**Written by Doug Powers

Here’s the ceremonial first pitch for today’s “opening day of baseball season” edition of the weekly Sunday open thread:

A few things to keep the ball rolling…

Dem Rep. Adam Schiff has been tirelessly searching for proof to support the Dem narrative on Trump, Russia and the election. If Roomba made a “conclusion in search of supporting evidence” vacuum it’d have Schiff’s picture on it.

During the House Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia, Schiff sounded like he had Trump and the Republicans dead to rights:

“Hacked the election” is the talking point of choice for congressional Dems and Hillary supporters to wildly misrepresent what might have happened.

This morning, however, Schiff was on CNN, and he’s backpedaling quite a bit. Schiff’s gone from “it’s a fact” in previous weeks to “I don’t think we can say anything definitively at this point” and “it’s way premature to be reaching conclusions” today. Click play to engage the WeaselTron™:

You can bet the ranch that none of this would be coming from the Democrats if Hillary had won in November.

It seems like only yesterday…

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Two headlines here, the first from The Hill, second from Politico:

There’s obviously a little more to the story:

The journalists, former Al Jazeera Islamabad bureau chief Ahmad Zaidan and freelance journalist Bilal Kareem, say in the lawsuit that they were placed on the “kill list” by the Obama administration, a decision maintained by the Trump White House.

“Journalists sue Trump for Obama’s ‘kill list’” would have been a more concise headline but wouldn’t have gone as far in making the former the bad guy.

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Here’s a bit of Michael Moore “yay socialism” cheerleading from 2013:

And Venezuela today:

President Nicolas Maduro said he has asked the United Nations for help in dealing with Venezuela’s medicine shortages, which have grown severe as the country grapples with a crippling economic crisis.
[…]
n the last few years, Venezuelans have struggled with food and medicine shortages as well as lack of basic products such as toilet paper.

Inflation in Venezuela rose to nearly 500% in 2016 and is expected to rise to a whopping 1,660% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Moore might somehow find a way to blame Trump for that.

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NARAL should have installed an elevator in this to make it easier to access the multiple levels of irony:

The “WTF” look on the kid’s face says it all.

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On Tuesday, the movie adaptation of Orwell’s “1984” will be screened at theaters around the world in protest of Trump:

On April 4, more than 180 art-house theaters around the country — along with five locations in Canada, one in England and one in Sweden — will screen the film in protest of Trump’s administration. Theaters in 165 cities and 43 states will host the screenings as part of a joint effort by the Art House Convergence and United State of Cinema organizations.

“A lot of us have felt that [with] the current administration, a lot of our most essential values are sort of under assault,” said Dylan Skolnick, co-director of Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, N.Y., and one of the organizers of the national screening. “In particular, things like the existence of actual facts. And ‘1984′ has had this sudden uptick in popularity because it really explores a lot of those issues.”

Side-splitting irony aside, theaters across the street from these places should screen “Southside With You” to serve up a major dilemma.

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Hillary Clinton emerged from the woods on Friday and told an audience, “Here I go again talking facts.”

She lost the election, but not her sense of humor:

Have a good Sunday all!

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe