Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with snow this evening and a high of nine.  Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 5:01 PM, for 9h 48m 28s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 53.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1888, the National Geographic Society is incorporated.

Recommended for reading in full:

 The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign writes Walker Far Outspent Evers in Election: 

Republican candidates and the special interest groups that supported them spent an estimated $57.7 million, which was about 63 percent higher than the more than $35.3 million spent by Democratic candidates and groups. Minor party candidates spent about $32,550.

The 20 major and minor party candidates for governor, and the two major party lieutenant governor candidates who won their primaries, spent more than $52.4 million. Former GOP Gov. Scott Walker and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, led candidate spending with nearly $36.2 million. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, spent a combined $10.8 million.

Independent expenditures and phony issue ad groups often funded by wealthy, secret contributors that represent ideological, business, and labor interests, spent $40.6 million (see table below). Groups that supported Walker and Kleefisch spent about $21.5 million and groups that supported Evers and Barnes doled out more than $18.6 million. Three groups also spent about $427,000 to support unsuccessful primary candidate Mahlon Mitchell.

All told, nearly $58 million or 62 percent of the $93 million spent on the governor’s race supported the Walker-Kleefisch ticket.

(Eight years as the incumbent governor and still – with millions more in campaign contributions, Walker lost. Craig Gilbert is right: “In short, the man who dominated Wisconsin politics for nearly a decade was never terrifically popular.” )

 James Rowen writes Gerrymandering Costs Taxpayers Millions:

The Wisconsin GOP’s principles include “sound money management should be our goal,” but its legislative leadership is spending money on itself like it won the lottery.

Self-anointed shadow Wisconsin Governor and ‘man slapped silly by the same Federal judge twice’ Robin Vos just revealed under pressure the $840,000 contract he approved for a Chicago law firm to fight for a partisan gerrymandering plan already ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court.

Recall that Legislative Republicans had already spent more than $2 million in state funds to write their plan in secret, as I’ve previously written:

It has become known that redistricting work took place, though publicly-funded, in private attorneys’ offices near the State Capitol into which GOP legislative leaders’ staffers were moved, and Republican legislators who were invited to those offices to review maps and boundaries proposed for their districts had to sign agreements requiring them to keep quiet about what they’d seen seen.

The Journal Sentinel now computes all the costs of redistricting litigation to state taxpayers at $3.5 million, which must be why the GOP’s principles said sound money management “should” be the goal, not ‘must be.’

  This Mountain Has Been Home to Monks for 12 Centuries:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of nine.  Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 5:00 PM, for 9h 46m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 64.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1925, a fire destroys the Whitewater Hospital (“monetary losses were estimated at $20,000, but no deaths were reported.”).

Recommended for reading in full:

Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey, and Seung Min Kim report ‘Prisoner of his own impulse’: Inside Trump’s cave to end shutdown without wall:

His poll numbers were plummeting. His FBI director was decrying the dysfunction. The nation’s air travel was in chaos. Federal workers were lining up at food banks. Economic growth was at risk of flatlining, and even some Republican senators were in open revolt.

So on Friday, the 35th day of a government shutdown that he said he was proud to instigate, President Trump finally folded. After vowing for weeks that he would keep the government closed unless he secured billions in funding for his promised border wall, Trump agreed to reopen it.

He got $0 instead.

Trump’s capitulation to Democrats marked a humiliating low point in a polarizing presidency and sparked an immediate backlash among some conservative allies, who cast him as a wimp.

….

“He was the prisoner of his own impulse and it turned into a catastrophe for him,” said David Axelrod, who was a White House adviser to President Barack Obama. “The House of Representatives has power and authority — and now a speaker who knows how to use it — so that has to become part of his calculation or he’ll get embarrassed again.”

(If Axelrod should be right – and it seems so – then a disordered man like Trump, in the grip of his impulses, will get embarrassed again. Such a man will learn nothing from past mistakes.)

Kelly Meyerhofer reports $840,000 redistricting contract released after Robin Vos initially refused to provide it:

A law firm hired by Republican state lawmakers to help defend them in a redistricting lawsuit can collect up to an $840,000 fee, but taxpayers could end up paying even more, according to a newly released contract.

The lawsuit is part of an ongoing court battle over Wisconsin’s legislative district maps passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2011. Before the latest contract, taxpayers had already paid some $2.5 million to outside law firms to draft and defend the maps in court.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, initially refused to release the latest contract to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in late December, citing an attorney-client privilege exemption in the state’s open records law.

Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council president Bill Lueders said at the time that he believed the denial of the newspaper’s request was illegal.

(Vos relented and released this contract, but claims a right to withhold other similar contracts in the future.)

Here’s the contract:

  Carmen Sandiego: The True Story:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see occasional afternoon snow showers and a high of nine.  Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:59 PM, for 9h 44m 03s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1932, Janesville continues its prohibition on Sunday dancing (“the Janesville council deadlocked, 3-3, on an ordinance that would have permitted public dancing on Sundays”).

Recommended for reading in full:

Mark Mazzetti, Eileen Sullivan, and Maggie Haberman report Roger Stone, Adviser to Trump, Is Indicted in Mueller Investigation:

Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump, was charged as part of the special counsel investigation over his communications with WikiLeaks, the organization behind the release of thousands of stolen Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign, in an indictment unsealed Friday.

Mr. Stone was charged with seven counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering, according to the special counsel’s office.

F.B.I. agents arrested Mr. Stone before dawn on Friday at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and he was expected to appear in a federal courthouse there later in the morning. F.B.I. agents were also seen carting hard drives and other evidence from Mr. Stone’s apartment in Harlem.

The indictment is the first in months by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination with Trump campaign associates. Citing details in emails and other forms of communications, the indictment suggests Mr. Trump’s campaign knew about additional stolen emails before they were released and asked Mr. Stone to find out about them.

Here’s the Stone Indictment:

Laura Strickler, Ken Dilanian, and Peter Alexander report Officials rejected Jared Kushner for top secret security clearance, but were overruled:

Jared Kushner’s application for a top secret clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence on him — but their supervisor overruled the recommendation and approved the clearance, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The official, Carl Kline, is a former Pentagon employee who was installed as director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President in May 2017. Kushner’s was one of at least 30 cases in which Kline overruled career security experts and approved a top secret clearance for incoming Trump officials despite unfavorable information, the two sources said. They said the number of rejections that were overruled was unprecedented — it had happened only once in the three years preceding Kline’s arrival.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said the Trump White House attracted many people with untraditional backgrounds who had complicated financial and personal histories, some of which raised red flags.

Kushner’s FBI background check identified questions about his family’s business, his foreign contacts, his foreign travel and meetings he had during the campaign, the sources said, declining to be more specific.

  How NASA Paints Its Spacecraft:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of twenty-three.  Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:58 PM, for 9h 41m 54s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 84.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, the 23rd Wisconsin Infantry continues its reconnaissance mission on the Matagorda Peninsula, Texas.

Recommended for reading in full:

Seung Min Kim and Felicia Sonmez report Pelosi tells Trump: No State of the Union address in the House until government is reopened:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday rescinded her invitation to President Trump to deliver the State of the Union in the House next week — denying him a national platform for the annual speech in an extraordinary standoff between the two most powerful figures in the nation.

Late Wednesday, the president signaled a retreat from the standoff, announcing on Twitter that he will wait till the shutdown is over to deliver the address to Congress.

(David Frum, in 2017, was right about Trump: “Regular reminder that Donald Trump’s core competency is not dealmaking with powerful counter-parties. It is duping gullible victims.”  Trump thought that he could force his way into a State of the Union address – Pelosi properly asserted an independent legislative authority to bring the House into session.)

 George Will asks Why do people such as Lindsey Graham come to Congress?:

Back in the day, small rural airports had textile windsocks, simple and empty things that indicated which way the wind was blowing. The ubiquitous Sen. Lindsey O. Graham has become a political windsock, and as such, he — more than the sturdy, substantial elephant — is emblematic of his party today.

When in 1994, Graham, a South Carolina Republican, first ran for Congress, he promised to be “one less vote for an agenda that makes you want to throw up.” A quarter-century later, Graham himself is a gastrointestinal challenge.

….

Seven times, Graham has taken the oath of congressional office, “solemnly” swearing to “support and defend the Constitution” and to “bear true faith and allegiance” to it, “without any mental reservation.” Graham, who is just 1 percent of one-half of one of the three branches of one of the nation’s many governments, is, however, significant as a symptom. When the Trump presidency is just a fragrant memory, the political landscape will still be cluttered with some of this president’s simple and empty epigones, the make-believe legislators who did not loudly and articulately recoil from the mere suggestion of using a declared emergency to set aside the separation of powers.

Tom Jones reports Gannett lays off journalists across the country.  The Journal Sentinel bought out six reporters in December; there are likely to be more departures in January. (Of those departures, that of Karen Herzog – a punch-pulling reporter if ever there were one – is no loss to local journalism.)

  How Ants Sniff Out Food:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see morning snowfall with a high of nineteen.  Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:56 PM, for 9h 39m 48s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board is scheduled to meet at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1957, Wham-O acquires the rights to a flying disc later named the Frisbee.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Rebecca Morin reports Poll: Shutdown, Russia drive Trump to all-time high disapproval:

Nearly 6-in-10 voters — 57 percent — disapprove of Trump’s job performance, compared to the 40 percent that approve. In addition, 54 percent of voters blame Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill for the government shutdown. Only 35 percent blame congressional Democrats.

….

According to the poll, 57 percent believe it’s likely that Russia “has compromising information“ on Trump, compared to 31 percent who don’t think it’s likely.

 Griff Witte, Carol Morello, Shibani Mahtani, and Anthony Faiola report Around the globe, Trump’s style is inspiring imitators and unleashing dark impulses:

BUDAPEST — They make a show of putting their own countries first and breezily dismiss concerns about international law or human rights. They seek to bend the rules to their will, excoriating “the deep state” for getting in their way. And when they are challenged by the press or other critics, they have a two-word rejoinder: fake news.

In countries around the globe — from Brazil to the Philippines, and in many less prominent ­places in between — a generation of leaders who resemble President Trump in both style and substance is rising, consolidating power and growing bolder in its willingness to flout democratic principles and norms.

The strongman style of leadership is not new, of course, and it is not always obvious who is inspiring whom. Trump himself climbed to power amid a surge of nativist and nationalist politics worldwide, and his chief campaign guru, Stephen K. Bannon, borrowed themes and phrases from European populists to rally the make-America-great-again faithful.

Abigail Tracy writes “The President Has Been Acting on Russia’s Behalf”: U.S. Officials Are Shocked By Trump’s Asset-Like Behavior:

The only detail the interpreter reportedly shared with the officials—including Fiona Hill, the senior Russia adviser at the National Security Council, and John Heffern, then the acting assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at State—was that Trump told Putin, “I believe you,” when the Russian president denied interfering in the 2016 presidential election. The Hamburg meeting is just one of five off-record meetings between the two leaders that Democrats are eager to probe. Another is Helsinki, where Trump famously dismissed the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the election and affirmed, again, that he saw no reason to believe Putin wasn’t telling him the truth. Several U.S. officials told the Post that they were never able to get a substantive readout of the two leaders’ private conversation.

  Transparent bones reveal hidden blood vessels: