Good morning.
Here in Whitewater, we’ll have an increasingly sunny day with a high of forty. Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 4:30 PM, for 9h 40m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1896, the first Rural Free Delivery route in Wisconsin is established.
Recommended for reading in full —
Alan Rappeport and Thomas Kaplan report Tax Bill Thrown Into Uncertainty as First G.O.P. Senator Comes Out Against It:
The House is set on Thursday to pass its own version of the tax bill, which would cut taxes by more than $1.4 trillion over 10 years and broadly rewrite the business tax code. But as with the health care debate earlier this year, the Senate emerged as the inconstant ally in President Trump’s pursuit of a major legislative accomplishment in his first year.
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, came out against both chambers’ tax plans on Wednesday, saying that the bills favored corporations over small businesses and other so-called pass-through entities, whose owners pay taxes on profits through the tax code for individuals.
“These businesses truly are the engines of innovation and job creation throughout our economy, and they should not be left behind,” he said in a statement. “Unfortunately, neither the House nor Senate bill provide fair treatment, so I do not support either in their current versions.”
Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Bob Corker of Tennessee have voiced their own concerns about the tax overhaul and have not committed to voting for the tax bill….
Josh Dawsey and Matthew Nussbaum report on Tee times, smoothie diets, and fat paychecks: A look inside post-Trump life:
Steve Bannon now only flies by private plane — and has his own small security team that surrounds him 24 hours a day.
Reince Priebus spends Friday afternoons at the swanky Belle Haven Country Club in Alexandria, sipping Heineken on the patio and trying to break 90 over 18 holes. He is charging at least $50,000 to give private talks about the White House to CEOs and carries a phone that seems to ring non-stop.
Michael Flynn, meanwhile, floats in a sort of legal purgatory, with his siblings setting up a defense fund to help him foot the bill and TV cameras swarming outside his house, representing another group of White House aides who live in fear of the footsteps of prosecutors and early-morning knocks on the door.
Standing on a stage at the Midtown Manhattan Hilton in the early hours of Nov. 9 almost a year ago, basking in his surprise victory, Donald Trump name-dropped each man. In the days and weeks that followed, he would appoint each to senior White House roles. Their days in the White House are long gone….
Jeffrey Toobin asks Is Tom Cotton the Future of Trumpism?:
In recent weeks, several Republican Senators have denounced Trump for his intemperance and his dishonesty. Jeff Flake, of Arizona, and Bob Corker, of Tennessee, condemned Trump and announced that they would not seek re-election in 2018. Ben Sasse, of Nebraska, whose term is not up until 2020, said that, by threatening journalists, Trump was violating his oath to defend the Constitution. Cotton has made a different bet, offering only the gentlest of criticisms of the President. When, in the course of several weeks of conversations, I asked Cotton about one or another of Trump’s controversial statements or tweets, he always responded in the same manner. “The President puts things sometimes in a way that I would not,” he said in early October. “But he was still nominated by our voters and elected by the American people to be our President, and if we want him to accomplish our agenda we need to set him up for success.”
Even Trump’s latest political traumas have not shaken Cotton’s faith in him. Following the indictment of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former campaign adviser Rick Gates, last week, Cotton urged a prompt resolution of the investigation into the Trump campaign, but he did not call for the removal of Robert Mueller, the special counsel. “What’s in the best interest of everyone is for these inquiries to move forward, and to follow them to their proper conclusion as quickly as possible,” Cotton said.
Roby Brock, who hosts the leading public-affairs television program in Arkansas, told me, “From the beginning, Tom could play to both the establishment and the Tea Party. Everyone recognizes he’s got a firm set of conservative principles, but that makes him a polarizing figure. There are a lot of people here, too, who hate him and think he’s the Antichrist. The only thing everyone agrees on is that he wants to be President someday.” To make that next leap, Cotton expresses the militarism, bellicosity, intolerance, and xenophobia of Donald Trump, but without the childish tweets. For those who see Trump’s Presidency as an aberration, or as a singular phenomenon, Cotton offers a useful corrective. He and his supporters see Trump and Trumpism as the future of the Republican Party….
(There are many who will do their best to assure Trumpism has no future in any political party.)
Updated: Earlier today, I posted a story in this space (excerpt & video) from 10.31 of Al Franken questioning a Facebook executive (Facebook’s general counsel). Now, one reads that Franken’s the subject of a harassment claim (something unknown to me when drafting today’s post, while sorting through saved articles of interest to offer as Daily Bread excerpts).
For reporting on the claim about Franken, see this story from J. Freedom du Lac, Lindsey Bever, and Michelle Ye Hee Lee in the Washington Post.
I’ve pulled the Franken video – he questioned Facebook’s general counsel ably about Russian advertising, but there’s more important news about Franken today. Franken’s questioning of Facebook executives doesn’t, indeed cannot, justify possible misconduct elsewhere.
I’m sure that this hasn’t happened to any of the poised and impressively coordinated regular readers of FW (each with cat-like reflexes), but What Happens if You Accidentally Damage or Destroy a Priceless Work of Art in a Museum?: