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Daily Bread for 11.10.17

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-three. Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 4:35 PM, for 9h 53m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 52.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred sixty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1871, Stanley finds Livingstone. On this day in 1834, the Wisconsin Territory sees its first sale of public land.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Anna Nemtsova reports How Putin’s Using Hungary to Destroy Europe:

BUDAPEST—Russian President Vladimir Putin has some key allies in the European Union. In some countries, they are outliers, even fringe elements. In some, like France and the Netherlands, they made impressive bids for power before, finally, they failed. But in Hungary, a nation of about 10 million people east of Austria, west of Ukraine, and north of the Balkans, Putin’s soulmate is the prime minister, Viktor Orban.

As with so many Putin allies and apologists (including in the United States) Orban made the fight against immigration a centerpiece of his agenda. And he then went one better by identifying another Hungarian as the personification of evil “liberalism”….

Moscow officials applauded Orban, welcoming the fences Hungary installed on its frontiers to stop refugees, and especially praising Budapest’s criticism of European democracy.

The Kremlin has spent a lot of energy trying to discredit EU policies in the Baltics, in the Balkans, and in Western Europe, but there was no need to convince the Hungarian leader, as Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban were thinking along the same lines, and Orban has garnered a lot of local backing for his ideas….

Ryan Goodman observes Ability to Charge Flynn Strengthens Case of Obstruction of Justice against Trump:

Special Counsel Bob Mueller has now gathered sufficient evidence to indict Michael Flynn and Flynn’s son, according to NBC News. An indictment of Flynn—and even simply having sufficient evidence to indict him—greatly strengthens the case of obstruction of justice against the President.

Why? Former federal prosecutor and Just Security’s Alex Whiting explained this summer in a piece, “As Collusion Evidence Emerges, Obstruction Allegations Begin to Look More Damaging.” Here’s Professor Whiting’s point:

Despite the old adage that “the cover-up is always worse than the crime,” obstruction charges will be harder to prove if in fact there were no improprieties to hide.

Read Whiting’s article for his full analysis including how prosecutors generally think about tactical choices in such cases. In his piece, Alex focuses more on the “collusion” charges as the potential underlying cover up. But who could have anticipated the avalanche of legal problems that Flynn would face, as outlined in the NBC news story—plus recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal’s Shane Harris on Flynn’s potential role in seeking Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russians and Harris’s subsequent report that Mueller directly turned his investigation’s attention to Flynn’s potential role in those efforts.

What’s more, as the NBC story explains, an indictment of Flynn would implicate the President more directly….

Andy Kroll writes Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News (“Its mix of terrorism alerts, right-wing commentary, and “classic propaganda” could soon reach three-quarters of US households”):

….After Carson dropped out of the race in March 2016, Sinclair threw its weight behind Trump. A Politico story detailed how Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, speaking in a postelection off-the-record session, described an arrangement where Sinclair had aired interviews with candidate Trump without commentary in exchange for greater access to the campaign. “It’s math,” Kushner reportedly said, boasting about the benefits of reaching Sinclair’s massive audience. While Sinclair says Kushner was describing a standard offer made to both campaigns to conduct extended interviews with local anchors, a Washington Post analysis found that Sinclair stations ran 15 “exclusive” interviews with Trump, 10 with running mate Mike Pence, and 10 more with campaign surrogates. By contrast, the company’s stations aired zero interviews with Hillary Clinton, five with Sen. Tim Kaine, Clinton’s pick for vice president, two with Chelsea Clinton, and none with any other top surrogates. According to the Post, Sinclair higher-ups suggested questions with a strongly anti-Clinton bent to local reporters.

Just before the campaign, Sinclair took steps to expand its style of news online. In August 2015, the company bought the name and technology from the remains of a failed San Francisco startup, Circa News. The new venture’s announcement promised an “independent digital news site” for readers who “value raw content, differing perspectives, and personalization.” Circa would produce stories for the web and video segments for Sinclair’s stations.

Sinclair’s pick to run Circa was a former Washington Times editor named John Solomon, who has a conservative slant and a history of writing stories damaging to Democratic politicians. Ten current and former Circa staffers told me that Solomon pitched the new venture as a down-the-middle, nonpartisan news organization: “BuzzFeed with a brain,” is how one remembers Solomon putting it. But as the presidential campaign ramped up, staffers, who asked to remain anonymous because they signed nondisclosure agreements or fear retribution, say Circa adopted a notable rightward tilt and an increasingly hostile stance toward Clinton. Solomon hired a former Republican National Committee spokesman named Raffi Williams to be a political reporter, though he previously had little formal journalism experience. Williams, the son of former NPR reporter turned Fox News pundit Juan Williams, is now a spokesman at Secretary Ben Carson’s Department of Housing and Urban Development….

Bryan Behar writes This is Still America, Dammit:

Let me start with the one piece of good news that’s come out of the first year of the Trump Era. Yes, there is some good news. In fact, there would be two pieces had I had the forethought to invest my life savings in Zantac and brownie mix stock about 9 months ago. Oh well. We still have 3 more years. Or 3 more days. Depending on how moved Robert Mueller is by the evidence. Or this article. But preferably the evidence.

For me, the one piece of news that can almost be characterized as positive is that for the first time in my nearly 52 years, I’ve been forced to think about what it means to be quintessentially American. And what it means for our government to behave in ways that are consistent with our longest-held and most deeply-cherished beliefs and norms. Throughout my life (and I suspect most people’s), the ability to go about our days blindly and complacently, eating pork rinds and drinking Dr. Pepper, without ever needing to think too deeply about the American experiment was a luxury that came from a basic, bipartisan stewardship that was always brought to the Oval Office.

Sure, there have been shifts in policy and philosophy between subsequent administrations. But never have before have I been forced to ask, “is this how we do things in America?” I’ve never had to confront and ponder what makes us distinctly American until I felt that those most fundamental underlying principles were being challenged and threatened from within our own government. Every day. Many times a day. Even sometimes at night. And always on Twitter….

Bosun the French Bulldog sometimes surprises himself:

When you see yourself in the mirror first thing in the morning #?

A post shared by Bosun the Frenchie (@bosunthefrenchie) on

The Disorder of (Alabama) Republicans

At the Washington Post Stephanie McCrummen, Beth Reinhard and Alice Crites report that Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32:

Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore.

It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing.

“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”

Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.

“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” Corfman says she asked Moore to take her home, and he did….

Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star followed up to see what GOP officials in Alabama thought of these allegations. Here’s one of several, all along similar lines —

There they are: men for whom no crime is greater than their party, no injury more important than their ambitions.

Daily Bread for 11.9.17

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-eight. Sunrise is 6:40 AM and sunset 4:36 PM, for 9h 56m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 64.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred sixty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Community Involvement and Cable Television Commission is scheduled to meet at 5 PM. Two items on tonight’s agenda tell Whitewater’s tale. Item 2 asks “Approval of August 17th Minutes – October 19th cancelled due to lack of quorum.” When even a community involvement meeting is cancelled for lack of a quorum, one knows all one needs to know about current conditions. Item 5 shows how, even when the commission cannot muster a quorum, some residents will waste time of trivial matters. Item 5 is unintentionally funny: “2nd Discussion of commission name after review of ordinance (Requested by Stewart).”  The name’s not the pressing problem, for goodness’ sake. (It’s not as though the commission is called the Dog-Eating Club, after all. That, admittedly, would be a bad name for a group trying to spur community participation.) Oh, brother: a second discussion of a minor detail explains in part why Whitewater’s aged leadership can’t inspire a new generation to embrace community involvement.

On this day in 1620, the passengers and crew of the Mayflower first see present-day Cape Cod. On this day in 1968, an earthquake shakes Wisconsin: “one of the strongest earthquakes in the central United States occurred in south-central Illinois. Measured at a magnitude of 5.3, press reports from LaCrosse, Milwaukee, Port Washington, Portage, Prairie Du Chien, and Sheboygan indicated that the shock was felt in these cities. [Source: United States Geological Survey]”

Recommended for reading in full —

Denise Clifton reports Putin’s Trolls Used the Texas Church Massacre to Sow More Chaos (“How the Kremlin keeps exploiting Twitter to attack America”):

False information inundated social media after Sunday’s mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and Russian trolls were in the thick of it.

Conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich led the way, falsely branding shooter Devin Patrick Kelly as a member of the far-left antifa movement, and the Russian media outlet RT America had the lie posted on Facebook for five hours, according to BuzzFeed. The hashtags #antifa, #sutherlandsprings and #texas were three of the top 10 recorded over the weekend by Hamilton 68, a nonpartisan research project that tracks Russian influencers on Twitter in real time.

Much of last week’s congressional hearings focused on Russia’s interference operations on Facebook during the 2016 election, when Kremlin-planted ads and fraudulent posts reached upwards of 130 million users. But disinformation attacks by Putin’s trolls seeking to sow chaos in American politics have continued apace ever since—and Twitter continues to provide an optimal platform for them, according to researchers….

Pema Levy and Dan Friedman report  3 Times Jeff Sessions Made False Statements to Congress Under Oath (“His denials about Russian contacts don’t match up to new revelations”) [listing here just one of the three occasions from the story]:

Here are the three moments in which Sessions appeared not to tell the truth to the Senate:

1/10/17: At Sessions’ confirmation hearing for his nomination to be attorney general, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asked Sessions a lengthy question about contacts between Trump campaign surrogates and Kremlin affiliates:

FRANKEN: CNN just published a story alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week that included information that, quote, “Russian operatives claimed to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.” These documents also allegedly say, quote, “There was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump’s surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.”

Now, again, I’m telling you this as it’s coming out, so you know. But if it’s true, it’s obviously extremely serious, and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?

SESSIONS: Sen. Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have—did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.

But Sessions did communicate with the Russians. As detailed by the Washington Post in March, Sessions twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. (Later, a third meeting with Kislyak came to light.) Further, Sessions may not have been aware of an ongoing stream of communications between Russians and campaign surrogates, but it’s clear from the revelations by Papadopoulos and Page that he knew of at least a few instances —not to mention his own meetings with the Russian ambassador.

Kevin Poulsen reports an Exclusive: Russia Activated Twitter Sleeper Cells for Election Day Blitz:

As U.S. polling places opened last Nov. 8, Russian trolls in St. Petersburg began a final push on Twitter to elect Donald Trump.

They used a combination of high-profile accounts with large and influential followings, and scores of lurking personas established years earlier with stolen photos and fabricated backgrounds. Those sleeper accounts dished out carefully metered tweets and retweets voicing praise for Trump and contempt for his opponent, from the early morning until the last polls closed in the United States.

“VOTE TRUMP to save ourselves from the New World Order. Time to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” read one. “Last chance to stop the Queen of Darkness! Vote Trump!” urged another.

The Daily Beast analyzed a dataset of 6.5 million tweets containing election keywords like “Hillary” and “Trump” that was collected over 33 hours last Nov. 7-9 by Baltimore-based data scientist Chris Albon.

The data are not comprehensive—only tweets with one of the keywords were collected, and limitations in Twitter’s API prevent a full capture even of those. But they represent a significant sampling of Election Day Twitter.

By filtering for the 2,752 users identified by Twitter as Russian troll accounts—a list the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released last week—we isolated 80 accounts dishing Election Day agitprop and reconstructed the big finish to Russia’s months-long active measures campaign….

David Alexander reports The Case Of Wilbur Ross’ Phantom $2 Billion:

Fresh off a tour through Thailand, Laos and China, United States Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross Jr. picked up the phone on a Sunday afternoon in October to discuss something deeply personal: how much money he has. A year earlier, Forbes had listed his net worth at $2.9 billion on The Forbes 400, a number Ross claimed was far too low: He maintained he was closer to $3.7 billion. Now, after examining the financial-disclosure forms he filed after his nomination to President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, which showed less than $700 million in assets, Forbes was intent on removing him entirely.

Ross protested, citing trusts for his family that he said he did not have to disclose in federal filings. “You’re apparently not counting those, which are more than $2 billion,” he said. When asked for documentation, the 79-year-old demurred, citing “privacy issues.” Told that Forbes nonetheless planned to remove him from the list for the first time in 13 years, he responded: “As long as you explain that the reason is that assets were put into trust, I’m fine with that.” And when did he make the transfer that allowed him to not disclose over $2 billion? “Between the election and the nomination.”

So began the mystery of Wilbur Ross’ missing $2 billion. And after one month of digging, Forbes is confident it has found the answer: That money never existed. It seems clear that Ross lied to us, the latest in an apparent sequence of fibs, exaggerations, omissions, fabrications and whoppers that have been going on with Forbes since 2004. In addition to just padding his ego, Ross’ machinations helped bolster his standing in a way that translated into business opportunities. And based on our interviews with ten former employees at Ross’ private equity firm, WL Ross & Co., who all confirmed parts of the same story line, his penchant for misleading extended to colleagues and investors, resulting in millions of dollars in fines, tens of millions refunded to backers and numerous lawsuits. Additionally, according to six U.S. senators, Ross failed to initially mention 19 suits in response to a questionnaire during his confirmation process….

(Imagine the character flaw that would cause a man worth 700 million to insist falsely that he was worth nearly 3 billion. Wonder if there’s anyone else with that same flaw…)

Filmmaker Victoria Fiore reveals A Toxic, Closed-Off City on the Edge of the World:

Every day for two years, filmmaker Victoria Fiore tried to gain access to a toxic, closed city in Siberia with no ground transportation connections to the rest of the world. Located nearly 250 miles north of the polar circle, Norilsk is home to 177,000 people, many of whom are employed by the world’s largest mining and metallurgy complex, Norilsk Nickel. It spews more than two million tons of gas into the atmosphere per year. As a result, life expectancy in Norilsk is ten years shorter than Russia’s average (and twenty years shorter than that of the U.S.).

After a dozen failed attempts at a visa and multiple trips to Moscow to meet with mining representatives—who were, in turn, holding meetings with the FSB, the successor to the KGB—Fiore was finally granted entry into the industrial wasteland. She was stunned to find that the residents of Norilsk were proud to call it home. Her short documentary, My Deadly Beautiful City, captures what Fiore describes as “the hypnotic mysticism of a city on edge of the world.”

“It is really impossible to emphasize just how otherworldly this place was,” Fiore told The Atlantic. Despite its well-documented health concerns, including rates of cancer two times higher than the rest of Russia, “most people, including the city’s nuns and head doctors, claim that those from Norilsk have better health,” Fiore said. “And this is without mentioning that all nature in a radius almost the size of Germany is dead from severe air pollution. I already knew that the people of Norilsk loved their hometown, but I didn’t expect them to so openly contradict medical findings.”

Making the film caused Fiore to become concerned about the long-term effects of alternative facts. “If we are fed a narrative for long enough,” she said, “it becomes true.”

For more haunting images of life in Norilsk, Fiore recommends Russian photographer Elena Chernyshova’s World Press Photo Award-winning series. This film was originally produced for the New York Times Op-Docs.

Milton’s School Referendum (and How to Fix Milton’s Mess)

The Scene from Whitewater, Wisconsin

The Milton School District held a school construction referendum last night, the second within the last year. The 2016 construction referendum was for $87 million, the 2017 referendum was for $69.9 million. In fact, the 2016 referendum for the larger amount (with a different electorate, to be sure) was closer than the 2017 referendum for a relatively smaller amount.

A few remarks:

1. What Comes First. It’s true that I’m a critic of large spending projects, but fundamentally, here’s why: What happens inside the building will always be more important than the building itself.

First and foremost, schools should be run for the advancement of substantive learning (academics, arts, and athletics) and the promotion of a sound civic understanding (of liberty and equality within a free society). That’s more important than any building.

Mark this well – this position – substance first – is one that promotes educational accomplishment. One very well sees that construction is important – it’s simply not the most important matter.

It’s far easier to put in some new bricks than it is to teach a young person properly, even in the cases where bricks make teaching possible.

Educational officials in this community should approach every conversation about their work in this order: substantive academic achievement, assurances of fairness among students striving to achieve, and then construction and maintenance needs.

They don’t have to approach it this way, of course. It’s simply that to do otherwise produces second-rate work.

2. Milton’s focus was construction. That was all the talk (and I followed much of it, from newspapers and social media and in conversation). Even a construction referendum should emphasize other matters first.

3. Communications. No normal school district hires a former police chief, who was later a city administrator, as their comms guy. No normal place. ‘Communications Director’ Jerry Schuetz needs to go. Any money he’s paid should go to instructional materials, school lunches, even cleaning supplies. Those allocations would at least be useful for a positive end (learning, nutrition, sanitation).

Worse even than the referendum, Milton has had debilitating debates about lawful public recording of meetings. A district that isn’t behind open government from the beginning is simply fomenting community mistrust.

4. A Reasonable Amount. Milton’s a small town. Eighty-seven million’s possible for some communities, perhaps, but rural Wisconsin doesn’t have those communities. Even sixty-nine million was too much (and too much for the electorate).

Community leaders need to be realistic, and pick a more acceptable number (as most communities, including Whitewater, have done).

I’m not a construction booster, but those who are (in Milton or elsewhere) need to be practical. If they are, they can win at referendum. Until they’re practical, they’ll be nothing more than an example for other communities of What Not to Do.

Daily Bread for 11.8.17

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty-five. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 4:37 PM, for 9h 58m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Counting from 11.9.16 as the first day, today is the {tooltip}three hundred sixty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1942, Britain and the United States undertake Operation Torch, in which those nations began an invasion of French North Africa. On this day in 1870, Increase Lapham issues the first national weather forecast, for “high winds and falling temperatures for Chicago, Detroit and the Eastern cities.”

National Election Roundup —

Anti-Trump Republican Consultant Rick Wilson sums up Trumpism’s influence last night–

Virginia. Democrat Ralph Northam wins big, exceeding pre-election forecasts, and besting previous Democratic victories in against Virginia:

Axios’s Mike Allen quotes Larry Sabato:

U.Va.’s Larry Sabato told me there’s one explanation: “Donald Trump. He really is deeply unpopular in urban-suburban Virginia. Voter after voter wanted to send him a message, and said so. Of course, he won’t listen, but the message was sent.”

(Beyond that, Democrats did well in the Virginia House of Delegates, including Danica Roem’s legislative victory, where “Virginia’s most socially conservative state lawmaker was ousted from office Tuesday by Danica Roem, a Democrat who will be one of the nation’s first openly transgender elected officials and who embodies much of what Del. Robert G. Marshall fought against in Richmond.”)

Georgia. In Georgia, Democrats pick up three legislative seats in special elections.

St. Petersburg, Fla. Voters re-elected Mayor Rick Kriseman (D). Republican consultant Rick Wilson reminds that his Republican challenger looked strong earlier in the year, but Trump’s unpopularity helped sink another Republican.

Charlotte. Democrat Vi Lyles easily defeated Republican Kenny Smith on Tuesday to become Charlotte’s first African-American female mayor (“Lyles took about 58 percent to Smith’s 42 percent in unofficial returns. She carried precincts throughout the city, including a handful in south Charlotte.”)

New Jersey. Democrat Phil Murphy beat unpopular Chris Christie’s lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno (“As of Wednesday morning, with 99 percent of districts reporting, Murphy led Guadagno by about 13 percentage points — 55.4 percent to 42.5 percent, according to the Associated Press. Murphy was ahead by nearly 250,000 voters — 1.12 million to 859,000.”)

Maine. Maine’s voters decided to expand Medicaid coverage in a ballot referendum. Trump-supporting Gov. Paul LePage (R) had been fighting the effort. Trump’s made the Affordable Care act more popular than ever.

Washington state. Democrat Manka Dhingra won the 45th Senate District seat, and so Democrats take control of both chambers of the Washington legislature.

Democrats now control all the legislative chambers and the three executive offices in Washington, Oregon, and California. The entire west coast is blue.

Last night, Trump tried to reassure his low-information base that “we will continue to win, even bigger than before!”  Reporter Daniel Daniel notes that Donald Trump made 32 false claims last week, 835 since his inauguration.

Promising his supporters they will be winning bigger than before would count as false claim # 836.

Here’s how sheep with cameras got some tiny islands onto Google Street View:

Foxconn? What’s Foxconn?

The Scene from Whitewater, WisconsinOne reads that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker downplays Foxconn because deal not a sure campaign winner:

MADISON – Scott Walker said the state would ink a $3 billion contract this week with Asian tech giant Foxconn Technology Group, even as he downplayed the deal and pointed to other jobs being created through his administration.

As Walker launches his bid for a third term and as the polling on the Foxconn project has been lackluster so far, the governor has taken a different tone on the bid to bring a flat-screen plant to Racine County. 

After spending months touting the up to 13,000 jobs at the proposed plant, the GOP governor didn’t mention Foxconn at his 2018 re-election kickoff on Sunday. He kept his distance again on Monday when conservative talk radio host Jerry Bader asked Walker about Sunday’s omission.

“Those 13,000 jobs are no more important than the 13 jobs that we helped the small business (create) in Green Bay or Superior or La Crosse,” Walker told Bader, who is based in Green Bay. “Whether it’s 13 jobs, 130 jobs, 1,300 jobs or 13,000 jobs, they’re all important to us”….

Oh dearie me: Walker flacked those Foxconn job projections incessantly, and now he won’t even mention the deal in his re-election announcement.

A few simple questions:

1. Did Gov. Walker ever truly believe in the 13,000 jobs figure? If he did, why did he do so? If he didn’t, why did he allow the number to be offered without rebuke or correction?

2. If Gov. Walker no longer believes in the 13,000 jobs figure (assuming that he once did), then what’s changed his mind?

3. Does Gov. Walker – or any policymaker – really think that 13, 130, 1,300, or 13,000 are implicitly numbers of equal importance?

If he thinks any number is important, why not stop at 13 jobs created for the 3 billion investment, and call it a day?

4. The obvious question for JS reporter Jason Stein: does Walker downplay Foxconn only because it’s polling poorly? (“A survey last month from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling found 34% of registered voters statewide supported the deal and 41% opposed it, with 26% undecided.”) Alternatively, is he also downplaying the deal because he knows – at least now – that it’s not going to live to his own hype?

If the problem is that the deal was always over-talked, what does that say about the competency or honesty of Wisconsin’s governor?

5. Finally, here in Whitewater, we’ve had more than one man push WEDC projects, one after another, for years. So faithfully have some offered apologetics for WEDC and other publicly-funded business deals that Whitewater even has a WEDC 2012 Main Street Best Business Citizen recipient.

Gentlemen, gentlemen: WEDC and Gov. Walker need you now. Will you not help them calculate prospective employees for Foxconn, and afterward help them distinguish between amounts of 13, 130, 1,300, or 13,000?

I’m sure they’d be so very grateful for your assistance.

Daily Bread for 11.7.17

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-four. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 4:39 PM, for 10h 00m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred sixty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1917 (October 25th under the Julian calendar), Lenin’s Bolsheviks overthrow Kerensky’s moderate, provisional government (that provisional government having overthrown the Tsar in February). A century of oppression in Russia and the countries she would come to occupy would follow.

Recommended for reading in full —

Eileen Sullivan Adam Goldman report Trump Adviser Carter Page Describes Meeting With Russian Official During 2016 Campaign:

WASHINGTON — A former Trump campaign adviser told Congress he had a private conversation with a Russian deputy prime minister during the 2016 presidential campaign and that at least two members of the president’s team were aware, providing more details to what is publicly known about Moscow’s access to President Trump’s circle, according to a congressional transcript released late Monday.

“I’ll send you guys a readout soon regarding some incredible insights and outreach I’ve received from a few Russian legislators and senior members of the Presidential administration here,” the former adviser, Carter Page, wrote in a July 8, 2016, email to campaign staff members after he spoke with Arkady Dvorkovich, the deputy prime minister.

The New York Times first reported the fact that Mr. Page notified campaign officials about his meetings in Moscow, but the transcript, which is over 200 pages long, discloses the names of those advisers — Tera Dahl and J.D. Gordon — and the identity of the Russian official, Mr. Dvorkovich. Mr. Page’s testimony also revealed that more campaign staff members were aware of his July 2016 trip to Russia than had previously been disclosed, including Jeff Sessions, who is now the attorney general.

Mr. Page’s eight-hour testimony, under oath, to the members of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, came the same week as the first charges were announced in the special counsel’s investigation into ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russian officials….

(Curious about Page’s lengthy testimony? Here’s a link (pdf), from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.)

David Kirkpatrck reports Parliament Asks Twitter About Russian Meddling in Brexit Vote:

LONDON — A British lawmaker said on Friday that some of the same Russian-linked Twitter accounts that sought to influence the American presidential election were also deployed in Britain, in the strongest indication yet that Russia used the same tactics on both sides of the Atlantic.

Twitter disclosed to the United States Congress this week that it had identified 2,752 accounts affiliated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency, a notorious troll factory. In a letter to the company, the lawmaker, Damian Collins, wrote that “it has subsequently emerged that some of those accounts were also posting content that relates to the politics of the United Kingdom.”

Mr. Collins, a Conservative who is leading a parliamentary inquiry into “fake news,” had been presented with screen shots showing the same Russian-linked accounts posting about Britain, his office said Friday.

Any evidence that Russia sought to use social media to manipulate British politics, as the Kremlin appears to have done in the United States and France, could raise questions about the legitimacy of the referendum last year that called for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, or Brexit….

(Fake news, properly understood, is Russian propanda masquerading as factual accounts. Fake news as Trump has describes it is simply an appropriation of the term to describe meticulously-sorced stories that are critical of his administration. Trump commonly takes terms and distorts their original meanings to serve his purposes.)

Ronan Farrow reports on Harvey Weinstein’s Army of Spies (“The film executive hired private investigators, including ex-Mossad agents, to track actresses and journalists”):

In the fall of 2016, Harvey Weinstein set out to suppress allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted numerous women. He began to hire private security agencies to collect information on the women and the journalists trying to expose the allegations. According to dozens of pages of documents, and seven people directly involved in the effort, the firms that Weinstein hired included Kroll, which is one of the world’s largest corporate-intelligence companies, and Black Cube, an enterprise run largely by former officers of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies. Black Cube, which has branches in Tel Aviv, London, and Paris, offers its clients the skills of operatives “highly experienced and trained in Israel’s elite military and governmental intelligence units,” according to its literature.

Two private investigators from Black Cube, using false identities, met with the actress Rose McGowan, who eventually publicly accused Weinstein of rape, to extract information from her. One of the investigators pretended to be a women’s-rights advocate and secretly recorded at least four meetings with McGowan. The same operative, using a different false identity and implying that she had an allegation against Weinstein, met twice with a journalist to find out which women were talking to the press. In other cases, journalists directed by Weinstein or the private investigators interviewed women and reported back the details.

The explicit goal of the investigations, laid out in one contract with Black Cube, signed in July, was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in the New York Times and The New Yorker. Over the course of a year, Weinstein had the agencies “target,” or collect information on, dozens of individuals, and compile psychological profiles that sometimes focussed on their personal or sexual histories. Weinstein monitored the progress of the investigations personally. He also enlisted former employees from his film enterprises to join in the effort, collecting names and placing calls that, according to some sources who received them, felt intimidating….

Farther down in Farrow’s story, one finds reporting about Atty. David Boies:

David Boies, who was involved in the relationships with Black Cube and psops, was initially reluctant to speak with The New Yorker, out of concern that he might be “misinterpreted either as trying to deny or minimize mistakes that were made, or as agreeing with criticisms that I don’t agree are valid.”

But Boies did feel the need to respond to what he considered “fair and important” questions about his hiring of investigators. He said that he did not consider the contractual provisions directing Black Cube to stop the publication of the Times story to be a conflict of interest, because his firm was also representing the newspaper in a libel suit. From the beginning, he said, he advised Weinstein “that the story could not be stopped by threats or influence and that the only way the story could be stopped was by convincing the Times that there was no rape.” Boies told me he never pressured any news outlet. “If evidence could be uncovered to convince the Times the charges should not be published, I did not believe, and do not believe, that that would be averse to the Times’ interest.”

He conceded, however, that any efforts to profile and undermine reporters, at the Times and elsewhere, were problematic. “In general, I don’t think it’s appropriate to try to pressure reporters,” he said. “If that did happen here, it would not have been appropriate.”

(Boies doesn’t think it’s a conflict of interest to represent a publisher-client while hiring investigators who are working to undermine the publisher-client’s stories? Oh brother, oh brother, oh brother. See Report Details Weinstein’s Covert Attempt to Halt Publication of Accusations. Here’s an NYT statement on the matter: “We learned today that the law firm of Boies Schiller and Flexner secretly worked to stop our reporting on Harvey Weinstein at the same time as the firm’s lawyers were representing us in other matters,” the statement read. “We consider this intolerable conduct, a grave betrayal of trust, and a breach of the basic professional standards that all lawyers are required to observe. It is inexcusable and we will be pursuing appropriate remedies.”)

Lauren Duca writes Fox News Is Undermining American Democracy:

Few displays of Fox News propaganda have been as egregious as the cheeseburger incident on Monday, October 30.

It was a huge news day, with game-changing developments in the ongoing investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller into the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia. That morning, major news outlets like CNN and MSNBC reported that Mueller had indicted the president’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his deputy Rick Gates. The special counsel’s office also released documents revealing that earlier in the month it received a guilty plea from former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who admitted to lying to the FBI about “his interactions with a certain foreign contact who discussed ‘dirt’ related to emails” concerning Hillary Clinton, according to CNN.

As developments unfolded on its competitors’s screens, Fox and Friends briefly mentioned the news, but failed to provide any accompanying reporting or commentary, and quickly moved on to a minutes-long dialogue about the differing placement of cheese on burger emojis released by Google and Apple.

A history-shifting moment was breaking in real time, and there was Fox, committed to a deep dive into the nuance of the virtual-beef-patty stacking hierarchy. It came just after a spot on millennials getting too enthusiastic about Halloween and before a piece announcing the breaking discovery that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are the most desired holiday candy.

“We’ve been talking about this all morning,” says host Jillian Mele, introducing the emoji segment. “Can you see what’s wrong with this picture? The cheese is underneath the hamburger! Who does that?”

(Talking about cheeseburgers on 10.30.17 is Fox’s equivalent of holding one’s hands over one’s  and singing blah-blah-blah-blah.)

So, Is There Any Cheese in Cheez Whiz? (And the Story of Kraft):

On School Board Membership


The Scene from Whitewater, Wisconsin
There’s a notice at the Whitewater Unified School District website about a school board vacancy. (The original notice is embedded at the bottom of this page.)

As is his habit, board member Stewart has taken the announcement, modified the official notice on his own with links to board qualifications that he considers important, and posted it to his website.

All the district policies are online, but one might easily highlight a few for board members —

110 School District Vision, Mission and Core Values:

Vision
Every Graduate an Engaged Lifelong Learner

Mission
Whitewater Unified School District (WUSD), in collaboration with families and community, inspires students to achieve excellence in a safe, innovative educational environment.

Core Values

Students as our #1 priority

High expectations for student achievement

Respect for and appreciation of human diversity

Excellence in teaching, leadership and service

School, community and family partnerships

Responsible planning and management of resources

Education as the foundation of a strong community

(No one should run, let alone serve, who does not begin first with thoughtful views on the district’s vision, mission, and core values.)

161 Board Member Authority

Individual members of the School Board have authority only when acting as a Board legally in session, and the Board will not be bound in any way by any action or statement on the part of any individual Board member, except when such statement is made or action is taken pursuant to specific in­structions from the Board.

Individual members of the Board contacted by the media should feel free to respond, but no individual member of the Board has the authority to speak on behalf of the entire Board unless directed by the Board.

No Board member, by virtue of his/her office, will exercise any adminis­trative responsibility with respect to the District or, as an indi­vidual, command the services of any employee of the District.

(No one member, even an aged and entitled one, speaks for all the board unless specifically instructed or directed.)

165 School Board Member Conduct/Ethics

School Board members are expected to conduct themselves in an ethical manner and in the best interest of their constituents. Relevant Wisconsin State Statutes include:
19.41      Declaration of policy
19.59   Codes of ethics for local government officials, employees and candidates
946.10    Bribery of public officers and employees
946.12    Misconduct in public office
946.13    Private interest in public contract prohibited

Board Operating Principles

Agenda
School Board members choose to conduct meetings in an open, orderly manner by using the following guidelines:

The Board develops and reviews an annual agenda plan.

Board meeting agendas are developed by the Board President and District Administrator, with input from Board members.

Regular Board meeting packets are distributed the Friday prior to the meeting.

Individual Board members are encouraged to contact either the Board President or District Administrator in a timely fashion if they require additional background information.

The Board President conducts the meeting based on the approved agenda.

Board members can request an item be placed on a future agenda by contacting the District Administrator and/or Board President.

Communication
School Board members are committed to District communications that promote openness and understanding of the diverse perspectives of the community.

Provide opportunities for open discussion and feedback among the School Board, staff, parents, students and community members

Maintain confidential information

Be respectful of guests who present information to the Board

Interaction 
School Board members are responsible for the interaction that takes place when they function as members of the team.

Talk and act respectfully to each other

Invite and respect individual contributions

Maintain focus on issues, not individual(s), during conflict

Do not discount, dismiss, interrupt or name-call

Relationships
School Board members recognize that it is essential to work together as a team.

Speak and act with integrity when dealing with each other and with guests

Treat each other and the District Administrator in ways that are trustworthy and supportive

Prepare for meetings, including reading information and directing questions to the District Administrator

Keep interactions positive at Board meetings

Adopt the norms of collaboration as a guideline for discussion at all meetings

Team Decision-Making
School Board members are committed to relying on best practices, background data, research, budget impact, and any other relevant information (evidence) to make good decisions.

(These policies would reasonably exclude those who repeatedly interrupt others, don’t review agendas properly beforehand, and have a habit of pushing dodgy data in a way that fails meet one’s expectations of a competent high-school student.)

181 Rules of Order

All meetings of the School Board will be conducted using Robert’s Rules of Order, Revised, as a guide, and will follow the generally accepted four principles of parliamentary procedure:

1. Majority rules. This principle has several components, starting with the concept that School Board members alone have no legal power. The Board, then, must act as a body for its decision to be binding. And, except in those areas specified by state law, the Board is bound by the decisions of the majority.

The majority rule principle is first one of practicality, since meeting time is too precious to allow every debate to run on until consensus is reached. However, the closer the Board can come to consensus, the better. It also is a way to strengthen and preserve the Board’s group identity because the minority is bound to support the majority’s action.

2. Equal opportunity decisionmaking. All Board members, according to this second principle, should have an equal chance to speak to the issue before the Board.

3. Decisions based on merit. The third principle states that the Board’s action should be based entirely on merit —- not on manipulation of procedural rules. Deliberation should focus on issues, not people.

4. Efficient proceedings. The first three principles are part of this fourth, which is augmented by these ideas:

a) Discussions should be orderly, with no Board member randomly or spontaneously interrupting another who has the floor.

b) Board members should proceed as though time is of the essence, wandering neither to the left nor to the right in personal reminiscences or redundancies.

c) Board members should know their rules of procedure and the principles behind them.

(Knowing the Rules of Order requires more than misapplying the provisions, failing to cite a rule properly, or insisting on one’s past, habitual misuse of a provision as a justification for a present use. Having done something many times in the past, but ignorantly and wrongly, shouldn’t be satisfactory.)

Best wishes to all, as there are so many good works to be accomplished.

The original and unedited notice follows —

Daily Bread for 11.6.17

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 4:40 PM, for 10h 03m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 92.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred sixty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Downtown Whitewater, Inc. board will meet today at 5 PM.

On this day in 1860, former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln is elected President of the United States, defeating John Breckinridge, John Bell and Stephen Douglas. On this day in 1837, Burlington, Iowa is picked as the temporary capital of the Wisconsin Territory: “A year earlier, legislators offered a bill making Madison the capital with a temporary capital in Dubuque until which time a permanent building could be constructed in Madison. Legislators also proposed the City of Belmont as a temporary capital. One month later, on December 12th, a fire destroyed the two-story temporary capital in Burlington. The new legislature moved its headquarters to the Webber and Remey’s store in Burlington where they conducted government affairs until June 1838.[Source: State of Wisconsin Blue Book].”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Jon Swaine and Luke Harding report Trump commerce secretary’s business links with Putin family laid out in leaked files:

Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, is doing business with Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law through a shipping venture in Russia.

Leaked documents and public filings show Ross holds a stake in a shipping company, Navigator, through a chain of offshore investments. Navigator operates a lucrative partnership with Sibur, a Russian gas company part-owned by Kirill Shamalov, the husband of Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova.

Ross, a billionaire and close friend of Trump, retained holdings in Navigator after taking office this year. The relationship means he stands to benefit from the operations of a Russian company run by Putin’s family and close allies, some of whom are under US sanctions.

Corporate records show Navigator ramped up its relationship with Sibur from 2014, as the US and EU imposed sanctions on Russians. The measures followed Putin’s aggression in eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Navigator has collected $68m in revenue from its Sibur partnership since 2014.

Michael S. Schmidt, Matt Apuzzo, and Scott Shane report Trump and Sessions Denied Knowing About Russian Contacts. Records Suggest Otherwise:

WASHINGTON — Standing before reporters in February, President Trump said unequivocally that he knew of nobody from his campaign who was in contact with Russians during the election. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has told the Senate the same thing.

Court documents unsealed this week cast doubt on both statements and raised the possibility that Mr. Sessions could be called back to Congress for further questioning.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, unsealed his first charges Monday in a wide-ranging investigation into Russian attempts to disrupt the presidential election and whether anyone close to Mr. Trump was involved. Records in that case show that George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser, had frequent discussions with Russians in 2016 and trumpeted his connections in front of Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions.

For months, journalists have revealed evidence that associates of Mr. Trump met with Russians during the campaign and the presidential transition. But the court documents represent the first concrete evidence that Mr. Trump was personally told about ties between a campaign adviser and Russian officials.

Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger and Carol D. Leonnig report At least nine people in Trump’s orbit had contact with Russians during campaign and transition:

….While Trump has sought to dismiss these Russia ties as insignificant, or characterized the people involved in them as peripheral figures, it has now become clear that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III views at least some of them as important pieces of his sprawling investigation of Russian meddling in last year’s presidential campaign.

Documents released last week as part of Papadopoulos’s guilty plea show that Mueller’s team is deeply interested in the Trump campaign’s operations, including possible links to Moscow, at even the lowest levels. And Mueller’s interest in Russian contacts may extend to Trump’s business, as well, with the special counsel’s office recently asking for records related to a failed 2015 proposal for a Moscow Trump Tower, according to a person familiar with the request….

Jon Swaine and Luke Harding also report Russia funded Facebook and Twitter investments through Kushner associate (“Institutions with close links to Kremlin financed stakes through business associate of Trump’s son-in-law, leaked files reveal”):

 Two Russian state institutions with close ties to Vladimir Putin funded substantial investments in Twitter and Facebook through a business associate of Jared Kushner, leaked documents reveal.The investments were made through a Russian technology magnate, Yuri Milner, who also holds a stake in a company co-owned by Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser.

The discovery is likely to stir concerns over Russian influence in US politics and the role played by social media in last year’s presidential election. It may also raise new questions for the social media companies and for Kushner

Alexander Vershbow, who was a US ambassador to Russiaunder George W Bush and to Nato under Bill Clinton, said the Russian state institutions were frequently used as “tools for Putin’s pet political projects”.

Vershbow said the findings were concerning in light of efforts by Moscow to disrupt US democracy and public debate. “There clearly was a wider plan, despite Putin’s protestations to the contrary,” he said….

South Korea is getting ready for the 2018 Winter Olympics

Daily Bread for 11.5.17

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty-one. Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 4:41 PM, for 10h 05m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred sixty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1912, Wisconsin voters (men only) consider a referendum on women’s suffrage, when they “considered a proposal to allow women to vote. When the referendum was over, Wisconsin men voted women’s suffrage down by a margin of 63 to 37 percent. The referendum’s defeat could be traced to multiple causes, but the two most widely cited reasons were schisms within the women’s movement itself and a perceived link between suffragists and temperance that antagonized many German American voters. Although women were granted the vote in 1920 by the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Wisconsin’s own constitution continued to define voters as male until 1934. [Source: Turning Points in Wisconsin History]”

Recommended for reading in full:

Dan Balz and Scott Clement report Trump’s approval rating is far lower than any president in 7 decades of polling:

A majority of Americans say President Trump has not accomplished much during his first nine months in office and they have delivered a report card that is far harsher even than the tepid expectations they set for his tenure when he was sworn into office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News survey.

Approaching the first anniversary of his victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, Trump has an approval rating demonstrably lower than any previous chief executive at this point in his presidency over seven decades of polling. Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans — 37 percent — say they approve of the way he is handling his job.

Trump’s approval rating has changed little over the past four months, which have included tumultuous events, from hurricanes to legislative setbacks to indictments in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into the role Russia played in the 2016 campaign….

(Trump received three million fewer votes than Clinton, received that minority share of the vote with Russian help, is historically at the bottom of polling for a sitting president, is collapsing nationally among rural voters, and was decisively  rejected here within the City of Whitewater on election day. When one encounters someone from what’s left of Trump’s base taking up about him, it’s worth remembering and reminding of these uncontestable truths.)

Tai Ragan writes Don’t Lose Focus: Here Is Every Scandal Plaguing Donald Trump (“The Trump presidency is defined by the presence of scandal”):

Donald J. Trump has led a confrontational social and business life that often landed him in the tabloids. In both his personal and professional life he has been notoriously litigious and has been mired in many scandals over the years. The press mostly emphasized President Trump’s controversies while on the campaign trail, but a brighter light has shown on his actions since taking office.

Several books could be written on the events plaguing this administration, but these are the most egregious scandals [list that follows includes Trump-Russia, Nepotism And Swamp Creatures, Dog Whistling Dixie, Conflicts, Sexual Harassment & Assault, Gross Ineptitude]….

Ellen Nakashima reports U.S. investigators have identified Russian government hackers who breached the DNC:

Federal investigators have identified several Russian government hackers who penetrated the Democratic National Committee’s computers last year and siphoned out information that was released online, according to individuals familiar with the matter.

Gathering the evidence necessary to bring charges against them has proven to be a challenge, and it is not clear when that might happen, the individuals said. Prosecutors and FBI agents have been in discussions about the case and could bring charges next year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Justice Department declined to comment. Russian President Vladi­mir Putin has denied his government played any role in the hacking or in seeking to influence the 2016 election….

Anna Nemtsova reports Ukraine Believes Paul Manafort’s Crimes Go Way Beyond Money Laundering:

MOSCOW—Many of Kiev’s journalists, investigators, and officials felt genuinely happy on Monday when they heard Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, had been indicted on charges of laundering more than $18 million from Ukraine.

Most of the 12 counts of the indictment pulled together by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team spoke about Manafort’s illegal financial deals when he was working for Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin Party of Regions from 2006 onward. It also accused him of “conspiracy against the United States,” since Manafort allegedly used multiple shell companies to hide his money, and never bothered to inform U.S. authorities about the true size of his income.

Manafort had racked up this fortune as an adviser to the infamously corrupt Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled into exile in Russia in 2014. So, to see Manafort brought up on charges and threatened with jail time was considered a triumph for Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, which overthrew Yanukovych. During the uprising, which centered on Kiev’s central square, the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, more than 100 people lost their lives in 2014.

“It is very important for Ukraine to never see such a phenomenon as Manafort on its soil ever again,” journalist and commentator Ekaterina Sergatskova told The Daily Beast. “He symbolizes the ‘old regime’ of money laundering, corrupt lobbying, dirty scams—the regime that made millions suffer—both in Ukraine and in United States. Manafort served a regime that worked under Russia’s total control—that regime should never come to power in Ukraine again.”

How ’bout A Michelin-Starred Meal for $1.50?

Chan Hon Meng is the master chef behind “Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle,” the food cart home to the cheapest Michelin-starred meal in the world. Ringing in at a mere $1.50, Meng’s perfected braised chicken recipe was passed down to him by his uncle. Now, he’s serving hundreds of meals a day out of his hawker in Singapore. And while his food has gained acclaim and recognition across the culinary community, Meng hasn’t forgotten his roots. He’s still serving up the same great food, all for under two bucks.

Daily Bread for 11.4.17

Good mornng.

Saturday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty-seven. Sunrise is 7:34 AM and sunset 5:42 PM, for 10h 08m 23s. We’ve a full moon, with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred sixtieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1922, British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter discovers entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb. On this day in 1847, the first class assembles at Beloit College.

Recommended for reading in full —

Philip Rucker and Matt Zapotosky report Trump breaches boundaries by saying DOJ should be ‘going after’ Democrats:

President Trump on Friday repeatedly called on the Department of Justice and FBI to investigate his Democratic political opponents, a breach of the traditional executive branch boundaries designed to prevent the criminal justice system from becoming politicized.

Trump urged federal law enforcement to “do what is right and proper” by launching criminal probes of former presidential rival Hillary Clinton and her party — a surprising use of his bully pulpit considering he acknowledged a day earlier that presidents are not supposed to intervene in such decisions.

In a flurry of accusatory morning tweets, Trump claimed there was mounting public pressure for new Clinton probes, including over her campaign’s joint fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee that effectively gave her some control over the party’s finances, strategy and staffing before the primaries began….

(Trump, expressing himself as what he is: authoritarian.)

WASHINGTON — Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump presidential campaign, met Russian government officials during a July 2016 trip he took to Moscow, according to testimony he gave on Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee.

Shortly after the trip, Mr. Page sent an email to at least one Trump campaign aide describing insights he had after conversations with government officials, legislators and business executives during his time in Moscow, according to one person familiar with the contents of the message. The email was read aloud during the closed-door testimony.

The new details of the trip present a different picture than the account Mr. Page has given during numerous appearances in the news media in recent months and are yet another example of a Trump adviser meeting with Russians officials during the 2016 campaign. In multiple interviews with The New York Times, he had either denied meeting with any Russian government officials during the July 2016 visit or sidestepped the question, saying he met with “mostly scholars”….

(The more one asks, the more one finds, of Trump operatives’ lies and misconduct.)

Carl Schreck asks Who Are The Russia Contacts In The Papadopoulos Plea?:

According to U.S. court documents unsealed this week, a foreign policy adviser to the campaign of President Donald Trump said he was in contact with Russian officials and had been told during the campaign that Moscow had “dirt” on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and “thousands of her e-mails.”

The documents related to the guilty plea of former adviser George Papadopoulos — the first admission of guilt to emerge from U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential collusion by Trump associates — do not provide the names of Papadopoulos’s contacts.

But the identities of two of these individuals appear to have been confirmed — a man described in court documents as “the professor” and another as a “connection” to the Russian Foreign Ministry. The name of another — a woman Papadopoulos initially believed was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s niece — remained unclear as of October 31.

Here’s a look at key individuals with ties to Russia in the October 5 plea deal signed by Papadopoulos, whose arrest in July on charges of lying to FBI agents only came to light after court documents were unsealed on October 30, and what we know about them [list follows]….

David Corn and AJ Vincens report Hackers Compromised the Trump Organization 4 Years Ago—and the Company Never Noticed:

Four years ago, the Trump Organization experienced a major cyber breach that could have allowed the perpetrator (or perpetrators) to mount malware attacks from the company’s web domains and may have enabled the intruders to gain access to the company’s computer network. Up until this week, this penetration had gone undetected by President Donald Trump’s company, according to several internet security researchers.

In 2013, a hacker (or hackers) apparently obtained access to the Trump Organization’s domain registration account and created at least 250 website subdomains that cybersecurity experts refer to as “shadow” subdomains. Each one of these shadow Trump subdomains pointed to a Russian IP address, meaning that they were hosted at these Russian addresses. (Every website domain is associated with one or more IP addresses. These addresses allow the internet to find the server that hosts the website. Authentic Trump Organization domains point to IP addresses that are hosted in the United States or countries where the company operates.) The creation of these shadow subdomains within the Trump Organization network was visible in the publicly available records of the company’s domains.

Here is a list of a Trump Organization shadow subdomains.

The subdomains and their associated Russian IP addresses have repeatedly been linked to possible malware campaigns, having been flagged in well-known research databases as potentially associated with malware. The vast majority of the shadow subdomains remained active until this week, indicating that the Trump Organization had taken no steps to disable them. This suggests that the company for the past four years was unaware of the breach. Had the infiltration been caught by the Trump Organization, the firm should have immediately decommissioned the shadow subdomains….

It shouldn’t be confusing, but sometimes it is —

Daily Bread for 11.3.17

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of fotrty-eight. Sunrise is 7:32 AM and sunset 5:43 PM, for 10h 10m 52s of daytime. The moon is full, with 99.5% of its visible disk iluminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred fifty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1804, a controversial treaty is agreed in St. Louis: “Fox and Sauk negotiators in St. Louis traded 50 million acres of land in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois for an annuity of $1,000. The treaty allowed the tribes to remain on the land until it was sold to white settlers. However, Chief Black Hawk and others believed that the 1804 negotiators had no authority to speak for their nation, so the treaty was invalid. U.S. authorities, on the other hand, considered it binding and used it justify the Black Hawk War that occured in the spring and summer of 1832. [Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail by William F. Stark, p. 32-33]”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Betsy Woodruff reports Mueller Reveals New Manafort Link to Organized Crime:

Buried deep in Robert Mueller’s indictment of Paul Manafort is a new link between Donald Trump’s former campaign and Russian organized crime.

The indictment (PDF), unsealed on Monday, includes an extensive look into Paul Manafort’s byzantine financial dealings. In particular, it details how he used a company called Lucicle Consultants Limited to wire millions of dollars into the United States.

The Cyprus-based Lucicle Consultants Limited, in turn, reportedly received millions of dollars from a businessman and Ukrainian parliamentarian named Ivan Fursin, who is closely linked to one of Russia’s most notorious criminals: Semion Mogilevich.

Mogilevich is frequently described as “the most dangerous mobster in the world.” Currently believed to be safe in Moscow, he is, according to the FBI, responsible for weapons trafficking, contract killings, and international prostitution. In 2009, he made the bureau’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

“Ivan Fursin was a senior figure in the Mogilevich criminal organization,” Taras Kuzio, a non-resident fellow at Johns Hopkins-SAIS’ Center for Transatlantic Relations and a specialist on the region told The Daily Beast.

Martin Sheil, a retired criminal investigator for the IRS, said the indictment, with its connections to Fursin, helps illuminate the murky world Manafort operated in before taking the reins of Trump’s presidential bid.

“This indictment strongly indicates the existence of a previously unknown relationship between an alleged Russian organized crime leader and Mr. Manafort,” Sheil told The Daily Beast….

(Trump surrounds himnself with men swimming in corruption and lies.)

Evan Perez, Pamela Brown and Shimon Prokupecz report Jared Kushner’s team turned over documents to special counsel in Russia investigation:

Jared Kushner has turned over documents in recent weeks to special counsel Robert Mueller as investigators have begun asking in witness interviews about Kushner’s role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey, CNN has learned.

Mueller’s investigators have expressed interest in Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a White House senior adviser, as part of its probe into Russian meddling, including potential obstruction of justice in Comey’s firing, sources familiar with the matter said.

Their questions about Kushner signal that Mueller’s investigators are reaching the President’s inner circle and have extended beyond the 2016 campaign to actions taken at the White House by high-level officials. It is not clear how Kushner’s advice to the President might relate to the overall Russia investigation or potential obstruction of justice….

John Santucci and James Meek report the White House was unaware top adviser testified before grand jury:

The White House first learned one of its senior staffers met with the grand jury hearing the case presented by the special counsel into alleged Russian meddling into the 2016 election not from the staffer but from media reports, sources with knowledge of the investigation tell ABC News.

Former Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis recently testified before that grand jury into his role on President Donald Trump’s campaign. Clovis currently serves as the senior White House adviser to the Department of Agriculture.

Clovis’ testimony comes on the heels of another Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleading guilty to lying to federal authorities. As part of Papadopoulos’ admission of guilt, details of emails were disclosed that showed him describing to top Trump campaign officials communications he had with contacts in Russia….

(Manafort & Clovis: both campaign chairmen at different times during Trump’s campaign. And yet, Trump promised he’d hire only the ‘best people‘…)

Ben Collins and Joseph Cox describe how Jenna Abrams, Russia’s Clown Troll Princess, Duped the Mainstream Media and the World:

….Those same users who followed @Jenn_Abrams for her perfect Kim Kardashian jokes would be blasted with her shoddily punctuated ideas on slavery and segregation just one month later.

“To those people, who hate the Confederate flag. Did you know that the flag and the war wasn’t about slavery, it was all about money,” Abrams’ account tweeted in April of last year.

The tweet went viral, earning heaps of ridicule from journalists, historians, and celebrities alike, then calls for support from far-right users coming to her defense.

That was the plan all along.

Congressional investigators working with social media companies have since confirmed that Abrams wasn’t who she said she was.

Her account was the creation of employees at the Internet Research Agency, or the Russian government-funded “troll farm,” in St. Petersburg.

Jenna Abrams, the freewheeling American blogger who believed in a return to segregation and said that many of America’s problems stemmed from PC culture run amok, did not exist….

A panoramic view of Burgundy doesn’t disappoint —