Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see morning showers on a partly cloudy day with a high of eighty-two.  Sunrise is 5:43 AM and sunset 8:18 PM, for 14h 34m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 9.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Committee meets at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1958, Pres. Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing NASA.

Recommended for reading in full:

Laura Reiley reports President tweets American farmers ‘starting to do great again’ — except they’re not:

President Trump began his Tuesday with a congratulatory tweet to new British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a shout-out to the military and a rosy assessment of U.S. agriculture: “Farmers are starting to do great again, after 15 years of a downward spiral. The 16 Billion Dollar China ‘replacement’ money didn’t exactly hurt!”

….

Before the trade war even began, farmers and ranchers struggled with falling farm income and commodity prices, rising debt, historic floods through the Midwest and rain that delayed, and in many cases prevented, spring planting.

In May, the president announced a $16 billion aid package, the second bailout for farmers since 2018. The bulk of the money was allocated for row crops such as soy, wheat and oats. Niche crops, including tree nuts, sweet cherries, cranberries and grapes, were also eligible for relief, and so were dairy and pork. But farmers say the payments won’t even start to make up for their losses.

“While America’s farmers and ranchers are grateful for the administration’s agriculture assistance package, it only begins to relieve the great difficulty the agriculture industry is currently facing, ranging from extreme weather conditions to depressed markets,” says Dale Moore, executive vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The U.S. Soybean Export Council reports that shipments of U.S. beans to China were down 19.2 million metric tons, or 705.2 million bushels, in the first 10 months of the current marketing year compared with the 2017-2018 marketing year. Falling sales and lower prices for soybeans have led to a historic carry-over stock of unsold U.S. beans, up 47 percent over the past year, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Lawrence Andrea reports Wisconsin and local officials beef up voting security ahead of the presidential election:

Wisconsin’s second most populated county relies on one computer locked in Madison’s City-County Building to program every municipality’s voting machine. It’s one step one county has taken to try to ensure Wisconsin’s elections are secure as the nation prepares for the next big test of its voting systems — the 2020 presidential election.

In July 2016, “Russian government cyber actors” scanned Wisconsin’s online defenses twice, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Russians attempted to hack 20 other states during the 2016 election.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller in his two-year investigation found the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in “sweeping and systematic fashion.” Numerous Russian officials have been indicted on charges including computer hacking and identity theft.

Police arrest 1,000 in Moscow during protest over exclusion of opposition candidates in city elections:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered morning showers on an otherwise partly cloudy day with a high of eighty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:42 AM and sunset 8:19 PM, for 14h 36m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 16.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1868, Secretary of State William Seward certifies the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Recommended for reading in full:

Toluse Olorunnipa and Ashley Parker report Trump campaign sees political advantage in a divisive appeal to working-class white voters:

President Trump launched another broadside Saturday on a Democratic political opponent, calling a prominent black congressman’s Baltimore district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and saying “no human being would want to live there.”

That Twitter attack on Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) plunged the nation into yet another anguished debate over the president’s divisive rhetoric. And it came just two weeks after Trump called out four minority congresswomen with a racist go-back-to-your-country taunt.

….

But Trump’s advisers had concluded after the previous tweets that the overall message sent by such attacks is good for the president among his political base — resonating strongly with the white working-class voters he needs to win reelection in 2020.

This has prompted them to find ways to fuse Trump’s nativist rhetoric with a love-it-or-leave-it appeal to patriotism ahead of the 2020 election, while seeking to avoid the overtly racist language the president used in his tweets about the four congresswomen.

Ronald Brownstein writes Will Trump’s Racist Attacks Help Him? Ask Blue-Collar White Women (‘His strategy rests on a bet: that these voters will respond just as enthusiastically to his belligerence as working-class white men’):

Donald Trump’s turn toward more overt racism in his “go back” attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color rests on an unspoken bet: that the women who are part of his core constituencies will respond to his acrimony as enthusiastically as the men.

But polling throughout Trump’s presidency has indicated that his belligerent and divisive style raises more concern among women voters than men in one of his most important cohorts: the white working class. And a new set of focus groups in small-town and rural communities offers fresh evidence that the gender gap over Trump within this bloc is hardening.

….

Trump must maximize his margins—and turnout—among the groups that have been most receptive to his exclusionary racist and cultural messages: older, nonurban, evangelical-Christian, and non-college-educated white voters.

