Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of twenty-seven. Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 07m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 78.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred ninety-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority is scheduled to meet at 5:30 PM, and her Landmarks Commission at 6 PM.
Seventy-six years ago, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service attacks the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor. Wisconsinite Russ Warriner was among the survivors that day:
Russ Warriner, a 25-year-old first class seaman on the USS Arizona, miraculously survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The explosions ripped apart the Arizona and killed nearly all his mates. At the time of the attack, Warriner was on the sky control platform, where his job was to spot enemy ships and planes. The bomb that struck the Arizona sliced through the steel deck and exploded into a fuel tank. Fire flared for seven seconds before it ignited 1.7 million pounds of explosives held in the ship’s magazine. More than 1,000 sailors died instantly, including many on the lookout platform with Warriner. Warriner lost his balance and fell onto the platform. His hands swept through fiery magnesium remaining from incendiary bombs and were nearly burned off. He was knocked off the ship, pulled aboard a small motor boat, and eventually made his way to shore. Warriner was treated at Great Lakes Naval Base in Illinois, where plastic surgeons were able to repair his hands. Warriner settled in Wisconsin, married and raised two children. In the late 90s, Warriner was a retired piano tuner living in Beloit Township.
Recommended for reading in full —
Josh Gerstein reports Russian oligarch Deripaska drops libel suit against Associated Press:
A Russian oligarch whose business dealings have come under scrutiny by investigators probing Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election has dropped a libel suit against The Associated Press.
Lawyers for aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, who worked closely with indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort several years ago, joined with the news service Tuesday in a joint court filing dismissing appeals of a judge’s decision in October tossing out the defamation lawsuit.
Deripaska’s suit, filed in May, alleged that an AP story published two months earlier falsely implied that Deripaska was paying Manafort for work aimed at advancing the goals of the Russian government and Russian president Vladimir Putin….
U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the Russian businessman was “a limited purpose public figure” under U.S. libel law. That determination meant Deripaska needed to plausibly assert that the AP knew its story was false at the time it published it, something the judge found the complaint in the case failed to lay out….
Avi Selk reports Chirps, hums and phantom noises — how bizarre events in Cuba changed embassy workers’ brains:
They would sometimes wake in the night to hear a disembodied chirping somewhere in the room, or a strange, low hum, or the sound of scraping metal.
Sometimes they felt a phantom flutter of air pass by as they listened. Others in the room would often not notice a thing, the Associated Press reported, and the noises would cease if the person moved just a few feet away.
And then, usually within 24 hours of these bizarre events, bad things happened to those who heard the noises.
What exactly two dozen Americans experienced at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba — in incidents last year and then again in August — remains a mystery to science and the FBI. They have alternately been blamed on a high-tech sonic weapon or a mysterious disease, and have caused a diplomatic crisis because U.S. officials blame Cuba for the attacks….
Jennifer Rubin contends The anti-Trump Republicans can cripple the GOP:
So nearly 20 percent have checked out of the Trump GOP and 23 percent are leaning that way, for a total of 41 percent. This, of course, does not account for the loss of many voters who won’t even identify as Republican because of the Trump phenomenon….
Well, we’ve got a long way to go, and the collapse of the Trump presidency, if it comes, might either shatter the party or help unify it around Vice President Pence (although his proximity to Michael Flynn, Jared Kusher and, of course, Trump might be disqualifying for lots of voters). In any case, Trump enablers may dominate the GOP, but the rest of the party may choose to cripple the Trump GOP by leaving for greener pastures. The more the GOP regulars and Trump sycophants rail against the Never Trump contingent, the more likely the latter is to leave. And if Democrats play their cards right, they might even win some of these voters over.
(Even small defections from Trumpism might tip some Congressional contests. Well worth encouraging.)
Maura Judkis writes Behold, the latest wait-in-line, Instagram-your-purchase status food: Cheese tea:
We’ve nearly made it through 2017, a year that gave us the unicorn frappuccino, pea milk, the gummy bear juice cleanse, pumpkin spice deodorant, and its greatest (worst) gift, microwaveable mug cakes for one.
But just when you thought we were out of the woods, along comes 2017’s final salvo: cheese tea.
[Blue wine is a thing because your Instagram doesn’t have taste buds]
You are thinking: Those are two words that do not go together. Cheese! In tea! But we’re not talking Humboldt Fog or Camembert here. The cheese used in cheese tea is usually a cream cheese — sometimes sweet, sometimes salty — combined with condensed milk. It forms a tall, frothy head at the top of the beverage, sort of like whipped cream in a frappuccino. The teas are often matcha, oolong, jasmine and black, and you can customize them with fruits and other flavor infusions. They’re kind of like bubble tea, which has made its way into mall food courts across America.
(I’ve not yet tried it, but will search for some.)
Incredible Footage of the Deepstaria Jellyfish: