Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with morning flurries and a high of thirty-five.  Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 04m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 24.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets at 8 AM, the CDA Board at 5:30 PM, and there is a scheduled Community Meeting for the Lakes Drawdown Project at 6 PM.

On this day in 1913, the Mona Lisa is recovered after it was stolen over two years earlier:

Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia had stolen the Mona Lisa by entering the building during regular hours, hiding in a broom closet, and walking out with it hidden under his coat after the museum had closed.

Recommended for reading in full:

  Lisa Rein and Josh Dawsey report Trump loyalist at VA forced out after collecting pay but doing little work:

Peter O’Rourke’s departure marks an unceremonious fall for a Trump loyalist once seen as a rising star at VA, where he nonetheless had a rocky tenure, first leading a high-profile office handling whistleblower complaints, next as chief of staff and then, for two months, as the agency’s acting secretary.

Since August he has held the nebulous role of senior adviser, with an uncertain portfolio and a senior executive salary as high as $161,000. VA Secretary Robert Wilkie asked for his resignation Friday, O’Rourke said.

….

Asked why he was getting paid not to work, O’Rourke said he was “available for anything the secretary asked me to do” and acknowledged that “there were times I didn’t have a lot to do.”

  Jennifer Rubin writes For Trump, it’s all downhill from here:

The intensity of his [Trump’s] disapproval (44 strongly disapprove, while only 30 percent strongly approve) remains a consistent problem for him and those who will appear on the ballot with him in 2020.

Republicans who have thrown their lot in with Trump, by smearing the FBI and attacking Mueller, may please the hardcore base but, overall, they are on the wrong side of public opinion — even before the public knows more than a fraction of what Mueller does.

  LZ Granderson observes Michigan, Wisconsin GOP power grabs are like ‘Breaking Bad’:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-two.  Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 04m 54s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM, and the Finance Committee at 7 PM.

On this day in 1833, Wisconsin’s first newspaper, the Green Bay Intelligencer, begins publication.

Recommended for reading in full:

  Byron York contends that there’s been a “[s]udden shift in get-Trump talk; now it’s campaign finance, not Russia,” but Natasha Bertrand sets him straight:

nope, it’s still Russia https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/former-trump-aide-michael-cohen-admits-lying-congress/577003/…

(Trump has many grievous faults, not merely one.)

  Pete Madden, Katherine Faulders, and Matthew Mosk report Maria Butina, accused Russian agent, reaches plea deal with prosecutors that includes cooperation:

  Philip Bump observes It’s not just the number of Trump-Russia contacts. It’s the timing:

There are two facets of the Russia-Trumpworld points of contact that are interesting. The first is the volume: More than a dozen people who worked with Trump’s campaign or who were close to him personally had meetings, emails or calls with Russians over the year-long span from the end of 2015 to the end of 2016. But the timing is also interesting. The bulk of those contacts happened in the spring and summer of 2016, a period when it looked increasingly like Trump would be the Republican nominee for president.

  Franklin Foer reports The Mysterious Return of Manafort’s ‘Russian Brain’:

In the Collected Works of Robert Mueller, there are Russian names that come and go. But there’s only one of these figures who provides a recurring presence in this oeuvre. He is a diminutive man, whom Mueller has called an “asset” of Russian intelligence. His presence is either the sort of distracting irrelevance that Alfred Hitchcock described as a MacGuffin, or he is the shadowy character who steps into the frame to foreshadow an ominous return.

Konstantin Kilimnik trained in Russian military intelligence as a linguist; he spent decades by Paul Manafort’s side, serving as a translator and then rising through the ranks of his organization. Eventually, Manafort would come to describe Kilimnik—also known as K.K. or Kostya—as “My Russian Brain.” He would travel with Manafort to Moscow to meet with their client, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. When Kostya worked with Americans, they suspected him as some sort of spook. (Last June, I wrote this profile of him.)

  Why is Snow White Given Snowflakes are Clear?:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty-three.  Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 05m 38s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1864, the 3rd Wisconsin Infantry reaches Savannah, Georgia:

The Wisconsin 3rd Infantry arrived at the front lines for the Battle of Savannah, Georgia. After marching from Atlanta under General William T. Sherman, Wisconsin troops assembled outside the coastal city of Savannah and laid siege to it.

Recommended for reading in full:

  Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger, and Carol D. Leonnig report Russians interacted with at least 14 Trump associates during the campaign and transition:

The Russian ambassador. A deputy prime minister. A pop star, a weightlifter, a lawyer, a Soviet army veteran with alleged intelligence ties.

Again and again and again, over the course of Donald Trump’s 18-month campaign for the presidency, Russian citizens made contact with his closest family members and friends, as well as figures on the periphery of his orbit.

Some offered to help his campaign and his real estate business. Some offered dirt on his Democratic opponent. Repeatedly, Russian nationals suggested Trump should hold a peacemaking sit-down with Vladi­mir Putin — and offered to broker such a summit.

In all, Russians interacted with at least 14 Trump associates during the campaign and presidential transition, public records and interviews show.

  Andrew Cohen of the Marshall Project summarizes the latest on The unindicted co-conspirator:

Federal prosecutors allege that President Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen conspired to commit campaign finance crimes involving hush money to women. THE NEW YORK TIMES They recommend “a substantial term of imprisonment” for Cohen, who pleaded guilty this summer to tax evasion, false statements, and other crimes. CNN And they say his separate cooperation with Mueller’s Russia investigation should not warrant “extraordinary leniency” given his “pattern of deception that permeated his professional life.” USA TODAY Mueller’s own sentencing memo, meanwhile, chronicles broader collusion and conspiracy evidence extending into Trump’s presidency. POLITICO Finally: A running tally of charges from Mueller’s investigation. NPR

  Tony Newmyer reports U.S.-China trade standoff means no reprieve for rattled investors:

“As far as I’m concerned it’s a hard deadline,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer said in a rare interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Offered a chance to reassure markets, Lighthizer (whose name has also surfaced in speculation about who will replace outgoing White House chief of staff John Kelly) instead gave some cold comfort. He said, in essence, the United States will only agree to forgo more tariffs if the Chinese agree to major structural changes in their economic approach. “It is a very important matter, and there’s a long history of having things not work out.”

Meet The Woman Teaching Tokyo’s Mascots:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of thirty.  Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 06m 26s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1844, Milwaukee’s first daily newspaper, the Daily Sentinel, begins publication.  

Recommended for reading in full:

  Mitch Smith, John Eligon, and Monica Davey report Behind the Scenes in Wisconsin: A Republican Power Play, Months in the Making:

Last spring, after Wisconsin Democrats seized a state legislative seat long held by Republicans and sent a liberal justice to the State Supreme Court, Republicans began to worry. Gov. Scott Walker, preparing to seek a third term, warned his fellow Republicans on Twitter of the “risk of a blue wave” and publicly urged them not to be complacent with fall elections ahead.

During the same period, an aggressive and methodical alternate strategy was emerging behind the scenes. Over the summer, Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, sought a detailed analysis from the state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau of the powers of the governor compared with those of the State Legislature.

By fall, with polls showing an extremely tight governor’s race, Scott L. Fitzgerald, the State Senate majority leader, said he and Mr. Vos had conferred about how best to “put on solid ground” some of the policies the Republicans had advanced during eight years of full control of state government.

“We were kicking it around, nervous about the way the elections were going to go,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in an interview.

When Wisconsin Republicans this week pushed through a sweeping set of bills that diminish the power of the newly elected Democratic governor and attorney general while expanding that of the Republican-held Legislature, Democrats responded with outrage, calling it a swift and sudden power grab by Republicans.

[Read: A hardball maneuver by Republicans in Wisconsin]

But the plans had actually been months in the making, part of what has become a playbook for holding onto power in places where Republicans have had state control to themselves and now face sharing it. North Carolina lawmakers took similar steps when a Democratic governor was elected in 2016, and in Michigan, where Democrats in the midterms won the offices of governor, attorney general and secretary of state, Republican lawmakers were this month weighing new limits to their opponents’ power.

….

“It speaks to a new brand of politics where you’re seeing a rejection of the social contract that exists with the public where we respect the outcomes of elections,” said Gordon Hintz, the Democratic minority leader in the Assembly. “It’s not really about policy. It’s about undermining our democracy.”

(This maneuver was in character for the WISGOP.  See Once a Gerrymanderer…)

The Sounds of Mars: NASA’s InSight Senses Martian Wind:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of twenty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 07m 16s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, the United States declares war on Japan:

JOINT RESOLUTION Declaring that a state of war exists between the Imperial Government of Japan and the Government and the people of the United States and making provisions to prosecute the same.

Whereas the Imperial Government of Japan has committed unprovoked acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America:

Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial Government of Japan which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial Government of Japan; and, to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.[8]

Recommended for reading in full:

  Heather Long observes Trump’s two favorite economic metrics — the stock market and the trade deficit — are failing him:

President Trump has made clear that he wants the stock market to rise and the trade deficit to fall, and that his policies will make that happen. But this year, he has been getting the opposite result: The trade deficit is soaring while the market is careening down.

The U.S. trade deficit is at its highest level in a decade, the Commerce Department reported Thursday, and the trade deficit with China is at a record high. Trump’s trade war appears to be making the trade deficit worse as the United States continues to import a lot of foreign goods but has struggled to sell products such as soybeans abroad.

….

“The stock market couldn’t be any more disapproving of the president and his economics team,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank, wrote in an email. “This administration has to tone down its war with the world, from European automakers to China importers, or this stock market will completely collapse and make a 2019 recession forecast a reality.”

(Trump’s views, of course, are economically ignorant, and that’s why he’s failing – and harming – America’s workers & investors.  See  Justin Amash responds to Trump in tweets from 12.4 and 12.5.)

Christopher Kuhagen reports A bobcat was spotted in a Whitefish Bay backyard, DNR confirms: 

Bobcats typically are nocturnal, but if they are in a habitat they feel safe they may roam in the nearby area. The animals tend to weigh between 20 and 40 pounds and their diet consists of small game.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of twenty-three.  Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 08m 12s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service attacks the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor.

Recommended for reading in full:

  Tory Newmyer writes Trump wants to narrow the trade deficit. It just reached a ten-year high:

President Trump’s favored gauge for the health of U.S. trade is veering hard in the wrong direction.

The country’s trade deficit reached a 10-year high in October, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The U.S. bilateral trade deficit with China also reached a monthly record, rising 7.1 percent to $43.1 billion.

Trump has been calling out that gap since the campaign trail as a sign that China is taking advantage of the United States. Never mind that a trade deficit doesn’t mean, as Trump argues, that the United States is losing money to China — rather, simply, that Americans are buying more from the Chinese than the Chinese are buying from Americans.

  Annie Lowrey asks Does Trump Even Understand How Tariffs Work?:

Fundamentally, Trump seems to misunderstand how tariffs work, insisting that they act as a tax on foreign companies and translate into more American wealth. “I am a Tariff Man,” he wrote on Twitter. “When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power. We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs.” But the tariffs are acting, as one would expect them to act, as a tax on American consumers, raising domestic prices and slowing the domestic economy. (They’re slowing the global economy, too.)

Despite the back-and-forth, it seems likely that at some point Trump will get some trade concessions from the Chinese and both sides will lift their tariffs. At that point, Trump will undoubtedly declare a “win.” But he won’t have managed to change the Chinese economy, revitalize the heartland, or reduce the United States’ trade deficit—which has grown to a record gap with China since he took office.

  Justin Amash responds to Trump in tweets from 12.4 and 12.5:

I am a Liberty Man. Trade is not raid. Voluntary exchanges make Americans wealthier. @POTUS’s tariffs, which create barriers to exchange, are paid for by Americans. Taxing Americans to steer our decisions is social engineering that reduces our economic power and makes us poorer.

….

International trade is like other trade in that it takes place between people or businesses, not countries. Believing that X country is buying/selling Y product from/to the United States likely leads to more mistakes in economic analysis than any other misconception about trade.

Yelping pack brings presence of coyotes alive in Milwaukee area: