This Tuesday, October 30th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of A Quiet Place @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building:
A Quiet Place (Drama/Horror)
Tuesday, October 30 12:30 pm
Rated PG-13. 1 hour, 30 min. (2018)
In a Post-Apocalyptic world, a family is forced to live in total silence while hiding from Things That Go Bump in the Night that possess ultra-sensitive hearing. Stars Emily Blunt and John Krasinski.
In addition to the really spooky story, we will witness a “Skelton Dance” (cartoon), a dreadful short (“The Masks”) and then our Main Creature Feature, “A Quiet Place.” Mark will have Halloween treats for all!
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.
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’ —
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.
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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.
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.
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.
The powder is sprinkled in lion enclosures at Smithsonian’s National Zoo. It is dotted in the exhibit that’s home to Fred, an American elk at the Oklahoma City Zoo. It is dusted about the living space of bears and foxes at the Cincinnati Zoo. And these animals love it, keepers say.
But few furry creatures embrace the pumpkin spice lifestyle as enthusiastically as Bei Bei, the National Zoo’s young panda, who was introduced to the autumnal additive last year and immediately doused his head with it. His caretakers sometimes use pumpkin spice to lace a rotted log, creating a combination that Bei Bei finds bewitching.
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.
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 —
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 manyexamples 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: 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.
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.”
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.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of fifty-three. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 5:53 PM, for 10h 29m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 90.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this date William Cushing led an expedition to sink the Confederate ram, the Albermarle, which had imposed a blockade near Plymouth, North Carolina and had been sinking Union ships. Cushing’s plan was extremely dangerous and only he and one other soldier escaped drowning or capture. Cushing pulled very close to the Confederate ironclad and exploded a torpedo under it while under heavy fire. Cushing’s crew abandoned ship as it began to sink. The Albemarle also sunk. Cushing received a “letter of thanks” from Congress and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. He died in 1874 due to ill health and is buried in the Naval Cemetery at Annapolis, Maryland. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, p.274-285]
Recommended for reading in full — Trump’s dark inspiration, a one-party outlook, conspiracy theorists stick with their false theories, Megyn Kelly has nowhere good to go, and video of NASA’s test of a Martian parachute —
For three long days this week, the Republican Party held its breath as a serial bomber sent a dozen devices to CNN’s New York headquarters, two former Democratic presidents, a former Democratic vice president, two former CIA directors, several elected Democrats, and Democratic activists George Soros and Tom Steyer. After months of rabid attacks on his opponents as enemies of the people, Donald Trump’s crop of crazy came to fruition this week and was almost ready for harvest. By either incompetence, luck, design flaws, or providence, none of the bombs in this campaign of political terror cost life or limb.
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Introspection isn’t exactly one of this president’s strong suits, and the discovery that the MAGA Bomber was one of the millions of creatures he created, inspired, and motivated to wage war against those he describes as Enemies of the People will never trouble the placid waters of his stunningly shallow intellect. Worry about his responsibility will never penetrate the vacuum of his moral landscape. Trump made an enemies list, and then he weaponized his social media power to push that enemies list into the minds of the furious and febrile who slavishly lap up his every utterance. What, precisely, did he think would happen?
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This is why we need to look objectively at Trump’s role in this affair. No one in American political life has even a fraction of his power to inspire behavior and action. No one. It’s time we recognize that Trump’s unique social media presence is a weapon of radicalization. No one else in the American political landscape stokes the resentments, fears, and prejudices of his base with equal power.
Trump always misses the chance to be bigger and better. He never fails to close the door on opportunities to be a consequential leader and not a winking, simpering buffoon who holds the title but never wears the mantle of the presidency. As we saw after Charlottesville, his defiance of every American norm and his eagerness to “both sides” every argument is an extended middle finger to our republic.
There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Trump sometimes yearns for a one-party state. It’s a thread that runs through his opposition to critical press coverage and threats to throttle the media, his celebration of violence against the press, his incitements to violence against protesters, and his threats to prosecute and imprison political rivals like Hillary Clinton.
The result is that Trump is unable to extricate a criticism of him from a criticism of federal-government policy, and vice versa. When, for example, Puerto Ricans complained that aid was not reaching the island’s residents fast enough following Hurricane Maria, Trump took that as a personal affront and launched a long-running feud with the mayor of San Juan. For Trump, l’etat, c’est lui.
This produces a strange transference that makes Trump the ultimate victim of everything. The bombs are an attack on him because he is the government; they are also an attack on him because he is the head of the Republican Party, which he fears might be hurt by the fact of political violence aimed at Democrats.
The sending of package bombs to prominent Democrats and other high-profile figures this week was accompanied by a disturbing phenomenon. Baseless conspiracy theories, once confined to the fringes in the wake of violent acts, leaped with shocking speed into the mainstream discussion of the attacks.
A surprisingly large number of figures from the conservative establishment — commentators, radio hosts, a Trump family member, and other pro-Trump figures — shared, liked, hinted at, raised questions about or otherwise endorsed an evidence-less theory that this was a “false-flag” attack — one that was staged to advance the political goals of the very people it seemed intended to hurt (in this case, Democrats).
But the FBI’s arrest of a suspect Friday pointed to the hollowness of these claims, raising questions about why they were voiced on such a fraught issue in the absence of evidence. The bombs were not “hoax devices,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said Friday. The suspect, 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc, “appears to be a partisan,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. And images circulating of the suspect’s van, which was plastered with pro-Trump and anti-Democrat imagery, and what was believed to be his social media feed, painted a portrait of a distinctly right-wing ideology.
Several media industry experts told The Daily Beast on Friday that even when Kelly’s blackface crucible is finished, she will likely have very few career opportunities—and none on a par with NBC News. Perhaps she’d be welcome at a second-tier conservative-leaning cable channel like One America News Network or a local station consortium like Sinclair.
In recent days, executives at CBS, ABC and CNN—outlets that might once have jumped at the chance of hiring her—have displayed a decided lack of interest in her services; even Fox News, where she spent a dozen years and left for NBC after a series of controversies—including accusing the late Fox News founder Roger Ailes of sexually harassing her, an allegation he denied—has slammed the door on a possible Kelly return, issuing a statement that essentially said there was zero room for her in their programming lineup.
“She could be hired by an outlet that is not interested in attracting African-American audiences,” said former CNN President Jonathan Klein, who once wished he’d hired Kelly from Fox News. In those days, a decade ago, “she was an impressive, accomplished, tough, edgy, in-your-face, kickass journalist,” Klein said. But when she came to NBC and tried to impersonate a female-friendly morning show host, “she tried so hard to spin it the other way to the point where it never felt authentic,” Klein added. “I think what she needs to do is be her authentic self and find a media home that allows her to be whatever that is.”
In times of high unemployment, of course it makes sense to get people back to work. Jobs, jobs, jobs isn’t a bad mantra when people don’t have work. (Work isn’t simply about an income, but a place in society.) Today is not, however, the Great Depression.
Listen to ‘development professionals’ go on about job-creation at public expense for Foxconn, or subsidies to low-end manufacturers in Whitewater, and they sound and act like state planners in a command economy: touting employment figures without regard to the cost of job creation or whether the jobs are productive and sustaining.
These aren’t men who believe in productive, free markets in capital, labor, and goods; these are men who talk private business while using public money to boost wasteful schemes and junk projects.
By their own admission, after decades of meddling in the economy, Whitewater is only a low-income community.
The jobs these ‘community development’ men produce are mostly dead-end, low-level positions so that they can fill in a number on a press release.
These days, we’re told that the American economy is strong. Unemployment is down, the Dow Jones industrial average is north of 25,000 and millions of jobs are going unfilled. But for people like Vanessa, the question is not, Can I land a job? (The answer is almost certainly, Yes, you can.) Instead the question is, What kinds of jobs are available to people without much education? By and large, the answer is: jobs that do not pay enough to live on.
In recent decades, the nation’s tremendous economic growth has not led to broad social uplift. Economists call it the “productivity-pay gap” — the fact that over the last 40 years, the economy has expanded and corporate profits have risen, but real wages have remained flat for workers without a college education. Since 1973, American productivity has increased by 77 percent, while hourly pay has grown by only 12 percent. If the federal minimum wage tracked productivity, it would be more than $20 an hour, not today’s poverty wage of $7.25.
One can guess that Desmond and I would not agree on the cause of, or solution to, these problems; he lacks confidence in free markets.
And yet, we’d not disagree about where we are now: nowhere good.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty-two. Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 5:54 PM, for 10h 32m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
a 30-second shootout between lawmen and members of a loosely organized group of outlaws called the Cowboys that took place at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. It is generally regarded as the most famous shootout in the history of the American Wild West. The gunfight was the result of a long-simmering feud, with Cowboys Billy Claiborne, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury on one side and town Marshal Virgil Earp, Special Policeman Morgan Earp, Special Policeman Wyatt Earp, and temporary policeman Doc Holliday on the other side.
Recommended for reading in full — How national attention changed Scott Walker, tariffs shake Wisconsin, a reunion in Paris for Trump & Putin, Roger Stone in the spotlight, and video about a way to deter great white sharks —
Higher tariffs cost Wisconsin companies $95 million in August, up 47 percent from a year earlier, according to new data from Tariffs Hurt the Heartland, a business group behind the town hall meetings being held in several cities.
The restaurant industry was part of the discussion because various products, from seafood to stoves, are subject to higher costs from trade wars.
It’s tough to pass the additional costs on to consumers through higher prices on the dinner menu, according to [executive vice president of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association Susan] Quam.
Even early on, however, I noticed that not everything was as it should be. At more than one Cabinet meeting, the secretary of the Department of Administration, Mike Huebsch, told us never to send him or the governor any electronic documents of consequence, and to avoid the use of our state-issued cellphones. “If you send me an important report electronically, I won’t open it,” I remember him saying, “and if you call me on your state phone, I won’t answer it.” If we had any important documents, they were to be “walked over” and hand-delivered to the governor’s office. As a result, open-record requests by the media or political opponents would be almost futile. This lack of transparency would be a hallmark of the Walker administration.
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After he won his recall election, Walker rarely attended Cabinet meetings anymore, and radically reduced the number of one-on-ones with Cabinet secretaries. He took more far-right positions, probably because he thought they would play well with the Republican base. Funding for public education and our University of Wisconsin system was cut dramatically. Our infrastructure continued to deteriorate to the point that we ranked 49th in the nation in the quality of our roads and bridges.
National security advisor John Bolton met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for 90 minutes Tuesday and agreed to have President Trump meet with Putin next month on the sidelines of a World War I commemoration being held in Paris.
The two leaders plan a “normal, bilateral meeting” on Nov. 11, Bolton told reporters Tuesday. It would be the first such encounter between the two presidents since July, when they met in Helsinki. That meeting was marked by Trump’s apparent acceptance of Russian statements that Moscow didn’t meddle in the 2016 election, a view quickly refuted by top U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers from both parties.
n recent weeks, a grand jury in Washington has listened to more than a dozen hours of testimony and FBI technicians have pored over gigabytes of electronic messages as part of the special counsel’s quest to solve one burning mystery: Did longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone — or any other associate of the president — have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails in 2016?
While outwardly quiet for the last month, Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have been aggressively pursuing leads behind the scenes about whether Stone was in communication with the online group, whose disclosures of emails believed to have been hacked by Russian operatives disrupted the 2016 presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the special counsel probe.
Stone, who boasted during the race that he was in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said since that his past comments were exaggerated or misunderstood. Both he and WikiLeaks have adamantly denied they were in contact.
Taiwanese-owned Foxconn is relying on eminent domain to seize Wisconsinites’ private homes for the sake of that foreign company’s project. Principles of eminent domain, sadly, have been vastly increased since a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision expanded government’s power to take from ordinary homeowners, among others.
Those expanded governmental powers mean that residents who lose their homes will likely be among those subsidizing future Foxconn workers.
The local business lobby, the Greater Whitewater Committee, showcased the Foxconn project early in 2018. There’s nothing ‘greater’ about a city, state, or country that allows these types of property seizures. Honest to goodness: Foxconn was a bad idea early in 2018, is a bad idea now, and will be a bad idea next year:
Contained within the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution is a provision commonly known as the Takings Clause, which restricts government from seizing private property “for public use, without just compensation.” When the government appropriates private property for public use under the Fifth Amendment, this power is typically referred to as eminent domain.
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Projects … where government acquired private lands in order to build public facilities such as government buildings or parks was how eminent domain traditionally functioned for centuries. That all changed, however, in 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London that government may seize private property from one owner and transfer it, not to the government for public use, but to another private owner. The Court stipulated the transfer from one private owner to another must be done for a “public purpose” such as generating greater economic activity. However, the promised increase in economic activity in such cases has not always materialized and often the resulting harm is significant.
The development at issue in the New London case for example never came to fruition and as a result, the once charming neighborhood is now a massive unused plot. More recently, in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker finalized a deal with Foxconn, a Taiwanese manufacturer, to build a massive plant promised to create jobs and stimulate economic growth in the area. As part of the agreement however, many homes will be seized via eminent domain and Foxconn was given 4.5 billion in state and local subsidies. Moreover, the State of Wisconsin will also be reimbursing Foxconn 17 cents for every dollar it pays to its employees, “meaning the very taxpayers losing their homes will likely subsidize the paychecks of future Foxconn workers.” If the promised benefits are actually realized — a big if as deals of this sort can quickly fail— the state will still not be able to recoup its losses for almost two decades until the year 2043.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of fifty-one. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 5:56 PM, for 10h 34m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this date the first legislative session of the Wisconsin territory convened in Belmont, Wisconsin. During this first session, forty-two laws were put in the statute books. At this time, the Territory of Wisconsin included all of present-day Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and part of the two Dakotas.
Recommended for reading in full — Chinese & Russians intercept Trump’s unprotected calls, letting go of Gen. Lee, some of Trump’s lies are impeachable offenses, wage stagnation, and video of the misunderstood ‘false vampire bat’ —
When President Trump calls old friends on one of his iPhones to gossip, gripe or solicit their latest take on how he is doing, American intelligence reports indicate that Chinese spies are often listening — and putting to use invaluable insights into how to best work the president and affect administration policy, current and former American officials said.
Mr. Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure, and they have told him that Russian spies are routinely eavesdropping on the calls, as well. But aides say the voluble president, who has been pressured into using his secure White House landline more often these days, has still refused to give up his iPhones. White House officials say they can only hope he refrains from discussing classified information when he is on them.
Mr. Trump’s use of his iPhones was detailed by several current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss classified intelligence and sensitive security arrangements. The officials said they were doing so not to undermine Mr. Trump, but out of frustration with what they considered the president’s casual approach to electronic security.
American spy agencies, the officials said, had learned that China and Russia were eavesdropping on the president’s cellphone calls from human sources inside foreign governments and intercepting communications between foreign officials.
(Trump’s nationalism shows no regard for the security of this nation from its authoritarian adversaries.)
Retired Army General Stanley A. McChrystal writes At 63, I Threw Away My Prized Portrait of Robert E. Lee (“I was raised to venerate Lee the principled patriot—but I want no association with Lee the defender of slavery”):
On a Sunday morning in 2017 I took down his picture, and by afternoon it was in the alley with other rubbish awaiting transport to the local landfill for final burial. Hardly a hero’s end.
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A mythology grew around Lee and the cause he served. For many, Lee’s qualities and accomplishments, already impressive, gained godlike proportions. This was the Lee I first came to know: a leader whose flaws and failures were sanded off, the very human figure recast as a two-dimensional hero whose shadow had eclipsed the man from whom it came.
But as time passed, the myth was reexamined. The darker side of Lee’s legacy, and the picture in my office, now communicated ideas about race and equality with which I sought no association. Down it came.
(Good for him – Lee was an enemy of the United States, and his failed effort succeeded only in bringing four years of death, continued slavery, and treason. See alsoLee’s Reputation Can’t Be Redeemed.)
