Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:31 AM and sunset 5:45 PM, for 10h 14m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 30.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1947, the legendary Hughes H-4 Hercules (‘Spruce Goose’) flies for the first – and only – time:

The Hughes H-4 Hercules (also known as the Spruce Goose; registration NX37602) is a prototype strategic airlift flying boat designed and built by the Hughes Aircraft Company. Intended as a transatlantic flight transport for use during World War II, it was not completed in time to be used in the war. The aircraft made only one brief flight on November 2, 1947, and the project never advanced beyond the single example produced. Built from wood because of wartime restrictions on the use of aluminum and concerns about weight, it was nicknamed by critics the Spruce Goose, although it was made almost entirely of birch.[2][3] The Hercules is the largest flying boat ever built, and it has the largest wingspan of any aircraft that has ever flown.[4][N 1] The aircraft remains in good condition. After being displayed to the public for almost 11 years in Long Beach, California from 1980 to 1991, it is now displayed at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, United States.[5]

Recommended for reading in full —  Interior Secretary Zinke in trouble, defining violence accurately, an anti-Mueller smear falls apart in a crackpot press conference, the Saruman trap, and a trailer for the release of Orson Welles’s (never-before-released) last movie —

Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey, and Lisa Rein report White House concerned Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke violated federal rules:

Trump told his aides that he is afraid Zinke has broken rules while serving as the interior secretary and is concerned about the Justice Department referral, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. But the president has not indicated whether he will fire the former Navy SEAL and congressman and has asked for more information, the officials said.

This week, Interior’s Office of Inspector General referred the inquiry — one of several probes into the secretary’s conduct — to the Justice Department to determine whether a criminal investigation is warranted. That referral concerns Zinke’s involvement in a Whitefish, Mont., land development deal backed by David J. Lesar, chairman of the oil services firm Halliburton.

(Trump’s worried about a cabinet member breaking rules? Oh, brother. Trump’s never met a rule he hasn’t broken; Zinke’s soon to be tossed overboard to keep the ship from listing yet farther.)

Jennifer Rubin observes These things are not the same:

Violence is defined “behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.”

Violence is sending bombs to President Trump’s political targets. Violence is body-slamming a reporter who dares to ask a question. Violence is driving a car into a crowd, killing a young woman. Violence is killing unarmed African American youths. Violence is wife beating, sexual assault and child molestation (not demanding that accused wife beaters and sexual predators be held accountable and at the very least disqualified from high office.) Violence is forcibly separating young children from their parents (not calling out such treatment as inhumane).

Violence is not refusing to serve a White House press secretary dinner at a farm-to-table restaurant. It is not yelling at people in restaurants. It is not making mean jokes at a charity event. It is not peacefully occupying a government building to protest.

One would think the distinction between violent acts and nonviolent acts should be easy for adults to grasp. And yet we are told “both sides” contribute to violence.

Will Sommer reports Mueller Smear Pushed by Pro-Trump Activists Falls Apart at Press Conference:

A press conference intended to publicize sexual assault claims against special counsel Robert Mueller collapsed in spectacular fashion on Thursday, after the pro-Trump operatives behind the event failed to demonstrate a grasp of even basic details about their accuser or explain why they had repeatedly lied about their project.

Mueller has asked the FBI to investigate the effort from publicity-hungry Washington lobbyist Jack Burkman and pro-Trump Twitter personality Jacob Wohl, which has been dogged by accusations that they offered women money to accuse Mueller of sexual misconduct.

But the prospect of an FBI investigation was the least of Wohl and Burkman’s problems on Thursday.

Throughout their 45-minute press conference, the two men repeatedly contradicted themselves and each other, giving cryptic non-answers that convinced approximately zero people in attendance that their allegations were anywhere close to the truth.

Eliot A. Cohen describes The Saruman Trap (“When power is corrupt, there is no way to escape its toxic influence”):

And that is where Tolkien comes in. His masterwork—the six books in three volumes, not the movies….addresses many themes relevant to our age, not least of which is that temptation.

At the beginning of Book II, elves, men, and dwarfs have gathered at Rivendell, home of Lord Elrond. There they debate what to do about the ring of the Dark Lord, Sauron, which has by a curious chance fallen into the possession of the hobbit Frodo. Toward the end of their deliberations they hear a report from Gandalf, the wizard who had befriended Frodo, and who had been taken prisoner by Saruman, the most senior wizard of his order, and escaped. Saruman had learned that the Ring had fallen into the possession of the hobbit, and he wanted Gandalf to help him get it. Gandalf reports Saruman’s pitch as follows.

“A new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all. There is no hope left in Elves or dying Númenor. This then is one choice before you, before us. We may join with that Power. It would be wise, Gandalf. There is hope that way. Its victory is at hand; and there will be rich reward for those that aided it. As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means.”

The stakes are not nearly as high for conservative thinkers as they were for the inhabitants of Middle Earth, but the basic idea is worth pondering. Some of them wish to walk back their condemnation of Trump, the animosities that he magnifies and upon which he feeds, the prejudices upon which he plays and the norms he delightedly subverts. They do so not because their original judgments have been proved unjust—far from it—but because, weary of unyielding opposition, they would like to shape things, or at least to hold communion with those who are in the room where the deals are done. But as Gandalf and Galadriel could teach them, the height of wisdom is to fear their own drive for power, to fight the fight in a darkening world even if it looks likely to end in failure, and, above all, to choose to remain their better selves.

 Chris Foran reports One of this month’s most anticipated movies comes from a Kenosha director who’s been dead for 33 years:

One of November’s more anticipated new movies is by a filmmaker from Kenosha who has been dead for 33 years.

On Friday, Netflix begins streaming “The Other Side of the Wind,” the fabled “last” movie by Orson Welles. Welles — the director of such masterworks as “Citizen Kane” who died in 1985 at age 70 — began shooting the movie in 1970, but the production ran into a string of almost surreal delays.

In “The Other Side of the Wind,” John Huston, the Oscar-winning writer-director, plays a legendary filmmaker who returns to Hollywood after years in exile to make a comeback project. His arrival is accompanied by a swirl of paparazzi, former acolytes, hangers-on and colleagues trying to figure out what he and his movie are all about.

A satire of the 1970s’ “New Hollywood,” the movie also stars director-actor Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Random, Susan Strasberg and Oja Kodar, Welles’ longtime partner who also shares screenwriting credit with him.

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 7:30 AM and sunset 5:46 PM, for 10h 16m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 39.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission is scheduled to meet at 6 PM.

On this day in 1863, George Safford Parker is born:

On this date George Safford Parker was born in Shullsburg. While studying telegraphy in Janesville, he developed an interest in fountain pens. In 1891 he organized the Parker Pen Company in Janesville. The company gained world-wide acclaim for innovations like the duo-fold pen and pencil. Parker served as president of the company until 1933. Parker died on July 19, 1937.

Recommended for reading in full — a roadmap for Mueller, the law(s) on collusion, why Trump cannot tone it down, using an executive order to violate the Constitution, and video on choosing a landing site on Mars  —

Spencer S. Hsu writes U.S. archivists release Watergate report that could be possible ‘road map’ for Mueller:

U.S. archivists on Wednesday revealed one of the last great secrets of the Watergate investigation — the backbone of a long-sealed report used by special prosecutor Leon Jaworski to send Congress evidence in the legal case against President Richard M. Nixon.

The release of the referral — delivered in 1974 as impeachment proceedings were being weighed — came after a former member of Nixon’s defense team and three prominent legal analysts filed separate lawsuits seeking its unsealing after more than four decades under grand jury secrecy rules. The legal analysts argued the report could offer a precedent and guide for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as his office addresses its present-day challenge on whether, and if so, how to make public findings from its investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, including any that directly involve President Trump.

The legal specialists said they and Watergate veterans sought to have the Jaworski report made public because of the historical parallels they see to the current probe and the report’s potential to serve as a counterexample to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s report before President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

….

“There were no comments, no interpretations and not a word or phrase of accusatory nature. The ‘Road Map’ was simply that — a series of guideposts if the House Judiciary Committee wished to follow them,” Jaworski wrote in his 1976 memoir, “The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate.”

Elizabeth Sablich writes Considering collusion: A primer on potential crimes:

As we explain in a new report, “collusion” is not the name of a codified crime.^[1] Nevertheless, the term has come to be shorthand for the possibility that the Trump campaign, its advisors or the president himself coordinated with Russia to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election. Indeed, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been authorized to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and to prosecute federal crimes arising from that investigation.^[2]

The president and his proxies have frequently advanced the claim that such coordination, even if it occurred, would not be unlawful. Their refrain that “collusion is not a crime” is in one sense correct. Collusion is not a single crime. It is instead a rubric that encompasses many possible offenses. We detail some of the principal ones in this report.

All turn on the possibility that Trump or his associates took action in connection with Russia’s attempts to impact the outcome of our country’s presidential election. The criminal nature of the Russian effort is already well-known. The special counsel’s 191 charges brought against 35 individuals and companies spell out some of the crimes allegedly committed in furtherance of the Russian attack on our democracy. Those include indictments of Russian individuals and entities for their participation in conspiracies to hack into the computer and email systems of Trump’s political opponents and release damaging information and to engage in a social media disinformation campaign using fake identities.

It logically follows that if the president or his campaign aides worked with the Russians in connection with those efforts, they too may be liable. That is not just common sense—it is also the law. The specific “collusion” crimes that may be implicated by any coordinated efforts between the president or his campaign aides and Russian operatives principally fall under the rubric of conspiracy: an agreement to further illegal action. The core federal conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, would be implicated if there was any agreement between members of the Trump campaign (or Trump himself) and Russian agents to do something that the law prohibits.

See also CONSIDERING COLLUSION: A PRIMER ON POTENTIAL CRIMES, October 31, 2018.

 Jennifer Rubin explains Why Trump cannot tone it down:

His refusal to give up the divisiveness, some might say, is simply evidence that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. That may be, but the problem is deeper. If Trump did not divide, lie, boast and incite, what would he possibly have to talk about?

Seriously, here are the topics he would have to avoid if he wanted to cut down on hateful language and stop dividing the country:

• The Clintons
• George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer
• Possible 2020 opponents
• The Russia “hoax”
• The deep state (including agencies and department for which he appointed leaders)
• The Fed’s pace of interest-rate hikes
• President Obama
• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
• “Socialism”
• Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)
• The caravan, the wall and the imaginary crime wave caused by immigrants
• Allies ripping us off
• The money we “owe” to trading partners (his misconception of the trade deficit)
• The media
• NATO taking advantage of us
• The epidemic of voting fraud (of which there is none)
• Globalism, nationalism

That takes up, what, like an hour of his campaign speeches? With the stock market now so erratic (can’t talk about his stock market being better than Obama’s) and attempts at Obamacare a failure (so now he’s the big defender of protections for preexisting conditions!), I honestly don’t think he would have more than 15 minutes of material for his rallies if he cut out all the items above.

Stavros Agorakis writes Trump wants to executive-order his way out of the Constitution:

In an exclusive interview with Axios, President Trump said he plans to sign an executive order that removes birthright citizenship to children of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants in the US. [Axios / Jonathan Swan and Stef W. Kight]

Through this order, Trump essentially wants to change the US Constitution, which was amended 150 years ago to include these words: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” This clause came to become part of the 14th Amendment in 1868. [CNN / Kevin Liptak and Devan Cole]

Experts widely agree that this cannot be done. Not only is the 14th Amendment considered one of the driving laws that govern the US, but Trump’s executive order would be invalid under a longstanding Supreme Court precedent. [Vox / Sean Illing]

Trump told Axios that the order to revoke birthright citizenship is still in the works; it’s unclear how such an executive order would work or what the timeline would be. Not long after, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wrote that he’ll introduce legislation in Congress along with the president’s proposed reform. [BBC]

News of this comes just one week before the midterm elections, for which Trump has been campaigning by strongly advocating against illegal immigration. One of his key points during rallies for Republican candidates has been stopping the Honduran migrant caravan, which crossed Mexico and is traveling to the US border. [Vox / Dara Lind]

This is just the latest move in Trump’s proposed hardline immigration reform. During his tenure in the White House, he’s upheld a Muslim ban, suggested a multibillion-dollar investment in security at the US-Mexico border, and demanded an end to so-called chain migration. [NPR / Susan Davis and Scott Detrow]

  Mars in a Minute: How Do You Choose a Landing Site?:

Good morning.

Halloween in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:28 AM and sunset 5:47 PM, for 10h 19m 05s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 51.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Trick or Treat in the city limits is from 4 to 7 PM today.  Haunt responsibly.

On this day in 1968, the Milwaukee Bucks win their first game:

On this date the Milwaukee Bucks claimed their first victory, a 134-118 win over the Detroit Pistons in the Milwaukee Arena. The Bucks were 0-5 at the time, and Wayne Embry led Milwaukee with 30 points

Recommended for reading in full —  Trump’s unconstitutional proposal, using Ivanka to escape  culpability for bigotry, investors sue Trump for fraud, Czech spies tracked Trump in the 80s, and video of a family of bears breaking into a photographer’s blind  —

George T. Conway III and Neal Katyal write Trump’s proposal to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional:

Birthright citizenship sprang from the ashes of the worst Supreme Court decision in U.S. history, Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 decision that said that slaves, and the children of slaves, could not be citizens of the United States. The blood of hundreds of thousands of Americans was shed to repudiate that idea.

Afterward, the drafters of the 14th Amendment declared in their very first sentence, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The drafters were motivated by their utter revulsion toward slavery and a system that relegated people to subordinate political status because of their birth. They weren’t thinking of, or concerned with, any exceptions to birthright citizenship other than the absolutely essential.

And what they wrote was simple and clear. Both proponents and opponents of the language at the time knew exactly what it meant: Virtually anyone born in the United States is a citizen. In 1898, the Supreme Court affirmed just that: It held that the “Fourteenth amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory” — “including all children here born of resident aliens.” The exception? “Two classes of cases” in which the United States could not apply its laws to foreigners under historic Anglo-American legal principles: “children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation, and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign state.”

Neither of those narrow exceptions supports what Trump proposes to do by executive order. He is threatening, with the stroke of a pen, to declare certain people who are born in the United States ineligible for citizenship — despite the plain words of the 14th Amendment.

Molly Jong-Fast writes Trump Is Using Ivanka As A Prop To Whitewash Anti-Semitism:

Because you know who doesn’t need a Jewish daughter to prove he’s not an anti-Semite when he goes to visit grieving Jews? A person who’s not an anti-Semite.

….

But why does the president need to keep insisting that he doesn’t hate blacks or Jews? Why the need for these human props?

Because his policies are so blatantly racist and anti-Semitic. From his Muslim ban to his recent interest in repealing the fourteenth amendment, Trump is constantly on the defensive because his policies are so blatantly unfavorable to ethnic and religious minorities.

At the end of the day, Ivanka Trump is her father’s greatest grift: the Jew who enables anti-Semitism, just as she is the woman who enables his misogyny.

 Jonathan O’Connell reports Trump defrauded investors in marketing scheme, lawsuit says:

At issue are promotional spots and speeches that Trump made on behalf of marketing company ACN, also known as American Communications Network, which charged $499 for the chance to sell video phones licensed by the company, and sometimes extracted thousands of dollars later to have a chance of recouping the money.

Trump earned $450,000 each for three speeches he gave for ACN, according to his government disclosure form, but in marketing videos he told potential investors that the opportunity came “without any of the risks most entrepreneurs have to take” and that his endorsement was “not for any money.”

The plaintiffs allege that the investments were a sham and that Trump and his family promoted them — including twice on his TV show “Celebrity Apprentice” — despite knowing they were fraudulent.

In a 164-page complaint filed with the Southern District of New York, the plaintiffs ask for damages including financial relief and a ruling barring the Trumps and their company from promoting such offers in the future.

The Committee to Investigate Russia writes Czech Spies Tracked Trump in the 80s:

The Guardian reveals that the Statni bezpecnost (StB), the Czechoslovakian intelligence service, first noticed Donald Trump when he was a celebrity-seeking real estate developer more than 40 years ago.

The StB had been interested in Trump since 1977, when he married a Czechoslovakian-born woman, Ivana Zelnickova. News of the wedding reached the StB bureau in Zlin, the town in Moravia where Ivana grew up and where her parents lived. Ivana’s father, Milos, regularly gave the StB information on his daughter’s visits from the US and his son-in-law’s burgeoning career.

The StB’s work on Donald and Ivana intensified in the late 1980s, after Trump let it be known he was thinking of running for president. The StB’s first foreign department sat up. Inside the Soviet bloc, Czechoslovakia’s spies were reputed to be skilled professionals, competent and versatile English speakers who were a match for the CIA and MI6.

(…)

Jarda was one of four StB collaborators who spied on the Trumps during the cold war. Jarda’s real name was Jaroslav Jansa …

… Now aged 74, and living in an apartment bloc on the outskirts of Prague, Jansa is reluctant to talk about his past. When the Guardian and the Czech magazine Respekt knocked on his door, he refused to open it. In an email, he said he was tired and wanted to be left in peace. He added: “You are trying to put me in the tomb.”

(…)

It’s unclear to what degree the KGB and StB shared or coordinated Trump material. The two spy agencies worked closely together, signing cooperation agreements in 1972 and October 1986. The KGB was always the dominant partner – it would have closely monitored Trump when he and Ivana visited the USSR in summer 1987, following a Kremlin invitation.

  Watch a Family Of Bears Try Breaking Into Photographers Hideout:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of fifty-five.  Sunrise is 7:27 AM and sunset 5:49 PM, for 10h 21m 41s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 63.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s School Board will meet tonight (for an operational referendum listening session) at 6 PM.

On this day in 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Radio Theatre perform a radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds:

“The War of the Worlds” is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode on Sunday, October 30, 1938, and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network, directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds (1898). It became famous for causing panic among the audience; the scale of that panic is disputed, however, as the program had relatively few listeners.[2]

….

In the days after the adaptation, widespread outrage was expressed in the media. The program’s news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the broadcasters and calls for regulation by the Federal Communications Commission.^[2] Nevertheless, the episode secured Welles’s fame as a dramatist.

Recommended for reading in full —  New emails call into question Gov. Walker’s claims about the Lincoln Hills prison review, Trump’s new NAFTA is bad for dairy farmers, how the Trump family pushed a conspiracy theory, naming those responsible for bigotry, and video explaining how a vortex helps dandelions fly —

Matthew Simon reports New emails call into question Gov. Walker’s answer about canceling independent Lincoln Hills youth prison review:

New emails, obtained after months of records requests by 7 Investigates, call into further question the answer Gov. Scott Walker has given about the former head of a national prison organization saying the governor’s staff ordered former corrections secretary Ed Wall to stop an independent Lincoln Hills review as reports of inmate abuse and staff attacks were about to become public in 2015.

The emails, written two weeks before Gov. Walker said he was learning about the Lincoln Hills’ crisis for the first time, show then-Corrections Secretary Ed Wall telling state Justice Department leaders he was attempting to obtain the independent review.

“We are arranging to have an outside agency with experience in the operation of juvenile facilities come in to do an assessment of the institution, security operations, policies, training, report structures, complaints and staffing,” Wall wrote on Nov. 18, 2015.

As 7 Investigates first reported, the retired executive director of the national non-profit Association of State Correctional Administrators, George Camp, confirmed Wall had sent him a copy of the letter dated two days before Gov. Walker said he was first learning about the youth prison scandal on Dec. 2, 2015, and was ordering Wall to take “aggressive action.”

Reuters reports NAFTA deals leave US dairy farmers behind:

The dairy industry was a sticking point in the contentious renegotiations of the free trade deal between the U.S., Canada and Mexico that concluded last month.

U.S. President Donald Trump demanded concessions from the protected Canadian dairy industry and said on Twitter that Canada was hurting U.S. farmers with high tariffs. After Canada gave some ground, Trump claimed a big victory and said farmers would have more export options.

But Canada opened less than 4 percent of its dairy market to U.S. farmers – a concession unlikely to make much of a dent in U.S. oversupply or improve the lot of farmers like Fritsche, producers on both sides of the border say.

 Aaron Blake explains How the Trumps and conservative media helped mainstream a conspiracy theory now tied to tragedy:

What’s as notable is how concern about promoting theories that may touch on those things is no longer so taboo. The idea that Soros, a wealthy, liberal Jewish donor, was funding the caravan in fact dates to the last time a caravan was headed to the U.S.-Mexico border in April. But while it had a difficult time getting beyond the pages of Infowars back then, this time it had some Republican congressmen, cable-news talkers and a president’s son to push it.

The theory began proliferating in mid-October in the form of questions about who was funding the latest caravan — without invoking Soros specifically.

“I want to talk a little bit about who is funding the caravan,” Fox News’s Laura Ingraham said Oct. 16. She noted that the Honduran “foreign ministry spokesman cited political sectors as culpable — unidentified political influences. Somebody is funding these caravans.”

Jennifer Rubin writes Enough platitudes: Let’s name names:

Trump has eradicated red lines of civility, refused to condemn neo-Nazis and offered a steady diet of grotesque stereotypes of immigrants. He has demonized the press and raised fear of foreign terrorists embedded among refugees. His campaign and now his presidency fan the flames of white grievance; he has done more to mainstream nonfactual conspiracies than any president. To say he bears no moral or political responsibility when disturbed or fringe characters hear him, take him seriously, extrapolate from his remarks and engage in horrible acts is willful blindness. He is not solely responsible. He is not mainly responsible. But the guy with the biggest megaphone on the planet is partly responsible when unbalanced people are inspired by his toxic rhetoric and that of followers whom he refuses to repudiate.

The uptick in racial violence, anti-Semitic acts and hateful rhetoric that have become omnipresent in the Trump years did not arise out of thin air. (And for now, I’ll leave the absolute refusal to address any reasonable gun laws out of it; but in that, the National Rifle Association and its obedient minions are hardly blameless.) We must all be more specific in identifying names of those who share responsibility for the toxic fumes that violent, unstable people inhale. So here goes.

Rupert Murdoch, the executives, on-air talent and shareholders of Fox need to self-reflect. Fox is home to anti-immigrant cranks such as Lou Dobbs and Laura Ingraham. It’s where the caravan is attributed to Jewish billionaire George Soros, where Sean Hannity leads his audience to believe immigrants are especially prone to commit crimes and where Tucker Carlson has adopted the language of white nationalism, decrying diversity in America. Unless and until Fox cleans up its act — drop conspiracies made up out of whole cloth, end demonization and hysteria about immigrants, and stop invoking Soros to explain every political threat (real or imagined) — people of good will should not appear on Fox News, advertise on it or watch it.

How a Vortex Helps Dandelions Fly:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-three.  Sunrise is 7:26 AM and sunset 5:50 PM, for 10h 24m 17s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s School Board will meet tonight (for a strategic planning discussion) at 6 PM.

On this day in 1864, the 38th Wisconsin Infantry participates in a reconnaissance mission to Harper’s Run, Virginia. They returned with two men wounded.

Recommended for reading in full — Secretive moves in the Wisconsin legislature, Trump’s incitement, Jewish agency fulfilling Biblical injunction to aid immigrants drew attention of mass murderer, Russian disinformation on Facebook, and video explaining the expression ‘foot the bill’   —

  CV Vitolo-Haddad and Dee J. Hall report Last-minute surprises and secretive moves hide Wisconsin lawmakers’ actions from public view:

Since 2010, when voters swept Republicans into power, Wisconsin legislators have increasingly used such secretive maneuvers to keep the public in the dark about major spending and policy changes, interviews and records show.

An investigation by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism found the Legislature systematically diminishes the voices of the public by:

— Introducing budget amendments at the end of the approval process with no public notice or debate.

— Approving anonymous, last-minute budget motions containing a grab bag of changes, including major policy items that have nothing to do with state spending.

— Changing the scope and impact of a bill after its public hearing has been held, which excludes regular citizens from having meaningful influence on legislation before it is enacted.

Adam Serwer writes Trump’s Caravan Hysteria Led to This (“The president and his supporters insisted that several thousand Honduran migrants were a looming menace—and the Pittsburgh gunman took that seriously”):

Ordinarily, a politician cannot be held responsible for the actions of a deranged follower. But ordinarily, politicians don’t praise supporters who have mercilessly beaten a Latino man, as “very passionate.” Ordinarily, they don’t offer to pay supporters’ legal bills if they assault protesters on the other side. They don’t praise acts of violence against the media. They don’t defend neo-Nazi rioters as “fine people.” They don’t justify sending bombs to their critics by blaming the media for airing criticism. Ordinarily, there is no historic surgein anti-Semitism, much of it targeted at Jewish critics, coinciding with a politician’s rise. And ordinarily, presidents do not blatantly exploit their authority in an effort to terrify white Americans into voting for their party. For the past few decades, most American politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, have taken care not to urge their supporters to take matters into their own hands. Trump did everything he could to fan the flames, and nothing to restrain those who might take him at his word.

Many of Trump’s defenders argue that his rhetoric is mere shtick. That his attacks, however cruel, aren’t taken 100 percent seriously by his supporters. But to make this argument is to concede that following Trump’s statements to their logical conclusion could lead to violence against his targets, and it is only because most do not take it that way, that the political violence committed on Trump’s behalf is as limited as it currently is.

….

The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election. There is no political gesture, no public statement, and no alteration in rhetoric or behavior that will change this fact. The shooter might have found a different reason to act on a different day. But he chose to act on Saturday, and he apparently chose to act in response to a political fiction that the president himself chose to spread, and that his followers chose to amplify.

 Miriam Jordan reports HIAS, the Jewish Agency Criticized by the Shooting Suspect, Has a History of Aiding Refugees:

When Mazen Hasan had to flee his native Iraq because his work for the American military had drawn threats on his life, it was a Jewish refugee resettlement agency called HIAS that helped him and his family to settle in Pittsburgh.

“They did everything they can to help us and make it easy to adjust to a new life here,” said Mr. Hasan, 61, an engineer who arrived in the United States in 2014.

HIAS is one of nine agencies with contracts from the State Department to help refugees acclimate to the United States. It has aided immigrants with diverse talents from all corners of the world, including the co-founders of Google and WhatsApp.

It is also the target of many anti-Semitic rants posted on social media by Robert Bowers, the suspect in the mass shooting on Saturday at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh — including one post published only a few hours before the shooting. Eleven worshipers were killed in the attack.

 Dana Priest, James Jacoby, and Anya Bourg report Russian disinformation on Facebook targeted Ukraine well before the 2016 U.S. election:

In the spring of 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was desperate for Mark Zuckerberg’s help. His government had been urging Facebook to stop the Kremlin’s spreading of misinformation on the social network to foment distrust in his new administration and to promote support of Russia’s invasion and occupation of parts of Ukraine.

To get Zuckerberg’s attention, the president posted a question for a town hall meeting at Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters. There, a moderator read it aloud.

“Mark, will you establish a Facebook office in Ukraine?” the moderator said, chuckling, according to a video of the assembly. The room of young employees rippled with laughter. But the government’s suggestion was serious: It believed that a Kiev office, staffed with people familiar with Ukraine’s political situation, could help solve Facebook’s high-level ignorance about Russian information warfare.

“You know, over time it’s something that we might consider,” the chief executive responded. “So thank you for — the Ukrainian president — for writing in. I don’t think we’ve gotten that one before.”

In the three years since then, officials here say the company has failed to address most of their concerns about Russian online interference that predated similar interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The tactics identified by officials, such as coordinated activity to overwhelm Facebook’s system and the use of impostor accounts, are the same as in the 2016 contest — and continue to challenge Facebook ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

 So, Why Do We Say Costs Can be Footed By Someone?:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see occasional showers with a high of forty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 5:52 PM, for 10h 26m 54s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 83.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1886, the Pres. Grover Cleveland dedicates the Statue of Liberty:

A ceremony of dedication was held on the afternoon of October 28, 1886. President Grover Cleveland, the former New York governor, presided over the event.[100] On the morning of the dedication, a parade was held in New York City; estimates of the number of people who watched it ranged from several hundred thousand to a million. President Cleveland headed the procession, then stood in the reviewing stand to see bands and marchers from across America. General Stone was the grand marshal of the parade. The route began at Madison Square, once the venue for the arm, and proceeded to the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan by way of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, with a slight detour so the parade could pass in front of the World building on Park Row. As the parade passed the New York Stock Exchange, traders threw ticker tape from the windows, beginning the New York tradition of the ticker-tape parade.[101]

Recommended for reading in full — Trump’s attacks on the media, why Republicans prefer Trumpocracy, synagogue shooter’s online screed, mail bomber’s affinity with Russians, and video on the mystery of the eagle ray —

  Jim Rutenberg contends Trump’s Attacks on the News Media Are Working:

Shortly before federal authorities arrested Cesar Sayoc Jr. — a registered Republican with a criminal record whose social media accounts were filled with right-wing conspiracy memes — the president was back on Twitter.

“Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this ‘Bomb’ stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows — news not talking politics,” he wrote in a 10:19 a.m. post on Friday.

By referring to likely domestic terrorism as “this ‘Bomb’ stuff” and tying it to the coming midterm elections, Mr. Trump was making the not-so-veiled suggestion that the news media was exaggerating the story because of some political motivation. Even in a national crisis, he was sticking with his anti-media strategy.

The question is, is it working?

The short answer is yes. Increasingly, the president’s almost daily attacks seem to be delivering the desired effect, despite the many examples ofpowerful reporting on his presidency. By one measure, a CBS News poll over the summer, 91 percent of “strong Trump supporters” trust him to provide accurate information; 11 percent said the same about the news media.

Mr. Trump was open about the tactic in a 2016 conversation with Lesley Stahl of CBS News, which she shared earlier this year: “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you,” she quoted him as saying.

 Sean Illing interviews David Frum on why Republicans chose Trumpocracy over democracy:

Sean Illing: What’s the main argument you’re making in this book?

David Frum: The argument I’m making is that Donald Trump’s rococo personality is outrageous and ridiculous and consumes all of our attention, but what we really need to pay attention to is his system of power. A president does not rule by personal authority and personal charisma. He is part of a system, and you have to understand that whole system — who supports him and why.

Sean Illing: Let’s talk about that system. Is it broken, or is it merely being tested?

David Frum: Trump has taken control of the Republican Party and the conservative media infrastructure. They started off opposing him; even Fox opposed him. He bent Fox to his will, and he defeated the organized Republican Party. He’s leveraged his control of the Republican Party, then, to dominate the American political system.

I think a lot of people console themselves by noting how little policy impact he’s having. Some people will note that to the extent that he’s having an impact, it’s a pretty conventional Republican policy vision. But that’s not what’s new about Trump.

What’s new is the way he’s shutting down the ethical standards of the US government, and thwarting the defense of the country against foreign espionage intervention in those elections.

Katie Zezima and Wesley Lowery report Suspected synagogue shooter appears to have railed against Jews, refugees online:

The postings, which were listed under Bowers’s name on the social media site Gab before the account was deactivated Saturday afternoon, could offer the clearest window into the mindset of the 46-year-old, who police say stormed Tree of Life synagogue shouting anti-Semitic slurs and firing an assault rifle in an attack that left 11 people dead and six wounded, including one in critical condition.

Gab, a social media site similar to Facebook and Twitter that is popular with white supremacists and other far-right figures, confirmed that it had deactivated an account in Bowers’s name following the shooting.

The account, which appeared to have been started in January, included a bio that reads: “jews are the children of satan.” His background photo was a radar gun that reads “1488,” a number that combines two codes — the “14” referring to a 14-word white supremacist slogan and the “88” being a neo-Nazi symbol meaning “Heil Hitler.”

Craig Timberg and Tony Romm report Mail bomb suspect made numerous references on Facebook to Russian associates and echoed pro-Kremlin views:

A Facebook account apparently belonging to the man charged with sending pipe bombs to prominent Democrats this week included references to Russian associates and propaganda links that echo Kremlin views on the Syrian civil war, alongside ramblings about soccer, women and U.S. politics.

Cesar Sayoc, 56, a vocal supporter of President Trump who was arrested in Florida on Friday and charged with multiple federal crimes, apparently spoke of “my Russian brothers” on several occasions on a Facebook page in 2015. The meaning of the references to Russians is not clear, nor is it clear how Sayoc came to view and share propaganda sympathetic to Russian actions in Syria.

Facebook removed the account from public view after news spread of Sayoc’s arrest. But The Washington Post obtained hundreds of public posts from 2015 and 2016 from Columbia University social media researcher Jonathan Albright, who downloaded them Friday before Facebook removed the information.

Discovering the Mystery of the Eagle Ray: