This Tuesday, December 13th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Love the Coopers @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building.
Love the Coopers is a comedy account of how “four generations of the Cooper clan come together for their annual Christmas Eve celebration, [when] a series of unexpected visitors and unlikely events turn the night upside down, leading them all toward a surprising rediscovery of family bonds and the spirit of the holiday.”
The film is directed by Jessie Nelson, and stars Diane Keaton, John Goodman, Ed Helms, and Olivia Wilde. The 2015 comedy has a run time of one hour, forty-seven minutes, and carries a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.
Whitewater will have a partly cloudy Monday with a high of twenty degrees. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 03m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6:30 PM tonight.
He unconvincingly talks free trade, but Donald Trump’s ‘dumb market’ position on trade breaks with decades of Republican views: “TRUMP: That is–that’s not free market when they go out and they move and they sell back into our country. WALLACE: But that’s the free market. They made a decision and it makes — TRUMP: No. That’s — that’s the dumb market, okay? That’s the dumb market.”
Alex Nowrasteh observes that The Right Has Its Own Version of Political Correctness. It’s Just as Stifling: “But conservatives have their own, nationalist version of PC, their own set of rules regulating speech, behavior and acceptable opinions. I call it “patriotic correctness.” It’s a full-throated, un-nuanced, uncompromising defense of American nationalism, history and cherry-picked ideals. Central to its thesis is the belief that nothing in America can’t be fixed by more patriotism enforced by public shaming, boycotts and policies to cut out foreign and non-American influences. Insufficient displays of patriotism among the patriotically correct can result in exclusion from public life and ruined careers. It also restricts honest criticism of failed public policies, diverting blame for things like the war in Iraq to those Americans who didn’t support the war effort enough.”
Jackson Diehl predicts Trump’s coming war against Islam: “Donald Trump is about to lead the West into the third and darkest phase of its 15-year quest to neutralize the threat of Islamic extremism. The first was George W. Bush’s freedom initiative, which posited that political liberalization in the Middle East’s rotting autocracies would dry up terrorist recruiting. The second was the engagement policy of Barack Obama, who bet that respectful dialogue and attention to Muslim demands for justice — above all for the Palestinians — would make the West a less compelling target. Both were widely judged to be failures. Now the new president will embrace the approach that both Bush and Obama explicitly ruled out as morally wrong and practically counterproductive: civilizational conflict.”
Derek Thompson describes The Dangerous Myth That Hillary Clinton Ignored the Working Class: “Perhaps the clearest takeaway from the November election for many liberals is that Hillary Clinton lost because she ignored the working class. In the days after her shocking loss, Democrats complained that Clinton had no jobs agenda. A widely shared essay in The Nationblamed Clinton’s “neoliberalism” for abandoning the voters who swung the election. “I come from the white working class,” Bernie Sanders said on CBS This Morning, “and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to where I came from.” But here is the troubling reality for civically minded liberals looking to justify their preferred strategies: Hillary Clinton talked about the working class, middle class jobs, and the dignity of work constantly. And she still lost.”
Sunday in town will be a snowy day, with total weekend accumulations of five to eight inches, and a daytime high of twenty-four. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 04m 35s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 91% of its visible disk illuminated.
Wisconsin’s State Democrats wonder: What went wrong?: “The win may have been narrow, but Trump’s triumph completed what amounts to an eight-year Republican take down of the state Democratic Party. In 2008, Wisconsin Democrats were riding high, holding the governor’s office, the Legislature, two U.S. Senate seats and five of the state’s eight congressional seats. Since then, Democrats have been wiped out at the statehouse, losing their legislative majorities and three straight governor’s races to Scott Walker, including the 2012 recall.”
Not everyone in Washington see calls for a probe of Russian hacking the same way, because As Democrats demand probe over CIA election claim, GOP senators express doubt: “Democrats immediately embraced the conclusions of the secret CIA report, which asserted that the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails — and their release to WikiLeaks — was the work of Russian operatives with ties to the government of President Vladimir Putin, all intended to help elect Trump. Key Republicans did not automatically accept that conclusion, despite many of them believing that Russia was behind the DNC hacks and other election interference. For Republicans, giving credence to the CIA assessment probably would cause them to anger Trump even before the president-elect has been inaugurated.”
Across America, An Alt-Right Makeover Shrouds the Swastikas: “in November, as the country’s divisive presidential campaign became ever more jagged, the National Socialist Movement, a leading neo-Nazi group, did away with its swastika. In its stead, the group chose a symbol from a pre-Roman alphabet that was also adopted by the Nazis. According to Jeff Schoep, the movement’s leader, the decision to dispense with the swastika was “an attempt to become more integrated and more mainstream.” Let us pause. Not even two years ago, white supremacists like Mr. Schoep would rant from the fringe of the fringe, their attention-desperate events rarely worth mention. Today, though, the Schoeps of America are undergoing a rebranding, as part of the so-called alt-right: a grab bag of far-right groups generally united by the belief that white identity has become endangered in what they deride as this era of dangerous diversity and political correctness.”
Lauren Duca observes that Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America: “To gas light is to psychologically manipulate a person to the point where they question their own sanity, and that’s precisely what Trump is doing to this country. He gained traction in the election by swearing off the lies of politicians, while constantly contradicting himself, often without bothering to conceal the conflicts within his own sound bites. He lied to us over and over again, then took all accusations of his falsehoods and spun them into evidence of bias. At the hands of Trump, facts have become interchangeable with opinions, blinding us into arguing amongst ourselves, as our very reality is called into question. There is a long list of receipts when it comes to Trump’s lies. With the help of PolitiFact, clear-cut examples of deception include Trump saying that he watched thousands of people cheering on 9/11 in Jersey City (police say there’s no evidence of this), that the Mexican government forces immigrants into the U.S. (no evidence), that there are “30 or 34 million” immigrants in this country (there are 10 or 11 million), that he never supported the Iraq War (he told Howard Stern he did), that the unemployment rate is as high as “42 percent” (the highest reported rate is 16.4 percent), that the U.S. is the highest taxed country in the world (not true based on any metric of consideration), that crime is on the rise (it’s falling, and has been for decades), and too many other things to list here because the whole tactic is to clog the drain with an indecipherable mass of toxic waste. The gas lighting part comes in when the fictions are disputed by the media, and Trump doubles down on his lies, before painting himself as a victim of unfair coverage, sometimes even threatening to revoke access.”
Saturday in this small city will be sunny in the morning, with snowfall beginning in the afternoon, and a high of twenty-one. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 05m 16s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller report that a Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House: “The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter. Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances. “It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”
Matthew DeFour writes that Paul Ryan says he and Donald Trump don’t talk about areas of disagreement: “U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Friday he and President-elect Donald Trump have been so focused on discussing the policy agenda items they agree on, they haven’t discussed areas of disagreement. “All our conversations revolve around getting the big things done,” Ryan said during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “We don’t really talk about what we disagree on.”
Norman Ohler has a new book [to be published in America in April] that contends the leaders of the Third Reich were Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany: “Mr. Ohler fell back on his interest in sleuthing during the five years it took to research and write “Blitzed.” Through interviews and documents that hadn’t been carefully studied before, he unearthed new details about how soldiers of the Wehrmacht were regularly supplied with methamphetamine of a quality that would give Walter White, of “Breaking Bad,” pangs of envy. Millions of doses, packaged as pills, were gobbled up in battles throughout the war, part of an officially sanctioned factory-to-front campaign against fatigue. As surely as hangover follows high, this pharmacological stratagem worked for a while — it was crucial to the turbocharged 1940 invasion and defeat of France — and then did not, most notably when the Nazis were mired in the Soviet Union. But the most vivid portrait of abuse and withdrawal in “Blitzed” is that of Hitler, who for years was regularly injected by his personal physician with powerful opiates, like Eukodal, a brand of oxycodone once praised by William S. Burroughs as “truly awful.” For a few undoubtedly euphoric months, Hitler was also getting swabs of high-grade cocaine, a sedation and stimulation combo that Mr. Ohler likens to a “classic speedball.”
Harriet Sherwodd writes that Pope Francis compares fake news consumption to eating faeces: “Pope Francis has lambasted media organisations that focus on scandals and smears and promote fake news as a means of discrediting people in public life. Spreading disinformation was “probably the greatest damage that the media can do”, the pontiff told the Belgian Catholic weekly Tertio. It is a sin to defame people, he added. Using striking terminology, Francis said journalists and the media must avoid falling into “coprophilia” – an abnormal interest in excrement. Those reading or watching such stories risked behaving like coprophagics, people who eat faeces, he added. The pope excused himself for using terminology that some might find repellent. “I think the media have to be very clear, very transparent, and not fall into – no offence intended – the sickness of coprophilia, that is, always wanting to cover scandals, covering nasty things, even if they are true,” he said. “And since people have a tendency towards the sickness of coprophagia, a lot of damage can be done.”
As fermented products become more common as health fads, questions about regulation are being raised. For one, kombucha is the product of fermenting tea with a culture of live yeast and bacteria. As a result, the beverage has a variable alcohol content—and some of its producers are being targeted by the federal regulators. In this episode of If Our Bodies Could Talk, senior editor James Hamblin meets with U.S. Representative Jared Polis to consider the role of government in the era of living cultures and fermented foods.
(On identity politics – it’s comfortable for a few, but only in the way that it’s comfortable for a pig to sit in the mud: the animal’s momentary ease won’t forestall a trip to the butcher shop.)
There’s the possibility of restructuring committees and city functions to assure a streamlined – and unified – direction, but the effort presents some legitimate policy questions, and more relevantly would require additional work from some who just don’t want to expend that effort. (Although I share policy doubts about the idea, if I can guess the motivation correctly – and it’s just a guess – I would say that the idea seems born of a desire to motivate the city in a positive direction. One can be opposed to an idea yet sympathetic to a perceived, underlying goal.)
Unfortunately, an alternative to streamlining is even more difficult – far more difficult – to do: the city could undertake a comprehensive review of its entire political culture, setting aside much of the last generation’s approach, in citywide meetings and supporting referendums. (Think of something like a broad-based convention and the resolutions that might come from it.)
Because this approach would require setting aside most of what has been tried ineffectually, and stubborn pride abhors a new course, the likely acceptance of this approach is about the same as convincing wolves to eat broccoli. (They might be persuaded to try some, but they’d be more likely to eat a person’s hand or arm during the effort.)
The scene: Whitewater’s local government advanced a resolution on Citizens United, but the community lacks the unity to advance a series of broad resolutions or votes on reducing local government’s size and thirst for revenue, ending government-goosed business deals, paring back even further zoning restrictions that are still too burdensome, a genuine community relations to replace adversarial enforcement, ending the transparently deceptive practice of publishing cherry-picked data and dodgy studies (a problem for the city, school district, and local campus), rather than honestly presenting the city to all the state not as a paradise but as a work-in-progress that could use every last talented newcomer we could find.
This would be a big project, but the city’s in a spot where, to avoid an extended period of relative decline, Whitewater needs big to avert bad. The long-term future of this city will yet prove bright, but why delay for many years that better day, for the sake of a few officials’ selfish pride?
Sometimes, a state-cajoled, anti-market confidence game unravels quickly, revealing the fraud that it is. Trump’s Carrier deal is one of those occasions.
Three days ago, the news was that Trump’s Carrier deal was worth hundreds fewer jobs than he’d proudly boasted. (See, Trump’s Carrier Deal: Fewer Saved Jobs With Each Passing Day: ““We found out today that more jobs are leaving than what we originally thought,” Bray said. “It seemed like since Thursday, it was 1,100 then it was maybe 900 and then now we’re at 700. So I’m hoping it doesn’t go any lower than that.”)
Now, only half a week later, one learns that of this smaller number of saved jobs, some will be lost through automation:
But that has a big down side for some of the workers in Indianapolis.
Most of that money will be invested in automation said Greg Hayes, CEO of United Technologies, Carrier’s corporate parent. And that automation will replace some of the jobs that were just saved.
“We’re going to…automate to drive the cost down so that we can continue to be competitive,” he said on an interview on CNBC earlier this week. “Is it as cheap as moving to Mexico with lower cost labor? No. But we will make that plant competitive just because we’ll make the capital investments there. But what that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs.”
For broad economic policy, there’s the prosperity that comes from free markets in capital, labor, and goods, and then there’s…everything else (including targeted breaks underlying exaggerated, misrepresented results).
My mom works at a hospital & they have this service dog go around to cheer up patients. Here he is earlier today with the Christmas spirit?? pic.twitter.com/5J6f9tlOp4
Imagine a choice between living in a universally free society where one was of the racial or ethnic minority, or living as a member of the racial or ethnic majority in a universally oppressive society. Which society should one choose?
A man or woman, committed first to liberty, would choose to live in a free society, regardless of race or ethnicity. A man or woman, committed first to majoritarian identity, would choose to live in an oppressive society, for the sake of identification with the racial or ethnic majority.
It should be clear – but perhaps it’s not commonly so – that a policy of blut und boden does not bring prosperity.
A recent study finds that telling voters for whom membership in an ethnic or racial majority is important that their numbers were in decline pushed them to support an authoritarian, anti-immigrant candidate. (As is turns out, party identification didn’t change this: “Reminders of the changing racial demographics had comparable effects for Democrats and Republicans.”)
As a local equivalent of this effect, in a place like Whitewater, I’d guess that reminding some non-student residents that college students are a majority of this small town’s population rankles them similarly. Some of these non-student residents are willing to suggest that those who are different might think about moving away, or hiding away on campus, but that won’t be happening. (If an identity politics matters so much, those who are disappointed with their declining numbers may decamp at their earliest convenience.)
For the rest of us, who would choose philosophy over an identity politics, who would choose liberty over race or ethnicity, there will be neither going nor yielding, in America, Wisconsin, or Whitewater.
The work week ends with partly cloudy skies and a high of twenty-two. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset is 4:20 PM, for 9h 06m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 73% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1907, Christmas Seals first went on sale in America to raise money for the fight against tuberculosis. On this day in 1844, Milwaukee’s first daily paper, The Daily Sentinel, begins publication.
Worth reading in full —
Sarah Kaplan writes of John Glenn and the courage of the Mercury Seven: “”Some fine early morning before another summer has come, one man chosen from the calmly intent seven . . . will embark on the greatest adventure man has ever dared to take. Dressed in an all-covering suit to protect him from explosive changes in pressure, strapped into a form-fitting couch to cushion him against the crushing forces of acceleration, surrounded in his tiny chamber by all manner of instruments designed to bring him safely home, he will catapult upward at the head of a rocket for more than 100 miles and then plunge down into the Atlantic Ocean. If he survives, he will be come the heroic symbol of a historic triumph; he will be the first American, perhaps the first man, to be rocketed into the dark stillness of space. If he does not survive, one of his six remaining comrades will go next.” This is how, in September 1959, Life Magazine introduced the Mercury Seven — NASA’s first astronauts. At that point, no person had even attempted to reach space.”
It’s not The Onion, but respected Hollywood trade sheet Variety, that reports Donald Trump to Remain Executive Producer on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’: “Donald Trump will remain an exec producer on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” which is returning Jan. 2 after a two-year hiatus with new host Arnold Schwarzenegger. MGM confirmed to Variety that Trump has retained his EP credit on the series. The president-elect’s status on the 15th season of the reality series that made him a household name has been a question since Trump launched his presidential campaign in June 2015. In the credit sequence, Trump’s name will air after that of “Apprentice” creator Mark Burnett and before Schwarzenegger, who is also an exec producer of the new incarnation along with Page Feldman and Eric Van Wagenen. The larger issue for MGM, NBC, and the White House is the payment that Trump will receive for the series. It’s unclear what his per-episode fee is, but it is likely to be in the low five-figures, at minimum. NBC has ordered eight episodes of “The New Celebrity Apprentice.” Trump’s fees will be paid through MGM, the production entity on the show, not NBC. MGM declined to comment on the financial terms of Trump’s deal. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed that Trump has maintained a financial interest in “Apprentice.””
At RadioFreeEurope and RadioLiberty, Brian Whitmore speaks of Putin’s Revenge:
Anna Fifield and Yoonjung Seo report that South Korea’s parliament votes to impeach president over corruption scandal: “South Korea’s National Assembly voted by a huge margin Friday to impeach President Park Geun-hye over her role in a corruption and influence-peddling scandal, forcing her to immediately hand over the running of the country to a caretaker prime minister. But despite the clear condemnation from both politicians and the general public, Park signaled that she would remain defiant even while being stripped of power and would wait with a “calm and clear mind” while the conservative-leaning Constitutional Court decides whether to uphold the legislature’s impeachment motion. That means that South Korea could be in for a long period of paralysis. The court now has six months to rule, creating a power vacuum in South Korea at the same time the United States is going through its own presidential transition.”
The Empire State Building’s more like a city all its own —
