Good morning.

Here in Whitewater we’ve partly cloudy skies and a high of minus one ahead for Sunday. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:23 PM, for 9h 01m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, slavery ends in the United States as the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed by the states on December 6th, goes into in effect after Sec. of State Seward’s certification. (“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”)  On this day in 1950, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin makes an unsuccessful bid to be the site of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Worth reading in full —

John Schmid reports that, in a troubled area, a Faith-based pay-what-you-can cafe opens in Sherman Park: “The Tricklebee Cafe, an elegant pay-what-you-can restaurant at 4424 W. North Ave., held its grand opening this week. In a community with an abundance of empty storefronts, the faith-based nonprofit favors vegetarian fare and furnished itself with the pews, pulpit and hymnal board of a former church in northern Wisconsin. “We will never turn anyone away if they don’t have the means to pay,” said the Rev. Christie Melby-Gibbons, an ordained pastor of the Moravian Church, a Protestant denomination. Nor will the Tricklebee turn away patrons who feel philanthropic enough to pay above and beyond the suggested per-meal donation of $5.69-$6.46, a range calculated to cover the cost of procuring locally grown organic food, utilities, rent and a “living wage” for the paid staff. “If people want to ‘pay it forward,’ we gracefully accept that, too,” Melby-Gibbons said. The cafe is open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. It launched without fanfare in time for Thanksgiving and used the past month to develop a daily operating rhythm for the kitchen that begins with early morning baking. It reserved its formal inaugural opening for this week.”

Although some Britons worry that Brexit will harm their economy, at least one has found work, as Mike McIntire describes How a Putin Fan Overseas Pushed Pro-Trump Propaganda to Americans: “The Patriot News Agency website popped up in July, soon after it became clear that Donald J. Trump would win the Republican presidential nomination, bearing a logo of a red, white and blue eagle and the motto “Built by patriots, for patriots.” Patriot News — whose postings were viewed and shared tens of thousands of times in the United States — is among a constellation of websites run out of the United Kingdom that are linked to James Dowson, a far-right political activist who advocated Britain’s exit from the European Union and is a fan of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. A vocal proponent of Christian nationalist, anti-immigrant movements in Europe, Mr. Dowson, 52, has spoken at a conference of far-right leaders in Russia and makes no secret of his hope that Mr. Trump will usher in an era of rapprochement with Mr. Putin.”

(There’s limitless audacity in a Briton calling his site a ‘patriot news network.’)

Those who’ve for years argued a so-called ‘states’ rights’ case might want to think about what it means when huge and powerful California takes up that position against a Trump Administration. James Fallows annotates Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent speech to  the American Geophysical Union:

“From 4:30 to 5:15 [in the video], Brown begins one of his “we’re ready to fight” riffs. The speech as a whole is unpolished, but among its charms is Brown’s ability to seem self-aware and even self-mocking. An example is in this passage: First he says that Big Tobacco was brought down by a combination of scientists and lawyers. Then, “And in California, we’ve got plenty of lawyers! … We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers, and we’re ready to fight!”

At 5:30, he introduces the “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Brown? You’re not a country” argument, about the way California has used its technical advances and sheer scale to set national and even international environmental standards. “We have a lot of firepower! We’ve got the scientists. We’ve got the universities. We have the national labs. We have a lot of political clout and sophistication for the battle. And we will persevere!”

So many are Trump’s conflicts of interest that one has trouble keeping track. Jeremy Venook provides Donald Trump’s Conflicts of Interest: A Crib Sheet: “legality does not imply propriety. Unless Trump acts to put appropriate distance between himself and his business ventures, these questions are likely to continue throughout his time in the Oval Office. Below is an attempt to catalogue the more clear-cut examples of conflicts of interest that have emerged so far; the most recent entries appear at the top.

• Those Certificates of Divestiture
• That Carrier Deal
• That Blind-Trust Issue
• Those Fannie and Freddie Investments
• That Phone Call With Taiwan
• That Deutsche Bank Debt
• That Secret Service Detail
• That Property in Georgia (the Country)
• That Phone Call With Erdogan
• That Las Vegas Labor Dispute
• That Hotel in Washington, D.C.
• That Argentinian Office Building
• Those Companies in Saudi Arabia
• That British Wind Farm
• Those Indian Business Partners
• That Envoy From the Philippines“

Courtesy of the European Space Agency, one sees how beautiful Mars is —

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see snowfall throughout the day, with a high of twenty-two and a few inches of accumulation.  Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 01m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 83.4% of her visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful powered airplane flight, near Kitty Hawk, N.C.  Demonstrations of their design in France five years later won over doubters: “Facing much skepticism in the French aeronautical community and outright scorn by some newspapers that called him a “bluffeur”, Wilbur began official public demonstrations on August 8, 1908 at the Hunaudières horse racing track near the town of Le Mans, France. His first flight lasted only one minute 45 seconds, but his ability to effortlessly make banking turns and fly a circle amazed and stunned onlookers, including several pioneer French aviators, among them Louis Blériot. In the following days, Wilbur made a series of technically challenging flights, including figure-eights, demonstrating his skills as a pilot and the capability of his flying machine, which far surpassed those of all other pioneering aircraft and pilots of the day.^[95][96]

The French public was thrilled by Wilbur’s feats and flocked to the field by the thousands, and the Wright brothers instantly became world-famous. Former doubters issued apologies and effusive praise. L’Aérophile editor Georges Besançon wrote that the flights “have completely dissipated all doubts. Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question, today, the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly …”^[97] Leading French aviation promoter Ernest Archdeacon wrote, “For a long time, the Wright brothers have been accused in Europe of bluff … They are today hallowed in France, and I feel an intense pleasure … to make amends.”^[98]“

Worth reading in full —

Chelsey Lewis offers 100 things to do in Wisconsin this winter: “The weather outside is frightful, and the fire may be delightful, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place to go. Beat cabin fever with these 100 things to do across Wisconsin this winter.” (Her list starts strong, as numbers 1, 2, and 3 are enticing.)

Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima report that the FBI backs CIA view that Russia intervened to help Trump win election: “FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to U.S. officials. Comey’s support for the CIA’s conclusion — and officials say that he never changed his position — suggests that the leaders of the three agencies are in agreement on Russian intentions, contrary to suggestions by some lawmakers that the FBI disagreed with the CIA. “Earlier this week, I met separately with (Director) FBI James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,” CIA Director John Brennan said in a message to the agency’s workforce, according to U.S. officials who have seen the message.”

Philip Bump reports that Now you can fact-check Trump’s tweets — in the tweets themselves: “We made a tool [an extension for Google Chrome] that slips a bit more context into Trump’s tweets. It’s still in the early stages, but our goal is to provide additional context where needed for Trump’s tweets moving forward (and a few golden oldies). For example, here’s what it shows in relation to that Trump tweet…”

WashPo fact checking tool: extension for Google Chrome, https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/realdonaldcontext/ddbkmnomngnlcdglabflidgmhmcafogn .

Visiting Twitter using Chrome produces a fact-checking box under Trump’s tweets that merit fact-checking. (The extension only seems to apply to tweets that are factually refutable; Trump’s mere opinions, or his many misspellings and grammatical failures of standard written English, are left unaddressed.)

Peter Beinart offers a theory about why some (but certainly not all) conservatives support Trump in The Key to the Conservative Spilt on Trump: “Partly, they’re aping Trump. But there’s something deeper at work. Ideological conservatives loathe Putin because he represents an authoritarian challenge to the American-backed order in Europe and the Middle East. But many civilizational conservatives, who once opposed the Soviet Union because of its atheism, now view Putin’s Russia as Christianity’s front line against the new civilizational enemy: Islam. Among the alt-right, Putin is a very popular man. He’s popular because he resists the liberal, cosmopolitan values that Muslims supposedly exploit to undermine the West. Richard Spencer, who was until recently married to a pro-Putin Russian writer, has called Russia the “sole white power in the world.” Matthew Heimbach, another prominent figure in the alt-right, recently told Business Insider that “Russia is the leader of the free world.” In 2013, Pat Buchanan penned a column entitled, “Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative? In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us?”

Capra contributed to the Why We Fight series to explain the moral imperative of America’s war with the Axis. We’ve no such series against racist nationalists, but hearing and seeing Richard Spencer is a reminder why each day compels a complete & tenacious resistance against Spencer and his ilk:

Good morning.

Here is our small city we’ll have cold temperatures after afternoon snowfall: Friday’s daytime high will be nineteen, with a significant snowfall beginning in the afternoon and stretching into Saturday.  Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 02m 13s of daytime.  The moon’s a waning gibbous with 91.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1773, the Boston Tea Party takes place as colonists protest British taxation.   On this day in 1944, the Battle of the Bulge begins as Germany launches her last major offensive of the Second World War through the Ardennes; the Allies repulsed the offensive within about a month.

Worth reading in full — 

Steven Mufson and Max Ehrenfreund report that Trump considers financial pundit Larry Kudlow for Council of Economic Advisors: “If selected, Kudlow would mark another un­or­tho­dox pick for Trump. Under both Republican and Democratic presidents, the council has provided expert economic advice to the president and attracts a staff of top-flight young economists. But Kudlow lacks a graduate or undergraduate degree in economics and has not written scholarly papers on the subject….In recent years, he has become a popular figure on television, but his record as an economic forecaster is full of potholes. Less than nine months before the economic crisis hit in 2008, Kudlow wrote in the National Review that “There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that’s a minimum). Goldilocks is alive and well. The Bush boom is alive and well… Yes, it’s still the greatest story never told.”

Elena Holodny reports on a study showing that Juvenile incarceration is way more expensive than tuition at a private university: “The annual cost of youth incarceration for a single individual is $112,555, according to the annual report of the Council of Economic Advisers. That’s about 3.5 times the average tuition and fees at a four-year, non-profit private university ($32,405), and almost five times the average cost of tuition and fees at a four-year public university for an out-of-state student ($23,893), according to the report’s data. The cost of incarceration is also more than 11.5 times the average for a year of Head Start ($9,770), and about nine times the cost of an average year of public school ($12,508).”

Evan Osnos, writing of Xu Hongci’s experiences as a dissident in China, asks a difficult question: “What is the precise moment, in the life of a country, when tyranny takes hold? It rarely happens in an instant; it arrives like twilight, and, at first, the eyes adjust.”

Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns see Democrats at Crossroads: Win Back Working-Class Whites, or Let Them Go?: “For Democrats, the election last month has become a Rorschach test. Some see Mrs. Clinton’s loss as a result of an unfortunate series of flukes — Russian tampering, a late intervention by the Federal Bureau of Investigation director and a poor allocation of resources — but little more than a speed bump on the road to a demographic majority. Others believe the results reflect a more worrisome trend that could doom the party. It’s is a sensitive topic, touching on race and class, but the choices that Democrats make in the coming months will shape their post-Obama identity and carry major implications in both the 2018 midterm elections and the next presidential race.”

Bob Bryan reports that A professor has calculated how much blowing up the Death Star in ‘Star Wars’ would set back gross galactic product: “In this paper we study the financial repercussions of the destruction of two fully armed and operational moon-sized battle stations (“Death Stars”) in a 4-year period and the dissolution of the galactic government in Star Wars,” began the abstract of the study. “The emphasis of this work is to calibrate and simulate a model of the banking and financial systems within the galaxy. Along these lines, we measure the level of systemic risk that may have been generated by the death of Emperor Palpatine and the destruction of the second Death Star.” With full on footnotes and in-text citations to “Lucas” and “Kershner” (the screenwriters of Star Wars, George and Irvin respectively), Feinstein found that the destruction of the Death Stars and collapse of the Galactic Empire would throw the galactic economy into chaos. “In this case study we found that the Rebel Alliance would need to prepare a bailout of at least 15%, and likely at least 20%, of [Gross Galactic Product] in order to mitigate the systemic risks and the sudden and catastrophic economic collapse,” said the study. “Without such funds at the ready, it likely the Galactic economy would enter an economic depression of astronomical proportions.”

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be clear and cold, with a high temperature of eight degrees.  Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 02m 34s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1791, following ratification by Virginia, the Bill of Rights takes effect.  On this day in 1847, Wisconsin convenes its second constitutional convention in Madison.

Worth reading in full — 

William Arkin, Ken Dilanian, and Cynthia McFadden unsurprisingly report that U.S. Officials: Putin [Was] Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack: “U.S. intelligence officials now believe with “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News. Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said. Putin’s objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a “vendetta” against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to “split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn’t depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore,” the official said.”

Eli Lake suggests that Obama Should Out Putin’s Wealth as Payback for Election Hacking: “Obama should shine a spotlight on the Russian president’s money. Since the 2014 stealth invasion of Ukraine, the CIA and the Treasury Department have devoted more resources to learning the details of Putin’s personal wealth. Obama should declassify dossiers of Putin’s and his inner circle’s fortune: their front companies, their homes, their yachts, their secret bank accounts. If he’s feeling puckish, Obama could tell his administration to anonymously post all that information on random public websites. He could say the CIA was hacked. Oops. Sorry, Vladimir. Our cyber security is a mess right now.  U.S. officials have hinted before that they know more than they are saying about Putin’s money. Adam Szubin, the acting undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, told the BBC in January that Putin “supposedly draws a state salary of something like $110,000 a year. That is not an accurate statement of the man’s wealth, and he has long time training and practices in terms of how to mask his actual wealth.” In October, retired Admiral James Stavridis told NBC News: “It’s well known that there’s a great deal of offshore money moved outside of Russia from oligarchs. … It would be very embarrassing if that was revealed, and that would be a proportional response to what we’ve seen.”

Mark Galeotti writes that Putin Is Waging Information Warfare. Here’s How to Fight Back: “Instead of trying to combat each leak directly, the United States government should teach the public to tell when they are being manipulated. Via schools and nongovernmental organizations and public service campaigns, Americans should be taught the basic skills necessary to be savvy media consumers, from how to fact-check news articles to how pictures can lie.Deterrence can also take the form of limiting the Russians’ ability to buy media muscle covertly. Global finance is still gangsters and the spooks’ best friend, allowing them to secretly move and spend money. By joining the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s latest and most stringent Common Reporting Standards agreement for sharing financial information, for example, and by putting pressure on American states with notoriously tough secrecy laws, Washington would make it harder for not just corrupt Russians officials but also Moscow’s security apparatus to spend money at will in America.”

Elizabethn Weise writes that It’s new and it’s bad: Yahoo discloses 1B account breach: “The latest breach is separate from a 500-million-account breach the company disclosed in September of this year. At the time, the 500-million-account breach, which took place in 2014, was believed to be the largest on record. Yahoo (YHOO) shares fell 2.5% after hours.”

Great Big Story tells describes how “[t]hree paralyzed men take up one of sailing’s most grueling challenges—a 750 mile race to Alaska through some of the most treacherous and remote waters on the planet. With no motors allowed and many miles from any help, the competition can be too dangerous for the world’s most fearless sailors. This team is out to prove they have what it takes to finish…”:

Hard Ship | A Really Great Big Story from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be chilly, with gradually clearing skies and a high of fifteen.  Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 02m 57s of daytime.  The moon is full, with 99.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Aquatic Center Board meets at 7 AM, and her Tech Park Board at 8 AM.

On this day in 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen becomes the first man to reach the South Pole. On this day in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner delivers his “Significance of the Frontier in American History” address at the forty-first annual meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Worth reading in full —

Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger, and Scott Shane describe The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.: “An examination by The Times of the Russian operation — based on interviews with dozens of players targeted in the attack, intelligence officials who investigated it and Obama administration officials who deliberated over the best response — reveals a series of missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of the cyberattack….The low-key approach of the F.B.I. meant that Russian hackers could roam freely through the committee’s network for nearly seven months before top D.N.C. officials were alerted to the attack and hired cyberexperts to protect their systems. In the meantime, the hackers moved on to targets outside the D.N.C., including Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, whose private email account was hacked months later.”

Liz Wahl, formerly of the Russia Today network, describes how Trump Is Using Our Old Putin TV Propaganda Playbook: “When news came out that the CIA believes Russia had intervened in America’s election to help elect Trump, his transition team denied it: “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’” Invoking Iraq is a common tactic of deflection in Russian media. Asking “What about Iraq?” is meant to bring the conversation to a halt and absolve the Kremlin of any wrongdoing. How dare the U.S. assert any moral superiority after invading Iraq? On my final day of anchoring at RT, when it became apparent Russian forces were present in Ukraine, the news director demanded I pose this question to former Congressman Ron Paul: “The mainstream media has been covering Ukraine non-stop. John Kerry famously said ‘You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext’ Why didn’t the mainstream media challenge the secretary of State regarding pretext to war in Iraq?”

In a post about hacking (Former CIA officer Evan McMullin weighs in on Trump hacking denial), Jennifer Rubin breaks news of a future politics: “[McMullin] says he will be starting a new organization within the month “to stand up for liberty and equality.” What form that takes and whether it spurs Republicans to confront the incoming president, whose actions would prompt calls for impeachment if he were a Democrat, remain to be seen. Nevertheless, McMullin may fill a much-needed role of conservative watchdog.”

Gina Barton reports that in Wisconsin, 3,000 [were] sent to prison without new convictions in 2015: “Nearly 3,000 people in Wisconsin were sent back to prison last year even though they were not found guilty of new crimes, according to a report released Tuesday. Some were on probation when the violations occurred. Others had been released from custody but were still being supervised by the Department of Corrections. About 70% of them were suspected of criminal activity, the department says. But because they were not formally charged, they did not have due process rights in court. These ex-offenders were re-incarcerated for “technical violations,” which also can include things such as accepting a job without permission, missing a meeting with their probation and parole officer, or leaving their home counties.A Journal Sentinel investigation published last year found the process that forces violators back behind bars relies largely on the judgment of individual parole agents, which can vary widely. Once accused of violations, people on parole can be sent back to prison for years without proof beyond a reasonable doubt — and they are left with little chance of a successful appeal.”

They’ve been friends for a long time, one hears, and there are still cabinet positions to fill…

“We’ve been friends for a long time”: Kanye West and President-elect Trump appear together at Trump Tower https://t.co/QoofBJzY1x pic.twitter.com/DK6z1P9LhG

— CNN (@CNN) December 13, 2016