Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-nine. Sunrise is 6:59 AM and sunset 4:44 PM, for 9h 25m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 30.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred eightieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1971, a man calling himself ‘Dan Cooper,’ and popularized in the media as D.B. Cooper,  hijacked a “Boeing 727 aircraft in Washington, on November 24, 1971. Utilizing knowledge that was virtually unique to the CIA, he escaped by parachute with over a million dollars at current values. A massive search failed to find any trace. After decades of fruitless inquiries, the lead investigators began to publicly suggest Cooper had been killed and all physical evidence lost in the wilderness, although the FBI nonetheless continued the hunt for Cooper until 2016.”

On this day in 1959, I-90 opens to traffic: “Interstate 90 opened to traffic between Janesville and Beloit. Work was temporarily halted north of Janesville as the exact route was not yet determined and property not yet acquired.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Michael S. Schmidt, Matt Apuzzo, and Maggie Haberman report A Split From Trump Indicates That Flynn Is Moving to Cooperate With Mueller:

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, notified the president’s legal team in recent days that they could no longer discuss the special counsel’s investigation, according to four people involved in the case, an indication that Mr. Flynn is cooperating with prosecutors or negotiating such a deal.

Mr. Flynn’s lawyers had been sharing information with Mr. Trump’s lawyers about the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining whether anyone around Mr. Trump was involved in Russian efforts to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

That agreement has been terminated, the four people said. Defense lawyers frequently share information during investigations, but they must stop when doing so would pose a conflict of interest. It is unethical for lawyers to work together when one client is cooperating with prosecutors and another is still under investigation.

The notification alone does not prove that Mr. Flynn is cooperating with Mr. Mueller. Some lawyers withdraw from information-sharing arrangements as soon as they begin negotiating with prosecutors. And such negotiations sometimes fall apart.

Still, the notification led Mr. Trump’s lawyers to believe that Mr. Flynn — who, along with his son, is seen as having significant criminal exposure — has, at the least, begun discussions with Mr. Mueller about cooperating….

(The New York Times, above, first reported this story. Shortly afterward, the Washington Post confirmed the termination of defense cooperation between Flynn’s attoneys and Trump’s legal team. See from Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman, Flynn’s lawyer shuts down communications with Trump’s team, a sign he may be cooperating with Mueller probe.)

Meanwhile, of Congressional probes, Mary Clarke Jalonick reports Congressional Russia probes likely to head into 2018:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some Republicans are hoping lawmakers will soon wrap up investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election that have dragged on for most of the year. But with new details in the probe emerging almost daily, that seems unlikely.

Three congressional committees are investigating Russian interference and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign was in any way involved. The panels have obtained thousands of pages of documents from Trump’s campaign and other officials, and have done dozens of interviews.

The probes are separate from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Mueller can prosecute for criminal activity, while Congress can only lay out findings, publicize any perceived wrongdoing and pass legislation to try to keep problems from happening again. If any committee finds evidence of criminal activity, it must refer the matter to Mueller.

All three committees have focused on a June 2016 meeting that Trump campaign officials held in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer and others. They are also looking into outreach by several other Russians to the campaign, including involvement of George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty this month to lying to the FBI as part of Mueller’s probe. New threads continue to emerge, such as a recent revelation that Donald Trump Jr. was messaging with WikiLeaks, the website that leaked emails from top Democratic officials during the campaign….

Anna Nemtsova reports An Arrest in France Freaks Out the Kremlin Kleptocracy:

MOSCOW—He was one of Russia’s untouchables: the country’s 21st richest man, a senator in the upper chamber of parliament. He is part of the circle of businessmen known for their loyalty to President Vladimir Putin and the benefits they’ve reaped as a result, a billionaire member of Putin’s United Russia party who has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in important state projects to curry favor.

Such “pocket oligarchs” earn official status, even diplomatic immunity when they travel. And Suleiman Karimov, 51, reportedly has a Russian diplomatic passport. But according to the Russian press, when he landed in France earlier this week he was on a private trip, and didn’t bring it.

Then, almost as soon he got off the plane in Nice, he got arrested for alleged tax evasion and money laundering. And the vision of Karimov behind bars splashed in the Russian press shocked the country’s elite. Many of them, like Karimov, have gotten used to keeping their fortunes, their luxury properties, their yachts, and indeed their families abroad….

Olga Proskurina, who has been covering Russian business news as an independent observer since 1992, keeps a close eye on Karimov and many other Russian businessmen and officials enjoying their lives on the south of France.

“More than 350 Russian millionaires and eight billionaires own properties in Monaco and on the French Riviera,” says Proskurina. “Their real life is abroad, so they come to Russia just to make money, creating all sorts of schemes to cover up their true deals.”

Both liberal and conservative experts believe that Russians keep around $1 trillion abroad in offshore banks accounts.

“Karimov’s case made many in the elite concerned, as he seemed to be safe with his Russian diplomatic immunity,” Proskurina noted….

(Putin presides over an oligarchy of lies and corruption, where lies and corruption are the very least of his own wrongs.)

Peter Stone And Greg Gordon report an Exclusive: Manafort flight records show deeper Kremlin ties than previously known:

Good morning.

Thanksgiving in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 6:57 AM and sunset 4:25 PM, for 9h 27m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 21.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1889, “44-year-old wild-haired inventor named Louis Glass installed in a corner of the bar [at 303 Sutter Street] his newest-fangled contraption: a coin-operated Edison Class M electric phonograph fitted inside a beautiful oak cabinet. Requiring a nickel to play and having four stethoscope-like listening tubes snaking out, Glass’s creation was met with curious glances and willing customers. This was the world’s first jukebox.”

On this day in 1909, a Wisconsin man goes on trial: “A.E. Graham of Janesville was put on trial for selling oleo as butter. Oleo, an early form of margarine, was outlawed in the dairy state of Wisconsin. On January 27, 1910, he was found guilty in federal court and sentenced to 18 months in Fort Leavenworth Prison.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Jeff Pegues reports Trump Jr. met with man with close ties to Kremlin:

CBS News has confirmed that Donald Trump Jr. met with Alexander Torshin – a man with close ties to the Kremlin — at an NRA event in May 2016. Torshin had been trying to set up a meeting with then-candidate Donald Trump but ended up being introduced to Mr. Trump’s son.

A source familiar with the meeting says the two men were introduced to each other by a third party and that the conversation only last about two or three minutes. The source says the conversation centered on the men’s mutual interest in firearms and, as far as the source could recollect, there was no discussion of the campaign.

The meeting prompted attention last week when the Senate Judiciary Committeefired off a letter to Jared Kushner and his attorney scolding them for not handing over documents about a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite.”  As CBS News reported last Friday, that “dinner invite” came in the form of a lengthy email from an intermediary who said that Torshin wanted to set up a meeting with Mr. Trump and that he was interested in setting up a meeting between Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.  The email was sent to top Trump campaign officials including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, campaign official Rick Gates and eventually Jared Kushner who is the president’s son-in-law. Kushner’s attorney says his client said to “pass on this” and warned campaign officials to “decline such meetings.”  But in the end Donald Trump Jr. was introduced to Torshin anyway….

Matthew DeFour reports UW-Madison dean acknowledges failure to create safe environment:

The dean of UW-Madison’s College of Letters & Science acknowledged this week a failure to provide a safe environment in the wake of a Wisconsin State Journal report on a culture of persistent sexual harassment in a university department.

One of the women who spoke to the State Journal also wrote an open letter to UW-Madison leadership Tuesday, saying her efforts to report the behavior of one professor were met with skepticism from the department’s head and warnings from the university’s legal department that she would be on her own if she were sued by the professor for defamation.

“Due process cannot be a justification for inaction or a barrier to clear and confidential reporting options and tangible whistleblower protection,” former graduate student and current administrator of the art history department Clare Christoph wrote. “Without these, campus assurances that sexual harassment will not be tolerated will continue to be meaningless and women who experience this demoralizing and damaging behavior will not feel safe coming forward”….

(There should be – and so will be – no yielding on similar concerns in Whitewater.)

The Committee to Investigate Russia notes a New Book Reveals More On Russia Dossier And British Spy Behind It:

Karin Bruillard writes Here’s the deal with all those turkeys terrorizing the suburbs:

Wild turkeys are causing troubles across the American suburbs.

The birds of late have been accused of cracking roof tiles outside Sacramento, dangerously disrupting traffic in western New York and “terrorizing” residents near Akron, Ohio. Reports of turkey aggression in the Boston area have spiked in the past three years, forcing authorities to use lethal force at least five times, the Associated Press found. When the Cambridge, Mass., city council took up the matter recently, one member told of a turkey that chased a child and her dog outside church, and another recounted coming face-to-beak with a bird outside a community gathering where the large fowl had been discussed….

