Good morning.

The end of the work week in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seven. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:37 PM, for 9h 12m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1941, Pres. Roosevelt presents his Four Freedoms speech to Congress. On this day in 1759, George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis.

Recommended for reading in full —

NBC News reports Inside the Russian Hacking Report That President Obama Received Thursday:

Adam Entous and Greg Miller report that U.S. intercepts capture senior Russian officials celebrating Trump win: “Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome. The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.”

Amber Phillips offers Six big takeaways from the extraordinary congressional hearing [yesterday] on Russian hacking: “2. Russia’s leaders authorized some of the hacking. The three intelligence officers [Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., Adm. Mike Rogers, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Marcel J. Lettre II] released a statement before the hearing. One key line in it read that only “Russia’s senior-most officials” could have authorized the hacking of the Democratic Party’s emails. The leaks arguably had an impact on Democrats at a critical moment in their campaign: You’ll recall that some of those emails were leaked on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in the summer and resulted in the resignation of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. This assertion that Russia’s top leaders signed off on this directly flies in the face of Trump’s insistence on repeatedly giving Russian President Vladimir Putin the benefit of the doubt. Shortly before the new year, Trump praised Putin for not retaliating to President Obama’s sanctions on Russia for the hacking.”

Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto and Pamela Brown report on the Intel report says US identifies go-betweens who gave emails to WikiLeaks: “Washington (CNN)- US intelligence has identified the go-betweens the Russians used to provide stolen emails to WikiLeaks, according to US officials familiar with the classified intelligence report that was presented to President Barack Obama on Thursday. In a Fox News interview earlier this week, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange denied that Russia was the source of leaked Democratic emails that roiled the 2016 election to the detriment of President-elect Donald Trump’s rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton.”

Meanwhile, along Hübschhorn East ridge, Simplon pass, Switzerland —

Good morning.

Whitewater’s Thursday will be partly cloudy with a high of ten degrees. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:36 PM, for 9h 11m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 46.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Birge Fountain Committee meets at 5:30 PM, her Landmarks Commission at 6 PM, and the Fire Department will hold a business meeting at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1925, Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes governor of Wyoming, and in doing so becomes the first female governor in U.S. history. On this day in 1855, King Camp Gillette, who developed a a safety razor bearing his name, is born in Fond du Lac.

Recommended for reading in full —

Bruce Vielmetti reports that Lawyer regulators charge retired Kenosha County DA: “Recently retired Kenosha County District Attorney Robert Zapf has been charged with ethics violations for his handling of a homicide prosecution in which a former police officer admitted to planting evidence. A complaint filed Dec. 23 by the Office of Lawyer Regulation accuses Zapf of three counts or professional misconduct related to the 2015 prosecution of two men involved in a 2014 shooting death.  It comes 16 months after a Kenosha activist and two lawyers filed their own complaints with OLR [Office of Lawyer Regulation] over the case. “It’s not how I was hoping to start my retirement,” Zapf said when reached at his home Wednesday.

Despite Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s declaration that a water contamination crisis is over, residents are Still Living with Bottled Water in Flint:

Amanda Erickson writes of How the USSR’s effort to destroy Islam created a generation of radicals: “In 1929, Soviet leader Mikhail Kalinin laid out his vision for Central Asia: “teaching the people of the Kirgiz Steppe, the small Uzbek cotton grower, and the Turkmenian gardener the ideals of the Leningrad worker.” It was a tall order, especially when it came to religion. About 90 percent of the population there was Muslim, but atheism was the state religion of the USSR. So in the early 1920s, the Soviet government effectively banned Islam in Central Asia. Books written in Arabic were burned, and Muslims weren’t allowed to hold office. Koranic tribunals and schools were shuttered, and conducting Muslim rituals became almost impossible. In 1912, there were about 26,000 mosques in Central Asia. By 1941, there were just 1,000. Rather than stamp out Islam, though, efforts to stifle Islam only radicalized believers. It’s a trend that’s played out again and again over the past century, and one that could have dire consequences in the war on terror. Today, Central Asian Muslims are radicalizing at alarming rates. Thousands have flocked to the Islamic State, and Turkish media reports suggest that the suspect who killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub last week was an ethnic Uighur from Kyrgyzstan.”

Jon Marcus reports on the predictable failure of tuition (or other) price controls, in How University Costs Keep Rising Despite Tuition Freezes: “DAYTON, Ohio—At a time when public anger is laser-focused on tuition charges that are rising three times faster than inflation, something less well understood has actually been largely responsible for pushing up the cost of college: fees. Think tuition is high? Now add fees for student activities, fees for athletics, fees for building maintenance, fees for libraries—even fees for graduation, the bills for which often arrive just as students and their families thought they were finally done paying for their higher education. All are frustratingly piled on top of a long list of expenses beyond tuition that many people never plan for or expect, or that can’t be covered by financial aid—sometimes forcing them to take out more and more loans, or quit college altogether.”

Sometimes one encounters singing ice, with a sci-fi vibe:

Good morning.

Here in Whitewater we’ll have a mostly sunny day with a high of thirteen. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:35 PM, for 9h 09m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 35.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1896, Utah becomes America’s forty-fifth state. On this day in 1923, Milton College’s president, A.E. Whitford, bans dancing by students in off-campus, semi-public places such as confectionery stores.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Efforts to change ethics rules for the House of Representatives as the House Fires at Ethics and Shoots Self: “Even before the new Congress was sworn in on Tuesday, House Republicans made it clear that they had no real intention of draining the Washington swamp. They voted in secret on Monday to gut the one quasi-independent office that investigates House ethics. President-elect Donald Trump, who ran on a promise to drain the swamp, didn’t demand that they stop — he merely asked them to wait awhile. And that they did. Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia emerged as an architect of the G.O.P. miasmic agenda with his attack on the Office of Congressional Ethics. A rules change would have prevented the office, known as the O.C.E., from investigating potentially criminal allegations, allowed lawmakers on the House Ethics Committee to shut down any O.C.E. investigation and, for good measure, gagged the office’s staff members in their dealings with the news media. When the public learned about this plan, outraged constituents deluged House members with phone calls.”

Erin Richards reports that Parent demand drives growth in Montessori programs: “Montessori is an educational approach that features multi-age classrooms grouped into clusters of three grades, starting with 3-year-olds. Self-directed activity, hands-on learning, collaborative activities and tactile objects for exploration are key features of Montessori classrooms. Students generally have the same teacher for three years. Montessori has long been associated with private schools, but public options are proliferating. Whitescarver said there are about 520 public Montessori schools nationwide. Traction has picked up in places like Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland and Denver.”

Garry Kasparov writes that The U.S. doesn’t have a problem with Russia. It has a problem with Vladimir Putin: “When the entire U.S. intelligence community united to accuse Russia of tampering in the 2016 presidential election, it seemed redundant to later add that Vladimir Putin was directly involved. Nothing significant happens in Russia, and no action is taken by Russia, without the knowledge of the man who has held total power there for 17 years, first as president and later as unchallenged dictator. Having steadily eliminated every form of real political and social opposition in Russia, Putin turned his attacks on the foreign powers that could — should they decide to act — weaken his grip. The United States, in other words, doesn’t have a problem with Russia — it has a problem with Putin.”

Jay Rosen writes of Prospects for the American press under Trump, part two (he published part one on 12.28.16): “Being willing to start over is good, too. If I were running a big national desk in DC, I would try to zero-base the beat structure. Meaning: if you had no existing beats for covering national affairs in Donald Trump’s America, if you had to create them all from scratch, what would that system look like? Is that going to fix what’s broken in political journalism? Nope. But trying it might reveal possibilities that were harder to see before. So let me be clear about this: I don’t have solutions to what I described in part one. And I’m not saying my suggestions are equal to the task. They are not. Rather, this is what I can think of. I have a series of small ideas that might be worth trying and a larger one to spell out. I wish had better answers for you….”

Chas Pope recorded a time-lapse video of smog in Beijing on 1.1.17. It’s quite something:

 

Bank of AQI400+ smog rolling into Beijing just now – within 20 minutes https://t.co/jbk3byT37C #beijing #airpocalypse #smog pic.twitter.com/Sf5Zom6F9M

— Chas Pope (@china_chas) January 2, 2017

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be overcast, with an even chance of rain and a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:34 PM, for 9h 08m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 25.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Whitewater’s Fire Department has a scheduled business meeting at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1777, the Continental Army defeats the British at the Battle of Princeton. On this day in 1892, J.R.R. Tolkien is born.

