Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:24 PM, for 9h 01m 44s of daytime. The moon is full.
Today is the seven hundred seventy-third day.
On this day in 1989, the Brandenburg Gate reopens:
Thousands of people spilled on to the city’s streets cheering in the pouring rain to watch the historic ceremony which effectively ends the division of East and West Germany.
East German army engineers worked through the night to tunnel through one of two crossing points in the gate, which stands in the “no man’s land” on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall.
Recommended for reading in full:
The Committee to Investigate Russia writes of Putin’s Not-So-Secret Santa:
NYT:
First, President Trump blindsided his aides and the rest of the world by deciding to pull the full contingent of some 2,000 American troops out of Syria, helping the Kremlin to confirm Mr. Putin’s gamble that intervening in Syria would revive Russian influence in the Middle East.
Mr. Trump followed that up by declaring that the United States would pull half its forces out of Afghanistan; the combined withdrawals prompted the resignation of Jim Mattis, the respected general who leads the Pentagon.
All that followed Mr. Trump’s already substantial effort to undermine NATO and the European Union by weakening the American commitment to its traditional alliances.
“Trump is God’s gift that keeps on giving,” said Vladimir Frolov, a Russian columnist and foreign affairs analyst. “Trump implements Russia’s negative agenda by default, undermining the U.S.–led world order, U.S. alliances, U.S. credibility as a partner and an ally. All of this on his own. Russia can just relax and watch and root for Trump, which Putin does at every TV appearance.”
….
Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Upper House of the Russian Parliament, has said that “the departure of James Mattis is a positive signal for Russia, since Mattis was far more hawkish on Russia and China than Donald Trump.” Kosachev opined that Trump apparently considered his own agenda in dealing with Russia, China and America’s allies to be “more important than keeping James Mattis at his post,” concluding: “That’s an interesting signal, and a more positive one” for Russia.
The New York Times editorial board writes Shutdown? More Like a Breakdown:
The president clearly believes that throwing everyone else off balance gives him an edge — that is, if he can make the turmoil fierce enough, those around him will give up and give in.
Better still, even when he doesn’t get his way, piling on the pandemonium keeps people from focusing on any one piece of it. The normal human mind can cope with only so much drama before it gets overloaded. Mr. Trump grasps better than most that a single scandal is cause for public outrage, while a million scandals is a statistic.