Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:39 PM, for 9h 14m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 53.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred twenty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority Seed Capital Committee meets at 4 PM. The PLanning Commission meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1790, Pres. Washington delivered the first state of the union address.
Recommended for reading in full —
Masha Gessen observes that “Fire and Fury” Is a Book All Too Worthy of the President:
The President of the United States is a deranged liar who surrounds himself with sycophants. He is also functionally illiterate and intellectually unsound. He is manifestly unfit for the job. Who knew? Everybody did….
A year in, the Trump Presidency remains unimaginable. To think that a madman could be running the world’s most powerful country, to think that the Commander-in-Chief would use Twitter to mouth off about whose nuclear button is bigger or to call himself a “very stable genius,” verges on the impossible. If the word “unthinkable” had a literal meaning, this would be it. It also brings to mind the psychiatrist Judith Herman’s definition of a related word: “Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud,” she once wrote. “This is the meaning of the word unspeakable.” The Trump era is unimaginable, unthinkable, unspeakable. Yet it is waging a daily assault on the public’s sense of sanity, decency, and cohesion. It makes us feel crazy.
At the end of the day, we sit down in front of the screen and watch the late-night comedians state the obvious: they imagine the unimaginable, think the unthinkable, and speak the unspeakable. There is nothing funny about it, but we laugh with relief. However briefly, the comedians free us from the nagging sense that we are crazy. It’s not us, it’s him. The laughter becomes hysterical….
Jake Tapper found himself compelled to cut off an interview with Trump adviser Stephen Miller:
(Miller conveys the impression of someone who tormented small animals as a child.)
Linette Lopez reports that Stephen Miller had to be escorted off CNN’s set after his interview with Jake Tapper went off the rails:
White House adviser Stephen Miller was escorted off the set of CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday after a contentious interview with host Jake Tapper.
Two sources close to the situation told Business Insider that after the taping was done, Miller was politely asked to leave several times.
He ignored those requests and ultimately security was called and he was escorted out, the sources said.
CNN declined to comment on this story.
Miller’s appearance on the cable network quickly went off the rails when Tapper pressed him on explosive claims about President Donald Trump that appeared in the book “Fire & Fury: Inside The Trump White House” by Michael Wolff.
Miller repeatedly attempted to pivot the conversation toward criticism of CNN, a favorite target of Trump’s. He then referred to Trump as a “political genius” and lamented his treatment during the interview, leading Tapper to reply that there was only “one viewer you care about right now”….
David Ferguson reports Ex-GOP Rep explains Stephen Miller’s boot-licking CNN performance: He’s trying to be the new Bannon:
Former U.S. Rep. David Jolley (R-FL) slammed President Donald Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller on Sunday after Miller’s toadyish tantrum on CNN forced anchor Jake Tapper to cut him off and end the segment early — a move that earned plaudits for Tapper.
Jolley said that the current rift between Trump and former adviser Steve Bannon will heal and the two will head into the 2018 midterms as a team, especially now that Bannon has rolled over and offered a groveling apology to Trump for the things he said in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
Anchor David Gura played video from Miller’s CNN segment, to which Jolley said, “Stephen Miller is the one person in this White House, through loyalty and sycophancy who can fill Steve Bannon’s shoes and he knows that.”
SpaceX streamed live its Falcon rocket (ZUMA mission) launch last night. The lauch was a success. I watched the live stream, and here’s a replay – the countdown is informative, and oen can learn a lot during a webcast like this:
SpaceX is targeting launch of the Zuma spacecraft from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The two-hour primary launch window opens at 8:00 p.m. EST on Sunday, January 7, or 1:00 UTC on Monday, January 8. A backup two-hour launch window opens at 8:00 p.m. EST on Monday, January 8, or 1:00 UTC on Tuesday, January 9.
Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage will attempt to land at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.