Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will see rain, changing to snow, with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:28 PM, for 9h 03m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 58.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred seventy-ninth day.
On this day in 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumière publicly screen 10 short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory).
Recommended for reading in full:
Annie Karni reports Trump Iraq Visit Is Called a Political Rally:
During his surprise visit to American troops in Iraq and Germany this week, President Trump singled out red “Make America Great Again” caps in a sea of military fatigues, signed a “Trump 2020” patch and accused Representative Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats of being weak on border security.
Now the president is facing accusations that he was playing politics with the military.
“When that starts happening, it’s like the politicalization of the judicial branch,” said Mark Hertling, a retired three-star Army lieutenant general.
Visiting troops abroad is a presidential tradition in which the commander in chief puts aside politics to thank a military that represents a broad spectrum of the country. But Mr. Trump’s political comments and his encouragement of supporters in the crowd veered from those norms.
“He has to understand that there exist some audiences that should not be addressed as part of his base, because they are not,” Mr. Hertling said. “It’s a violation of protocol by the president.”
Anne Applebaum asks Has the GOP retreated into a world of make-believe? The shutdown debate will tell us:
The hard truth is that the wall has no function. Its only purpose is to serve as a talisman, as a fairy tale, as a mythical, “beautiful” piece of concrete that will be paid for by Mexico. The only difference between the wall and the now-forgotten, equally mythical “caravan” that we discussed during the election is that construction will cost real money. We, not Mexico, will pay for it in taxes and, therefore, in lost productivity. Or we will pay for it in interest on the national debt. Or we will pay for it by sacrificing spending on fighter jets or health care or roads.
It will make our nation weaker and poorer — $5 billion poorer. That’s why this isn’t a debate about border policy. It’s a debate that tells us which of our politicians cares about the real world inhabited by real Americans and which prefer to live in a fantasy world created by the president’s imagination. For the future of the country, it’s important that reality wins.
David J. Lynch reports Economic growth is slowing all around the world:
For the past month, economic data in the United States, Japan and the euro zone consistently has failed to meet analysts’ expectations, according to a Citigroup Global Markets index of economic surprises. Chinese results also began disappointing on Dec. 10 amid signs that the economy is slowing more sharply than policymakers had anticipated.
A bit about Ben Franklin and the U.S. Postal Service: