A couple of readers in random comment threads have suggested maybe my new gig will let me sleep in to a normal PST wake-up time. Afraid not. I’ll be joining a virtual conference each day at the accustomed 5:00 AM. And no Daylight Video in the queue to enable me to hit the snooze button a time or two.

Oh well. Can’t have everything.

Here are some wide-awake midday new/views treats:

* Trump now getting more emphatic about need to close some mosques. It must be, God help us, polling well.

* The Hill piece stitches together scattered Dem kvetching about Obama rhetoric on Paris attacks into Dems in Disarray.

* Byron York complains we’d have done more damage to ISIS if Obama were not so persnickety about killing civilians.

* Ted Cruz demands Obama repeat “cheap insults” about refugee children “to my face.”
It is true Cruz is something of an expert on cheap insults.

* So Bernie Sanders’ “socialism speech” will be delivered tomorrow at Georgetown.

* St. Lake City elects openly gay mayor.

And in non-political news:

* Why I am I not surprised to find Taylor Swift on list of celebrities who were born rich?

As we break for lunch, here’s more Hank Ballard with “Finger Popping Time.”

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Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.