Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty. Sunrise is 7:01 AM and sunset 4:23 PM, for 9h 22m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 48.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred eighty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1838, the Wisconsin Legislature assembles in Madison for the first time: “after moving from the temporary capital in Burlington, Iowa, the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature assembled in Madison for the first time. Two years earlier, when the territorial legislature had met for the first time in Belmont, many cities were mentioned as possibilities for the permanent capital — Cassville, Fond du Lac, Milwaukee, Platteville, Mineral Point, Racine, Belmont, Koshkonong, Wisconsinapolis, Peru, and Wisconsin City. Madison won the vote, and funds were authorized to erect a suitable building in which lawmakers would conduct the people’s business. Progress went so slowly, however, that some lawmakers wanted to relocate the seat of government to Milwaukee, where they also thought they would find better accomodations than in the wilds of Dane Co. When the legislature finally met in Madison in November 1838 there was only an outside shell to the new Capitol. The interior was not completed until 1845, more than six years after it was supposed to be finished. On November 26, 1838, Governor Henry Dodge delivered his first speech in the new seat of government. [Source: Wiskonsan Enquirer, Nov. 24 and Dec. 8, 1838]”
Recommended for reading in full —
Michael Gerson, a religious conservative, considers The Religious Right’s Scary, Judgmental Old Men:
….On sexual harassment, our country is now in a much better ethical place. And how we got here is instructive. Conservatives have sometimes predicted that moral relativism would render Americans broadly incapable of moral judgment. But people, at some deep level, know that rules and norms are needed. They understand that character — rooted in empathy and respect for the rights and dignity of others — is essential in every realm of life, including the workplace.
And where did this urgent assertion of moral principle come from? Not from the advocates of “family values.” On the contrary, James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family (now under much better management), chose to side with GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama against his highly credible accusers. “I have been dismayed and troubled,” Dobson said, “about the way he and his wife Kayla have been personally attacked by the Washington establishment.”
It is as if Dobson set out to justify every feminist critique of the religious right. Instead of standing against injustice and exploitation — as the Christian gospel demands — Dobson sided with patriarchal oppression in the cause of political power. This is beyond hypocrisy. It is the solidarity of scary, judgmental old men. It is the ideology of white male dominance dressed up as religion.
This is how low some religious conservatives have sunk: They have left me sounding like an English professor at Sarah Lawrence College.
Conservatives need to be clear and honest in this circumstance. The strong, moral commitment to the dignity of women and children recently asserting itself in our common life has mainly come from feminism, not the “family values” movement. In this case, religious conservatives have largely been bystanders or obstacles. This indicates a group of people for whom the dignity of girls and women has become secondary to other political goals.
We are a nation with vast resources of moral renewal. It is a shame and a scandal that so many religious conservatives have made themselves irrelevant to that task.
(These religious conservatives may have abandoned their responsibilities; there are many others of us who are religious, in opposition and in resistance, who will hold fast.)
Jim McDermott contends (rightly, to my mind) There’s no problem with praying after a mass shooting—but what does that prayer look like?:
….When we offer “thoughts and prayers,” the commitment we are making is both to ask God to help and to take some time to listen for his suggestions as how we might contribute to that, or his point of view on what is going on.
If I say I will offer thoughts and prayers but my own thoughts don’t change or grow in any way, if the process of prayer over time leads to nothing new, no fresh choices or insight, the fact is that I am missing something. Prayer is not supposed to be a substitute for action, but a means by which we learn the right actions to take.
(We are called to action.)
Sharon LaFraniere, Maggie Haberman, and Peter Baker report Jared Kushner’s Vast Duties, and Visibility in White House, Shrink:
WASHINGTON — At a senior staff meeting early in President Trump’s tenure, Reince Priebus, then the White House chief of staff, posed a simple question to Jared Kushner: What would his newly created Office of American Innovation do?
Mr. Kushner brushed him off, according to people privy to the exchange. Given that he and his top lieutenants were paid little or nothing, Mr. Kushner asked, “What do you care?” He emphasized his point with an expletive.
“O.K.,” Mr. Priebus replied. “You do whatever you want.”
Few in the opening days of the Trump administration dared to challenge Mr. Kushner’s power to design his job or steer the direction of the White House as he saw fit. But 10 months after being given free rein to tackle everything from the federal government’s outdated technology to peace in the Middle East, the do-whatever-you-want stage of Mr. Kushner’s tenure is over.
Mr. Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who had been in seemingly every meeting and every photograph, has lately disappeared from public view and, according to some colleagues, taken on a more limited role behind the scenes. He is still forging ahead on a plan to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, a goal that has eluded presidents and diplomats for generations, and he has been credited with focusing attention on the government’s technological needs. But he is no longer seen as the primary presidential consigliere with the limitless portfolio….
(A funny exchange between Priebus and Kushner: Priebus is stupid enough to think his question would matter within the Trump Administration, and Kushner arrogant enough to think it wouldn’t matter outside the Trump Administration.)
Christopher Ingraham writes How Americans lost the stars and how we might be able to get them back:
The United States is poised to get its first Dark Sky Reserve under the pristine nighttime skies of central Idaho. Pending approval from the International Dark-Sky Association, the designation would recognize the region’s clear skies, virtually untouched by light pollution, as “possessing an exceptional or distinguished quality of starry nights and nocturnal environment.”
If you’ve lived in or near cities most of your life and have never seen a truly dark sky you may not understand why anyone would bother with this. The night is dark, and dark is dark wherever you are, right?
Not exactly. The best way to explain what the Idaho Dark Sky Reserve backers want to preserve is to show it visually. Below are two photographs: on the left, a shot of the night skies in Washington, D.C. On the right, the sky above Idaho’s White Cloud mountains, which would make up part of the proposed reserve.
Lost in Light shows how light pollution affects one’s view of the night sky: