Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see scattered thundershowers with a high of eighty-three.  Sunrise is 6:30 AM and sunset 7:11 PM, for 12h 40m 27s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the eighteenth anniversary of the September 11th Al Qaida attacks on the United States.

Recommended for reading in full:

Bruce Reidel writes Al-Qaida today, 18 years after 9/11:

Eighteen years after the 9/11 attacks, the al-Qaida organization that carried them out is a shell of its previous self. The global campaign against Osama bin Laden’s creation has achieved notable success. The ideas that inspired bin Laden and his followers have lost some, but not all, of their attractiveness. There is no place for complacency, but the threat is different.

….

The 9/11 attacks also transformed the American national security bureaucracy more thoroughly than any event since the dawn of the Cold War. New organizations like the National Counter Terrorism Center, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence owe their creation to 9/11. This infrastructure is still essential to detecting and disrupting plots. The next administration should review the infrastructure with an eye to strengthening damaged foreign alliances.

Shawn Donnan reports Recession Already Grips Corners of U.S., Menacing Trump’s 2020 Bid:

Somewhere between his home near Madison and the factory he runs on the edge of the small town of Brodhead, the news will turn to the trade wars and Donald Trump will again claim that China is bearing the cost of his tariffs. That’s when Petras loses it.

“It’s just an outright lie, and he knows it,” says Petras, president of Kuhn North America, which employs some 600 people at its farm-equipment factory in Wisconsin. For Kuhn, Trump’s trade war has produced a toxic mix of rising costs and falling revenues. “You’re slamming your fist on the steering wheel and saying ‘Why would you tell people this?’”

About 250 Kuhn employees spent the Labor Day holiday caught in a two-week furlough, and they’re facing another in early October. A shrinking order book means Kuhn is cutting costs and slashing production as Petras and his managers peer out at a U.S. economy that looks far bleaker from the swing-state heartland than it does in either the White House or on Wall Street.

….

In 22 states—including electorally important ones like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—the number of people working in factories actually fell in the first seven months of this year, according to figures compiled by the Economic Innovation Group, a think tank.

This isn’t what Trump promised. From his trade policy to tax cuts and deregulation, his grand economic vow was to bring factories home. By unraveling trade deals such as Nafta, taking on China, and deploying tariffs like economic cruise missiles, Trump’s “America First” agenda was supposed to boost growth in an iconic sector of the economy.

New Zealand v. Rats:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see scattered thundershowers giving way to partly sunny skies, with a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 6:29 AM and sunset 7:13 PM, for 12h 43m 18s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 88.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1813, America is victorious at the Battle of Lake Erie: “Nine vessels of the United States Navy defeated and captured six vessels of the British Royal Navy. This ensured American control of the lake for the rest of the war, which in turn allowed the Americans to recover Detroit and win the Battle of the Thames to break the Indian confederation of Tecumseh. It was one of the biggest naval battles of the War of 1812.”

Recommended for reading in full:

Toluse Olorunnipa and Scott Clement report Six in 10 Americans expect a recession and higher prices as Trump’s approval rating slips, Washington Post-ABC News poll finds:

Trump’s approval rating among voting-age Americans stands at 38 percent, down from 44 percent in June but similar to 39 percent in April, with 56 percent now saying they disapprove of his performance in office. Among registered voters, 40 percent say they approve of Trump, while 55 percent disapprove.

Concern over the economy — and specifically Trump’s handling of trade negotiations with China — have become a drag on the president’s public standing, particularly with women.

The Post-ABC poll finds Trump’s economic approval rating has also declined from 51 percent in early July to 46 percent in the new survey, with 47 percent disapproving. His relatively positive standing on the economy continues to buoy his reputation amid public criticism on other issues.

In the July survey, the economy was the sole issue where Trump received positive numbers, with more than half of all Americans disapproving of his handling of immigration, health care, gun violence, climate change and other issues.

Trump’s handling of trade negotiations with China is a particularly weak spot, with 35 percent in the new poll approving of him on this issue and 56 percent disapproving.

Christopher Flavelle, Lisa Friedman, and Peter Baker report Commerce Chief Threatened Firings at NOAA After Trump’s Hurricane Tweets, Sources Say:

The Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire top employees at NOAA on Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavowing the office’s own position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew criticism from the scientific community that NOAA, a division of the Commerce Department, had been bent to political purposes.

A Standing Ovation For Birmingham NWS After They Stood Up To Trump:

Why Uber Still Can’t Make a Profit:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of seventy-two.  Sunrise is 6:28 AM and sunset 7:14 PM, for 12h 46m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 81.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM and the Whitewater Unified School Board at 7 PM. 

On this day in 1956, Elvis Presley first appears on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Recommended for reading in full:

David Daley writes of The Secret Files of the Master of Modern Republican Gerrymandering:

Thomas Hofeller preached secrecy as he remapped American politics from the shadows. The Republican Party operative, known as the master of the modern gerrymander, trained other G.O.P. operatives and legislators nationwide to secure their computer networks, guard access to their maps, and never send e-mails that they didn’t want to see published by the news media. In training sessions for state legislators and junior line drawers, he used a PowerPoint presentation that urged them to “avoid recklessness” and “always be discreet,” and warned that “emails are the tool of the devil.”

Hofeller did not follow his own advice. Before his death, in August, 2018, he saved at least seventy thousand files and several years of e-mails. A review of those records and e-mails—which were recently obtained first by The New Yorker—raises new questions about whether Hofeller unconstitutionally used race data to draw North Carolina’s congressional districts, in 2016. They also suggest that Hofeller was deeply involved in G.O.P. mapmaking nationwide, and include new trails for more potential lawsuits challenging Hofeller’s work, similar to the one on Wednesday which led to the overturning of his state legislative maps in North Carolina.

Hofeller’s files include dozens of intensely detailed studies of North Carolina college students, broken down by race and cross-referenced against the state driver’s-license files to determine whether these students likely possessed the proper I.D. to vote. The studies are dated 2014 and 2015, the years before Hofeller helped Republicans in the state redraw its congressional districts in ways that voting-rights groups said discriminated on the basis of race. North Carolina Republicans said that the maps discriminated based on partisanship but not race. Hofeller’s hard drive also retained a map of North Carolina’s 2017 state judicial gerrymander, with an overlay of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that these maps—which are currently at the center of a protracted legal battle—might also be a racial gerrymander.

Riccardo Torres reports Louis Woo, a top Foxconn exec, stepping down to address ‘some personal matters’:

Foxconn executive Louis Woo has “relinquished his project responsibilities to focus on addressing some personal matters,” the company confirmed to The Journal Times.

Woo has been one of the major faces for the Foxconn Technology Group in Wisconsin and its development in Mount Pleasant. Woo also served as a special assistant to Foxconn founder and former Chairman Terry Gou before Gou decided to step down from the day-to-day operations to run what ended up being an unsuccessful campaign to become president of Taiwan.

Apple’s Secret Keynote Formula, Explained:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see occasional showers with a high of sixty-six.  Sunrise is 6:27 AM and sunset 7:16 PM, for 12h 48m 59s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 73.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1966, NBC broadcasts The Man Trap, the first broadcast episode of the first season of Star Trek on NBC: “The Enterprise visits planet M-113 for a routine medical inspection of the husband-wife archaeological team stationed there, but the crew finds that the wife has been replaced by a deadly, shape-shifting creature.”

Recommended for reading in full:

Jason Lange and P.J. Huffstutter report Farm loan delinquencies surge in U.S. election battleground Wisconsin:

The share of farm loans that are long past-due rose to 2.9% at community banks in Wisconsin as of June 30, the highest rate in comparable records that go back to 2001, according to a Reuters analysis of loan delinquency data published by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

While the number of seriously delinquent farm loans is rising nationwide, the noncurrent rate has more than doubled at Wisconsin’s community banks since Trump took office in January 2017. It now stands higher than in any other of the top 10 U.S. farm states as measured in production – a list that includes California, Iowa and Texas.

Craig Gilbert reports In battleground Wisconsin, views of the economy aren’t as rosy as they used to be:

In more than 50 surveys since the beginning of 2012, Marquette Law School pollster Charles Franklin has asked Wisconsin voters whether they expect the economy to get better, worse or stay the same “over the next year.”

In every survey during the Obama presidency, more voters said “better” than “worse.” That remained true during the first two years of the Trump presidency.

But in two of the three Wisconsin polls that Marquette has done in 2019, more voters have said “worse” than “better.”

In short, public expectations about the economy are darker this year than they have been at any time since at least 2011.  And that’s not based on just one survey; it is based on the yearly averages of 52 surveys Marquette has done from 2012 to 2019.

This finding is also consistent with national trends. In August, a widely followed index of consumer sentiment by the University of Michigan registered its biggest monthly drop since 2012.

Jennifer Rubin writes of Trump’s ‘tell’ on the economy:

Moreover, Trump’s tax cuts were spun on the basis that they would permanently hike business investment, raise workers’ wages by $4,000 and bring on a new era of more than 3 percent growth. That hasn’t happened. Rattner wrote: “In fact, during the second quarter, new investment fell for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2015. As the 2020 election season continues to unfold, Americans may be surprised to learn that the rate of investment under Mr. Trump — 3.9% — is actually lower than under President Obama (5.7%) after the nation’s economy began to recover in 2010.”

What Your School Lunch Might Have Looked Like in 1996:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-five.  Sunrise is 6:26 AM and sunset 7:18 PM, for 12h 51m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 63.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1977, Wisconsin holds a judicial recall election:

Dane County citizens voted Judge Archie Simonson out of office. Simonson called rape a normal male reaction to provocative female attire and modern society’s permissive attitude toward sex. He made this statment while explaining why he sentenced a 15-year-old to only one year of probation for raping a 16-year-old girl. After the recall election, Simonson was replaced by Moria Krueger, the first woman judge elected in Dane County history.

Recommended for reading in full:

Molly Beck reports Scott Walker hits the airwaves to promote his son Matt’s potential congressional run:

Former Gov. Scott Walker is jumping back into Wisconsin politics — this time to promote his 25-year-old son’s potential candidacy for Congress.

Matt Walker, Walker’s oldest son, is one of 10 potential candidates considering running to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner in the 5th Congressional District, a conservative stronghold.

“I think in particular what intrigues him is he feels frustrated that (U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) somehow nationally is reflective of his generation,” Scott Walker said in an appearance on WISN’s “UpFront.” “He’s 25 and he feels there needs to be a counter-voice to that.”

Ocasio-Cortez is a 29-year-old freshman congresswoman from New York — and the youngest female to serve in Congress — who the former Republican governor frequently criticizes over her Democratic Socialist views.

(Oh, brother.  The gerrymandered Fifth Congressional District stretches all the way down to Whitewater.  Walker says his son wants to be a counter-voice to AOC, but the son isn’t using his voice – his father’s the one talking. If Matt Walker wants to take on Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, then he’s going to have to speak & stand on his own without papa’s help.  This libertarian does not – and never will – support AOC’s fundamentally misguided confidence in government action.  And yet, and yet – it is clear that AOC can speak and write on her own.  She’s standing on her own feet.  It’s always worth reminding of Scott Walker’s Three Fundamental Failures: Employment, Income, and Poverty.)

Jobs Data Looks Like a Stagflation Report, Economist Torsten Slok Observes:

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, and Irina Novoselsky, chief executive officer at CareerBuilder, examine the U.S. August jobs report. They speak on “Bloomberg Daybreak: Americas.”

Who Invented the Pitcher’s Mound?:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-three.  Sunrise is 6:25 AM and sunset 7:20 PM, for 12h 54m 40s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 53.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1781, traitor Benedict Arnold orders the British soldiers under his command to burn New London, Connecticut.

Recommended for reading in full:

Pollster Nate Silver explains How To Handle An Outlier Poll:

To a first approximation, the best advice is to toss it into the average. Definitely do not assume that it’s the new normal. You don’t need to read dramatically headlined newspaper articles and watch breathless cable news segments about it. In a race with many polls, any one poll should rarely make all that much news. But you shouldn’t “throw out” the poll either. Instead, it should incrementally affect your priors. In the case of the Monmouth poll last week, for instance, you shouldn’t have assumed that the race had suddenly become a three-way tie, but you should have inched up your estimate of how well Sanders and Warren were doing compared with Biden.

For extra credit, pay attention to sample size. The Monmouth poll surveyed only 298 Democratic voters, which is small even by the standards of primary polls (which often survey fewer voters than general election polls do).

….

If a poll shows a significant change in the race, you should tend to presume it’s an outlier unless it’s precipitated by a major news or campaign event.

Corollary: You should be much more open to the possibility that a poll reflects a real change if it’s among the first polls following a major news or campaign event.

What do I mean by a “major” news or campaign event? Some fairly specific types of things. When I made you pinky swear earlier, I was asking you to stick precisely to this list:

1. Debates.
2. Candidates entering or exiting the race, or clinching their nominations.
3. Primary and caucus results (e.g., the Iowa caucuses occur and that has knockoff effects on the next set of states).
4. The conventions.
5. The announcement of vice presidential candidates.
6. The final week of the campaign.
7. Spectacular, blockbuster news events that dominate the news cycle for a week or more. (There generally are only one or two of these per campaign cycle, if that many.)

Nell Greenfieldboyce reports Squirrels Eavesdrop On Birds, Researchers Say:

Squirrels eavesdrop on the casual chitchat of birds to figure out when it’s safe enough to be out in the open and foraging for food.

Researchers have found that a squirrel becomes incredibly vigilant when it hears the shriek of a red-tailed hawk, but it will relax and resume its food-seeking behavior more quickly if the predator’s call is immediately followed by the easygoing tweets of unconcerned birds.

Inside the World of Gourmet Lab Meat: