Somewhere, there’s sure to be someone insisting that a hooligan who beat someone unconscious only did so from insecurity, envy, or bad toilet training. That explanation should be of no comfort to a victim (should the victim even recover). The one thing of which one can be sure is that someone attacked another, causing severe injury.
In a similar way, William Saletan, writing at Slate, finds it reassuring to declare that Trump’s many whims and insecurities can be manipulated, in an essay entitled, Here’s how to manipulate Trump. On this reading, Trump’s a character defective man whose worst tendencies are manageable.
This is a false, silly reassurance: even if Trump were easily manipulated, that task will only fall to a few schemers near him, not the tens of millions who will experience economic and personal loss as Trump tramples liberties and rejects sound policies.
Worse, of course, is the truth that an inner weakling who breaks another’s nose is still someone who broke another’s nose. That he did these things from ignorance or disorder matters less than that one is covered in crimson. The common person who suffers injury will not be able to manipulate anyone in power, shouldn’t have to do so, and would be a fool to think there’s consolation in the belief that he was injured only from another’s supposed emotional weakness.
Saletan can save his silly psychological analysis; the work of defending personal liberty will fall to those who resist transgressions without speculating about whether the transgressors are weak.
On Twitter, conservative @Evan_McMullin lists ten principles for political opposition under a Trump Administration. Libertarians would do well to embrace, and live each day, all ten. McMullin’s ten tweets began on December 4th at 12:08 PM and concluded at 12:12 PM.
(Points Six and Seven are especially important: it’s a grand coalition that we’ll need, and so we should and must embrace people of all walks of life in our common political endeavor. Libertarians have much to contribute through our resolute defense of free markets, individual liberty, and peace; we will find that we have much to gain in alliances and with the support of others, ideologically different from us, who yet share a commitment to a free society.)
Listed below are all ten of McMullin’s points, useful for reviewing often to assure one stays on the right path.
1. Read and learn the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Know that our basic rights are inalienable.
2. Identify and follow many credible sources of news. Be very well informed and learn to discern truth from untruth.
3. Watch every word, decision and action of Trump and his administration extremely closely, like we have never done before in America.
4. Be very vocal in every forum available to us when we observe Trump’s violations of our rights and our democracy. Write, speak, act.
5. Support journalists, artists, academics, clergy and others who speak truth and who inform, inspire and unite us.
6. Build bridges with Americans from the other side of the traditional political spectrum and with members of diverse American communities.
7. Defend others who may be threatened by Trump even if they don’t look, think or believe like us. An attack on one is an attack on all.
8. Organize online and in person with other Americans who understand the danger Trump poses and who are also willing to speak up.
9. Hold members of Congress accountable for protecting our rights and democracy through elections and by making public demands of them now.
10. And finally, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, have “malice toward none, with charity for all” and never ever lose hope!
Whitewater’s week begins with cloudy skies and a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 7:11 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 09m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 30.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Italy’s Premier, Matteo Renzi, Says He’ll Resign After Reform Is Rejected: “ROME — Italy plunged into political and economic uncertainty early Monday as Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign after voters decisively rejected constitutional changes, a step certain to reverberate across a European Union already buffeted by anti-establishment anger. “The ‘no’ won in an incredibly clear way,” Mr. Renzi said from the Chigi Palace. Holding back tears as he spoke in front of Italian and European Union flags, the usually brash and confident 41-year-old said, “I assume all the responsibility of the defeat,” adding that “my experience of government ends here.” He said he would go later on Monday to the country’s president, Sergio Mattarella, and “tender my resignation.”
Austria Rejects Far-Right Presidential Candidate Norbert Hofer: “VIENNA — In rejecting a far-right candidate for president on Sunday, voters in Austria showed the limitations of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s tailwinds on a continent where extremist politics have traditionally brought cataclysm. Call it the other Trump effect, one that may sow caution among some European voters suspicious of the advances of populist politicians. Populist forces have unsettled politics in Europe and the United States, frequently by using fake news and fanning fears of globalization and migration. The British vote to leave the European Union this year was complicated by such anxieties. The rejection of constitutional changes in Italy on Sunday hinged on a variety of issues. But the choice before Austrians was perhaps the starkest. The bitter yearlong campaign for the presidency pitted Norbert Hofer, a leader of the far-right Freedom Party, founded in the 1950s by former Nazis, against a mild-mannered 72-year-old former Green Party leader, Alexander Van der Bellen.”
Trump’s Taiwan phone call was long planned, say people who were involved: “Donald Trump’s protocol-breaking telephone call with Taiwan’s leader was an intentionally provocative move that establishes the incoming president as a break with the past, according to interviews with people involved in the planning. The historic communication — the first between leaders of the United States and Taiwan since 1979 — was the product of months of quiet preparations and deliberations among Trump’s advisers about a new strategy for engagement with Taiwan that began even before he became the Republican presidential nominee, according to people involved in or briefed on the talks. The call also reflects the views of hard-line advisers urging Trump to take a tough opening line with China, said others familiar with the months of discussion about Taiwan and China.”
You Heard It Here First: Trump May Not Propose A Budget Next Year: “The Trump administration is seriously thinking about not submitting a budget to Congress next year. Although the Congressional Budget Act requires the president to submit the fiscal 2018 budget to Congress between January 2 and February 6, Trump could easily say that it was the responsibility of the outgoing Obama administration to comply with the law before the new president was sworn in on January 20. But while the new president not sending a budget to Congress might not be illegal, it would clearly be unprecedented….So why might the Trump administration want to punt on this major opportunity by not submitting a budget? First, it would allow Trump to avoid the complaints that always come from those the budget proposals would harm by denying them a platform to criticize the White House. No proposals on paper would mean nothing to disparage.”
What happens when a group of professional surfers get tired of the global surfing circuit? This charming short documentary tells the story of how three friends abandoned their sports careers for the whimsical calling of growing organic vegetables on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way. “Surfing’s quite similar to farming in the way that you can do what you can to have a productive crop, but sometimes nature has different ideas,” says Matt Smith, one of the founders of Moy Hill CSA Farm. This film comes to us from the world-traveling web series The Perennial Plate. To learn more about this series, visit its Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages.
We’ll have snow this Sunday in Whitewater, with a modest accumulation, and a daytime high of thirty-two. Sunrise is 7:10 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 10m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Steve Inskeep sees a difference between Donald Trump and the Legacy of Andrew Jackson: “For all the similarities, there’s a big difference between Jackson’s victory and Trump’s: Jackson’s greatest political achievement was the widening of democratic space. He brought new groups of voters into the political system. Expanding voting rights and a growing media perfectly coincided with his attention-grabbing campaigns, and the popular vote total tripled—tripled—between Jackson’s loss in 1824 and his victory in 1828. Trump, too, aspired to widen the electorate, but with less success. It’s true that he attracted some former Democrats, and received more votes than any Republican candidate in history, slightly more than George W. Bush in 2004. But in key states his party made it harder to vote. Among those who did participate, as of this writing, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 2.3 million. While the national popular vote has no legal significance, it matters politically, as Jackson grasped in the 1820’s. It matters enough to Trump that he volunteered a conspiracy theory to explain his failure to win it.”
Nathan Pilkington debunks Five myths about the decline and fall of Rome: “The rise of Donald Trump supposedly heralds the decline of the American idea, according to many of his critics, who’ve taken the opportunity to compare this moment to the fall of Rome’s republic in 31 B.C. or its empire in the 5th century A.D. Any historian is happy when their period of study comes into vogue, but these requiems leave a false impression of Roman antiquity and the causes of its greatest crises. MYTH NO. 1. America is going throughwhat republican Rome did….”
Gary D’Amato writes that in the Big Ten title game, UW’s collapse [was] swift, severe: “Indianapolis– In one half of uncharacteristically bad football Saturday, the Wisconsin Badgers went from sniffing the College Football Playoff to, well, OK, a great consolation prize in Pasadena to, ugh, a likely date with Western Michigan in the Cotton Bowl.”
Molly Beck writes that for the Lincoln Hills and Cooper Lake facilities, there’s No resolution to youth prison investigation one year after raid: “State officials and lawmakers say they haven’t been briefed on the timetable for the completion of the investigation, which has been headed by federal authorities for nearly a year. “I don’t know what they’re doing or what their schedule is,” said John Paquin, administrator for the state Department of Correction’s division of juvenile corrections. And a DOC spokesman said the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is handling a review of the allegations, hasn’t told department officials where the investigation stands. “They haven’t really shared much with us,” said DOC spokesman Tristan Cook. Wisconsin Department of Justice spokesman Johnny Koremenos also said state investigators haven’t been involved in the investigation since the FBI took over in February. The state had launched its own investigation in early 2015.”
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 7:09 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 11m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Bill Glauber writes that an Embattled Tomah VA dentist resigns: “Officials at the troubled Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center said Friday that the dentist responsible for possibly infecting nearly 600 veterans has resigned. The dentist has not been named. The announcement came after House Speaker Paul Ryan of Janesville and Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson expressed outrage that the dentist was still working at the facility. On Tuesday, Victoria Brahm, acting medical director at the center, announced that the VA was in the process of notifying 592 veterans treated by the dentist that they may be infected with hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or HIV because he did not follow proper sterilization procedures.”
Patrick Marley and Jason Stein report that a Federal judge denies quick halt to recount: “Madison — A federal judge Friday denied an emergency halt to the recount of the presidential vote in Wisconsin, allowing the process to continue until a Dec. 9 court hearing at least. There is no need to halt the recount just yet because it will not do any immediate harm to Republican President-elect Donald Trump or his supporters, U.S. District Judge James Peterson wrote in a three-page order that called for both sides in the case to lay out written arguments before he takes any action.”
Russ Choma exclaims Holy Conflict of Interest! The Firm Holding Much of Trump’s Debt May Be Up for Sale: “Coming to an auction block near you: Donald Trump’s $100 million mortgage on Trump Tower? As Mother Jones has detailed for months, Trump owes hundreds of millions of dollars to a variety of lenders, giving his bankers a huge amount of potential leverage over the man who will soon occupy the most powerful office in the world. Already there are concerns about Trump’s biggest lender, the troubled Deutsche Bank, which he owes at least $364 million. On Friday, Reuters reported that his second-biggest lender, a small Wall Street firm called Ladder Capital Strategies, may be putting itself up for sale to the highest bidder. Public records show Trump owes the firm at least $282 million, on four lines of credit. This means that other big money players—Wall Street firms, American banks, overseas banks, financial institutions partly owned by foreign governments—could move to buy up the debts of a US president and create a host of conflicts of interest.”
The Wisconsin State Journal reports that Donations top $87,700 for children’s Christmas toys: “Since 1918, the Empty Stocking Club has provided Christmas toys to needy children in the greater Madison area. You can help again this year. Send your gift online at emptystockingclub.com or mail it to: The Empty Stocking Club, Wisconsin State Journal, Box 8056 Madison, WI 53708″
A big holiday sometimes brings frustration as well as happiness. That was true in Maryland, after a beaver trashes dollar store after finding only artificial Christmas trees: “A beaver in Maryland apparently tried to get into the Christmas spirit at a dollar store in Charlotte Hall. But after discovering the store only offered artificial trees, it made like a crazed Black Friday shopper and trashed the place….The St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office joked that the “suspect attempted to flee the area,” but it was safely rescued by animal control. The office tweeted that the beaver was released to wildlife rehabilitation, and it included an adorable GIF for proof.”
Cpl. Yingling had a unique call for service when the suspect, pictured, was witnessed causing prop. Destruction at a store in Char. Hall. pic.twitter.com/6qKlu7tqA7
The beaver tweet may go viral! All joking aside, the beaver was safely rescued by animal control & was released to a wildlife rehabilitator. pic.twitter.com/0VyLXJPjxh
Analysts from five Washington policy institutes[1] have published a joint report asking (1) what should American defense strategy be? (2) what capabilities, investments, and force structure might that strategy require? and (3) what would such a military cost? (The five institutes are not of the same views, with the Cato Institute’s Benjamin H. Friedman notable for advocating fiscal and strategic restraint.)
Here’s the report:
[1] The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), The Cato Institute, The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Unlike dogs, domestic cats exhibit traits expected of wild animals, raising a question about what their level of domestication:
Dog lovers will find it baffling that cats are the world’s most popular pet. After all, they’re passive-aggressive, emotionally unavailable, and known for their chilly independence—traits that at most qualify felines for the role of “man’s best frenemy.”
It turns out, though, there’s an evolutionary reason for this tense relationship. That is, cats are in many ways still wild.
“Cats, unlike dogs, are really only semi-domesticated,” says Wes Warren, professor of genetics Washington University and co-author of the first complete mapping (paywall) of the house cat genome—specifically, that of an Abyssinian named Cinnamon….
So why have kitties stayed wilder? The genome-mappers theorize it’s because house cat populations have continued to interbreed with wild cats. Also, humans’ “cat fancy”—meaning, our fanaticism about creating weird cat breeds—only began in the last 200 or so years.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 13m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater will hold holiday events, including a parade, this evening in her downtown. The events begin at 5 PM, and the parade at 6 PM.
Milwaukee’s medical examiner contends that the county sheriff, David Clarke, threatened him in a tantrum: “Brian Peterson, Milwaukee County chief medical examiner, said Thursday that the sheriff called him on Oct. 28 and “verbally pummeled” and “threatened” him over information that Peterson’s office made public regarding the deaths of two inmates at the jail earlier this year. Peterson said his office followed appropriate protocol in the cases cited by the sheriff….Clarke, who is under consideration for a high-level post in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, declined to comment on his conversation with Peterson or to make available a copy of his recording of the conversation. “No, thanks,” Clarke said via email.”
Jason Horowitz writes that With Populist Anger Rising, Italy May Be Next Domino to Fall: “TURIN, Italy — Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, only 41, once seemed to have solved the riddle of how to survive Europe’s populist, anti-establishment tempest. But with a critical national referendum on Sunday, the populist wave is now threatening to crush him and plunge Italy into a political crisis when the European Union is already reeling.From Washington to Brussels to Berlin, fears are rising that Italy may be stumbling into its own “Brexit” moment. What should be an inward-looking referendum on whether to overhaul Italy’s ossified political and electoral system has taken on much broader import. Financial analysts warn of a potential banking crisis, and pro-Europe supporters fear that a “no” vote in the referendum could accelerate the populist movement across the European bloc.”
Matt Turner considers The state of the US consumer: “A large chunk of Americans report that their income falls below or barely covers their expenses. There has been a hollowing out of middle-skill jobs, which has disproportionately affected men lacking a four-year college degree. Those with only a high-school diploma or less are much more likely to say their financial position is deteriorating. Close to half (46%) of Americans would struggle to cover an unexpected $400 expense. Real wages are stagnating, especially for those who are 40 or over. Healthcare costs, which have been increasing, are a key concern for many Americans. One in five has had to go without a trip to the dentist, and one in nine a visit to the doctor.”
Karla Adam writes that overseas, Child sex abuse allegations widen against British soccer clubs: “LONDON — An investigation into claims of child sexual abuse involving British soccer clubs has grown to about 350 alleged cases, a police group said Thursday, as the sport’s overseer opened its own inquiry into possible coverups spanning decades. The widening investigations have rocked Britain’s most popular sport and its affiliated clubs, including systems of youth camps. Over the past two weeks, several former professional soccer players have come forward to recount harrowing tales of abuse that they said they suffered as children and had been kept secret for decades. The publicity brought a “significant number of calls” to authorities, “both reporting further allegations and offering information,” the organization said in a statement.”
Randal O’Toole takes a look at a key part of the incoming administration’s economic policy, and sees the Trouble with Trump’s Infrastructure Ambitions. There are, simply expressed, four problems:
Not all spending of this kind is equally valuable: “Many advocates of infrastructure spending assume that all infrastructure contributes equally to economic vitality, but this is far from true. Digging a hole and filling it up may create a few jobs but no long-term economic growth. Transportation projects, for example, produce growth only if they generate new passenger and freight movement that would not have taken place without them.”
New transportation infrastructure is less useful than properly-repaired, existing infrastructure: “Today, few areas need new transportation infrastructure. The nation has 2.7 million miles of paved roads, 140,000 miles of railroads, and more than 5,000 airports with paved runways…We have crumbling infrastructure because politicians would rather fund new projects than maintain existing ones. We build projects that fail to contribute to the economy because those same politicians follow fads rather than make sure taxpayers’ money is well spent.”
Project spending often produces little additional revenue: “Traditionally, when a state or local government builds new infrastructure, it sells bonds, uses the revenues to pay for the infrastructure, then repays the bonds with local tax revenues. Since local tax revenues will be about the same whether the infrastructure is productive or a white elephant, officials have little reason to discriminate between good and bad projects.”
The Trump plan cleverly circumvents existing, democratically-enacted debt limits to allow big spending: “Trump’s method of tax credits gets around these debt limits. Private contractors borrow money and build the infrastructure, and state or local governments would contract to pay the contractors, sometimes millions of dollars per month. Since the contractors, not the government agencies, borrowed the money, it doesn’t count against the democratically set debt limits, but local taxpayers are obligated to repay the debt anyway.”
Schemes like these don’t #DraintheSwamp; they breed stronger, and more numerous, crocodiles.
(In a small rural town like Whitewater, a full generation’s worth of big projects has not improved the community’s economic well being. The percentage of all residents in poverty in 1999 was 27.4%, and of families was 10.6%. The percentage of all residents in poverty in 2014 was 36.7% and of families was 15.2%.)
December begins in Whitewater with a morning mix of rain and light snow and an afternoon high of forty degrees. Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 14m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM, and the Fire Department will hold a business meeting at 7 PM.
James Pethokoukis writes about The bad economics of Trump’s Carrier deal: “more broadly, this is all terrible for a nation’s economic vitality if businesses make decisions to please politicians rather than customers and shareholders. Yet America’s private sector has just been sent a strong signal that playing ball with Trump might be part of what it now means to run an American company. Imagine business after business, year after year, making decisions based partly on pleasing the Trump White House. In addition, Trump’s hectoring on trade and offshoring distracts from the economic reality that automation poses the critical challenge for the American workforce going forward….Of course it wasn’t so long ago that Republicans were attacking the Obama White House for its “crony capitalism,” including the auto bailouts and clean energy investments in firms like Solyndra. Republicans, on the other hand, were supposedly stalwarts for competitive capitalism and vehemently against government “picking winners and losers.” Some even said they were “pro-market” rather than “pro-business.” Now, not so much.”
As it turns out, safe spaces aren’t just refuges for the left, as Amanda Hess discovers that The Far Right Has a New Digital Safe Space: “When the white nationalist leader Richard B. Spencer was suspended from Twitter recently, he hopped over to YouTube to address his supporters. “Digitally speaking,” he said, Twitter had sent “execution squads across the alt-right.” He accused Twitter of “purging people on the basis of their views,” calling it “corporate Stalinism.” Then he mapped out a path forward. “There’s obviously Gab, which is an interesting medium,” he said. “I think that will be the place where we go next”….You can’t sell a social destination where conservatives are free from liberal pestering and expect the pitch to resonate across the spectrum. Even the idea that harassment rules are oppressive — instead of protective of the vulnerable — is itself a pointed worldview. I suspect that any concern about inclusion will be assuaged by the comfort of chatting with people who think and talk the same way. It’s the next logical step after all the blocking and muting on Twitter and filtering and unfollowing on Facebook split America into two social media realities. Where there once was a bubble, now there’s a wall.”
Gina Barton and Ashley Luthern report that an MPD officer appeals demotion for mishandling sexual assault case: “A Milwaukee police detective demoted after a sexual assault suspect was left free to sexually assault an 82-year-old woman at a bus stop in July 2015 told a panel of Fire and Police Commissioners Wednesday that while he made some mistakes, he did thoroughly follow up on the case. Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn demoted Brendan M. Dolan to the rank of officer in April, saying he violated the department’s core value of competency for failure to properly investigate an earlier sexual assault by the same man. A hearing on Dolan’s appeal of that discipline began Wednesday.”
Great Big Story recounts the work of The Lone Man Building a Cathedral By Hand: “For 53 years, Justo Gallego has been building a cathedral by hand on the outskirts of Madrid almost entirely by himself. Gallego has no formal architecture or construction training, but that hasn’t stopped him from toiling on this herculean task. At 90 years old, Gallego knows that he will not be able to finish the project in his lifetime. But he keeps at it anyway, day after day, driven by his faith.”
