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At Politico, a report on the growing infiltration of the Trump administration by people drawn from the Koch Brothers network, a network that employs 1,200 people and spent three quarters of a million dollars in the last election cycle. That kind of reach would not be ignored by any incoming president, even one whom the Koch Brothers refused to support. The worry is that in search of a governing ideology, the famously peripatetic Trump may glom onto the worst ideologically driven agenda in the country.
Talk about a shot across the bow: This article in the Washington Post over the weekend details a frightening development, the infiltration of fake news, originating in Russia, designed to undermine Americans' faith in our democracy, spread via social media. It is the kind of article that would put a typical politician on notice: We can make your life hell with more and more stories like these. But, no one knows what affect it will have on Trump.
Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL, emails potential supporters about why she is running for DNC chair. Politico has the story. Hogue bragged about how wonderful her abortion was at the Democratic Convention in July. I am sure that will appeal to those rural voters who fled the Democratic Party. But, the scariest line in Hogue's email, and the most tone deaf, is this:
The DNC can be not just a force every two years at election time, but also a daily presence in peoples’ lives, relevant in policy discussions and responsive to ideas and concerns of people where they live.
A daily presence? Yikes. Hogue is well advised to read the late Jean Bethke Elshtain's "Augustine and the Limits of Politics."
And, a Happy Advent to one and all. Yesterday, at Mass, we sang the hymn "The King shall come." I can't find a setting of this in a church with organ, but this version is not bad:
