Good morning.
Palm Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of seventy-three. Sunrise is 6:21 AM and sunset 7:31 PM, for 13h 10m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred fifty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1865, Lee surrenders to Grant. The 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th, 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments were among the troops that had helped corner Lee there. The 36th were present to witness the formal surrender ceremony.
Recommended for reading in full —
Margaret Sullivan observes that The media loved Trump’s show of military might. Are we really doing this again?: ““Guest after guest is gushing. From MSNBC to CNN, Trump is receiving his best night of press so far,” wrote Sam Sacks, a Washington podcaster and journalist. “And all he had to do was start a war.” Why do so many in the news media love a show of force? “There is no faster way to bring public support than to pursue military action,” said Ken Paulson, head of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center. “It’s a pattern not only in American history, but in world history. We rally around the commander in chief — and that’s understandable.” Paulson noted that the news media also “seem to get bored with their own narrative” about Trump’s failings, and they welcome a chance to switch it up. But that’s not good enough, he said: “The watchdog has to have clear vision and not just a sporadic bark.”
(This is true of successful criticism: it begins and exhibits periods of a sporadic bark’s maneuver, but it prevails though a clear vision’s attrition. See, along these lines, What Grant’s Overland Campaign Teaches for Grave Political Conflict.)
Former GOP Congressman Mickey Edwards exclaims Stand Up, Paul Ryan, or Step Aside: “The toadiness of the legislative leadership, and the low regard in which it is held by the president’s entourage, have led to such previously unimaginable scenes as Stephen Bannon, a senior White House staff member, giving orders to members of Congress and demanding a copy of the leadership’s secret vote counts to create an enemies list for possible reprisals. Mr. Bannon should have been ordered to leave the Capitol. Again, it was Speaker Ryan’s job at that moment to assert the independence and equal status of the legislative branch. Instead, he obsequiously ran downtown to see the boss.”
(Local publications like the Janesville Gazette have cosseted Janesville resident Paul Ryan for years, but their gentle petting has ill-prepared Ryan for defending his institution against men like Bannon.)
Jeremy Peters contends that Bannon’s Views Can Be Traced to a Book That Warns, ‘Winter Is Coming’: “The book, “The Fourth Turning,” a 1997 work by two amateur historians, Neil Howe and William Strauss, lays out a theory that American history unfurls in predictable, 80-year cycles of prosperity and catastrophe. And it foresees catastrophe right around the corner….But those who question Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon’s motives say the central premise of “The Fourth Turning,” with its religious subtext and dark premonitions, is a convenient excuse to sow fear and justify extreme action. Many academic historians dismiss the book as about as scientific as astrology or a Nostradamus text. And many will find reason for alarm in its conclusion that the coming crisis will demand loyalty and conformity from citizens.”
(It’s worth noting that Bannon’s ideas derive from several, but equally fringe, theories.)
Joshua Partlow reports that The Soviet Union fought the Cold War in Nicaragua. Now Putin’s Russia is back: “Three decades after this tiny Central American nation became the prize in a Cold War battle with Washington, Russia is once again planting its flag in Nicaragua. Over the past two years, the Russian government has added muscle to its security partnership here, selling tanks and weapons, sending troops, and building facilities intended to train Central American forces to fight drug trafficking. The Russian surge appears to be part of the Kremlin’s expansionist foreign policy. In other parts of the world, President Vladimir Putin’s administration has deployed fighter planes to help Syria’s war-battered government and stepped up peace efforts in Afghanistan, in addition to annexing the Crimean Peninsula and supporting separatists in Ukraine.”
Here’s a video from You Suck at Cooking that tackles tomato sauce: