Good morning.
A new month begins in Whitewater with sunny skies and a high of seventy-six. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:27 PM, for 15h 08m 52s of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter, with 50.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission is scheduled to meet today at 6 PM, and her Board of Review at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 2009, General Motors sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. On this day in 1864, Wisconsin regiments take park in the Battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia: “the 5th Wisconsin Infantry arrived after a long march, barefoot and exhausted. Nevertheless, they charged enemy lines and captured a number of prisoners. By the afternoon, the 36th Wisconsin Infantry lost 140 of the 142 men who tried to take an enemy position.”
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An explosion at the Didion corn mill (near Cambria) has left the mill ruined:
Lachlan Markay reports that Trump Exempts Entire Senior Staff From White House Ethics Rules:
President Donald Trump has exempted his entire senior staff from provisions of his own ethics rules to allow them to work with political and advocacy groups that support the administration.
Staffers given a pass on those rules include White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who has the green light to communicate and meet with “political, advocacy, trade, or non-profit organizations” that formerly employed her consulting firm, despite ethics rules that would otherwise bar work with former clients.
Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon also received a waiver to the rules as part of a blanket exemption for all White House appointees allowing them to communicate with the press. His reported discussions with former colleagues at the pro-Trump site Breitbart News, which Bannon chaired until last year, had raised red flags among ethics watchdogs.
Bannon and Conway will both be free to work with a network of political groups backed by the wealthy Mercer family, which was integral to Trump’s victory last year and continues to support his agenda as president.
Daniel Bush offers The complete Watergate timeline (it took longer than you realize):
Amid the controversy over James Comey’s firing and the Russia investigations, President Donald Trump’s critics — most notably Rep. Al Green, D-Texas — have already begun calling for his impeachment. But it could take months, if not longer, for Congress and special counsel Robert Mueller to finish their investigations into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and connections to Mr. Trump’s campaign. Which means the final outcome could still be a long way off.
Critics have been quick to compare the controversy surrounding the White House and Russia to the Watergate scandal that forced President Richard Nixon to resign. But the Watergate drama took longer to unfold — more than two years — than many people may remember. Here’s a quick refresher of the events that led to Nixon’s resignation, along with a reminder that despite the recent pace of news in Washington, political crises are often slow-burning affairs [timeline follows]….
Clare Landsbaum asks Where Is Ivanka Trump’s Influence Now?
Ivanka has said that her father “always listens” to her opinions, even when they differ from his own – “I express myself with total candor,” she said. “Where I disagree with my father, he knows it.” And time after time, whether he was launching an attack on Syria or preserving Obama-era LGBGQ protections or including paid leave in his budget, the president’s actions suggested his daughter had his ear when it came to policy.
This week, not so much. And although some critics are suggesting Ivanka dropped the ball, it’s also possible that her father is more wary of relying on her and Kushner, his so-called “moderating influences,” in the wake of two damning stories about Kushner: one suggesting he proposed establishing a back-channel line of communication with the Russians, and another reporting that his sister used his in with the president to woo Chinese investors. Weirdly, Trump was more pissed about the latter, which he saw as “profiteering” off his presidency – a cardinal sin. Following both rounds of bad press, the New York Times reported that the president’s relationship to Kushner is showing “unmistakable signs of strain,” and a source told CNN that the president is “emotionally withdrawing…He doesn’t have anybody whom he trusts.”
How is a Hollywood movie camera different from an iPhone 7? Here’s how —