If turkey-human conflicts seem to be increasing, Chamberlain and Hatfield argue, it’s because urban and suburban birds are not hunted and so do not view humans as threats. Also, turkeys are generalists that can get by quite nicely so long as they have trees to roost in at night and space to strut — particularly in the spring, when males woo females with a show that requires a sizable stage.

“They want open areas. Well, lawns and golf courses? All of these are great open spots for wild turkeys,” Hatfield said. “Suburban areas are pretty good habitat.”

Humans have changed turkeys more than we may realize:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 4:25 PM for 9h 29m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1963, Pres. Kennedy is assassinated while riding in a Dallas motorcade. On this day in 1935, the China Clipper (NC14716) makes the first trans-Pacific airmail delivery,”via via Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, and Guam, and deliver[ing] over 110,000 pieces of mail.”

Recommended for reading in full – 

Luke Harding relates The Hidden History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow (“In 1987, a young real estate developer traveled to the Soviet Union. The KGB almost certainly made the trip happen):

Trump’s first visit to Soviet Moscow in 1987 looks, with hindsight, to be part of a pattern. The dossier by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele asserts that the Kremlin had been cultivating Trump for “at least five years” before his stunning victory in the 2016 US presidential election. This would take us back to around 2011 or 2012.

In fact, the Soviet Union was interested in him too, three decades earlier. The top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB. It took place while Kryuchkov was seeking to improve the KGB’s operational techniques in one particular and sensitive area. The spy chief wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans….

(Trump was an organ grinder’s monkey even before Putin became the organ grinder.)

Nicholas Fandos reports He’s a Member of Congress. The Kremlin Likes Him So Much It Gave Him a Code Name:

WASHINGTON — For two decades, Representative Dana Rohrabacher has been of value to the Kremlin, so valuable in recent years that the F.B.I. warned him in 2012 that Russia regarded him as an intelligence source worthy of a Kremlin code name.

The following year, the California Republican became even more valuable, assuming the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee that oversees Russia policy. He sailed to re-election again and again, even as he developed ties to Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.

Then came President Trump.

As revelations of Russia’s campaign to influence American politics consume Washington, Mr. Rohrabacher, 70, who had no known role in the Trump election campaign, has come under political and investigative scrutiny. The F.B.I. and the Senate Intelligence Committee are each seeking to interview him about an August meeting with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, Mr. Rohrabacher said. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is said to be interested in a meeting he had last year with Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s short-lived national security adviser….

(So reprehensible is he, that Rohrabacher’s more a true fifth columnist than even a fellow traveler.)

Alice Ollstein reports Trump May Tap Pro-Gerrymandering Professor To Run The 2020 Census:

The 2020 U.S. Census will determine which states gain or lose electoral power for years to come, and President Donald Trump is leaning towards appointing a pro-gerrymandering professor with no government experience to help lead the effort.

Politico reported Tuesday that Trump may soon tap Thomas Brunell, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas who has no background in statistics, for a powerful deputy position that doesn’t require congressional approval.

He authored a 2008 book titled Competitive Elections are Bad for America.

The position has historically been held by a career civil servant who has served many years in the Census Bureau….

(Trump’s great effort in ’18 and beyond will be attempts to suppress the vote, and later to distort the decennial census to favor pro-Trump states and constituencies.)

Adam Serwer writes of  The Nationalist’s Delusion:

….During the final few weeks of the campaign, I asked dozens of Trump supporters about their candidate’s remarks regarding Muslims and people of color. I wanted to understand how these average Republicans—those who would never read the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer or go to a Klan rally at a Confederate statue—had nevertheless embraced someone who demonized religious and ethnic minorities. What I found was that Trump embodied his supporters’ most profound beliefs—combining an insistence that discriminatory policies were necessary with vehement denials that his policies would discriminate and absolute outrage that the question would even be asked.

It was not just Trump’s supporters who were in denial about what they were voting for, but Americans across the political spectrum, who, as had been the case with those who had backed Duke, searched desperately for any alternative explanation—outsourcing, anti-Washington anger, economic anxiety—to the one staring them in the face. The frequent postelection media expeditions to Trump country to see whether the fever has broken, or whether Trump’s most ardent supporters have changed their minds, are a direct outgrowth of this mistake. These supporters will not change their minds, because this is what they always wanted: a president who embodies the rage they feel toward those they hate and fear, while reassuring them that that rage is nothing to be ashamed of….

(Serwer sees the so-called base of Trump’s support for what it is. America has seen other vile factions, from Know Nothings to Confederates to the Klan to the Bund. Our people have overcome them all, and will overcome this present challenge.)

Ronan Farrow reports Harvey Weinstein’s Secret Settlements (“The mogul used money from his brother and elaborate legal agreements to hide allegations of predation for decades”):

On April 20, 2015, the Filipina-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez sat in an office in midtown Manhattan with an eighteen-page legal agreement in front of her. She had been advised by her attorney that signing the agreement was the best thing for her and her family. In exchange for a million-dollar payment from Harvey Weinstein, Gutierrez would agree never to talk publicly about an incident during which Weinstein groped her breasts and tried to stick his hand up her skirt.

“I didn’t even understand almost what I was doing with all those papers,” she told me, in her first interview discussing her settlement. “I was really disoriented. My English was very bad. All of the words in that agreement were super difficult to understand. I guess even now I can’t really comprehend everything.” She recalled that, across the table, Weinstein’s attorney was trembling visibly as she picked up the pen. “I saw him shaking and I realized how big this was. But then I thought I needed to support my mom and brother and how my life was being destroyed, and I did it,” she told me. “The moment I did it, I really felt it was wrong.”

Weinstein used nondisclosure agreements like the one Gutierrez signed to evade accountability for claims of sexual harassment and assault for at least twenty years. He used these kinds of agreements with employees, business partners, and women who made allegations—women who were often much younger and far less powerful than Weinstein, and who signed under pressure from attorneys on both sides.

Weinstein also hid the payments underwriting some of these settlements. In one case, in the nineteen-nineties, Bob Weinstein, who co-founded the film studio Miramax with his brother, paid two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, roughly six hundred thousand dollars today, to be split between two female employees in England who accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault. The funds came from Bob Weinstein’s personal bank account—a move that helped conceal the payment from executives at Miramax and its parent company, Disney, as well as from Harvey Weinstein’s spouse….

(In places big and small, corrupt organizations and institutions will conceal actual injuries to individuals for the sake of leaders’ personal satisfaction or self-serving appeals to an institutional reputation they, and they alone, have in fact blackened.

Some in Whitewater have, for so many years, ignored or defended institutional wrongdoing of their friends though boosterism of the most childish kind: if all they owned sank to the bottom of Cravath, still it would not compensate adequately the assault survivors in this city who have been wronged not once, but twice over. For a FW category on this subject, see Assault Awareness & Prevention.)

Cockatoos, it turns out, are pretty darn sharp:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 4:26 PM, for 9h 30m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Whitewater Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1973, Pres. Nixon’s lawyers tell John Sirica, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, of an eighteen and a half minute gap in White House audio tapes.

Recommended for reading in full —

Chris Strohm and Shannon Pettypiece report Ex-Fox News Employee Says She Was Blocked From Investigating Trump-Russia Ties:

A former Fox News employee said the network blocked her from going to Moscow to investigate President Donald Trump’s links with Russia, one of several claims of news bias at 21st Century Fox Inc. made by former and current workers opposing its takeover of Sky Plc.

“You can’t do in-depth reporting if you’re not there,” said Jessica Golloher, a former Fox Radio correspondent who is suing the division for gender discrimination, at a gathering with U.K. lawmakers and citizens in Parliament on Monday. “Fox didn’t let me go to Moscow to dig into Trump’s Russian connections, even when I offered to pay my own way.”

“Fox is just buying what the White House is selling,” she said….

(Fox is the closest thing America now has to state media).

Devlin Barrett and Carol D. Leonnig report DHS inspector general: Travel-ban confusion led agents to violate court order:

The Trump administration’s botched rollout of its first travel ban led federal agents to violate court orders by telling airlines not to let certain passengers board U.S.-bound flights, according to an internal watchdog.

In a letter Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, John Roth, notified lawmakers of the violations. He also alerted them that his findings have become bogged down in a battle with the department over redactions that he said would obscure the true failures of the administration’s handling of the first travel ban.

In the early days of the Trump administration, the president signed an executive order temporarily banning entry to the United States by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries, as well as refugees.

The move led to confusion and alarm at airports, where immigration agents were unsure how to enforce the order and passengers were unsure whether they could enter the United States. It also sparked protests at some major international airports….

(Lack of clear direction served the darker purpose of inflicting maximum worry on those who might, but were not, part of a travel ban.)

Catherine Rampell contends The GOP readies itself to welcome Roy Moore:

….In any case, by arguing that victory refutes all allegations against Trump, Republicans are laying the groundwork to welcome Moore to Washington if he wins next month.

Already, White House officials are ducking questions about whether Moore should be allowed to serve as senator. A mere week ago, Conway said there was “no Senate seat worth more than a child.” On Monday, when asked whether Alabama voters should cast their ballots for Moore, she denounced his Democratic opponent and said, “I’m telling you that we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through”….

(If Moore should win – and there’s a good chance he will – one can expect that the GOP majority will allow him into the chamber and will rely on his vote.)

Betsy Woodruff, Ben Collins, and Spencer Ackerman report Twitter Clams Up Over Russian Trolls:

Twitter has not provided the House and Senate Russia investigations with any additional Kremlin-backed imposter accounts and bots since at least Nov. 1, The Daily Beast has confirmed.

The lack of new disclosure comes as evidence continues to mount that inauthentic Russian activity continues apace on the microblogging platform.

Twitter first identified 201 non-bot accounts tied to the St. Petersburg-based troll farm known as the Internet Research Association on Sept. 28. Barely a month later, for a Nov. 1 congressional hearing, the company increased that figure tenfold, to 2,752—in addition to the existence of 36,746 Russia-linked bot accounts involved in election-related tweets. Twenty days after that, however, Twitter has yet to provide an updated amount, let alone specific propaganda accounts, to legislators, three sources familiar with the inquiries tell The Daily Beast….

Sunday was turkey, Monday was mashed potatoes, and today it’s classic pan gravy:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 4:27 PM, for 9h 32m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 6:30 PM, and her Library Board also meets at 6:30 PM. The Whitewater Unified School Board meets (in open session) beginning at 7 PM.

On this day in 1789, New Jersey becomes the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.

On this day in 1859, the Milwaukee’s  first recorded game of ‘base ball’ is played: “An impromptu game of base ball , as it was spelled in the early years, was played by two teams of seven at the Milwaukee Fair Ground. The game was organized by Rufus King, publisher of the Milwaukee Sentinel, and is believed to have been the first baseball game played in Milwaukee. In spite of cold weather, two more games were played in December, and by April 1860 the Milwaukee Base Ball Club was organized. View early baseball photographs at Wisconsin Historical Images, and read about baseball’s first decades in Wisconsin at Turning Points in Wisconsin.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Mike Levine reports Special Counsel sends wide-ranging request for documents to Justice Department:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s team investigating whether President Donald Trump sought to obstruct a federal inquiry into connections between his presidential campaign and Russian operatives has now directed the Justice Department to turn over a broad array of documents, ABC News has learned.

In particular, Mueller’s investigators are keen to obtain emails related to the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the earlier decision of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the entire matter, according to a source who has not seen the specific request but was told about it.

Issued within the past month, the directive marks the special counsel’s first records request to the Justice Department, and it means Mueller is now demanding documents from the department overseeing his investigation.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein played key roles in Comey’s removal. And Sessions has since faced withering criticism from Trump over his recusal and Rosenstein’s subsequent appointment of Mueller….

(Sessions is variously a forgetful, evasive, and arrogant man.)

Alex Eule asks Unicorns: What Are They Really Worth?:

When a venture capitalist coined the concept “unicorn club” in 2013, it referred to software start-ups valued at $1 billion or more—just 39 at that time.

“We like the term because, to us, it means something extremely rare, and magical,” Cowboy Ventures founder Aileen Lee wrote in a column for Techcrunch. Four years later, the rarity—and the magic—has worn off. Today, Dow Jones VentureSource tracks 170 unicorns in its database.

Equity investors once held high hopes for these companies to come to market and become the next Facebook or Google. But in recent years, the unicorns have preferred to raise funds behind closed doors. Just 32 have gone through with initial public offerings since they became a class unto themselves, according to VentureSource, and they have tended to be smaller names. Large companies like Uber Technologies, Dropbox, Lyft, Spotify, and Airbnb have so far spurned the public market.

As the private companies become household names, they face questions about their workplace cultures, business models—and valuations.

The unicorn experience is teaching us an unexpected lesson: The public markets remain the best place to achieve long-term corporate success….

(The public markets remain the best – if not perfect – place to achieve long-term success because they’re exposed to the greatest range of market forces, of decisions of buyers and sellers. Simplified, yet fundamentally true true.)

Desmond Butler, Mary Clare Jalonick, and Eric Tucker report Moscow meeting in June 2017 under scrutiny in Trump probe:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earlier this year, a Russian-American lobbyist and another businessman discussed over coffee in Moscow an extraordinary meeting they had attended 12 months earlier: a gathering at Trump Tower with President Donald Trump’s son, his son-in-law and his then-campaign chairman.

The Moscow meeting in June, which has not been previously disclosed, is now under scrutiny by investigators who want to know why the two men met in the first place and whether there was some effort to get their stories straight about the Trump Tower meeting just weeks before it would become public, The Associated Press has learned.

Congressional investigators have questioned both men — lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin and Ike Kaveladze, a business associate of a Moscow-based developer and former Trump business partner — and obtained their text message communications, people familiar with the investigation told the AP.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team also has been investigating the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, which occurred weeks after Trump had clinched the Republican presidential nomination and which his son attended with the expectation of receiving damaging information about Democrat Hillary Clinton. A grand jury has already heard testimony about the meeting, which in addition to Donald Trump Jr., also included Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and his then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The focus of the congressional investigators was confirmed by three people familiar with their probe, including two who demanded anonymity to discuss the sensitive inquiry….

(The closer one looks, the more one finds.)

Ashley Parker and Carol D. Leonnig write of ‘A long winter’: White House aides divided over scope, risks of Russia probe:

…. [One of Trump’s lawyers, Ty] Cobb added that those who have already been interviewed by Mueller’s team have left feeling buoyed. “The people who have been interviewed generally feel they were treated fairly by the special counsel, and adequately prepared to assist them in understanding the relevant material,” he said. “They came back feeling relieved that it was over, but nobody I know of was shaken or scared.”

But the reassurances from Cobb and others — which seem at least partially aimed at keeping the president calm and focused on governing — are viewed by others as naive.

“The president says, ‘This is all just an annoyance. I did nothing,’?” said one person close to the administration. “He is somewhat arrogant about it. But this investigation is a classic Gambino-style roll-up. You have to anticipate this roll-up will reach everyone in this administration”….

(Those of us in opposition will hold fast far longer than a single season, however long, however cold.)

Yesterday was turkey, and today it’s a recipe for Simple Mashed Potatoes:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 4:27 PM, for 9h 34m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1863, Pres. Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg Address.

Recommended for reading in full —

Alice Lloyd writes in Rug Money how Paul Manafort likely laundered money:

One of the more puzzling aspects of Paul Manafort’s indictment for conspiracy, money laundering and other charges was the line items detailing the he epic sums he reported spending from Cyprus-based accounts on antique rugs in Northern Virginia. There’s really no reasonable way, THE WEEKLY STANDARD learned at the time, to spend $1 million on antique carpets in Alexandria. But we have since learned, from Treasury and IRS agents, a geopolitical expert with family ties to the rug business, and two sources versed in the Iranian business world, that we were far from the first to give a second thought to the way money moves through rug shops.

An intelligence analyst and Middle East expert who recently approached TWS with his story grew up wondering exactly that: Michael Nayebi-Oskoui, a consultant for global businesses, talked candidly about his Persian-Jewish grandmother’s mysterious import-export business. “To this day, I can never tell you what my grandma’s business actually was—moving goods through places, funds come back and forth,” he reflected.

And that, he believes, is where the rug merchants come in: “The intrinsic value of these rugs is bupkis,” he said. “There’s no legal or functional tool for the IRS to judge their value.” Consequently, “if you needed someone to make a deal with you, to move some money around, this is a great way of doing it.”

(Robin Givhan, a fashion columnist at the Washington Post, wrote recently of Manafort that he is a ‘glossy, glossy man.’ See Paul Manafort’s wardrobe tells you all you need to know about power and style in the 1980s. When I first read her assessment, finding it only because I caught Manafort’s name in her title, I mistakenly thought that a discussion of Manafort’s clothing trivialized his connections to Russians and pro-Russian oligarchs & politicians in Ukraine.  Oh, no: Givhan has a powerful insight into men like him: “Manafort was not dressing like a man who needs your applause. He was dressing like a man who didn’t think he needed anything at all. At least from you. He looked like someone who considered himself above everything. A man who makes things happen. A man who glides through life.” Indeed.)

Jack Shafer writes of Week 26: Donald Jr. and WikiLeaks Talk Dirty:

If we’ve learned anything from months of scandal reporting, the Russians set their sights on two types of people wandering the halls of Trump Tower. There were the self-promoters like Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort who they knew would cooperate based on direct or potential payouts. But the Russians also shopped a second group of Tower denizens, the over-their-heads strivers often compared to the hapless Fredo Corleone. These Fredos—George Papadopoulos and Carter Page—attracted Russian agents like magnets, and were easily manipulated by direct appeals to their stooped egos.

But of all the Fredos occupying Trump world, perhaps Donald Trump Jr. proved to be the easiest mark for the Russians. First, Junior embraced a gaggle of suspicious Russians for a June 2016 meeting in his Trump Tower office on the pretext that they possessed incriminating dirt on Hillary Clinton. Then, as we learned this week from the Atlantic’s Julia Ioffe, Junior became their boy when WikiLeaks tweeted some DMs at him in the early fall of 2016. The DMs, perhaps authored by Julian Assange himself, connect Junior directly to the Russian thing: U.S. intelligence believes WikiLeaks acted as Russia’s proxy in the 2016 distribution of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails….

(Variously greedy, ignorant, and stupid men, so easily given to corruption.)

Jim Wallis writes A year into Trump’s presidency, Christians are facing a spiritual reckoning:

Many traditions in the history of Christianity have attempted to combat and correct the worship of three things: money, sex and power. Catholic orders have for centuries required “poverty, chastity, and obedience” as disciplines to counter these three idols. Other traditions, especially among Anabaptists in the Reformation, Pentecostals and revival movements down through the years have spoken the language of simplicity in living, integrity in relationships and servanthood in leadership. All of our church renewal traditions have tried to provide authentic and more life-giving alternatives to the worship of money, sex and power — which can be understood and used in healthy ways when they are not given primacy in one’s life.

President Trump is an ultimate and consummate worshiper of money, sex and power. American Christians have not really reckoned with the climate he has created in our country and the spiritual obligation we have to repair it. As a result, the soul of our nation and the integrity of the Christian faith are at risk.

As Abraham Lincoln, a politician with a deep knowledge of Christianity, stated in his first inaugural address, political action can, undertaken rightly, appeal to the “better angels of our nature.” But political action undertaken badly, and reckless inaction, can mislead and dispirit us — and appeal to our worst demons, such as greed, fear, bigotry and resentment, which are never far below the surface.

Trump’s adulation of money and his love for lavish ostentation (he covers everything in gold) are the literal worship of wealth by someone who believes that his possessions belong only to himself, instead of that everything belongs to God and we are its stewards. In 2011, before his foray into politics, Trump said, “Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” And in his 2015 speech announcing his candidacy for president, he said: “I’m really rich. .?.?. And by the way, I’m not even saying that in a braggadocio — that’s the kind of mind-set, that’s the kind of thinking you need for this country.” Later, during the campaign, Trump suggested that our country must “be wealthy in order to be great”….

(There’s nothing in either Trump’s words or actions that suggests an understanding of Christian theology, any other theology, or even a secular philosophy of any kind. He has views, to be sure, and they may be crafted into a ideology, but it’s a crude, gutter ideology.)

The Rev. Dr. William Barber writes of  The unbearable hypocrisy of Roy Moore’s Christian rhetoric (“This isn’t Christianity, it’s an extreme form of Republican religionism”):

A disturbing pattern has emerged since the Washington Post first reported that four women accused Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of offenses ranging from the creepy to the criminal. People in Gadsden, Alabama, where Moore worked in the District Attorney’s office three decades ago, say it was “common knowledge” that Moore pursued teenagers when he was in his 30s. Locals told the New Yorker that they recall being told than the local mall banned Moore for the same reason.

Accusations of criminal assault are difficult to prove in court and the statute of limitations in these cases has since passed. But Republicans outside of Alabama have started to back away from Moore following the allegations; They have chosen to believe the accusers.

Moore’s base, on the other hand, continues to support him despite the evidence. For many of them, this is matter of faith. Jerome Cox, the pastor of Greenwood Baptist Church in Prattville, Alabama, told NBC News he would be supporting Moore because “he’s done a lot of good for the state of Alabama… Everything else is for the Lord to sort out.”

This is not Christianity. Rather, it is an extreme Republican religionism that stands by party and regressive policy no matter what. It’s not the gospel of Christ, but a gospel of greed. It is the religion of racism and lies, not the religion of redemption and love….

As well as he knows his Bible, Roy Moore never quotes from the more than 2,000 verses that exhort us to care for the poor, the sick, and the stranger in our midst. He has apparently overlooked the prophet Isaiah, who said to men like Moore in his own day: “Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims — laws that make misery for the poor, that rob the destitute of their dignity, exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children” (Is.10:1-4)….

(A better understanding will endure long after Moore and Trump.)

One of America’s great and beautiful holidays draws close, and over the next few days I’ll post about Thanksgiving meals (where the meal is an outward expression of an inner reflection of gratitude. For today, here’s a recipe for Simple Roast Turkey:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will bring a mix of rain, sleet, and snow (but with little or no accumulation). Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 4:28 PM, for 9h 36m 40s of daytime. The moon is new today. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1928, Steamboat Willie premiers at Universal’s Colony Theater in New York City. On this day in 1930, a police raid a Beloit home: “federal agents and county deputies raided Otto Matschke’s home, north of Beloit, and seized an illegal still and 300 gallons of contraband moonshine.”

Recommended for reading in full —

United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions mocks concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, and his Federalist Society audience laughs:

“Is Ambassador Kislyak in the room? Before I get started here. Any Russians? Anybody been to Russia?” – AG Jeff Sessions @FedSoc Convention. pic.twitter.com/6eK90EKrCB

— CSPAN (@cspan) November 17, 2017

Ken Dilanian and Carol E. Lee report Kushner failed to disclose outreach from Putin ally to Trump campaign:

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, failed to disclose what lawmakers called a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite” involving a banker who has been accused of links to Russian organized crime, three sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

An email chain described Aleksander Torshin, a former senator and deputy head of Russia’s central bank who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as wanting Trump to attend an event on the sidelines of a National Rifle Association convention in Louisville, Kentucky, in May 2016, the sources said. The email also suggests Torshin was seeking to meet with a high-level Trump campaign official during the convention, and that he may have had a message for Trump from Putin, the sources said….

A Washington Post editorial reminds Puerto Rico is still in the dark:

THE DEPARTURE from Puerto Rico this week of the Army general who led the military’s response to Hurricane Maria is being depicted as a sign the island is no longer in crisis mode but instead is transitioning to long-term recovery. No matter what terms are used, it is clear there are still enormous problems in Puerto Rico, with far too many people living in conditions that simply would not be tolerated on the mainland. More than ever, the people of Puerto Rico must not be forgotten. Those charged with rebuilding the island need to show they are up to the task and not repeat the mistakes that marked the initial response to the catastrophic storm.

It has been nearly two months since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, yet the majority of the island’s 3.4 million residents are still without electricity in what ranks as the largest blackout in U.S. history. No one has a clear handle on when the lights will be back on. Other problems include damaged homes, people in shelters, lack of access to clean water and, the New York Times reported, fears of a full-fledged mental-health crisis….

(Emphasis added.)

Rosie Gray and Mackay Coppins write Conservatives Reap the Whirlwind of Their War on the Media:

All news is “fake news”—at least if you’re a diehard Roy Moore supporter.

With sexual misconduct allegations continuing to mount against the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, Moore has defied calls to drop out of the race by advancing an audacious conspiracy theory—that partisan fabulists in the mainstream media are working with his enemies in the political establishment to wage a nefarious smear campaign against him. Not long ago, such claims likely would have backfired. But in the Trump era, anti-press sentiment has reached a fever pitch on the right—something candidates like Moore are eagerly exploiting.

Moore has not directly denied many of the specific allegations. Instead, he has sought to cast himself as the victim of a witch hunt and sow just enough doubt in the stories to muddy the waters in voters’ minds.

“Their only response to this is really to find other villains in the process to take the heat off of them,” said the Republican strategist John Brabender, a former Rick Santorum campaign adviser. The two villains they have chosen are The Washington Post and other mainstream outlets, to “discredit the messenger,” Brabender said, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican establishment, “to make the point that this is really just elitist establishment figures who never wanted Roy Moore”….

Let’s Meet the Argentine King of Gypsy Jazz: