Good morning.
December begins in Whitewater with a morning mix of rain and light snow and an afternoon high of forty degrees. Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 14m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM, and the Fire Department will hold a business meeting at 7 PM.
James Pethokoukis writes about The bad economics of Trump’s Carrier deal: “more broadly, this is all terrible for a nation’s economic vitality if businesses make decisions to please politicians rather than customers and shareholders. Yet America’s private sector has just been sent a strong signal that playing ball with Trump might be part of what it now means to run an American company. Imagine business after business, year after year, making decisions based partly on pleasing the Trump White House. In addition, Trump’s hectoring on trade and offshoring distracts from the economic reality that automation poses the critical challenge for the American workforce going forward….Of course it wasn’t so long ago that Republicans were attacking the Obama White House for its “crony capitalism,” including the auto bailouts and clean energy investments in firms like Solyndra. Republicans, on the other hand, were supposedly stalwarts for competitive capitalism and vehemently against government “picking winners and losers.” Some even said they were “pro-market” rather than “pro-business.” Now, not so much.”
Paul Waldman thinks that Trump has already defeated the news media. And it’s unclear what we can do about it (linked yesterday), but Melody Kramer offers 28 ideas for covering President-elect Donald Trump: “Pick an issue, any issue. Collect everything the president-elect says about that issue in one place. It’s hard to keep track of all of the nuances related to a single issue — say, climate change or the Supreme Court. It’s easier to follow along when they’re all in the same place. The Connecticut Mirror does this well with their Citizen’s Toolbox….”
As it turns out, safe spaces aren’t just refuges for the left, as Amanda Hess discovers that The Far Right Has a New Digital Safe Space: “When the white nationalist leader Richard B. Spencer was suspended from Twitter recently, he hopped over to YouTube to address his supporters. “Digitally speaking,” he said, Twitter had sent “execution squads across the alt-right.” He accused Twitter of “purging people on the basis of their views,” calling it “corporate Stalinism.” Then he mapped out a path forward. “There’s obviously Gab, which is an interesting medium,” he said. “I think that will be the place where we go next”….You can’t sell a social destination where conservatives are free from liberal pestering and expect the pitch to resonate across the spectrum. Even the idea that harassment rules are oppressive — instead of protective of the vulnerable — is itself a pointed worldview. I suspect that any concern about inclusion will be assuaged by the comfort of chatting with people who think and talk the same way. It’s the next logical step after all the blocking and muting on Twitter and filtering and unfollowing on Facebook split America into two social media realities. Where there once was a bubble, now there’s a wall.”
Gina Barton and Ashley Luthern report that an MPD officer appeals demotion for mishandling sexual assault case: “A Milwaukee police detective demoted after a sexual assault suspect was left free to sexually assault an 82-year-old woman at a bus stop in July 2015 told a panel of Fire and Police Commissioners Wednesday that while he made some mistakes, he did thoroughly follow up on the case. Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn demoted Brendan M. Dolan to the rank of officer in April, saying he violated the department’s core value of competency for failure to properly investigate an earlier sexual assault by the same man. A hearing on Dolan’s appeal of that discipline began Wednesday.”
Great Big Story recounts the work of The Lone Man Building a Cathedral By Hand: “For 53 years, Justo Gallego has been building a cathedral by hand on the outskirts of Madrid almost entirely by himself. Gallego has no formal architecture or construction training, but that hasn’t stopped him from toiling on this herculean task. At 90 years old, Gallego knows that he will not be able to finish the project in his lifetime. But he keeps at it anyway, day after day, driven by his faith.”
The Lone Man Building a Cathedral By Hand from Great Big Story on Vimeo.