Recommended for reading in full —

Fredrecka Schouten reports that House Republicans move to slash powers of ethics watchdog: “WASHINGTON – One day before the new Congress convenes, House Republicans voted Monday night to rein in an independent ethics office that investigates potential wrongdoing by lawmakers. The move guts a major piece of an ethics overhaul Congress undertook after several high-profile scandals sent lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others to federal prison. The independent Office of Congressional Ethics, launched in 2008 to address concerns that the lawmaker-run House Ethics Committee failed to adequately police members of Congress, now would be subject to oversight by the House Ethics Committee, under the proposed rules package adopted by Republican lawmakers. The new rules also would bar investigators from reviewing anonymous complaints against lawmakers.”

Peter Baker reports that Nixon Tried to Spoil Johnson’s Vietnam Peace Talks in ’68, Notes Show: “Richard M. Nixon told an aide that they should find a way to secretly “monkey wrench” peace talks in Vietnam in the waning days of the 1968 campaign for fear that progress toward ending the war would hurt his chances for the presidency, according to newly discovered notes….The Nixon campaign’s clandestine effort to thwart President Lyndon B. Johnson’s peace initiative that fall has long been a source of controversy and scholarship. Ample evidence has emerged documenting the involvement of Nixon’s campaign. But Mr. Haldeman’s notes appear to confirm longstanding suspicions that Nixon himself was directly involved, despite his later denials.”

Slawomir Sierakowski describes, from the recent experience of Poland, The Five Lessons of Populist Rule: “The restoration of “order.” Independent institutions are the most important enemy of populism. Populist leaders are control freaks. For populists, it is liberal democracy that leads to chaos, which must be “put in order” by a “responsible government.” Media pluralism leads to informational chaos. An independent judiciary means legal chaos. Independent public administration creates institutional chaos. And a robust civil society is a recipe for chronic bickering and conflict. But populists believe that such chaos does not emerge by itself. It is the work of perfidious foreign powers and their domestic puppets. To “make Poland great again,” the nation’s heroes must defeat its traitors, who are not equal contenders for power. Populist leaders are thus obliged to limit their opponents’ rights. Indeed, their political ideal is not order, but rather the subordination of all independent bases of power that could challenge them: courts, media, business, cultural institutions, NGOs, and so forth.”

George Friedman shows 5 maps that explain China’s strategy: “The sharp decline in Chinese stock markets on Monday is a reminder of two things. The first is the continued fragility of the Chinese market. The second is that any economic dysfunction has political implications, both in Chinese domestic and foreign policy. This, in turn, will affect Chinese economic performance. It is essential, therefore, to understand Chinese national strategy. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been portrayed as an increasingly aggressive country prepared to challenge the United States. At the same time, aside from relatively minor forays into the South and East China Seas, China has avoided significant involvement in the troubles roiling in the rest of Eurasia. There is a gap between what is generally expected of China and what China actually does. To understand what China’s actual national strategy is, it is helpful to follow the logic inherent in the following five maps….”

What’s Kimchi? It’s A Story of Love and Patience:

Kimchi: A Story of Love and Patience from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

Good morning.

Monday will see showers in Whitewater, with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:33 PM, for 9h 07m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1492, the Nasrid dynasty’s Emirate of Granada surrenders to Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, ending all Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula. On this day in 1918, the Wisconsin 127th and 128th Infantries depart for France from their training facility at Camp Arthur in Waco, Texas.

Recommended for reading in full —

Katie Sullivan writes that Morning Joe Hosts, After Carrying Water For Trump And Meeting Him Privately, Aghast That Anyone Questions Their Impartiality: “Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, co-hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, have met privately with Donald Trump while Scarborough is reportedly advising the president-elect, yet both still reject media criticism of their overly positive coverage of the former reality show celebrity. On the November 29 edition of Morning Joe alone, the hosts carried water for President-elect Trump on five separate topics, including criticizing journalists for scrutinizing his extensive conflicts of interest and reporting on Pro-Trump ‘fake news.’ ”

Brooke Seipel reports on Trump’s solution to cyberattacks: Send info via courier: “President-elect Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday that messages “should be sent via courier like in the old days” to ensure security. “It’s very important, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old fashioned way because I’ll tell you what, no computer is safe,” Trump responded when asked about the importance of cybersecurity, according to pool reporters. “I don’t care what they say, no computer is safe. I have a boy who’s 10 years old, he can do anything with a computer. You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier,” Trump reiterated.”

Kevin Sack and Alan Blinder report that convicted mass-murderer Dylann Roof Himself Rejects Best Defense Against Execution: “I want state that I am morally opposed to psychology,” wrote the young white supremacist who would murder nine black worshipers at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., in June 2015. “It is a Jewish invention, and does nothing but invent diseases and tell people they have problems when they dont [sic].” Mr. Roof, who plans to represent himself when the penalty phase of his federal capital trial begins on Tuesday, apparently is devoted enough to that proposition (or delusion, as some maintain) to stake his life on it. Although a defense based on his psychological capacity might be his best opportunity to avoid execution, he seems steadfastly committed to preventing any public examination of his mental state or background.”

Eliyahu Kamisher reports that Police due to question Netanyahu today in alleged corruption case: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to be questioned under caution at his residence in Jerusalem today by police regarding the receipt of illegal gifts.  On Monday morning, the Prime Minister’s Residence was closed off and a black veil erected to keep out the media’s eyes – police investigators have not yet arrived to the premier’s home….This comes as reports surfaced over the weekend that World Jewish Congress President and long-time ally Ronald Lauder told police that he did give Netanyahu and his son Yair gifts, including pricey suits. The evidence provided by Lauder supposedly provided impetus to interrogate Netanyahu.”

What’s up for January 2017?  Here’s a preview of the night’s sky —

Good morning and Happy New Year.

The new year begins in Whitewater with partly sunny skies and a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:32 PM, for 9h 06m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}fifty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1808, the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807) takes effect. On this day in 1863, Pres. Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.

Recommended for reading in full —

John Gurda writes of Making America hate again? It’s a very old story: “Time after time, and without surrendering our national security, Americans of longer tenure have put hatred aside and allowed newcomers to find their way. We have done so grudgingly, more often than not, and rarely without conflict, but the result is a society richer for the presence of all of us. The alternative is not just impoverishing but chilling. What if we really were able to shut our doors and close our windows? In the 1850s, during an especially virulent outbreak of nativism, the aptly named Know Nothing Party rose to prominence as one of the first groups pledged to “keep America American.” Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, expressed grave misgivings in an 1855 letter to a friend. His words sound eerily familiar in 2017, as we prepare to inaugurate a president who openly admires Vladimir Putin. “Our progress in degeneracy,” Lincoln wrote, “appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

In the defense blog War on the Rocks, Andrew Weisburd, Clint Watts, and JM Berger write of Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy: “Russia’s honeypots, hecklers, and hackers have run amok for at least two years, achieving unprecedented success in poisoning America’s body politic and creating deep dissent, including a rise in violent extremist activity and visibility. Posting hundreds of times a day on social media, thousands of Russian bots and human influence operators pump massive amounts of disinformation and harassment into public discourse. This “computational propaganda,” a term coined by Philip Howard, has the cumulative effect of creating Clayton A. Davis at Indiana University calls a “majority illusion, where many people appear to believe something ….which makes that thing more credible.” The net result is an American information environment where citizens and even subject-matter experts are hard-pressed to distinguish fact from fiction. They are unsure who to trust and thus more willing to believe anything that supports their personal biases and preferences.”

Eli Saslow describes The white flight of Derek Black: “Every day since then [an argument with white nationalist relatives], Derek had been working to put distance between himself and his past. He was still living across the country after finishing his master’s degree, and he was starting to learn Arabic to be able to study the history of early Islam. He hadn’t spoken to anyone in white nationalism since his defection, aside from occasional calls home to his parents. Instead, he’d spent his time catching up on aspects of pop culture he’d once been taught to discredit: liberal newspaper columns, rap music and Hollywood movies. He’d come to admire President Obama. He decided to trust the U.S. government. He started drinking tap water. He had taken budget trips to Barcelona, Paris, Dublin, Nicaragua and Morocco, immersing himself in as many cultures as he could.”

Amy Wang reports that Anthony Bourdain bashes fellow ‘privileged Eastern liberals’ for making Trump win possible: “The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now,” Bourdain told Reason [Magazine]….Bourdain has made, well, no reservations about his disdain for Trump — or for those who choose to do business with him. In a recent interview with Eater, Bourdain said he had “utter and complete contempt” for restaurateur Alessandro Borgognone, who announced in November he would open a sushi restaurant at Trump’s hotel in Washington. “I will never eat in his restaurant,” Bourdain declared in that interview. He expressed similar feelings about chef David Burke, who said he would take over another space at the same hotel after José Andrés pulled out. “Burke’s a steaming loaf of s—, as far as I’m concerned, and feel free to quote me,” Bourdain told Eater.”

Let’s have something animated to begin the new year, from Yulia Mikushina —

new year 2017 ( sand animation) from Yulia Mikushina on Vimeo.