Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of twenty.  Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:51 PM, for 9h 31m 22s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 28% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, the Union Army achieves its first significant victory at the Battle of Mill Springs.

Recommended for reading in full —

The Washington Post editorial board writes The National Archives was wrong to alter history. Fortunately, it reversed course:

IN AN era of “fake news,” “alternative facts” and other assaults on the very idea of truth, you would expect the National Archives — devoted to the preservation of the nation’s history — to be at the forefront of those pushing back. “The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation’s record keeper,” the government agency proudly announces on its website. How utterly depressing it was, then, to discover on Friday that the Archives had gone into the business of altering history.

And how reassuring to read the Archives’ forthright — and, for Washington, extraordinary — statement on Saturday: “We made a mistake….We have removed the current display….We apologize.”

The Post’s Joe Heim reported Friday that the Archives made numerous alterations to a photograph included in an exhibit dedicated to the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. The photo shows the massively attended Women’s March held in January 2017 to protest President Trump’s inauguration. But Archives curators altered signs being carried by the women to delete references to Mr. Trump — and thereby they seriously distorted the meaning of the event. “A placard that proclaims ‘God Hates Trump’ has ‘Trump’ blotted out so that it reads ‘God Hates,’?” The Post reported. But “God Hates” was not the message of the protester carrying that sign. Another sign that reads “Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women” has the word ‘Trump” blurred out.

In their initial weak defense, Archives officials noted that they had not altered articles they preserve for safekeeping, only a photograph for a temporary exhibit. We did not find that reassuring, as we said in the first published version of this editorial. Photo alteration long has been the preserve of authoritarian governments, most famously Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who erased comrades from historical photographs one by one as he had them executed.

The United States government should never play the same game, even on a small scale. The goal in this case may have been not to irritate the snowflake in chief residing up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Archives. After all, the Women’s March harks back to one of the foundational lies of the Trump presidency, when he falsely insisted, and insisted that his officials likewise falsely insist, that his inauguration crowd was the largest of all time. Mr. Trump’s refusal to back down then set the pattern for his presidency: Lies are acceptable, and evidence can be ignored.

 The Strange History of Soviet X-Ray Records:

At a time when the Soviet government strictly forbade western music from the likes of hip shaker Elvis and jazz great Charlie Parker, people found a creative way around the restriction. They turned x-rays of rib cages, fingers and other body parts into records—yes, actual audio recordings—that they exchanged on the sly. Stephen Coates of London’s Bureau of Lost Culture tells us about the ingenious scheme to create and distribute the bootleg audio recordings.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-five.  Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:50 PM, for 9h 29m 30s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 37.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1919, the Paris Peace Conference opens.

Recommended for reading in full —

Angela Stent and Adrianna Pita ask What does Putin’s government shakeup mean for his role in Russia?

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposed sweeping constitutional changes have stirred speculation about his plans to maintain power after his term of office expires in 2024. Russia expert Angela Stent, author of “Putin’s World,” interprets Putin’s latest moves, the resignation of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and the rest of the current government, and what to watch for during the next few months.

Masha Gessen writes of The Willful Ambiguity of Putin’s Latest Power Grab:

What Putin seems to be doing now is preëmpting the possibility of a challenge. He is starting early, four years before the end of his term. And he seems to be creating several avenues for staying in power. His preferred option is probably to remain President. When he was first elected, in 2000, the Constitution set a limit of “two four-year terms served consecutively” for the Presidency. Putin chose to interpret this admittedly ambiguous provision to mean “no more than two terms at a time,” and exited the office in 2008, by temporarily trading places with his protégé Medvedev, who moved from the Prime Minister’s chair to the Presidency. While Medvedev was President, he initiated an amendment to the Constitution that extended the Presidential term to six years, so by the time Putin returned to the office, in 2012, he could plan on twelve more years.

Putin’s address on Wednesday included an indecipherable passage:

I know that people are discussing the constitutional provision under which one person cannot hold the post of the President of the Russian Federation for more than two successive terms. I do not regard this as a matter of principle, but I nevertheless support and share this view.

Bizarrely, the Kremlin’s official translation of the speech omitted the words “more than,” changing the meaning of the passage entirely—if the passage can indeed be said to have meaning. What view does Putin share? The view that one person should not hold the office for more than two consecutive terms? Or the view that this provision should be revisited? Considering that an entire army of Kremlin watchers was listening for what Putin would say about term limits, not even the Kremlin’s speechwriters are so incompetent as to draft such an accidentally ambiguous passage. This message is meant to be mixed.

Julia Davis writes Did Russian Prime Minister Medvedev Drop a Grim Hint About Putin’s Latest Power Grab?:

At a celebration of the Russian Orthodox New Year on Tuesday, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev chose a grim message, the sarcasm of which left his audience on edge. But, then, Medvedev probably knew what Wednesday would bring—the resignation of his entire government—and the audience did not.

On national television, the prime minister read at length from Anton Chekhov’s story “A Night in the Cemetery,” which suggests with ironic wit that celebrating the coming of the New Year is a foolish pursuit, unworthy of a properly functioning mind, since “every coming year is as bad as the previous one,” and the newest year is bound to be even worse.

Saturn-sized world orbiting 2 stars found using NASA TESS:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with snow in the afternoon, and a high of twenty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:48 PM, for 9h 27m 41s of daytime.  The moon is in its third-quarter with 50% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1998, Matt Drudge breaks the news of the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky affair on his Drudge Report website.

Recommended for reading in full —

Paul Fanlund writes Can any of the Democratic candidates inspire ‘low-information’ voters as Obama did?:

That same evening in Milwaukee, Donald Trump was doing what he always does — spouting hate, telling lies — and simply being bizarre. “Trump went on another rambling rant about ‘worthless’ new dishwashers, weak showers, and lightbulbs that make you ‘look orange’ at a Milwaukee rally,” said the Business Insider headline.

Two asides. One, does he really think it’s lightbulbs that make him look orange?

Two, I recall covering President Ronald Reagan’s speech many years ago in the same Milwaukee arena. Reagan was relentlessly sunny, all optimism and opportunity. Trump has moved the GOP 180 degrees — it’s all about anger, illusory threats and grievances.

It was another in a seemingly endless string of rallies in which Trump surrounds himself with sycophants. Borrowing a passage from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Trump’s was a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Sadly, the Democratic debate also signified little. It was another tedious, mixed-decision event that probably attracted the already decided and few others. I’d imagine many here were tuned instead to Badgers basketball as they beat Maryland on a last-second shot.

Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Vanessa Williams, Dan Balz, and Scott Clement report Black Americans deeply pessimistic about country under Trump, whom more than 8 in 10 describe as ‘a racist,’ Post-Ipsos poll finds:

President Trump made a stark appeal to black Americans during the 2016 election when he asked, “What have you got to lose?” Three years later, black Americans have rendered their verdict on his presidency with a deeply pessimistic assessment of their place in the United States under a leader seen by an overwhelming majority as racist.

The findings come from a Washington Post-Ipsos poll of African Americans nationwide, which reveals fears about whether their children will have a fair shot to succeed and a belief that white Americans don’t fully appreciate the discrimination that black people experience.

While personally optimistic about their own lives, black Americans today offer a bleaker view about their community as a whole. They also express determination to try to limit Trump to a single term in office.

More than 8 in 10 black Americans say they believe Trump is a racist and that he has made racism a bigger problem in the country. Nine in 10 disapprove of his job performance overall.

The pessimism goes well beyond assessments of the president. A 65 percent majority of African Americans say it is a “bad time” to be a black person in America. That view is widely shared by clear majorities of black adults across income, generational and political lines. By contrast, 77 percent of black Americans say it is a “good time” to be a white person, with a wide majority saying white people don’t understand the discrimination faced by black Americans.

(These poll respondents are right about Trump, and right in their dedication to cast him into a political outer darkness.)

A Secret Look Inside a Chinese Labor Camp:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny, with a high of sixteen.  Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:47 PM, for 9h 25m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 61.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1945, facing defeat on all fronts, Hitler moves into his underground Fuhrerbunker located near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

Recommended for reading in full —

Bruce Murphy writes Why a Voter Purge Is So Critical (‘The goal is to reelect Trump. Even if that means purging some Republican voters, too’):

Nationally and in Wisconsin, purging the voting list has been proven a great way to remove Democratic-leaning voters. “The number of purged voters has been especially dramatic in Milwaukee and Dane counties, the state’s two heaviest Democratic strongholds, where nearly one in four voters have been removed from the rolls,” the CMD found. “Milwaukee County has lost 150,954 voters since the end of 2016, a 26% decrease; Dane County has lost 88,254, a 23% drop.”

