Daily Bread for 2.13.17

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-six. Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 5:25 PM, for 10h 32m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 92.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}ninety-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1935, a New Jersey jury convicts Bruno Richard Hauptmann of the kidnapping and murder of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s son. For further reading on the case, see The Sixteenth Rail, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, Colorado, ISBN 978-1-55591-716-6, copyright by Adam Schrager, 2013, 314 pages. On this day in 1935, Wisconsin establishes a minimum gasoline price per gallon.

Piet Levy reports that Al Jarreau, celebrated vocalist, Milwaukee native, dies at 76: “Al Jarreau has said his yellow brick road started in Milwaukee. From singing songs as a child at church and PTA meetings, to his first paid gigs at the Pfister Hotel, the genre-blending jazz singer went on to tour the world, record 21 albums and earn seven Grammys. He remains the only vocalist in Grammy history to win in the jazz, pop and R&B categories. But Jarreau’s heart was always at home. “Practically every night from stage, he would say, ‘I’m from Milwaukee,’ ” said fellow Milwaukee native Joe Turano, a member of Jarreau’s band for 17 years and his musical director since 2008. When they met, Turano said, Jarreau asked, “‘You’re from Milwaukee? I never had a guy from Milwaukee in my band before.’ And he gave me a big hug.” Jarreau, 76, died in a Los Angeles hospital early Sunday morning, with his wife, Susan, their son Ryan and a few friends and relatives by his side. On Wednesday, Jarreau announced through his website that he would have to retire from touring on medical orders, due to “exhaustion.” A cause of death was not immediately known. “He was just a great human and talented and wonderful to be around,” said friend Greg Marcus, CEO of the Marcus Corp. “He made you feel good. The world has lost someone special.”

Philip Rucker reports that Trump friend says Priebus is ‘in way over his head’: One of President Trump’s longtime friends made a striking move on Sunday: After talking privately with the president over drinks late Friday, Christopher Ruddy publicly argued that Trump should replace his White House chief of staff. “A lot of people have been saying, ‘Look, Donald has some problems,’ and I think he realizes that he’s got to make some changes going forward,” Ruddy said in an interview with The Washington Post. Ruddy went on to detail his critique of White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus: “It’s my view that Reince is the problem. I think on paper Reince looked good as the chief of staff — and Donald trusted him — but it’s pretty clear the guy is in way over his head. He’s not knowledgeable of how federal agencies work, how the communications operations work. He botched this whole immigration rollout. This should’ve been a win for Donald, not two or three weeks of negative publicity.”

David Sanger, Eric Schmitt, and Peter Baker describe Turmoil at the National Security Council, From the Top Down: “Three weeks into the Trump administration, council staff members get up in the morning, read President Trump’s Twitter posts and struggle to make policy to fit them. Most are kept in the dark about what Mr. Trump tells foreign leaders in his phone calls. Some staff members have turned to encrypted communications to talk with their colleagues, after hearing that Mr. Trump’s top advisers are considering an “insider threat” program that could result in monitoring cellphones and emails for leaks. The national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, has hunkered down since investigators began looking into what, exactly, he told the Russian ambassador to the United States about the lifting of sanctions imposed in the last days of the Obama administration, and whether he misled Vice President Mike Pence about those conversations. His survival in the job may hang in the balance. Although Mr. Trump suggested to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday that he was unaware of the latest questions swirling around Mr. Flynn’s dealings with Russia, aides said over the weekend in Florida — where Mr. Flynn accompanied the president and Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe — that Mr. Trump was closely monitoring the reaction to Mr. Flynn’s conversations. There are transcripts of a conversation in at least one phone call, recorded by American intelligence agencies that wiretap foreign diplomats, which may determine Mr. Flynn’s future.”

Tom Boggioni relates a comment from Charlie Sykes in Conservative pundit: Trump only uses ‘cringe-worthy’ surrogates because no one else will lie for him: ““I want to know who will play him on SNL next week,” Sykes said after watching Miller yell at multiple Sunday morning hosts. “What an extraordinary choice by the Trump administration to push Stephen Miller out when they actually do have some credible spokesmen. This was a cringe-worthy performance.” “Stephen Miller has only one audience,” Sykes continued. “He’s playing to Donald Trump. This is somebody proving that he is the loyalist possible spokesman. But what you have there [in Miller] is you have the intersection of inexperience, incompetence and zealotry, and the fact that he is doubling down on something that is clearly just not true.”

On February 7, 2017 a tornado hit NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Employees shot video of the tornado and its aftermath: