Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of twenty-seven.  Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset 4:33 PM, for 9h 47m 43s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 31.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the seven hundred thirty-third day.

On this day in 1858, the Heileman Brewery is founded:

 [O]ne of Wisconsin’s best-known breweries was established by John Gund and Gottlieb Heileman (1824-1878). By the time Gund retired in 1872, the firm’s annual beer production had increased from 500 barrels in 1860 to 3,000. By the turn of the century, as this postcard shows, it had become one of the city’s largest manufacturing concerns, and throughout the 20th century its storage tanks (painted to resemble a six-pack of beer) were a LaCrosse landmark.

Recommended for reading in full — North Korea continues missile deployment despite Trump’s optimism, America’s struggle for moral coherence, trolls work to get around social media bans, GOP rep Steve King caught lying, and video on whether peanut butter is the new condiment for burgers —

  David E. Sanger and William J. Broad report In North Korea, Missile Bases Suggest a Great Deception:

North Korea is moving ahead with its ballistic missile program at 16 hidden bases that have been identified in new commercial satellite images, a network long known to American intelligence agencies but left undiscussed as President Trump claims to have neutralized the North’s nuclear threat.

The satellite images suggest that the North has been engaged in a great deception: It has offered to dismantle a major launching site — a step it began, then halted — while continuing to make improvements at more than a dozen others that would bolster launches of conventional and nuclear warheads.

The existence of the ballistic missile bases, which North Korea has never acknowledged, contradicts Mr. Trump’s assertion that his landmark diplomacy is leading to the elimination of a nuclear and missile program that the North had warned could devastate the United States.

“We are in no rush,” Mr. Trump said of talks with the North at a news conference on Wednesday, after Republicans lost control of the House. “The sanctions are on. The missiles have stopped. The rockets have stopped. The hostages are home.”

….

The secret ballistic missile bases were identified in a detailed study published Monday by the Beyond Parallel program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a major think tank in Washington.

(The only thing that’s stopped is any reason to take Trump at his word on North Korea policy. To be honest, credulity on the topic never should have started.)

Andrew Delbanco considers lessons opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law in America’s Struggle for Moral Coherence:

Through most of his career, Lincoln himself tried to walk the line between compliance and resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law. Repulsed by the Southern demand that “we must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure,” he nevertheless pledged to respect the law. Even after his election as president and well into the Civil War, he continued trying to reconcile his revulsion at slavery with his devotion to the union.

For more about this tune, see Library of Congress, notated music, Pine Apple Rag.… Continue reading

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-one.  Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 4:34 PM, for 9h 49m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the seven hundred thirty-third day.

On this day in 1863, the 33rd Wisconsin Infantry leaves for the South:

The 33rd Wisconsin Infantry left Wisconsin for The South. It would go on to serve in Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana. It participated in the sieges of Jackson and Vicksburg, the Red River Expedition, the Battle of Nashville, the siege of Spanish Fort and the capture of Fort Blakely. It would lose 202 men during service. Three officers and 30 enlisted men were killed. Two officers and 167 enlisted men died from disease.

Recommended for reading in full — ICE employees claim privilege to sex with detainees, what the blue wave in the House looks like, Trump’s beginning to lose white support, Trump shown to be so ignorant he didn’t know the difference between the Baltics and the Balkans, and video on the origins of the vacuum cleaner —

  Victoria López and Sandra Park write ICE Detention Center Says It’s Not Responsible for Staff’s Sexual Abuse of Detainees:

All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government impose criminal liability on correctional facility staff who have sexual contact with people in their custody. These laws recognize that any sexual activity between detainees and detention facility staff, with or without the use of force, is unlawful because of the inherent power imbalance when people are in custody. Yet, one immigration detention center is trying to avoid responsibility for sexual violence within its walls by arguing that the detainee “consented” to sexual abuse.

E.D., an asylum-seeker and domestic violence survivor from Honduras, was sexually assaulted by an employee while she was detained with her 3-year-old child at the Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania. At the time of the assault, E.D. was 19 years old.

She filed suit against the detention center and its staff for their failure to protect her from sexual violence, even though they were aware of the risk. The record in the case, E.D. v. Sharkey, shows that her assailant coerced and threatened her, including with possible deportation, while the defendants stood by and made jokes.

Although the employee pled guilty to criminal institutional sexual assault under Pennsylvania law, the defendants contend that they should not be liable for any constitutional violations. Their argument rests in part on their assessment that the sexual abuse was “consensual” and that they should be held to a different standard because the Berks Family Residential Center is an immigration detention facility rather than a jail or prison.

(There’s Trumpism in full: a claim of privilege for the degenerate acts of government employees.)

Mark Harris writes of the House results that 

If you’re tired of looking at a big red map even when Democrats win, this, from @nytimes, is what the new House of Representatives really looks like.

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:42 AM and sunset 4:35 PM, for 9h 52m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the seven hundred thirty-second day.

In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, a ceasefire comes into effect following the surrender of Germany ending the First World War:

Contemporaneously described as the “war to end all wars”,[7] it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history.[8][9] An estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a direct result of the war, while it is also considered a contributory factor in a number of genocides and the 1918 influenza epidemic, which caused between 50 and 100 million deaths worldwide.[10] Military losses were exacerbated by new technological and industrial developments and the tactical stalemate caused by gruelling trench warfare. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history and precipitated major political changes, including the Revolutions of 1917–1923, in many of the nations involved. Unresolved rivalries at the end of the conflict contributed to the start of the Second World War about twenty years later.[11]

Recommended for reading in full — Trump cancels visit to American veterans’ cemetery in France due to rain, photo shows even a French cyclist could handle the light rain, Trump’s acting attorney general threatened consumers who lost life savings but they filed complaints against company he served anyway, DNR under Walker pressured to build on rare wetlands to suit Kohler, and video about a tiny island that was a big deal for lumberjacks —

  Luke Baker reports Trump cancels WW1 memorial at U.S. cemetery in France due to rain:

PARIS (Reuters) – President Donald Trump could not attend a commemoration in France for U.S. soldiers and marines killed during World War One on Saturday because rain made it impossible to arrange transport, the White House said.

The last minute cancellation prompted widespread criticism on social media and from some officials in Britain and the United States that Trump had “dishonored” U.S. servicemen.

….

The decision prompted a rash of criticism on Twitter, with Nicholas Soames, a British member of parliament who is a grandson of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, saying that Trump was dishonoring U.S. servicemen.

“They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to the Fallen”, Soames wrote on Twitter.

….

Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser for strategic communications under President Barack Obama, said the excuse about the inclement weather did not stand up.

“I helped plan all of President Obama’s trips for 8 years,” he wrote on Twitter. “There is always a rain option. Always.”

(Emphasis added.)

François Heisbourg writes:

A view of the weather in Paris which is supposed to have deterred @realDonaldTrump from paying his respects to the brave American soldiers who gave their lives for freedom at the AisneMarne war cemetery this afternoon.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty.  Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 4:36 PM, for 9h 54m 29s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 9.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the seven hundred thirty-first day.

On this day in 1969, Sesame Street premieres.

Recommended for reading in full —  Whitaker is unfit to serve as acting attorney general, Whitaker play a key role in a fraudulent company, Republicans really did get clobbered in the midterms, Trump’s trade war may have won Democrats the House, and video of people trying to toss pizza dough — 

The Washington Post editorial board writes There is no way this man should be running the Justice Department:

IS MATTHEW G. WHITAKER the legitimate acting attorney general? From approximately the second President Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and tapped Mr. Whitaker to temporarily exercise the office’s vast authority, legal experts have sparred over whether Mr. Trump can unilaterally elevate someone from a role that does not require Senate confirmation to one that does. But regardless of whether the promotion is legal, it is very clear that it is unwise. Mr. Whitaker is unfit for the job.

….

First, there are Mr. Whitaker’s statements criticizing the Russia probe of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. At the least, they require him to consult Justice Department ethics counsel about whether he can oversee the inquiry with a plausible appearance of evenhandedness. He will do immediate and lasting harm to the Justice Department’s reputation, and to the nation, if he assumes the role of president’s personal henchman and impedes the Mueller probe.

Then there is Mr. Whitaker’s connection to a defunct patent promotion company the Federal Trade Commission called “an invention-promotion scam that has bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars.” Mr. Whitaker served on its board and once threatened a complaining customer, lending the weight of his former position as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa to the company’s scheme.

Finally, and fundamentally most damning, is Mr. Whitaker’s expressed hostility to Marbury v. Madison, a central case — the central case — in the American constitutional system. It established an indispensable principle: The courts decide what is and is not constitutional. Without Marbury, there would be no effective judicial check on the political branches, no matter how egregious their actions.

(Trumpism is a true kakistocracy, a rule by the worst: ignorant, dim-witted, or corrupt men & women otherwise rejected in a well-functioning society find themselves at the center of power by appointment from an ignorant, dim-witted, and corrupt autocrat.)

Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman report Federal investigators scrutinized Whitaker’s role in patent company accused of fraud, according to people with knowledge of case:

Federal investigators last year looked into whether Matthew G. Whitaker, as an advisory board member of a Miami patent company accused of fraud by customers, played a role in trying to help the company silence critics by threatening legal action, according to two people with knowledge of the inquiry.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see morning snow with a high of thirty-three.  Sunrise is 6:40 AM and sunset 4:37 PM, for 9h 56m 48s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 4% of its visible disk illuminated today.

Today is the seven hundred thirty-first day.

On this day in 1938, Nazis begin the Kristallnacht pogrom: 

…. a pogrom against Jews throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938, carried out by SA paramilitary forces and German civilians. The German authorities looked on without intervening.[1][2] The name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed.

Estimates of the number of fatalities caused by the pogrom have varied. Early reports estimated that 91 Jews were murdered during the attacks.[3] Modern analysis of German scholarly sources by historians such as Sir Richard Evans puts the number much higher. When deaths from post-arrest maltreatment and subsequent suicides are included, the death toll climbs into the hundreds. Additionally, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.[3]

Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers.[4] The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland,[5] and over 7,000 Jewish businesses were either destroyed or damaged.[6][7] The British historian Martin Gilbert wrote that no event in the history of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported as it was happening, and the accounts from the foreign journalists working in Germany sent shock waves around the world.[4]

Recommended for reading in full — Wisconsin can’t cover even existing programming,  Trump’s appointment of Whitaker as acting Attorney General is unconstitutional, threats to democracy, how Trump will become more dangerous after midterms, and video on saving lives with AI  — 

Patrick Marley reports Wisconsin needs $2 billion more to cover existing programs and schools in next budget:

Incoming Gov. Tony Evers and lawmakers would need to come up with more than $2 billion just to keep doing what the state already does and provide a healthy increase to schools, according to a new report.

Such a budget situation would be difficult in any year, but could prove particularly tricky with split control of state government for the first sustained period since 2011.

In a report released Friday, the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum found the state would need an additional $2.2 billion over two years to continue its existing programs. State revenue is unlikely to increase by that much, so Evers and legislators would probably have to make cuts or raise taxes to make ends meet.

(Not enough money for existing programs – there is the epitaph of the last eight years.)

 Neal K. Katyal and George T. Conway III write Trump’s Appointment of the Acting Attorney General Is Unconstitutional (“The president is evading the requirement to seek the Senate’s advice and consent for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and the person who will oversee the Mueller investigation”):

It means that Mr. Trump’s installation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States after forcing the resignation of Jeff Sessions is unconstitutional.

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-nine.  Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 4:38 PM, for 9h 59m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.1% of its visible disk illuminated today.

Today is the seven hundred thirtieth day.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for his work) discovers X-rays:

On the evening of November 8, 1895, he found that, if the discharge tube is enclosed in a sealed, thick black carton to exclude all light, and if he worked in a dark room, a paper plate covered on one side with barium platinocyanide placed in the path of the rays became fluorescent even when it was as far as two metres from the discharge tube. During subsequent experiments he found that objects of different thicknesses interposed in the path of the rays showed variable transparency to them when recorded on a photographic plate. When he immobilised for some moments the hand of his wife in the path of the rays over a photographic plate, he observed after development of the plate an image of his wife’s hand which showed the shadows thrown by the bones of her hand and that of a ring she was wearing, surrounded by the penumbra of the flesh, which was more permeable to the rays and therefore threw a fainter shadow. This was the first “röntgenogram” ever taken. In further experiments, Röntgen showed that the new rays are produced by the impact of cathode rays on a material object. Because their nature was then unknown, he gave them the name X-rays. Later, Max von Laue and his pupils showed that they are of the same electromagnetic nature as light, but differ from it only in the higher frequency of their vibration.

Recommended for reading in full —   the WOW counties begin to lose their wow, the battle against Trumpism is just beginning, Trump leaves ruin, sizing up the blue wave, and video on the origin of the expression ‘a penny for your thoughts’ — 

Craig Gilbert observes 2018 midterms expose Wisconsin’s shifting political fault lines:

So many factors figured into the narrow defeat of GOP Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday, among them a tsunami of Democratic votes in the blue bastions of Dane and Milwaukee counties.

But one with major implications for the future involved the suburban counties outside Milwaukee that have long been Walker’s political bedrock.

Instead, they contributed to his undoing Tuesday, when they failed to give Walker the same spectacular margins he had won in the past.

Waukesha and Ozaukee counties, two of the state’s wealthiest, most-educated and most-Republican counties, “underperformed” for Walker on Tuesday. The governor, who won Waukesha County by 46 points in 2014, carried it by 34 this time. He won Ozaukee by 41 points in 2014 but by 27 in 2018. Nowhere in Wisconsin did Walker’s winning margins decline as much as it did in those two counties.

You could write it off as a blip, but for four things:

One, these places had always come through for Walker.

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty.  Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 4:39 PM, for 10h 01m 33s of daytime.  The moon is new today.

Today is the seven hundred twenty-ninth day.

There is scheduled a joint meeting of Whitewater’s Common Council, Community Development Authority, and Plan and Architectural Review Commission for 6 PM, and a Police & Fire Commission meeting at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1863, the 5th Wisconsin Infantry fights in the Second Battle of Rappahannock Station, Virginia. The battle was a Union victory:

In all, 1,670 Confederates were killed, wounded, or captured in the brief struggle, more than eighty percent of those engaged. Union casualty figures, by contrast, were small: 419 in all.[3]

For the North the battle had been “a complete and glorious victory,” an engagement “as short as it was decisive,” reflecting “infinite credit upon all concerned.”[3] Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright noted that it was the first instance in which Union troops had carried a strongly entrenched Confederate position in the first assault. Brig. Gen. Harry Hays claimed to have been attacked by no less than 20,000 to 25,000 Union soldiers—a figure ten times the actual number.[3]

The battle had been as humiliating for the South as it had been glorious for the North. Two of the Confederacy’s finest brigades, sheltered behind entrenchments and well supported by artillery, had been routed and captured by an enemy force of equal size. Col. Walter H. Taylor of Lee’s staff called it, “the saddest chapter in the history of this army,” the result of “miserable, miserable management.” An enlisted soldier put it more plainly. “I don’t know much about it,” he said, “but it seems to be that our army was surprised.”[3]

Recommended for reading in full —  Evers wins, a record number of women in Congress, thinking about the national results, Russia’s continuing disinformation, and video on what it takes to become an astronaut  — 

 Patrick Marley and Molly Beck write Tony Evers denies Scott Walker a third term as Wisconsin’s governor:

MADISON – After upending Wisconsin politics and infuriating liberals across the country, Gov. Scott Walker narrowly lost his bid for a third term Tuesday to Tony Evers, the leader of the education establishment Walker blew up eight years ago.

The Associated Press called the race for Evers about 1:20 a.m. Wednesday based on unofficial returns.

The race was so close that Walker’s team said a detailed review of balloting and a recount were possible. But an unofficial tally had Evers winning by 1.1 percentage points — a margin that would be too large for a recount if it held.

“It’s time for a change, folks,” Evers, the state schools superintendent, told supporters in front of a large Wisconsin flag on the stage of Madison’s Orpheum Theater.

(A shorter, more apt, title would have been Evers Wins.)

Danielle Kurtzleben reports A Record Number Of Women Will Serve In Congress (With Potentially More To Come):

After Tuesday’s elections, a record number of women will serve in Congress come January 2019.

Good morning.

Election Day in Whitewater will be cloudy & windy with a high of forty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 4:40 PM, for 10h 03m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the seven hundred twenty-eighth day.

On this day in 1837, Burlington, Iowa becomes our temporary capital:

On this date Burlington, Iowa was chosen as a temporary capital of the Wisconsin Territory. A year earlier, legislators offered a bill making Madison the capital with a temporary capital in Dubuque until which time a permanent building could be constructed in Madison. Legislators also proposed the City of Belmont as a temporary capital. One month later, on December 12th, a fire destroyed the two-story temporary capital in Burlington. The new legislature moved its headquarters to the Webber and Remey’s store in Burlington where they conducted government affairs until June 1838.

Recommended for reading in full — fantasy at a Trump rally, consequences of Trump’s trade war, hacking attempts against election systems, Hannity as a Fox News Trump TV anchor,  and video about Apollo 8’s trip to the far side of the moon — 

Andrew Kragie reports Inside the Alternative Universe of the Trump Rallies:

He has a line that casts employment growth as beyond anyone’s expectations during the 2016 campaign: “If I would have told the kind of numbers that we’ve achieved, nobody would have believed it. They would not have let us get away with it,” he says in every city, pointing his index finger at the press pen directly opposite. A scattered round of boos breaks out. For anyone who doesn’t peruse economic data—most people—this allusion to a theoretical fact check from “the enemy of the people” makes his claim sound all the more impressive.

But federal data show fewer jobs were created in Trump’s first 21 months in office than during the last 21 months of the Obama administration—4.1 million after January 2017 versus 4.5 million up to then. (Trump prefers his election as the starting post, but the comparison stands: 4.5 million after November 2016 versus 5.0 million in the comparable period before.) While it’s notable that economic growth has continued so long since the Great Recession, Trump misleadingly creates the impression that gains have accelerated.

But supporters eat it up. “It was all doom and gloom under Obama. I lost a ton of money,” Charlotte Shiflett, the retired Tennessee bookkeeper, said of her 401(k)-retirement savings account. But the data show that while the stock market has been strong for two years, it was no weaker under Obama, whose tenure saw average annualized S&P 500 returns of 16.3 percent. It seems a symptom of the increasingly polarized views of the economy; for the last decade, the Pew Research Center has found that Americans increasingly assess the economy and even their own personal finances based on whether their party controls the presidency rather than on actual results.

Binyamin Appelbaum reports Their Soybeans Piling Up, Farmers Hope Trade War Ends Before Beans Rot:

President Trump sees tariffs as a tool to force changes in America’s economic relationships with China and other major trading partners.