. Thus we have the elaborate edifice of kangaroo courts and sensitivity training that governments and corporations have imposed on their fellow Americans more or less discredited in the eyes of just about everyone. Given that, something was needed to show that the whole P.C. montage is something other than what it is—and that America should stand with the ruling class in defense of basic decency. We needed a good panic. So here it is.

But basic decency be damned. The current campaign against a few, carefully targeted butt-grabbers is specifically designed to renew ruling class authority to continue business as usual, meaning to make socio-political war on the usual suspects.

Yep.

SHARYL ATTKISSON IN THE HILL: Sex abuse allegations expose the media’s hypocrisy on Trump.

“Not every horny narcissist with bad judgment is named Donald Trump.”

That was the actual “reportage” of New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush last year, in an article referring to the online sexual exploits of former congressman Anthony Weiner.

It appears, in retrospect, that Thrush might well have been describing himself.

News reports about his behavior, allegedly inflicting unwanted advances on a series of young women, describe the fedora-wearing Thrush as a successful and influential reporter who once worked for Politico and was then plucked away by the New York Times — once, perhaps, the most prestigious news publication in the world.

Some of his accusers say they feared his industry connections and felt smeared by him after they rebuffed his advances — all of which Thrush has denied.

But there’s a question as to how he was allowed to become an influential force in newsrooms and in political journalism, as described by offended female colleagues.

His politics were right, by which I mean left.