….

But Trump’s strategy faces a huge obstacle if working-class women don’t buy in to his message as much as working-class men. That’s for a simple reason: Every data source—from the exit polls to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of voter files to studies by Catalist, a Democratic voter-targeting firm—shows that these women reliably cast slightly more than half of all the votes from the white working class.

(Quite the bet, but then Trump has nowhere else to turn.)

The Birdman of Idaho Has Built Homes for Over 40,000 Bluebirds:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-five.  Sunrise is 5:41 AM and sunset 8:20 PM, for 14h 39m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 25.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee votes 27–11 to recommend its first article of impeachment against Pres. Nixon (for obstruction of justice).

Recommended for reading in full:

Dana Milbank writes Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset:

Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset.

This doesn’t mean he’s a spy, but neither is it a flip accusation. Russia attacked our country in 2016. It is attacking us today. Its attacks will intensify in 2020. Yet each time we try to raise our defenses to repel the attack, McConnell, the Senate majority leader, blocks us from defending ourselves.

Let’s call this what it is: unpatriotic. The Kentucky Republican is, arguably more than any other American, doing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding.

Robert Mueller sat before Congress this week warning that the Russia threat “deserves the attention of every American.” He said “the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in our election is among the most serious” challenges to American democracy he has ever seen. “They are doing it as we sit here, and they expect to do it during the next campaign,” he warned, adding that “much more needs to be done in order to protect against these intrusions, not just by the Russians but others as well.”

The next day, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the minority leader, asked for the Senate to pass the Securing America’s Federal Elections Act, already passed by the House, that would direct $600 million in election assistance to states and require backup paper ballots.

McConnell himself responded this time, reading from a statement, his chin melting into his chest, his trademark thin smile on his lips. “It’s just a highly partisan bill from the same folks who spent two years hyping up a conspiracy theory about President Trump and Russia,” he said. “Therefore, I object.” McConnell also objected to another attempt by Blumenthal to pass his bill.

Pleaded Schumer: “I would suggest to my friend the majority leader: If he doesn’t like this bill, let’s put another bill on the floor and debate it.”

But McConnell has blocked all such attempts….

(To be a Russian agent would place someone in Russia’s employ; to be an asset, as McConnell is, is to be useful and valuable to Russia’s interests even without a direct connection to a foreign intelligence service.  McConnell fits the definition of a Russian asset.)

Why The United States Is Turning To Recycling Robots:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see a morning shower with a daytime high of eighty-three.  Sunrise is 5:40 AM and sunset 8:21 PM, for 14h 41m 02s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 35.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1775, the Second Continental Congress appoints Benjamin Franklin postmaster general.

Recommended for reading in full:

How Trump ended up in front of a presidential seal doctored to include a Russian symbol:

The image almost resembles the official seal of the president, but a closer examination reveals alterations that seem to poke fun at the president’s golfing penchant and accusations that he has ties to Russia. Neither the White House nor Turning Point knew who created it. On Thursday morning, however, the conservative group announced it had fired the member of its video team who it says was responsible for displaying the fake seal.

“We did let the individual go,” a Turning Point spokesman told The Washington Post. “I don’t think it was malicious intent, but nevertheless.”

The spokesman called the mistake “unacceptable” and said it was the result of a rushed online search to find a second image of the presidential seal to display behind Trump.

[Meet the man who created the fake presidential seal — a former Republican fed up with Trump]

The eagle has two heads instead of one — a symbol historically tied to empire and dominance. It closely resembles the bird on the Russian coat of arms and also appears on the flags of Serbia, Albania and Montenegro. Its left talons, rather than clasping 13 arrows, appear to clutch a set of golf clubs.

One Post reader noted a website that sells merchandise featuring what appears to be the same fake seal. In those images, the words on the parody eagle’s banner say “45 es un títere,” which in Spanish translates to “45 is a puppet.” On the official presidential seal, the eagle’s mouth holds a banner with the U.S. motto, “E pluribus unum” — out of many, one. The fake seal on the shop’s merchandise shows the eagle clutching cash in its right talons.

Human lab rats in virtual reality:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-three.  Sunrise is 5:39 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 14h 43m 02s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 45.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1862, the 2nd, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments continue their reconnaissance from Fredericksburg to Orange Court House, Virginia.

Recommended for reading in full:

In Congressional hearings yesterday, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff described – and ably summarized – Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report:

 Daniel Samuelsohn reports Lawmakers fess up to not fully reading the Mueller report (‘Time for a Mueller report reality check: Only a small segment of America’s most powerful have read it’):

Time for a Mueller report reality check: Only a small segment of America’s most powerful have read it.

President Donald Trump can’t give a straight answer about the subject. More than a dozen members of Congress readily admitted to POLITICO that they too have skipped around rather than studying every one of the special counsel report’s 448 pages. And despite the report technically ranking as a best-seller, only a tiny fraction of the American public has actually cracked the cover and really dived in.

“What’s the point?” said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who like many other lawmakers recently interviewed in the Capitol acknowledged they hadn’t completed their own comprehensive read.

The result, say lawmakers, historians and cultural critics, is a giant literacy gap in the country when it comes to the most authoritative examination into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump obstructed that investigation. And closing that gap could determine whether Democrats feel they have public backing to launch impeachment proceedings against the president. That’s why numerous Democrats, activists and pro-impeachment advocates say it’s up to them to teach Americans what the Mueller report says, even if there’s already considerable public fatigue with the issue.

The education campaign runs the gamut, from celebrities staging a dramatic Broadway reading of Mueller’s most juicy findings on obstruction of justice, to House Democrats pulling Robert Mueller back from retirement next week to publicly testify, hoping that live television cameras can illuminate what the dense government report cannot.

….

“It’s tedious,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has a copy of Mueller’s work in a large stack of things she turns to for her daily reading. She said she started right away on the report’s first volume detailing the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians while on a trip to Vietnam, and as of late June she was still plugging along. “In fairness, I haven’t picked it up in at least two weeks.”

“I’ve got a lot on my reading list,” Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said as he explained why he’s avoided one of the most highly anticipated reports in recent American history.

(The report is available online. Someone should remind these officials that sloth is a sin.)

What Wolves Can Teach us About Human Connection:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-two.  Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:23 PM, for 14h 44m 59s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 54.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Seed Capital Screening Committee (yes, really) meets at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1969, Apollo 11’s astronauts splashdown after an eight-day journey and successful landing on the moon.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Guy Boulton reports The state’s economy depends on manufacturers. They’re worried that a downturn is approaching:

But the outlook for manufacturing — which accounts for an estimated 16% of the state’s workforce, compared with 8.5% nationally — is less upbeat.

“Slower growth is ahead,” said Mike Halloran, an analyst with Baird who follows companies such as Gardner Denver Holdings, an industrial company based in Milwaukee.

Economic growth has slowed in China. Europe could slip into a downturn. Japan’s economy remains sluggish. And the tariffs imposed on imports from China have added to the uncertainty about the economic outlook.

That’s increased the caution of the companies that cut, stamp and forge the tools and dies, components and equipment that underpin industry.

The Institute for Supply Management’s survey of purchasing managers, a widely followed index commonly known as the PMI, showed that the manufacturing sector expanded in June, with the economy growing for the 122nd consecutive month.

But the rate of growth slowed for the third straight month, and the index was at its lowest level since October 2016. The New Orders Index showed no growth.

“There is a lot of caution around ordering,” said Richard Eastman, a senior research analyst who covers industrial technology for Baird.

Separately, the Conference Board Leading Economic Index released last week for June had the largest decline in three years. And though the stock market has hit record highs, the bond market is betting on weak growth at best.

 Margaret Sullivan writes The media is getting a second chance to cover Robert Mueller’s findings — and this time get it right:

In political media, as in love, there aren’t many chances to correct a serious wrong.

But the news media will get just that on Wednesday when Robert S. Mueller III testifies before Congress, months after his long-awaited report on Donald Trump and possible Russian collusion to swing the 2016 election was competed.

Recall how gullible — and therefore misleading to the public — the news media was in March when Attorney General William Barr characterized the unreleased report in a four-page letter.

Coverage of that letter set in place an inaccurate narrative that has been almost impossible to dislodge.

Many news organizations, including some of the most prominent, took what Barr said at face value or mischaracterized the report’s findings.

They essentially transmitted to the public — especially in all-important headlines and cable-news bulletins — what President Trump desperately wanted as the takeaway: No collusion; no obstruction.

 San Diego Comic Con: The True Story: