Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-four.  Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:45 PM, for 9h 22m 56s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 52.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On January 14, 1863, the 23rd Wisconsin Infantry leads an expedition to South Bend, Arkansas. On this day in 1865, the 12th, 16th, 17th, 25th, and 32nd Wisconsin Infantry regiments seize Pocotaligo, South Carolina.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Tory Newmyer writes Government shutdown threatens to take real bite out of economic growth:

The longest shutdown is on track to turn a month old this coming weekend, and the economic damage is starting to pile up. 

Given that there’s no end in sight, the damage may need to get significantly worse to break the stalemate.

Economists disagree on what the shutdown has done to broader economic growth so far. The rough standard is that every week or two the government is shuttered trims a tenth of a percent from GDP growth. 

But the knock-on effects — when government contractors or others who rely on federal workers as customers get stiffed, then fail to pay employees or creditors and, potentially, see their businesses fail — are hard to measure, Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Shepherdson argued in a research note over the weekend. “Even a one-month shutdown would seriously hit growth, to say nothing of the misery caused,” he wrote. And if the situation drags on for the duration of the first quarter, “we would look for an outright decline in first quarter GDP.”

(Emphasis in original.)

Vanda Felbab-Brown surveys Trump’s bogus justifications for the border wall:

President Trump’s speech this week did not change the fact that a border wall won’t make the United States safer or more prosperous. Despite the president’s spin and pretend newly-found humanitarianism, a wall—whether a steel barrier or concrete—remains a waste of money. No matter how tall, deep, or thick a barrier, illicit flows will find a way around. Instead, the wall would undermine the rights of Native Americans and critically damage U.S. biodiversity.

A wall can’t stop smuggling. Drug smugglers have been using tunnels to get drugs into the United States since 1989. Between 1990 and 2016, 224 tunnels have been discovered underneath the U.S.–Mexico border. With no great difficulty, tunnels can be built under any wall. Drugs are also smuggled through drainage systems between border towns and by drones. People and contraband can be smuggled by boats, landing far north on U.S. coasts. Ports such as Miami and Boston are key drug-trafficking hubs.

Contraband and migrants can be hidden within the legal cargo entering through the 52 ports of entry between the United States and Mexico. Most high-value drugs are smuggled across the land border that way. Checking every car, truck, and train compartment that crosses the border is simply infeasible because of time and costs. It would paralyze legal trade and travel.

Dolphins join surfer for amazing ride off California coast:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-three.  Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:44 PM, for 9h 21m 19s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 42.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1922, WHA radio station is founded. (The station dates back to 1917, making it “the oldest station in the nation.”)

Recommended for reading in full:

 Mitch Smith reports Students in Rural America Ask, ‘What Is a University Without a History Major?’:

STEVENS POINT, Wis. — Chancellor Bernie Patterson’s message to his campus was blunt: To remain solvent and relevant, his 125-year-old university needed to reinvent itself.

Some longstanding liberal arts degrees, including those in history, French and German, would be eliminated. Career-focused programs would become a key investment. Tenured faculty members could lose their jobs. The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Dr. Patterson explained in a memo, could “no longer be all things to all people.”

….

But critics say that in trying to carve out a sustainable path for Stevens Point — and build a model for other struggling, regionally focused universities — administrators are risking the very essence of a four-year college experience.

Adam Harris worries The Liberal Arts May Not Survive the 21st Century:

Many people attribute the Wisconsin Idea, as it is known, to Charles Van Hise, the president of the University of Wisconsin from 1903 to 1918. “I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the University reaches every family of the state,” Hise said in an address in 1905. “If our beloved institution reaches this ideal it will be the first perfect state university.” His idea was written into the mission of the state’s university system, and over time that system became a model for what public higher education could be.

But the backbone of the idea almost went away in 2015, when Governor Scott Walker released his administration’s budget proposal, which included a change to the university’s mission. The Wisconsin Idea would be tweaked. The “search for truth” would be cut in favor of a charge to “meet the state’s workforce needs.”

To those outside Wisconsin, the proposed change might have seemed small. After all, what’s so bad about an educational system that propels people into a high-tech economy? But to many Wisconsinites, the change struck at the heart of the state’s identity. They argued that the idea—with its core tenets of truth, public service, and “improving the human condition”—is what makes Wisconsin, Wisconsin.

Walker ultimately scrapped his attempt to alter the Wisconsin Idea, claiming that his administration hadn’t meant to change it, that it was just a “drafting error.” And so the Wisconsin Idea was preserved—at least in an official sense. But though the words survived intact, many Wisconsinites believe that in the years since, the change Walker had proposed has taken place nevertheless. And one of the state’s institutions, the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, is the epicenter of that change.

How One Man Circumnavigated the World … By Car:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-four.  Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:43 PM, for 9h 19m 45s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 33.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1904, Henry Ford sets a land speed record:

Henry Ford personally drove the rechristened 999 with his mechanic Ed “Spider” Huff at the throttle. A new land speed record was achieved of 91.37 mph (147.05 km/h) on an ice track carved into Lake St. Clair’s Anchor Bay.  (Photo shows Ford and Barney Oldenfield in 1902 with a model 999.)

Recommended for reading in full:

Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt, and Nicholas Fandos report F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia:

WASHINGTON — In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took over the inquiry into Mr. Trump when he was appointed, days after F.B.I. officials opened it. That inquiry is part of Mr. Mueller’s broader examination of how Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with them.

….

F.B.I. officials viewed their decision to move quickly as validated when a comment the president made to visiting Russian officials in the Oval Office shortly after he fired Mr. Comey was revealed days later.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to a document summarizing the meeting. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

 Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare summarizes this news:

It was about Russia. Full stop. It was always about Russia.

See from Wittes What if the Obstruction Was the Collusion? On the New York Times’s Latest Bombshell.

 Why is Duct Tape So Strong?:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-three.  Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:42 PM, for 9h 18m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 25.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1887, noted conservationist Aldo Leopold is born.

Recommended for reading in full:

Michael Tackett and Julie Hirschfeld Davis report White House Considers Using Storm Aid Funds as a Way to Pay for the Border Wall:

President Trump traveled to the border on Thursday to warn of crime and chaos on the frontier, as White House officials considered diverting emergency aid from storm- and fire-ravaged Puerto Rico, Florida, Texas and California to build a border barrier, perhaps under an emergency declaration.

….

The administration appeared to be looking into just such a solution: using extraordinary emergency powers to get around Congress in funding the wall. Among the options, the White House has directed the Army Corps of Engineers to determine whether it can divert for wall construction $13.9 billion allocated last year after devastating hurricanes and wildfires, according to congressional and Defense Department officials with knowledge of the matter, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the possibility.

Administration officials are debating whether they could make such a move without the president declaring a national emergency, an action the White House counsel’s office has explored.

 Nomaan Merchant reports As Trump visits border, Texas landowners prepare wall fight:

How Combat Jets Refuel In Midair:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-seven.  Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:41 PM, for 9h 16m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1883, the Newhall House Fire claims dozens of lives in Milwaukee:

one of America’s worst hotel fires claimed more than seventy lives when the Newhall House burned at the northwest corner of Broadway and Michigan Streets in Milwaukee. Rescued from the fire were The P.T. Barnum Lilliputian Show performers Tom Thumb and Commodore Nutt. The fire, shown here, was discovered at 4:00 a.m. on the 10th, but sources give the date variously as 1/9/1883 or 1/10/1883. [Sources: The History of Wisconsin, Vol. 3, p.452; WLHBA]

Recommended for reading in full:

 Annie Gowen, Jeff Stein, and Sean Sullivan report Already reeling from tariff war, some farmers aren’t receiving government support checks amid shutdown:

The government check hadn’t arrived, and John Boyd was out of seeds.

So he left his family farm here in southern Virginia on Tuesday and went to the local Farm Service Agency office, a last-ditch attempt to see if any essential personnel with the U.S. Agriculture Department were still working. He was hoping they could help, even with the partial federal government shutdown stretching on with no end in sight.

The Trump administration had promised to help farmers like Boyd, those who suffered as a result of the international trade war after Chinese purchases of soybeans — once 60 percent of the market — plummeted to next to nothing. With farmers on the edge of ruin, the U.S. government offered $12 billion in support since September, checks that had become a lifeline.

But with the government shutdown moving into its third week, Boyd was left waiting for his support check to arrive. Other farmers who still must have their crop totals approved by the government to receive aid were left with no way to apply for it.

….

“This shutdown is affecting small people like myself, but if it continues, America is going to feel the impact everywhere — grocery stores, small businesses,” Boyd fumed, angry about the “fiasco” he feels Trump has created. “Right now, I need seed and diesel fuel; I do not need a damn wall. That does not help me in my farming operation.”

 Jeff Stein reports Trump farm bailout money will go to Brazilian-owned meatpacking firm, USDA says:

Helping People with Disabilities Become Working Artists:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-two.  Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:39 PM, for 9h 15m 24s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1493, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, while sailing near the Dominican Republic, sees what he believes to be three mermaids – truly manatees–and describes them as “not half as beautiful as they are painted.”

Recommended for reading in full:

 Jennifer Rubin describes Trump’s nothingburger speech:

The only thing surprising about President Trump’s address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night was how totally unnecessary and un-newsworthy it was. Trump did not declare he was reopening the government. He did not issue an “emergency” declaration. He did not even offer any new arguments for a border wall that voters say they don’t want for a crisis that doesn’t exist. Instead, he delivered a weak, unconvincing promise to sit down with Democrats. Never has he looked so helpless and small.

….

the speech was littered with falsehoods. He claimed there was a growing crisis along the U.S-Mexico border, though illegal crossings are a fraction of what they were in 2000. He bemoaned the influx of heroin, but didn’t mention that the vast majority of heroin doesn’t come over the border but through airports and other ports of entry. He claimed the wall would be paid for by NAFTA 2.0, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, but that’s bunk, and no official has adequately explained how it would work.

 Sharon LaFraniere, Kenneth P. Vogel, and Maggie Haberman report Manafort Accused of Sharing Trump Polling Data With Russian Associate:

As a top official in President Trump’s campaign, Paul Manafort shared political polling data with a business associate tied to Russian intelligence, according to a court filing unsealed on Tuesday. The document provided the clearest evidence to date that the Trump campaign may have tried to coordinate with Russians during the 2016 presidential race.

Mr. Manafort’s lawyers made the disclosure by accident, through a formatting error in a document filed to respond to charges that he had lied to prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, after agreeing to cooperate with their investigation into Russian interference in the election.

The document also revealed that during the campaign, Mr. Manafort and his Russian associate, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, discussed a plan for peace in Ukraine. Throughout the campaign and the early days of the Trump administration, Russia and its allies were pushing various plans for Ukraine in the hope of gaining relief from American-led sanctions imposed after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

Prosecutors and the news media have already documented a string of encounters between Russian operatives and Trump campaign associates dating from the early months of Mr. Trump’s bid for the presidency, including the now-famous meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan with a Russian lawyer promising damaging information on Hillary Clinton. The accidental disclosure appeared to some experts to be perhaps most damning of all.

An AI that thinks like a scientist: