Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be suny with a high of twenty-five. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 5:56 PM, for 11h 43m 09s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}One hundred twenty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1864, U.S. Grant takes command of all Union armies, and makes his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac. On this day in 1949, Mildred Elizabeth Gillars is convicted of treason for her role as an American broadcaster employed by the Third Reich in Nazi Germany to proliferate propaganda during World War II.
Recommended for reading in full —
Alan Rappeport reports that the White House Casts Pre-emptive Doubt on Congressional Budget Office: “Now, with Mr. Trump’s administration aggressively pitching the House Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Capitol Hill’s official scorekeeper — the Congressional Budget Office — is coming under intense fire. As it prepares to render its judgment on the cost and impact of the bill, the nonpartisan agency of economists and statisticians has become a political piñata — and the latest example of Mr. Trump’s team casting doubt on benchmarks accepted as trustworthy for decades.”
Rappeport also addresses the question Will a Leak Reveal Trump’s Tax Returns? Don’t Hold Your Breath: “I think an I.R.S. leak is extremely unlikely,” said Fred Goldberg, who served as I.R.S. commissioner from 1989 to 1992. “It’s a combination of the culture, the legal framework, the logistics and the risks.” Although the I.R.S. has nearly 80,000 employees, the agency uses strict safeguards when it comes to privacy. The number of people with access to returns is limited, and improper browsing of taxpayer files is automatically flagged. Hard copies of presidential returns historically have been kept in a safe outside of the commissioner’s office, tax experts say. Returns of celebrities are protected even more carefully than those of regular taxpayers. “I would never say never, because it has happened in the past,” said Lawrence B. Gibbs, another former I.R.S. commissioner who was its chief counsel when Mr. Nixon’s tax information was made public. “But people are probably going to have to look elsewhere than the I.R.S. for the president’s tax returns if that’s what they want.”
Marc Fisher explains The [six] terms Trump and Bannon use: a glossary: “President Trump and his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, have introduced a new political language to Washington — a populist and nationalist rhetoric that cuts across traditional Republican vs. Democratic divisions. Some of the words and phrases the administration has injected into Washington’s political vocabulary previously thrived on the far reaches of both left and right. Here is a glossary of terms that Trump and Bannon have been using, with some background on where the language came from and how it’s been deployed….”
Greg Sargent contends that Trumpism is now getting exposed as a monumental fraud: “little by little, as Trump seeks to make good on his promises, Trumpism — as sold by the man himself — is being revealed as fraudulent to its core. NBC News reports that health-care experts across the political spectrum agree that the new House GOP health-care plan, which Trump has now endorsed, falls short of his promises: The bill, experts said, falls far short of the goals President Donald Trump laid out: Affordable coverage for everyone; lower deductibles and health care costs; better care; and zero cuts to Medicaid. Instead, the bill is almost certain to reduce overall coverage, result in deductibles increasing, and will phase out Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.”
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