Good morning.

Here in Whitewater we’ll have a mostly sunny day with a high of thirteen. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:35 PM, for 9h 09m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 35.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1896, Utah becomes America’s forty-fifth state. On this day in 1923, Milton College’s president, A.E. Whitford, bans dancing by students in off-campus, semi-public places such as confectionery stores.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Efforts to change ethics rules for the House of Representatives as the House Fires at Ethics and Shoots Self: “Even before the new Congress was sworn in on Tuesday, House Republicans made it clear that they had no real intention of draining the Washington swamp. They voted in secret on Monday to gut the one quasi-independent office that investigates House ethics. President-elect Donald Trump, who ran on a promise to drain the swamp, didn’t demand that they stop — he merely asked them to wait awhile. And that they did. Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia emerged as an architect of the G.O.P. miasmic agenda with his attack on the Office of Congressional Ethics. A rules change would have prevented the office, known as the O.C.E., from investigating potentially criminal allegations, allowed lawmakers on the House Ethics Committee to shut down any O.C.E. investigation and, for good measure, gagged the office’s staff members in their dealings with the news media. When the public learned about this plan, outraged constituents deluged House members with phone calls.”

Erin Richards reports that Parent demand drives growth in Montessori programs: “Montessori is an educational approach that features multi-age classrooms grouped into clusters of three grades, starting with 3-year-olds. Self-directed activity, hands-on learning, collaborative activities and tactile objects for exploration are key features of Montessori classrooms. Students generally have the same teacher for three years. Montessori has long been associated with private schools, but public options are proliferating. Whitescarver said there are about 520 public Montessori schools nationwide. Traction has picked up in places like Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland and Denver.”

Garry Kasparov writes that The U.S. doesn’t have a problem with Russia. It has a problem with Vladimir Putin: “When the entire U.S. intelligence community united to accuse Russia of tampering in the 2016 presidential election, it seemed redundant to later add that Vladimir Putin was directly involved. Nothing significant happens in Russia, and no action is taken by Russia, without the knowledge of the man who has held total power there for 17 years, first as president and later as unchallenged dictator. Having steadily eliminated every form of real political and social opposition in Russia, Putin turned his attacks on the foreign powers that could — should they decide to act — weaken his grip. The United States, in other words, doesn’t have a problem with Russia — it has a problem with Putin.”

Jay Rosen writes of Prospects for the American press under Trump, part two (he published part one on 12.28.16): “Being willing to start over is good, too. If I were running a big national desk in DC, I would try to zero-base the beat structure. Meaning: if you had no existing beats for covering national affairs in Donald Trump’s America, if you had to create them all from scratch, what would that system look like? Is that going to fix what’s broken in political journalism? Nope. But trying it might reveal possibilities that were harder to see before. So let me be clear about this: I don’t have solutions to what I described in part one. And I’m not saying my suggestions are equal to the task. They are not. Rather, this is what I can think of. I have a series of small ideas that might be worth trying and a larger one to spell out. I wish had better answers for you….”

Chas Pope recorded a time-lapse video of smog in Beijing on 1.1.17. It’s quite something:

Bank of AQI400+ smog rolling into Beijing just now – within 20 minutes https://t.co/jbk3byT37C #beijing #airpocalypse #smog pic.twitter.com/Sf5Zom6F9M

— Chas Pope (@china_chas) January 2, 2017

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be overcast, with an even chance of rain and a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:34 PM, for 9h 08m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 25.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Whitewater’s Fire Department has a scheduled business meeting at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1777, the Continental Army defeats the British at the Battle of Princeton. On this day in 1892, J.R.R. Tolkien is born.

Recommended for reading in full —

Fredrecka Schouten reports that House Republicans move to slash powers of ethics watchdog: “WASHINGTON – One day before the new Congress convenes, House Republicans voted Monday night to rein in an independent ethics office that investigates potential wrongdoing by lawmakers. The move guts a major piece of an ethics overhaul Congress undertook after several high-profile scandals sent lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others to federal prison. The independent Office of Congressional Ethics, launched in 2008 to address concerns that the lawmaker-run House Ethics Committee failed to adequately police members of Congress, now would be subject to oversight by the House Ethics Committee, under the proposed rules package adopted by Republican lawmakers. The new rules also would bar investigators from reviewing anonymous complaints against lawmakers.”

Peter Baker reports that Nixon Tried to Spoil Johnson’s Vietnam Peace Talks in ’68, Notes Show: “Richard M. Nixon told an aide that they should find a way to secretly “monkey wrench” peace talks in Vietnam in the waning days of the 1968 campaign for fear that progress toward ending the war would hurt his chances for the presidency, according to newly discovered notes….The Nixon campaign’s clandestine effort to thwart President Lyndon B. Johnson’s peace initiative that fall has long been a source of controversy and scholarship. Ample evidence has emerged documenting the involvement of Nixon’s campaign. But Mr. Haldeman’s notes appear to confirm longstanding suspicions that Nixon himself was directly involved, despite his later denials.”

Slawomir Sierakowski describes, from the recent experience of Poland, The Five Lessons of Populist Rule: “The restoration of “order.” Independent institutions are the most important enemy of populism. Populist leaders are control freaks. For populists, it is liberal democracy that leads to chaos, which must be “put in order” by a “responsible government.” Media pluralism leads to informational chaos. An independent judiciary means legal chaos. Independent public administration creates institutional chaos. And a robust civil society is a recipe for chronic bickering and conflict. But populists believe that such chaos does not emerge by itself. It is the work of perfidious foreign powers and their domestic puppets. To “make Poland great again,” the nation’s heroes must defeat its traitors, who are not equal contenders for power. Populist leaders are thus obliged to limit their opponents’ rights. Indeed, their political ideal is not order, but rather the subordination of all independent bases of power that could challenge them: courts, media, business, cultural institutions, NGOs, and so forth.”

George Friedman shows 5 maps that explain China’s strategy: “The sharp decline in Chinese stock markets on Monday is a reminder of two things. The first is the continued fragility of the Chinese market. The second is that any economic dysfunction has political implications, both in Chinese domestic and foreign policy. This, in turn, will affect Chinese economic performance. It is essential, therefore, to understand Chinese national strategy. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been portrayed as an increasingly aggressive country prepared to challenge the United States. At the same time, aside from relatively minor forays into the South and East China Seas, China has avoided significant involvement in the troubles roiling in the rest of Eurasia. There is a gap between what is generally expected of China and what China actually does. To understand what China’s actual national strategy is, it is helpful to follow the logic inherent in the following five maps….”

What’s Kimchi? It’s A Story of Love and Patience:

Kimchi: A Story of Love and Patience from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

Good morning.

Monday will see showers in Whitewater, with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:33 PM, for 9h 07m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1492, the Nasrid dynasty’s Emirate of Granada surrenders to Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, ending all Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula. On this day in 1918, the Wisconsin 127th and 128th Infantries depart for France from their training facility at Camp Arthur in Waco, Texas.

Recommended for reading in full —

Katie Sullivan writes that Morning Joe Hosts, After Carrying Water For Trump And Meeting Him Privately, Aghast That Anyone Questions Their Impartiality: “Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, co-hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, have met privately with Donald Trump while Scarborough is reportedly advising the president-elect, yet both still reject media criticism of their overly positive coverage of the former reality show celebrity. On the November 29 edition of Morning Joe alone, the hosts carried water for President-elect Trump on five separate topics, including criticizing journalists for scrutinizing his extensive conflicts of interest and reporting on Pro-Trump ‘fake news.’ ”

Brooke Seipel reports on Trump’s solution to cyberattacks: Send info via courier: “President-elect Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday that messages “should be sent via courier like in the old days” to ensure security. “It’s very important, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old fashioned way because I’ll tell you what, no computer is safe,” Trump responded when asked about the importance of cybersecurity, according to pool reporters. “I don’t care what they say, no computer is safe. I have a boy who’s 10 years old, he can do anything with a computer. You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier,” Trump reiterated.”

Kevin Sack and Alan Blinder report that convicted mass-murderer Dylann Roof Himself Rejects Best Defense Against Execution: “I want state that I am morally opposed to psychology,” wrote the young white supremacist who would murder nine black worshipers at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., in June 2015. “It is a Jewish invention, and does nothing but invent diseases and tell people they have problems when they dont [sic].” Mr. Roof, who plans to represent himself when the penalty phase of his federal capital trial begins on Tuesday, apparently is devoted enough to that proposition (or delusion, as some maintain) to stake his life on it. Although a defense based on his psychological capacity might be his best opportunity to avoid execution, he seems steadfastly committed to preventing any public examination of his mental state or background.”

Eliyahu Kamisher reports that Police due to question Netanyahu today in alleged corruption case: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to be questioned under caution at his residence in Jerusalem today by police regarding the receipt of illegal gifts.  On Monday morning, the Prime Minister’s Residence was closed off and a black veil erected to keep out the media’s eyes – police investigators have not yet arrived to the premier’s home….This comes as reports surfaced over the weekend that World Jewish Congress President and long-time ally Ronald Lauder told police that he did give Netanyahu and his son Yair gifts, including pricey suits. The evidence provided by Lauder supposedly provided impetus to interrogate Netanyahu.”

What’s up for January 2017?  Here’s a preview of the night’s sky —

Good morning and Happy New Year.

The new year begins in Whitewater with partly sunny skies and a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:32 PM, for 9h 06m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1808, the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807) takes effect. On this day in 1863, Pres. Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.

Recommended for reading in full —

John Gurda writes of Making America hate again? It’s a very old story: “Time after time, and without surrendering our national security, Americans of longer tenure have put hatred aside and allowed newcomers to find their way. We have done so grudgingly, more often than not, and rarely without conflict, but the result is a society richer for the presence of all of us. The alternative is not just impoverishing but chilling. What if we really were able to shut our doors and close our windows? In the 1850s, during an especially virulent outbreak of nativism, the aptly named Know Nothing Party rose to prominence as one of the first groups pledged to “keep America American.” Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, expressed grave misgivings in an 1855 letter to a friend. His words sound eerily familiar in 2017, as we prepare to inaugurate a president who openly admires Vladimir Putin. “Our progress in degeneracy,” Lincoln wrote, “appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

In the defense blog War on the Rocks, Andrew Weisburd, Clint Watts, and JM Berger write of Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy: “Russia’s honeypots, hecklers, and hackers have run amok for at least two years, achieving unprecedented success in poisoning America’s body politic and creating deep dissent, including a rise in violent extremist activity and visibility. Posting hundreds of times a day on social media, thousands of Russian bots and human influence operators pump massive amounts of disinformation and harassment into public discourse. This “computational propaganda,” a term coined by Philip Howard, has the cumulative effect of creating Clayton A. Davis at Indiana University calls a “majority illusion, where many people appear to believe something ….which makes that thing more credible.” The net result is an American information environment where citizens and even subject-matter experts are hard-pressed to distinguish fact from fiction. They are unsure who to trust and thus more willing to believe anything that supports their personal biases and preferences.”

Eli Saslow describes The white flight of Derek Black: “Every day since then [an argument with white nationalist relatives], Derek had been working to put distance between himself and his past. He was still living across the country after finishing his master’s degree, and he was starting to learn Arabic to be able to study the history of early Islam. He hadn’t spoken to anyone in white nationalism since his defection, aside from occasional calls home to his parents. Instead, he’d spent his time catching up on aspects of pop culture he’d once been taught to discredit: liberal newspaper columns, rap music and Hollywood movies. He’d come to admire President Obama. He decided to trust the U.S. government. He started drinking tap water. He had taken budget trips to Barcelona, Paris, Dublin, Nicaragua and Morocco, immersing himself in as many cultures as he could.”

Amy Wang reports that Anthony Bourdain bashes fellow ‘privileged Eastern liberals’ for making Trump win possible: “The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now,” Bourdain told Reason [Magazine]….Bourdain has made, well, no reservations about his disdain for Trump — or for those who choose to do business with him. In a recent interview with Eater, Bourdain said he had “utter and complete contempt” for restaurateur Alessandro Borgognone, who announced in November he would open a sushi restaurant at Trump’s hotel in Washington. “I will never eat in his restaurant,” Bourdain declared in that interview. He expressed similar feelings about chef David Burke, who said he would take over another space at the same hotel after José Andrés pulled out. “Burke’s a steaming loaf of s—, as far as I’m concerned, and feel free to quote me,” Bourdain told Eater.”

Let’s have something animated to begin the new year, from Yulia Mikushina —

new year 2017 ( sand animation) from Yulia Mikushina on Vimeo.

Good morning.

The last day of 2016 in Whitewater will be cloudy in the morning, but a bit sunnier in the afternoon, with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:31 PM, for 9h 06m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1879, at Menlo Park, Thomas Edison holds the first public demonstration of an incandescent light bulb; “[i]t was during this time that he said: ‘We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.’^[61]”  On this day in 1967, the Packers defeat the Cowboys, 21-17, in what amounted to an Ice Bowl (the game had a temperature of 13 below zero and a wind chill of 46 below zero).

Recommended for reading in full — 

Mark Sommerhauser writes that As Donald Trump eyes infrastructure spending, state leaders assess impact for Wisconsin. Waiting for Trump to pour money into Wisconsin may prove a long wait: “Most recently, some D.C. lobbyists have begun to question Trump’s basic commitment to an infrastructure plan. Trump, in a post-election interview with The New York Times, seemed to back away from the issue, saying infrastructure won’t be a “core” part of the first few years of his administration. Trump acknowledged that he didn’t realize during the campaign that New Deal-style proposals to put people to work building infrastructure might conflict with his party’s small-government philosophy. “That’s not a very Republican thing — I didn’t even know that, frankly,” Trump said.”

The Washington Post‘s editorial board states the obvious, in Trump refuses to face reality about Russia: “Mr. Trump has been frank about his desire to improve relations with Russia, but he seems blissfully untroubled by the reasons for the deterioration in relations, including Russia’s instigation of an armed uprising in Ukraine, its seizure of Crimea, its efforts to divide Europe and the crushing of democracy and human rights at home. Why is Mr. Trump so dismissive of Russia’s dangerous behavior? Some say it is his lack of experience in foreign policy, or an oft-stated admiration for strongmen, or naivete about Russian intentions. But darker suspicions persist. Mr. Trump has steadfastly refused to be transparent about his multibillion-dollar business empire. Are there loans or deals with Russian businesses or the state that were concealed during the campaign? Are there hidden communications with Mr. Putin or his representatives? We would be thrilled to see all the doubts dispelled, but Mr. Trump’s odd behavior in the face of a clear threat from Russia, matched by Mr. Putin’s evident enthusiasm for the president-elect, cannot be easily explained.”

Jim Henry writes persuasively of The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections: “Even before the November 8 election, many leading Democrats were vociferously demanding that the FBI disclose the fruits of its investigations into Putin-backed Russian hackers. Instead FBI Director Comey decided to temporarily revive his zombie-like investigation of Hillary’s emails. That decision may well have had an important impact on the election, but it did nothing to resolve the allegations about Putin. Even now, after the CIA has disclosed an abstract of its own still-secret investigation, it is fair to say that we still lack the cyberspace equivalent of a smoking gun.Fortunately, however, for those of us who are curious about Trump’s Russian connections, there is another readily accessible body of material that has so far received surprisingly little attention. This suggests that whatever the nature of President-elect Donald Trump’s relationship with President Putin, he has certainly managed to accumulate direct and indirect connections with a far-flung private Russian/FSU [former Soviet Union] network of outright mobsters, oligarchs, fraudsters, and kleptocrats.”

Conservative David Frum describes How Trump Made Russia’s Hacking More Effective: “Without Trump’s own willingness to make false claims and misuse Russian-provided information, the Wikileaks material would have deflated of its own boringness. The Russian-hacked material did damage because, and only because, Russia found a willing accomplice in the person of Donald J. Trump. Many questions remain about how the Russian spy services did what they did. That includes Putin’s motives for ordering the operation. But on issues from Crimea to Syria to NATO to the breakup of the European Union, Trump’s publicly expressed views align with Putin’s wishes. Over Trump’s motives for collaborating so full-throatedly with Russian espionage, there hangs a greater and more disturbing mystery—a mystery that Trump seems in no hurry to dispel. And maybe he is wise to leave the mystery in place: as delegitimizing as it is, it’s very possible the truth would be even worse.”

Admittedly, I’m not an admirer of champagne, but this recipe for a champagne cocktail is intriguing, indeed, agreeably bewitching:

Good morning.

Whitewater’s week ends with partly cloudy skies and a high of twenty-nine. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:30 PM, for 9h 05m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this dayin 1940, California’s first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway, opens. On this day in 1922, authorities in Madison confiscate 1,200 gallons of mash and fifteen gallons of moonshine from the home of a suspected bootlegger.

Recommended for reading in full —

Hungarian author Miklos Haraszti writes I watched a populist leader rise in my country. That’s why I’m genuinely worried for America: “Hungary, my country, has in the past half-decade morphed from an exemplary post-Cold War democracy into a populist autocracy. Here are a few eerie parallels that have made it easy for Hungarians to put Donald Trump on their political map: Prime Minister Viktor Orban has depicted migrants as rapists, job-stealers, terrorists and “poison” for the nation, and built a vast fence along Hungary’s southern border. The popularity of his nativist agitation has allowed him to easily debunk as unpatriotic or partisan any resistance to his self-styled “illiberal democracy,” which he said he modeled after “successful states” such as Russia and Turkey. No wonder Orban feted Trump’s victory as ending the era of “liberal non-democracy,” “the dictatorship of political correctness” and “democracy export.” The two consummated their political kinship in a recent phone conversation; Orban is invited to Washington, where, they agreed, both had been treated as “black sheep.” ”

Andrew Kramer reports How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar: “For more than three years, rather than rely on military officers working out of isolated bunkers, Russian government recruiters have scouted a wide range of programmers, placing prominent ads on social media sites, offering jobs to college students and professional coders, and even speaking openly about looking in Russia’s criminal underworld for potential talent. Those recruits were intended to cycle through military contracting companies and newly formed units called science squadrons established on military bases around the country.”

Reporter David Fahrenthold tells the behind-the-scenes story of his year covering Trump (leading to Fahrenthold’s discovery of corruption within the Trump’s Foundation): “So by the time the New Hampshire primaries were over, the candidates I had covered were kaput. I needed a new beat. While I pondered what that would be, I decided to do a short story about the money Trump had raised for veterans. I wanted to chase down two suspicions I’d brought home with me from that event in Iowa. For one thing, I thought Trump might have broken the law by improperly mixing his foundation with his presidential campaign. I started calling experts. “I think it’s pretty clear that that’s over the line,” Marc S. Owens, the former longtime head of the Internal Revenue Service’s nonprofit division, told me when I called him.”

James Palmer describes What China Didn’t Learn From the Collapse of the Soviet Union: “The hostility toward the color revolutions and the chaos they’ve unleashed has thus been projected backward. The Soviet fall, once seen at least in part as a result of the Communist Party’s own failings, has become reinterpreted as a deliberate U.S. plot and a moral failure to hold the line against Western influence. That has ended what was once a powerful spur to reform — meaning that, barring a major change in leadership, the likely course of Chinese politics over the next few years will be further xenophobia, even more power to the party, and an unwillingness to talk about the harder lessons of history.”

What’s inside a tapestry factory? This is —