Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will see freezing rain and a probability of light afternoon snowfall, with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:59 PM, for 9h 45m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 6.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}seventy-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1959, the jet age really takes off (of course it does) on 1.25.1959 with an transcontinental flight (New York to Los Angeles) of an American Airlines Boeing 707.   On this day in 1932, Janesville, Wisconsin continues its probition of dancing on Sundays.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Brian Stetler and Frank Pallotta report that Publisher printing more copies of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ after spike in demand: “The book publisher Penguin is printing more copies of George Orwell’s dystopian classic “1984” in response to a sudden surge of demand. On Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning the book was #1 on Amazon’s computer-generated list of best-selling books. The list reflects hourly book sales. The 68-year-old novel appeared on the list on Monday, hovered around the #6 spot for much of the day, rose to #2 by Tuesday afternoon and then hit #1. Lower down on Amazon’s best sellers list are two other classic novels with similar themes: “It Can’t Happen Here,” by Sinclair Lewis, and “Brave New World,” by Aldous Huxley. It is hard to say for sure how much of the interest is related to Donald Trump’s inauguration and the rise of “alternative facts,” a term coined by Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway on Sunday.”

Dylan Byers reports that Trump’s Chicago tweet is another response to cable news: “When President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday night and said he would send federal agents into Chicago if the city failed to address its growing violence, the threat seemed to emanate from nowhere. But like so many of Trump’s tweets, it appeared to be inspired by cable news. The 45th President of the United States is known to be an avid cable news consumer, and his tweets often seem to be in direct response to something he’s just seen on television. In this case, Trump appeared to be responding to a segment on Fox News. Shortly after 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, Fox’s “O’Reilly Factor” ran a segment about violence in Chicago that included the following statistics: “228 shootings in 2017 (up 5.5% from last year” and “42 homicides in 2017 (up 24% from last year).” One of the show’s guests, Horace Cooper, an adjunct fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, said, “I don’t know another word besides ‘carnage’ to describe the devastation that’s been taking place.” Just over an hour later, at 9:25 p.m. ET, Trump took to Twitter using the same statistics Fox News had used and the same language as Cooper. “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!” Examples of Trump seemingly reacting to cable news abound.”

Jennifer Rubin explains that Trump’s actions will invite nonstop litigation: “Ironically, for a man who loved to bring litigation to torment opponents and squash criticism, President Trump will likely face nonstop litigation for his entire term. Lawyers contesting him on everything from the emoluments clause to the lease for his Washington hotel with the federal government say, in essence, that he has no one to blame but himself. Instead of divesting entirely of his businesses, Trump chose to keep ownership. “This will be in play for the length of the Trump presidency,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said to me in a telephone interview on Monday.”

Matt Velazquez reports that it was MU 74, Villanova 72: Golden Eagles stun AP No. 1 Wildcats: “Marquette has played men’s basketball for more than 100 years. There have been plenty of memorable games and historic moments in that time, but never before had Marquette knocked off the top-ranked team in the Associated Press top 25 during a regular-season game. That changed Tuesday night at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. After trailing by as many as 17 points and staying behind by double digits for most of the second half, the Golden Eagles finished with a 19-4 run to claim a 74-72 victory over reigning-champion Villanova, the No. 1 team in the AP poll and No. 2 in the USA Today coaches poll. The victory was Marquette’s second in 12 meetings with the AP No. 1 team, with the other coming against Kentucky in the Elite Eight of the 2003 NCAA Tournament.”

BRIC TV describes One Man’s Search for Meaning in the Rhythm of Tap:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:58 PM, for 9h 42m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 11.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}seventy-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Patrick Marley writes that Teen Lincoln Hills inmates allege excessive pepper spraying: “Madison — Juvenile inmates filed a class action lawsuit Monday against Wisconsin officials, alleging they used pepper spray excessively and kept teens in solitary confinement for weeks or months at a time. Over eight months last year, one 14-year-old boy was kept in solitary confinement for all but two weeks, the lawsuit alleges. Pepper spray was used nearly 200 times over 10 months at Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls, which share a campus 30 miles north of Wausau, according to the lawsuit. “The state routinely subjects these youth to unlawful solitary confinement, mechanical restraints and pepper spraying,” attorney Rachel Graham wrote in the suit. “Prior to state and federal raids on the facility at the end of 2015, staff also regularly physically abused youth in the facility….In the first 10 months of last year, pepper spray was used 198 times, according to the lawsuit. Often, a brand of pepper spray is used that is meant to protect hikers from bears.”

Michael D. Shear and Emmarie Huetteman report that Trump Repeats Lie About Popular Vote in Meeting With Lawmakers: “WASHINGTON — President Trump used his first official meeting with congressional leaders on Monday to falsely claim that millions of unauthorized immigrants had robbed him of a popular vote majority, a return to his obsession with the election’s results even as he seeks support for his legislative agenda. The claim, which he has made before on Twitter, has been judged untrue by numerous fact-checkers. The new president’s willingness to bring it up at a White House reception in the State Dining Room is an indication that he continues to dwell on the implications of his popular vote loss even after assuming power.”

Patrick Thornton explains that Headlines Matter When Your President Lies All the Time: “The most important part of your story on Trump’s lie is, in fact, your headline. If your headline reports the claim, and doesn’t note it’s false, that it isn’t based on a shred of evidence, it would deliberately misinform the public, no matter what you wrote beneath it. Why? Because for a lot of your audience now, the headline is the story. 72 percent of Americans get news on smartphones, where they discover stories via news alerts (most recipients don’t click through to stories) and social media. Most users catch glimpses of headlines on Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes they click through to read the story, but many times they do not. Journalists must craft headlines that live with the reality of how people actually consume news online. Our job as journalists is not to wish that people slowed down and read every word we write; our job is to deliver information to people in ways that they’ll actually consume and internalize it.”

In Forbes, Ally Bogard and Allie Hoffman describe Resilience: How Laura Dunn Went From Campus Assault Survivor To Groundbreaking Legal Advocate: “Laura Dunn became an activist, an advocate, a lawyer, a litigator, a founder and an entrepreneur – the day that she survived a campus assault. It was the life-defining experience that could have catapulted her into despair, or become the ultimate act of resilience. She chose the latter; today she runs the national nonprofit SurvJustice, which provides vital legal assistance to fellow survivors. Since its founding in 2014, they’ve assisted on 189 cases, and Laura has been recognized by the American Law Institute, the American Bar Association, and the White House for her pioneering advocacy. We hope she inspires you, as she did us….”

The local University of Wisconsin campus, UW-Whitewater, has been the subject of two federal complaints to the U.S. Department of Education and one federal lawsuit, all directly or relatedly concerning reporting of sexual assaults on campus. Atty. Dunn represents two of those survivors. For a category link to posts about these cases, and the topic more generally, see Assault Awareness & Prevention.

Barnaby Dixon doesn’t just make puppets, he makes amazing puppets, including a first-class raptor:

Good morning.

In Whitewater, we’ll have a cloudy Monday with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:57 PM, for 9h 40m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 18.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}seventy-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1864, the 23rd Wisconsin Infantry continues its reconnaissance mission on the Matagorda Peninsula in Texas.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Margaret Sullivan writes that The traditional way of reporting on a president is dead. And Trump’s press secretary killed it: “Anyone — citizen or journalist — who is surprised by false claims from the new inhabitant of the Oval Office hasn’t been paying attention. That was reinforced when Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told “Meet the Press” Sunday that Spicer had been providing “alternative facts” to what the media had reported, making it clear we’ve gone full Orwell. Official words do matter, but they shouldn’t be what news organizations pay most attention to, as they try to present the truth about a new administration. White House press briefings are “access journalism,” in which official statements — achieved by closeness to the source — are taken at face value and breathlessly reported as news. And that is over. Dead. Spicer’s statement should be seen for what it is: Remarks made over the casket at the funeral of access journalism. As Jessica Huseman of ProPublica put it: “Journalists aren’t going to get answers from Spicer. We are going to get answers by digging. By getting our hands dirty. So let’s all do that.”

The New York Times showcases Pictures From Women’s Marches on Every Continent: Crowds in hundreds of cities around the world gathered Saturday in conjunction with the Women’s March on Washington: HIGHLIGHTS, 360 VIDEO, MAPS.

Esme Cribb reports that Merriam-Webster Gets In On The ‘Alternative Facts’ Fun: “After top Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase “alternative facts” on Sunday, Merriam-Webster decided to weigh in by reminding everybody that some definitions just aren’t that subjective. In an interview Sunday morning, Conway argued that White House press secretary Sean Spicer wasn’t lying about crowd size at Donald Trump’s inauguration—he was just giving “alternative facts.”

 

?A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality. https://t.co/gCKRZZm23c

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) January 22, 2017

Krishnadev Calamur offers A Short History of ‘America First’: “From this day forward,” Trump said at one point [during his inaugural address], “it’s going to be only America first. America first….the phrase “America first” also has a darker recent history and, as my colleague David Graham pointed out Friday, was associated with opponents of the U.S. entering World War II. The America First Committee (AFC), which was founded in 1940, opposed any U.S. involvement in World War II, and was harshly critical of the Roosevelt administration, which it accused of pressing the U.S. toward war. At its peak, it had 800,000 members across the country, included socialists, conservatives, and some of the most prominent Americans from some of the most prominent families. There was future President Ford; Sargent Shriver, who’d go on to lead the Peace Corps; and Potter Stewart, the future U.S. Supreme Court justice. It was funded by the families who owned Sears-Roebuck and the Chicago Tribune, but also counted among its ranks prominent anti-Semites of the day.”

Here’s an orangutan, showing how smart she is —

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-four. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:56 PM, for 9h 38m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 26.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}seventy-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1905, on what’s now known as to Russians as Bloody Sunday, soldiers of Russia’s Imperial Guard fire on petitioners led by Father Georgy Gapon as they march toward the Winter Palace to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Over one-thousand are killed or wounded. On this day in 1964, the World’s Largest Block of Cheese (to that date) is produced “from 170,000 quarts of milk by the Wisconsin Cheese Foundation specifically for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It weighed 34,665 pounds (17.4 tons). The cheese was consumed in 1965 at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association at Eau Claire.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Gary D’Amato writes that McCarthy, Rodgers chase history: “Winning one Super Bowl game as a coach or a quarterback places you among the best of the best and lands you a fat contract extension and TV commercials. Do it in Green Bay and they’ll name a street after you. Winning two Super Bowls? Now that’s a fame-changer. Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers are two victories away from joining the ultra-elite group of head coaches and quarterbacks who have won the Big One multiple times. If the Packers get past the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday and then beat the AFC champion — either New England or Pittsburgh — in the Super Bowl in Houston on Feb. 5, McCarthy will become the 14th head coach and Rodgers the 13th quarterback to have done it more than once.”

Michael Schmidt, Eric Lipton, and Charlie Savage report that Jared Kushner, Trump’s Son-in-Law, Is Cleared to Serve as Adviser: “WASHINGTON — Hours after President Trump took his oath on Friday, the Justice Department issued an opinion saying that his appointment of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior White House adviser would be lawful despite a federal antinepotism law. In a 14-page opinion signed on Friday, a longtime career lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said that the president’s special hiring authority exempted White House positions from a 1967 law barring the president from employing relatives at a federal agency. Mr. Koffsky’s opinion acknowledged that in several cases since 1978, the Office of Legal Counsel had determined that the antinepotism statute prevented presidents from appointing relatives to positions.”

Tim Wallace and Alicia Parlapiano report that Crowd Scientists Say Women’s March in Washington Had 3 Times More People Than Trump’s Inauguration: “The women’s march in Washington was roughly three times the size of the audience at President Trump’s inauguration, crowd counting experts said Saturday. Marcel Altenburg and Keith Still, crowd scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, analyzed photographs and video taken of the National Mall and vicinity and estimated that there were about 160,000 people in those areas in the hour leading up to Mr. Trump’s speech Friday. They estimated that at least 470,000 people were at the women’s march in Washington in the areas on and near the mall at about 2 p.m. Saturday. The two images below show the crowds when they were at their peak density at the two events.”