Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 7:09 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 11m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1967, the  20th Century Limited makes its final run from New York to Chicago.  On this day in 1947, Wisconsin’s first television station, WTMJ-TV, is established.

Worth reading in full —

Bill Glauber writes that an Embattled Tomah VA dentist resigns: “Officials at the troubled Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center said Friday that the dentist responsible for possibly infecting nearly 600 veterans has resigned. The dentist has not been named. The announcement came after House Speaker Paul Ryan of Janesville and Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson expressed outrage that the dentist was still working at the facility. On Tuesday, Victoria Brahm, acting medical director at the center, announced that the VA was in the process of notifying 592 veterans treated by the dentist that they may be infected with hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or HIV because he did not follow proper sterilization procedures.”

Patrick Marley and Jason Stein report that a Federal judge denies quick halt to recount: “Madison — A federal judge Friday denied an emergency halt to the recount of the presidential vote in Wisconsin, allowing the process to continue until a Dec. 9 court hearing at least. There is no need to halt the recount just yet because it will not do any immediate harm to Republican President-elect Donald Trump or his supporters, U.S. District Judge James Peterson wrote in a three-page order that called for both sides in the case to lay out written arguments before he takes any action.”

Russ Choma exclaims Holy Conflict of Interest! The Firm Holding Much of Trump’s Debt May Be Up for Sale: “Coming to an auction block near you: Donald Trump’s $100 million mortgage on Trump Tower? As Mother Jones has detailed for months, Trump owes hundreds of millions of dollars to a variety of lenders, giving his bankers a huge amount of potential leverage over the man who will soon occupy the most powerful office in the world. Already there are concerns about Trump’s biggest lender, the troubled Deutsche Bank, which he owes at least $364 million. On Friday, Reuters reported that his second-biggest lender, a small Wall Street firm called Ladder Capital Strategies, may be putting itself up for sale to the highest bidder. Public records show Trump owes the firm at least $282 million, on four lines of credit. This means that other big money players—Wall Street firms, American banks, overseas banks, financial institutions partly owned by foreign governments—could move to buy up the debts of a US president and create a host of conflicts of interest.”

The Wisconsin State Journal reports that Donations top $87,700 for children’s Christmas toys: “Since 1918, the Empty Stocking Club has provided Christmas toys to needy children in the greater Madison area. You can help again this year. Send your gift online at emptystockingclub.com or mail it to: The Empty Stocking Club, Wisconsin State Journal, Box 8056 Madison, WI 53708″

A big holiday sometimes brings frustration as well as happiness. That was true in Maryland, after a beaver trashes dollar store after finding only artificial Christmas trees:  “A beaver in Maryland apparently tried to get into the Christmas spirit at a dollar store in Charlotte Hall. But after discovering the store only offered artificial trees, it made like a crazed Black Friday shopper and trashed the place….The St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office joked that the “suspect attempted to flee the area,” but it was safely rescued by animal control. The office tweeted that the beaver was released to wildlife rehabilitation, and it included an adorable GIF for proof.”

Cpl. Yingling had a unique call for service when the suspect, pictured, was witnessed causing prop. Destruction at a store in Char. Hall. pic.twitter.com/6qKlu7tqA7

— St. Mary’s Sheriff (@firstsheriff) November 30, 2016

The beaver tweet may go viral! All joking aside, the beaver was safely rescued by animal control & was released to a wildlife rehabilitator. pic.twitter.com/0VyLXJPjxh

— St. Mary’s Sheriff (@firstsheriff) November 30, 2016

Good  morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-seven.  Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 13m 12s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater will hold holiday events, including a parade, this evening in her downtown.  The events begin at 5 PM, and the parade at 6 PM.

On this day in 1942, at Chicago Pile-1, first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place under Enrico Fermi‘s supervision; Fermi described the reactor as “a crude pile of black bricks and wooden timbers”.  On December 2, 1804, Napoleon crowns himself emperor of France.

Worth reading in full — 

Milwaukee’s medical examiner contends that the county sheriff, David Clarke, threatened him in a tantrum: “Brian Peterson, Milwaukee County chief medical examiner, said Thursday that the sheriff called him on Oct. 28 and “verbally pummeled” and “threatened” him over information that Peterson’s office made public regarding the deaths of two inmates at the jail earlier this year. Peterson said his office followed appropriate protocol in the cases cited by the sheriff….Clarke, who is under consideration for a high-level post in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, declined to comment on his conversation with Peterson or to make available a copy of his recording of the conversation. “No, thanks,” Clarke said via email.”

Jason Horowitz writes that With Populist Anger Rising, Italy May Be Next Domino to Fall: “TURIN, Italy — Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, only 41, once seemed to have solved the riddle of how to survive Europe’s populist, anti-establishment tempest. But with a critical national referendum on Sunday, the populist wave is now threatening to crush him and plunge Italy into a political crisis when the European Union is already reeling.From Washington to Brussels to Berlin, fears are rising that Italy may be stumbling into its own “Brexit” moment. What should be an inward-looking referendum on whether to overhaul Italy’s ossified political and electoral system has taken on much broader import. Financial analysts warn of a potential banking crisis, and pro-Europe supporters fear that a “no” vote in the referendum could accelerate the populist movement across the European bloc.”

Matt Turner considers The state of the US consumer: “A large chunk of Americans report that their income falls below or barely covers their expenses. There has been a hollowing out of middle-skill jobs, which has disproportionately affected men lacking a four-year college degree. Those with only a high-school diploma or less are much more likely to say their financial position is deteriorating. Close to half (46%) of Americans would struggle to cover an unexpected $400 expense. Real wages are stagnating, especially for those who are 40 or over. Healthcare costs, which have been increasing, are a key concern for many Americans. One in five has had to go without a trip to the dentist, and one in nine a visit to the doctor.”

Karla Adam writes that overseas, Child sex abuse allegations widen against British soccer clubs: “LONDON — An investigation into claims of child sexual abuse involving British soccer clubs has grown to about 350 alleged cases, a police group said Thursday, as the sport’s overseer opened its own inquiry into possible coverups spanning decades. The widening investigations have rocked Britain’s most popular sport and its affiliated clubs, including systems of youth camps. Over the past two weeks, several former professional soccer players have come forward to recount harrowing tales of abuse that they said they suffered as children and had been kept secret for decades. The publicity brought a “significant number of calls” to authorities, “both reporting further allegations and offering information,” the organization said in a statement.”

Here’s a look at the new campus Apple’s building:

Good morning.

December begins in Whitewater with a morning mix of rain and light snow and an afternoon high of forty degrees.  Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 14m 28s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM, and the Fire Department will hold a business meeting at 7 PM.

James Pethokoukis writes about The bad economics of Trump’s Carrier deal: “more broadly, this is all terrible for a nation’s economic vitality if businesses make decisions to please politicians rather than customers and shareholders. Yet America’s private sector has just been sent a strong signal that playing ball with Trump might be part of what it now means to run an American company. Imagine business after business, year after year, making decisions based partly on pleasing the Trump White House. In addition, Trump’s hectoring on trade and offshoring distracts from the economic reality that automation poses the critical challenge for the American workforce going forward….Of course it wasn’t so long ago that Republicans were attacking the Obama White House for its “crony capitalism,” including the auto bailouts and clean energy investments in firms like Solyndra. Republicans, on the other hand, were supposedly stalwarts for competitive capitalism and vehemently against government “picking winners and losers.” Some even said they were “pro-market” rather than “pro-business.” Now, not so much.”

Paul Waldman thinks that Trump has already defeated the news media. And it’s unclear what we can do about it (linked yesterday), but Melody Kramer offers 28 ideas for covering President-elect Donald Trump: “Pick an issue, any issue. Collect everything the president-elect says about that issue in one place. It’s hard to keep track of all of the nuances related to a single issue — say, climate change or the Supreme Court. It’s easier to follow along when they’re all in the same place. The Connecticut Mirror does this well with their Citizen’s Toolbox….”

As it turns out, safe spaces aren’t just refuges for the left, as Amanda Hess discovers that The Far Right Has a New Digital Safe Space: “When the white nationalist leader Richard B. Spencer was suspended from Twitter recently, he hopped over to YouTube to address his supporters. “Digitally speaking,” he said, Twitter had sent “execution squads across the alt-right.” He accused Twitter of “purging people on the basis of their views,” calling it “corporate Stalinism.” Then he mapped out a path forward. “There’s obviously Gab, which is an interesting medium,” he said. “I think that will be the place where we go next”….You can’t sell a social destination where conservatives are free from liberal pestering and expect the pitch to resonate across the spectrum. Even the idea that harassment rules are oppressive — instead of protective of the vulnerable — is itself a pointed worldview. I suspect that any concern about inclusion will be assuaged by the comfort of chatting with people who think and talk the same way. It’s the next logical step after all the blocking and muting on Twitter and filtering and unfollowing on Facebook split America into two social media realities. Where there once was a bubble, now there’s a wall.”

Gina Barton and Ashley Luthern report that an MPD officer appeals demotion for mishandling sexual assault case: “A Milwaukee police detective demoted after a sexual assault suspect was left free to sexually assault an 82-year-old woman at a bus stop in July 2015 told a panel of Fire and Police Commissioners Wednesday that while he made some mistakes, he did thoroughly follow up on the case. Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn demoted Brendan M. Dolan to the rank of officer in April, saying he violated the department’s core value of competency for failure to properly investigate an earlier sexual assault by the same man. A hearing on Dolan’s appeal of that discipline began Wednesday.”

Great Big Story recounts the work of The Lone Man Building a Cathedral By Hand: “For 53 years, Justo Gallego has been building a cathedral by hand on the outskirts of Madrid almost entirely by himself. Gallego has no formal architecture or construction training, but that hasn’t stopped him from toiling on this herculean task. At 90 years old, Gallego knows that he will not be able to finish the project in his lifetime. But he keeps at it anyway, day after day, driven by his faith.”

The Lone Man Building a Cathedral By Hand from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in town will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 15m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with just .9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1835, Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Mo. On this day in 1874, Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.

Worth reading in full —

In Wisconsin, a Judge rejects Stein’s request for hand recount: “Madison — Green Party candidate Jill Stein paid $3.5 million Tuesday to clear the way for Wisconsin’s presidential vote recount but had a judge reject her lawsuit to require all Wisconsin counties to do the recount by hand. Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn said the effort to force the hand recount — which was backed by Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign — did not meet the state’s legal standard for prohibiting the use of machines in the recount, saying that the two campaigns did not show a hand recount, though more thorough, was necessary or show there was a clear and convincing evidence of fraud or other problems. Bailey-Rihn said there were good reasons to do a hand recount but no legal basis for her to mandate it.”

Paul Smith reports that the state’s Deer kill, license sales drop to lowest levels in more than 30 years: “Hunters registered 196,785 deer during the 2016 Wisconsin gun deer season, the lowest total in 34 years, according to preliminary data released Tuesday by the Department of Natural Resources. Notably, hunter participation also was down. The agency sold 598,867 gun licenses, a 40-year low and the first time the number has dipped below 600,000 since 1976. Five non-fatal shooting incidents were reported during the season, which ran Nov. 19 to 27. The 2016 deer kill was down despite a statewide herd that was likely larger this year, according to DNR preseason forecasts.”

Reporter Paul Waldman observes, of his profession, that Trump has already defeated the news media. And it’s unclear what we can do about it: “First, Trump says something outrageously false, but which his supporters either believe already or would like to believe. Then Trump gets criticized in the media for it, and his supporters say, “There they go again, the liberal anti-Trump media.” Instead of convincing everyone that the claim was false, the criticism only reinforces for Trump’s fans the idea that nothing the media says can be believed, which further undermines their ability to act as neutral arbiters in any debate. The more outrageous his claim, the more coverage it gets. At first, a disturbing amount of that coverage just passes along what Trump is saying, particularly in headlines and brief mentions on television, which often take the form of “Trump says world is flat.” Then the news media find their footing a bit and begin explicitly calling him out for the falsehood. But the more it ends up looking like an argument between Trump and the media, the more that even Republicans who are skeptical of Trump will get pulled to his side, because they’ve long been invested in the idea that the media are hopelessly infected with liberal bias. The entire sequence of events enables Trump to create a meta-message, which is that there’s no such thing as truth and no such thing as genuine authority. Think about it: the president-elect is claiming that an election that he won was beset by fraud, because he heard it from a lunatic radio host who thinks that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged using child actors and the 9/11 attacks were carried out by the U.S. government.”

As for the presidential election, Jessica Huseman and Scott Klein report that There’s No Evidence Our Election Was Rigged: “ProPublica was an organizing partner in Electionland, a project run by a coalition of organizations including Google News Lab, Univision, WNYC, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and the USA Today Network. We monitored the vote with a team of more than 1,000 people, including about 600 journalism school students poring over social media reports and more than 400 local journalists who signed up to receive tips on what we found. We had access to a database of thousands of calls made to a nonpartisan legal hotline. We had four of the nation’s leading voting experts in the room with us and election sources across the country. Thousands of people texted us to tell us about their voting experience. We had an unprecedented real-time understanding of voting in the United States, and while we saw many types of problems, we did not see mass voter fraud of any kind — especially of the sort Donald Trump alleges.”

Catherine King and Wayne Adams don’t just have a home, they’ve a homemade island –

Off the Grid on a Homemade Island from Great Big Story on Vimeo.