Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 4:26 PM, for 9h 30m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Whitewater Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1973, Pres. Nixon’s lawyers tell John Sirica, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, of an eighteen and a half minute gap in White House audio tapes.

Recommended for reading in full —

Chris Strohm and Shannon Pettypiece report Ex-Fox News Employee Says She Was Blocked From Investigating Trump-Russia Ties:

A former Fox News employee said the network blocked her from going to Moscow to investigate President Donald Trump’s links with Russia, one of several claims of news bias at 21st Century Fox Inc. made by former and current workers opposing its takeover of Sky Plc.

“You can’t do in-depth reporting if you’re not there,” said Jessica Golloher, a former Fox Radio correspondent who is suing the division for gender discrimination, at a gathering with U.K. lawmakers and citizens in Parliament on Monday. “Fox didn’t let me go to Moscow to dig into Trump’s Russian connections, even when I offered to pay my own way.”

“Fox is just buying what the White House is selling,” she said….

(Fox is the closest thing America now has to state media).

Devlin Barrett and Carol D. Leonnig report DHS inspector general: Travel-ban confusion led agents to violate court order:

The Trump administration’s botched rollout of its first travel ban led federal agents to violate court orders by telling airlines not to let certain passengers board U.S.-bound flights, according to an internal watchdog.

In a letter Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, John Roth, notified lawmakers of the violations. He also alerted them that his findings have become bogged down in a battle with the department over redactions that he said would obscure the true failures of the administration’s handling of the first travel ban.

In the early days of the Trump administration, the president signed an executive order temporarily banning entry to the United States by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries, as well as refugees.

The move led to confusion and alarm at airports, where immigration agents were unsure how to enforce the order and passengers were unsure whether they could enter the United States. It also sparked protests at some major international airports….

(Lack of clear direction served the darker purpose of inflicting maximum worry on those who might, but were not, part of a travel ban.)

Catherine Rampell contends The GOP readies itself to welcome Roy Moore:

….In any case, by arguing that victory refutes all allegations against Trump, Republicans are laying the groundwork to welcome Moore to Washington if he wins next month.

Already, White House officials are ducking questions about whether Moore should be allowed to serve as senator. A mere week ago, Conway said there was “no Senate seat worth more than a child.” On Monday, when asked whether Alabama voters should cast their ballots for Moore, she denounced his Democratic opponent and said, “I’m telling you that we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through”….

(If Moore should win – and there’s a good chance he will – one can expect that the GOP majority will allow him into the chamber and will rely on his vote.)

Betsy Woodruff, Ben Collins, and Spencer Ackerman report Twitter Clams Up Over Russian Trolls:

Twitter has not provided the House and Senate Russia investigations with any additional Kremlin-backed imposter accounts and bots since at least Nov. 1, The Daily Beast has confirmed.

The lack of new disclosure comes as evidence continues to mount that inauthentic Russian activity continues apace on the microblogging platform.

Twitter first identified 201 non-bot accounts tied to the St. Petersburg-based troll farm known as the Internet Research Association on Sept. 28. Barely a month later, for a Nov. 1 congressional hearing, the company increased that figure tenfold, to 2,752—in addition to the existence of 36,746 Russia-linked bot accounts involved in election-related tweets. Twenty days after that, however, Twitter has yet to provide an updated amount, let alone specific propaganda accounts, to legislators, three sources familiar with the inquiries tell The Daily Beast….

Sunday was turkey, Monday was mashed potatoes, and today it’s classic pan gravy:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 4:27 PM, for 9h 32m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 6:30 PM, and her Library Board also meets at 6:30 PM. The Whitewater Unified School Board meets (in open session) beginning at 7 PM.

On this day in 1789, New Jersey becomes the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.

On this day in 1859, the Milwaukee’s  first recorded game of ‘base ball’ is played: “An impromptu game of base ball , as it was spelled in the early years, was played by two teams of seven at the Milwaukee Fair Ground. The game was organized by Rufus King, publisher of the Milwaukee Sentinel, and is believed to have been the first baseball game played in Milwaukee. In spite of cold weather, two more games were played in December, and by April 1860 the Milwaukee Base Ball Club was organized. View early baseball photographs at Wisconsin Historical Images, and read about baseball’s first decades in Wisconsin at Turning Points in Wisconsin.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Mike Levine reports Special Counsel sends wide-ranging request for documents to Justice Department:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s team investigating whether President Donald Trump sought to obstruct a federal inquiry into connections between his presidential campaign and Russian operatives has now directed the Justice Department to turn over a broad array of documents, ABC News has learned.

In particular, Mueller’s investigators are keen to obtain emails related to the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the earlier decision of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the entire matter, according to a source who has not seen the specific request but was told about it.

Issued within the past month, the directive marks the special counsel’s first records request to the Justice Department, and it means Mueller is now demanding documents from the department overseeing his investigation.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein played key roles in Comey’s removal. And Sessions has since faced withering criticism from Trump over his recusal and Rosenstein’s subsequent appointment of Mueller….

(Sessions is variously a forgetful, evasive, and arrogant man.)

Alex Eule asks Unicorns: What Are They Really Worth?:

When a venture capitalist coined the concept “unicorn club” in 2013, it referred to software start-ups valued at $1 billion or more—just 39 at that time.

“We like the term because, to us, it means something extremely rare, and magical,” Cowboy Ventures founder Aileen Lee wrote in a column for Techcrunch. Four years later, the rarity—and the magic—has worn off. Today, Dow Jones VentureSource tracks 170 unicorns in its database.

Equity investors once held high hopes for these companies to come to market and become the next Facebook or Google. But in recent years, the unicorns have preferred to raise funds behind closed doors. Just 32 have gone through with initial public offerings since they became a class unto themselves, according to VentureSource, and they have tended to be smaller names. Large companies like Uber Technologies, Dropbox, Lyft, Spotify, and Airbnb have so far spurned the public market.

As the private companies become household names, they face questions about their workplace cultures, business models—and valuations.

The unicorn experience is teaching us an unexpected lesson: The public markets remain the best place to achieve long-term corporate success….

(The public markets remain the best – if not perfect – place to achieve long-term success because they’re exposed to the greatest range of market forces, of decisions of buyers and sellers. Simplified, yet fundamentally true true.)

Desmond Butler, Mary Clare Jalonick, and Eric Tucker report Moscow meeting in June 2017 under scrutiny in Trump probe:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earlier this year, a Russian-American lobbyist and another businessman discussed over coffee in Moscow an extraordinary meeting they had attended 12 months earlier: a gathering at Trump Tower with President Donald Trump’s son, his son-in-law and his then-campaign chairman.

The Moscow meeting in June, which has not been previously disclosed, is now under scrutiny by investigators who want to know why the two men met in the first place and whether there was some effort to get their stories straight about the Trump Tower meeting just weeks before it would become public, The Associated Press has learned.

Congressional investigators have questioned both men — lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin and Ike Kaveladze, a business associate of a Moscow-based developer and former Trump business partner — and obtained their text message communications, people familiar with the investigation told the AP.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team also has been investigating the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, which occurred weeks after Trump had clinched the Republican presidential nomination and which his son attended with the expectation of receiving damaging information about Democrat Hillary Clinton. A grand jury has already heard testimony about the meeting, which in addition to Donald Trump Jr., also included Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and his then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The focus of the congressional investigators was confirmed by three people familiar with their probe, including two who demanded anonymity to discuss the sensitive inquiry….

(The closer one looks, the more one finds.)

Ashley Parker and Carol D. Leonnig write of ‘A long winter’: White House aides divided over scope, risks of Russia probe:

…. [One of Trump’s lawyers, Ty] Cobb added that those who have already been interviewed by Mueller’s team have left feeling buoyed. “The people who have been interviewed generally feel they were treated fairly by the special counsel, and adequately prepared to assist them in understanding the relevant material,” he said. “They came back feeling relieved that it was over, but nobody I know of was shaken or scared.”

But the reassurances from Cobb and others — which seem at least partially aimed at keeping the president calm and focused on governing — are viewed by others as naive.

“The president says, ‘This is all just an annoyance. I did nothing,’?” said one person close to the administration. “He is somewhat arrogant about it. But this investigation is a classic Gambino-style roll-up. You have to anticipate this roll-up will reach everyone in this administration”….

(Those of us in opposition will hold fast far longer than a single season, however long, however cold.)

Yesterday was turkey, and today it’s a recipe for Simple Mashed Potatoes:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 4:27 PM, for 9h 34m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1863, Pres. Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg Address.

Recommended for reading in full —

Alice Lloyd writes in Rug Money how Paul Manafort likely laundered money:

One of the more puzzling aspects of Paul Manafort’s indictment for conspiracy, money laundering and other charges was the line items detailing the he epic sums he reported spending from Cyprus-based accounts on antique rugs in Northern Virginia. There’s really no reasonable way, THE WEEKLY STANDARD learned at the time, to spend $1 million on antique carpets in Alexandria. But we have since learned, from Treasury and IRS agents, a geopolitical expert with family ties to the rug business, and two sources versed in the Iranian business world, that we were far from the first to give a second thought to the way money moves through rug shops.

An intelligence analyst and Middle East expert who recently approached TWS with his story grew up wondering exactly that: Michael Nayebi-Oskoui, a consultant for global businesses, talked candidly about his Persian-Jewish grandmother’s mysterious import-export business. “To this day, I can never tell you what my grandma’s business actually was—moving goods through places, funds come back and forth,” he reflected.

And that, he believes, is where the rug merchants come in: “The intrinsic value of these rugs is bupkis,” he said. “There’s no legal or functional tool for the IRS to judge their value.” Consequently, “if you needed someone to make a deal with you, to move some money around, this is a great way of doing it.”

(Robin Givhan, a fashion columnist at the Washington Post, wrote recently of Manafort that he is a ‘glossy, glossy man.’ See Paul Manafort’s wardrobe tells you all you need to know about power and style in the 1980s. When I first read her assessment, finding it only because I caught Manafort’s name in her title, I mistakenly thought that a discussion of Manafort’s clothing trivialized his connections to Russians and pro-Russian oligarchs & politicians in Ukraine.  Oh, no: Givhan has a powerful insight into men like him: “Manafort was not dressing like a man who needs your applause. He was dressing like a man who didn’t think he needed anything at all. At least from you. He looked like someone who considered himself above everything. A man who makes things happen. A man who glides through life.” Indeed.)

Jack Shafer writes of Week 26: Donald Jr. and WikiLeaks Talk Dirty:

If we’ve learned anything from months of scandal reporting, the Russians set their sights on two types of people wandering the halls of Trump Tower. There were the self-promoters like Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort who they knew would cooperate based on direct or potential payouts. But the Russians also shopped a second group of Tower denizens, the over-their-heads strivers often compared to the hapless Fredo Corleone. These Fredos—George Papadopoulos and Carter Page—attracted Russian agents like magnets, and were easily manipulated by direct appeals to their stooped egos.

But of all the Fredos occupying Trump world, perhaps Donald Trump Jr. proved to be the easiest mark for the Russians. First, Junior embraced a gaggle of suspicious Russians for a June 2016 meeting in his Trump Tower office on the pretext that they possessed incriminating dirt on Hillary Clinton. Then, as we learned this week from the Atlantic’s Julia Ioffe, Junior became their boy when WikiLeaks tweeted some DMs at him in the early fall of 2016. The DMs, perhaps authored by Julian Assange himself, connect Junior directly to the Russian thing: U.S. intelligence believes WikiLeaks acted as Russia’s proxy in the 2016 distribution of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails….

(Variously greedy, ignorant, and stupid men, so easily given to corruption.)

Jim Wallis writes A year into Trump’s presidency, Christians are facing a spiritual reckoning:

Many traditions in the history of Christianity have attempted to combat and correct the worship of three things: money, sex and power. Catholic orders have for centuries required “poverty, chastity, and obedience” as disciplines to counter these three idols. Other traditions, especially among Anabaptists in the Reformation, Pentecostals and revival movements down through the years have spoken the language of simplicity in living, integrity in relationships and servanthood in leadership. All of our church renewal traditions have tried to provide authentic and more life-giving alternatives to the worship of money, sex and power — which can be understood and used in healthy ways when they are not given primacy in one’s life.

President Trump is an ultimate and consummate worshiper of money, sex and power. American Christians have not really reckoned with the climate he has created in our country and the spiritual obligation we have to repair it. As a result, the soul of our nation and the integrity of the Christian faith are at risk.

As Abraham Lincoln, a politician with a deep knowledge of Christianity, stated in his first inaugural address, political action can, undertaken rightly, appeal to the “better angels of our nature.” But political action undertaken badly, and reckless inaction, can mislead and dispirit us — and appeal to our worst demons, such as greed, fear, bigotry and resentment, which are never far below the surface.

Trump’s adulation of money and his love for lavish ostentation (he covers everything in gold) are the literal worship of wealth by someone who believes that his possessions belong only to himself, instead of that everything belongs to God and we are its stewards. In 2011, before his foray into politics, Trump said, “Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” And in his 2015 speech announcing his candidacy for president, he said: “I’m really rich. .?.?. And by the way, I’m not even saying that in a braggadocio — that’s the kind of mind-set, that’s the kind of thinking you need for this country.” Later, during the campaign, Trump suggested that our country must “be wealthy in order to be great”….

(There’s nothing in either Trump’s words or actions that suggests an understanding of Christian theology, any other theology, or even a secular philosophy of any kind. He has views, to be sure, and they may be crafted into a ideology, but it’s a crude, gutter ideology.)

The Rev. Dr. William Barber writes of  The unbearable hypocrisy of Roy Moore’s Christian rhetoric (“This isn’t Christianity, it’s an extreme form of Republican religionism”):

A disturbing pattern has emerged since the Washington Post first reported that four women accused Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of offenses ranging from the creepy to the criminal. People in Gadsden, Alabama, where Moore worked in the District Attorney’s office three decades ago, say it was “common knowledge” that Moore pursued teenagers when he was in his 30s. Locals told the New Yorker that they recall being told than the local mall banned Moore for the same reason.

Accusations of criminal assault are difficult to prove in court and the statute of limitations in these cases has since passed. But Republicans outside of Alabama have started to back away from Moore following the allegations; They have chosen to believe the accusers.

Moore’s base, on the other hand, continues to support him despite the evidence. For many of them, this is matter of faith. Jerome Cox, the pastor of Greenwood Baptist Church in Prattville, Alabama, told NBC News he would be supporting Moore because “he’s done a lot of good for the state of Alabama… Everything else is for the Lord to sort out.”

This is not Christianity. Rather, it is an extreme Republican religionism that stands by party and regressive policy no matter what. It’s not the gospel of Christ, but a gospel of greed. It is the religion of racism and lies, not the religion of redemption and love….

As well as he knows his Bible, Roy Moore never quotes from the more than 2,000 verses that exhort us to care for the poor, the sick, and the stranger in our midst. He has apparently overlooked the prophet Isaiah, who said to men like Moore in his own day: “Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims — laws that make misery for the poor, that rob the destitute of their dignity, exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children” (Is.10:1-4)….

(A better understanding will endure long after Moore and Trump.)

One of America’s great and beautiful holidays draws close, and over the next few days I’ll post about Thanksgiving meals (where the meal is an outward expression of an inner reflection of gratitude. For today, here’s a recipe for Simple Roast Turkey:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will bring a mix of rain, sleet, and snow (but with little or no accumulation). Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 4:28 PM, for 9h 36m 40s of daytime. The moon is new today. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1928, Steamboat Willie premiers at Universal’s Colony Theater in New York City. On this day in 1930, a police raid a Beloit home: “federal agents and county deputies raided Otto Matschke’s home, north of Beloit, and seized an illegal still and 300 gallons of contraband moonshine.”

Recommended for reading in full —

United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions mocks concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, and his Federalist Society audience laughs:

“Is Ambassador Kislyak in the room? Before I get started here. Any Russians? Anybody been to Russia?” – AG Jeff Sessions @FedSoc Convention. pic.twitter.com/6eK90EKrCB

— CSPAN (@cspan) November 17, 2017

Ken Dilanian and Carol E. Lee report Kushner failed to disclose outreach from Putin ally to Trump campaign:

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, failed to disclose what lawmakers called a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite” involving a banker who has been accused of links to Russian organized crime, three sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

An email chain described Aleksander Torshin, a former senator and deputy head of Russia’s central bank who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as wanting Trump to attend an event on the sidelines of a National Rifle Association convention in Louisville, Kentucky, in May 2016, the sources said. The email also suggests Torshin was seeking to meet with a high-level Trump campaign official during the convention, and that he may have had a message for Trump from Putin, the sources said….

A Washington Post editorial reminds Puerto Rico is still in the dark:

THE DEPARTURE from Puerto Rico this week of the Army general who led the military’s response to Hurricane Maria is being depicted as a sign the island is no longer in crisis mode but instead is transitioning to long-term recovery. No matter what terms are used, it is clear there are still enormous problems in Puerto Rico, with far too many people living in conditions that simply would not be tolerated on the mainland. More than ever, the people of Puerto Rico must not be forgotten. Those charged with rebuilding the island need to show they are up to the task and not repeat the mistakes that marked the initial response to the catastrophic storm.

It has been nearly two months since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, yet the majority of the island’s 3.4 million residents are still without electricity in what ranks as the largest blackout in U.S. history. No one has a clear handle on when the lights will be back on. Other problems include damaged homes, people in shelters, lack of access to clean water and, the New York Times reported, fears of a full-fledged mental-health crisis….

(Emphasis added.)

Rosie Gray and Mackay Coppins write Conservatives Reap the Whirlwind of Their War on the Media:

All news is “fake news”—at least if you’re a diehard Roy Moore supporter.

With sexual misconduct allegations continuing to mount against the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, Moore has defied calls to drop out of the race by advancing an audacious conspiracy theory—that partisan fabulists in the mainstream media are working with his enemies in the political establishment to wage a nefarious smear campaign against him. Not long ago, such claims likely would have backfired. But in the Trump era, anti-press sentiment has reached a fever pitch on the right—something candidates like Moore are eagerly exploiting.

Moore has not directly denied many of the specific allegations. Instead, he has sought to cast himself as the victim of a witch hunt and sow just enough doubt in the stories to muddy the waters in voters’ minds.

“Their only response to this is really to find other villains in the process to take the heat off of them,” said the Republican strategist John Brabender, a former Rick Santorum campaign adviser. The two villains they have chosen are The Washington Post and other mainstream outlets, to “discredit the messenger,” Brabender said, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican establishment, “to make the point that this is really just elitist establishment figures who never wanted Roy Moore”….

Let’s Meet the Argentine King of Gypsy Jazz:

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?: