Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of twenty-nine.  Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 4:39 PM, for 10h 02m 08s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 77.33% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1929, New York’s Museum of Modern Art opens to the public.

Recommended for reading in full:

Ari Berman contends The Right to Vote Won Big on Tuesday:

Voters in three states chose candidates and policies that could result in expanded access to the ballot, an undoing of Republican gerrymandering efforts, and a fairer voting system.

Democrat Andy Beshear, who was elected governor of Kentucky, pledged during the campaign to issue an executive order restoring voting rights to 140,000 people convicted of nonviolent felonies in the state. Kentucky is one of only three states where people with past felony convictions cannot vote unless the governor restores their rights. As a result, 300,000 Kentucky residents—nine percent of the electorate—have been disenfranchised, including more than one in four African-Americans, the highest black felon disenfranchisement rate in the country.

….

In Virginia, Democrats won the state legislature, giving them one-party control of the state for the first time in a quarter of a century. Democrats could now pass major voting reforms like early voting, automatic and Election Day registration, and the automatic restoration of voting rights for ex-offenders, along with repealing the state’s restrictive voter ID law. All of these bills have already been introduced by Democrats in the legislature but blocked by Republicans.

Virginia Democrats will also control the drawing of the state’s redistricting mapsin 2021. It remains to be seen whether they will support efforts to create a bipartisan redistricting commission to redraw legislative and US House maps, which passed the legislature this year but must be approved by the legislature again in 2020 and then by the voters in a ballot referendum.

Mike McIntire, Karen Yourish, and Larry Buchanan report In Trump’s Twitter Feed: Conspiracy-Mongers, Racists and Spies:

In September, an obscure Twitter account promoting a fringe belief about an anti-Trump cabal within the government tweeted out a hashtag: #FakeWhistleblower.

It was typical for the anonymous account, which traffics in far-right content and a conspiracy theory known as QAnon, some of whose adherents think that satanic pedophiles control the “deep state.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently labeled QAnon a potential domestic terror threat.

Still, that did not stop others, including a Republican congressional candidate, from quickly picking up the hashtag and tweeting it. Within a week, hundreds of QAnon believers and “MAGA” activists had joined in, posting memes and bogus reports to undermine the complaint by a government whistle-blower that President Trump had pressed Ukraine’s leader for dirt on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son.

Then Mr. Trump tweeted the hashtag himself.

Giant Squid Captured On Video:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of thirty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 4:40 PM, for 10h 04m 34s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 70.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board’s personnel committee meets in closed session at 5:45 PM.

On this day in 1947, Meet the Press first premieres as a television program.

Recommended for reading in full:

Jonathan Bernstein reports Tuesday’s Elections Went Badly for Donald Trump:

Democrats had a good night Tuesday in the off-year elections, picking up both chambers of the Virginia state legislature and apparently the governor seat in Kentucky, although Republican Governor Matt Bevin hasn’t yet conceded. In Mississippi, Republicans held on in the gubernatorial race, but by a relatively slim margin.

….

Oh yes, the suburbs. Bevin was hurt in suburban Cincinnati (although see a dissenting thread). Democrats also picked up a state legislative seat in suburban St. Louis; won their first three city council seats in Carmel, an Indianapolis suburb; and did better than usual in some Memphis suburbs. That continues a trend from 2018 that should scare Republicans. That said, it’s impossible to know if it will continue or if it’s a Trump-era reaction that will dissipate or reverse once he’s gone.

National effects? The Washington Post’s Robert Costa reports that Senate Republicans were watching Kentucky closely: “not just watching the returns, but President Trump’s political capital as they make decisions about how to handle impeachment and their own future.” How politicians interpret elections is only sometimes scientific, but it always matters, often far more than the objective facts about those elections. Whether they think Trump is an electoral asset or poison at the ballot box will be at least as important to the outcome of impeachment and a Senate trial as actual evidence of malfeasance. I can say one thing: These political professionals are unlikely to be convinced by Trump’s habitual false claims that his intervention in a race moved the polls by massive amounts.

(Emphasis in original.)

Philip Bump writes Republicans have heard less about the impeachment probe — and are more likely to reject established details:

It’s worth noting here one possible reason for that difference. Fox News is the most trusted network among Republicans, according to Suffolk University polling — and Fox News has also been much less likely to cover key witnesses in the impeachment inquiry.

Republicans’ lack of familiarity with the core issues — or professed lack of familiarity — is a theme in Monmouth’s poll.

Most Republicans — a group that, again, opposes the impeachment inquiry — think that what’s been revealed so far shows that Trump either did nothing wrong or did nothing that rises to the level of impeachment.

How Trump’s Ally Roger Stone Is Tied To The Russia Probe:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see showers yielding to partly sunny skies with a high of forty-six.  Sunrise is 6:33 AM and sunset 4:43 PM, for 10h 09m 29s of daytime.  The moon is in its first quarter with 50.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1956, Soviet troops intervene to suppress the Hungarian popular revolution against communist rule.

Recommended for reading in full:

Garry Kasparov writes This Soviet dissident knew why finding common ground with dictators can’t work:

Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky died in Cambridge, England, on Sunday night. He was 76, an age far greater than he expected to reach back when he was in and out of Soviet prisons and going on the hunger strikes that made him a potent symbol of resistance to Communist oppression.

For so many of us in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Bukovsky’s name had the air of a legend, since he had been forcibly ejected from the Soviet Union in 1976. Soviet authorities had grown afraid of his ability to organize the prisoners wherever he was jailed, but turning him into a martyr was also unattractive. Remember that this was the 1970s, when there were still strong voices in Europe and on both sides of the U.S. political aisle in support of holding the Soviets accountable for their treatment of dissidents such as Bukovsky, Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In his writings and public statements, Bukovsky remained steadfastly in favor of direct opposition to the Soviet Union, condemning for collaboration and collusion those such as Henry Kissinger who favored amoral realpolitik. Bukovsky saw clearly that the “peaceful coexistence” touted by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and his successors was a sham. No nation capable of imprisoning and torturing its citizens the way the Soviet Union did, Bukovsky said, could ever be a part of a civilized world of human rights and individual liberty.

Simone Weichselbaum explains Why Some Police Departments Are Leaving Federal Task Forces (‘Cities say the feds won’t follow their rules about using force, body cams’):

Clashes are erupting between local and federal officials over the hundreds of joint task forces that operate around the country, specializing in missions such as finding fugitives, fighting drug dealers or tracking potential terrorists.

Washington provides money, expertise and weaponry. Local law enforcement agencies provide much of the manpower. Their officers are deputized as federal agents, which among other things means that the Justice Department can shield them from litigation and local oversight.

At least five cities, including Atlanta, have pulled out of task forces since 2017, and Houston, the nation’s fourth largest, has threatened to follow.

The problem, police officials say, is that local cops assigned to joint task forces are not bound by department rules, such as wearing body cameras, which the feds have prohibited. The FBI and U.S. Marshals allow the use of deadly force if a person poses an “imminent danger,” using a definition that is less strict than many police departments’. California recently adopted a law stating that deadly force may be used only when “necessary.” Task-force members are also immune to civilian lawsuits in a way that regular officers are not.

The AI that mastered Starcraft II:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-five.  Sunrise is 6:32 AM and sunset 4:44 PM, for 10h 11m 59s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 40.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 2014, One World Trade Center (Freedom Tower) opens as the principal building on the former World Trade Center site.

Recommended for reading in full:

 The Racine Journal Times reports Union Grove woman allegedly drunk during parent-teacher conference, tries to flee deputy:

According to the criminal complaint:

A Racine County Sheriff’s Office deputy was dispatched to Union Grove Elementary School, 1745 Mildrum St., on Thursday for a report of an intoxicated parent trying to leave the school with children. The deputy located Raboine’s vehicle on Main Street and 15th Avenue (the intersection of highways 11 and 45) and activated the police squad’s emergency lights and sirens.

The deputy reported that the vehicle did not slow down or pull over but continued to maneuver around other vehicles that had. The driver pulled into a driveway in the 700 block of 9th Avenue, exited the vehicle and ran towards the back of the residence. The deputy pursued on foot, found the driver attempting to unlock the back door and asked her to stop. She opened the back door and allegedly attempted to close it on the pursing deputy. The driver was identified as Raboine and she was taken into custody.

….

According to court records, Raboine was arrested for operating while intoxicated earlier this month in a similar incident. On Oct. 16, the principal had summoned law enforcement because Raboine had not picked up her children from school. Raboine called the school from the parking lot, asking that the children be sent to the car; she was allegedly slurring her words. She was told she needed to enter the building to collect her children and was reportedly stumbling while walking and slurring her speech. The principal then called the Sheriff’s Office.

At her initial appearance on Thursday, bail for Raboine was set at $1,000. Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 6.

The Fine Art of Fish Prints:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:31 AM and sunset 5:45 PM, for 10h 14m 36s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 31.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1889, North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted to the Union.

Recommended for reading in full:

 David Ignatius writes In Ukraine, the quid pro quo may have started long before the phone call:

What led to Trump’s first meeting on June 20, 2017, with Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko? Ukraine had hired the lobbying firm BGR Group in January 2017 to foster contact with Trump, but nothing had happened .?.?. and then the door opened. Why?

On June 7, less than two weeks before Poroshenko’s White House meeting, Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, had visited Kyiv to give a speech for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, headed by a prominent Ukrainian oligarch. While Giuliani was there, he also met with Poroshenko and his prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, according a news release issued by the foundation.

Just after Giuliani’s visit, Ukraine’s investigation of the so-called black ledger that listed alleged illicit payments to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was transferred from an anti-corruption bureau, known as NABU , to Poroshenko’s prosecutor general, according to a June 15, 2017, report in the Kyiv Post. The paper quoted Viktor Trepak, former deputy head of the country’s security service, saying: “It is clear for me that somebody gave an order to bury the black ledger.”

The New York Times reported in May 2018 that Ukraine had “halted cooperation” with Mueller’s investigation. The paper quoted Volodymyr Ariev, a parliament ally of Poroshenko, explaining: “In every possible way, we will avoid irritating the top American officials.”

Was there any implicit understanding that Poroshenko’s government would curb its cooperation with the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation of Manafort, who would later be indicted by Mueller?

  Molly Beck reports Wisconsin again has the worst gap in academic achievement between its black and white students:

Wisconsin also again bears the distinction of having the worst gap between black and white academic success of any state, according to new results of the National Assessment of Education Progress — known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Wisconsin has the highest percentage of black students exhibiting skills considered below a basic level, according to the assessment, taken by fourth and eighth graders earlier this year.

State superintendent Carolyn Stanford Taylor, the first African American leader of the Department of Public Instruction, said the results indicate a “crisis.”

“We have work ahead to achieve our rigorous expectations,” she said in a statement. “Our persistent achievement gaps are a crisis. Closing these gaps is not only the right thing to do, it is imperative for our state.”

The new test results underscore the hurdles facing the black children in Wisconsin — 82% of whom are considered to be economically disadvantaged by the state DPI.

Meet the 2019 MacArthur Fellow transforming Chicago’s South Side:

Good morning.

November in Whitewater begins with rain and a high of thirty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:29 AM and sunset 5:46 PM, for 10h 17m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1863, George Safford Parker, founder of the Parker Pen Company, is born.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Greg Ip writes Trump’s Tax Cut Underdelivers, Which Could Embolden Democrats Who Want It Reversed:

The cornerstone of President Trump’s domestic economic agenda is the tax cut he signed into law in late 2017. It would, he said, lift U.S. sustained annual economic growth to 3%, or even as high as 6%. His advisers said it would boost average household incomes by at least $4,000 a year. His Treasury secretary said it would pay for itself.

Nearly two years later, none of those things have happened, and there is scant sign they will. The U.S. economy did enjoy a burst of 3% annualized growth after the tax cut first took effect at the start of 2018. But it has since slipped. It grew at a 1.9% annual rate in the third quarter. In the past 12 months, the economy grew 2%, about the same as it averaged from 2011 through 2017.

This should not come as a surprise. The administration’s claims rested on the belief that cutting the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% and allowing companies to immediately write off the cost of new equipment would boost business investment and thus worker productivity and wages. Yet numerous other advanced countries had already cut their corporate rates in the prior two decades without experiencing anywhere near the growth boost the Trump administration promised. Many experienced no boost at all.

….

Macroeconomic Advisers, a private forecasting firm, compared what it thought in 2017 the economy would do without a tax cut to what actually happened through the second quarter. Business investment on buildings and other structures significantly underperformed the projections while investment in intellectual property outperformed. This was despite the tax law treating structures most favorably and intellectual property least. “The patterns of investment growth were inconsistent with changes in investment incentives” in the tax law, Jane Gravelle, a tax expert at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, told Congress in July.

(Emphasis added. The tax bill was discernibly bad to anyone not drunk, comatose, or deluded.)

  Reis Thebault reports Trump is changing his residence from NYC to Florida. ‘Good riddance,’ New Yorkers say:

As news of the change spread, some of those city and state leaders, all Democrats, endorsed Trump’s decision.

“Good riddance,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo tweeted. “It’s not like @realDonaldTrump paid taxes here anyway … He’s all yours, Florida.”

Corey Johnson, New York’s city council speaker, agreed: “GOOD RIDDANCE!!,” he bade Trump in a tweet.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out or whatever,” quipped Mayor Bill de Blasio.

In the declaration, Trump refers to Trump Tower — his home since the early 1980s, the place where he launched his presidential campaign — in the past tense: “I formerly resided at 721 Fifth Avenue.”

Tonight’s Sky for November 2019: