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:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty.  Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 04m 34s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 13.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1901, Morris Pratt incorporates his institute for spiritualism, located in Whitewater. 

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Patrick Marley reports Republicans are calling partisans instead of election professionals for their hearing on voting in Wisconsin:

MADISON – A month ago, Republican lawmakers said they were prepared to issue subpoenas for the first time in decades to haul election officials before them to get answers about how the presidential contest was conducted.

But they have now abandoned that plan and aren’t even bothering to invite them to attend a Friday hearing looking into an election that Democrat Joe Biden won by about 21,000 votes in the state.

Instead, they’re asking to hear from a conservative radio talk show host, a former state Supreme Court justice, a postal subcontractor who has offered a debunked theory about backdated absentee ballots and an election observer whom President Donald Trump wants to testify in court in one of his lawsuits over the election.

Friday’s hearing before two committees is being overseen by Rep. Ron Tusler of Harrison and Sen. Kathy Bernier of Lake Hallie.

The two have not sought testimony from Meagan Wolfe, the director of the state Elections Commission, or Claire Woodall-Vogg, the director of the Milwaukee Election Commission. Tusler has spent the last month reviewing what he has said are thousands of complaints and concerns about the election, but he’s yet to talk to Woodall-Vogg about them, Woodall-Vogg said.

“No one has contacted me during the course of their ‘investigation’ into claims over the past month,” Woodall-Vogg said by email.

 Amber Phillips writes Why the Texas lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election may be the most outlandish effort yet:

This is a lawsuit that seems both like President Trump’s last major attempt to get the courts to overturn his loss — and like it’s destined to flop. That’s the consensus of numerous legal experts on a recently filed lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) alleging rampant fraud in four states that numerous other court cases have so far failed to prove.

Paxton alleges “the 2020 election suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities” in four states that swung from President Trump in 2016 to President-elect Joe Biden in 2020: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia.

And he asks the Supreme Court to allow state legislatures to pick electors in those states instead. That part of the equation is now familiar, given Trump is also trying to pressure state lawmakers to overturn election results.

….

It’s a legitimate question what right Texas even has to bring such a lawsuit against other states. (Lawsuits between states are rare.) The Supreme Court could dismiss it out of hand for that reason, if it offers a reason at all.

And then you get into the substance of it, which is more like a Newsmax reel than actual legal arguments, said Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Law School and host of the legal podcast “Passing Judgment.”

“It’s all of the Hail Mary pass lawsuits strung together, in the erroneous hope that somehow lining them all up will make them look more impressive,” she said. “It’s procedurally defective. It’s substantially defective. And I think the Supreme Court will have not only no appetite for it, but it will actively nauseate them.”

Keeping up with Demand for $3,000 Hazmat Suits:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 05m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 22.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1864, during Major General William Tecumseh Sherman‘s March to the Sea, his troops reach the outer Confederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Charlie Warzel writes Inside the Battle Between Biden and Facebook:

In early September, the Biden campaign met with Facebook’s elections integrity team. With just weeks to go before election night, the meeting was an opportunity for Facebook to clarify how it would handle disinformation efforts to discourage people from voting and to undermine confidence in the results.

According to multiple Biden staff members in attendance, the Facebook team was unequivocal and reassuring. Under no circumstances, the company’s employees said, would Facebook tolerate the use of falsehoods to discredit mail-in voting. Facebook promised decisive action on voting disinformation, even if it were to come from President Trump himself.

The promise was put to the test shortly after, when Mr. Trump on his Facebook page urged North Carolina voters to show up to polling places even if they previously submitted a mail-in ballot. “Don’t let them illegally take your vote away from you,” the post read.

Mr. Trump’s call for his supporters to vote twice was roundly condemned by officials, including North Carolina’s attorney general. But when the Biden campaign asked Facebook to remove the post, it refused, instead appending a small label saying that mail-in voting “has a long history of trustworthiness.” (BuzzFeed News reported that Facebook’s internal data show that its warning labels don’t meaningfully stop the spread of Mr. Trump’s posts.)

For the Biden team, the moment was emblematic of its frustrating yearlong battle with the platform to enforce its own rules. “It was a total reversal,” a senior staff member told me recently. “You have half-baked policies on one hand, and the political reality on the other. And when push comes to shove, they don’t enforce their rules as they describe them.” (Like this staff member, those I interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity for this article for fear of reprisals.)

 Patrick Marley reports Thursday could prove crucial in Trump’s elections lawsuits in Wisconsin:

A federal judge will hold a hearing Thursday as he mulls whether to throw out Wisconsin’s election results at the request of President Donald Trump, who has been thwarted by courts across the country in recent weeks.

Thursday could offer up a legal doubleheader in Wisconsin because a state judge hopes to hold a hearing in a separate lawsuit brought by Trump as well. But if the 9 a.m. hearing in the federal case goes long — a distinct possibility — the state hearing will be put off until Friday.

The two cases, along with a third one brought by a Republican official from La Crosse County, must be resolved soon because the Electoral College meets Monday. Wisconsin officials have certified Democrat Joe Biden as the winner by about 21,000 votes, or 0.6 percentage points.

 SpaceX Starship launches successfully but lands hard:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 06m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 33.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater Unified School District’s Policy Review Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 10 AM.

On this day in 1946, the Subsequent Nuremberg trials begin with the Doctors’ trial, prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Linda Qiu reports A Senate hearing promoted unproven drugs and dubious claims about the coronavirus:

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, spent much of this year promoting investigations into Hunter Biden, trying fruitlessly to show corruption on the part of Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Now Mr. Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is more focused on another narrative sympathetic to President Trump if not to established science: that the reaction to the coronavirus pandemic has been overblown and that public health officials have been too quick to come to conclusions about the best ways to deal with it.

So on Tuesday, for not the first time, Mr. Johnson lent his committee’s platform to the promotion of unproven drugs and dubious claims about stemming the spread of the coronavirus while giving prominence to a vaccine skeptic.

In a move that led even most members of his own party on the committee to avoid the hearing, Mr. Johnson called witnesses who promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. The National Institutes of Health guidelines recommend against using either drug to treat coronavirus patients except in clinical trials.

 Molly Beck and the Associated Press report With case pending in state court, Wisconsin is only state to miss election safe-harbor deadline:

Every state but Wisconsin appears to have met a so-called safe-harbor deadline set by federal law, which means Congress has to accept the electoral votes that will be cast next week, locking in Biden’s victory.

The safe-harbor provision protects states against challenges in Congress through certifying the results of the election and resolving legal challenges in state courts by the deadline, which was Tuesday.

Wisconsin election officials still have a case pending in state court that wasn’t resolved by the safe-harbor date, in addition to the federal actions that are still pending.

….

Missing the deadline won’t deprive Wisconsin of its 10 electoral votes. Biden electors still will meet in Madison on Monday to cast their votes and there’s no reason to expect that Congress won’t accept them. In any case, Biden would still have more than the 270 votes he needs even without Wisconsin’s.

But lawmakers in Washington could theoretically second-guess the slate of electors from any state that misses the Dec. 8 deadline, according to Edward Foley, a professor of election law at Ohio State University’s Moritz School of Law.

Adam Liptak reports Supreme Court Rejects Republican Challenge to Pennsylvania Vote:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused a long-shot request from Pennsylvania Republicans to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the state, delivering an unmistakable rebuke to President Trump in the forum on which he had pinned his hopes.

The Supreme Court’s order was all of one sentence, and there were no noted dissents. But it was nonetheless a major setback for Mr. Trump and his allies, who have compiled an essentially unbroken losing streak in courts around the nation. They failed to attract even a whisper of dissent in the court’s first ruling on a challenge to the outcome of the election.

Polar Bears Face a New Threat to Their Life in Svalbard:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-six.  Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 06m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 44.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee will meet via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

On this day in 1660, a woman (either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare’s play Othello.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Noah Weiland and Carl Zimmer report Pfizer’s Vaccine Offers Strong Protection After First Dose:

The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech provides strong protection against Covid-19 within about 10 days of the first dose, according to documents published on Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration before a meeting of its vaccine advisory group.

The finding is one of several significant new results featured in the briefing materials, which span 53 pages of data analyses from the agency. Last month, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of 95 percent after two doses administered three weeks apart. The new analyses show that the protection starts kicking in far earlier.

What’s more, the vaccine worked well regardless of a volunteer’s race, weight or age. While the trial did not find any serious adverse events caused by the vaccine, many participants did experience aches, fevers and other side effects.

Andrew Roth writes Putin’s former son-in-law bought shares worth $380m for $100, report says:

A Russian businessman who was married to Vladimir Putin’s daughter received an estimated $380m (£283m) stake in a Russian petrochemicals company for just $100, an investigation by Russia’s iStories investigative outlet has claimed.

The investigation, published in collaboration with the the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), used a trove of leaked emails to shine new light on the closed circle of family and associates who surround the Russian president.

According to the investigation, Kirill Shamalov, the son of a longtime friend of Putin’s, purchased the sizeable stake in the parent company of petrochemicals giant Sibur through an offshore company. The deal was inked just months after he married Katerina Tikhonova, a scientist and university official who is widely reported to be Putin’s younger daughter.

John Bowden reports More than 1,500 attorneys sign letter condemning Trump legal team:

An open letter from Lawyers Defending Democracy has been signed by more than 1,500 attorneys, law professors and officials in the legal profession, including some high-profile signees such as Laurel Bellows, a former president of both the Chicago Bar Association and the American Bar Association.

“More than 35 losses in election-related cases have made one thing painfully clear: President Trump’s barrage of litigation is a pretext for a campaign to undermine public confidence in the outcome of the 2020 election, which inevitably will subvert constitutional democracy. Sadly, the President’s primary agents and enablers in this effort are lawyers, obligated by their oath and ethical rules to uphold the rule of law,” reads the open letter.

How The 75-Foot Rockefeller Christmas Tree Makes It To NYC:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 07m 43s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 55.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy carries out a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Jaclyn Peiser reports Arizona legislature closes after Giuliani spent two days with maskless GOP lawmakers:

For more than 10 hours last Monday, President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, convened in a Phoenix hotel ballroom with more than a dozen current and future Arizona Republican lawmakers to hear testimony from people who supposedly witnessed election fraud.

Giuliani and other attendees were shown maskless and not social distancing, and the Arizona Republican Party tweeted an image of Giuliani and lawmakers flouting coronavirus guidelines.

That defiance of public health advice came to a head on Sunday when Trump announced on Twitter that Giuliani had contracted the coronavirus. Hours later, legislative staff in Arizona’s Capitol abruptly announced a week-long closure of the state Senate and House starting on Monday.

An email announcement to members of the Arizona House said the move was “out of an abundance of caution for recent cases and concerns relating to covid-19″ and noted that “no one will have permission to work or meet in the building.”

Anita Kumar and Andrew Desiderio report Trump mulls preemptive pardons for up to 20 allies, even as Republicans balk:

President Donald Trump is considering preemptively pardoning as many as 20 aides and associates before leaving office, frustrating Republicans who believe offering legal reprieves to his friends and family members could backfire.

Trump’s strategy, like much of his presidency, is nontraditional. He is eschewing the typical protocol of processing cases through the Justice Department. And he may argue that such preemptive pardons for his friends and family members are necessary to spare them from paying millions in legal fees to fight what he describes as witch hunts. Those up for clemency include everyone from Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to several members of his family — all people who haven’t been charged with a crime. Weighing on Trump’s mind is whether these pardons would look like an admission of guilt.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya writes The people of Belarus are still marching against dictatorship. The U.S. can help:

Alexander Lukashenko refuses to step down or hold a new round of elections. His armed thugs are brutalizing ordinary people who hold up flowers and signs as they call for a different life. Thousands have been rounded up and housed like cattle in tiny, overcrowded jail cells without access to water, sanitation or horizontal sleeping positions. Torture is now commonplace. Belarusian Nobel Prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich has remarked, “I only know such stories from the Stalin era.” Such crimes have only strengthened the conviction of the Belarusian people that Lukashenko has to go.

….

We need more help from the United States, even in this complex transitional period. I appeal to the U.S. Congress to swiftly pass the Belarus Democracy, Human Rights, and Sovereignty Act of 2020.

This bill will expand the scope of those who can be sanctioned under U.S. law for their complicity in the repressions. At the same time it will provide support to independent media and technology for circumventing state censorship. Access to information is the strongest weapon in our possession. Lukashenko’s efforts to stifle the free flow of information and hide his violent crackdown cannot go unanswered.

‘Hug bubble’ safely connects care home residents to their families in France: