Good morning.
In Whitewater, we’ll have a cloudy Wednesday with a high of thirty-two. Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:24 PM, for 9h 01m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 45.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM, and her Parks & Recreation Board at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1898, Marie Sklodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie discover radium in a uraninite sample. On this day in 1862, the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry (3,500 strong) sets out for Vicksburg, Mississippi (arriving on 1.5.1863).
Worth reading in full —
Neil MacFarquahr and Andrew E. Kramer report on How Rex Tillerson Changed His Tune on Russia and Came to Court Its Rulers: “MOSCOW — As a member of the U.S.-Russia Business Council and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, Rex W. Tillerson frequently voiced doubts about Russia’s investment climate, saying as late as 2008 that Russia “must improve the functioning of its judicial system and its judiciary. There is no respect for the rule of law in Russia today”….[yet] oil industry experts and other analysts say, as Mr. Putin consolidated his control over Russia’s oligarchs, Mr. Tillerson underwent a profound change of outlook. He came to realize that the key to success in Russia, a country deeply important to Exxon’s future, lay in establishing personal relationships with Mr. Putin and his friend and confidant, Igor Sechin, the powerful head of Rosneft, the state oil company.”
Bruce Vielmetti reports that Megyn Kelly, Fox News win in Wisconsin court: “back when she was hosting “Kelly’s Court,” on a Fox News show called America Live in 2011, she and two guests breezily tossed out some commentary a former North Shore firefighter claims were defamatory. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Conen eventually dismissed the case, in part because he felt the segment clearly was not a serious news program, only a mock judicial debate. The plaintiff appealed. On Tuesday, the Court of Appeals also sided with Kelly. “While the commentary may have been sarcastic, belittling, and impolite, that does not make it defamatory,” wrote a panel of the District 1 court. The decision came from judges Kitty Brennan, Joan Kessler and William Brash. “It is a prized American privilege to speak one’s mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions.”
Michael Gerson observes that The GOP is at its peak, but conservatism has hit rock bottom: “Conservatives believe that human beings are fallible and prone to ambition, passion and selfishness. They (actually, we) tend to become swaggering dictators in realms where we can act with impunity — a motor vehicle department office, a hostile traffic stop, a country under personal rule. It is the particular genius of the American system to balance ambition with ambition through a divided government (executive, legislative and judicial). The American system employs human nature to limit the power of the state — assuming that every branch of government is both dedicated to the common good and jealous of its own power….This is not the political force that has recently taken over the Republican Party — with a plurality in the presidential primaries and a narrow victory in November. That has been the result of extreme polarization, not a turn toward enduring values. The movement is authoritarian in theory, apocalyptic in mood, prone to conspiracy theories and personal abuse, and dismissive of ethical standards. The president-elect seems to offer equal chances of constitutional crisis and utter, debilitating incompetence.”
Daniel Drezner enumerates Donald Trump’s three types of norm violations, but it’s the third of the three that matters: “The final set of violations are the ones where Trump is taking steps that run afoul of deeper norms, some of which are even enshrined in the Constitution: His refusal to properly divest from his company, which set up massive conflicts of interest in foreign policy. The possible violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn occupying positions of power in the White House. His reliance on his family as close advisers to the point where they are sitting in on meetings they should not be attending. His desire to make his staff sign nondisclosure agreements. His open war with the intelligence community. His laying the groundwork for his own private security force. These are the areas in which Trump is not only eviscerating existing norms, but creating a new set of arrangements that seem like a breeding ground of corruption, favoritism and the further erosion of trust in the political system.”
Could one have a bicycle-powered house? NPR’s Skunk Bear investigates —
RE: Gerson
Gerson, et al, are wringing hands now and conveniently ignoring the role they played in enabling this disaster. All of those folks hauled substantial water for the hard right for many decades. I’m glad they have had an epiphany and are now properly horrified, but it’s a little late.
So…My direct advice for Gerson, Will, Frum, Krauthammer, Beck, Sykes, etc. is to go f*** themselves. They enabled this. They thought it was just a game and a way to make a cheap buck stirring up the rubes. It isn’t a game. It’s now real and they did more than their share to make it so.
I’m coming to the conclusion that the only hope for the republic is for Kennedy or Roberts to pull a Souter and hold them back at the SC level. I don’t have a lot of confidence that will happen.
Thanks much for your comments – my best to you, of course. Here’s my perspective: (1) Gerson and others are too late to this, and they’ve done too little (agreed), (2) their change of heart now is less persuasive to me for what it says about them than what it says apart from them (that Trump is authoritarian), (3) I’ll accept any claim from anyone – Left, Right, Libertarian, Moderate, etc. – for the substance of it (with no desire to exonerate the past – egregious – mistakes of the claimants), (4) your lack of confidence that the court will do anything other than acquiesce as countless careerists in Congress have done (#NeverTrump has mostly folded, just 43 days since the election) seems very sound, (5) Trump will do whatever he can over the next two and four years to limit electoral opposition (e.g, in red states we’ll see far greater restrictions on voting than we’ve seen in recent times), (6) success against authoritarianism is still possible, from the actions of people in large numbers, (7) although it’s likely to be more unsettling and painful for protesters than even the wrongful violence that civil rights protesters faced before their numerous and morally necessary successes.
That’s an outline (to understate) for a long and difficult time ahead: possible but (well-beyond) difficult. We’re in the early days of that long slog. In some ways, each day is still new, of assessments and getting one’s footing. Not sure that I have this right, quite candidly, but trying to feel my way ahead as best as I can.
What has become clear is that we are in the middle of a slow-moving coup d’etat. It started with the installation of Dubya by the SC, with the excuse that the country was not able to withstand the drama of actually counting the votes. That worked out really well, with a lost 8 years and significant amounts of treasure and lives fighting 2 wars of convenience.
Since then, there has been a concerted, and largely successful, disenfranchisement campaign by the republican party. That, along with a surgically precise Gerrymandering effort at the state level, has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. One party in this country is doing everything they possible can to suppress the vote.
Then Scalia died. The coup continued, though, with the Republicans refusing to seat a new justice.
Now, we will face a torrent of new, repressive laws for at least the next 4 years, with no checks and balances involved. I see no other stabilizing influence beyond the possibility of a SC justice turning on them. It’s a thin reed…
We in Wisco-World have had a preview of how this will play out. Walker’s Frankensteinian “Laboratory of Democracy” rework of our state tells us just what lies ahead.
There is lots of blaming of the Democrats for not getting off their asses and voting. That would have helped, but would it have been enough to overcome the systematic disenfranchisement efforts of the Republican party? Apparently not…
This is not going to end pretty…