Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 05m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 22.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1864, during Major General William Tecumseh Sherman‘s March to the Sea, his troops reach the outer Confederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Charlie Warzel writes Inside the Battle Between Biden and Facebook:

In early September, the Biden campaign met with Facebook’s elections integrity team. With just weeks to go before election night, the meeting was an opportunity for Facebook to clarify how it would handle disinformation efforts to discourage people from voting and to undermine confidence in the results.

According to multiple Biden staff members in attendance, the Facebook team was unequivocal and reassuring. Under no circumstances, the company’s employees said, would Facebook tolerate the use of falsehoods to discredit mail-in voting. Facebook promised decisive action on voting disinformation, even if it were to come from President Trump himself.

The promise was put to the test shortly after, when Mr. Trump on his Facebook page urged North Carolina voters to show up to polling places even if they previously submitted a mail-in ballot. “Don’t let them illegally take your vote away from you,” the post read.

Mr. Trump’s call for his supporters to vote twice was roundly condemned by officials, including North Carolina’s attorney general. But when the Biden campaign asked Facebook to remove the post, it refused, instead appending a small label saying that mail-in voting “has a long history of trustworthiness.” (BuzzFeed News reported that Facebook’s internal data show that its warning labels don’t meaningfully stop the spread of Mr. Trump’s posts.)

For the Biden team, the moment was emblematic of its frustrating yearlong battle with the platform to enforce its own rules. “It was a total reversal,” a senior staff member told me recently. “You have half-baked policies on one hand, and the political reality on the other. And when push comes to shove, they don’t enforce their rules as they describe them.” (Like this staff member, those I interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity for this article for fear of reprisals.)

 Patrick Marley reports Thursday could prove crucial in Trump’s elections lawsuits in Wisconsin:

A federal judge will hold a hearing Thursday as he mulls whether to throw out Wisconsin’s election results at the request of President Donald Trump, who has been thwarted by courts across the country in recent weeks.

Thursday could offer up a legal doubleheader in Wisconsin because a state judge hopes to hold a hearing in a separate lawsuit brought by Trump as well. But if the 9 a.m. hearing in the federal case goes long — a distinct possibility — the state hearing will be put off until Friday.

The two cases, along with a third one brought by a Republican official from La Crosse County, must be resolved soon because the Electoral College meets Monday. Wisconsin officials have certified Democrat Joe Biden as the winner by about 21,000 votes, or 0.6 percentage points.

 SpaceX Starship launches successfully but lands hard:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 06m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 33.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater Unified School District’s Policy Review Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 10 AM.

On this day in 1946, the Subsequent Nuremberg trials begin with the Doctors’ trial, prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Linda Qiu reports A Senate hearing promoted unproven drugs and dubious claims about the coronavirus:

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, spent much of this year promoting investigations into Hunter Biden, trying fruitlessly to show corruption on the part of Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Now Mr. Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is more focused on another narrative sympathetic to President Trump if not to established science: that the reaction to the coronavirus pandemic has been overblown and that public health officials have been too quick to come to conclusions about the best ways to deal with it.

So on Tuesday, for not the first time, Mr. Johnson lent his committee’s platform to the promotion of unproven drugs and dubious claims about stemming the spread of the coronavirus while giving prominence to a vaccine skeptic.

In a move that led even most members of his own party on the committee to avoid the hearing, Mr. Johnson called witnesses who promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. The National Institutes of Health guidelines recommend against using either drug to treat coronavirus patients except in clinical trials.

 Molly Beck and the Associated Press report With case pending in state court, Wisconsin is only state to miss election safe-harbor deadline:

Every state but Wisconsin appears to have met a so-called safe-harbor deadline set by federal law, which means Congress has to accept the electoral votes that will be cast next week, locking in Biden’s victory.

The safe-harbor provision protects states against challenges in Congress through certifying the results of the election and resolving legal challenges in state courts by the deadline, which was Tuesday.

Wisconsin election officials still have a case pending in state court that wasn’t resolved by the safe-harbor date, in addition to the federal actions that are still pending.

….

Missing the deadline won’t deprive Wisconsin of its 10 electoral votes. Biden electors still will meet in Madison on Monday to cast their votes and there’s no reason to expect that Congress won’t accept them. In any case, Biden would still have more than the 270 votes he needs even without Wisconsin’s.

But lawmakers in Washington could theoretically second-guess the slate of electors from any state that misses the Dec. 8 deadline, according to Edward Foley, a professor of election law at Ohio State University’s Moritz School of Law.

Adam Liptak reports Supreme Court Rejects Republican Challenge to Pennsylvania Vote:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused a long-shot request from Pennsylvania Republicans to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the state, delivering an unmistakable rebuke to President Trump in the forum on which he had pinned his hopes.

The Supreme Court’s order was all of one sentence, and there were no noted dissents. But it was nonetheless a major setback for Mr. Trump and his allies, who have compiled an essentially unbroken losing streak in courts around the nation. They failed to attract even a whisper of dissent in the court’s first ruling on a challenge to the outcome of the election.

Polar Bears Face a New Threat to Their Life in Svalbard:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-six.  Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 06m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 44.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee will meet via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

On this day in 1660, a woman (either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare’s play Othello.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Noah Weiland and Carl Zimmer report Pfizer’s Vaccine Offers Strong Protection After First Dose:

The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech provides strong protection against Covid-19 within about 10 days of the first dose, according to documents published on Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration before a meeting of its vaccine advisory group.

The finding is one of several significant new results featured in the briefing materials, which span 53 pages of data analyses from the agency. Last month, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of 95 percent after two doses administered three weeks apart. The new analyses show that the protection starts kicking in far earlier.

What’s more, the vaccine worked well regardless of a volunteer’s race, weight or age. While the trial did not find any serious adverse events caused by the vaccine, many participants did experience aches, fevers and other side effects.

Andrew Roth writes Putin’s former son-in-law bought shares worth $380m for $100, report says:

A Russian businessman who was married to Vladimir Putin’s daughter received an estimated $380m (£283m) stake in a Russian petrochemicals company for just $100, an investigation by Russia’s iStories investigative outlet has claimed.

The investigation, published in collaboration with the the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), used a trove of leaked emails to shine new light on the closed circle of family and associates who surround the Russian president.

According to the investigation, Kirill Shamalov, the son of a longtime friend of Putin’s, purchased the sizeable stake in the parent company of petrochemicals giant Sibur through an offshore company. The deal was inked just months after he married Katerina Tikhonova, a scientist and university official who is widely reported to be Putin’s younger daughter.

John Bowden reports More than 1,500 attorneys sign letter condemning Trump legal team:

An open letter from Lawyers Defending Democracy has been signed by more than 1,500 attorneys, law professors and officials in the legal profession, including some high-profile signees such as Laurel Bellows, a former president of both the Chicago Bar Association and the American Bar Association.

“More than 35 losses in election-related cases have made one thing painfully clear: President Trump’s barrage of litigation is a pretext for a campaign to undermine public confidence in the outcome of the 2020 election, which inevitably will subvert constitutional democracy. Sadly, the President’s primary agents and enablers in this effort are lawyers, obligated by their oath and ethical rules to uphold the rule of law,” reads the open letter.

How The 75-Foot Rockefeller Christmas Tree Makes It To NYC:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 07m 43s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 55.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy carries out a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Jaclyn Peiser reports Arizona legislature closes after Giuliani spent two days with maskless GOP lawmakers:

For more than 10 hours last Monday, President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, convened in a Phoenix hotel ballroom with more than a dozen current and future Arizona Republican lawmakers to hear testimony from people who supposedly witnessed election fraud.

Giuliani and other attendees were shown maskless and not social distancing, and the Arizona Republican Party tweeted an image of Giuliani and lawmakers flouting coronavirus guidelines.

That defiance of public health advice came to a head on Sunday when Trump announced on Twitter that Giuliani had contracted the coronavirus. Hours later, legislative staff in Arizona’s Capitol abruptly announced a week-long closure of the state Senate and House starting on Monday.

An email announcement to members of the Arizona House said the move was “out of an abundance of caution for recent cases and concerns relating to covid-19″ and noted that “no one will have permission to work or meet in the building.”

Anita Kumar and Andrew Desiderio report Trump mulls preemptive pardons for up to 20 allies, even as Republicans balk:

President Donald Trump is considering preemptively pardoning as many as 20 aides and associates before leaving office, frustrating Republicans who believe offering legal reprieves to his friends and family members could backfire.

Trump’s strategy, like much of his presidency, is nontraditional. He is eschewing the typical protocol of processing cases through the Justice Department. And he may argue that such preemptive pardons for his friends and family members are necessary to spare them from paying millions in legal fees to fight what he describes as witch hunts. Those up for clemency include everyone from Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to several members of his family — all people who haven’t been charged with a crime. Weighing on Trump’s mind is whether these pardons would look like an admission of guilt.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya writes The people of Belarus are still marching against dictatorship. The U.S. can help:

Alexander Lukashenko refuses to step down or hold a new round of elections. His armed thugs are brutalizing ordinary people who hold up flowers and signs as they call for a different life. Thousands have been rounded up and housed like cattle in tiny, overcrowded jail cells without access to water, sanitation or horizontal sleeping positions. Torture is now commonplace. Belarusian Nobel Prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich has remarked, “I only know such stories from the Stalin era.” Such crimes have only strengthened the conviction of the Belarusian people that Lukashenko has to go.

….

We need more help from the United States, even in this complex transitional period. I appeal to the U.S. Congress to swiftly pass the Belarus Democracy, Human Rights, and Sovereignty Act of 2020.

This bill will expand the scope of those who can be sanctioned under U.S. law for their complicity in the repressions. At the same time it will provide support to independent media and technology for circumventing state censorship. Access to information is the strongest weapon in our possession. Lukashenko’s efforts to stifle the free flow of information and hide his violent crackdown cannot go unanswered.

‘Hug bubble’ safely connects care home residents to their families in France:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 08m 41s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 65.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1821, the first Wisconsin post office is established in Green Bay.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Christopher Rowland, Lena H. Sun, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Carolyn Y. Johnson report Trump’s Operation Warp Speed promised a flood of covid vaccines. Instead, states are expecting a trickle:

Federal officials have slashed the amount of coronavirus vaccine they plan to ship to states in December because of constraints on supply, sending local officials into a scramble to adjust vaccination plans and highlighting how early promises of a vast stockpile before the end of 2020 have fallen short.

Instead of the delivery of 300 million or so doses of vaccine immediately after emergency-use approval and before the end of 2020 as the Trump administration had originally promised, current plans call for availability of around a tenth of that, or 35 to 40 million doses.

Two vaccines, from manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, which both use a novel form of mRNA to help trigger immune response, are on the verge of winning Food and Drug Administration clearance this month. Approval would cap an unprecedented sprint by government and drug companies to develop, test and manufacture a defense against the worst pandemic in a century — part of the Operation Warp Speed initiative that promised six companies advance purchase orders totaling $9.3 billion.

As planning accelerated for distributing supplies, the government began to further lower expectations.

 Tim Miller writes This Is Your Brain on Newsmax:

I wanted to find out what these folks were being told, so I committed myself to hours upon hours of viewing. You may think you have a sense for what is happening on The Max, but I promise you it is much weirder, more alarming, and more debased than you can imagine. Here’s some of what I saw:

The president’s campaign lawyer saying that a former Trump official should be executed.

A host saying that Biden’s election would bring a war between the races and that Barack Hussein Obama is a “reprobate” who is “pimping” a book.

Hosts and guests suggesting several times an hour that Republican state legislatures should overturn the will of the people to keep Trump in power.

Fantastical stories of millions of votes being dropped off by tow trucks in the dead of night after nationwide blackouts.

The term “ballot harvesting” bandied about indiscriminately.

An endless stream of Lionel Hutz-level legal analysis.

 The ‘World’s Loneliest Elephant’ is Finally Getting a New Home:

Taing Rinith reports in the Khmer Times that A new journey begins for Kaavan in Cambodia:

In an exclusive interview, Khmer Times talks to Ministry of Environment spokesman Neth Pheaktra about the future of the ‘world’s loneliest elephant’ after arriving in his new home.

….

KT: Do you think it will be difficult for Kaavan to live in Cambodia, as he has been living alone for a very long time? What challenges have you faced so far?

Pheaktra: Known as the ‘world’s loneliest elephant’, we initially thought that it would take a long time for Kaavan to adapt to his new life in Cambodia. However, surprisingly, he seems to be adapting very well and quickly. In fact, it is going much better than we expected. First of all, he has started trusting and feeling close to his caregivers. Secondly, Kaavan is already enjoying walking and playing freely in his new home in the protected area.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:11 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 09m 43s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 75.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1879, Humane Society of Wisconsin is organized in Milwaukee. 

Recommended for reading in full — 

 David Folkenflik writes ‘Substantial Likelihood Of Wrongdoing’ By VOA Parent Agency, Government Watchdog Says:

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, a federal watchdog, disclosed Wednesday that it had found “a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” at the parent agency of the Voice of America under the leadership of the CEO appointed by President Trump.

Since taking over the U.S. Agency for Global Media, CEO Michael Pack has turned it upside down, sidelining top executives, firing network chiefs, and deep-sixing requests for visa extensions for foreign staffers. Most notably, Pack had two senior political aides with records of strongly pro-Trump ideological statements investigate journalists for perceived anti-Trump bias and push for sympathetic news coverage of the president during the campaign.

The finding is yet another formal and stinging rebuke to Pack’s actions, though it is not a final determination. In late November, U.S. Judge Beryl Howell ruled that Pack had acted unconstitutionally in investigating his own journalists on political grounds. She ordered him to stop intervening inside VOA’s newsrooms. Suspended executives have separately filed a complaint with the inspector general of the U.S. State Department, which has jurisdiction over the agency.

 Catherine Rampell writes The November jobs report has no silver lining:

After a few strong months of job gains earlier this year, hiring has slowed dramatically. In June, for instance, employers added 4.8 million jobs; but last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report published Friday, that number had slowed to a trickle of only 245,000.

Yes, it’s good that U.S. employers are still hiring. In a normal, healthy economy, adding 245,000 jobs would be nothing to sneeze at. But it’s not nearly enough for the economy today. We remain in a deep, deep hole, dug when employers eliminated 22 million jobs on net earlier this year. As a result, the U.S. economy still has a greater jobs deficit today than was the case at the very worst point of every previous postwar recession, including the Great Recession. Which no longer seems so terribly “great” anymore, as this chart illustrates:

As you can see, we’ve recovered only about half the positions lost when the pandemic initially broke out in the United States and shuttered much of the economy. If hiring continues at November’s pace, it will take more than three additional years before the United States regains all the jobs lost in early spring. And that estimate does not account for expected population growth, which would call for more jobs than we had pre-pandemic.

The report contains other bad news, too.

The headline unemployment rate fell because people dropped out of the labor force entirely — that is, they stopped actively looking for work — and therefore are no longer counted as unemployed.

(Emphasis added. Rampell is right that, by job loss, this Pandemic Recession is far worse than the Great Recession. The Great Recession, however, was great – in darkness and danger – for its aftermath as much unemployment: stagnation in parts of America, addictions, malaise, and nativism. It was an illness half-treated, and so led to infections and worse maladies in many of its victims.)

Astronomers produce most detailed 3D map yet of the Milky Way: