Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see morning snowfall with a high of nineteen. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:56 PM, for 9h 39m 48s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred fifth day.
Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board is scheduled to meet at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1957, Wham-O acquires the rights to a flying disc later named the Frisbee.
Recommended for reading in full:
Rebecca Morin reports Poll: Shutdown, Russia drive Trump to all-time high disapproval:
Nearly 6-in-10 voters — 57 percent — disapprove of Trump’s job performance, compared to the 40 percent that approve. In addition, 54 percent of voters blame Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill for the government shutdown. Only 35 percent blame congressional Democrats.
….
According to the poll, 57 percent believe it’s likely that Russia “has compromising information“ on Trump, compared to 31 percent who don’t think it’s likely.
Griff Witte, Carol Morello, Shibani Mahtani, and Anthony Faiola report Around the globe, Trump’s style is inspiring imitators and unleashing dark impulses:
BUDAPEST — They make a show of putting their own countries first and breezily dismiss concerns about international law or human rights. They seek to bend the rules to their will, excoriating “the deep state” for getting in their way. And when they are challenged by the press or other critics, they have a two-word rejoinder: fake news.
In countries around the globe — from Brazil to the Philippines, and in many less prominent places in between — a generation of leaders who resemble President Trump in both style and substance is rising, consolidating power and growing bolder in its willingness to flout democratic principles and norms.
The strongman style of leadership is not new, of course, and it is not always obvious who is inspiring whom. Trump himself climbed to power amid a surge of nativist and nationalist politics worldwide, and his chief campaign guru, Stephen K. Bannon, borrowed themes and phrases from European populists to rally the make-America-great-again faithful.
Abigail Tracy writes “The President Has Been Acting on Russia’s Behalf”: U.S. Officials Are Shocked By Trump’s Asset-Like Behavior:
The only detail the interpreter reportedly shared with the officials—including Fiona Hill, the senior Russia adviser at the National Security Council, and John Heffern, then the acting assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at State—was that Trump told Putin, “I believe you,” when the Russian president denied interfering in the 2016 presidential election. The Hamburg meeting is just one of five off-record meetings between the two leaders that Democrats are eager to probe. Another is Helsinki, where Trump famously dismissed the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the election and affirmed, again, that he saw no reason to believe Putin wasn’t telling him the truth. Several U.S. officials told the Post that they were never able to get a substantive readout of the two leaders’ private conversation.