Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with some snow this evening, and a high of thirty-two.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:32 PM, for 9h 07m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation takes effect in Confederate territory.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Simon Tisdall writes Trump fed our worst instincts. His global legacy is toxic and immoral:

How much damage did Donald Trump do around the world, can it be repaired, and did he accomplish anything of lasting significance? Assessing the international legacy of the 45th US president is not so much a conventional survey of achievement and failure. It’s more like tracking the rampages of a cantankerous rogue elephant that leaves a trail of random destruction and shattered shibboleths in its wake. Last week’s wild pardoning spree is a case in point.

First, the big picture. Trump’s confrontational manner, combined with his “America First” agenda, seriously undermined transatlantic relations and US global leadership. Joe Biden promises to set this right, but it will not be easy.

….

Trump encouraged authoritarian “strongman” leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egypt’s dictator Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and hooligans such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. He coddled autocrats such as Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and Russia’s Putin. Worse, his lies eroded trust in democracy and the rule of law, at home and abroad. Yet even as, properly and electorally vanquished, he slowly departs, he continues to antagonise and divide – and to be lionised by the right.

Maybe it’s not that hard to see why. Trump’s personal brand of viciousness appealed to every worst human instinct, justified every vile prejudice, excused every mean and unkind thought. His is a blind ignorance that resonates with those who will not or cannot see. Falsehood is always easier than truth. For these reasons, Trump’s global legacy is Trumpism. It will live on – toxic, immoral, ubiquitous and ever-threatening.

Melanie D.G. Kaplan writes John Steinbeck’s classic travelogue showcases man’s best road trip buddy:

Fourteen years ago, I decided to drive across the United States. This came after a childhood of cross-country rides in the back seat of my parents’ car, visiting my grandparents in Southern California. But in 2007, when I was a full-fledged grown-up, my grandmother worried about this trip well before my departure. My mother wanted to know where I would sleep. My sister said she couldn’t imagine driving all those miles by myself.

“Don’t you wish you had someone there to share it with?” she asked.

Reminding them about my four-legged travel buddy did nothing to quell their unease. “I’m not alone,” I said, time and again. “Darwin will be with me.”

Perhaps I carried an extra air of confidence when I reiterated that statement about my co-pilot and explained that this trip was wholly different from a solo adventure. I had just read John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley: In Search of America,” and it spoke to me. Loudly.

“I took one companion on my journey — an old French gentleman poodle known as Charley,” Steinbeck wrote. He described Charley as a born diplomat, expert sniffer and poor fighter. He was an early bird, a good watchdog and friend who “would rather travel about than anything he can imagine.” The pair set off on their journey in September 1960.

Darwin was also a good friend — a sassy, independent beagle, occasional growler and regular howler who loved road trips second only to eating. In 2007, we traveled 8,800 miles in 30 days.

 Maniacal Squirrels Declare War Against New York: 

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of twenty-five.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:31 PM, for 9h 06m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1967, the Packers defeat the Cowboys (21-17) in the 1967 NFL Championship (the ‘Ice Bowl’).

Recommended for reading in full — 

Rebecca Robbins reports U.S. Officials Say Covid-19 Vaccination Effort Has Lagged:

As of Wednesday, more than 14 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had been sent out across the United States, up from 11.4 million doses on Monday morning. But just 2.1 million people had received their first dose as of Monday morning, according to a dashboard maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

….

The 2.1 million administered doses reported by the C.D.C. is an underestimate of the true number because of lags in reporting. And a C.D.C. official said in a separate news conference on Wednesday that 2.6 million people had received their first dose. Whatever the number, it falls far short of the goal that federal officials put forward as recently as this month to have 20 million people vaccinated by the end of this year.

 Steven Benen writes Trump takes aim at Georgia official’s non-existent brother:

In the weeks since his defeat, Trump’s fury toward the Georgia official [Brad Raffensperger, Republican secretary of state in Georgia] has intensified, leading to a pair of tweets published around midnight, starting with this gem.

“I love the Great State of Georgia, but the people who run it, from the Governor, [Brian Kemp], to the Secretary of State, are a complete disaster and don’t have a clue, or worse. Nobody can be this stupid. Just allow us to find the crime, and turn the state Republican.”

First, “Just allow us to find the crime” is an amazing thing for anyone to write, and a reminder that the president and his team are still searching desperately for evidence that doesn’t exist. Second, “Nobody can be this stupid” is one of those phrases I’m going to brush right past without comment.

But it was the other late-night tweet that included a new accusation of particular interest.

“Now it turns out that Brad R’s brother works for China, and they definitely don’t want ‘Trump’. So disgusting!”

Among the many problems with Trump’s accusation is that Brad Raffensperger’s brother does not work for China. We can say this with great certainly because Brad Raffensperger does not have a brother.

 Michael Kranish reports Sen. David Perdue became wealthy outsourcing work to Asia. Now the former CEO stands with Trump, who wants to ‘end our reliance on China’:

When Republican David Perdue ran for the Senate six years ago, he spoke proudly of his years as a corporate executive in Asia. He made no apologies for having said that he “spent most of my career” relying on the outsourcing of jobs. He fended off attacks that he had enriched himself as companies he led relied on offshore production, and he won the Georgia seat.

But as Perdue seeks reelection, in a contest that will determine which party controls the Senate, he has sought to shift the focus away from such work as he allies himself with President Trump, who has blasted corporate executives who move jobs overseas.

The disconnect between Trump’s rhetoric about returning manufacturing jobs from China and the experience of Perdue was evident at an October rally in Macon with Trump. Perdue did not mention specifics about his career, telling the crowd, “I’m just a dumb business guy from right over that hill.”

 Times Square Crystal Ball Gets Final Test Run Before New Year’s Eve Celebration:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-two.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:30 PM, for 9h 05m 24s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1813, British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Shayna Jacobs and Jonathan O’Connell report N.Y. prosecutor hires forensic accounting experts as Trump criminal probe escalates:

NEW YORK — The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has retained forensic accounting specialists to aid its criminal investigation of President Trump and his business operations, as prosecutors ramp up their scrutiny of his company’s real estate transactions, according to people familiar with the matter.

District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. opened the investigation in 2018 to examine alleged hush-money payments made to two women who, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, claimed to have had affairs with him years earlier. The probe has since expanded, and now includes the Trump Organization’s activities more broadly, said the people familiar with the matter. Vance’s office has suggested in court filings that bank, tax and insurance fraud are areas of exploration.

Vance has contracted with FTI Consulting to look for anomalies among a variety of property deals, and to advise the district attorney on whether the president’s company manipulated the value of certain assets to obtain favorable interest rates and tax breaks, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains highly sensitive. The probe is believed to encompass transactions spanning several years.

 David Corn reports Kelly Loeffler’s Conflict of Interest Is Even Worse Than Reported:

When she entered the Senate in January 2020, she was given a spot on the Agriculture Committee, which oversees government regulators of the Fortune 500 business where she was recently a top officer. The company, Intercontinental Exchange (known as ICE), owns and operates a number of financial and commodity exchanges regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which falls under jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee.

Loeffler’s assignment to the committee seemed a whopping conflict of interest: She still owned between $5 million and $25 million in ICE stock, and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is its CEO. Worse, Loeffler was placed on the committee’s subcommittee on commodities, which has direct oversight of the CFTC. In response to criticism, she left the subcommittee in May but remained a member of the full committee.

Yet one piece of this tale has received little notice. Her conflict of interest was even more pronounced, for while Loeffler was on the commodities subcommittee, the CFTC took several actions that impacted ICE. This means Loeffler was overseeing regulators at the same time they were engaged in activity affecting a company she was intimately tied to as a current shareholder, former executive, and spouse of its CEO.

 David Smith writes Alternative facts, witch-hunt, bigly: the Trump era in 32 words and phrases:

alternative facts

Coined by Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, during a Meet the Press interview in January 2017 to defend press secretary Sean Spicer’s the false assertion that Trump drew the biggest inauguration crowd ever. Together these formed the original sin of the Trump presidency, culminating in his coronavirus and election denialism.

….

globalist

This was the dark side of “America first”. Trump’s defenders claimed he was using the term to condemn globalisation and its devastating effects on American workers. But critics heard a dog whistle for racist, antisemitic and antigovernment conspiracy theorists including the alt-right. George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist, was among the targets of anti-globalist bigotry.

(A lexicon of lies and bigotries.)

  What is ‘Dance Monkey’ and How Did It Take Over the World? 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with snow overnight, and a high of twenty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:29 PM, for 9h 04m 42s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1949, KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Paul Waldman writes Trump is growing smaller before our eyes:

The myth of the stolen election is central to that project, and to the president’s own psyche: It says that the story of 2020 is not that Trump is a failure and a loser, but that he is (as always) a victim, and justice can be obtained by putting him back in his rightful place of power. But as he continues to proclaim the myth, reality might make it less compelling even to those now inclined to believe it.

For the next four years, Biden will be president. It will be his face on the nightly news and his actions on the front page of the newspaper. He will command both attention and power. And Trump? With no ability to make decisions with more practical importance, he might appear smaller than ever by comparison.

The truth is that both of these futures are possible. In one, Trump remains the leader of the opposition and a president-in-exile, his every outburst celebrated by millions of fans and his control of the GOP unchallenged. In the other, he grows smaller and smaller, his miserable complaints about the unfairness of it all only repelling people from him. We don’t know yet which will come to pass, but the second future is obviously far brighter for the rest of us. And it has never looked more likely.

(The nativist man will fade, but nativism will go on. See Man and Movement.)

 Adam Gabbatt writes As the White House changes hands, so will Fox News’ support of the presidency:

When Joe Biden is sworn in as president on 20 January, cable news viewers may witness one of the most dramatic 180-degree turns in history.

After four years of slavishly promoting the president, Fox News is expected to pump on the brakes within seconds of the inauguration ceremony.

All of a sudden, the person in the White House is not a Republican. More than that, the network can no longer rely on the willingness of the president or his aides to call into Fox News any time of the day or night.

The rightwing TV channel, and its big name hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, will spend the next four years as the party of the opposition.

(A network that spent four years justifying the abusive expansion of federal power – outside all law and tradition – will rediscover caution. Situational isn’t a substitute for serious.)

Andrea Salcedo reports Massachusetts GOP leader says he likely got COVID-19 at a White House Hanukkah party: ‘I’m paying the price’:

Earlier this month, Tom Mountain, a Massachusetts Republican Party leader, posed for a maskless photo in front of a silver menorah as dozens of other guests without face coverings mingled nearby at a White House Hanukkah party.

Three days later, the vice chairperson of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee was rushed to the hospital with a severe case of COVID-19 that later left him close to needing a ventilator.

….

“Lets put it this way: when I went down to Washington, D.C. for the White House Hanukkah event, I was perfectly fine,” Mountain, 60, told WJAR. “And three days later after that event, I was in the hospital … ready to be put on a lifesaving ventilator.”

The Rise And Fall of Twinkies:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:29 PM, for 9h 04m 04s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen publishes a paper detailing his discovery of a new type of radiation, which later will be known as x-rays.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Cynthia McFadden and Kenzi Abou-Sabe report Food banks sound alarm on child hunger as Covid crisis drags on:

More than 50 million people living in America, including 17 million children, are likely to experience food insecurity by the end of the year, according to Feeding America, the country’s largest anti-hunger organization. That amounts to 1 in 6 Americans and 1 in 4 children — an increase of nearly 50 percent over last year.

Catherine D’Amato, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank, said that in her 40 years of working in food banks, the need has never been greater.

“I’ve been through plenty of disasters … hurricanes and floods,” D’Amato said, but “we haven’t seen it so pervasive,” with every city, every state, every country involved.

Before the pandemic, the Greater Boston Food Bank was providing about 550 food pantries with about a million pounds of food a week, D’Amato said. Now, deliveries have swelled to 2.5 million pounds of food shipped weekly from its massive and meticulously organized warehouse in South Boston.

One of the areas it serves is Norfolk County, where Weymouth is located. The county has a distinction no one would want: a projected 168 percent rise in child hunger since 2018, according to Feeding America, the biggest increase in the country.

While the pandemic didn’t cause the nation’s hunger problem, it has made things much worse.

Pam Denholm, the executive director of the Weymouth Food Pantry, said the pressure on pantries has greatly intensified since March.

“The demand has increased dramatically,” Denholm said. “All across America, we have these middle-class communities that are being deeply affected.”

 Jamie Fly writes How Biden can undo damage to U.S.-backed news outlets that counter authoritarian propaganda:

After the Cold War, when RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) faced congressional elimination in the 1990s, Joe Biden — then a Democratic senator from Delaware — was instrumental in saving the broadcaster. And he cautioned in a 1993 Senate report that if federally supported networks “become direct agencies of the U.S. Government, they will maintain neither the appearance nor the reality of journalistic independence.”

Now the president-elect will have an opportunity to protect these broadcasters from future attempts to politicize them. His administration should work with Congress on bipartisan reforms to firmly establish how the U.S. government explains its policies to the world and how it bolsters truth in the digital age.

RFE/RL and the other non-federal networks should be granted more independence from the federal government. Their independence and adherence to the truth even when that runs counter to U.S. policy are what attracts the loyalty of audiences and differentiates them from their authoritarian competitors.

The broadcasters must also bolster their relevance by adapting better to the digital age. They should forge partnerships with social media platforms to expand their reach with key audiences. Doing so would help break through the static of 21st-century information overload and counter authoritarian messaging on the platforms.

 2020’s Most Iconic Moments in Photos:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-seven.  Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:28 PM, for 9h 03m 30s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1929, Soviet General Secretary Stalin orders the “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” leading to millions deported or dead. 

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Patricia Cohen reports The Struggle to Mend America’s Rural Roads (‘As supersize vehicles bear heavier loads, maintenance budgets can’t keep up. Meet the Wisconsin farmers paying the price’):

Like hundreds of other small agricultural counties and towns around the country, Trempealeau County in central-west Wisconsin is overwhelmed with aging, damaged roads and not enough money to fix them.

“Our road hasn’t been paved since the ’60s,” said Kellen Nelson, whose family owns Triple Brook Farms on County Road O outside Osseo. “Patching and seal coating is all they’ve ever done.”

The roads look like losers in a barroom brawl. Thick, jagged cracks run down the asphalt like scars, interrupted at points by bruised bumps. In some places, guardrails are tilted off their moorings like a pair of glasses knocked askew.

“It is not real stable — the shoulders are eroding in many places,” Mr. Nelson said. “When you’re going through with an 80,000-pound load of soybeans and meeting cars, that’s dangerous.”

Throughout much of the Midwest and South, the rural transportation system is crumbling. Two-thirds of the nation’s freight emanates from rural areas. Traffic volume has increased. And over the years, tractor-trailers and farm equipment have been supersized, ballooning in length, breadth and weight.

A legally loaded semi-trailer truck can produce 5,000 to 10,000 times the road damage of one car according to some estimates, said Benjamin J. Jordan, director of the Wisconsin Transportation Information Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

 Sarah Ellison asks What happened to Maria Bartiromo?:

Her conviction that the rest of the media is biased against Trump now extends to social media. Like the president, the newswoman herself has seen some of her tweets flagged by Twitter for promoting misinformation — such as the Federalist article she shared the day after the election headlined, “Yes, Democrats Are Trying To Steal The Election in Michigan, Wisconsin, And Pennsylvania,” and her following day’s evidence-free claims of “AZ poll workers forcing voters to use sharpies thereby invalidated ballots” and “4 am dumps” delivering tens of thousands of swing state votes for Biden.

She decried the media’s role in calling the election for Biden. “The media’s role is to report the facts, and I think it’s up to the electors to report on who the president is,” she said on her show long after all the major networks had called the election for Biden but before the electors voted on Dec. 14. Now that that vote has happened, Bartiromo told The Post that she acknowledges Biden as the president-elect. “That said, you still have a sitting president contesting the election, which I will cover as well. I will also ensure to cover any instances of fraud, not just for this election but for future elections.”

She’s going to have to be a bit more careful covering claims of election fraud. Bartiromo was one of several Fox hosts, including Dobbs, who were forced to air a corrective segment on their shows in response to a legal threat sent by voting technology company Smartmatic. Bartiromo was mentioned 46 times in the letter to Fox, the most of any Fox personality, largely for giving so much airtime to Trump allies Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell.

Through a spokesperson, Bartiromo declined to comment further.

Neptune’s ‘dark spots’ spied by Hubble:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:27 PM, for 9h 03m 02s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 88.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1776, at the Battle of Trenton, the Continental Army attacks and successfully defeats a garrison of Hessian forces.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Bill Glauber reports Federal appeals court turns down Donald Trump push to overturn election results in Wisconsin:

The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld a decision reached nearly two weeks ago by U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig in Milwaukee.

In his suit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission and others, Trump had sought to have the Republican-led Legislature, rather than voters, decide how to allocate Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes.

Ludwig — a Trump nominee — concluded Wisconsin officials had followed state laws when they conducted the Nov. 3 election.

In a unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel in Chicago “affirmed” Ludwig’s decision.

“On the merits, the district court was right to enter judgment for the defendants,” the 7th Circuit said. “We reach this conclusion in no small part because of the President’s delay in bringing the challenges to Wisconsin law that provide the foundation for the alleged constitutional violation. Even apart from the delay, the claims fail under the Electors Clause.”

 The Washington Post editorial board writes Trump’s border wall was a complete waste of time and money:

For much of his administration, the construction of hundreds of miles of steel-and-concrete barriers has symbolized futility and waste — a massive, publicly funded undertaking whose payoff in deterring illegal border-crossing was unproven at best, ineffective at worst. Now, as crews dynamite, bulldoze and raze their way through pristine canyons, riverbeds, mountains, deserts and grasslands to gain access to construction sites, Mr.?Trump’s wall has become a symbol of wanton environmental destruction.

President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to halt the wall’s construction immediately upon taking office. That hasn’t stopped or slowed what amounts to a full-court press to complete as much of the wall as possible before Mr. Trump leaves office Jan. 20. However, for every new mile of wall construction, far more damage and degradation is done to the landscape by a dozen or so contractors carving their way through wilderness and wildlife areas with access roads, retaining walls and other eyesores.

The folly of the project is glaring. Even as more miles of wall are completed, the number of unauthorized migrants apprehended after crossing the border has spiked in recent months to the highest level in years. Driven by the ravages of pandemic, hurricanes, economic ruin and violence in Central America and Mexico, migrants keep coming, wall or no wall.

Ed Pilkington writes How real is the threat of prosecution for Donald Trump post-presidency?:

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, is actively investigating Trump’s business dealings. The focus described in court documents is “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization” including possible bank fraud.

A second major investigation by the fearsome federal prosecutors of the southern district of New York has already led to the conviction of Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. He pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations relating to the “hush money” paid to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who alleged an affair with Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

During the course of the prosecution, Cohen implicated a certain “Individual 1” – Trump – as the mastermind behind the felony. Though the investigation was technically closed last year, charges could be revisited once Trump’s effective immunity is lifted.

Men Play Game of Chess in Freezing Canadian Lake: