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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.26.19
by JOHN ADAMS •
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.
City, Education, School District
School Board, 7.22.19: 13 Points
by JOHN ADAMS •
The Whitewater School Board met on Monday, 7.22.19, and from the agenda there was a brief discussion about the learning that is fundamental to any educational program (about which I wrote yesterday). See School Board, 7.22.19: One Worthy Question.
Today, a few other points to consider:
1. It’s a mature board: most members have been on for years (the board’s two principal officers among them), and having watched years of school board meetings, it’s reasonable to conclude that past is prologue.
2. Whitewater’s middle school principal (Tanya Wojciechowicz) recently resigned, with notice after July 1st, and so under district policy owed $1,000 in breach of her contract. The discussion made clear that she notified the district only on 7.10, conceded that she was in breach of contract, and that she owed a breach penalty.
3. One board member (Stewart, who’s been in public office for something like half his life) contended that it was community knowledge that she would resign, that she had been a six-year employee, and so on the basis of her tenure she should not have to pay a contract penalty (despite her admission that she was in breach and owed the money).
4. Under that principal’s leadership, the middle school has been a troubled program for years, to which both the board president and vice president later alluded during the 7.22.19 meeting, however euphemistically. For my own references to these problems, see The Canary in the School District’s Coal Mine and Changes at Whitewater Middle School.
5. It’s unsurprising that an aged, local career politician would insist (without any other justification) that tenure alone entitled an administrator who knowingly broke her contract to receive a waiver from established policy
Tenure, apart from any claim to success or achievement, is empty of value beyond merely getting up in the morning and clocking in.
6. As these board members (at least some of them) know that there have been problems at the middle school, and (at least some of them) should know that the principal of a school is accountable for the school’s performance, a vote to waive the contract penalty isn’t simply a vote for tenure alone — it’s a vote for tenure in spite of repeated problems on that principal’s watch during her tenure.
How many teachers, who resigned after the official deadline, and had not a single question about their performance, had to pay their contract penalties? If even one received less consideration than this administrator, then this board has decided wrongly and unfairly.
7. A majority (Stewart, Judd, Davis, Ganser) voted to waive the breach penalty; three voted to uphold the district policy on notification and enforce the penalty (Kienbaum, Linos, Ryan).
8. If a majority of this board thinks that a principal leaving a troubled school deserves an exception from her contract’s provisions even as she departs, then it’s worth considering and explaining in detail the troubles of the school she’s left behind.
The board majority opens the door to a public accounting that they, themselves, have failed to make.
9. Nothing says Old Whitewater better than the selective enforcement of policies based on little more than personal likes and dislikes. A board member (Stewart) asks to waive a contract penalty and rely on common knowledge and not written notice, but demands adherence to written policy in how the vote should be conducted (by Robert’s Rules).
Hobbes understood motivated reasoning even before the term motivated reasoning was coined: “the Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.”
10. The district rushed to hire its now-former middle school principal in the same month that her predecessor left, but one board member feels that this hiring process isn’t going fast enough, while it never seems to occur to him that the rushed process last time contributed to the hiring of this most recent, inadequate principal.
11. The district had a process underway for selecting a new middle school principal, but one member wrote up his own ideas (placing himself, among others, into the interviewing process). And yet, and yet, although he argued for inclusion as the basis of his proposal, that very proposal recommends concealing the names of the final candidates from public notice until the last possible moment.
Open when it’s convenient, closed when it’s convenient, all depending on the who’s invited to the dessert cart.
12. Perhaps strangest of all is a board member’s offer – with no sense of irony or embarrassment – of prospective interview questions (and answers!) that he found on the Internet.
If a local district cannot craft its own questions (as fortunately some employees in the district were already doing), then it cannot do much, and should be doing even less of what it is doing.
A properly educated high-school student – let alone a properly educated man or woman – does not crib term papers or interview questions from websites.
Honest to goodness.
13. One should take this board member seriously, but not deferentially. Lesser standards are a serious matter; they do not, however, not merit high regard.
Good work benefits from good examples.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.25.19
by JOHN ADAMS •
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.)
City, Culture, Economy, Education, Health, Poverty, School District
School Board, 7.22.19: One Worthy Question
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 16 items, of varying importance.
In a two-hour, open-session discussion of over a dozen items, with topics great and small (and at least one board member as interested in wheedling or badgering himself into future meetings as any deeper question), there was one truly worthy topic, beyond all others, posed as a question.
Whitewater High School Principal Mike Lovenberg, while discussing academic performance measured through class work and standardized tests, and the occasional gaps between the two measurements, asked the most important educational question of the evening:
How do you make students want to do well?
In any community — but especially in rural communities like Whitewater’s that are beset with low incomes, poverty, and dim-witted cronyism, of few reliable policies but too many pain pills, of students’ emotional and physical challenges — after a meeting’s administrative fuss, came this truly educational question. (It was clear from the discussion that Lovenberg’s question involved inspiring students rather than compelling them, of course.)
A few board members, and to my recollection only a few board members, spoke in response to this question, offering possible explanations for the gap between some academic metrics and others (such as test fatigue or test anxiety).
These are plausible causes; they likely account for some of these gaps.
And yet, and yet: is it not clear that some of these gaps arise from the socio-economic condition of this community? And look, and look: is it not obvious that many have been injured by deteriorating economic and social conditions while some of us have been free from the pain of socio-economic decline?
How students learn in these conditions, because many are in these conditions, is a fundamental question. Even other questions that seem important are inferior to this fundamental one.
A newspaper’s intern and editor (Gazette: intern Pierce, editor Schwartz) may think that the headline from the meeting is the possible dissolution of the nearby Palmyra-Eagle School District, but that’s a superficial selection for a superficial readership.
It’s rural socio-economic conditions that have afflicted Palmyra-Eagle, conditions that afflict the whole area, and under which Whitewater will have to advance learning no matter how few or how many students come this district’s way.
Officials fretting about absorbing part of another district have an even greater matter than this, already before this district, to which not one has a sufficient solution.
Officials and others concerned (as I am) about the hiring of a new middle school principal have an even greater matter than this, already before us, to which not one of us has a sufficient solution.
How do you make students want to do well?
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.24.19
by JOHN ADAMS •
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.
Health, Walworth County, Wisconsin
The Washington Post’s Pain Pill Database
by JOHN ADAMS •
The Washington Post, as part of its Opioid Files series, has published Drilling into the DEA’s pain pill database:
For the first time, a database maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration that tracks the path of every single pain pill sold in the United States — by manufacturers and distributors to pharmacies in every town and city — has been made public.
The Washington Post sifted through nearly 380 million transactions from 2006 through 2012 that are detailed in the DEA’s database and analyzed shipments of oxycodone and hydrocodone pills, which account for three-quarters of the total opioid pill shipments to pharmacies. The Post is making this data available at the county and state levels in order to help the public understand the impact of years of prescription pill shipments on their communities.
The Post’s analysis of the data found that
• America’s largest drug companies distributed 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills across the country between 2006 and 2012 as the nation’s deadliest drug epidemic spun out of control. Just six companies distributed 75 percent of the pills during this period.
• The volume of the pills handled by the companies climbed as the epidemic surged, increasing 51 percent from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012. The states that received the highest concentrations of pills per person per year were: West Virginia, Kentucky and South Carolina.
• Opioid death rates soared in the communities that were flooded with pain pills. The national death rate from opioids was 4.6 deaths per 100,000 residents. But the counties that had the most pills distributed per person experienced more than three times that rate on average.
Data for Wisconsin and the counties near Whitewater appear below.
For Wisconsin:
• From 2006 to 2012 there were 1,283,958,368 prescription pain pills supplied to Wisconsin.
•481,504,550 of the pills were distributed by Walgreen Co and 531,979,146 were manufactured by SpecGx LLC.
•OMNICARE OF MILWAUKEE, MILWAUKEE pharmacy received the highest number of pills.
For Walworth County:
• From 2006 to 2012 there were 22,051,370 prescription pain pills, enough for 31 pills per person per year, supplied to Walworth County, Wis.
•8,505,200 of the pills were distributed by Walgreen Co and 9,762,700were manufactured by SpecGx LLC.
•WALGREEN CO., LAKE GENEVA pharmacy received the highest number of pills.
For Jefferson County:
• From 2006 to 2012 there were 15,780,270 prescription pain pills, enough for 27 pills per person per year, supplied to Jefferson County, Wis.
•5,484,800 of the pills were distributed by Walgreen Co and 7,415,500were manufactured by SpecGx LLC.
•WALGREEN CO., WATERTOWN pharmacy received the highest number of pills.
For Rock County:
• From 2006 to 2012 there were 45,359,941 prescription pain pills, enough for 40 pills per person per year, supplied to Rock County, Wis.
•18,185,570 of the pillswere distributed by McKesson Corporation and 20,585,300 were manufactured by SpecGx LLC.
•WALGREEN CO., JANESVILLE pharmacy received the highest number of pills.
Babbittry, Boosterism, City, Culture, Philosophy, Religion
That’s Been Done for Generations
by JOHN ADAMS •
The Atlantic has a story, from Faith Hill (not the singer, obviously), about how gatherings of atheists in Secular Churches Rethink Their Sales Pitch (‘They Tried to Start a Church Without God. For a While, It Worked).
These groups are learning – like all civic groups – that it’s hard to sustain membership. There’s nothing novel in that truth – keeping members is hard for most organizations, of whatever kind.
Hill might want to consider American history more thoroughly, however. She writes about these recent gatherings as though they’re new; in truth, there has been a long-standing secular movement in many communities, but by a different name.
It’s called boosterism, a secular religion of sorts, that’s played a significant role in many communities, but without any meaningful insights of either religion or secular thinking. The insistence that one must describe a town positively and promote it incessantly is as griping to its adherents as any religion or any skepticism.
A thoughtful believer or thoughtful skeptic would avoid a fanatical accentuation of the positive, but then boosterism isn’t thoughtful. It’s a clique’s mentality in the absence of thought.
(This isn’t meant to be a tight analogy, surely, but instead a loose one. The places Hill describes are different from networks of boosters, yet it’s true that in most communities marketing-as-faith among town officials & notables is more common than any other secularism – including an intellectual one – has ever been.)
This came to mind last night, while attending a community meeting (about which there’s time to write later). It’s a bracing and regrettable sight – truly – to see what looks like an incurvatus in se consume a person.
And when it does, the only one who has no possibility of seeing as much is the one so consumed.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.23.19
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will see occasional thundershowers with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 14h 46m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 65.3% of its visible disk illuminated.On this day in 1903, the Ford Motor Company sells its first car.
Recommended for reading in full:
Devi Shastri reports Former UW-Oshkosh student reaches $325,000 settlement in sex harassment case:
The University of Wisconsin System reached a $325,000 settlement with a former student who says UW-Oshkosh violated her rights and acted “with deliberate indifference” to the sexual harassment she faced from one of her professors.
The former student, A.R. in court documents, sued in October, claiming the university violated her Title IX rights when it failed to take action against former art professor Michael Beitz.
Though Beitz and A.R.’s relationship began as consensual in 2012, issues arose when the student began trying to distance herself one year later.
She told the court and, years earlier, university investigators that Beitz began sexually and emotionally abusing her, coercing sex and pushing her to take the morning after pill, and vandalizing one of her art pieces and harassing her.
UW System spokesman Mark Pitsch told the Journal Sentinel that the resolution is “in the best interest of taxpayers and the university.”
A.R.’s Monona-based attorney, Mary Kennelly, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. According to court documents, a separate settlement with Beitz is in progress.
(Note well: although an injured party may settle a case, no monetary settlement can compensate adequately for injures endured. The law relies on monetary settlements as an imperfect remedy for wrongs beyond a perfect human redress.)
Kevin Poulsen reports Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist:
If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifa through her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.”
Other smears target billionaire financier George Soros, a longtime Kremlin bête noire. In one segment, Rouz amplified a thoroughly debunked claim that Soros collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, when the Jewish philanthropist was 14 years old. Another Rouz story accused Soros of secretly funding migrant caravans.
This Inflatable Space Habitat Could Help NASA Return To The Moon:
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin
Town Residents Claim Trump’s Foxconn Factory Deal Failed Them
by JOHN ADAMS •
The project has failed those residents, as it has failed Wisconsin, and become a cautionary tale for the rest of America.
Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers, Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition, Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, Foxconn Roundup, Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere, Foxconn: Evidence of Bad Policy Judgment, Foxconn: Behind Those Headlines, Foxconn: On Shaky Ground, Literally, Foxconn: Heckuva Supply Chain They Have There…, Foxconn: Still Empty, and the Chairman of the Board Needs a Nap, Foxconn: Cleanup on Aisle 4, Foxconn: The Closer One Gets, The Worse It Is, Foxconn Confirms Gov. Evers’s Claim of a Renegotiation Discussion, America’s Best Know Better, Despite Denials, Foxconn’s Empty Buildings Are Still Empty, Right on Schedule – A Foxconn Delay, and Foxconn: Reality as a (Predictable) Disappointment.
Music
Monday Music: Habib Koite & Bamada, Din Din Wo
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.22.19
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-six. Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 14h 48m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.4% of its visible disk illuminated.The Whitewater Unified School Board meets tonight in closed session at 6 PM, with an open session scheduled to begin at 7 PM.
On this day in 1864, Wisconsinites defending the Union (1st, 12th, 16th, 17th, 22nd, 25th, 26th, 31st Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th Wisconsin Light Artillery) engage Confederates during the Battle of Atlanta.
Recommended for reading in full:
Adam Serwer discusses his contention that cruelty is the point of Trumpism:
See also The Cruelty Is the Point (‘President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear’).
(It is necessary, if opposition to Trumpism is to prevail, to steel oneself to this truth. Those believing – pretending – otherwise will only meet with disappointment at best, and unprepared injury at worst.)
Michael Isikoff reports The true origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory:
In the summer of 2016, Russian intelligence agents secretly planted a fake report claiming that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was gunned down by a squad of assassins working for Hillary Clinton, giving rise to a notorious conspiracy theory that captivated conservative activists and was later promoted from inside President Trump’s White House, a Yahoo News investigation has found.
Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, first circulated a phony “bulletin” — disguised to read as a real intelligence report —about the alleged murder of the former DNC staffer on July 13, 2016, according to the U.S. federal prosecutor who was in charge of the Rich case. That was just three days after Rich, 27, was killed in what police believed was a botched robbery while walking home to his group house in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., about 30 blocks north of the Capitol.
The purported details in the SVR account seemed improbable on their face: that Rich, a data director in the DNC’s voter protection division, was on his way to alert the FBI to corrupt dealings by Clinton when he was slain in the early hours of a Sunday morning by the former secretary of state’s hit squad.
Yet in a graphic example of how fake news infects the internet, those precise details popped up the same day on an obscure website, whatdoesitmean.com, that is a frequent vehicle for Russian propaganda. The website’s article, which attributed its claims to “Russian intelligence,” was the first known instance of Rich’s murder being publicly linked to a political conspiracy.
….
The previously unreported role of Russian intelligence in creating and fostering one of the most insidious conspiracy theories to arise out of the 2016 election is disclosed in “Yahoo News presents: Conspiracyland,” a six-part series by the news organization’s podcast “Skullduggery” that debuts this week on the third anniversary of Rich’s murder.
City, Film
Film: Tuesday, July 23rd, 12:30 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Shazam!
by JOHN ADAMS •
This Tuesday, July 23rd at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Shazam! @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Tuesday, July 23; 12:30 PM (Action/Adventure/Comedy)
Rated PG-13; 2 hours, 12 minutes (2019).As a kid, who didn’t dream of being invincible and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…? Well, wishes do come true for 14-year-old Billy Batson, after meeting the mystical wizard Shazam. With one magic word, Billy is transformed into an adult superhero: Captain Sparklefingers! Err, Thundercrack…? (Due to copyright laws, he can’t be called the original, Captain Marvel.)
A hilarious, fun film for all!
One can find more information about Shazam! at the Internet Movie Database.
Enjoy.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 7.21.19
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered morning showers with a daytime high of eighty-one. Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:26 PM, for 14h 50m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 81.5% of its visible disk illuminated.On this day in 1861, the First Battle of Bull Run is the first major battle of the Civil War and a Confederate victory.
Recommended for reading in full:
Kelly Weill asks Can Trump’s Hard-Core Fans Be Deradicalized?:
Trump’s rallies offer a strong sense of community for fans. That’s critical to the people chanting for Omar’s removal, said David Neiwert, author of Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.
Neiwert defines eliminationism as a community-based mentality that promotes “purity” by demonizing its opponents and demanding they be purged from society.
“What they’re doing is participating in a community of hate. This is actually key to a lot of its power and its attraction. It’s almost ritualized,” he told The Daily Beast. “This is how hate crimes work. Hate crimes are always message crimes directed at targets who are seen as corrupting influences and bad for the community. Hate-crime perpetrators see themselves as defending their communities while doing it. There’s always a communal aspect to this. It’s very much the mob.”
….
Christian Picciolini, a former white supremacist who now helps extremists leave hate groups, said his method involves talking and identifying sources of grief and trauma that might underlay hate.
“I listen for those potholes that detoured their life’s journey and then try to fill (repair) them,” he told The Daily Beast via email.
Lalich cited the case of Derek Black, the son of a prominent white nationalist, as an example of how deradicalization can sometimes works.
“What seems to have worked is really just engaging in dialogue, individual by individual,” she said. Black renounced white supremacy after going to college and meeting people of differing viewpoints.
But some of Trump’s most die-hard fans might be removed from dissenting opinions, [assistant professor at New York University specializing in radicalization Mary Beth] Altier said.
“Establishing alternative social bonds and networks where they can interact with people with other views” could help, she said, but “we’re not seeing that on social media. We’re seeing more polarization in society on both sides.”
(A few remarks:
These hard-core Trumpists may now be so unacculturated or alienated that they no longer live comfortably within the American democratic tradition. Indeed, some do not know the meaning of the term liberal democracy. Trump, himself, ignorantly thinks it’s a partisan term rather than a constitutional and philosophical one.
The proper focus against this movement is Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders, and this focus on officials extends to Trumpism Down to the Local Level.
Addressing every bigoted Trumpist would be a waste of valuable effort.
The establishment of a Third Reconstruction will provide a sound foundation for individual rights, and slowly acculturate Trumpists or their descendants back into a normal American political order. )