Good morning.
A new month in Whitewater begins with a partly sunny day and a high of thirty-one. Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 5:09 PM, for 10h 01m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 21.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}eighty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia is lost when it disintegrates over Texas and Louisiana as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. On this day in 1860, Charles Ingalls and Caroline Quiner, Ma and Pa Ingalls, are married in Concord, Wisconsin.
Recommended for reading in full —
Matt Levine considers Trump’s relationship to businesses in Immigration Orders and Odd Tenders: “Many people in the business and financial and technology communities listened to what Trump said, and cheerily assumed he’d do something completely different. Sure he talked about restricting trade and banning Muslim immigrants, but what they heard was that he’d enact “sensible immigration policy” and pro-growth trade agreements, reduce taxes, cut back regulation and generally improve conditions for business….And what has happened so far? Immigration bans (with more to come), abandoned trade agreements, “alternative facts,” unprompted promises to bring back torture. And what has not happened so far? Tax policy is a complete mystery, with an unclear and walked-back promise to impose a border tax. Health-care policy is even more mysterious. Trump has made vague promises to cut regulations by 75 percent, but his specific regulatory focus seems to be on increasing penalties on companies that move operations abroad. Everything Trump literally said is coming literally true; everything the serious people heard remains an unserious hope. Businesses may eventually get the tax and regulatory reform they wanted, but it’s not a priority. The technology industry, and some others, are beginning to figure this out:
Trump has “had this extraordinary honeymoon where Wall Street has kind of discounted all the negative aspects,” Richard Fenning, the CEO of consultancy Control Risks, told Bloomberg Television. As companies react to the migrant ban, “perhaps that honeymoon is starting to be over,” he said.”
Thomas R. Wood shows What Democracy Looks Like:
What Democracy Looks Like from Thomas R. Wood on Vimeo.
Derek Thompson asks Want to Talk to the President? Advertise Here: “Indeed, some politicians and journalists are realizing just how much Trump’s statements are recapitulations of ideas he has just seen on TV. CNN’s Brian Stelter observed that minutes after Fox News used the words “ungrateful traitor” to describe Chelsea Manning and “weak leader” to describe President Obama, Trump sent a tweet calling Manning an “Ungrateful TRAITOR” and Obama “a weak leader. Last week, Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings directly implored the president to call him in a segment on Morning Joe. “I know you’re watching,” he said. “Call me. I want to talk to you.” Hours later, Trump called the congressman’s Washington office.”
Jeffrey Gettleman reports that State Dept. Dissent Cable on Trump’s Ban Draws 1,000 Signatures: “Within hours, a State Department dissent cable [for employees of the department], asserting that President Trump’s executive order to temporarily bar citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries would not make the nation safer, traveled like a chain letter — or a viral video. The cable wended its way through dozens of American embassies around the world, quickly emerging as one of the broadest protests by American officials against their president’s policies. And it is not over yet. By 4 p.m. on Tuesday, the letter had attracted around 1,000 signatures, State Department officials said, far more than any dissent cable in recent years. It was being delivered to management, and department officials said more diplomats wanted to add their names to it.”
There’s at least one Snow Guardian of the Rockies: