Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:05 PM, for 14h 29m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 32.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis is captured: “The 1st Wisconsin Cavalry was one of the first units sent to search for Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee. A Michigan unit, also sent to find Davis, accidentally attacked the cavalry before dawn. A few hours later, both units captured the Confederate president in Irwinville, Georgia.”

Recommended for reading in full:

Yascha Mounk writes How Authoritarians Manipulate Elections (“From Russia to Venezuela, the strongmen who have destroyed democratic institutions won high office at the ballot box”):

the new crop of authoritarian leaders is much more invested in retaining the appearance of a genuine democratic mandate. As a result, they have to engage in a more complicated political calculus: They have to give the opposition enough of a chance to compete in the elections to look credible to a significant segment of the population. But they must also capture political institutions such as electoral commissions to a sufficient extent to ensure that the people can’t actually boot them out of office.

As the recent developments in Turkey show, however, it may not be possible to sustain this equilibrium forever. Eventually, even governments that have effectively abolished the freedom of the press risk growing so unpopular that they have to resort to more blatant ways of rigging the vote.

But by the time he held his inspiring speech, Imamoglu knew all too well that, at least for the time being, Erdogan already had. After using his control over most of the country’s media to spread the insane conspiracy theory that a powerless opposition had somehow been able to falsify the outcome of the election, Erdogan went on to use his control over the country’s judiciary to cancel its result. Citing supposed irregularities, the electoral commission announced on Monday that Istanbul would hold new elections in June.

The announcement marks a fundamental turning point in Turkey’s political history: It is now impossible for any reasonable observer to keep denying reality. A country whose president has the power to annul elections when he doesn’t like their outcome has clearly become a dictatorship. From now on, anybody who still insists on calling Turkey a democracy, or treating its elections as a fair barometer of public opinion, is a liar or a fool.

Why Doesn’t Sugar Spoil?:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of sixty.  Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:04 PM, for 14h 26m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1950, the first sporting event takes place at the Milwaukee Arena: “Rocky Graziano scored a fourth-round TKO over Vinnie Cidone in a middleweight fight that drew 12,813 fans.”

Recommended for reading in full:

Antonia Noori Farzan reports ‘Shoot them!’: Trump laughs off a supporter’s demand for violence against migrants:

A roar rose from the crowd of thousands of Trump supporters in Panama City Beach on Wednesday night, as President Trump noted yet again that Border Patrol agents can’t use weapons to deter migrants. “How do you stop these people?” he asked.

“Shoot them!” someone yelled from the crowd, according to reporters on the scene and attendees.

The audience cheered. Supporters seated behind Trump and clad in white baseball caps bearing the letters “USA” laughed and applauded.

“That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement,” Trump replied, smiling and shaking his head. “Only in the Panhandle.”

Though Trump didn’t explicitly endorse the suggestion to shoot migrants, his joking response raised concerns that he was tacitly encouraging extrajudicial killings and brutality against asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants. The president has long been accused of endorsing acts of violence through his incendiary rhetoric and allusions to the potential for violence at his rallies, a charge that members of his administration deny.

Russell Berman describes The Rarely Used Congressional Power That Could Force William Barr’s Hand (“It hasn’t been done in nearly a century, but House Democrats could arrest the attorney general after they find him in contempt):

Impeachment is Congress’s most famous, yet rarely exercised, power over wayward presidents and other federal officers. But as Trump-administration officials continue to defy House subpoenas related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Democrats in control of the chamber could turn to an even blunter weapon in their arsenal: arrest.

Courts have recognized that the House and Senate each have the authority to enforce their orders by imprisoning those who violate them—literally. They can direct their respective sergeant at arms to arrest officials they’ve found to be in contempt and bring them to the Capitol for trial and, potentially, jail. Congress hasn’t invoked what’s known as the “power of inherent contempt” in nearly a century, but the escalating clash between two co-equal branches of government has Democrats talking about moves previously deemed unthinkable.

“Its day in the sun is coming,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland told me by phone on Tuesday. Raskin, a second-term Democrat and former constitutional-law professor, sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which on Wednesday approved, on a vote of 24–16, a resolution finding Attorney General William Barr in contempt for his refusal to give Congress the full, unredacted Mueller report.

How One Man Built His Own Spacesuit:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of fifty-four.  Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:04 PM, for 14h 24m 40s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission is scheduled to meet at 6:30 PM and the Birge Fountain Committee also at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1945, the Allies celebrate VE Day: “Victory in Europe Day, generally known as VE Day (Great Britain) or V-E Day (North America), is celebrated on Tuesday, 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces.”

Recommended for reading in full:

Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig report Trump tax figures show over $1 billion in losses over 10 years:

By the time his master-of-the-universe memoir “Trump: The Art of the Deal” hit bookstores in 1987, Donald J. Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns.

Mr. Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome. He has attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in 1990. But 10 years of tax information obtained by The New York Times paints a different, and far bleaker, picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition.

The data — printouts from Mr. Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form, the 1040, for the years 1985 to 1994 — represents the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president’s taxes, information he has kept from public view. Though the information does not cover the tax years at the center of an escalating battle between the Trump administration and Congress, it traces the most tumultuous chapter in a long business career — an era of fevered acquisition and spectacular collapse.

The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.

(A fraud and failure to his core.)

William H. Frey observes 2018 voter turnout rose dramatically for groups favoring Democrats, census confirms:

The results of the 2018 election are well known, highlighted by the Democrats’ “blue wave” takeover of the House of Representatives and other state offices across the country. However, recently released data from the Census Bureau sheds new light on how this was done—with extraordinarily high levels of voter turnout among voting blocs that lean Democratic. These data, from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) voting supplement, provide information not available earlier—estimates of voter turnout for key demographic groups—both nationally and for states. They tell us which groups exceeded turnout expectations in 2018 and suggest that good things may be in store for Democrats in the 2020 presidential contest.

 Why The US Has No High-Speed Rail:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-five.  Sunrise is 5:40 AM and sunset 8:02 PM, for 14h 22m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1864, the Battle of the Wilderness ends:

Although the Wilderness is usually described as a draw, it could be called a tactical Confederate victory, but a strategic victory for the Union army. Lee inflicted heavy numerical casualties (see estimates below) on Grant, but as a percentage of Grant’s forces they were smaller than the percentage of casualties suffered by Lee’s smaller army. And, unlike Grant, Lee had very little opportunity to replenish his losses. Understanding this disparity, part of Grant’s strategy was to grind down the Confederate army by waging a war of attrition. The only way that Lee could escape from the trap that Grant had set was to destroy the Army of the Potomac while he still had sufficient force to do so, but Grant was too skilled to allow that to happen. Thus, the Overland Campaign, initiated by the crossing of the Rappahannock, and opening with this battle, set in motion the eventual destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia

Recommended for reading in full:

Jennifer Rubin writes Trump tries to silence another witness: Mueller:

So can he stop Mueller from testifying? “Of course there is no way Trump can stop Bob Mueller from testifying,” constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe tells me. “There is no executive privilege between them, and obviously no attorney-client privilege, and Mueller doesn’t even work for Trump.” Tribe continues, “Until he leaves [the Justice Department], he works for Barr. And Barr has no conceivable basis to stop Mueller from testifying.” In any event, Tribe explains, “Mueller is free to leave [Justice] at any time and will then be simply a private citizen.”

He’ll be as unsuccessful in stopping private citizen Mueller from testifying as he has been in preventing former White House counsel Donald McGahn from telling his story. “Only a dictator can tell a private citizen not to testify in a duly constituted legislative or parliamentary inquiry into the head of state’s conduct,” Tribe concludes. “And though Trump might fancy himself a dictator, that’s not the reality. Not yet, anyway.”

Trump had no luck halting former acting attorney general Sally Yates from testifying, former Justice spokesman Matthew Miller says.

Trump must be frustrated. His spin works only when the facts are hidden or too complicated to unravel. Put the facts out in plain sight, have someone more credible than Trump (an open-ended category) explain what has happened and — poof! — Trump’s smokescreen, the nonsensical patter coming from Fox News hosts and the incoherent arguments from Trump’s TV lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, will vanish.

See also Trump would have been charged with obstruction were he not president, hundreds [over 450!] of former federal prosecutors assert.  

  How Nonrecyclable Plastic Bags Are Being Turned Into Speakers:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see occasional showers with a high of fifty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:41 AM and sunset 8:01 PM, for 14h 20m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Downtown Whitewater Inc. Board at 5 PM.

On this day in 1915, actor and filmmaker Orson Welles is born in Kenosha.

Recommended for reading in full:

Margaret Sullivan writes Mark Zuckerberg claims that, at Facebook, ‘the future is private.’ Don’t believe him:

Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg used the company’s annual Silicon Valley confab to announce that “the future is private.”

In one of the most awkward moments I’ve ever seen captured on video, he smiled broadly as he tried to joke about the supposed change of direction.

“I know that we don’t exactly have the strongest reputation on privacy right now, to put it lightly,” he said.

No, Zuck, you don’t. Facebook is facing more than a dozen international investigations into its history of privacy violations, Wired magazine has reported — “from its years of willy-nilly data sharing to several recent data breaches.”

Zuckerberg seemed to think his lame line would get some good-natured guffaws. The audience of technophiles, though, didn’t find it amusing. The reaction was pained silence with a few cringe-induced laughs.

The “pivot to privacy” simply isn’t believable.

“On privacy, I would suggest what Facebook is doing is more about public relations,” venture capitalist Roger McNamee told Hanna Kozlowska of Quartz. “[It has] tried to put a positive spin on something that they’re doing for business reasons, and would have done anyway.”

John Cassidy writes After a Strong Jobs Report, Economic Questions Linger for 2020:

In their latest projections, [Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome] Powell and his colleagues said that they expect G.D.P. growth of 2.1 per cent in 2019 and 1.9 per cent in 2020, which is about in line with the maximum rate that they think the economy can sustain over the long term. The White House claims that its tax cuts and regulatory bonfire have transformed the economy’s productive potential by supercharging business investment, but this theory lacks empirical support. The relevant measure of investment “accelerated a bit in the first half of 2018, but has since slowed significantly,” the writer Mark Whitehouse, of Bloomberg, points out. “In the first three months of 2019, it was up an annualized 2.7 percent, well short of the 5.3 percent average for the current expansion.” About the only thing that has really shot up since the tax cut is the scale of corporate stock buybacks.

Cycle Through Dubai’s Best Kept Secrets:

Good morning.

Cinco de Mayo  in Whitewater will see occasional afternoon thundershowers with a high of seventy.  Sunrise is 5:45 AM and sunset 8:00 PM, for 14h 17m 38s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, the Mexican Army defeats French occupying forces at the Battle of Puebla.

Recommended for reading in full:

Maria Perez writes A company tried to open an immigrant detention center in Wisconsin. A community that voted for Trump said no — again:

Plans to build the first privately-run immigration detention center in Wisconsin are off the table — at least for now — part of larger trend in which companies that build them are being encouraged by federal officials but resisted at the state and local level.

For at least a year, Virginia-based Immigration Centers of America wanted to build a 500-bed detention center in St. Croix County. The company said it would generate more than 200 full-time jobs and millions of dollars in state and local tax revenue.

However, earlier this month it withdrew its proposal to build in New Richmond. The city’s staff had issued a report recommending officials reject the application for rezoning and related ordinance changes, saying the project didn’t fit in the city’s development plan. In addition, public outcry over the plan was fierce, with residents opposing the detention of immigrants, and expressing concerns about property values and use of tax dollars.

David Frum writes Trump Attacks Facebook on Behalf of Racists and Grifters (“But unlike in previous eras, the social giant knows it can just ignore the president”):

President Donald Trump despises “fake news.” The Washington Post, The New York Times—these are “enemies of the people.” He has urged the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission to force Saturday Night Live off the air to punish the comedy show for making jokes about him.

What he likes are independent and honest voices who say things such as: Vaccines cause autism. President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a “carefully crafted fake.” Democratic Party insiders organized the murder of a staffer to cover up their nefarious plan to blame Russia for the hack of their emails. Sharia police are enforcing sharia law in Minneapolis. The Sandy Hook massacre never happened; the dead children were paid actors. (These are all false claims.)

One thing at least will follow from the president’s Twitter campaign: It will become even more difficult than before for the shamefaced remains of what used to be mainstream conservatism to separate themselves from these grifters, racists, and liars. According to the president, they are now martyrs, saying things that deserve to be heard. There have been times in the past few years—especially during the hoax to shift blame from the Russians for hacking the Democratic National Committee—that Fox News and Infowars blurred into each other. Those days will now return.

Perhaps this goat truly is the Greatest of All Time:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of sixty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:45 AM and sunset 7:58 PM, for 14h 12m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 2.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, the Union Army’s Overland Campaign begins:

a series of battles fought in Virginia during May and June 1864, in the American Civil War. Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all Union armies, directed the actions of the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, and other forces against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Although Grant suffered severe losses during the campaign, it was a strategic Union victory. It inflicted proportionately higher losses on Lee’s army and maneuvered it into a siege at Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, in just over eight weeks.

Recommended for reading in full:

John Sipher writes The Russia Investigation Will Continue:

Although Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe is over, and although President Trump on Friday again described the probe as a “Witch Hunt,” the FBI is almost certain to continue its counterintelligence investigation into Russian espionage efforts related to the 2016 election. More important, they will continue to search for Americans working on behalf of the Kremlin.

The inability to establish that the Trump campaign conspired in a “tacit or express” agreement with the Russian government is not surprising. Most espionage investigations come up empty unless and until they get a lucky break. That does not mean there was no espionage activity in relation to the 2016 election. Every previous Russian political-warfare campaign was built on human spies. Russian “active measures”—propaganda, information warfare, cyberattacks, disinformation, use of forgeries, spreading conspiracies and rumors, funding extremist groups and deception operations—rely on human actors to support and inform their success. Counterintelligence professionals must doubt that Russia could have pulled off its election-interference effort without the support of spies burrowed into U.S. society or institutions.

Indeed, troubling patterns, unanswered questions, and tantalizing leads suggest that Russia relied on human sources to interfere in the 2016 election. Both the Mueller report and Intelligence Community assessments have identified a variety of Russian actors involved in the attack. They uncovered the activities of the Russian GRU, cyberhackers, and the Russian troll factory. However, one key player is missing: Russia’s premier espionage service, the SVR. Is it possible that the Russian espionage service played no role in Russia’s operation, and had no spies helping support what the Mueller report characterized as a “sweeping and systematic” attack of American institutions? The FBI would be professionally negligent if it assumed so.

Reuters reports State Dept. allowed foreign govts to lease luxury condos at Trump World Tower without Congress OK:

The U.S. State Department allowed at least seven foreign governments to rent luxury condominiums in New York’s Trump World Tower in 2017 without approval from Congress, according to documents and people familiar with the leases, a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause.

The Prosecutors Ending Mass Incarceration: