Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 6:07 PM, for 10h 54m 40s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 80.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1867, the United States takes formal possession of Alaska:

… The troops being promptly formed, were, at precisely half past three o’clock, brought to a ‘present arms’, the signal given to the [USS] Ossipee … which was to fire the salute, and the ceremony was begun by lowering the Russian flag … The United States flag … was properly attached and began its ascent, hoisted by my private secretary [and son], George Lovell Rousseau, and again salutes were fired as before, the Russian water battery leading off. The flag was so hoisted that in the instant it reached its place the report of the big gun of the Ossipee reverberated from the mountains around … Captain Pestchouroff stepped up to me and said, ‘General Rousseau, by authority from his Majesty the Emperor of Russia, I transfer to the United States the Territory of Alaska’ and in a few words I acknowledged the acceptance of the transfer, and the ceremony was at an end.”

Recommended for reading in full:

Karoli Kuns observes Mulvaney Thinks Crimes Admitted To In Public Aren’t Crimes:

During a press conference, Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney admitted to the quid pro quo with Ukraine and defiantly justified it as just a shift in foreign policy.

Toluse Olorunnipa, David A. Fahrenthold, and Jonathan O’Connell report Trump has awarded next year’s G-7 summit of world leaders to his Miami-area resort:

That decision is without precedent in modern American history: The president used his public office to direct a huge contract to himself.

Trump’s Doral resort — set among office parks near Miami International Airport — has been in sharp decline in recent years, according to the Trump Organization’s own records. Its net operating income fell 69 percent from 2015 to 2017; a Trump Organization representative testified last year that the reason was Trump’s damaged brand.

Now, the G-7 summit will draw hundreds of diplomats, journalists and security personnel to the resort during one of its slowest months of the year, when Miami is hot and the hotel is often less than 40 percent full. It will also provide a worldwide spotlight for the club.
….

It also appears to signal the collapse of promises made by the president and Eric Trump, his son and the day-to-day leader of Trump’s businesses, at the start of the Trump presidency — when they pledged to create separation between the president’s private business and his new public office.

“I will be leaving my great business in total,” Trump said as president-elect in 2016.

“There are lines that we would never cross, and that’s mixing business with anything government,” Eric Trump said in 2017.

The Trump Organization on Thursday said it was “honored” to have been chosen by its owner, the president, for this event.

 How to Kill Disney Villains | Slash Course:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-three.  Sunrise is 7:11 AM and sunset 6:08 PM, for 10h 57m 26s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 87.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets today at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1931, Al Capone is convicted of tax evasion.

Recommended for reading in full:

Michael D. Shear and Nicholas Fandos report Trump’s Impeachment Blockade Crumbles as Witnesses Agree to Talk:

The White House’s trenchant declaration to House impeachment investigators last week was unequivocal: No more witnesses or documents for a “totally compromised kangaroo court.”

But just a week later, it has become clear that President Trump’s attempts to stonewall the Democrat-led inquiry that has imperiled his presidency and ensnared much of his inner circle are crumbling.

One by one, a parade of Trump administration career diplomats and senior officials has offered a cascade of revelations. Those accounts have corroborated and expanded upon key aspects of the whistle-blower complaint that spawned the impeachment inquiry into whether the president abused his power to enlist Ukraine to help him in the 2020 presidential election.

The latest disclosures came on Wednesday, when a former top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered an inside account of what he said was a demoralized State Department, where career diplomats were sidelined and others apparently were pressed to use their posts “to advance domestic political objectives.” In six hours of voluntary testimony, the former aide, Michael McKinley, told impeachment investigators that he quit his post as Mr. Pompeo’s senior adviser amid mounting frustrations over the Trump administration’s treatment of diplomats and its failure to support them in the face of the impeachment inquiry, according to a copy of his opening remarks.

Jacques Singer-Emery and Jack Goldsmith consider The Role of OMB in Withholding Ukrainian Aid:

One of the most damning allegations in the whistleblower complaint is that President Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son by withholding congressionally approved military aid.  The amounts include $250 million from the Defense Department and $141 million from the State Department.

As debates swirl over the existence and significance of a presidential quid pro quo, it is worth examining the underlying mechanics of how the White House might have withheld the money. The answer lies in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is responsible for overseeing all executive agency spending. That is why on Oct. 7 the chairmen of three House Committees—Oversight and Reform, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs—sent letters to subpoena documents from the acting director of OMB, Russell Vought, in addition to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. The subpoena to Vought ordered him to produce “all documents and communications in your custody, possession, or control referring or relating to” various matters linked to the withholding or deferral of congressionally appropriated funds to Ukraine. The deadline to respond to the subpoena was Oct. 15, yesterday, and Vought made clear that he would not comply.

At present, it is unclear whether OMB withheld the money in a manner consistent with its legal obligations. Without drawing any definitive conclusions, this post explains the complex legal underpinnings of the issue about which Congress seeks information.

A Bolton of Lightning Strikes Trump:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-one.  Sunrise is 7:10 AM and sunset 6:10 PM, for 11h 00m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets today at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1946, ten convicted Nazi war criminals are executed at Nuremberg.

Recommended for reading in full:

Rosalind S. Helderman, Josh Dawsey, Paul Sonne, and Tom Hamburger report How two Soviet-born emigres made it into elite Trump circles — and the center of the impeachment storm:

Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-born emigre, appeared at a dark time in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Less than a month before the election, major GOP donors had been spooked by the revelation that Trump boasted about grabbing women during a recording of the television show “Access Hollywood.”

Parnas had never been a player in national Republican politics. But the onetime stockbroker chose that moment to deliver a $50,000 donation to Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party, and it quickly opened doors.

The contribution helped propel Parnas and his business partner, Belarus-born Igor Fruman, on an extraordinarily rapid rise into the upper echelon of Trump allies — before they became central figures in the presidential impeachment inquiry.

By spring 2018, the two men had dined with Trump, breakfasted with his son and attended exclusive events at Mar-a-Lago and the White House, all while jetting around the world and spending lavishly, particularly at Trump hotels in New York and Washington. That May, a pro-Trump super PAC reported receiving a $325,000 donation from an energy company the duo had recently formed.

Where Parnas and Fruman got their money remains a mystery. When they were arrested Wednesday on charges of campaign finance violations, prosecutors alleged that Parnas and Fruman were backed in part by an unnamed Russian national who used them to funnel donations to state and federal candidates.

 Mike DeBonis and Rachael Bade report GOP players in Benghazi probe drop strong defense of congressional oversight:

Several key players in the House impeachment inquiry of President Trump were the strongest proponents of Republicans’ iron-fisted oversight of the Obama administration, culminating in a two-year House probe into the deadly 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Now, faced with a politically charged investigation into a president of their own party, they have dropped their formerly stout defense of congressional prerogatives and have joined Trump in endorsing a campaign of massive resistance to the impeachment probe — a turnabout that has left many Democrats and even some Republicans aghast.

Among those who participated in the select committee that probed the attacks on U.S. facilities in Libya were Mike Pompeo, then a Kansas congressman and now secretary of state and a key target of the current Democratic investigation, and Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), who is the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee. The panel’s chairman, then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (S.C.), who has since left Congress, was poised to serve as an outside lawyer for Trump. The president said Thursday that Gowdy would have to wait until January to start due to lobbying rules.

Noah Bierman and Chris Megerian report Trump’s children take in millions overseas as president slams Biden’s son:

WASHINGTON — Eric Trump sounded shocked that Hunter Biden hadn’t drawn more criticism for his lucrative business deals in Ukraine and China while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president.

“Can you imagine if I took 3 cents from the Ukraine or 4 cents from China?” President Trump’s second-oldest son asked in a recent Fox Business appearance.

Eric Trump and his older brother, Donald Trump Jr., run the Trump Organization, which conducts business — and takes in tens of millions of dollars annually — around the globe and is still owned by the president. The company is forging ahead with projects in Ireland, India, Indonesia and Uruguay, and is licensing the Trump name in such turbulent areas as Turkey and the Philippines.

Their sister Ivanka is a senior advisor to the president. She kept her international fashion business going for 18 months after she was given a loosely defined White House portfolio that includes interacting with heads of state and working with domestic and international corporate chiefs on economic programs.

 OpenAI’s AI-powered robot learned how to solve a Rubik’s cube one-handed:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see morning showers with a high of sixty.  Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 6:11 PM, for 11h 03m 02s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater Unified School District’s Policy Review Committee meets at 9 AM. Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1991, Clarence Thomas is confirmed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Riley Vetterkind reports Wauwatosa spice company behind pro-impeachment ad blitz:

A Wauwatosa-based spice company spent nearly $100,000 on Facebook ads last week calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, placing the company among the biggest social media spenders to wade into the impeachment debate so far.

Penzeys Spices, the country’s largest independent spice retailer, spent $95,948 on Facebook ads promoting impeachment between Oct. 4 and 10, according to Facebook. That comes as the company was reported to have spent $92,000 on Facebook ads related to impeachment from Sept. 29 to Oct. 5.

The ads have caught fire online. One post generated 257,000 reactions, 55,000 comments and 45,000 shares.

(Buy Penzeys spices.)

Karoun Demirjian, Shane Harris, and Rachael Bade report Trump’s ex-Russia adviser told impeachment investigators of Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine:

Fiona Hill, the White House’s former top Russia adviser, told impeachment investigators on Monday that Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, ran a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that circumvented U.S. officials and career diplomats in order to personally benefit President Trump, according to people familiar with her testimony.

Hill, who served as the senior official for Russia and Europe on the National Security Council, was the latest witness in a fast-moving impeachment inquiry focused on whether the president abused his office by using the promise of military aid and diplomatic support to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political rivals.

In a closed-door session that lasted roughly 10 hours, Hill told lawmakers that she confronted Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, about Giuliani’s activities which, she testified, were not coordinated with the officials responsible for carrying out U.S. foreign policy, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose details of her deposition.

Tory Newmyer writes There’s less to Trump’s ‘greatest and biggest deal’ with China than meets the eye:

President Trump hailed the preliminary trade agreement struck by American and Chinese negotiators as “one of the biggest deals.” It’s “by far, the greatest and biggest deal ever made for our Great Patriot Farmers in the history of our Country,” he trumpeted.

Closer inspection reveals there’s less to it than the presidential hype suggests. And the news this morning [10.14] that the Chinese want to hold more talks this month before President Xi Jinping signs an agreement is adding to investor skepticism.

(Emphasis in original.)

 Europe’s Oldest Forest:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-one.  Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 6:13 PM, for 11h 05m 50s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6:00 PM. The Whitewater Unified School Board meets 6:30 PM, to go into closed session with a return to open session afterward.

On this day in 1947, Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier while flying the X-1 Glamorous Glennis at Mach 1.05 at an altitude of 45,000 feet.

Recommended for reading in full:

Bob Bauer writes The Cipollone Letter: Trouble in the White House Counsel’s Office:

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s letter to the House leadership, declaring that the president will not cooperate in any impeachment inquiry, is an extraordinary document in more than one respect. As Keith Whittington and Frank Bowman have shown, the letter’s constitutional and “legal” arguments are baseless. It misrepresents the constitutional law and precedent that it is pleading on the president’s behalf. On the merits, it is an exceptionally weak performance. Add to this another deficiency: its glaring failure to effectively represent the institutional interests of the presidency.

….

With this goal of rejecting any cooperation, Cipollone also uses his letter to weigh in on the merits of the impeachment proceedings—with disastrous results. This portion of the letter is embarrassingly conclusory and superficial in its dismissal of any significance to be attached to the president’s call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Of course, Cipollone does not mention the whistleblower complaint or other reports of systematic administration pursuit of foreign government intervention in an American election on condition of withheld military aid. He does not address the documentary evidence that the head U.S. diplomat in Ukraine understood that this was the president’s aim and objected. Cipollone just asserts that the phone call with Zelensky was “completely appropriate.”

Seventeen former Watergate special prosecutors write We investigated the Watergate scandal. We believe Trump should be impeached: 

We, former members of the Watergate special prosecutor force, believe there exists compelling prima facie evidence that President Trump has committed impeachable offenses. This evidence can be accepted as sufficient for impeachment, unless disproved by any contrary evidence that the president may choose to offer.

The ultimate judgment on whether to impeach the president is for members of the House of Representatives to make. The Constitution establishes impeachment as the proper mechanism for addressing these abuses; therefore, the House should proceed with the impeachment process, fairly, openly and promptly. The president’s refusal to cooperate in confirming (or disputing) the facts already on the public record should not delay or frustrate the House’s performance of its constitutional duty.

In reaching these conclusions, we take note of 1) the public statements by Trump himself; 2) the findings of former special counsel Robert S.?Mueller III’s investigation; 3) the readout that the president released of his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; 4)?the president’s continuing refusal to produce documents or allow testimony by current and former government employees for pending investigations, as well as for oversight matters; and 5) other information now publicly available, including State Department text messages indicating that the release of essential military aid to Ukraine was conditioned on Ukraine’s willingness to commence a criminal investigation designed to further the president’s political interests.

Is A Recession Inevitable?:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-four.  Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 6:15 PM, for 11h 08m 40s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1775, a resolution of the Continental Congress creates a Continental Navy.

Recommended for reading in full:

Mayor of Minneapolis Jacob Frey writes We saw Trump stiffing cities for his other rallies, so we told him to pay up:

So late last month when President Trump announced that he would hold a campaign rally in Minneapolis, where I’m the mayor, I had two questions about resources. First, how much extra work would city employees need to do? Second, how could the city secure reimbursement for those excess costs on behalf of the city’s taxpayers.

The venue the campaign chose, Target Center, is publicly owned but privately operated. Under the terms of the city’s contract with the operator, Minneapolis is entitled to reimbursement for certain costs. In our view, those include excess costs for public safety and traffic control, among other services. Had the venue been privately owned, we wouldn’t have had as much leverage to recoup costs.

As mayor, I have a responsibility to protect free speech, even from a president whose rhetoric and policies I find reprehensible. However, it is not my responsibility to subsidize it.

Using the same methodology that city staff relied on to calculate costs for other recent, large-scale events in Minneapolis such as the Super Bowl ($6 million) and the NCAA Men’s Final Four ($1.5 million), the projected bill for Trump’s campaign stop came out to $530,000.

It’s no secret that the president’s rallies pose real security concerns, and this event coincided with rush hour. Both factors contributed to that figure, which was higher than might have been incurred for an event with fewer security worries at a time of day without so much traffic. We informed the booking agent of the expected cost and requested payment.

Michael S. Schmidt, Ben Protess, Kenneth P. Vogel, and William K. Rashbaum report Giuliani Is Said to Be Under Investigation for Ukraine Work:

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani broke lobbying laws in his dealings in Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the inquiry.

The investigators are examining Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to undermine the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, one of the people said. She was recalled in the spring as part of Mr. Trump’s broader campaign to pressure Ukraine into helping his political prospects.

The investigation into Mr. Giuliani is tied to the case against two of his associates who were arrested this week on campaign finance-related charges, the people familiar with the inquiry said. The associates were charged with funneling illegal contributions to a congressman whose help they sought in removing Ms. Yovanovitch.

This Is the Only Coffee Grown in the Continental United States:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty.  Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 6:16 PM, for 11h 11m 29s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1861, the 8th Wisconsin Infantry leaves Madison: “It would later move east through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, and west into Arkansas and Missouri and fight at the battles of Corinth, Vicksburg, Jackson, and Nashville.”

Recommended for reading in full:

Julia Davis writes Trump’s Syria Fiasco Is Part of Putin’s To-Do List (‘Trump tried to keep his talks with Putin at Helsinki last year secret from his staff and the world, but Russia’s president held up the checklist for the cameras. Syria was on it’):

In Finland last year, the leader of the most powerful country in the world demonstrated cringeworthy servility toward Vladimir Putin—president of a rogue government sanctioned by the West for a great number of malign activities, including Russia’s brazen interference in the U.S. elections.

The world’s pariah looked triumphant next to the deflated American president. As Trump stood hunched over, with a blank expression, Putin was practically glowing—and he wanted the world to know just how great the meeting went for Russia. Putin held up a thick stack of his notes with both hands, showing them off for the world to see, in effect giving himself the thumbs-up.

Discernible portions of the first page, purposely written in abnormally large script, included references to the election interference, Putin’s request that Russia be allowed to interrogate the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, and also the British businessman Bill Browder, pursuant to the 1999 Treaty with Russia on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters. There was a reference to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. And at the bottom of the first page, Putin’s notes also mentioned Syria, where Russia has been wreaking havoc and committing mass atrocities in concert with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Iran.

For public consumption, the Russian president’s handwriting mentioned “joint humanitarian operations with the goal of creating conditions for the return of refugees.” The reality on the ground tends to create—not dissipate—the flood of refugees, essentially weaponized by Russia and Syria to destabilize Europe.

The Washington Post editorial board writes A new report describes Russia’s deception. The interference sounds just like Trump’s playbook:

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S lawlessness and nonstop lying about the matter of Ukraine have consumed Washington so completely that a new bipartisan report on Russian election interference has received less attention than it deserves. The kicker? The investigation directly contradicts the commander in chief’s fountain of falsehoods.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released the latest installment this week of its comprehensive review of the Kremlin’s systematic attempts to sway the 2016 vote. The top-line finding is this: The Internet Research Agency, whose efforts the committee assesses were directed and supported by the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, sought to harm Hillary Clinton and elevate Mr. Trump.

….

The Russians extended their reach beyond the online realm with rallies and spontaneous gatherings known as flash mobs, at one point attempting to draw a crowd in New York City by offering free hot dogs and at another paying participants to portray Ms. Clinton imprisoned in a cage. A protest against Islam in Houston by a made-up group called “Heart of Texas” and a manufactured pro-Muslim event held at the same time resulted in a confrontation that local news agencies covered live. The operation cost operatives in St. Petersburg only $200.

“The preponderance of the operational focus,” write the Senate authors, “was on socially divisive issues .?.?. in an attempt to pit Americans against one another and their government.” The Kremlin’s hope throughout its history of disinformation operations has been to turn the public “passive and paranoid,” convince people they cannot rely on traditional channels for the truth, and lure governments into responding in a manner “irreconcilable with the nation’s principles and civil liberties.”

A.I. Takes Center Stage: MacArthur Fellowship Winner Annie Dorsen combines tech and theater: