Good morning.
In Whitewater, we’ll have a cloudy Monday with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:57 PM, for 9h 40m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 18.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}seventy-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM.
On this day in 1864, the 23rd Wisconsin Infantry continues its reconnaissance mission on the Matagorda Peninsula in Texas.
Recommended for reading in full —
Margaret Sullivan writes that The traditional way of reporting on a president is dead. And Trump’s press secretary killed it: “Anyone — citizen or journalist — who is surprised by false claims from the new inhabitant of the Oval Office hasn’t been paying attention. That was reinforced when Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told “Meet the Press” Sunday that Spicer had been providing “alternative facts” to what the media had reported, making it clear we’ve gone full Orwell. Official words do matter, but they shouldn’t be what news organizations pay most attention to, as they try to present the truth about a new administration. White House press briefings are “access journalism,” in which official statements — achieved by closeness to the source — are taken at face value and breathlessly reported as news. And that is over. Dead. Spicer’s statement should be seen for what it is: Remarks made over the casket at the funeral of access journalism. As Jessica Huseman of ProPublica put it: “Journalists aren’t going to get answers from Spicer. We are going to get answers by digging. By getting our hands dirty. So let’s all do that.”
The New York Times showcases Pictures From Women’s Marches on Every Continent: Crowds in hundreds of cities around the world gathered Saturday in conjunction with the Women’s March on Washington: HIGHLIGHTS, 360 VIDEO, MAPS.
?A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality. https://t.co/gCKRZZm23c
— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) January 22, 2017
Krishnadev Calamur offers A Short History of ‘America First’: “From this day forward,” Trump said at one point [during his inaugural address], “it’s going to be only America first. America first….the phrase “America first” also has a darker recent history and, as my colleague David Graham pointed out Friday, was associated with opponents of the U.S. entering World War II. The America First Committee (AFC), which was founded in 1940, opposed any U.S. involvement in World War II, and was harshly critical of the Roosevelt administration, which it accused of pressing the U.S. toward war. At its peak, it had 800,000 members across the country, included socialists, conservatives, and some of the most prominent Americans from some of the most prominent families. There was future President Ford; Sargent Shriver, who’d go on to lead the Peace Corps; and Potter Stewart, the future U.S. Supreme Court justice. It was funded by the families who owned Sears-Roebuck and the Chicago Tribune, but also counted among its ranks prominent anti-Semites of the day.”
Here’s an orangutan, showing how smart she is —