A new road project serving the $10 billion Foxconn plant in Racine County could reduce funding for other state roads by as much as $90 million in the current budget, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
The reduction leaves state highway rehabilitation funding as much as $870 million short of the $2.4 billion per biennium the Department of Transportation estimates is needed to maintain road conditions at current levels for the next decade.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-three. Sunrise is 6:30 AM and sunset 5:43 PM, for 11h 13m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1862, Battle of Island No. 10, Missouri, begins: “The Battle of Island No. 10 began at New Madrid, Missouri. The 8th and 15th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries fought in this important battle.”
The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.
Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.
Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.
In a response to questioning by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rogers said “I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay here…and that therefore I can continue this activity.”
The hearing also focused on the NSA and Cyber Command’s operating authorities. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) asked Rogers whether he had received orders to go after the Russian meddling operation where it originated: “Have you been directed to do so given the strategic threat that faces the United States and the significant consequences you recognize already?”
“No I have not,” Rogers responded, adding that based on authority he already has, he has “directed … to begin some specific work,” but wouldn’t elaborate in a public setting. Certain overt actions by Cyber Command, a branch of the US military, could be considered an a act of cyber warfare.
“But essentially, we have not taken on the Russians yet,” Reed pressed. “We’re watching them intrude in our elections, spread misinformation, become more sophisticated, try to achieve strategic objectives that you have recognized, and we’re just, essentially, sitting back and waiting.”
Investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller have recently been asking witnesses about Donald Trump’s business activities in Russia prior to the 2016 presidential campaign as he considered a run for president, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Questions to some witnesses during wide-ranging interviews included the timing of Trump’s decision to seek the presidency, potentially compromising information the Russians may have had about him, and why efforts to brand a Trump Tower in Moscow fell through, two sources said.
The lines of inquiry indicate Mueller’s team is reaching beyond the campaign to explore how the Russians might have sought to influence Trump at a time when he was discussing deals in Moscow and contemplating a presidential run.
Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.
Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.
It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner’s contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.
Kushner’s interim security clearance was downgraded last week from the top-secret to the secret level, which should restrict the regular access he has had to highly classified information, according to administration officials.
At tonight’s Community Development Authority meeting, agenda item number 14 surprisingly calls for “Discussion and Possible Action on Community Collaborative Marketing.”
Perhaps this means a change to Whitewater’s existing community collaborative marketing plan. Our city leaders have been clear, for many years, about how to market the community. Indeed, other parts of the municipal government have sent an unmistakable message within and outside the city about Whitewater’s economic ethos.
Only recently, on February 12th, Whitewater’s city planner reiterated Whitewater’s long-standing approach, in an enumeration of regulatory expectations while discussing a change of ownership of a banquet hall that operates out of Whitewater’s American Legion Post 173 (https://vimeo.com/255625780 beginning @ 2:13 on the video). Here are some of her remarks:
The proposal is for conditional use to serve alcohol by the glass for a Class B beer and liquor license, this site has been a restaurant. A change of ownership for the establishment no changes are proposed to the existing plan, traffic flow, exterior lighting of the building, no information about hours of operation or maximum capacity have been turned in.
So it is my recommendation that we approve this subject to the condition use shall run with the applicant and not with the land, any change of ownership license needs to come back to the Plan Board, it needs to include the outdoor patio and balcony to be included in this conditional use permit, there needs to be security on site at all times (I believe that was in the last round), approval needs to be for Class B liquor license from the Alcohol Licensing Committee and Common Council (that has gone through but I would like to point out that it was on there), grease, oil, and sand interceptors (basically the grease trap) need to be kept in operation per Section 16.14.585 of city code, no modifications made be made to the site, in the event that there are modifications they need to come back in and pull building permits and so on, establish hours of operation just so that we can get them on record, provide the maximum capacity and proof of information posted on the establishment (this is for fire department), and then everything else is subject to the approval of city staff, engineering, city planner, and any other conditions that you guys see fit.
Old Whitewater – a distinct demographic minority of the city – either regulates or subsidizes to shape the city as they wish, as they expect, and as they believe they alone are entitled. They have been successful in getting their message out – in nearby towns, and across three nearby counties, Old Whitewater’s expectations are well-known, or quickly become clear, to those who might move here.
Knowing as much, prospects often choose to go elsewhere.
Productive and creative prospects don’t find Whitewater’s traditional approach appealing, but that isn’t because of a flaw in Old Whitewater’s marketing – on the contrary, it’s the very goal of their messaging: their way or the highway.
One hopes that Whitewater will try something new, but it is unlikely that some of the same men who brought us here, after a full generation of the same approach, will change now.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-nine. Sunrise is 6:32 AM and sunset 5:42 PM, for 11h 10m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1922, Justice Brandeis delivers the unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Leser v. Garnett, upholding the constitutionality of the Nineteenth Amendment that recognized women’s right to vote.
On this day in 1904, Wisconsin’s second state capitol building burns: “On the evening of the 26th, the generator was turned off for the night. The only lights visible were two gas jets serving the night watchman. At approximately 2 a.m., night watchman Nat Crampton smelled smoke and followed the odor to a recently varnished ceiling, already in flames. A second watchman arrived to assist, but there was no water pressure with which to operate a hose. The fire department encountered a similar situation upon arrival. Governor Robert M. La Follette telegraphed fire departments in Janesville and Milwaukee for assistance. La Follette was at the capitol, directing efforts to douse the fire and entering the burning building to retrieve valuable papers. The fire was completly extinguished by 10 p.m. the next day. Losses were estimated to be close to $1 million.”
Reading Marc Fisher and Sari Horwitz’s extraordinary article comparing the lives of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and President Trump made me realize that the war between the two men is not just a struggle over the fate of this presidency. It is a battle for the soul of America, because each of them represents a recognizable American archetype.
Mueller was born to wealth and attended elite institutions — St. Paul’s School, Princeton University, the University of Virginia School of Law — but felt compelled to serve his country. During the Vietnam War, when most of his classmates were avoiding the draft, he volunteered for the Marine Corps and earned numerous decorations leading a rifle platoon in fierce combat. Returning home, he became a prosecutor and eventually ran the Justice Department’s criminal division. In the 1990s Mueller went into private practice. It was lucrative, but he hated it. Watching the spike of drug-driven murders in the District of Columbia, he volunteered to become a line prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office. It was as if a retired general had volunteered to serve as a private in wartime.
…
Trump is Mueller’s opposite in every meaningful respect save that he was also born to privilege. He has much in common with the land promoters who bamboozled English immigrants into coming to the New World in the 17th century with fanciful tales of riches — what Trump would describe as “truthful hyperbole.” He is the kind of charming con man who peddled patent medicines in the 19th century and then, in the 20th century, penny stocks and time-shares. These scofflaws and scammers were the inspiration for the phony duke and dauphin in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jay Gatsby and the Wizard of Oz.
Trump combines the hedonism of the 1970s with the bigotry and sexism of the 1950s: the worst of both worlds. His consciousness was not raised in the 1960s, but his libido was. He did not take part in the civil rights or antiwar movements and won five draft deferments — including one for “bone spurs” — so that he could devote his life to the pursuit of women and wealth. He later said that fear of catching a sexually transmitted disease was “my personal Vietnam.”
(An American majority opposes Trump, and always has. What’s been said of him so many times, in similar variations, is true: Trump’s a stupid person’s idea of a smart person, and an ignorant person’s idea of a knowledgeable one.)
The announcement on Sunday that China would abolish the two-term limit for the presidency, effectively foreshadowing current leader Xi Jinping’s likely status as president for life, had been predicted ever since Xi failed to nominate a clear successor at last October’s Communist Party Congress. But it still came as a shock in a country where the collective leadership established under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s was once considered inviolable. Xi, like every leader since Deng, combines a trinity of roles that embody the three pillars of power in China: party chairman, president, and head of the Central Military Commission. But like every leader since Deng, he was once expected to hand these over after his appointed decade, letting one generation of leadership pass smoothly on to the next.
It’s virtually impossible to gauge public opinion in China, especially as censorship has gripped ever tighter online. But among Chinese I know, including those used to defending China’s system, the move caused dismay and a fair amount of gallows humor involving references to “Emperor Pooh” and “West Korea.”
…
Perhaps the system was always doomed, as soon as a cunning enough leader emerged — though Xi was not only skilled but lucky, utilizing the fall of his likely rival Bo Xilai to consolidate his own supremacy. There will be a certain grim amusement in watching intellectual apparatchiks scuttle to explain how their previous arguments in favor of collective rule have been superseded by the needs of the times and that strongman rule is now the only answer. As the New York Times’s Chris Buckley pointed out, Hu Angang, a regular and vocal apologist for the government, made collective rule the centerpiece of his book on the superiority of the Chinese political system — published in 2013, just after Xi’s initial ascension.
(One can’t say that the China has chosen her fate, but rather that Xi and the CCP have chosen for her.)
A group led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sued Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Monday over his refusal to call special elections to fill two open legislative seats.
Fresh off a victory in a Senate special election last month, Wisconsin Democrats have demanded that Walker call these two additional special elections and give their party an opportunity to notch more wins.
With Democrats seeing an opportunity — and Republicans seeing a threat — the controversy over the special election has taken on a strong political cast.
Holder’s group, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, jumped into the fight Monday, bringing the lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court on behalf of Wisconsin Democrats who live in the two districts.
“Governor Scott Walker’s refusal to hold special elections is an affront to representative democracy,” Holder said in a statement. “Forcing citizens to go more than a year without representation in the general Assembly is a plain violation of their rights, and we’re hopeful the court will act quickly to order the governor to hold elections.”
Rep. Adam Schiff seems ready to acknowledge the theory that Steve Bannon is trying to run out the clock on Capitol Hill lawmakers. Speaking to Esquire.com, the California Democrat said that the House Intelligence Committee has been somewhat tougher on Bannon than it has been with other former Trump aides called to testify in the Russia probe—namely Corey Lewandowski. But Schiff believes that Bannon has spoken instead to Robert Mueller and his investigators because he thinks he’d likely lose a legal showdown over executive privilege if he were to cross the special counsel.
“Steve Bannon apparently is a man without a country, neither in with the White House nor in with Breitbart, so the majority is willing to take him on in a way they have not been willing with other witnesses,” Schiff said.
Schiff also responded to a report over the weekend that he has rattled President Trump.
“I am doing my job and clearly there is something in it that is threatening to the president, or at least he views it that way, and he’s even more alarmed at what Bob Mueller is doing,” Schiff said. “He seems to think that these playground bully tactics are going to work. They don’t work at all. They just steel people’s resolved to be more disciplined about their work.”
[Photographer Jeremy] Black said in a Facebook post that he learned about the bird from a friend, Charlie Stephenson, a longtime birdwatcher who had spotted the sun-hued fellow at her feeder. At first, she told Al.com, she figured it was a species of yellow bird she had never seen before. Then she realized that the creature, with its black mask and crested head, looked just like a cardinal — just one of a different color.
This coloration is not unique, but it is aberrant, according to a 2003 research paper on what at the time was said to be the first-ever reported yellow northern cardinal in the United States. It was a specimen collected in 1989 in Baton Rouge by scientists at Louisiana State University. Researchers who studied its feathers concluded that the bird had a genetic mutation that impaired the metabolic processes that normally make red feathers out of the carotenoid-rich yellow and orange foods in a male cardinal’s diet.
“Do you believe your father’s [sexual misconduct] accusers?” –@PeterAlexander
“I think it’s a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter if she believes the accusers of her father when he’s affirmatively stated there’s no truth to it.” –@IvankaTrumppic.twitter.com/23AVPgcOdE
Trying to figure out what part of this is inappropriate. She works for the taxpayers, says she focuses on women’s issues, was at the interview because she went to the Olympics to represent the USA, is an adult, and has spoken publicly about accusations against others. https://t.co/7GqrFRe8oH
This Tuesday, February 27th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of The Florida Project @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building.
Sean Baker directs the one-hour, fifty-one minute film. The Florida Project is a drama “set over one summer, [as] the film follows precocious six-year-old Moonee as she courts mischief and adventure with her ragtag playmates and bonds with her rebellious but caring mother, all while living in the shadows of Walt Disney World.”
The movie stars Brooklynn Prince, Bria Vinaite, and Willem Dafoe. Appleton native Dafoe, who attended UW-Milwaukee, is nominated for a 2018 Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty. Sunrise is 6:33 AM and sunset 5:41 PM, for 11h 07m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 84.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-third 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 today.
On this day in 1815, exiled French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from Elba, to begin the Hundred Days, during which he would inflict further militarism and suffering on the people of Europe. On this day in 1863, Wisconsin’s Irish residents order a regimental flag for “the 17th Wisconsin Infantry. The flag was to be presented to Colonel Adam Malloy from all of the state’s Irish citizens.”
President Xi Jinping’s efforts to indefinitely extend his rule as China’s leader, announced on Sunday, raised fresh fears in China of a resurgence of strongman politics — and fears abroad of a new era of hostility and gridlock.
…
But Mr. Xi’s assumption of unfettered power may not work out the way he thinks, said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and a former senior Australian defense official.
“The risks to his personal fortunes are huge,” he said. “What if the People’s Liberation Army decides he should be cut loose?” And, he added, “What if growth slows more than expected?”
…
Moreover, he added, “Where does one ever see the ‘president for life’ model end well?”
Tentative plans for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to make his first visit to the White House to meet with President Trump were scuttled this week after a testy call between the two leaders ended in an impasse over Trump’s promised border wall, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.
Peña Nieto was eyeing an official trip to Washington this month or in March, but both countries agreed to call off the plan after Trump would not agree to publicly affirm Mexico’s position that it would not fund construction of a border wall that the Mexican people widely consider offensive, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential conversation.
…
One Mexican official said Trump “lost his temper.” But U.S. officials described him instead as being frustrated and exasperated, saying Trump believed it was unreasonable for Peña Nieto to expect him to back off his crowd-pleasing campaign promise of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall.
(Trump’s so self-absorbed that he thinks others will simply agree to what he finds crowd-pleasing. Even stranger are the Trump officials who think that what’s crowd-pleasing for Trump’s lumpen horde would be acceptable to reasonable and knowledgeable people anywhere else, in America or abroad.)
Hundreds of local election workers have been trained to spot and resist foreign influence. The country’s biggest media outlets have teamed up to combat false news. Political parties scour their email systems to close hacker-friendly holes.
The goal: to Russia-proof Sweden’s political system so that what happened in the United States in 2016 can never happen in this Nordic country of 10 million people.
Although the general election isn’t until Sept. 9, officials say their preemptive actions may already have dissuaded the Kremlin from interfering. In Washington, meanwhile, the FBI says it has received no White House orders to secure the 2018 midterms against Russian influence.
“It would be very risky for a foreign nation to do this now,” said Mikael Tofvesson, who heads the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency’s effort to safeguard elections from malicious foreign influence. “It could risk a backlash. It would be an exposure of their methods.”
The efforts, which are supported by parties across the political spectrum, contrast with the bitterly partisan discussion in Washington about Russia’s behavior during the 2016 election.
(There is a partisan discussion in Washington because so many GOP politicians and operatives have become fellow travelers with Putinism. These men commonly wear American flags of red, white, and blue on their lapels, but it’s a tricolor banner of white, blue, and red that more closely represents their aspirations.)
➤ Sarah Kendzior considers Why Former Trump Staffers May Be Walking Security Threats (“With many White House officials on interim clearances, the president appears to be more interested in personal loyalty than national security”):
Trump’s White House has long been a revolving door, with a turnover rate of 34%. While departures of incompetent or immoral staffers have often inspired public relief, they are actually cause for alarm. That revolving door leads into a bustling marketplace of state secrets, one whose temptations should not be shrugged off given that basic standards of loyalty to country have been put into question by this administration’s actions.
Among the departed White House staffers are former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who has admitted guilt in the Kremlin interference probe; white nationalist (and fellow domestic abuser ) Steve Bannon, who has vowed to destroy the United States; and extremist Seb Gorka, who has ties to neo-Nazi organizations and is being investigated by police in Hungary. (Gorka, like Porter, worked as a Trump advisor despite being denied clearance as a result of his 2016 arrest in the U.S. for bringing a weapon through an airport.)
Men who have already colluded with a foreign power, committed acts of violence, or threatened to destroy the U.S. now know some of the country’s secrets, and it’s easy to imagine the damage they could do in the era of WikiLeaks and illicit foreign deals. Fellow federal indictee Paul Manafort, for example, used his access as Trump’s campaign manager to offer “private briefings” to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is a close friend of Vladimir Putin and to whom Manafort is alleged to owe a great deal of money.
This flu season has been nasty in large part because the vaccine didn’t work as well as past versions. So scientists are on the hunt for new ways to make better vaccines and think they might have found one — by growing them in plants..
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 5:40 PM, for 11h 04m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1793, Pres. Washington holds the first recorded American cabinet meeting, at Mount Vernon, with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. On this day in 1862, James Loom demonstrates a new cannon at Camp Randall: “a new breech-loading cannon at Camp Randall in Madison, Wisconsin The cannon was said to be effectively discharged 50 times in four minutes.”
“After reviewing the memorandum drafted by committee Republicans that was made public at the beginning of this month, the FBI rightly expressed its ‘grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.’
“Here are some of the material facts the Majority deliberately omitted:
· The FBI supplied information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that Russia might be colluding with Trump campaign associates. DOJ provided the Court with a comprehensive explanation of Russia’s election interference including evidence that Russia courted another Trump foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, and that Russian agents previewed their dissemination of information damaging to Hillary Clinton. Russian assistance would, as we would learn in the Papadopoulos plea, take the form of the anonymous disclosure of thousands of Hillary Clinton and DNC emails.
· The FBI had ample reason to believe that Carter Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power based on his history, including the fact that he had previously been a target of Russian recruitment, his travel to Russia, and other information. The renewals of the FISA were also appropriate and based on new information obtained by law enforcement.
· The FBI did disclose that those who employed Christopher Steele were likely motivated to discredit Trump’s presidential campaign. The Bureau used proper masking procedures so as not to reveal the identities of U.S. persons not subject to the FISA, but made clear that the likely purpose was opposition research.
· Contrary to the Majority’s assertions, the FBI and DOJ did not use a Yahoo News article to corroborate Steele; it was referenced alongside another article and a letter Page wrote to then FBI Director James Comey to inform the court of Page’s public denials.
“The Democratic response memo released today should put to rest any concerns that the American people might have as to the conduct of the FBI, the Justice Department and the FISC. Our extensive review of the initial FISA application and three subsequent renewals failed to uncover any evidence of illegal, unethical, or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement and instead revealed that both the FBI and DOJ made extensive showings to justify all four requests.
“The document that we are releasing today is the product of a good faith negotiation between the Minority and the FBI and DOJ. But it is unfortunate that the weekend release of the Democratic memo by the White House was delayed beyond what was necessary and to the advantage of those seeking to mislead the American public. From the beginning, the HPSCI Minority expressed its support for any limited redactions to protect sources and methods, as well as sensitive ongoing investigative equities, and these redactions were agreed to at the expert level over a week ago.
“Now that the public has a clearer understanding of the early phases of the investigation, it is time for our committee to return to the core investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, the role U.S. persons played in that interference and what we need to do to protect the country going forward.”
The memo is available here and here. A fact sheet from HPSCI Minority is here. The accompanying letter sent by the Department of Justice is here.
President Trump lost no time dismissing the memo released Saturday by the House intelligence committee Democrats in response to the earlier memo prepared by Rep. Devin Nunes on the origins of the Carter Page surveillance:
Trump is quite wrong that the Democratic memo is a bust.
While the “Demo,” as we’ll call it for short, certainly contains its share of political rhetoric, the facts it alleges are worth serious consideration. If they are true even in substantial measure, let alone in all of their particulars, they rather lay waste to the original Nunes document. This despite a number of redactions in the Demo that apparently were the condition of its declassification and that make it hard to parse in some places.
The document is devastating because the core claim of ranking Democrat Adam Schiff and his colleagues is that the House intelligence committee majority left out key facts from its analysis in such fashion as to effectively lie about the FBI’s FISA application against former Trump adviser Carter Page in the fall of 2016. The supposedly left-out facts constitute the body of the Demo. And if the Democrats are being even generally accurate as to the material that the majority omitted from the original memo, then there is little left of the original document. Entitled “Correcting the Record—the Russia Investigations,” the document thus raises serious questions, certainly not for the first time, about whether Chairman Nunes and his colleagues are acting in good faith.
Russian military spies hacked several hundred computers used by authorities at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, according to U.S. intelligence.
They did so while trying to make it appear as though the intrusion was conducted by North Korea, what is known as a “false-flag” operation, said two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Officials in PyeongChang acknowledged that the Games were hit by a cyberattack during the Feb. 9 Opening Ceremonies but had refused to confirm whether Russia was responsible. That evening there were disruptions to the Internet, broadcast systems and the Olympics website. Many attendees were unable to print their tickets for the ceremony, resulting in empty seats.
Analysts surmise the disruption was retaliation against the International Olympic Committee for banning the Russian team from the Winter Games due to doping violations. No officials from Russia’s Olympic federation were allowed to attend, and while some athletes were permitted to compete under the designation “Olympic Athletes from Russia,” they were unable to display the Russian flag on their uniforms and, if they won medals, their country’s anthem was not played.
As of early February, the Russian military agency GRU had access to as many as 300 Olympic-related computers, according to an intelligence report this month.
As Donald Trump crisscrossed the nation promising to drain the swamp, two of his top advisers were busy illegally building a colossal fortress of riches deep inside that swamp, according to federal prosecutors.
For a decade prior and on through Trump’s populist crusade, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates used offshore accounts, hidden income, falsified documents and laundered cash to maintain Manafort’s lush life of multiple homes, fine art, exquisite clothes and exotic travel, the government says.
In a richly detailed expanded indictment filed Thursday, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III parted the curtain shielding how two longtime Washington influence merchants worked the system. The government contends that Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign chairman for five months before being fired, used people all around him, from his buddy Gates to banks, clients and the IRS, to build a life of conspicuous consumption.
Gates, who was Manafort’s deputy in their lobbying firm and on the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy and lying to the FBI, cutting a deal with prosecutors to give them information that could help Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
After being bullied in school, Alexandro Kröger Degerfeldt decided to build a world of his own. Using Lego, Degerfeldt found refuge in replicating and filming the performances of his favorite reality show, the Eurovision talent competition. Fourteen years later, he has accumulated thousands of views on his videos and has even worked with the show itself. What started off as an escape from bullying has now become Degerfeldt’s biggest dream come true. Now, he’s showing the bullies who’s boss.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 5:38 PM, for 11h 02m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 63.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1868, the U.S. House of Representatives votes 126-47 to impeach Pres. Andrew Johnson. (He narrowly avoided removal from office by the U.S. Senate.)
President Trump is overselling the financial impact of his proposed $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan by about $1.3 trillion, according to economists at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Earlier this month, the White House unveiled a proposal that it said would stimulate $1.5 trillion in new infrastructure spending through a $200 billion federal investment. The White House said the other $1.3 trillion would come from new state, local and private spending unleashed by its spending plan.
But the Penn Wharton Budget Model team found that the new federal investment would lead at most to an additional $30 billion in state, local and private spending, or about 2 percent of the amount envisioned by the White House.
SAN FRANCISCO — One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate.
The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“This is pretty typical for them, to hop on breaking news like this,” said Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of New Knowledge, a company that tracks online disinformation campaigns. “The bots focus on anything that is divisive for Americans. Almost systematically.”
One of the most divisive issues in the nation is how to handle guns, pitting Second Amendment advocates against proponents of gun control. And the messages from these automated accounts, or bots, were designed to widen the divide and make compromise even more difficult.
Any news event — no matter how tragic — has become fodder to spread inflammatory messages in what is believed to be a far-reaching Russian disinformation campaign. The disinformation comes in various forms: conspiracy videos on YouTube, fake interest groups on Facebook, and armies of bot accounts that can hijack a topic or discussion on Twitter.
➤ Jeremy Raff writes So What? Maybe It Is a Concentration Camp’ (“Joe Arpaio made his name by building a harsh jail in the desert. Now, Trump is promising to take his punitive approach to immigration national”):
On the eve of the Iowa Caucuses in January 2016, when Donald Trump’s presidential campaign still seemed a long-shot, he landed a crucial endorsement. Joe Arpaio, the Phoenix-area sheriff hailed by conservative activists for being tough on immigration, embraced Trump with a prescient message. “Everything I believe in,” Arpaio declared, “he’s going to do when he becomes president.”
The former sheriff rose to national prominence by running an outdoor jail in the desert he once proudly referred to as a “concentration camp.” Arpaio, who is now running for the United States Senate, sees no reason to reconsider the remark. “I’m not going to back down,” Arpaio said in a recent interview. “So what? Maybe it is a concentration camp. I don’t want to make it look nice, like the Hilton Hotel. I want to say it’s a tough place so people don’t want to come there.”
Now Trump, his most prominent champion, is working to execute an Arpaio-style immigration crackdown at a scale neither may have imagined in Iowa. America’s immigrant detention centers have proliferated in recent decades as a result of bipartisan investment. But the Trump administration is aggressively expanding these facilities, where conditions often seem punitively harsh, locking up many immigrants who pose no obvious threat to public safety. A year into President Trump’s crackdown, tens of thousands of immigrants are living the consequences, and fighting against deportation from behind bars.
(These lumpen men now wield wrongly federal power over hundreds of millions.)
In December 2017, the Russia-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security over an order labeling Kaspersky software an “information security risk” and ordering the removal of all relevant software from government national security systems after a review process of 90 days. The firm applied for a preliminary injunction under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), arguing the order was “arbitrary and capricious.” Lawfare has previously summarized the lawsuit.
In February, the litigation between Kaspersky and DHS heated up. On Feb. 5, the government filed its response to Kaspersky’s application for a preliminary injunction, along with its evidentiary file. The evidentiary file includes a document entitled the “Maggs Report,” on which DHS relied in making its decision to link Russian espionage services and Kaspersky so closely together. On Feb. 12, Kaspersky filed its reply to these documents. The following is an update to this litigation providing a summary of all the above documents.
The “Maggs Report”
Though only briefly mentioned by both Kaspersky in its application for a preliminary injunction and by the government in its brief in opposition below, the Maggs Report, authored by Russian law expert Peter Maggs of the University of Illinois College of Law, provides a strong underpinning to the DHS says Kaspersky software presented an information security risk because of Kaspersky’s Russian connections. First, Maggs explains that Federal Law No. 40-FZ outlines a legal obligation by Kaspersky to assist Russian FSB officials in the execution of their duties, “including counterintelligence and intelligence activity.” Russian law also permits FSB personnel to be embedded in private enterprises, including Kaspersky, under the same law. Furthermore, because Kaspersky qualifies as an “organizer of the dissemination of information on the Internet” under Article 10. 1 of Federal Law No. 149-FZ, it is required to provide the FSB with metadata (as of July 1, 2018), and is also required to provide Russian officials with decryption keys for its data transmissions. Articles 6 and 8 of Federal Law No. 144-FZ also require Kaspersky to install equipment for the FSB to monitor data transmissions.
South African police say a suspected poacher was eaten by a pride of lions at a big game park in the province of Limpopo.
The animals “ate his body, nearly all of it, and just left his head and some remains,” Limpopo police spokesman Moatshe Ngoepe told AFP. “It seems the victim was poaching in the game park when he was attacked and killed by lions.”
A loaded hunting rifle, found near the man’s remains, appears to be the main reason police think the individual was a poacher.
Authorities haven’t conclusively identified him yet. Ngoepe initially told News24, a local news site, that authorities believed the deceased man was a park employee. That individual was later found alive. Police have opened an investigation and are seeking information about the dead man’s identity.
“The process of identifying the deceased has already commenced and it might be made possible by the fact that his head is amongst the remains that were found at the scene,” Ngoepe tells the site.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 5:37 PM, for 10h 59m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous, with 53.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1846, malted-milk magnate William Horlick is born: “A noted food manufacturer and philanthopist, Horlick arrived in the U.S. in 1869 and settled in Racine. In 1872 he moved to Chicago with his brother and began to manufacture food products. In 1876 his company moved to Racine where he began to experiment with creating a dried milk product. In 1887 he trademarked Malted Milk. In 1889 he opened a company branch in New York City and another in England the following year. He constructed additional plants in Racine in 1902 and 1905. The company name was changed to Horlick’s Malted Milk Co. in 1906. This success enabled Horlick to achieve a widespread reputation as a philanthropist in Racine. He also helped fund the first Byrd expedition to the South Pole and the Amundsen expedition to the North Pole. After his death in 1936, control of the company passed to his son, Ander James Horlick.”
A Russian oligarch believed to control the Russian mercenaries who attacked U.S. troops and their allies in Syria this month was in close touch with Kremlin and Syrian officials in the days and weeks before and after the assault, according to U.S. intelligence reports.
In intercepted communications in late January, the oligarch, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, told a senior Syrian official that he had “secured permission” from an unspecified Russian minister to move forward with a “fast and strong” initiative that would take place in early February.
…
The recent incident took place on the night of Feb. 7-8, when a headquarters base of U.S. troops and their Syrian allies, located near a strategic oil field several miles east of the river and close to the town of Deir al-Zour, was attacked by 300 to 500 “pro-regime” forces.
The Americans quickly mobilized a ferocious response, including AC-130 gunships, jet warplanes and Apache attack helicopters. After three hours, the attacking force retreated, leaving behind what the U.S. military said was about 100 dead attackers. No casualties were reported among the Americans and their allies, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
(Our fellow Americans were victorious here, successfully defending themselves, and inflicting a deserved blow against Russian mercenaries. Americans at home who support Putin – including Trump’s servile response to Putin’s Russia – provide support for America’s deadly – literally deadly – enemies.)
WASHINGTON — A former top adviser to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign indicted by the special counsel was expected to plead guilty as soon as Friday afternoon, according to two people familiar with his plea agreement, a move that signals he is cooperating with the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
The adviser, Rick Gates, is a longtime political consultant who once served as Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman. The plea deal could be a significant development in the investigation — a sign that Mr. Gates plans to offer incriminating information against his longtime associate and the former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, or other members of the Trump campaign in exchange for a lighter punishment.
The deal comes as the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has been raising pressure on Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort with dozens of new charges of money laundering and bank fraud that were unsealed on Thursday. Mr. Mueller first indicted both men in October, and both pleaded not guilty.
➤ Do all Christians believe that the Earth is for humanity to exploit? No, not all:
Actually, what God told us was something else: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). But we have done too much tilling and not enough keeping. https://t.co/R49J2EFXco
➤ Do all Christians believe that God, Himself, grants an express right to gun ownership? No, not all:
Others may believe this, but the Catholic Church does not teach that individual civilians have a natural right to own a gun. While recognizing the natural right to self-defense, the US bishops have also repeatedly called for major restrictions on gun ownership. https://t.co/1yaWZL4o28
Whitewater’s looking for a new police chief, and has two candidates from which to choose. During a hiring process, it’s conventional to solicit community opinion on residents’ preferences and views on policing. Whitewater, expectedly, has done so, too.
(There are, however, significant limitations with surveys of Whitewater’s kind, as I’ve noted. Whitewater’s method will produce self-selected, skewed samples that will not show the true demographics of the city. SeeThe Limits of Community Surveys.)
A sharp reader pointed out a surprise with Whitewater’s survey: the three questions oddly omit a conventional question about what could be done better.
List the top three characteristics you feel are important traits for a Whitewater Police Chief.
As we look toward the future, what do you believe is the major challenge facing law enforcement in the City of Whitewater?
What is something you feel the Whitewater Police Department is currently doing well and you would like to see continue to grow and prosper?
Yes, there’s not a single question about what could be done better. Just about every ordinary survey asks what could be improved from existing practices, for example using a ‘Start-Stop-Continue’ or ‘Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities’ method, etc.
The local survey omits a simple question about what could be done better that’s present on thousands of surveys submitted across American each day.
Is Old Whitewater that brittle, that rigid, that she will not ask the simple question that America’s finest organizations & institutions (including the United States Armed Forces, SpaceX, Apple) ask of themselves routinely? Those institutions and organization lead the world in part because they confidently ask those questions, from others, about themselves.
There is no better example for Whitewater than the best of American competitiveness. We should embrace the confident method of inquiry that underlies the most extraordinary country in all the world.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 5:36 PM, for 10h 56m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 42% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred sixty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Whitewater’s Alcohol & Licensing Committee meets at 6 PM, the Whitewater Fire Department has a business meeting scheduled for 6:30 PM, and Common Council also meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1922, an ice storm brings havoc to Wisconsin: “Unprecedented freezing rain and snow assaulted the Midwest February 21-23, 1922. In Wisconsin the central and southern parts of the state were most severely affected, with the counties between Lake Winnebago and Lake Michigan south to Racine being hardest hit. Ice coated trees and power lines, bringing them down and cutting off electricity, telephone and telegraph services. Cities were isolated, roads were impassable, rivers rose, streets and basements flooded, and train service stopped or slowed.
Near Little Chute a passenger train went off the rails, injuring several crew members. Appleton housed 150 stranded traveling salesmen, near Plymouth a sheet of river ice 35 feet long and nearly three feet thick washed onto the river bank, while in Sheboygan police rescued a flock of chickens and ducks from their flooded coop and a sick woman from her flooded home. Icy streets caused numerous automobile accidents, but the only reported deaths were a team of horses in Appleton that were electrocuted by a fallen power line.”
Donald Trump has, by his own account, spent much of his adult life trying to enrich himself through corruption: During his presidential campaign, the mogul claimed that he had routinely tried to buy policy favors from elected officials by donating to their campaigns.
Given these realities, many experts in government ethics believe that Trump had an obligation to take extraordinary measures to insulate himself from conflicts of interest once be became president — up to and including divesting himself from a wide range of foreign assets. Of course, Trump refused to do any such thing. Instead, he vowed to place his assets into what he referred to as a “blind trust,” but was actually an entity that would allow him perfect knowledge of his holdings — and that would be managed by his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr. The president’s sole concession to ethical propriety was the stipulation that neither Eric nor Don Jr. would have any role whatsoever in his administration.
“The company and policy and government are completely separated,” Eric Trump assured the Washington Post last year. “We have built an unbelievable wall in between the two.”
But Don Jr.’s trip to India represents a kind of “coming-out party” for the Trumpist kleptocracy: According the the Washington Post, the manager of the president’s “blind trust” will travel to Mumbai this week to promote his family’s real-estate projects, sell access to himself for $38,000 a head, and give a foreign policy speech (ostensibly) on behalf of his father’s administration at a global business summit ….
But Friday’s indictments from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and the president’s response to them, point to a more troubling and increasingly likely motivation: President Trump does not want to stop Kremlin interference intended to sway our elections in his favor. Rather, he welcomes it.
The Special Counsel’s revelations provided a detailed description of part of the modern information warfare Russia has waged against our country since at least 2014. It was a highly-coordinated assault, employing foreign agents on U.S. soil as well as Moscow-based internet operatives.
And yet, in response to this news, the president still couldn’t muster a forceful rebuke of Putin’s regime. Nor would he vow to hold it accountable and deter future attacks. On the contrary, he tried to spin the entire ordeal as an exoneration.
This is either willful ignorance or, more likely, disloyal opportunism. That’s because, whether he admits it or not, the president must know that the story he publicly calls a “hoax” is real. We have detailed evidence of Moscow’s subversion of our democracy. But it seems unlikely that the president will change his tune and take action to counter it.
“I can’t say I’ve been specifically directed to blunt or actually stop” Russian influence operations, NSA Director Mike Rogers shockingly revealed to the Senate Intelligence Committee this week. Rogers and the nation’s other top intelligence chiefs were on the Hill to provide their annual Worldwide Threats Assessment.
(Donald Trump reveals himself as worse even than a fellow traveler – he’s effectually a fifth columnist for Putin. Indeed, he’s likely the highest-placed fifth columnist in modern times.)
In 2016, America’s elections were targeted by a foreign nation-state intent on infiltrating and manipulating our electoral system. On September 22, 2017, it was reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified 21 states that were targeted by hackers during the 2016 election.1 Among those states notified by DHS were: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington.2 Arizona, California, Iowa, Texas, and Wisconsin were also among those states originally contacted by DHS. However, those states have denied that their election systems were attacked.3 Ultimately, hackers only reportedly succeeded in breaching the voter registration system of one state: Illinois.4 And while DHS did not name those responsible for the attempted hacks, many believe the culprits can be traced back to Russia.5 Experts have warned that a future attack on our election infrastructure, by Russia or other malicious actors, is all but guaranteed.6
…
In August 2017, the Center for American Progress released a report entitled “9 Solutions for Securing America’s Elections,” laying out nine vulnerabilities in election infrastructure and solutions to help improve election security in time for the 2018 and 2020 elections.15 This report builds on that analysis to provide an overview of election security and preparedness in each state, looking specifically at state requirements and practices related to:
Minimum cybersecurity standards for voter registration systems
Voter-verified paper ballots
Post-election audits that test election results
Ballot accounting and reconciliation
Return of voted paper absentee ballots
Voting machine certification requirements
Pre-election logic and accuracy testing
This report provides an overview of state compliance with baseline standards to protect their elections from hacking and machine malfunction. Some experts may contend that additional standards, beyond those mentioned here, should be required of states to improve election security. The chief purpose of this report is to provide information on how states are faring in meeting even the minimum standards necessary to help secure their elections.
(One reads that Wisconsin is no better than average in her election security: “Wisconsin adheres to minimum cybersecurity best practices related to voter registration systems and conducts its elections using paper ballots and voting machines that provide a paper record. But the state’s failure to carry out post-election audits that test the accuracy of election outcomes leaves the state open to undetected hacking and other Election Day problems.”)