Good morning.

August 2018’s last day in Whitewater will be increasingly cloudy with a high of eighty.  Sunrise is 6:19 AM and sunset 7:30 PM, for 13h 10m 50s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 76.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, the Battle of Jonesborough begins:

The Battle of Jonesborough (modern name Jonesboro) was fought August 31–September 1, 1864, during the Atlanta Campaign in the American Civil War. Two Union armies led by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman maneuvered to draw the Army of Tennessee (led by John Bell Hood) away from their defenses at Atlanta, Georgia, where it could be destroyed.

Although Hood’s army was not destroyed, the city of Atlanta was abandoned and then occupied by Union troops for the rest of the war. The fall of Atlanta also had far-reaching political as well as military effects on the course of the war.

Among those supporting the defense of the Union, “[t]he 1st, 12th, 16th, 17th, 21st, 24th, 25th and 32nd Wisconsin Infantry regiments along with the 5th and 10th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries fought in this battle.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Ashley Parker reports ‘Totally dishonest’: Trump asserts only he can be trusted over opponents and ‘fake news’:

Over roughly the past day, President Trump has decried the “totally dishonest” media, with its “fake news” and “fake books.” He has argued that Google is biased against conservatives. And he has accused NBC News of “fudging” the tape of an interview with him that has been available online for more than a year.

The president has even declared there is no chaos in his White House, which he claimed is a “?‘smooth running machine’ with changing parts,” despite the tumult that emanates almost daily from within its walls.

Trump’s assertions — all on Twitter, some false, some without clear evidence — come just over nine weeks before the midterm elections that could help determine his fate, and they are bound by one unifying theme: All of his perceived opponents are peddling false facts and only Trump can be trusted.

(The serial liar seeks to inoculate himself against refutation by claiming that only his words are believable.)

Ali Veshi shows how simply and plainly Trump’s claims are refuted:

This is unusual even by the standards of dishonest @realDonaldTrump tweets. Here’s the entire, unedited Trump interview with Lester Holt, that has been available to anyone who’s wanted to see it from the beginning. https://t.co/Oj5e4VeaTf https://t.co/6F3P9HMXQo

— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) August 30, 2018

Jeff Horwitz reports Tabloid that kept Trump secrets faces losses, legal trouble:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Enquirer has long explained its support for Donald Trump as a business decision based on the president’s popularity among its readers. But private financial documents and circulation figures obtained by The Associated Press show that the tabloid’s business was declining even as it published stories attacking Trump’s political foes and, prosecutors claim, helped suppress stories about his alleged sexual affairs.

The Enquirer’s privately held parent company, American Media Inc., lost $72 million for the year ending in March, the records obtained by the AP show. And despite AMI chairman David Pecker’s claims that the Enquirer’s heavy focus on Trump sells magazines, the documents show that the Enquirer’s average weekly circulation fell by 18 percent to 265,000 in its 2018 fiscal year from the same period the year before — the greatest percentage loss of any AMI-owned publication. The slide follows the Enquirer’s 15 percent circulation loss for the previous 12 months, a span that included the presidential election.

More broadly, the documents obtained by the AP show that American Media isn’t making enough money to cover the interest accruing on its $882 million in long-term debt and that the company expects “continued declines in circulation and advertising revenues” in the current year. That leaves AMI reliant on debt to keep its operations afloat and finance a string of recent acquisitions that are transforming the tabloid news industry.

Holger Roonemaa and Inga Springe report This Is How Russian Propaganda Actually Works In The 21st Century (“Skype logs and other documents obtained by BuzzFeed News offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine”):

TALLINN, Estonia — The Russian government discreetly funded a group of seemingly independent news websites in Eastern Europe to pump out stories dictated to them by the Kremlin, BuzzFeed News and its reporting partners can reveal.

Russian state media created secret companies in order to bankroll websites in the Baltic states — a key battleground between Russia and the West — and elsewhere in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

The scheme has only come to light through Skype chats and documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, Estonian newspaper Postimees, and investigative journalism outlet Re:Baltica via freedom of information laws, as part of a criminal probe into the individual who was Moscow’s man on the ground in Estonia.

The Skype logs and other files, obtained from computers seized by investigators, reveal the secrets and obfuscating tactics used by Russia as it tries to influence public opinion and push Kremlin talking points.

The websites, all called Baltnews, presented themselves as independent news outlets, but in fact, editorial lines were dictated directly by Moscow.

Go Behind the Scenes of the ‘Walking With Dinosaurs’ Show:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-two.  Sunrise is 6:18 AM and sunset 7:31 PM, for 13h 13m 36s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 84% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, Wisconsin troops rest at the White House lawn:

The 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments fought in the Second Battle of Bull Run. By the end of this third day, more than 18,000 soldiers had been killed or wounded and Union forces had been pushed back to Washington, D.C. When the Wisconsin regiments arrived in Washington, they rested on the White House lawn. According to historian Frank Klement, “President Lincoln came out with a pail of water in one hand and a dipper in the other. He moved among the men, offering water to the tired and thirsty. Some Wisconsin soldiers drank from the common dipper and thanked the President for his kindness.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Bruce Vielmetti reports Milwaukee County Jail inmate who remained shackled, handcuffed during childbirth sues county, sheriff:

A former Milwaukee County Jail inmate whom deputies ordered to wear leg shackles before, during and after she gave birth in a hospital has sued the county and Acting Sheriff Richard Schmidt over her ordeal.

According to Sandra Robles’ federal civil rights lawsuit, the chain between her feet was so short she couldn’t reach the stirrups when it came time to push during labor. In addition, one hand was chained to the bed.

Deputies refused medical staff requests to remove Robles’ shackles at least during labor.

After she gave birth, Robles wore the shackles to the restroom, and the arm chain prevented her from having full skin contact with her newborn, she said. An armed deputy was present for her entire hospital stay.

Kevin Sieff reports U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question:

PHARR, Tex. — On paper, he’s a devoted U.S. citizen.

His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol and now as a state prison guard.

But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year, the government’s response floored him. In a letter, the State Department said it didn’t believe he was an American citizen.

As he would later learn, Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown.

(Note well that the Trump Administration has no specific reason to doubt any given American’s citizenship – they’re relying on a mere and general suspicion, and shifting the burden of proof to the citizen to prove his status. That general suspicion is cast on Latinos without particular evidence. In a free society, the burden of proof should rest with the state, not the citizen.)

Josh Rogin sets Trump straight on how a free press works:

Trump may not like that his media coverage is negative, but unlike Xi he doesn’t have the power to censor critics. If he wants to know why Google searches on “Trump News” return negative results, he should put down Twitter and pick up a mirror. https://t.co/rJEWnDYtfU

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) August 29, 2018

Natasha Bertrand considers Devin Nunes’s Curious Trip to London (“The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee flew to London to gather intel on Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who compiled the dossier alleging Trump-campaign ties with Russia. But MI5, MI6, and GCHQ didn’t seem interested”):

According to two people familiar with his trip across the pond who requested anonymity to discuss the chairman’s travels, Devin Nunes, a California Republican, was investigating, among other things, Steele’s own service record and whether British authorities had known about his repeated contact with a U.S. Justice Department official named Bruce Ohr. To that end, Nunes requested meetings with the heads of three different British agencies—MI5, MI6, and the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. (Steele was an MI6 agent until a decade ago, and GCHQ, the United Kingdom’s equivalent of the National Security Agency, was the first foreign-intelligence agency to pick up contacts between Trump associates and Russian agents in 2015, according to The Guardian.)

A U.K. security official, speaking on background, said “it is normal for U.K. intelligence agencies to have meetings with the chairman and members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.” But those meetings did not pan out—Nunes came away meeting only with the U.K.’s deputy national-security adviser, Madeleine Alessandri. The people familiar with his trip told me that officials at MI6, MI5, and GCHQ were wary of entertaining Nunes out of fear that he was “trying to stir up a controversy.” Spokespeople for Alessandri and Nunes did not return requests for comment, and neither did the press offices for MI5 and MI6. GCHQ declined to comment.

(Nunes has so little credibility that allied officials know to shun him.)

Engineering a Racing Yacht to Cross the Pacific Ocean: 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see occasional morning showers and a high of seventy-one.  Sunrise is 6:17 AM and sunset 7:33 PM, for 13h 16m 23s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 90.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Joint Review Board meets today at 4 PM.

On this day in 2005, Hurricane Katrina makes its second landfall:

Hurricane Katrina was an extremely destructive and deadly Category 5 hurricane that struck the Gulf Coast of the United States in August 2005, causing catastrophic damage from central Florida to eastern Texas. Subsequent flooding, caused largely as a result of fatal engineering flaws in the flood protection system[3] around the city of New Orleans, precipitated most of the loss of lives. The storm was the third major hurricane of the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, as well as the third most intense tropical cyclone on record to make landfall in the United States, behind only the 1935 Labor Day hurricane and Hurricane Camille in 1969.

….

Overall, at least 1,245 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods, making it the deadliest United States hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane. Severe property damage occurred in numerous coastal areas, such as Mississippi beachfront towns where boats and casino barges rammed buildings, pushing cars and houses inland; water reached 6–12 miles (10–19 km) from the beach. Total property damage was estimated at $125 billion (2005 USD),[2][1] roughly four times the damage wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992,[6] tying Katrina with Hurricane Harvey of 2017 as the costliest Atlantic tropical cyclone on record.[7]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Molly Beck reports Wisconsin corrections officials don’t have current info for nearly 3,000 sex offenders:

MADISON – State corrections officials don’t have current information for nearly 3,000 people convicted of sexual crimes, a new state analysis shows.

Of the more than 25,000 offenders on the state’s Sex Offender Registry, 2,735 are considered noncompliant as of Aug. 20 — which could mean the offender has reported a false address to the Department of Corrections or they haven’t updated their place of employment with the state, among other violations.

Among the offenders who are noncompliant, 308 have absconded — or are refusing to keep in touch with DOC agents, according to a recent Legislative Fiscal Bureau analysis.

….

DOC spokesman Tristan Cook said the number of sex offenders who have intentionally stopped communicating with agents is in the hundreds, not thousands.

(Honest to goodness, the supposed defense from Walker’s Department of Corrections is that the number sex offenders who have intentionally stopped communicating is in the hundreds? That’s not a defense, it’s an admission.)

Mary Spicuzza and Patrick Marley report Scott Walker declares Zoo Interchange is done, even as years of work remain:

Walker on Monday celebrated the completion of the core of the Zoo Interchange, even though work on the interchange’s north leg is behind schedule. The overall construction project has for years tormented Milwaukee-area commuters.

“The Zoo Interchange Core is completed on time and on budget,” the GOP governor said in a statement.

….

In 2011, Walker promised to complete the entire Zoo Interchange project by 2019. He’s meeting that deadline for the core of the project, but not its north leg.

RELATED: No gridlock relief: Wisconsin DOT makes — then abandons — plans to ease Zoo Interchange traffic.

That work now isn’t expected to be done until 2023 at a cost of $232.6 million — 16 percent more than last year’s estimate of $202.6 million, according to the Daily Reporter.

That work will get done by 2023 only if the governor and Legislature approve the funding in next year’s state budget. Walker hasn’t decided yet whether to make enough money available to meet that already-delayed deadline, according to this office.

Katelyn Ferral reports Wisconsin DOT report shows total transportation funding has fallen under Scott Walker:

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation reports that total funding across all state transportation programs has fallen since Gov. Scott Walker took office in 2011, despite statements Walker has made insisting he has made historic investments.

According to a DOT report on 2018-2019 budget trends released last week, spending has fallen across every road program, including major highway development, local road aid and assistance and southeast Wisconsin freeways, which saw the most dramatic decline.

From fiscal year 2011-2012, funding for major highway development decreased by 31.2 percent, highway improvement funding fell by 23.8 percent and local road funding fell 13.4 percent in constant 2017 dollars. Funding for southeast freeways dropped by 51.1 percent.

Debt service on transportation borrowing has increased 66.9 percent since fiscal year 20121-12, according to the report.

 CBS reports on an even worse hurricane than Katrina:

Last year, President Trump implied that Hurricane Maria was not “a real catastrophe, like Katrina.” Today, new estimates reveal that over a thousand more people died in Puerto Rico than in Katrina. https://t.co/QygQgHx9ng pic.twitter.com/SHUqQeXinh

— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 28, 2018

See also Hurricane Maria caused an estimated 2,975 deaths in Puerto Rico, new study finds.

A fireball streaking through Midwest sky was visible from 8 states:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see occasional thundershowers with a high of eighty-five.  Sunrise is 6:16 AM and sunset 7:35 PM, for 13h 19m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, the Iron Brigade fights its first battle:

On this date the Iron Brigade (Western soldiers) fought their first battle at Browner Farm. The unit was composed of the 2nd Infantry, 6th Infantry, 7th Wisconsin Infantry, and the 19th Indiana Infantry, 24th Michigan Infantry, and Battery B of the 4th U.S. Light Artillery and was well known for its valor at such Civil War battles as Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg.

Recommended for reading in full — 

  David Fickling and Anjani Trivedi report Trump’s Mexico Trade Deal Looks Like a Lemon (“Peer under the hood, and these auto rules pack less punch”):

The key elements certainly look dramatic: lifting rules-of-origin requirements to 75 percent to avoid import tariffs, and a separate rule that 40 percent to 45 percent of content come from factories paying more than $16 an hour. The wage rule in particular is about twice what Mexican assembly-line workers make, and four times the average at parts companies there.

When you take a look under the hood, though, there’s a lot less than meets the eye.

….

Based on the NHTSA’s data [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration], there are just three models made in Mexico that are currently exempt but would attract tariffs under the new regime: Nissan Motor Co.’s Versa Sedan, Audi AG’s SQ5, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s Fiat 500. Of these, only the Versa sells more than a handful of models in the U.S., with 106,772 vehicles shipped in 2017.

 Tim Arango, Adam Nagourney, and Jose A. Del Real report Duncan Hunter’s Political Promise Foiled by Hard Partying and a Corruption Scandal:

SAN DIEGO — In Alpine, Calif., a suburban Southern California enclave, Duncan Hunter was a good neighbor. He’d help people do yard work, or move heavy furniture. He drove the same dented-up truck for years. At parties, he’d have a beer, two tops, and he might go off and sneak a cigarette so his wife wouldn’t see. He rarely talked about his job as a congressman.

In Washington, Mr. Hunter was a fixture on the bar scene, and spent lavishly — over $400 for 30 tequila shots at a bachelor party, and countless fancy dinners. He visited one of his favorite bars sometimes multiple times a day, piling up thousands of dollars in tabs. On occasion, he would get into loud arguments with patrons, once over the choice of music on the jukebox (he hated Celine Dion).

Those divergent lives — between the watering holes and halls of power in Washington and the suburban tracts and chain stores of Southern California — intersected for years, prosecutors say, as Mr. Hunter and his wife funded their personal lives with campaign donations, the dimensions of which were revealed in an indictment last week.

David Frum writes The President Is a Crook (“The country now faces a choice between the Trump presidency and the rule of law”):

So now it’s confirmed, as a matter of legal record, that President Donald Trump organized a scheme to violate federal election laws. He directed his longtime personal attorney to pay at least one woman for silence. That attorney got the money by lying to a bank to get a home-equity line of credit.

It’s a matter of legal record, too, that Trump’s campaign chair was a huge-scale crook. Despite his desperate financial straits, he volunteered to work for Trump for free—and Trump accepted.

These two cases complete the beginnings of the story. They are not the story in full. The Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort cases are like the first rocky outcroppings a ship passes as it makes landfall. They are examples of the kind of people willing to work for Trump—and the way that those people carried on their business. They indicate why one of Trump’s sons would write “I love it” when offered stolen information about the Hillary Clinton campaign by a purported representative of the Russian government, how so much doubtful money flowed into the Trump Organization after 2006, and why Trump dares not publish his tax returns.

Ashely Parker writes President non grata: Trump often unwelcome and unwilling to perform basic rituals of the office:

Shunned at two funerals and one (royal) wedding so far, President Trump may be well on his way to becoming president non grata.

The latest snub comes in the form of the upcoming funeral for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), which, before his death, the late senator made clear he did not want the sitting president to attend. That the feeling is mutual — Trump nixed issuing a statement that praised McCain as a “hero” — only underscores the myriad ways Trump has rejected the norms of his office and, increasingly, has been rejected in turn.

Less than two years into his first term, Trump has often come to occupy the role of pariah — both unwelcome and unwilling to perform the basic rituals and ceremonies of the presidency, from public displays of mourning to cultural ceremonies.

Self-Driving Cars Need Lessons On Human Drivers:

Good morning.

 Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-five.  Sunrise is 6:15 AM and sunset 7:37 PM, for 13h 21m 54s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, the Library Board at 6:30 PM, and at 7 PM Whitewater’s School Board convenes in open session at Central Office.

On this day in 1883, Krakatoa erupts:

The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) began in the afternoon of Sunday, 26 August 1883 (with origins as early as May of that year), and peaked in the late morning of Monday, 27 August when over 70% of the island and its surrounding archipelago were destroyed as it collapsed into a caldera. Additional seismic activity was reported to have continued until February 1884, though reports of seismic activity after October 1883 were later dismissed by Rogier Verbeek’s investigation into the eruption. The 1883 eruption was one of the deadliest and most destructive volcanic events in recorded history. At least 36,417 deaths are attributed to the eruption and the tsunamis it created. Significant additional effects were also felt around the world in the days and weeks after the volcano’s eruption.

….

On August 27, four enormous explosions occurred. At 5:30 am, the first explosion was at Perboewatan, triggering a tsunami heading straight to Telok Betong, now known as Bandar Lampung. At 6:44 am, Krakatoa exploded again at Danan, with the resulting tsunami stretching eastward and westward. The largest explosion, at 10:02 am, was so violent that it was heard 3,110 km (1,930 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia, and the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away, where they were thought to be cannon fire from a nearby ship. The third explosion has been reported as the loudest sound heard in historic times.[2][3]:79 The loudness of the blast heard 160 km (100 mi) from the volcano has been calculated to have been 180 dB.[4] Each explosion was accompanied by tsunamis estimated to have been over 30 meters (98 feet) high in places. A large area of the Sunda Strait and a number of places on the Sumatran coast were affected by pyroclastic flows from the volcano. The energy released from the explosion has been estimated to be equal to about 200 megatons of TNT,[5] roughly four times as powerful as the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever detonated. At 10:41 am, a landslide tore off half of Rakata volcano, causing the final explosion.

Recommended for reading in full — 

  Ben Judah contends Washington Is Turning Into Moscow:

So I wasn’t surprised when my computer was hacked in a custom-made attack launched from a Russian-speaking country. Nor was I shocked when Microsoft revealed that, once I had finished my research into how kleptocrats move around their money, my project had been targeted by hackers run by Russian intelligence who cloned a website in order to phish the accounts of anyone interested in our work.

But this time I didn’t stop to think Why me? It was now perfectly clear. What upsets the current regime in Moscow is not what used to infuriate the old Soviet authorities—research into its military strength—but anything exploring its illicit finances. Something similar might now be said of the current White House.

Looking back on it, I realize that every story I ever filed from Russia was not just a politics story, or a crime story, or a spy story—but almost always, on some level, also a corruption story.

That’s one final, spooky way that Washington now feels just like Moscow.

Bob Bauer writes Trump’s Contempt for the Law Will Be His Downfall:

Michael Cohen’s guilty plea this week [8.21], on charges including campaign-finance violations, brought the investigations directly to the president. It has also, however, supplied Trump and his allies with new material with which to cry “witch hunt.” Having argued all along that the investigations are political in character, they point now to strained legal claims focused on Trump’s sexual history. Distasteful, yes, they say; but it has “nothing to do with Russia,” and the charge’s evident purpose is to sully the president and to find some basis on which to bring him down.

In the days ahead, that message will surely also include references to the jurorwho voted to convict Paul Manafort, but told Fox News that she believed that the prosecutors aim was to flip Manafort for “dirt” on Trump. In this way, Trump will attempt to situate himself squarely in the tradition of other subjects of public corruption prosecutions who, facing legal and political ruin, blame high political intrigue and low motive.

This defense only succeeds to the extent that it breaks into smaller pieces the larger story of the president’s legal troubles, systematically distorting and misrepresenting each element to make the whole seem less than the sum of its parts. So Trump maintained that former National-Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pled guilty for lying to the FBI, had to go only because he lied to the vice president, and otherwise was blameless for the dealings with the Russians about which he lied. He dismissed his former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who lied to investigators about his contacts with Russians, as a “low-level volunteer.” His answer to the Cohen plea is that his former lawyer and friend is a liar, not to be trusted. He has depicted Paul Manafort as “brave,”a distinguished member of the Republican consulting community who only landed in the sights of prosecutors because of his late and brief ties to Trump and his refusal to “break” under the threat of jail time.

Max Boot writes Trump is an illegitimate president whose election is tainted by fraud:

It tells you all you need to know about the moral standing of Trump’s defenders that Terrible Tuesday also included the indictment of one of his earliest congressional supporters, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.), and his wife, on charges of misusing campaign funds to pay personal expenses. This comes shortly after another of Trump’s early endorsers, Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), decided not to seek reelection after being indicted on insider-trading charges.

But the far more serious crimes of Trump’s congressional supporters do not involve personal peculation. They involve violating their oaths of office by failing to hold the president accountable for misusing his office. Some, such as Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), have gone much further by actively attempting to impede the Justice Department investigation into Trump’s alleged misconduct. They have become, in a moral if not legal sense, accessories to obstruction of justice.

And they have gotten away with it because the congressional leadership has allowed them to do so. Judging by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) cowardly and cautious statement on Tuesday — “We are aware of Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea to these serious charges. We will need more information than is currently available at this point” — there is no sign that the Republicans in Congress will ever provide any serious oversight of the Republican in the White House.

Conor Sen writes After a Trump Impeachment, Expect the Market to Bounce (“His party probably won’t turn against him until an economic downturn is near its trough. That’s what happened to Nixon”):

President Donald Trump’s comment Thursday morning that the stock market would crash if he’s impeached has the causality backward: Without a stock market crash, it’s unlikely he’ll ever be successfully impeached. Only after or in the middle of a crash would the political environment change enough to get Republicans to abandon him and impeach him.

But if this scenario were to unfold, an actual impeachment would probably end up being a bullish development, not a bearish one. For evidence look to the slow end of the Nixon administration.

In January 1973, the month of the beginning of President Richard Nixon’s second term, the S&P 500 was at a record high and Nixon’s net approval rating was near its highest level as well. This was seven months after the Watergate break-in. Unfortunately for the president, core inflation was about to surge, which ultimately led to the unraveling of his presidency.

How the Five Day Work Week Became Popular:

Good morning.

 Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:14 AM and sunset 7:38 PM, for 13h 24m 38s of daytime.  The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1939, the first Major League Baseball game is televised:

August 26 of the same year [1939], the first ever Major League Baseball game was televised (once again on W2XBS). With Red Barber announcing, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds played a doubleheader at Ebbets Field. The Reds won the first, 5–2 while the Dodgers won the second, 6–1. Barber called the game without the benefit of a monitor and with only two cameras capturing the game. One camera was placed behind home plate, in the second tier of seating, while another was positioned near the visitors’ dugout, on the third-base side.[2]

Recommended for reading in full — 

  Russell Feingold writes John McCain Was a Committed Leader. He Was Also Really Fun:

Being with John McCain, who died Saturday afternoon, could be a lot of work but was almost always fun. There were many often heroic chapters in this exciting man’s life to which others can better speak. But he and I spent well over a decade working closely together across the aisle as legislators: all over this country when it came to campaign finance reform, and around the world when it came to foreign policy.

When we traveled from Little Rock to Annapolis to San Francisco and beyond to hold “townhall meetings” in the home districts of recalcitrant senators and congressmen, John delighted in introducing me to the crowds saying: “People in Wisconsin think Senator Feingold’s first name is McCain,” reflecting the popular name of our campaign finance reform bill and also how long it was taking to pass it. In a place like New Orleans, after a long day of meetings and rallies and long after I had gone to bed, John was still playing the tables at Harrah’s though he was 16 years my senior.

When I would see John on the Senate floor way over on the “other” — Republican — side, he would invariably come running over to me and say something like, “C’mon boy, we have to get one more Democrat co-sponsor.” Or, “We’re going to New York next week for a news conference at Teddy Roosevelt’s birthplace.” The conversations were brief, to the point and about getting the job done: He was a determined man, always in motion. All of us, including his terrific staff led by Mark Salter, were always trying to keep up with him, to which John would typically say, “March or die. March or die.”

Paul Waldman contends In his feud with Jeff Sessions, Trump has painted himself into a corner:

So here’s how the president would almost certainly like things to proceed. First, he fires Sessions. Then he finds someone to replace him who has the one quality Sessions lacks: unswerving loyalty to Trump. And not just a general kind of loyalty, but a very specific kind: the willingness to fire Mueller as soon as Trump orders him to, perhaps on his very first day at the Justice Department. This nominee will be confirmed by Trump’s Republican allies in the Senate, he will assume office, he will fire Mueller and shut down the Russia investigation, and Trump will at last be free.

We don’t have to wonder whether that would be the plan, because Trump has made it clear that Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation is the primary complaint he has about his performance. There would be no point in replacing Sessions with someone else unless Trump was sure that person would protect him by shutting down the investigation.

But there’s a problem with this plan. Because Trump has made it so clear that he despises Sessions because Sessions isn’t in a position to fire Mueller for him, if and when he does fire Sessions, everyone knows that the only important criterion that he will use in choosing a new attorney general is whether that person will be willing to fire Mueller at Trump’s direction. From the moment of the firing, everyone will be asking, “Is this another Saturday Night Massacre?” The nominee will be asked by every senator and a hundred times in their confirmation hearings whether they discussed the matter with Trump, what they promised and what they intend to do. And don’t forget that Republicans control the Senate by only a 51-49 margin. Just two GOP defections would be enough to doom the nomination.

Patty Murray reports DNR Investigating Manure Runoff In Northeastern Wisconsin:

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is investigating manure runoff in Fond Du Lac County that contaminated waterways and killed fish in the Sheboygan River.

The contamination was reported Wednesday but is thought to have happened Monday during a heavy rainstorm.

Redtail Ridge Dairy, LLC is believed to be the source of the manure, which might have been washed off its fields into creeks that run into the Sheboygan River. The farm milks 1,400 cows and houses younger cows as well, and spreads manure on several parcels amounting to roughly 2,000 acres.

Ben Uvaas is a wastewater specialist for the DNR who self-described himself as a “manure cop.”

He said the manure has depleted oxygen levels in miles of local creeks.

Samantha West reports UW System Board of Regents approves name changes for 2-year campuses:

As the University of Wisconsin system completes the restructuring process that merges several two-year with four-year campuses, the Board of Regents approved official name changes Friday.

As of July 1, many former two-year UW Colleges campuses began operating as branch campuses of regional comprehensive campuses.

The new names announced at the meeting:

• University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Manitowoc Campus

• University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Marinette Campus

• University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Sheboygan Campus

• University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Washington County

• University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Waukesha

• University of Wisconsin-Platteville Baraboo Sauk County

• University of Wisconsin-Platteville Richland

• University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point at Wausau

• University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point at Marshfield

• University of Wisconsin-Whitewater at Rock County

Meet The Tiny Fox Making A Bold Comeback: