Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms and a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 16m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 45.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred thirty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On the morning of this day in 1908, the Tunguska event, a large explosion near Stony Tunguska River, in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai) in Russia takes place:
The explosion over the sparsely populated Eastern Siberian Taiga flattened 2,000 km2 (770 sq mi) of forest yet caused no known human casualties. The explosion is generally attributed to the air burst of a meteoroid. It is classified as an impact event, even though no impact crater has been found; the object is thought to have disintegrated at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) rather than hit the surface of the Earth.[3]
The Tunguska event is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history. Studies have yielded different estimates of the meteoroid’s size, on the order of 60 to 190 metres (200 to 620 feet), depending on whether the body was a comet or a denser asteroid.[4]
Recommended for reading in full —
Shane Harris reports that GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn:
WASHINGTON—Before the 2016 presidential election, a longtime Republican opposition researcher mounted an independent campaign to obtain emails he believed were stolen from Hillary Clinton’s private server, likely by Russian hackers.
In conversations with members of his circle and with others he tried to recruit to help him, the GOP operative, Peter W. Smith, implied he was working with retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, at the time a senior adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump.
“He said, ‘I’m talking to Michael Flynn about this—if you find anything, can you let me know?’” said Eric York, a computer-security expert from Atlanta who searched hacker forums on Mr. Smith’s behalf for people who might have access to the emails.
Shane Harris, national security reporter for the Wall Street Journal, talked with Rachel Maddow “about his new reporting about Peter Smith, a Republican activist who sought the help of Russian hackers who may have found Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, and implied he was working with Donald Trump aide Mike Flynn”:
Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough state the obvious when they write that Donald Trump is not well:
More significant is Mr. Trump’s continued mistreatment of women. It is disturbing that the president of the United States keeps up his unrelenting assault on women. From his menstruation musings about Megyn Kelly, to his fat-shaming treatment of a former Miss Universe, to his braggadocio claims about grabbing women’s genitalia, the 45th president is setting the poorest of standards for our children. We were heartened to hear a number of Republican lawmakers call out Mr. Trump for his offensive words and can only hope that the women who are closest to him will follow their examples. It would be the height of hypocrisy to claim the mantle of women’s empowerment while allowing a family member to continue such abusive conduct.
We have known Mr. Trump for more than a decade and have some fond memories of our relationship together. But that hasn’t stopped us from criticizing his abhorrent behavior or worrying about his fitness. During the height of the 2016 presidential campaign, Joe often listened to Trump staff members complain about their boss’s erratic behavior, including a top campaign official who was as close to the Republican candidate as anyone.
We, too, have noticed a change in his behavior over the past few years. Perhaps that is why we were neither shocked nor insulted by the president’s personal attack. The Donald Trump we knew before the campaign was a flawed character but one who still seemed capable of keeping his worst instincts in check.
The Washington Post editorial board writes that Trump clearly won’t change. Here’s what the rest of us can do:
We’ve given this some thought in the context of international relations, because the world had become accustomed to looking to the United States as a defender of democracy, human rights and liberal values. Admittedly the nation has played this role imperfectly, with dollops of hypocrisy and inconsistency along the way. But from World War II until now, the United States had not been led by anyone espousing selfishness as a lodestar. And that has made it crucial for others to fill the gap — crucial for Congress, civil society and citizens across the nation to stand up for freedom and for the United States remaining a beacon of freedom across the globe.
We’d say the same now about plain old courtesy and decorum. It may be beyond the power of any other politician to change Mr. Trump’s behavior. But all of us can model a different way of acting and interacting.
What gives us hope is the conviction that the American people are better than the misogyny and rudeness we see spewing from the White House. Our politics have always been rough-and-tumble, but most of us don’t want to see this kind of ugliness become the dominant trait. We should all be focused on preserving a little flame of decency so that, whenever the Trump era ends, that flame can be rekindled into the kind of discourse that would make the country proud again.
Practical Engineering asks How Do Sinkholes Form?