Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise is 7:04 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 17m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 54.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred fiftieth day.
On this day in 1929, Richard Byrd flies over the South Pole.
Recommended for reading in full:
Rick Barrett and Andrew Mollica report Trump farm bailout checks coming to Wisconsin farmers vary from thousands to a few dollars:
Wisconsin is on track to lose more dairy farms this year than in any year since at least 2003, according to state agriculture department figures.
Wisconsin Farmers Union, based on a survey of its members, says a 55-cow dairy farm would receive a one-time payment of $725 from the Trump bailout program, but it will lose between $36,000 and $48,000 this year due to low milk prices.
An 80-cow dairy would get $889, barely enough to cover its electric bill for a month. Meanwhile, it will lose $35,000 this year.
(Emphasis added.)
Julie K. Brown reports How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime:
On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz.
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His client, Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.
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Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life.
But on the morning of the breakfast meeting, a deal was struck — an extraordinary plea agreement that would conceal the full extent of Epstein’s crimes and the number of people involved.
Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal — called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records.
Binyamin Applebaum reports For the American Economy, Storm Clouds on the Horizon:
Emerging signs of weakness in major economic sectors, including auto manufacturing, agriculture and home building, are prompting some forecasters to warn that one of the longest periods of economic growth in American history may be approaching the end of its run.
Amie Ferris-Rotman reports Kremlin says Trump, Putin have agreed to meet at G-20 summit on Saturday:
The Kremlin said Thursday that Washington has confirmed a one-on-one meeting between President Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin at noon on Dec. 1 at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina.
“You look at the sky and universe … everything is chaotic and just all over the place.” “But everything is exactly in its right place.”