Good morning.
Saturday in this small town will be cloudy with a high of thirty-one. Sunrise is 7:04 AM and sunset 5:13 PM, for 10h 08m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 54.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}eighty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
American civil rights activist Rosa Parks (née McCauley) is born this day in 1913. On this day in 1871, the Wisconsin Central Railroad is organized.
Recommended for reading in full —
Susan Craig and Eric Lipton report that despite his promises, Trust Records Show Trump Is Still Closely Tied to His Empire: “Just days before his inauguration, President-elect Donald J. Trump stood beside his tax lawyer at a Midtown Manhattan news conference as she announced that he planned to place his vast business holdings in a trust, a move she said would allay fears that he might exploit the Oval Office for personal gain. However, a number of questions were left unanswered — including who would ultimately benefit from the trust — raising concerns about just how meaningful the move was. Now, records have emerged that show just how closely tied Mr. Trump remains to the empire he built. While the president says he has walked away from the day-to-day operations of his business, two people close to him are the named trustees and have broad legal authority over his assets: his eldest son, Donald Jr., and Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer. Mr. Trump, who will receive reports on any profit, or loss, on his company as a whole, can revoke their authority at any time. What’s more, the purpose of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust is to hold assets for the “exclusive benefit” of the president. This trust remains under Mr. Trump’s Social Security number, at least as far as federal taxes are concerned.”
Steven Verburg reports that State water woes drive ‘unpolished’ effort to sway lawmakers: Representatives of two dozen groups from around the state plan to tell lawmakers how their lives have been affected by things such as hazardous bacteria in drinking water, toxic algae that has killed pets and closed swimming beaches, and receding lakes that have left docks high and dry, [Criste] Greening said. While not aimed at any particular legislative proposal, the effort is intended as an initial warning shot across the bow of a state government that has rolled back water protections for the better part of a decade, Greening said. A few groups that formed mostly to seek stronger regulation of nearby animal feedlots are at the core of the effort, said Greening, a Wisconsin Rapids schoolteacher. Greening said it’s been heartbreaking to take her children to lakeside campsites she loved as a child and find signs banning swimming because of blue-green algae or E. coli bacteria. She said her neighbors’ concerns heightened last summer as public health officials received reports of people getting sick and pets dying after contact with algae blooms that were worse than usual in central Wisconsin.”
Daniel Dale’s keeping a list, and as of this date it’s The complete list of all 33 false things Donald Trump has said as president so far: “The [Toronto] Star’s running tally of the bald-faced lies, exaggerations and deceptions the president of the United States of America has said, so far….”
Scott Shane, Eric Lipton, and Matthew Rosenberg decribe how Trump Pushes Dark View of Islam to Center of U.S. Policy-Making: “This worldview borrows from the “clash of civilizations” thesis of the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, and combines straightforward warnings about extremist violence with broad-brush critiques of Islam. It sometimes conflates terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State with largely nonviolent groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots and, at times, with the 1.7 billion Muslims around the world. In its more extreme forms, this view promotes conspiracies about government infiltration and the danger that Shariah, the legal code of Islam, may take over in the United States….Rejected by most serious scholars of religion and shunned by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, this dark view of Islam has nonetheless flourished on the fringes of the American right since before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. With Mr. Trump’s election, it has now moved to the center of American decision-making on security and law, alarming many Muslims.”
A Former Google Employee [Explains] How Your Phone Is Designed to Control Your Life: