Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 60.  Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 7:19 PM, for 12h 41m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 2017, SpaceX conducts the world’s first reflight of an orbital class rocket.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Steven Lee Myers writes An Alliance of Autocracies? China Wants to Lead a New World Order (‘As President Biden predicts a struggle between democracies and their opponents, Beijing is eager to champion the other side’):

Only days after a rancorous encounter with American officials in Alaska, China’s foreign minister joined his Russian counterpart last week to denounce Western meddling and sanctions.

He then headed to the Middle East to visit traditional American allies, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as Iran, where he signed a sweeping investment agreement on Saturday. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, reached out to Colombia one day and pledged support for North Korea on another.

Although officials denied the timing was intentional, the message clearly was. China hopes to position itself as the main challenger to an international order, led by the United States, that is generally guided by principles of democracy, respect for human rights and adherence to rule of law.

See also William Galston, A momentous shift in US public attitudes toward China (“Although public opinion rarely determines the specifics of U. S. foreign policy, it typically defines the zone within which policies with public visibility can be sustained over time. Recent survey research has underscored a shift in Americans’ attitudes towards China that is far-reaching enough to sustain the most adversarial stance toward the Middle Kingdom since the Nixon administration’s opening of relations half a century ago.”)

(Autocracy is a leadership’s choice; China’s leaders so choose.)

 Catherine Rampell writes Draining the swamp should start in state capitals:

The “swamp” that desperately needs draining isn’t in Washington, D.C. It’s in state capitals around the country, where undemocratic, anti-majoritarian officials are seizing rights from voters and flagrantly thwarting the will of the people.

The past week alone is replete with examples of state lawmakers, typically Republicans, ignoring or suppressing the views of constituents they’re supposed to represent.

In Missouri, Republican legislators announced their refusal to enact and fund an expansion of the state’s Medicaid program — despite the successful ballot initiative last summer adding a Medicaid expansion to the state constitution. One Republican lawmaker argued that the ballot measure, despite receiving a majority of the votes cast, cannot possibly represent the “will of the people.”

This follows similar GOP attempts in recent years to undermine popular ballot measures in other states, including one in Utah also expanding Medicaid, one in Florida restoring voting rights to people with felony convictions and one in Maine raising the minimum wage.

Michael Sainato reports AT&T said Trump’s tax cut would create jobs – now it’s laying off thousands of workers:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 63.  Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 7:18 PM, for 12h 38m 39s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1865, Federal forces under Major General Philip Sheridan move to flank Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee as the Appomattox Campaign begins.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Katelyn Ferral reports No action from Wisconsin lawmakers more than a year after National Guard sex assault scandal:

Following a year of historic National Guard activity in Wisconsin, and despite a 2019 federal investigation calling for reforms, state legislators have done nothing to change the law on how the force handles sexual assault and addresses discrimination.

The Guard, along with Gov. Tony Evers, say they support reforms to the state’s military law, called the Wisconsin Code of Military Justice, to align it with national standards for addressing sexual assault, victims rights and discrimination and other crimes within the force.

“Gov. Evers continues to urge the Legislature to improve the Wisconsin Code of Military Justice as the National Guard Bureau recommended to protect our servicemembers and survivors and prevent sexual harassment and assault in the Guard,” said Evers spokesman Britt Cudaback in an email.

Captain Joe Trovato, the Guard’s spokesman, said the Wisconsin Guard has had some preliminary discussions with lawmakers to update the code but had no details on specific changes or a timeline for them.

  Kari Paul reports Leaked memo shows Amazon knows delivery drivers resort to urinating in bottles:

Amazon caused an uproar on Thursday when it denied reports that its delivery workers have been forced to urinate in bottles due to lack of access to bathrooms, but a leaked internal memo shows the company has been aware of the problem for at least several months.

Documents provided by employees at Amazon to the Intercept showed that an email sent in May 2020 admonished workers for urinating in bottles and defecating in bags while on the job.

“This evening, an associate discovered human feces in an Amazon bag that was returned to station by a driver,” the email reads. “This is the 3rd occasion in the last 2 months when bags have been returned to station with poop inside. We understand that DA’s [driver associates] may have emergencies while on-road, and especially during Covid, DAs have struggled to find bathrooms while delivering. Regardless, DAs cannot, MUST NOT, return bags to station with poop inside.”

The email went on to say: “We’ve noticed an uptick recently of all kinds of unsanitary garbage being left inside bags: used masks, gloves, bottles of urine.”

Meryl Kornfield reports GOP candidate from New Jersey accused of pandering after he transforms into cowboy for Texas run:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 45.  Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 7:17 PM, for 12h 35m 43s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1979, a coolant leak at the Three Mile Island‘s Unit 2 nuclear reactor outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania leads to the core overheating and a partial meltdown.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Samuel Weinstein writes The Antitrust Cases Against Facebook And Google: In Search of a Smoking Gun: 

For an antitrust plaintiff, the most powerful pieces of evidence often can be the defendant’s own documents. Customer and competitor testimony can be helpful to understand the competitive impact of a merger or specific conduct, though both customers and rivals may have biases that color their views of the case. Third-party testimony—from industry analysts, for example—also can be persuasive. But when the defendant’s own words support the plaintiff’s theory of the case, that can be outcome shifting. In the Microsoft case, the government effectively used Bill Gates’ emails and other internal Microsoft documents against the company. Doug Melamed, the Antitrust Division’s Acting Assistant Attorney General at the time the case was litigated, stated in a recent interview that the government’s case “was built on these emails.”

By this measure, the FTC’s Facebook complaint bodes well for its case. It is replete with powerful Facebook documents that directly support the FTC’s theory of the case. The agency alleges that Facebook engaged in a combination of anticompetitive acquisitions (Instagram and WhatsApp) and exclusionary conduct involving access conditions on its application programming interfaces (APIs). Its case with regard to Facebook’s acquisition strategy is neatly summarized by a line from a 2008 email from Mark Zuckerberg: “it is better to buy than compete.” This statement has the same pithy (and damaging) quality as the line attributed to a Microsoft executive that the company’s strategy was to “cut off Netscape’s air supply.”

  Kelly Mena reports Former Trump chief of staff calls ex-President’s Capitol riot claims ‘manifestly false’:

Mick Mulvaney, who stepped down as Trump’s special envoy to Northern Ireland after the insurrection, called Trump’s comments that his supporters were “hugging and kissing” police officers and posed “zero threat,” despite widespread violence, “manifestly false.”

“I was surprised to hear the President say that. Clearly there were people who were behaving themselves, and then there were people who absolutely were not, but to come out and say that everyone was fine and there was no risk, that’s just manifestly false — people died, other people were severely injured,” Mulvaney told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “Newsroom.”

“It’s not right to say there was no risk, I don’t know how you can say that when people were killed,” he added.

Ari Berman writes John Roberts Said “Things Have Changed Dramatically” in the South. Georgia Shows Why He’s Wrong:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 52.  Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 7:16 PM, for 12h 32m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1981, the Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Shawn Hubler, Tim Arango, and Anemona Hartocollis report U.S.C. Agrees to Pay $1.1 Billion to Patients of Gynecologist Accused of Abuse (‘The staggering sum — a combination of three sets of settlements with hundreds of alleged victims of Dr. George Tyndall — sets a record for collegiate sex abuse payouts’):

“On one hand, it really exemplifies the gravity of what Tyndall’s survivors had to experience, and really set in stone our truth as to what occurred,” said Ms. Morgan, now a 27-year-old lawyer. “But it’s also a really grueling reminder of the price tag U.S.C. was willing to put on our safety and our mental health.”

John C. Manly, who represented the third group of plaintiffs, said that “the reason U.S.C. paid this money was that there was culpability — they knew early on, in the early ’90s and all the way through his tenure that this was happening.”

This week’s settlement, which he said would be distributed among the plaintiffs in awards ranging from about $250,000 to several million dollars, will provide by far the largest per-victim payout, he said. But combined, the outcome of the litigation sends a message, he added: “If you’re an institution of higher education, you will pay if you do this.”

  Anne Applebaum describes The Science of Making Americans Hurt Their Own Country:

The problem is not only the outgrowth of the peculiar climate created by Donald Trump—however simple and satisfying such an explanation might be. Think, for a moment, about why the Russian state indulges in this kind of activity, year in and year out, despite the political costs and the risk of sanctions: Because it’s very cheap, it’s very easy, and a lot of evidence suggests that it works.

For decades now, Russian security services have studied a concept called “reflexive control”—the science of how to get your enemies to make mistakes. To be successful, practitioners must first analyze their opponents deeply, to understand where they get their information and why they trust it; then they need to find ways of playing with those trusted sources, in order to insert errors and mistakes. This way of thinking has huge implications for the military; consider how a piece of incorrect information might get a general to make a mistake. But it works in politics too. The Russian security services have now studied us and worked out (it probably wasn’t very hard) that large numbers of Americans—not only Fox News pundits and OANN broadcasters but also members of Congress—are very happy to accept sensational information, however tainted, from any source that happens to provide it. As long as it suits their partisan frames, and as long as it can be used against their opponents, they don’t care who invented it or for what purpose.

As a result, supplying an edited audiotape or a piece of false evidence to one of the bottom-feeders of the information ecosystem is incredibly easy; after that, others will ensure that it rises up the food chain. Russian disinformation doesn’t succeed thanks to the genius of Russians; it succeeds thanks to the sharp partisanship of Americans. Russian disinformation works because Americans allow it to work—and because those same Americans don’t care anymore about the harm they do to their country.

Slideshow: Spring in blossom around the world:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 51.  Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset 7:15 PM, for 12h 29m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1945, the Battle of Iwo Jima ends as the island is officially secured by American forces.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Sarah Binder writes Mitch McConnell is wrong. Here’s the filibuster’s ‘racial history’:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 49.  Sunrise is 6:46 AM and sunset 7:13 PM, for 12h 27m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1965, civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. successfully complete their 4-day, 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Daphne Chen reports Appeals court weighs lawsuit over naming businesses linked to COVID-19 outbreaks:

A Wisconsin appeals court heard arguments Wednesday over a lawsuit regarding the release of data on businesses linked to COVID-19 cases — records first requested by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel more than nine months ago.

Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby, sued in October to stop the release of the information to media outlets, arguing that disclosure of the information would “irreparably harm” businesses.

The Madison-based District IV Court of Appeals agreed to take on the case after a Waukesha County circuit judge sided with WMC and temporarily blocked the state health department from releasing the data.

….

Lawyers for the Journal Sentinel and the state have argued that the business lobby is not one of the groups awarded the right to challenge the release of public records as defined by the state Legislature.

However, on Wednesday, WMC attorney Ryan Walsh argued that the organization has the standing to sue because the data — which does not contain the names of people — is derived from confidential medical records.

“It can’t be that any record in the government’s possession is an open record,” Walsh said. “(The state) has all kinds of records that can’t be released. What I’m asking the court to consider is the broad implications of this case.” 

Judges Kloppenburg and Fitzpatrick questioned Walsh on whether the WMC can speak for businesses who are not members of the association, and whether the WMC represents business owners or employees.

“We don’t understand how you can be also taking on the mantle of speaking for the interest of the employees,” Kloppenburg said, adding that some employees “might want the public to know that there have been a lot of COVID cases where they’re working.”

 Greg Sargent writes How Trump is exposing the ugly truth about the GOP plan to retake power:

The focus-grouped phrase justifying all this is “election integrity.” That’s the name of a new group, run by the Republican National Committee, that is developing more such proposals for export to states.

But Trump has already told us what standing for “election integrity” really means: making it harder to vote for the express purpose of making it easier for Republicans to win future elections.

Trump made this explicit during his Conservative Political Action Conference speech. He declared that the GOP must be the party of “election integrity” and that this means reversing efforts to make it easier to vote wherever possible and that this is an “urgent” matter facing the GOP.

Speaking about the 2020 election, Trump said: “We can never allow this to happen again.”

It is “urgent” for the GOP to make it harder to vote wherever possible, in the name of “election integrity,” and the 2020 election loss drove this home.

Christina Jewett and Lauren Weber report Former Covid official Deborah Birx joins company behind hazardous air-cleaners banned in California:

The former top White House coronavirus adviser under President Donald Trump, Dr Deborah Birx, has joined an air-cleaning company that built its business, in part, on technology that is now banned in California due to health hazards.

 Dolphins Spotted Swimming in New York’s East River Tuesday Morning: 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see occasional showers with a high of 55.  Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 7:12 PM, for 12h 24m 04s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 77.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5 PM.

On this day in 1895, Joshua Slocum, the first person to sail single-handedly around the world, sets sail from Boston, Massachusetts aboard the sloop Spray.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Brian Klaas writes of Peter Pomerantsev in He worked in Russian media. He recognizes the same tactics at Fox News:

In a newly released report, U.S. intelligence agencies outline how Russia yet again sought to subvert American democracy. The findings confirm that the Kremlin tried to plant damaging disinformation about Joe Biden among associates of then-President Donald Trump.

That report and others that preceded it are important, because the foreign threat to American democracy is real and growing. But they should not distract us from a disturbing reality: The most serious danger to the United States from the Russian propaganda playbook doesn’t come from Moscow. It comes from Manhattan, where Fox News prime-time hosts broadcast conspiracy theories and disinformation while mimicking tactics that insiders in Russian media easily recognize.

….

Specifically, Pomerantsev points to two major areas of strategic overlap. First, there’s a shared war on facts that tries to convince the viewer that accountability is a fool’s errand because true objectivity does not exist.

“There’s this kind of pop-postmodernism, where Sean Hannity will say things like objectivity doesn’t exist, everybody’s biased,” Pomerantsev says. He points to Hannity’s infamous interview with Ted Koppel, in which he contrasted his own style with what he sees as the charade of “objective” facts in other areas of the press. “I don’t pretend that I’m fair and balanced and objective,” Hannity bizarrely boasted.

“That’s exactly the same argument the Russians make,” Pomerantsev says. He recalls a famous phrase uttered by Dmitry Kiselev, a prime-time TV host who was also appointed by Vladimir Putin to run Kremlin’s international propaganda network, Rossiya Segodnya. “Objectivity is a myth that is proposed and imposed on us.”

….

Pomerantsev sees another commonality between Fox News and Russian media. Both, he argues, treat news as entertainment, complete with characters designed to depict those who hold opposing viewpoints as buffoonish caricatures. “They turn everything into a Jerry Springer show. … Essentially, Tucker Carlson has ‘idiot liberals’ on.” Fox, he says, likes to present extreme left-wingers whose positions can be easily caricatured; Russian TV uses cartoonish members of the opposition as objects of ridicule.

 Sam Levine reports Republicans wage ‘coordinated onslaught’ on voting rights:

Republicans have openly talked about their intentions. “Everybody shouldn’t be voting,” John Kavanagh, a Republican in the Arizona state legislature, told CNN earlier this month. “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

Some Republicans say that their efforts to put new voting restrictions in place are part of an effort to restore confidence in elections and prevent voter fraud, which is extremely rare.

But others have shown that their motivation is anti-democratic. Trump dismissed proposals to make it easier to vote last year by saying: “You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” And this month, Michael Carvin, a lawyer representing the Arizona Republican party, said something similar when Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked him what interest the party had in defending two Arizona voting restrictions. Lifting those restrictions, Carvin said, “puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game.”

(Video link updated) Suez Canal Blocked by Stuck Container Ship: 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 64.  Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 7:11 PM, for 12h 21m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 68.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa. The trip is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Erin Cunningham reports NIH questions AstraZeneca trial data, calls it ‘incomplete’:

British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca may have only used partial data when it announced the results from a U.S. trial of its coronavirus vaccine, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said Tuesday in a highly unusual rebuke.

The agency, part of the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement that it was concerned AstraZeneca used outdated information from the large-scale trial when it reported the results Monday, “which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.”

It urged the company, which developed its vaccine with Oxford University, to work with the U.S. Data Safety and Monitoring Board to review the data and release the updated information “as quickly as possible.” AstraZeneca had said Monday that the vaccine was shown to be 79 percent effective against symptomatic covid-19 — and that it was 100 percent effective against severe illness.

 Michael Gerson writes Ron Johnson isn’t a Republican outlier:

There have always been bigots with access to a microphone. But in this case [Johnson’s remarks on Black Lives Matter], Johnson did not face the hygienic repudiation of his party. Republican leaders preferred a different strategy: putting their fingers in their ears and humming loudly. Republicans have abolished their ideological police.

The reason is simple. After four years of Donald Trump, Johnson’s sentiments are not out of the Republican mainstream. They are an application of the prevailing Republican ideology — that the “real” America is under assault by the dangerous other: Violent immigrants. Angry Blacks. Antifa terrorists. Suspicious Muslims. And don’t forget “the China virus.”

Trump did not create such views. But he normalized them in an unprecedented fashion. Under Trump’s cover, this has been revealed as the majority position of Republicans, or at least engaged, activist Republicans. A recent New York Times poll found 65 percent of people who identify with the GOP to still be Trump “die-hards,” Trump “boosters” or captive to conspiracy theories. And most of the rest find nothing disqualifying in Trump’s pathologically divisive performance as president.

(Gerson is right that Johnson is not an outlier among ordinary Republicans on race, or among other false notions he holds. He is, however, notably eager among the Senate’s GOP caucus to peddle these views at any opportunity.)

Danielle Kaeding reports Audubon Plan Aims To Restore Nearly 300K Acres Of Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands To Benefit Birds:

A new report from the Great Lakes regional arm of the National Audubon Society is outlining its plan to restore and protect a dozen areas that support region’s birds. Climate change, development and invasive species are threatening coastal areas of the Great Lakes region that is home to 350 bird species.

Great Lakes Audubon has identified 12 regions and nearly 300,000 acres of coastal wetlands for protection and restoration to benefit 14 marsh bird species that have been on the decline. Shrinking bird populations in the region are part of a larger trend as North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970.

….

The 12 sites include 10 projects in Green Bay and the St. Louis River estuary in the Twin Ports where the black tern hasn’t been seen since the 1990s. The largest project prioritized in the estuary seeks to restore 850 acres of marsh in Allouez Bay in Superior that would support the species.

  ‘You can’t escape the smell’: mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 60.  Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 7:10 PM, for 12h 18m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 58.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Downtown Whitewater, Inc. meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

On this day in 1993, the Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips (80586), featuring a 60 MHz clock speed, 100+ MIPS, and a 64-bit data path.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Robin Stein, Haley Willis, Danielle Miller, and Michael S. Schmidt report ‘We’ve Lost the Line!’: Radio Traffic Reveals Police Under Siege at Capitol (‘The Times obtained District of Columbia police radio communications and synchronized them with footage from the scene to show in real time how officers tried and failed to stop the attack on the U.S. Capitol’):

 Katie Benner reports Evidence in Capitol Attack Most Likely Supports Sedition Charges, Prosecutor Says:

Evidence the government obtained in the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol most likely meets the bar necessary to charge some of the suspects with sedition, Michael R. Sherwin, the federal prosecutor who had been leading the Justice Department’s inquiry, said in an interview that aired on Sunday.

The department has rarely brought charges of sedition, the crime of conspiring to overthrow the government.

But in an interview with “60 Minutes,” Mr. Sherwin said prosecutors had evidence that most likely proved such a charge.

“I personally believe the evidence is trending toward that, and probably meets those elements,” Mr. Sherwin said. “I believe the facts do support those charges. And I think that, as we go forward, more facts will support that.”

….

The statute on seditious conspiracy also says that people who conspire to “oppose by force the authority” of the government or use force “to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States” can be charged with sedition.

 Sophie Carson reports Wisconsin QAnon believer shot paintball gun at Army Reserve members in Pewaukee, threatened ‘mass casualty’ event, prosecutors say:

A heavily armed Waukesha County man and QAnon believer who recently traveled to Washington, D.C., and promised violence there was twice taken into custody and released before being arrested Friday on federal charges.

Prosecutors say Ian Alan Olson, 31, of Nashotah drove a car spray-painted with QAnon slogans to the Wisconsin Army Reserve Center in Pewaukee on March 15 and shouted, “This is for America,” before he fired paintball rounds at two reservists nearby.

He also told intake staff at the Waukesha County Jail that he would “cause mass casualty” if he were released, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.

“I am ready for this. How many people need to die for a message to get across,” he said, according to the complaint.

 Video of the volcanic eruption at Iceland’s Geldingardalur valley in Reykjanes peninsula: 

A new video of the eruption at Geldingardalur valley in Reykjanes peninsula. Taken from the Coast Guard helicopter. #Reykjanes #Eruption #Fagradalsfjall pic.twitter.com/B862heMzQL

— Icelandic Meteorological Office – IMO (@Vedurstofan) March 19, 2021

.