Good morning.

Tuesday begins a new year in Whitewater with cloudy skies and a high of twenty-five.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:32 PM, for 9h 06m 34s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 18.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation takes effect.

Recommended for reading in full:

  Patrick Marley reports Speaker Robin Vos won’t release $850,000 contract with law firm in Wisconsin gerrymandering case:

MADISON – Assembly Speaker Robin Vos won’t make public a legal contract that will cost taxpayers $850,000, despite a state law meant to ensure government records are widely available.

Advocates for open records say the Rochester Republican is in the wrong and must release a copy of the contract with the Chicago-based law firm Bartlit Beck.

Assembly Republicans recently retained the firm to help defend the state in a long-running lawsuit over legislative district lines they drew in 2011 that have helped them win elections. Taxpayers have already spent more than $2 million in legal fees to draw and defend those maps.

“They should just release the record. I mean, it’s clearly a public record and it should be automatic,” said Orville Seymer, field operations director of the conservative Citizens for Responsible Government and a member of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council’s board.

“I think the denial of this contract is clearly illegal and clearly in bad faith,” said Bill Lueders, editor of The Progressive magazine and president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

Later in the story, Marley quotes Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty,  as saying “They have got a lot of law on their side,” Esenberg said of the stance Vos’ team has taken.”  Oh, brother – they only have ‘a lot of law’ on their side if one assumes that an entire contract with a public body, itself, constitutes an attorney-client writing.  It most certainly does not, as Esenberg surely knows.

April Barker, a Brookfield attorney and a vice president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said it is unusual for legal contracts to include information that is subject to attorney-client privilege. Lawyers are careful in how they write them because they know that such contracts must sometimes be released as part of litigation, she said.

If the contract does include any privileged information, Vos should black out those portions of the contract and release the remainder of it, she said.

“I can’t see any legitimate basis for withholding the entire document,” she said.

Jennifer Rubin observes Trump’s agenda is dependent on provable falsehoods:

Trump’s lies are not inconsequential. They are a necessary foundation for his political survival (in an investigation that has indicted more than 30 people, he still screams “Witch hunt!”) and for an agenda that is based on ignorance and deception. And because of the centrality of lying to his survival and agenda, Republicans who continue to support him increasingly must live alongside him in his alternative universe.

The Adrenaline Rush of Herding Reindeer in the North Pole:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-six.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:31 PM, for 9h 05m 45s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 27.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1879, Thomas Edison conducts a public demonstration of his incandescent bulb:

Other people had been working on the making of light bulbs in the past, but none of the earlier bulbs was ever able to work for more than a few minutes. Finally, on October 21, 1879, Edison’s light bulb burned for a continuous thirteen and a half hours. The following bulbs lasted for 40 hours and Edison and his team worked hard to light the laboratory and his home with several of the new light bulbs for Christmas. On New Year’s Eve of the same year, Christie Street became the world’s first street to be lit by incandescent light bulbs with the help of a power system designed by Edison. By the summer of 1880, Edison had perfected the incandescent bulb enough to be able to produce and sell it in large quantities.

Recommended for reading in full:

  Alexandra Alter reports New Life for Old Classics, as Their Copyrights Run Out:

This coming year marks the first time in two decades that a large body of copyrighted works will lose their protected status — a shift that will have profound consequences for publishers and literary estates, which stand to lose both money and creative control.

But it will also be a boon for readers, who will have more editions to choose from, and for writers and other artists who can create new works based on classic stories without getting hit with an intellectual property lawsuit.

“Books are going to be available in a much wider variety now, and they’re going to be cheaper,” said Imke Reimers, an assistant professor of economics at Northeastern University who has studied the impact of copyright. “Consumers and readers are definitely going to benefit from this.”

The sudden deluge of available works traces back to legislation Congress passed in 1998, which extended copyright protections by 20 years. The law reset the copyright term for works published from 1923 to 1977 — lengthening it from 75 years to 95 years after publication — essentially freezing their protected status. (The law is often referred to by skeptics as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act,” since it has kept “Steamboat Willie,” the first Disney film featuring Mickey, under copyright until 2024.)

Now that the term extension has run out, the spigot has been turned back on. Each January will bring a fresh crop of novels, plays, music and movies into the public domain. Over the next few years, the impact will be particularly dramatic, in part because the 1920s were such a fertile and experimental period for Western literature, with the rise of masters like F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.

This Abandoned Nuclear City is Trapped Under Ice, What Happens if it Thaws?

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of thirty-six.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:30 PM, for 9h 05m 01s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 37.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1922, authorities in Madison confiscate illegal alcohol: “1,200 gallons of “mash” and fifteen gallons of moonshine from the home of a suspected bootlegger.”

Recommended for reading in full:

  Linda Qui writes Deciphering the Patterns in Trump’s Falsehoods:

Fact checkers have compiled lists of all of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods since he took office (The Washington Post counts over 7,500, and The Toronto Star over 3,900), rounded up his most egregious whoppers in year-end lists and scrutinized his claims in real time with television chyrons.

Repetition and Inflation

Mr. Trump refuses to correct most of his inaccurate claims, instead asserting them over and over again. They become, by sheer force of repetition, “alternative facts” and staples of his campaign rallies and speeches.

Examples abound. He has falsely characterized the December 2017 tax cuts as the “largest” or the “biggest” in American history over 100 times (several others were larger). He has misleadingly said over 90 times that his promised wall along the southern border is being built (construction has not begun on any new section). He has falsely accused Democrats of supporting “open borders” over 60 times (Democratic lawmakers support border security, but not his border wall). And he has lobbed over 250 inaccurate attacks on the investigation into Russian election interference.

….

Shifting and Deflecting

In the face of controversy or criticism, Mr. Trump has defended initial falsehoods with additional dubious claims.

This approach is evident in his shifting statements about the payment that Michael D. Cohen, his former lawyer, made to a pornographic film actress to keep her from speaking about their alleged affair. In April, Mr. Trump falsely denied knowing about the payment.

After the F.B.I. raided Mr. Cohen’s office, Mr. Trump acknowledged on Twitter in May that Mr. Cohen received reimbursement for the payment and asserted that it had nothing to do with his presidential campaign. Mr. Cohen would later tell prosecutors that he acted at Mr. Trump’s direction and to influence the election.

….

Misleading Vagueness and Fanciful Details

Mr. Trump also regales his audience with elaborate stories. Some — like his tales of unnamed “strong” or “tough” men, miners or steelworkers crying and thanking him — may have occurred but are impossible to verify.

….

Inventing Straw Men

The usual target of this particular strain of falsehoods is the news media, which Mr. Trump suggests purposely underestimates or misinterprets him.

Mr. Trump often lauds strong job growth under his watch and says that the “fake news” would have deemed such numbers “impossible” or “ridiculous” during the 2016 campaign. Yet he neglects to mention that the number of jobs added in the 22 months after his inauguration — 4.2 million — is lower than the 4.8 million jobs added in the 22 months before he took office, undermining the premise of his retrodiction.

The Underwater Indiana Jones Preserving Our Past:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of twenty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:29 PM, for 9h 04m 21s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 47.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1879, General William “Billy” Mitchell is born.

Recommended for reading in full:

  Patrick Radden Keefe explains How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success (“With “The Apprentice,” the TV producer mythologized Trump—then a floundering D-lister—as the ultimate titan, paving his way to the Presidency”):

In 2002, Burnett rented Wollman Rink, in Central Park, for a live broadcast of the Season 4 finale of “Survivor.” The property was controlled by Donald Trump, who had obtained the lease to operate the rink in 1986, and had plastered his name on it. Before the segment started, Burnett addressed fifteen hundred spectators who had been corralled for the occasion, and noticed Trump sitting with Melania Knauss, then his girlfriend, in the front row. Burnett prides himself on his ability to “read the room”: to size up the personalities in his audience, suss out what they want, and then give it to them.

“I need to show respect to Mr. Trump,” Burnett recounted, in a 2013 speech in Vancouver. “I said, ‘Welcome, everybody, to Trump Wollman skating rink. The Trump Wollman skating rink is a fine facility, built by Mr. Donald Trump. Thank you, Mr. Trump. Because the Trump Wollman skating rink is the place we are tonight and we love being at the Trump Wollman skating rink, Mr. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.” As Burnett told the story, he had scarcely got offstage before Trump was shaking his hand, proclaiming, “You’re a genius!”

  Max Fisher reports Inside Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech (“Under fire for stirring up distrust and violence, the social network has vowed to police its users. But leaked documents raise serious questions about its approach”):

Every other Tuesday morning, several dozen Facebook employees gather over breakfast to come up with the rules, hashing out what the site’s two billion users should be allowed to say. The guidelines that emerge from these meetings are sent out to 7,500-plus moderators around the world. (After publication of this article, Facebook said it had increased that number to around 15,000.)

The closely held rules are extensive, and they make the company a far more powerful arbiter of global speech than has been publicly recognized or acknowledged by the company itself, The New York Times has found.

The Times was provided with more than 1,400 pages from the rulebooks by an employee who said he feared that the company was exercising too much power, with too little oversight — and making too many mistakes.

An examination of the files revealed numerous gaps, biases and outright errors. As Facebook employees grope for the right answers, they have allowed extremist language to flourish in some countries while censoring mainstream speech in others.

 Watch an Underwater Battle in ‘Aquaman’:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see rain, changing to snow, with a high of thirty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:28 PM, for 9h 03m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 58.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumière publicly screen 10 short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory).

Recommended for reading in full:

  Annie Karni reports Trump Iraq Visit Is Called a Political Rally:

During his surprise visit to American troops in Iraq and Germany this week, President Trump singled out red “Make America Great Again” caps in a sea of military fatigues, signed a “Trump 2020” patch and accused Representative Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats of being weak on border security.

Now the president is facing accusations that he was playing politics with the military.

“When that starts happening, it’s like the politicalization of the judicial branch,” said Mark Hertling, a retired three-star Army lieutenant general.

Visiting troops abroad is a presidential tradition in which the commander in chief puts aside politics to thank a military that represents a broad spectrum of the country. But Mr. Trump’s political comments and his encouragement of supporters in the crowd veered from those norms.

“He has to understand that there exist some audiences that should not be addressed as part of his base, because they are not,” Mr. Hertling said. “It’s a violation of protocol by the president.”

Anne Applebaum asks Has the GOP retreated into a world of make-believe? The shutdown debate will tell us:

The hard truth is that the wall has no function. Its only purpose is to serve as a talisman, as a fairy tale, as a mythical, “beautiful” piece of concrete that will be paid for by Mexico. The only difference between the wall and the now-forgotten, equally mythical “caravan” that we discussed during the election is that construction will cost real money. We, not Mexico, will pay for it in taxes and, therefore, in lost productivity. Or we will pay for it in interest on the national debt. Or we will pay for it by sacrificing spending on fighter jets or health care or roads.

It will make our nation weaker and poorer — $5 billion poorer. That’s why this isn’t a debate about border policy. It’s a debate that tells us which of our politicians cares about the real world inhabited by real Americans and which prefer to live in a fantasy world created by the president’s imagination. For the future of the country, it’s important that reality wins.

David J. Lynch reports Economic growth is slowing all around the world:

For the past month, economic data in the United States, Japan and the euro zone consistently has failed to meet analysts’ expectations, according to a Citigroup Global Markets index of economic surprises. Chinese results also began disappointing on Dec. 10 amid signs that the economy is slowing more sharply than policymakers had anticipated.

 A bit about Ben Franklin and the U.S. Postal Service:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty-seven.  Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:27 PM, for 9h 03m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 69.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1900, Carrie (Carry) Nation smashes a Witicha, Kansas bar in one of her many hatchetations:

a hatchet-wielding Carrie Nation brought her campaign against alcohol to Wichita, Kansas, where she damaged the bar at the elegant Carey Hotel. Since the Kansas Constitution prohibited the purchase of alcohol, Nation argued that destroying saloons was an acceptable means of battling the state’s thriving liquor trade.

Recommended for reading in full:

  Anna Nemtsova writes The Putin Regime is Forcing Russia’s Best and Brightest Into Exile:

Outspoken critics of the Kremlin’s policy are aware of the risks they run. Every week Russian authorities order the arrests of activists. On Sunday, police detained 12 people protesting outside the Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters against abuses of power. One of the activists was holding a banner, which said: “Putin, leave Ukraine alone, nobody wants the war.”

In 2015 a group of assassins gunned down the man at the heart of the Russian opposition, ex-vice prime minister Boris Nemtsov, right by the Kremlin wall. It was a demonstrative gesture: the criminals showed that no federal security service was there to protect the leading critic of President Putin.

Every year thousands march in Nemtsov’s memory all over the country. Earlier this year, the city of Washington D.C. renamed the street outside the Russian embassy Boris Nemtsov Plaza.

Since 2014, the year Russia took Crimea from Ukraine and annexed it, Russia’s prominent cultural figures, writers, artists, gallery owners, musicians, film-makers, and journalists have been moving out. According to the latest study by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, nearly every third young Russian wants to emigrate.

Ilya Arkhipov reports Russia Considers Constitution Changes as Putin Faces Term Limits:

The speaker of Russia’s parliament raised the possibility of changing the constitution as speculation grows that the Kremlin is considering ways to allow President Vladimir Putin to remain in power beyond the end of his current term, when current law requires him to step down.

“This is about the transfer of power,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst and former Kremlin aide. “Putin encourages this game, dropping ambiguous hints.”

The comments from Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma and a top member of the ruling party, at a scripted Kremlin meeting with Putin late Tuesday were vague and didn’t mention succession. But analysts said they showed the authorities already are preparing the ground for changes before the end of Putin’s current term in 2024.

How a Stick Insect Walks:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:27 PM, for 9h 02m 48s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 79.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1944, elements of Patton’s Third Army arrive to break the Siege of Bastogne.

Recommended for reading in full:

Annie Lowrey asks What Was Steve Mnuchin Thinking? Three Possibilities:

Imagine having a runny nose, itchy eyes, congestion, and a sore throat, and your doctor telling you that you shouldn’t worry about cancer—she consulted her colleagues and they’re certain it is not cancer, and if it were, they could fight it.

This is roughly what happened on Sunday evening, when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin put out a press release on calls he held with executives from the country’s largest banks. Mnuchin’s statement assured the public that they had not been having liquidity problems or “clearance or margin” issues—the sorts of things you would worry about if the country were on the brink of a financial crisis.

….

Option one: The Treasury secretary was speaking to an audience of one. Mnuchin is under enormous pressure from President Donald Trump, who is upset about the market sell-off and mad at the current Federal Reserve chairman, Jay Powell. The press release was perhaps an attempt to show Trump that Mnuchin was doing something, anything, to talk the markets back into stability.

….

Option two: The Treasury secretary believes that the market correction is due in part to animal spirits—animal spirits he could quiet by reminding everyone that the financial system is in fine shape. Perhaps he anticipated further declines in stock prices due to the government shutdown, and wanted to calm the markets.

….

Option three: Mnuchin has some troubling insider knowledge, and he wanted to broadcast to the markets that he is aware and in charge. Maybe some financial firms are teetering? Maybe rising interest rates and falling asset prices are straining some important market participants, and it just has not yet become evident in public reports?

(A fourth possibility is that Mnuchin has no reasonable idea what he’s doing.)

Danielle Kaeding reports UW-Extension Sees Historic Faculty Turnover:

The University of Wisconsin-Extension, UW Colleges and UW-Stevens Point saw the greatest rates of faculty turnover in the 2018 fiscal year. About a quarter of faculty left UW-Extension, followed by UW Colleges at around 11.5 percent and UW-Stevens Point at roughly 10.5 percent.

UW-Extension had 45 out of 188 faculty either retire or resign in the last fiscal year, according to UW System’s fiscal 2018 faculty turnover report. Karl Martin, dean and director of Cooperative Extension, said the higher rate of turnover was due to faculty who took advantage of buyouts.

….

UW-Extension has been dealing with a $3.6 million cut as part of the $250 million reduction in state funding to UW System under the 2015-2017 state budget. Approximately 90 percent of UW-Extension’s budget funds salaries for employees.

 Red Panda Meets Rock:

Good morning.

Christmas in Whitewater will see a morning dusting of snow on a cloudy day with a high of thirty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:26 PM, for 9h 02m 26s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1914, a series of informal ceasefires, now known collectively as the Christmas Truce, begin along the Western Front in the First World War.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Jason Horowitz reports Pope Francis, in Christmas Message, Emphasizes ‘Fraternity’:

ROME — As nationalist forces rise globally and populist leaders emphasize the primacy of their own people, Pope Francis used his annual Christmas Day address on Tuesday to voice his conviction that all humans are part of an extended holy family that has lost its sense of fraternity.

“My wish for a happy Christmas is a wish for fraternity,” Francis, 82, said during his “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and to the World”) benediction from a balcony above St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.

“Fraternity among individuals of every nation and culture. Fraternity among people with different ideas, yet capable of respecting and listening to one another. Fraternity among persons of different religions.”

He added, “Our differences, then, are not a detriment or a danger; they are a source of richness.”

The pope, who has been an ardent defender migrants in a period when speaking in their defense has largely fallen out of fashion, specifically addressed the scars of war in Africa, where “millions of persons are refugees or displaced and in need of humanitarian assistance and food security.”

 Ruby Mellen describes What Christmas traditions look like around the world:

For some Venezuelans, it’s important to get to Christmas Eve Mass in style. That’s why they strap on roller skates and barrel down the streets to church.

It’s not clear how this tradition started, but some say it’s a warm-weather alternative to sledding or ice skating. It’s so popular in the heavily Christian country that the government has closed down streets in the past to ensure families can skate safely.

….

For many people, Christmas calls to mind roasted ham, eggnog and green bean casseroles. But in Japan, the menu is often centered on one food: Kentucky Fried Chicken. More than 3 million people each year celebrate the holiday with KFC. It’s gotten so popular that families have taken to ordering from the American fast-food chain weeks in advance to avoid having to stand in line for hours come Christmas.

….

For centuries, Christmas in Norway was thought to coincide with the arrival of evil spirits and witches. Families still hide brooms during Christmas to keep witches from flying off with them.

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Possibly the most terrifying Christmas tradition is in Austria, Germany and other parts of Central Europe, where revelers dress up like a hybrid demon-goat called Krampus who scares children into being nice — and punishes the ones who refuse.

Celebrating Japanese Christmas in Portland: