So we’ve finally seen some of the social media ads which we are told skewed the entire election in 2016 and constituted a key part of the internet assault on America launched by Vladimir Putin’s “troll army.” Scary stuff blazoned across front pages and screen scrolls everywhere. 

Ricketts claims that unions create an us against them mentality. Regardless of whether a business is unionized, there will always be some conflict between workers and management over how much of revenues will be paid to the former and how much will remain for the latter. But smart managers can work with unions to reduce tensions. If Ricketts is correct and the online sites are money-losers that he is funding out-of-pocket, he should have sat down with union officers, opened his books, and discussed the situation. Working together, exploring various options, including a co-operative arrangement, would have eased tensions and maximized the likelihood that the sites could first survive then thrive.

I've been so concerned that Mueller wouldn't be able to come up with the smoking gun that tanks the imposter in the White House, that it never crossed my mind to ask "What if he proves everything we think we know and it doesn't matter?"

Now the question has been asked.

This article will scare the living crap outta you.

Joe Scarborough's new op-ed  @ WaPo, with the above headline, is climbing the 'most popular' chart fast. I think it's going viral because readers think it suggests he might have gotten an important leak. I'm not sure people are reading him correctly. The op-ed is mostly a chronological laundry list of stuff that has become known. so that's not the reason for its popularity. I think it is may be the summary paragraph below. Syched with the headline, judge for yourself:

I’m starting to think that the answers to our burning questions about Trump’s strange obsession with Russia are revealing themselves in a slow and painful way for the president and all of his men and women. Will the next big reveal in this reality show spectacle come when one of his closest confidants surprises him in the final episode, not with a rose, but with a wire? The ratings would be yuge. Believe me. Yuge.

By LIssandra Villa @ Buzz Feed, Nov. 2

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, traditionally a group reserved only for Democrats, are weighing whether to allow Republican members to join, and the talks are growing increasingly heated.

A tense meeting in which one prospective Republican member allegedly accused the caucus’ chairwoman of being insufficiently Hispanic may have derailed the former's chances, two members of the CHC told BuzzFeed News Thursday night [....]

The group, dubbed America First Action, could face competition for cash with another group backed by Steve Bannon.

By Alex Isenstadt @ Politico.com, Nov. 2

President Donald Trump’s super PAC is drawing up plans to spend $100 million on an all-out push to sell tax reform and elect pro-Trump Republicans in 2018.

The group, dubbed America First Action, is expected to host a fundraiser in the coming months that will be attended by Vice President Mike Pence and is in talks with the administration to get Trump to headline an event. It has tapped oil and gas mogul Harold Hamm, a Trump ally whose net worth exceeds $11 billion, to boost its fundraising campaign. And it is recruiting major Republican Party donors across the country [....]

By Damian Paletta and Mike DeBonis @ WashingtonPost.com, Nov 2 at 12:50 PM

Oy. Radical. Many third rails. Lobbyists, along with constituents who read real news: to the trenches.

A loss in the Virginia gubenatorial race would be devastating for the Democratic Party. It could happen as Ralph Northam continues to misread crucial constituencies and take them for credited.

By Deena Shanker @ Bloomberg News, Nov. 1

[....] Almost two-thirds of Americans, or 63 percent, report being stressed about the future of the nation, according to the American Psychological Association’s Eleventh Stress in America survey, conducted in August and released on Wednesday.  This worry about the fate of the union tops longstanding stressors such as money (62 percent) and work (61 percent) and also cuts across political proclivities. However, a significantly larger proportion of Democrats (73 percent) reported feeling stress than independents (59 percent) and Republicans (56 percent).

The “current social divisiveness” in America was reported by 59 percent of those surveyed as a cause of their own malaise. When the APA surveyed Americans a year ago, 52 percent said they were stressed by the presidential campaign. Since then, anxieties have only grown [....]

Newspapers once featured telegraph items that bear a striking resemblance to tweets.

By Adrienne LaFrance @ TheAtlantic.com, Nov. 1

[....] In the 19th century, the telegraph was at the center of a crisis over the future of fact-based reporting. A few years ago, I stumbled upon a Times article published in 1858 that lamented “all telegraphic intelligence” as “superficial, sudden, unsifted, too fast for the truth.”

“Does it not render the popular mind too fast for the truth?” the author of that article wrote. “Ten days bring us the mails from Europe. What need is there for the scraps of news in ten minutes? How trivial and paltry is the telegraphic column?” [....]