Good morning.
February in this small town ends with thunderstorms and a high of fifty-seven. Sunrise is 6:30 AM and sunset 5:44 PM for 11h 14m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred twelfth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1972, near the conclusion of Pres. Nixon’s visit to China, the United States and China issue the Shanghai Communiqué pledging to work toward normalization of relations between the two countries. On this day in 1862, the 8th and 15th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries fight the Battle of Island No. 10, Missouri.
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Drew Harwell reports that Hundreds allege sex harassment, discrimination at Kay and Jared jewelry company: “Hundreds of former employees of Sterling Jewelers, the multibillion-dollar conglomerate behind Jared the Galleria of Jewelry and Kay Jewelers, claim that its chief executive and other company leaders presided over a corporate culture that fostered rampant sexual harassment and discrimination, according to arbitration documents obtained by The Washington Post. Declarations from roughly 250 women and men who worked at Sterling, filed as part of a private class-action arbitration case, allege that female employees at the company throughout the late 1990s and 2000s were routinely groped, demeaned and urged to sexually cater to their bosses to stay employed. Sterling disputes the allegations. The arbitration was first filed in 2008 by more than a dozen women who accused the company of widespread gender discrimination. The class-action case, still unresolved, now includes 69,000 women who are current and former employees of Sterling, which operates about 1,500 stores across the country.”
Paul Kane finds An unlikely ally for President Trump: Liberal actress Jennifer Garner: “People felt like Trump really understood them, that he was going to come in and create jobs for them,” she said. “They felt like they needed something to just turn everything upside down.” It’s that level of despair that leaves Garner willing to deal with Trump when some of her friends want to offer nothing but resistance. She may even be willing to meet the president. “Send me a ticket to Mar-a-Lago. I’m ready to go down and have a steak and a good chat,” she said, only half joking about the prospect. “I really think it’s great, if he’s willing to help the poor kids who got him elected.”
Robert Pear and Kate Kelly report that Trump Concedes Health Law Overhaul Is ‘Unbelievably Complex’: “WASHINGTON — President Trump, meeting with the nation’s governors, conceded Monday that he had not been aware of the complexities of health care policy-making: “I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” The president also suggested that the struggle to replace the Affordable Care Act was creating a legislative logjam that could delay other parts of his political agenda. Many policy makers had anticipated the intricacies of changing the health care law, and Mr. Trump’s demands in the opening days of his administration to simultaneously repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement made the political calculations far more complicated. Governors of both parties added still more confusion on Monday when they called for any replacement to cover all the people already benefiting from the landmark law.”
Michael Daly describes The American Greatness of Ian Grillot: “Nobody was ever more American than was Ian Grillot when he leapt from under the table and started towards the gunman in Austins Bar & Grill on Wednesday night. Grillot had been in this sports bar in Olathe, Kansas, watching a basketball game when a decidedly un-American man was ejected for making disparaging remarks to two patrons whom he imagined to be Middle Eastern. “Get out of my country!” the man was heard to shout. Moments later, the man returned to the bar with a gun in hand and shot both patrons. Grillot ducked under a table but retained the presence of mind to count the number of shots. “I thought I heard nine,” Grillot would later say in a video released by the University of Kansas Health System. “I expected his magazine to be empty.” America was never greater than the moment that immediately followed. “So I got up and proceeded to chase him down,” Grillot would recall. “I wasn’t really thinking when I did that. It was just, it wasn’t right, and I didn’t want the gentleman to potentially go after somebody else.” Grillot would dismiss any suggestion that he was a hero.”
Tech Insider finds evolving paper art that has no end: