Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-three  Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:23 PM, for 9h 01m 48s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1958, Project SCORE (Signal Communication by Orbiting Relay), the world’s first communications satellite, is launched.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Natasha Bertrand and Eric Wolff report Nuclear weapons agency breached amid massive cyber onslaught:

The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said.

On Thursday, DOE and NNSA officials began coordinating notifications about the breach to their congressional oversight bodies after being briefed by Rocky Campione, the chief information officer at DOE.

They found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office of Secure Transportation at NNSA, and the Richland Field Office of the DOE.

The hackers have been able to do more damage at FERC than the other agencies, and officials there have evidence of highly malicious activity, the officials said, but did not elaborate.

The officials said that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has been helping to manage the federal response to the broad hacking campaign, indicated to FERC this week that CISA was overwhelmed and might not be able to allocate the necessary resources to respond. DOE will therefore be allocating extra resources to FERC to help investigate the hack, even though FERC is a semi-autonomous agency, the officials said.

Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima report Federal investigators find evidence of previously unknown tactics used to penetrate government networks:

Federal investigators reported Thursday on evidence of previously unknown tactics for penetrating government computer networks, a development that underscores the disastrous reach of Russia’s recent intrusions and the logistical nightmare facing federal officials trying to purge intruders from key systems.

For days, it has been clear that compromised software patches distributed by a Texas-based company, SolarWinds, were central to Russian efforts to gain access to U.S. government computer systems. But Thursday’s alert from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security said evidence suggested there was other malware used to initiate what the alert described as “a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations.”

While many details remained unclear, the revelation about new modes of attack raises fresh questions about the access that Russian hackers were able to gain in government and corporate systems worldwide.

[The U.S. government spent billions on a system for detecting hacks. The Russians outsmarted it.]

“This adversary has demonstrated an ability to exploit software supply chains and shown significant knowledge of Windows networks,” the alert said. “It is likely that the adversary has additional initial access vectors and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that have not yet been discovered.”

How Scientists Knew Hawaii’s Kilauea Was About to Erupt:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty.  Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 01m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1903, the Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Thomas Bossert writes I Was the Homeland Security Adviser to Trump. We’re Being Hacked:

At the worst possible time, when the United States is at its most vulnerable — during a presidential transition and a devastating public health crisis — the networks of the federal government and much of corporate America are compromised by a foreign nation. We need to understand the scale and significance of what is happening.

Last week, the cybersecurity firm FireEye said it had been hacked and that its clients, which include the United States government, had been placed at risk. This week, we learned that SolarWinds, a publicly traded company that provides software to tens of thousands of government and corporate customers, was also hacked.

The attackers gained access to SolarWinds software before updates of that software were made available to its customers. Unsuspecting customers then downloaded a corrupted version of the software, which included a hidden back door that gave hackers access to the victim’s network.

This is what is called a supply-chain attack, meaning the pathway into the target networks relies on access to a supplier. Supply-chain attacks require significant resources and sometimes years to execute. They are almost always the product of a nation-state. Evidence in the SolarWinds attack points to the Russian intelligence agency known as the S.V.R., whose tradecraft is among the most advanced in the world.

….

The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months. The Russian S.V.R. will surely have used its access to further exploit and gain administrative control over the networks it considered priority targets. For those targets, the hackers will have long ago moved past their entry point, covered their tracks and gained what experts call “persistent access,” meaning the ability to infiltrate and control networks in a way that is hard to detect or remove.

While the Russians did not have the time to gain complete control over every network they hacked, they most certainly did gain it over hundreds of them. It will take years to know for certain which networks the Russians control and which ones they just occupy.

 Heather Long reports Nearly 8 million Americans have fallen into poverty since the summer (‘Nation’s poverty rate has risen at the fastest pace ever this year after aid for the unemployed declined’):

The poverty rate jumped to 11.7 percent in November, up 2.4 percentage points since June, according to new data released Wednesday by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame.

While overall poverty levels are low by historical standards, the increase in poverty this year has been swift. It is the biggest jump in a single year since the government began tracking poverty 60 years ago. It is nearly double the next-largest rise, which occurred in 1979-1980 during the oil crisis, according to James X. Sullivan, a professor at Notre Dame, and Bruce D. Meyer, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.

Sullivan and Meyer created a Covid-19 Income and Poverty Dashboard to track how many Americans are falling below the poverty line during this deep recession. The federal poverty line is $26,200 for a family of four.

How One of The Oldest Dye Houses in Egypt Keeps Ancient Hand Dyeing Alive:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-one.  Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 02m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater-University Tech Park Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 8:00 AM, and the Parks and Recreation Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM. 

On this day in 1864, the Union’s Army of the Cumberland routs and destroys the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee, ending its effectiveness as a combat unit.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Molly Blackall reports Mitch McConnell finally concedes the election, but Trump clings on:

Joe Biden headed to Georgia on Tuesday to campaign for the Democrats in January’s crucial Senate run-off races, which will decide who controls the chamber during his administration. Back in Washington, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, broke his silence and finally recognised Biden as the winner of the presidential election. Speaking on the Senate floor, he congratulated “president-elect Joe Biden” and said: “All Americans can take pride that our nation has a female vice-president-elect for the very first time.”

Others, however, are still unwilling to hand over the reins; Donald Trump continued to peddle baseless claims of voter fraud, tweeting an article about the backlash against McConnell for conceding and saying it was “too soon to give up”. The press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, also refused to recognise Biden’s incoming administration, saying “the president is still involved in ongoing litigation related to the election” and describing the electoral college confirmation of Biden’s win as “one step in the constitutional process”. But Republicans’ problem with reality runs much deeper, writes David Litts, who argues that their rejection of the election result is one of many examples of the party baselessly disputing facts, from gun violence to the climate crisis.

 Jennifer Steinhauer reports Pandemic Leaves More Military Families Seeking Food Assistance:

Fort Bragg, the largest military base in the United States, has all the trappings of a small American city: shopping centers, a barber shop and social clubs. In a sign of the times, it also has a food bank.

This spring, the Y.M.C.A. on base — which started a food pantry last year to respond to the growing food insecurity among military families — saw a 40 percent increase in requests for groceries. During the same period, grocery requests to AmericaServes, a network that helps military families, jumped to the biggest service request in the organization’s history.

The story is much the same around the country, hunger groups say, for the lowest-income families in the military, who have a specific set of challenges, and different from civilians whose economic fortunes have also been damaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

Spouses of active-duty troops have lost jobs, the same as thousands of other Americans, but are often the least likely to be able to find new ones. Children who rely on free or reduced meals at school no longer are receiving them, and military families often have more children than the national average.

Bill Glauber reports ‘This is my home, this is my city’: Giannis Antetokounmpo is now the pride of Milwaukee:

Sure, he got a supermax contract, which is “NBA speak” for getting more money than you can spend in a lifetime.

But in one beautiful tweet, he made the kind of statement that just takes your breath away:

“This is my home, this is my city. I’m blessed to be able to be a part of the Milwaukee Bucks for the next 5 years. Let’s make these years count. The show goes on, let’s get it.”

How airlines like United are using passenger planes to transport the Covid vaccine:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of twenty-six.  Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 02m 33s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM. 

On this day in 1791, Bill of Rights is ratified after the Virginia General Assembly becomes the 11th state to ratify. 

Recommended for reading in full — 

David E. Sanger, Nicole Perlroth, and Eric Schmitt report Scope of Russian Hack Becomes Clear: Multiple U.S. Agencies Were Hit (‘The Pentagon, intelligence agencies, nuclear labs and Fortune 500 companies use software that was found to have been compromised by Russian hackers. The sweep of stolen data is still being assessed’):

The scope of a hack engineered by one of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies became clearer on Monday, when some Trump administration officials acknowledged that other federal agencies — the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and parts of the Pentagon — had been compromised. Investigators were struggling to determine the extent to which the military, intelligence community and nuclear laboratories were affected by the highly sophisticated attack.

United States officials did not detect the attack until recent weeks, and then only when a private cybersecurity firm, FireEye, alerted American intelligence that the hackers had evaded layers of defenses.

It was evident that the Treasury and Commerce Departments, the first agencies reported to be breached, were only part of a far larger operation whose sophistication stunned even experts who have been following a quarter-century of Russian hacks on the Pentagon and American civilian agencies.

About 18,000 private and government users downloaded a Russian tainted software update — a Trojan horse of sorts — that gave its hackers a foothold into victims’ systems, according to SolarWinds, the company whose software was compromised.

Among those who use SolarWinds software are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department, the Justice Department, parts of the Pentagon and a number of utility companies. While the presence of the software is not by itself evidence that each network was compromised and information was stolen, investigators spent Monday trying to understand the extent of the damage in what could be a significant loss of American data to a foreign attacker.

 Keli Goff writes Dr. Jill Biden won’t be a ‘traditional’ US first lady. Some men are threatened by that:

Last week the writer Joseph Epstein embarrassed himself by publishing a Wall Street Journal column denigrating incoming first lady Jill Biden for using the “Dr” title she earned with her doctorate. He wrote: “Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo. Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”

The backlash was swift. The president-elect’s communications director, Kate Bedingfield, tweeted: “What patronizing, sexist, elitist drivel”. The daughter of Martin Luther King Jr tweeted in support of Jill Biden, reminding people that her father used the title Dr, despite not being a medical doctor. She added “And his work benefited humanity greatly, yours does, too.” And the first lady to be replied herself in a tweet on Sunday, saying: “Together, we will build a world where the accomplishments of our daughters will be celebrated, rather than diminished.”

Epstein’s article exposed the cultural powder-keg Biden was always destined to ignite. She maintained her professional career teaching community college while serving as second lady and intends to continue working as first lady. While some of us are thrilled with that, others, like Epstein are threatened.

Russell Rising — The Role of Churches in Rebuilding a Community:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of twenty-six.  Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 02m 57s of daytime.  The moon is new with none of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM. 

On this day in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner delivers an address on “Significance of the Frontier in American History” at the forty-first annual meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Ellen Nakashima and Craig Timberg report Russian government hackers are behind a broad espionage campaign that has compromised U.S. agencies, including Treasury and Commerce:

Russian government hackers breached the Treasury and Commerce departments, along with other U.S. government agencies, as part of a global espionage campaign that stretches back months, according to people familiar with the matter.

Officials were scrambling over the weekend to assess the nature and extent of the intrusions and implement effective countermeasures, but initial signs suggested the breach was long-running and significant, the people familiar with the matter said.

The Russian hackers, known by the nicknames APT29 or Cozy Bear, are part of that nation’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and they breached email systems in some cases, said the people familiar with the intrusions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The same Russian group hacked the State Department and the White House email servers during the Obama administration.

  Allison Klein reports Historic D.C. Black churches attacked during pro-Trump rallies Saturday:

A Black Lives Matter banner and sign were torn from two historic Black churches in downtown D.C. and destroyed during pro-Trump protests Saturday night.

D.C. police said they are investigating the events as potential hate crimes.

In one of the incidents, videos posted on Twitter show a group of people identified as Proud Boys marching with a Black Lives Matter banner held above their heads, then cheering as it is set on firewhile chanting “f— antifa.”

The banner was taken from Asbury United Methodist Church, one of the oldest Black churches in the city. Asbury United has stood at the corner of 11th and K streets NW since 1836.

“Last night demonstrators who were part of the MAGA gatherings tore down our Black Lives Matter sign and literally burned it in the street,” the Rev. Ianther M. Mills, the church’s senior pastor, said in a statement. “It pained me especially to see our name, Asbury, in flames. For me it was reminiscent of cross burnings.”

Another video, posted by @BGOnTheScene, shows a Black Lives Matter sign being torn down from in front of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church at 15th and M streets NW. The group is heard chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!” as they destroy the sign in front of the church where worshipers have included historic leaders, such as Frederick Douglass, and presidents, including Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and William Howard Taft.

In response, William H. Lamar IV, pastor of Metropolitan AME, tweeted, “We have not been distracted by signs, sounds, or fury for nearly two centuries. We worship. We liberate. We serve.”

King tides, heavy rain and strong winds lash Australia’s east coast:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty.  Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 03m 25s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1769, Dartmouth College is founded by the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Tim Wu writes Facebook Cannot Buy Its Way Out of Competition:

The Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states filed an antitrust suit against Facebook on Wednesday, prompting the company and its defenders to argue that Silicon Valley’s very way of doing business is under attack.

On the contrary. What the federal government and states are doing is reasserting a fundamental rule for all American business: You cannot simply buy your way out of competition. Facebook, led by its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has taken that strategy to a smirking and egregious extreme, acquiring multiple companies to stifle the competitive threat they posed. To ignore the company’s conduct would be to license it, allowing a long-illegal practice to become a norm.

As the metaphor goes, capitalism is a jungle and business is about survival. A business can survive in one of two ways: It can be as good as, or better than, the competition; or it can spend money to buy up any competitors that endanger its market share or disable them using tactics like exclusive dealing. The core message of the Sherman Antitrust Act is that buying up or disabling competitors, while often effective, is prohibited as a means of doing business.

This rule, in effect since 1890, has been widely ignored in Silicon Valley over the past decade and a half. The early online juggernauts developed a reputation for ignoring the basics of antitrust law. During the 2010s, the idea that they could “always just buy any competitive start-ups” (Mr. Zuckerberg’s words) became the default strategy for dealing with new threats.

Emily Davies, Rachel Weiner, Clarence Williams, Marissa J. Lang, and Jessica Contrera report Multiple people stabbed after thousands gather for pro-Trump demonstrations in Washington:

Thousands of maskless rallygoers who refuse to accept the results of the election turned downtown Washington into a falsehood-filled spectacle Saturday, two days before the electoral college will make the president’s loss official.

In smaller numbers than their gathering last month, they roamed from the Capitol to the Mall and back again, seeking inspiration from speakers who railed against the Supreme Court, Fox News and President-elect Joe Biden. The crowds cheered for recently pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, marched with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and stood in awe of a flyover from what appeared to be Marine One.

But at night, the scene became violent. At least four people were stabbed near Harry’s Bar at 11th and F streets NW, a gathering point for the Proud Boys, a male-chauvinist organization with ties to white nationalism.

The victims were hospitalized and suffered possibly life-threatening injuries, D.C. fire spokesman Doug Buchanan said. It was not immediately clear with which groups the attackers or the injured might have been affiliated.

The violence escalated after an evening of faceoffs with counterprotesters that took place near Harry’s, Black Lives Matter Plaza, Franklin Square, and other spots around downtown.

At first, officers in riot gear successfully kept the two sides apart, even as the groups splintered and roamed. In helmets and bulletproof vests, Proud Boys marched through downtown in militarylike rows, shouting “move out” and “1776!” They became increasingly angry as they wove through streets and alleys, only to find police continuously blocking their course with lines of bikes.

 Weekly Highlights from Space (Starship soars, China launches & more):

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see both rain and snow with a high of thirty-four.  Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 03m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 6.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, Hitler declares, before dozens of high-ranking Nazi Party officials, his genocidal plans against European  Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 The New York Times editorial board writes of The Republicans Who Embraced Nihilism:

This isn’t really about Mr. Trump anymore. He lost, and his ruinous tenure will soon be over. This is now about the corruption of a political party whose leaders are guided by the fear of Mr. Trump rather than the love of this country — and who are falling into dangerous habits.

The events of recent weeks have demonstrated the strength and resilience of the election system. A larger share of American adults voted in the 2020 presidential election than in any previous cycle. The votes were counted, sometimes more than once. The results were certified. In the states that have attracted the particular ire of Mr. Trump and his allies, most officials, including most Republican officials, defended the integrity of the results.

But the incendiaries are playing a dangerous game. They are battering public trust and raising doubts about the legitimacy of future elections. Most of it is political theater: Mr. Biden’s decisive victory is difficult to overturn. But a great many voters trust their political leaders, they don’t expect to be lied to, they aren’t in on the grift.

It is also a short walk from rhetorical attacks on the legitimacy of the election to denying the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s administration. Republicans are certainly within their rights to disagree with Mr. Biden and to challenge the decisions made by his administration, but those who refuse to accept his victory are undermining the rule of law. Those who stand silent are complicit.

 Matt Bai writes Let’s take a closer look at Trump’s supposedly intimidating 74 million vote total:

In the dark and cavernous mind of President Trump, Joe Biden’s vote count in last month’s election is, on its face, evidence of mail-in fraud. Eighty million votes! How is that even possible?

What Trump doesn’t question, of course, is the significance of his own vote total, which was north of 74 million — higher than that of any president before him. And neither does anyone else.

….

To Republicans, the clear message of those 74 million votes is that Trump is simply the most popular Republican in at least a generation.

The problem is: We really have no idea what that 74 million figure means, because we have nothing useful to which we can compare it.

Why? Because this was the first election that featured multiple ways of casting a ballot pretty much everywhere, including early and by-mail voting. As a result (and also because of heightened emotions in the electorate), turnout was the highest it has been in more than a century, clocking in at more than 66 percent.

….

It’s likely that we’ll look back in 20 years and say that Trump’s 74 million was actually quite low for an incumbent president in the era of the expanded vote. It’s entirely possible that we won’t see an incumbent president garner fewer than 70 million votes in the next several decades.

How Prince Wrote a Political Anthem That’s Still Relevant Today: