Good morning.

Whitewater’s Saturday will be sunny with a high of thirteen degrees. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:38 PM, for 9h 13m 24s. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 69.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the sixtieth day. Today is the {tooltip}sixtieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1953, Pres. Truman announced that America had (the previous year) successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. On this day in 1901, Robert Marion La Follette is inaugurated as governor of Wisconsin.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Greg Miller and Adam Entous report Declassified report says Putin ‘ordered’ effort to undermine faith in U.S. election and help Trump: “Russia carried out a comprehensive cyber campaign to sabotage the U.S. presidential election, an operation that was ordered by Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and ultimately sought to help elect Donald Trump, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a remarkably blunt assessment released Friday. The report depicts Russian interference as unprecedented in scale, saying that Moscow’s role represented “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort” beyond previous election-related espionage. The campaign initially sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, “denigrate” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and damage her expected presidency. But in time, Russia “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump” and repeatedly sought to artificially boost his election chances. The report released to the public is an abbreviated version of a highly classified multiagency assessment requested by President Obama. Even so, it amounts to an extraordinary postmortem of a Russian assault on a pillar of American democracy. The 14-page document made public also serves as an explicit rebuttal to Trump’s repeated assertions that U.S. spy agencies cannot determine who was responsible for a hacking operation that extracted thousands of emails from Democratic Party computer networks and dumped them into public view via the WikiLeaks website.”

Jim Higgins writes that Ayad Akhtar’s ‘Disgraced’ pushes hot buttons: “In “Disgraced,” hard-charging New York attorney Amir appears to have a good life: He lives in a gorgeous New York residence with Emily, his beautiful artist spouse, and is on the verge of making partner in his firm. But a dinner party with another couple — one of his colleagues and her husband, Emily’s art dealer — erupts into an argument with explosive consequences. In Akhtar’s tragedy, Amir, who has obscured his background, will suffer both for hiding his Muslim roots and reluctantly helping an imam in trouble. “Disgraced” was the most-produced play in the United States during the 2015-’16 season (excluding Shakespeare and versions of “A Christmas Carol”), according to American Theatre magazine. That popularity continues: it’s tied for second-most productions in 2016-’17, American Theatre reports.”

Ronald Brownsten explains Why the European Right-Wing Loves Putin: “But the conservative-populist nationalists in both the United States and Europe view Putin as a potential ally because they are focused on a sharply contrasting set of international priorities: resisting Islamic radicalization, unwinding global economic integration, and fighting the secularization of Western societies. Top Trump advisers like incoming White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn have expressed strikingly similar views….“It’s certainly not that they follow him the way Communist parties used to follow the Soviet Union. That’s a misrepresentation,” said Cas Mudde, a University of Georgia associate professor of international affairs who studies these movements. “But … they do like his strength, what they perceive as defense for strong traditional values, nationalism, and opposition to Islam.”

David Leonhardt considers Lies, Journalism and Objectivity: “The reality is, media organizations sometimes have to decide between the risk oflooking like they’re not being objective and the risk that they’re actually not being objective. (Hat tip to Adam Serwer of The Atlantic, who made this point on Twitter.) Each of the following factual statements, to pick a few disparate examples, runs the risk of appearing subjective to large numbers of readers:

Capitalism has worked better than any other economic system.
Tax cuts generally fail to pay for themselves and cause the budget deficit to increase.
Human actions are warming and damaging the planet.

There is no escaping this tension at times. News organizations have to decide whether they place a higher priority on seeming subjective to some readers or on stating the facts.” [Leonhardt’s essay is in response to Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker’s view that newspapers should largely avoid using the word “lie.”]

One good way to prepare for life in space is by living in a cave —

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