Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-five.  Sunrise is 7:10 AM and sunset 6:09 PM, for 10h 59m 33s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 47.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s CDA meets at 5:30 PM, the Alcohol Licensing Committee at 6:10 PM, Common Council at 6:30 PM, and the Finance Committee at approximately 7 PM.

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

On this date the Milwaukee Bucks opened their first season with an 89-84 loss to the Chicago Bulls. The loss was witnessed by 8,467 fans in the Milwaukee Arena. The starting lineup featured Wayne Embry at center, Fred Hetzel and Len Chappell at forward, and Jon McGlocklin and Guy Rodgers in the backcourt. Larry Costello was the head coach. The Bucks had its first win in their sixth game of the season with a 134-118 victory over the Detroit Pistons.

Recommended for reading in full — Trump’s era of cruelty, the false morality of sheer power, Newt Gingrich as wrecker, signs of fascism, and video of the science of a frog’s leap —

 Conservative Michael Gerson observes The Trump era is full of cruelty without consequence:

It is difficult to trace causality in foreign affairs, but there is little doubt that Trump has reduced the cost of oppression and political murder in the world by essentially declaring it none of America’s business. And when you reduce the cost of something, you get more of it. U.S. indifference on human rights abuses is taken by other governments as a form of permission.

The story of a journalist [Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi] killed while picking up documents for his wedding is particularly powerful. But the aggregation of such horrors — the sum of killing and human misery at this historical moment — is stunning. The Trump era is also — perhaps not coincidentally — the age of mass atrocities. And the United States’ president is not concerned enough to be ashamed of it.

 Jacob Levy decries Trump’s love of strength over morality in Winning Isn’t Everything:

Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, the Trump administration is trying to persuade its audience of a deeply pernicious version of “might makes right:” that a political victory counts as moral vindication. The case at hand is the idea that now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the Senate somehow disproves the allegations of sexual assault against him. Trump was unusually explicit about this on Monday, but expect to hear variations of it from him, other members of his administration, and the talking-points-reciting apologists in Congress and elsewhere for a long time to come.

No one actually, consciously believes that a political victory can prove the victor innocent of charges that were under dispute at the time. In any dispute about whom to elect or appoint to a public office, many different issues are in play and the decision-makers (voters, senators, etc.) might decide that a particular charge is true, or probably true, and yet outweighed by other considerations. Or the decision-makers might think the charge is false and be wrong about that, since the election or the confirmation hearing wasn’t a criminal trial and didn’t involve the careful presentation of all the evidence. (And even a not-guilty verdict at a criminal trial doesn’t prove innocence; it only says that proof beyond a reasonable doubt hasn’t been provided to the satisfaction of these jurors and/or this judge.) Stated generally, there’s surely nothing controversial about any of this. Treating an election or a confirmation vote as proof of innocence is an updated version of the superstition associated with trial by combat: If I were guilty, the gods wouldn’t have let me win.

And yet the repeated use of this kind of might-makes-right argument by the Trump administration doesn’t strike their audience as jarringly absurd. It resonates, and lends itself to easy repetition.

McKay Coppins profiles The Man Who Broke Politics (“Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise. Now he’s reveling in his achievements”):

In the clamorous story of Donald Trump’s Washington, it would be easy to mistake Gingrich for a minor character. A loyal Trump ally in 2016, Gingrich forwent a high-powered post in the administration and has instead spent the years since the election cashing in on his access—churning out books (three Trump hagiographies, one spy thriller), working the speaking circuit (where he commands as much as $75,000 per talk for his insights on the president), and popping up on Fox News as a paid contributor. He spends much of his time in Rome, where his wife, Callista, serves as Trump’s ambassador to the Vatican and where, he likes to boast, “We have yet to find a bad restaurant.”

But few figures in modern history have done more than Gingrich to lay the groundwork for Trump’s rise. During his two decades in Congress, he pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction. Gingrich’s career can perhaps be best understood as a grand exercise in devolution—an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence.

 Professor Jason Stanley observes When fascism starts to feel normal, we’re all in trouble:

The Science Behind a Frog’s Leap:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-five.  Sunrise is 7:09 AM and sunset 6:11 PM, for 11h 02m 21s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 38.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1885, Marinette-Menominee lumbermen strike:

On this date 2,500 Marinette-Menominee lumbermen walked off the job to support a reduction in workday hours. Mill owners locked out the workers in an attempt to force acceptance of an eleven-hour workday. The lockout failed as many lumbermen simply moved away from the area rather than agree to work eleven hour days. The employers were forced to negotiate with unions and conceded to a ten-hour work day and cash payment for wages.

Recommended for reading in full —  GOP majority leader’s family benefited from program for minorities, the relationship with Saudi Arabia is out of control,  Trump’s Middle East policy is a fantasy, Trump admits Putin is ‘probably’ a murderer, and video about a woman who searches for missing women — 

Paul Pringle and Adam Elmahrek report House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s family benefited from U.S. program for minorities based on disputed ancestry:

A company owned by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s in-laws won more than $7 million in no-bid and other federal contracts at U.S. military installations and other government properties in California based on a dubious claim of Native American identity by McCarthy’s brother-in-law, a Times investigation has found.

The prime contracts, awarded through a federal program designed to help disadvantaged minorities, were mostly for construction projects at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in McCarthy’s Bakersfield-based district, and the Naval Air Station Lemoore in nearby Kings County.

Vortex Construction, whose principal owner is William Wages, the brother of McCarthy’s wife, Judy, received a total of $7.6 million in no-bid and other prime federal contracts since 2000, The Times found.

….

Wages says he is one-eighth Cherokee. An examination of government and tribal records by The Times and a leading Cherokee genealogist casts doubt on that claim, however. He is a member of a group called the Northern Cherokee Nation, which has no federal or state recognition as a legitimate tribe. It is considered a fraud by leaders of tribes that have federal recognition.

Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky write The U.S.-Saudi Relationship Is Out of Control:

Possible Saudi involvement in the disappearance—and alleged murder—of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi presents the U.S.-Saudi relationship with its greatest crisis since 9/11. If the Saudis are proven guilty of this heinous crime, it should change everything about the United States’ long-standing relationship with Saudi Arabia. Regrettably, it probably won’t.

….

Donald Trump’s enabling of Saudi Arabia began even before he became president. He talked openly on the campaign trail about his admiration for Saudi Arabia and how he couldn’t refuse Saudi offers to invest millions in his real-estate ventures. His predecessors may have gone to Mexico or Canada for their first foreign foray; Trump chose Saudi Arabia. In a trip carefully choreographed by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who quickly established close personal ties with the soon-to-be crown prince, Trump was feted, flattered, and filled with hopes of billions in arms sales and Saudi investment that would create jobs back home. Trump’s aversion to Barack Obama’s Iran deal also fueled the budding romance. Trump used his anti-Iranian animus (even while he boasted that he’d make a better deal with the mullahs) to energize his ties with Riyadh, and MbS [crown prince Mohammed bin Salman] was only too happy to exploit his eagerness. Reports that MbS saw Trump’s team, particularly Kushner, as naive and untutored should have come as no surprise.

Previous administrations—both Republican and Democratic—also pandered to the Saudis, but rarely on such a galactic, unrestrained, and unreciprocated scale. Through its silence or approval, Washington gave MbS—the new architect of the risk-ready, aggressive, and repressive Saudi policies at home and in the region—wide latitude to pursue a disastrous course toward Yemen and Qatar. The administration swooned over some of MbS’s reforms while ignoring the accompanying crackdown on journalists and civil-society activists. Indeed, The Guardian and other outlets reported that MbS had told Kushner in advance of his plans to move against his opponents and wealthy businessmen, including some royals, in what might be termed a “shaikhdown.”

Jackson Diehl writes Trump’s Middle East ambitions have been exposed as misguided fantasies:

When Donald Trump was unexpectedly elected president, two nations in the Middle East that had been particularly aggrieved by the policies of the Obama administration rushed to take advantage. They were Saudi Arabia and Israel — and they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

….

Trump and his supporters argued that this radical shift would lead to Mideast breakthroughs that eluded the Obama administration, including a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the Saudis would help to broker. His son-in-law and Middle East point man, Jared Kushner, talked expansively both of forging that “ultimate deal” and of an “Arab NATO” to roll back Iranian influence across the region.

Today, those ambitions have been revealed as the misguided fantasies they always were. The disappearance and alleged murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has exposed the real return on Trump’s gambits: a string of reckless acts by the Saudis and Israelis that have made the region more rather than less unstable.

The leaders of the two countries, Mohammed bin Salman and Benjamin Netanyahu, have given Trump what he most craves: sycophantic support. On substance, however, they have done next to nothing to reciprocate unilateral Trump concessions such as the embassy move or the resumption of U.S. support for Saudi bombing in Yemen. Netanyahu expanded West Bank settlements and rejected confidence-building steps with the Palestinians. The Saudis, predictably, have failed to deliver on the $110 billion in arms purchases Trump boasted about last year.

Most U.S. presidents make their first foreign trip to our neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Trump went to Riyadh, where he was lavishly flattered and feted. He deputized his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to manage the relationship with the Gulf states, which were more than willing to mentor the young presidential aide in the ways of Middle Eastern diplomacy while dangling the ever elusive proposition of Gulf support for Israel (which they still do not recognize). Trump touted the potential for tens of billions of dollars in Saudi investment in the U.S., and heaped praise on the Saudi leadership. In a picture that seemed to capture perfectly the way in which the dynamic in the Middle East had changed, Salman, Trump, and the Saudi-backed Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi placed their hands on a glowing orb as if they were masters of the globe. The days of Egyptian democracy and of diplomacy with Iran were a thing of the past, and so were any U.S. restraints on Saudi foreign policy or attention to complaints about human rights.

Felicia Sonmez reports Putin is ‘probably’ involved in assassinations and poisonings, but ‘it’s not in our country,’ Trump says:

President Trump said he believes that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin “probably” has been involved in assassinations and poisonings, but he appeared to dismiss the gravity of those actions, noting that they have not taken place in the United States.

“Probably he is, yeah. Probably,” Trump told CBS’s Lesley Stahl when asked during an interview on “60 Minutes” whether he thinks Putin is involved “in assassinations, in poisonings.”

“But I rely on them; it’s not in our country,” Trump added.

A long line of Russian dissidents, journalists and others critical of Putin have been poisoned or died under mysterious circumstances; in one of the most recent cases, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter were poisoned in Britain, allegedly by Russian operatives. Russia denies any involvement in the attack.

Meet The Amateur Sleuth Who Hunts Down the Missing:

“If you’re just out there somewhere on the land, dead, and nobody’s looking for you—that’s the worst thing in the world,” says Lissa Yellowbird-Chase in Vanished, a new documentary from The Atlantic. Yellowbird-Chase, a private citizen and volunteer investigator, has devoted her life to searching for missing American Indians.

American Indian women and girls are reported missing at a disproportionately high rate compared with most other demographics. Although there is no federal database that tracks their disappearances, Mary Kathryn Nagle, a tribal sovereignty attorney, told The Atlantic that legal structures help to “create a climate in the United States where Native women go murdered and missing.”

Recently, Yellowbird-Chase has been focused on one case in particular: that of Melissa Eagleshield, who disappeared in 2014 in Minnesota. “It was like she just vanished,” says Jodi Dey, Eagleshield’s aunt. No arrests have been made in relation to her case. In the film, Yellowbird-Chase and Eagleshield’s family visit the last place that Melissa was seen alive in order to search for clues.

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny, with occasional showers, and a high of fifty-three.  Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 6:13 PM, for 11h 05m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 29.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1947, Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier:

Such was the difficulty in this task that the answer to many of the inherent challenges was along the lines of “Yeager better have paid-up insurance.”^[25] Two nights before the scheduled date for the flight, Yeager broke two ribs when he fell from a horse. He was worried that the injury would remove him from the mission and reported that he went to a civilian doctor in nearby Rosamond, who taped his ribs.^{[26][Note 2]} Yeager told only his wife, as well as friend and fellow project pilot Jack Ridley, about the accident. On the day of the flight, Yeager was in such pain that he could not seal the X-1’s hatch by himself. Ridley rigged up a device, using the end of a broom handle as an extra lever, to allow Yeager to seal the hatch.

Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, flying the X-1 Glamorous Glennis at Mach 1.07 at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 m).^{[27][Note 3]} over the Rogers Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert.^[31] Yeager was awarded the Mackay Trophy and the Collier Trophy in 1948 for his mach-transcending flight, and the Harmon International Trophy in 1954. The X-1 he flew that day was later put on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution‘s National Air and Space Museum.

Recommended for reading in full — Trump’s son-in-law paid no federal taxes for year after year, Schimel-Kaul debate, American leadership & Saudi Arabia, LaCroix as ersatz faith, video of canine vacation ambassadors— 

 Jesse Drucker and Emily Flitter report Kushner Paid No Federal Income Tax for Years, Documents Suggest (“Confidential documents reviewed by The Times indicate that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, probably paid little or no income tax from 2009 to 2016”):

Over the past decade, Jared Kushner’s family company has spent billions of dollars buying real estate. His personal stock investments have soared. His net worth has quintupled to almost $324 million.

And yet, for several years running, Mr. Kushner — President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser — appears to have paid almost no federal income taxes, according to confidential financial documents reviewed by The New York Times.

His low tax bills are the result of a common tax-minimizing maneuver that, year after year, generated millions of dollars in losses for Mr. Kushner, according to the documents. But the losses were only on paper — Mr. Kushner and his company did not appear to actually lose any money. The losses were driven by depreciation, a tax benefit that lets real estate investors deduct a portion of the cost of their buildings from their taxable income every year.

….

Thirteen tax accountants and lawyers, including J. Richard Harvey Jr., a tax official in the Reagan, George W. Bush and Obama administrations, reviewed the documents for The Times. Mr. Harvey said that, assuming the documents accurately reflect information from his tax returns, Mr. Kushner appeared to have paid little or no federal income taxes during at least five of the past eight years. The other experts agreed and said Mr. Kushner probably didn’t pay much in the three other years, either.

Jenny Peek reports Brad Schimel, Josh Kaul Meet In First Attorney General Debate:

In 2014, the state Department of Justice discovered some 7,000 untested sexual assault kits being stored across Wisconsin. In September, Schimel announced that that backlog was gone.

But in Friday’s debate, Kaul questioned why it took so long for the kits to be tested.

“In his first year in office, Wisconsin received millions of dollars to address that backlog, but after he served for two years as attorney general, only nine of the kits in the backlog had been tested,” Kaul said.

Kaul added that the delay in testing led to a delay in getting justice for survivors of sexual assault — a task he’d prioritize if elected.

“Now Schimel said mission accomplished, I fundamentally disagree with that, the goal here is not simply to test these kits, it’s to get justice for survivors of sexual assault and there’s a lot of work left to be done to get justice,” Kaul said.Wisconsin U.S. Senate race: Vukmir, Baldwin debate in Wausau with key clashes on health care and immigration

Ben Rhodes describes A Fatal Abandonment of American Leadership:

When Donald Trump took office, any effort to restrain the Saudi regime disappeared. Instead, Trump and his team fell comfortably into the full embrace of MbS [Saudi Mohammad bin Salman] and MbZ [Emerati Mohammed bin Zayed]. These men understood well the mind-set of a transactional, egocentric, New York real-estate developer who cared little for universal rights or the liberal international order that the United States had built. Indeed, Saudis and Emiratis have invested in New York real estate for decades, and Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric about Iran and the nuclear deal was music to their ears. Here was the opposite of Obama, the analytical, deliberate, and idealistic leader whom they found so frustrating.

Most U.S. presidents make their first foreign trip to our neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Trump went to Riyadh, where he was lavishly flattered and feted. He deputized his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to manage the relationship with the Gulf states, which were more than willing to mentor the young presidential aide in the ways of Middle Eastern diplomacy while dangling the ever elusive proposition of Gulf support for Israel (which they still do not recognize). Trump touted the potential for tens of billions of dollars in Saudi investment in the U.S., and heaped praise on the Saudi leadership. In a picture that seemed to capture perfectly the way in which the dynamic in the Middle East had changed, Salman, Trump, and the Saudi-backed Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi placed their hands on a glowing orb as if they were masters of the globe. The days of Egyptian democracy and of diplomacy with Iran were a thing of the past, and so were any U.S. restraints on Saudi foreign policy or attention to complaints about human rights.

Alan Levinovitz ponders Why LaCroix calls its seltzer ‘natural’:

A recent class-action lawsuit against LaCroix claims that the sparkling-water company has misled consumers by calling its products “natural.” From a certain perspective, it’s a slam-dunk case: Flavored sparkling water does not gush directly from Mother Nature’s teat, and aluminum does not spontaneously form convenient gleaming cylinders so we may drink refrigerated cans of “naturally essenced” LaCroix, popping them open with fingers designed by evolution for precisely that task.

Of course, this is not what LaCroix means by “natural.” Rather, its label — and the plaintiff’s attraction to it — can be understood only in light of our tendency to conflate “natural” with “goodness.” It’s no coincidence that the word “innocent” also features prominently in LaCroix’s marketing materials and packaging. “Natural” invokes a religious myth, an origin story about pure beginnings. With giant islands of garbage floating in the seas, microplastics polluting the oceans and human-caused climate change ravaging the globe, it makes sense to be suspicious of human tampering.

….

Buying “natural” is the modern equivalent of buying indulgences — deep down, we probably know that holiness can’t be purchased, but the opportunity is just too tempting to pass up. In this sense, both LaCroix and the people who buy it because it’s “natural” are guilty of reinforcing the false faith of consecrated consumption and the false idol of nature to which it is dedicated. Instead of confusing “natural” with innocence and goodness, we should think hard about who stands to benefit from the ritual practices that result.

These ‘Canine Ambassadors’ Are About to Make Your Vacation Adorable:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-three.  Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 6:14 PM, for 11h 07m 59s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 20.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress establishes an American navy: “On this day, Congress authorized the purchase of two vessels to be armed for a cruise against British merchant ships; these ships became Andrew Doria and Cabot.[1] The first ship in commission was the USS Alfred which was purchased on November 4 and commissioned on December 3 by Captain Dudley Saltonstall.[6] On November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress passed a resolution calling for two battalions of Marines to be raised for service with the fleet.[7]”

Recommended for reading in full — Trump asks black voters to honor him while he praises Robert E. Lee, meet the researchers unmasking Russian assassins, myths of the 2018 midterms, for a young Jesuit grad at the synod justice for migrants is personal, and video of a really big Peruvian tarantula — 

Gabriel Pogrund reports Trump calls on blacks to ‘honor’ him with votes, then praises Confederate general Robert E. Lee:

LEBANON, Ohio — President Trump praised the Confederate general Robert E. Lee while asking African American voters to “honor us” by voting for him at an Ohio rally that featured an unexpected and provocative monologue on America’s Civil War history.

Addressing an open-air rally of around 4,000 supporters, Trump appeared buoyant as he declared that Lee was a “true great fighter” and “great general.” He also said Abraham Lincoln once had a “phobia” of the Southern leader, whose support of slavery has made his legacy a heavily contested and divisive issue.

The comments came during an anecdote about Ohio-born President Ulysses S. Grant’s alleged drinking problems, which historians deem exaggerated.

….

Minutes earlier, Trump had hailed African American unemployment numbers and asked black voters to “honor us” by voting Republican in November. “Get away from the Democrats,” he told them. “Think of it: We have the best numbers in history. … I think we’re going to get the African American vote, and it’s true.” He also celebrated hip-hop artist Kanye West’s visit to the Oval Office on Thursday, adding: “What he did was pretty amazing.”

Geoff Brumfiel writes Meet The Internet Researchers Unmasking Russian Assassins: 

Aric Toler isn’t exactly sure what to call himself

“Digital researcher, digital investigator, digital something probably works,” Toler says.

Toler, 30, is part of an Internet research organization known as Bellingcat. Formed in 2014, the group first got attention for its meticulous documentation of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Toler used posts to Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, VK, to track Russian soldiers as they slipped in and out of eastern Ukraine — where they covertly aided local rebels.

Since then, Toler and his colleagues have been up to a whole lot more. They’ve used commercial satellite images to track Chinese air bases; watched security operations unfold on social media in Venezuela; and pinpointed the locations of chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

Now Toler and the nine other full-time members of Bellingcat’s small, international staff are increasingly being drawn into some of the biggest news stories in the world. This week they unmasked one of two Russian agents believed to be behind a spate of poisonings in the U.K. (they exposed the other one last month). And they’re collaborating with news outlets to help identify suspects in the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

It’s a rapid rise for what was, just a few years ago, a group of amateurs. Bellingcat was founded by Eliot Higgins, a British native whose previous jobs included helping the settlement of refugees in the U.K. and administrator in a women’s lingerie factory.

John Hudak and Fred Dews discuss Myths about the 2018 midterm elections:

2018 midterms: Myths about the upcoming elections https://t.co/Mxsv0Y8nvr

— John Adams (@DailyAdams) October 13, 2018

The Brookings Cafeteria podcast will release new episodes on the issues shaping the 2018 midterms every Tuesday and Friday leading up to Election Day. You can follow the series where we list all episodes of the Cafeteria podcast, and visit our 2018 Midterms page for more research and analysis on the upcoming elections.

In the first episode of a special series on the 2018 midterm elections, Senior Fellow John Hudak describes some of the issues shaping the upcoming midterm elections and which common narratives around the elections are not supported by data.

Also in this episode, David Wessel explains the Federal Reserve’s recent decision to raise interest rates and the inherent difficulties in forecasting the economy.

Subscribe to Brookings podcasts here or on Apple Podcasts, send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu, and follow us and tweet us at @policypodcasts on Twitter.

Luke Hansen, S.J. writes Young Jesuit grad at the synod: justice for migrants is personal:

The church must go out and encounter young people “in detention centers, at the borders” and “in all places where their safety and family unity are threatened,” Yadira Vieyra said to the Synod of Bishops on Oct. 11. Speaking as a young immigrant living in the United States, Ms. Vieyra was sharply critical of the “hateful rhetoric and policies” she has witnessed, and she described the “sustained distress” experienced by migrants, which affects the way “they pray and remain hopeful.”

To show that the church values the lives of young people, she said the church needs to develop “innovative ways to minister to this vulnerable community” while helping people to know that Jesus Christ “stands with the oppressed and challenges the oppressor.”

Pope Francis appointed Ms. Vieyra, 29, as an auditor to the synod that is meeting from Oct. 3 to 28 in Rome to discuss “young people, faith and vocational discernment.” The synod includes 267 voting members who are mostly cardinals and bishops, 50 auditors (half men, half women) and other delegates and collaborators.

 Behold a Massive Tarantula Caught Emerging From Burrow In Peru:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-four.  Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 6:16 PM, for 11h 10m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1782, Henry Dodge is born:

On this date Territorial Governor Henry Dodge was born in Vincennes, Indiana. The son of Israel Dodge and Nancy Hunter, Henry Dodge was the first Territorial Governor of Wisconsin. Prior to this position, he served as Marshall and Brigadier General of the Missouri Territory, Chief Justice of the Iowa County (Wisconsin) Court. During the Black Hawk War of 1832 he led the Wisconsin militia who ultimately brought the conflict to its tragic end. He served as Territorial Governor from July 3, 1836 to October 5, 1841 and again from May 13, 1845 to June 7, 1848. He also served as U.S. Territorial Senator from 1841 to 1846. When Wisconsin was admitted to the Union as a State, dodge was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate; he was reelected in 1851 and served from June 8, 1848, to March 3, 1857. He was also twice nominated for President and once for Vice President, all of which he declined. Henry Dodge died on June 19, 1867 in Burlington, Iowa.

Recommended for reading in full —  A five-year-old was persuaded to sign away her rights at the U.S. border, homegrown disinformation, Georgia Republican keeps thousands of voter registrations on hold, Ukrainian Christians break from Moscow’s political control, and a video about the Apollo space program’s origins —

Sarah Stillman reports The Five-Year-Old Who Was Detained at the Border and Persuaded to Sign Away Her Rights:

Helen—a smart, cheerful five-year-old girl—is an asylum seeker from Honduras. This summer, when a social worker asked her to identify her strengths, Helen shared her pride in “her ability to learn fast and express her feelings and concerns.” She also recounted her favorite activities (“playing with her dolls”), her usual bedtime (“8 p.m.”), and her professional aspirations (“to be a veterinarian”).

….

According to a long-standing legal precedent known as the Flores settlement, which established guidelines for keeping children in immigration detention, Helen had a right to a bond hearing before a judge; that hearing would have likely hastened her release from government custody and her return to her family. At the time of her apprehension, in fact, Helen checked a box on a line that read, “I do request an immigration judge,” asserting her legal right to have her custody reviewed. But, in early August, an unknown official handed Helen a legal document, a “Request for a Flores Bond Hearing,” which described a set of legal proceedings and rights that would have been difficult for Helen to comprehend. (“In a Flores bond hearing, an immigration judge reviews your case to determine whether you pose a danger to the community,” the document began.) On Helen’s form, which was filled out with assistance from officials, there is a checked box next to a line that says, “I withdraw my previous request for a Flores bond hearing.” Beneath that line, the five-year-old signed her name in wobbly letters.

Sheera Frankel reports Made and Distributed in the U.S.A.: Online Disinformation:

When Christine Blasey Ford testified before Congress last month about Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault, a website called Right Wing News sprang into action on Facebook.

The conservative site, run by the blogger John Hawkins, had created a series of Facebook pages and accounts over the last year under many names, according to Facebook.

After Dr. Blasey testified, Right Wing News posted several false stories about her — including the suggestion that her lawyers were being bribed by Democrats — and then used the network of Facebook pages and accounts to share the pieces so that they proliferated online quickly, social media researchers said.

The result was a real-time spreading of disinformation started by Americans, for Americans.

What Right Wing News did was part of a shift in the flow of online disinformation, falsehoods meant to mislead and inflame. In 2016, before the presidential election, state-backed Russian operatives exploited Facebook and Twitter to sway voters in the United States with divisive messages. Now, weeks before the midterm elections on Nov. 6, such influence campaigns are increasingly a domestic phenomenon fomented by Americans on the left and the right.

Stavros Agorakis reports Georgia’s 53,000 pending votes:

• Georgia has put more than 53,000 voter registrations on hold, with the state’s residents fearing that voter purges and delayed registrations will affect the outcome of the upcoming elections. [AP / Ben Nadler]

• Nearly 70 percent of the flagged applications are from black voters, yet black people make up about one-third of Georgia’s population. [Vox / P.R. Lockhart]

• Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state and the Republican nominee for the open governor’s seat, is in charge of the pending list. His Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race is Stacey Abrams, the first black female governor candidate from a major party in the US. [NYT / Astead W. Herndon]

• Voting rights advocates and civil rights groups have protested Kemp’s decision to stay in office until the election, saying it’s inappropriate that he controls voting systems. Abrams’s campaign has demanded his resignation. [CNN / Gregory Krieg]

• Kemp has waged a years-long battle against voting rights groups and minority voter registration efforts, using an “exact match” program to approve voter IDs. [Talking Points Memo / Cameron Joseph]

• Voters whose registrations are on hold will be notified via text to verify their information. Tuesday is the last day Georgians can register to vote. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution / Mark Niesse]

• Voter ID rulings across the US could help decide which party controls the Senate come 2019. Courts issued rulings against restrictions in Missouri but in favor of them in North Dakota; both states have competitive Senate races. [Vox / German Lopez]

Gabby Deutch reports Ukraine’s Spiritual Split From Russia Could Trigger a Global Schism (“For Moscow, the crisis is geopolitical as well as religious”):

“This is a victory of good over evil, light over darkness.” That’s how Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described the announcement Thursday that the Orthodox Church’s Istanbul-based leader, Patriarch Bartholomew, will grant Ukraine’s Church independence from Russia.

In televised remarks, Ukraine’s president dubbed this a “historic event,” which it undoubtedly is: For more than three centuries, Ukraine and Russia have been religiously united within the Russian Orthodox Church. It was a union Poroshenko characterized this summer as a “direct threat to the national security of Ukraine,” given his view that the Russian Orthodox Church fully supports Kremlin policy; he said then that it was “absolutely necessary to cut off all the tentacles with which the aggressor country operates inside the body of our state.”

This Is How the Apollo Program Began:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:04 AM and sunset 6:18 PM, for 11h 13m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee is scheduled to meet again today at 6:00 PM.

On this day in 1942, the United States engages Japanese naval forces at the Battle of Cape Esperance:

Shortly before midnight on 11 October, a U.S. force of four cruisers and five destroyers—under the command of Rear Admiral Norman Scott—intercepted [Rear Admiral Aritomo] Goto’s force as it approached Savo Island near Guadalcanal. Taking the Japanese by surprise, Scott’s warships sank one of Goto’s cruisers and one of his destroyers, heavily damaged another cruiser, mortally wounded Goto, and forced the rest of Goto’s warships to abandon the bombardment mission and retreat. During the exchange of gunfire, one of Scott’s destroyers was sunk and one cruiser and another destroyer were heavily damaged. In the meantime, the Japanese supply convoy successfully completed unloading at Guadalcanal and began its return journey without being discovered by Scott’s force. Later on the morning of 12 October, four Japanese destroyers from the supply convoy turned back to assist Goto’s retreating, damaged warships. Air attacks by U.S. aircraft from Henderson Field sank two of these destroyers later that day.

Recommended for reading in full —  Nearly every line of Trump’s USA Today op-ed was false or misleading, Trump’s conflicts of interest with the Saudis, the Saudis don’t respect Trump, Republicans accept Trump’s corruption, and video on how to make a proper cup of tea (according to George Orwell) —

Glenn Kessler is Fact-checking President Trump’s USA Today op-ed on ‘Medicare-for-All’ (“Nearly every line of President Trump’s USA Today op-ed contained a false or misleading statement”):

President Trump wrote an opinion article for USA Today on Oct. 10 regarding proposals to expand Medicare to all Americans — known as Medicare-for-All — in which almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood.

Many of these are claims we have already debunked. Presumably, the president is aware of our fact checks — he even links to two — but chose to ignore the facts in service of a campaign-style op-ed. Medicare-for-All is a complex subject, and serious questions could be raised about the cost and how a transition from today’s health-care system would be financed. Trump correctly notes that studies have estimated that the program — under the version promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — would add $32.6 trillion in costs to the federal government over 10 years. (He doesn’t mention that costs in theory would go down for individuals, state governments and others, so overall national health expenditures may not increase and could even decrease.)

But this is not a serious effort to debate the issue. So as a reader service, we offer a guide through Trump’s rhetoric.

Russ Choma writes Donald Trump Has a Serious Saudi Arabian Conflict of Interest (“They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them?”):

The grisly details of an alleged Saudi government plot to murder dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi are roiling diplomatic and national security circles, but the Trump White House’s reaction has been strangely muted. Asked about the matter on Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump vaguely condemned the “bad situation,” while also praising King Salman, the Saudi monarch, as a “fine man.” He stressed that Saudi officials say it’s unclear what became of Khashoggi, who disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Turkish officials say he was killed within hours of entering the consulate by a Saudi hit squad on the orders of senior Saudi royal family members.

….

Trump’s meek response to the diplomatic crisis highlights the ongoing conflicts of interest posed by his business empire.

At a 2015 campaign stop, Trump bragged to the crowd about his business dealings with the Saudis. “Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them,” Trump said. “They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”

In 2001, the Saudi government bought the 45th floor of the Trump World Plaza building in New York City as part of its mission to the United Nations. And shortly before entering the White House, Trump was aggressively pursuing deals with Saudi investors and attempting to build hotels in the Saudi Arabia. In August 2015, in the midst of his presidential run, Trump registered new corporations to manage a prospective hotel in Jeddah, the gateway city to the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina. That project never came to fruition, but the Washington Post reported that at least two of Trump’s US hotel properties—both called the Trump International Hotel & Tower, in New York and Chicago—have benefitted hugely from Saudi business.

 Shadi Hamid writes Saudi Arabia Is Taunting Trump (“The disappearance of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of an American ally shows how little Saudi Arabia fears the repercussions of its actions”):

Even for those who care little about human rights in the Middle East, the disappearance of Khashoggi calls into question the reliability of an ally that has insisted on acting in such brazen fashion. If Trump’s foreign policy really is about “America first,” then allies who show blatant disregard for America, American values, and American interests should incur significant costs. What might those costs be? This is what the conversation over the future of U.S.-Saudi relationship must turn to. Trump is at least partly correct about Saudi dependence on the United States. As my colleague Bruce Riedel writes, the Saudi Air Force is “is entirely dependent on American and British support for its air fleet of F15 fighter jets, Apache helicopters, and Tornado aircraft. If either Washington or London halts the flow of logistics, the [air force] will be grounded.”

Bad allies, particularly in the Middle East where they abound, have been a recurring problem for successive U.S. administrations. U.S. policymakers need—or think they need—them, even when those allies go out of their way to undermine their relationships with the United States. Those allies believe—mostly correctly—that the United States will express concern and complain, but ultimately do little. The worst offenses will be forgotten in the name of national-security interests, as they have been so many times before. It is time to call Saudi Arabia’s bluff.

Greg Sargent writes Republicans keep stating openly that they’re totally fine with Trump’s corruption:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sat down for an extensive interview with Associated Press reporters, the full video of which you can watch here. One of the most telling moments was this one, in response to a question from the AP’s Dustin Weaver: (emphasis added):

Question: Democrats have made clear that if they do win back the House, they plan to launch many, many investigations into the president and the administration. They’ve made clear that one of their lines of inquiry is going to be the president’s tax returns, the president’s businesses, the president’s hotel contract. . . . Do you think that’s a legitimate line of inquiry for Democrats to be talking about?

McConnell: I think it’ll help the president get reelected. I remember the price we paid — actually, we did impeach Bill Clinton. I remember all the enthusiasm, lots of Republicans in the House and Senate — “boy, this is the ticket, this is gonna make us have a great year.” . . . It worked exactly the opposite. The public got mad at us. . . . This business of presidential harassment may or may not quite be the winner they think it is.

McConnell was asked directly whether President Trump’s tax returns and self-dealing constitute a legitimate topic for congressional oversight. He didn’t directly answer, but he did dismissively characterize such an inquiry as “presidential harassment.”

(Emphasis in original.)

How to Make a Proper Cup of Tea (According to famed Englishman George Orwell…):