Yes, the system drops some voters in Republican areas, but GOP strategists are willing to disenfranchise some of their likely voters in return for wiping out much larger numbers of Democratic voters. Moreover, Milwaukee and Dane County have by far the most outmanned election polls, where the confusion caused by purged voters could cause the most problems. “It is very likely that thousands of voters will show up to vote in November only to find that they are no longer registered,” said CMD’s David Armiak. “Fortunately, Wisconsin allows election day registration, but this could lead to confusion and delays during what is expected to be a high turnout election.”

Justin Clark, a senior political adviser and senior counsel to Trump’s reelection campaign, recently told told influential Republicans in Wisconsin that the party has “traditionally” relied on voter suppression to compete in battleground states. Esenberg and his ever-growing staff of Harvard degree lawyers are doing their best to assure that happens.

And never has that strategy made more sense than for a president who has never had the approval of a majority of the voters. Republicans need to find every way possible to suppress or discourage voting by Democrats and independents in the 2020 election or President Trump won’t be reelected. And no state is more critical to that effort. The vote in Wisconsin, many experts believe, could decide the election, and even the purging of a small percent of the state’s voters could do the trick. Trump won this state in 2016 by just 22,748 out of about 2.9 million cast.

To Jacobs, the giveaway is that [Rick] Esenberg and others pushing to purge the voter lists only want efforts “to kick voters off the rolls,” not to add any voters who were mistakenly removed. “That tells you what this is all about.”

 Riley Vetterkind reports Incumbent Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly outraises rivals as he gets nod from Donald Trump:

Conservative-backed Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly raised more than double the amount of liberal-backed opponent Jill Karofsky in the last half of 2019, and he garnered President Donald Trump’s endorsement at a rally Tuesday evening.

As the state nears the Feb. 18 primary, preliminary reports show Kelly raised $556,184, compared with $227,553 for Karofsky, a Dane County Circuit Court judge. The other liberal-supported candidate in the race, Marquette Law School professor Ed Fallone, hasn’t yet provided detailed fundraising figures for the last half of the year, but his campaign says he raised $150,000 during all of 2019.

How Can We Find Hidden Planets?:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with a high of thirty-six.  Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:46 PM, for 9h 24m 12s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 72.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1967, the Packers win the first Super Bowl (over Chiefs, 35-10).

Recommended for reading in full —

Neal Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer write Lev Parnas and Rudy Giuliani have demolished Trump’s claims of innocence:

Americans who have been wondering why President Trump has taken the extraordinary step of trying to block every document from being released to Congress in his impeachment inquiry need wonder no longer. The new documents released Tuesday evening by the House Intelligence Committee were devastating to Trump’s continuing — if shifting — defense of his Ukraine extortion scandal, just days before his impeachment trial is likely to begin in the Senate. These new documents demolish at least three key defenses to which Trump and his allies have been clinging: that he was really fighting corruption when he pressured Ukraine on matters related to the Biden family; that Hunter Biden should be called as a witness at the Senate impeachment trial; and that there’s no need for a real, honest-to-goodness trial in the Senate.

….

The documents released Tuesday show what Trump has been so afraid of. For starters, they prove that Trump’s already-eyebrow-raising claim to have been fighting corruption in Ukraine was bogus. Notes taken by an associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, Lev Parnas — now facing federal criminal charges — show what his and Giuliani’s mission was when they got in touch with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “get Zalensky to Announce that the Biden case will Be Investigated.” Look hard at the real goal here: not to prompt an investigation of Hunter Biden, but to score an announcement of a Biden investigation. Pursuing an announcement, rather than an investigation, makes sense only if Trump’s objective was to dirty the reputation of a leading political rival, Joe Biden.

….

Trump’s push had nothing to do with what Biden did or didn’t do, and everything to do with whether Trump could extort and bully the Ukrainian leadership into casting aspersions on Biden regardless of what he did or didn’t do. That leaves Biden with nothing of relevance to say at a Senate impeachment trial — the final word on Trump’s preposterous effort to refocus scrutiny on the Biden family. That was, of course, the very push that got Trump into this mess in the first place, so to allow him to succeed now through the mechanism of impeachment would be irony bordering on tragedy.

Will Sommer and Betsy Swan report Meet the Trump Donor Who Allegedly Stalked America’s Ambassador in Ukraine:

Before Tuesday, he was best known as a little-known, scandal-scarred Republican congressional candidate who tweeted an obscene joke at Kamala Harris. But new documents from the House Intelligence Committee have put a completely different kind of spotlight on Robert F. Hyde, the Trump donor who appears to have tracked U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s movements in Ukraine.

In WhatsApp messages exchanged in March 2019 with Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who provided the committee with the files, Hyde and Parnas discussed Yovanovitch’s location. Hyde, a retired Marine, appeared to have associates in Ukraine monitoring her.

….

“They will let me know when she’s on the move… They are willing to help if you/we would like a price.”

“Guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money… what I was told,” Hyde wrote in another message. Parnas responded: “LOL.”

Riding an “Ad Astra” Moon Buggy:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with a high of thirty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:45 PM, for 9h 22m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 82.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM. 

On this day in 1784, United States Congress of the Confederation ratifies the Treaty of Paris.

Recommended for reading in full —

David J. Lynch reports Trump’s trade deal with China won’t give many U.S. companies relief, as most tariffs will remain:

Nearly two-thirds of everything Americans buy from China will face tariffs, compared with less than 1 percent before the president began his anti-China campaign, according to an analysis.

Riccardo Torres reports Millions paid to advisers on Foxconn project:

Some consulting firms have already received thousands — and in one case, millions —of dollars working on the project for the state, Racine County and Mount Pleasant.

In total, among the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., Racine County and the Village of Mount Pleasant, consultants and other firms have been paid more than $5.3 million from 2017 to October 2019.

Mount Pleasant has paid out the most, more than $3.6 million during that time period. Much of that money is related to work done to secure the land and infrastructure needed for the project.

….

According to documents obtained through open-records requests, in 2017 Kapur and Associates received $86,700 from Mount Pleasant. In 2018, it received $240,000; in 2019, through October, the firm had received $208,000.

That is a total of $534,700 from Mount Pleasant, and the total is growing.

….

Besides Kapur and Associates, Mount Pleasant has paid the law firm of von Briesen and Roper, S.C., $2.26 million in total since 2017. Alan Marcuvitz, attorney with von Briesen, has been working with the village on land acquisition for the village and other legal matters with Foxconn.

Mueller Communications LLC, communication consultant for the village on Foxconn, has received more than $684,000 since 2017.

Ehlers, Inc., financial adviser to the village on Foxconn, has received more than $114,000 from the village since 2017.

Since 2017, the county has paid Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren, S.C., more than $575,000 for legal services; PFM received more than $259,000 for financial services; Quarles and Brady, LLP, received more than $138,000 for legal services; and Moody’s Corp., received $18,500 for financial services.

The county also paid more than $545,000 toward an underwriter discount related to bonding the county did on the project.

Since 2017, the state has paid Foley and Lardner, LLP, more than $177,000 for legal services; Baker, Tilly, Vircho, Krause, LLP received $16,500 for “third-party analysis;” and Display Supply Chain Consultants, LLC received $2,500 for a “display industry tutorial.”

Corrine Hess reports Foxconn Promised Wisconsin ‘Innovation Centers,’ But Hasn’t Yet Delivered:

Foxconn bought buildings in the cities’ downtowns, promising to employ hundreds of workers at each site. The company said it would recruit from nearby colleges.

Two years later, nothing has opened. And none of the 1,200 jobs have been filled.

The innovation centers themselves were vaguely explained as a place to foster entrepreneurship.

Matt Jewell, an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, said he hoped his students could work at Foxconn. But he’s unclear what the company is doing.

“As a general term, innovation center doesn’t say anything specific to us, so we were from the start trying to understand what they meant by that,” Jewell said.

(Emphasis added.)

Who Invented JELLO?: