Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of eighteen. Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 6:45 PM, for 9h 22m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}sixty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 2012 the cruise ship Costa Concordia capsized and sank after striking an underwater rock obstruction off Tuscany, killing thirty-three people. The ship’s captain was later found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to sixteen years in prison. On this day in 1922, WHA Radio, “the oldest station in the nation” is established in Madison.
Recommended for reading in full —
Journalist and Trump critic Masha Gessen describes, in Russia, Trump & Flawed Intelligence, her skeptical assessment of a recently-released intelligence statement of Russian influence in the presidential election: “The election of Donald Trump is anomalous, both because of the campaign he ran and the peculiar vote mathematics that brought him victory. His use of fake news, his serial lying, his conning his way into free air time, his instrumentalization of partisanship and naked aggression certainly violated the norms of American democracy. But the intelligence report does nothing to clarify the abnormalities of Trump’s campaign and election. Instead, it risks perpetuating the fallacy that Trump is some sort of a foreign agent rather than a home-grown demagogue, while doing further damage to our faith in the electoral system. It also suggests that the US intelligence agencies’ Russia expertise is weak and throws into question their ability to process and present information—all this, two weeks before a man with no government experience but with a short Twitter fuse takes the oath of office.”
Michael Weiss recounts Russia’s Long History With Honey Traps—They Didn’t Start With Donald Trump: “In February 1999, [general prosecutor Yuri] Skuratov resigned, citing poor health, but it was later reported that Yeltsin had tried to “squeeze” him out of a job. The following month, Russia’s Federation Council, or upper chamber of parliament, rejected his resignation and issued a motion of confidence in his role. Then a video was released on state-controlled Rossiya TV channel showing a man who looked a lot like Skuratov cavorting with two prostitutes. In April, Yeltsin suspended Skuratov “during the period of the criminal investigation” into the video….The person in charge of the investigation into the tape’s provenance was Putin, then head of the FSB who, one might safely assume, ordered the filming of the event (vanilla by modern standards) if not the procurement of the working girls, too. In any event, Skuratov accused him of planting the tape, and journalist Pavel Sheremet (murdered last year in Ukraine) reported at the time that Putin arranged to have Skuratov quietly leave the prosecutor general’s office. In a televised press conference held in April that year, Putin and Russian Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin verified that it was indeed Skuratov in the video and that the orgy had been paid for by criminal suspects being investigated by Skuratov’s office. Skuratov was finally sacked in April 2000, following the Federation Council’s vote to dismiss him, following a year-long intra-government dispute over his future.”
Richard Wolffe writes that Trump’s trainwreck press conference ushers in a shambolic presidency: “After a rambling introduction about carmakers, veterans affairs and his inaugural celebrations, Trump finally arrived at his desired topic of the day: the non-resolution of the conflicts of interest that will embroil his presidency from now until he leaves the Oval Office. A table stacked with yellow envelopes was supposed to represent all the documents Trump signed to disentangle his business affairs from his presidency, by passing management control of the Trump Organization to his sons. Rather like a suitcase supposedly full of cash, it was hard to tell if any of the documents were real without, you know, releasing them to the press like his tax returns. Instead, we were forced to listen to his personal attorney assuring us there was a wall being built between the presidency and the Trump Organization. That wall is about as solid as Trump’s other proposed wall on the southern border, given that there is no divestment. Why not? As the Trump attorney explained, a fire sale of Trump assets would be unfair to the president-elect and it was impossible to find an independent trustee competent enough to do so anyway. Oh yes, and such a divestment would involve a lot of third-party debt, despite Trump’s claims that he has no debt.”
Rosie Gray reports that An Alt-Right Leader Sets Up Shop in Northern Virginia: “This month, [racist Richard] Spencer’s rebooting again: He is renting a “hub” for the alt-right movement in a townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia. Spencer and Jason Jorjani, the editor-in-chief of Arktos, a publishing arm associated with the alt-right, have bought the domain name altright.com. Spencer and Jorjani met at the conference for the National Policy Institute, Spencer’s innocuously named think tank, where attendees gave Nazi salutes as Spencer shouted “Hail Trump” from the stage. They quickly formed a bond, and are now joining forces to brand themselves as the intellectual leaders of the alt-right. Spencer’s new headquarters reflects his increasing effort to mainstream the alt-right as its preferred candidate prepares to enter the White House, and to cement himself as its leading voice….The pair imagine the space as a kind of office-salon hybrid for the alt-right, a private space where people in the movement can make videos, throw parties (there’s an outdoor patio) and work on the nascent website, which Spencer said would launch on Monday. The loft “is symbolic in that it is a headquarters of sorts,” Spencer said.”
What does the world look like to a polar bear? To find out, the U.S. Geological Survey recorded two polar bears trying to survive in the wild: