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Daily Bread for 1.3.17

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.

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