Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset 4:32 PM, for 9h 47m 10sm of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 23.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred sixty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Recommended for reading in full —
Craig Gilbert writes Rural Wisconsin voters swung for Trump and change, but found frustration:
Richland Center – It was just over a year ago that this rural battleground region swung hard for Donald Trump in a clamor for political change.
But today that frustration with politics appears undiminished by his election and is aimed in all directions — including Trump’s.
“We’re wasting so much time,” said Trump voter Robin DeFabbio, interviewed at Kelly’s Coffee House here.
She’d like Trump’s staff to take his Twitter account away.
“He’s like a very bad child,” she said, “that I’m glad I didn’t raise”….
(See also Rural America Turns Against Trump.)
Rob Glaser asks How Many Prongs in Mueller’s Investigation of Trump-Russia?:
How many strands are there to the Trump-Russia investigation?
Here are 5 strands that we know are under investigation as of today:
Manafort/Gates: The investigation and indictment of Manafort and Gates for myriad financial and other crimes related to actions they hid and lied about in support of Russia and Russian-controlled political groups;
Papadopolous: The indictment and guilty plea of George Papadopolous for lying to investigators about his contacts with Russia;
Flynn: The investigation and impending indictment of Mike Flynn for myriad crimes related to actions he hid and lied about in support of Russia and Russian-controlled political groups (and other countries such as Turkey);
Comey: The firing of James Comey while he was attempting to investigate the Trump-Russia connection; and
Russian Hacking into politically relevant troves of documents (DNC, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager), the release of those documents, and other types of interference in the 2016 Presidential Election….
Evelyn Farkas writes With Manafort, It Really Is About Russia, Not Ukraine:
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, insists that indictments against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates have “nothing to do with the president’s campaign or campaign activity.” Administration officials dismiss the alleged criminal activity by Mr. Manafort, formerly President Trump’s campaign chairman, as being merely about money-laundering and Ukraine — but not Russia, the focus of the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.
But Mr. Manafort’s work in Ukraine, which began in 2006, has always in a real sense been about Russia — and may also have been about the campaign.
Mr. Manafort didn’t go to Ukraine to advance the interests of democracy, Western Europe or the United States. He was there to help an increasingly corrupt Russia-friendly politician, who became a Kremlin puppet during the time Mr. Manafort worked for him. In the context of the standoff between democracy and autocracy, his legal and potentially illicit activities demonstrate that he ultimately took a side….
Tim Alberta reports on The Education of Betsy DeVos:
“She can talk about bureaucracy and how constraining it is for her, but a Republican-controlled Congress rejected her budget proposals. She can’t fill her senior staff slots. Morale is terrible at the department,” says Thomas Toch, the director of FutureEd, an independent education think tank at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy. “And I’ll tell you, in Washington education circles, the conversation is already about the post-DeVos landscape, because the assumption is she won’t stay long. And for my money, I don’t think it would be a bad thing if she left. I think she’s been probably one of the most ineffective people to ever hold the job.”
That assessment was somewhat harsher than those I heard from a handful of department employees. They were startled by DeVos’ nomination and remain uninspired by her command of internal processes. Yet the response to most questions about the department’s vitality is a collective shrug—the implication being that DeVos has realized she can only do so much, and has shown neither the appetite nor the ability to do more.
What were the biggest volcano eruptions in recorded history?