Let's get back to discussing critical national-security issues confronting America. The threats are grave and growing. The presidency and control of the House and the Senate will all be decided in less than one year. It's time to speak up again! #JohnBolton

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1198240903577645056

US president Donald Trump is almost two weeks into the impeachment hearings that have roiled his administration. But it hasn’t prevented him from making some winter plans to play a little golf.

The president spends a lot of time on the links, almost exclusively at his own properties. At the end of October, Trump made his 224th visit to one of his 17 golf courses since assuming office three years ago. On each outing, the Secret Service must follow. And with their golf carts comes a big bill for the American public.

As Trump rides around with his invited guests—on his last visit to the Trump National Golf Course in Potomac, Maryland, he was accompanied by Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, and Republican senators Lindsey Graham and David Perdue—the Secret Service is never far behind, in their own carts. As Quartz first reported, the carts require modifications that allow them to go at least 19 mph, about 5 mph faster than a standard cart.

The Secret Service has rented 84 golf carts for Trump’s planned visits to Florida between now and May 2020, costing US taxpayers more than $50,000, according to federal procurement filings. That brings the total cost of the agency’s cart rentals for Trump’s golf outings to more than $550,000.



https://qz.com/1753518/trump-golf-cart-rentals-have-now-cost-us-taxpayers-550000/

In 1928, when Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute received a truckload of mangled and singed machine parts, they had no idea what it was. A boy’s porcelain head and hands and a pile of brass springs, levers, and gears—it looked like an automaton that had been in a bar fight.

It wasn’t until the puzzle pieces were reassembled that the machine revealed its identity. The boy was a writing and drawing automaton, capable of creating beautifully decorated poetry (in English and French) and charming drawings of Cupids, a three-masted ship, and a Chinese temple. The mystery of his origin was solved when the boy was wound, and he wrote out, at the bottom of one of the poems, “Ecrit par l’automate de Maillardet” – “Written by Maillardet’s automaton”.

Henri Maillardet was a Swiss-born watchmaker and mechanician, born in 1745. He was a master of automatons (or automata), finely tuned and controlled mechanisms that perform rote—and sometimes elaborate—functions. Their “memory” is stored on brass discs called cams, which activate a series of linkages to enable precise and preordained movements. Maillardet had built several automatons, including this one, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The boy-machine was a money-maker for Maillardet in its day but had been sold at some point to a 19th century showman named Maelzel, who exhibited it widely, including in the United States. There is some evidence that Maelzel then sold it to P.T. Barnum, who may have had it on display at his museum in New York when a fire devastated the building in 1865. Perhaps the boy was injured then?

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/maillardets-automaton?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=atlas-page

Moscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings.



WASHINGTON — Republicans have sought for weeks amid the impeachment inquiry to shift attention to President Trump’s demands that Ukraine investigate any 2016 election meddling, defending it as a legitimate concern while Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of pursuing fringe theories for his benefit.

The Republican defense of Mr. Trump became central to the impeachment proceedings when Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating “a fictional narrative” — and that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which themselves propagated it.

In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.

The revelations demonstrate Russia’s persistence in trying to sow discord among its adversaries — and show that the Kremlin apparently succeeded, as unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference seeped into Republican talking points. American intelligence agencies believe Moscow is likely to redouble its efforts as the 2020 presidential campaign intensifies. The classified briefing for senators also focused on Russia’s evolving influence tactics, including its growing ability to better disguise operations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/us/politics/ukraine-russia-interference.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

A person connected to Amb. Marie Yovanovich's legal team, to @NBCNews's @GeoffRBennett:

"The Embassy in Kyiv hung the official photographs of the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State as soon as they arrived from Washington, DC."

https://twitter.com/davidgura/status/1197905678490312705

New: Elizabeth Warren names Representatives Deb Haaland, Katie Porter and Ayanna Pressley as co-chairs of her campaign

Haaland, Porter and Pressley were all elected to Congress in 2018. "It's an incredible honor to have these three persistent women on our team," Warren says.

https://twitter.com/thomaskaplan/status/1197930668614934528