President Trump is a committed liar, as even his most dependable supporters openly concede. The Washington Post columnist and former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen recently wrote that “the president lies all the time,” and he included this candid assertion in a piece favorable to the president. A serious question is whether Trump’s lies have put him at risk of impeachment.
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Some lies, however, may represent a dereliction of constitutional duty, and these cannot be left to the political marketplace.
As Philip Bobbitt shows in his supplement to Charles Black’s landmark study of impeachment, a “conspiracy to pervert the course of a presidential election” by “acting in league with a hostile foreign power” is clearly a basis for removal. So, too, is any false statement made to impede an investigation into this kind of conspiracy—including false statements to the public. A clear precedent is the article of impeachment on obstruction passed by the House Judiciary Committee in the proceedings against Richard Nixon. It included a charge that Nixon had made “false and misleading public statements,” which were “contrary to his trust as president and subversive of constitutional government.”
It is entirely possible that Trump has made “false and misleading public statements” of exactly that sort.
President Trump can’t be happy that after another steep sell-off on Wall Street, the U.S. stock market has now erased all of its gains this year. Trump revels in the market highs, and the recent slide comes at a precarious moment for Republicans hoping economic tail windslimit their midterm losses.
But a less splashy piece of news Wednesday arguably should be more worrying for the GOP: The Federal Reserve reports that wages are moving higher but only at a “modest to moderate” clip, despite the tight labor market.
The finding is the latest piece of evidence suggesting the strong economic growth evident in headline numbers isn’t trickling down to everybody. And it follows a new poll by Bankrate.com showing six in 10 Americans say they’re financially no better off today than they were two years ago — a number that climbs to nearly eight in 10 for those earning less than $30,000 a year.
Deep in the Maya forests of Mexico lives the rarely-seen Vampyrum spectrum—the false vampire bat. Little is known about these carnivorous mammals, as their nocturnal lifestyle and remote habitats make them exceedingly difficult to study.
That didn’t deter biologist Rodrigo Medellin and photographer Anand Varma. In Jason Jaacks’s short documentary, In Search of Tzotz, Medellin, Professor of Ecology at the University of Mexico, and Varma, on assignment for National Geographic, spent months scouring ancient ruins and labyrinthine caves in the Yucatan for traces of the mysterious winged creatures, whom the Maya called Tzotz.
“Through Dr. Medellin’s research and Anand’s incredible visual storytelling skills, we witnessed several new behaviors never before seen by science,” Jaacks told The Atlantic. “We spent quite a bit of time crammed in a small tunnel inside an 800-year-old Mayan temple, in near-pitch darkness, filming the False Woolly Vampire bat roost. To hear a bat with a 2.5-foot wingspan fly over you in tight quarters was utterly amazing…Being in the presence of these bats is an awe-inspiring feeling.”
If he’s focused on people over party, then why is he Republican Szerlong? Why not Citizen Szerlong, or Independent Szerlong, or Write-in Szerlong, etc.?
Here’s why: Szerlong would take all the benefits that the Party of Trump would give him, and he’d caucus with them, and vote with them, but he doesn’t want the stigma that such service to Trumpism would understandably bring. (If Szerlong somehow won this race as a Republican and took an independent line from Trumpism, his own party would make sure he was a one-termer.)
Run under Trumpism, serve under Trumpism, bear the stain of Trumpism – a stain that no false claims of independence could possibly eradicate.
Retired UW-Whitewater professor Brian Kevin Beck contends that Kopper shouldn’t leave [the] Chancellor post. (Candidly, there’s a chance that his defense is so bad that it’s an intentional parody of a defense. It’s hard to believe anyone who served on a worthy faculty could reason so poorly.)
Beck argues that (1) misconduct involving Kopper’s public appointee (and spouse) is not relevant to her work, (2) that she failed in no part of her job, and that – by analogy – (3) Kopper should no more resign from her role than should an avowed and repeated racist.
These contentions are easily addressed —
Relevancy and responsibility:
Multiple allegations of harassment and assault at UW-Whitewater are more than simply a matter of a spouse‘s misconduct toward others (now numbering five complainants). They reveal the failure of the appointing official.
Pete Hill was no ordinary, unconnected spouse: he was 1) appointed publicly 2) by this chancellor, Beverly Kopper 3) to attend public events 4) present often in chancellor’s office and 5) about whom the chancellor kept investigations secret for months despite knowing of allegations against Hill, and (6) in an office where other appointees who are alleged to have known of Hill’s misconduct have been the points of contact for public records releases about that very misconduct.
Beck Tries to Defend Kopper by Comparing Her to Racists: Beck believes that Kopper should linger as avowed racists Earl Butz of the Nixon Administration and baseball player John Rocker should have stayed around. He writes that
Former Secretary of the Department of Agriculture Earl Butz, who served in the Nixon Administration, allegedly told a racist joke. For this, he had to step down. But wasn’t he doing a difficult job well? Was the ensuing disorganization worth it?
Retired baseball star John Rocker allegedly talked trash about NYC subway riders (“a queer with AIDS…welfare mothers…foreigners”). But did this spewing disqualify his undoubted social contribution? Can he play ball and thus entertain thousands?
There’s your vulgar act utilitarianism – balancing unjust injury to some against a supposed gain for others. Beck thinks that these men had a positive social contribution – and to that the answer is – no and never. Reliance on these supposed ‘contributions’ is nothing more than reliance on anti-social bigotry.
Of federal bureaucrats and athletes, one expects both skill and decency, and there is no acceptable balancing of one against the other.
On Social Disruption: Beck contends that replacing Kopper will cause “social upset and waste.”
On the contrary, her failures as a supervisory official have caused social upset; doing the right thing – and only by doing the right thing – will UW-Whitewater find itself on the right path (of social harmony).
Americans have developed – on the basis of individual rights and individual dignity – the most extraordinary society in human history. Those few who stand against this tradition are often the very cause of individual hardship and social disruption. A few scheming leaders who place themselves over the individuals to whom they owe service and humility may be assured that thousands of years of moral and philosophical teaching stand against their selfish way.
Kopper’s obstinacy has exacerbated injuries to individuals and to the professionalism that places individuals first.
Beyond all this, Hyer Hall should consider how weak its position is: a supposed champion who offers a defense that relies on the careers of misfits and bigots to argue for Kopper.
It’s a strange – and ethically perverse – defense not worth having.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty-two. Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 5:57 PM, for 10h 37m 33s of daytime. The moon is full today.
Whitewater’s Tech Park Board is scheduled to meet at 8 AM.
UN Day marks the anniversary of the entry into force in 1945 of the UN Charter. With the ratification of this founding document by the majority of its signatories, including the five permanent members of the Security Council, the United Nations officially came into being.”
Recommended for reading in full — Why Trump’s supporters will believe any lie he tells, Trump’s closing argument for 2018 elections is dark and divisive, how Russian runs its disinformation against American elections, Georgia Republican bemoans opponent’s supporters exercising their right to vote, and video of the amateur astronomer who found a lost NASA satellite —
Part of Trump’s defense against his various investigatory pursuers is to persuade his followers that all politicians are corrupt liars, which is one reason the “Lock her up” chant has been so devastating. If people believe all politicians are corrupt, going after Trump becomes political persecution, or a “witch hunt.”
Trump’s final aim isn’t simply to escape accountability for his crimes. The final aim is to replace democracy itself with a form of autocracy, under which he and his cronies are forever unaccountable for criminal actions. Normalizing lies and flooding the zone shatters the public sphere upon which democracy depends. Without that shared reality, Mueller poses no threat to Trump. Similarly, without a shared public sphere, Trump doesn’t have to worry about resistance. As Yale professor Jason Stanley says, without truth it is impossible to speak truth to power, so there is only power.
The United States is on a steep learning curve. Because truth, factuality, and our very public sphere are under attack, our democracy (and republic) is in danger. The attack is devastatingly effective, partly because we have never experienced anything like this and thus are largely unprepared. Our task now is to save our public sphere. The way to do this was demonstrated by how the Chileans got out of the far more extreme Pinochet regime and reinstated democracy: All sides opposed to authoritarianism and committed to democracy worked together. That means they started actually talking, and listening, to one another. In the United States, this would mean that all groups that claim to be committed to continuing our democratic republic, from supporters of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Never Trump Republicans, would need to join forces. We will likely soon find out if the nation is up to the task.
With the election just 14 days away, Trump is campaigning hard. He has four rallies scheduled this week alone—his other stops are central Wisconsin, Charlotte, and southern Illinois. His closing argument is a familiar one. Following the blueprint that brought him to victory in 2016, he’s relying on the power of immigration fears, enhanced by blatantly false rhetoric.
For example, Trump claimed he had begun constructing his border wall; he has not. He claimed Democrats are for open borders; for the most part, they are not, nor is Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, against whom Trump was campaigning. He claimed Democrats were to blame for asylum seekers traveling to the United States; the migrants are fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries. Trump also claimed—without evidence—that Democrats started the “caravan” of refugees currently wending its way northward through Mexico.
If that were true, and there’s no evidence for it, it would be a colossal blunder. The specter of a column of Hispanics marching northward in the closing weeks of the election has provided Trump just the talking point he wants to whip up his supporters, and on Monday night he showed how he intends to use it.
Trump covered lots of other ground in the speech, of course. There was a strange, and coolly received, riff about Hurricane Harvey. (The president continues to believe, for some reason, that people went out in pleasure craft to enjoy the storm; he also complained that the storm was expensive, and “I’m paying for it.”) There was also an apparently bogus promise to cut taxes 10 percent in the coming week.
But that’s a reminder that almost a year ago, when Trump rammed a tax cut through Congress, it was supposed to be the heart of the GOP’s pitch to voters in 2018. Instead, it’s been a total flop, which is why Trump was out beating the immigration drum once more.
The branch of active measures the Russians call “Project Lakhta” has been running since “mid-2014,” and works through some dozen Russian entities, of which the best-known probably was the “Internet Research Agency.” It, quasi-“news” and other organizations employed hundreds of people, with a global budget of the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars, U.S. officials say.
Who pays for it?
The money comes through a company called Concord, which is controlled by a billionaire ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the Justice Department’s allegations.
“Our fifth anniversary is coming up next May … and I am hoping we can make it to then,” he said.
….
How does it work?
Worker bees within Project Lakhta disguise themselves as Americans and insert themselves into conversations on social media. They create Facebook and Twitter identities, for example, that make them appear to be Americans. They use technical means to disguise the fact that they are logging in from St. Petersburg, Russia.
Court documents unsealed in February described how influence-mongers within the Internet Research Agency set up virtual private networks and used American email accounts, along with some stolen identities of Americans, to plausibly pose as Americans, disguising the fact that they were using workstations in St. Petersburg.
Other people working in the disinformation project bought display ads, in some cases, through “third-party intermediaries,” according to court documents. So disinformation practitioners could get into an American user’s Facebook feed at least those two ways: by pretending to be real users or by having paid for ads.
Facebook and Twitter have vowed to clamp down on fake accounts and they say they’ll mandate more disclosure about who pays for political ads.
Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State and the Republican nominee for Georgia governor, expressed at a ticketed campaign event that his Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams’ voter turnout operation “continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote,” according to audio obtained by Rolling Stone.
An attendee of the “Georgia Professionals for Kemp” event says they recorded 21 minutes and 12 seconds of the evening, held last Friday at the Blind Pig Parlour Bar near Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. As proof of their attendance, the source shared with Rolling Stone a receipt of their donation, which granted access to the gathering.
….
On Tuesday morning, a member of the Kemp campaign confirmed that the event took place, but the campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the specific remarks. On Monday evening, a Facebook page for the event was removed from public view. Candice Broce, the press secretary for the Georgia Secretary of State, told Rolling Stone that she does not respond to campaign-related inquiries because she represents the office.
It is fairly typical for a political candidate expressing confidence in his campaign to lament his opponent’s efforts to increase turnout. But Kemp’s position as Georgia’s Secretary of State clouds his statements. While it is not uncommon for someone in such a position to be on a ballot during an election that he or she oversees — they do have to run for re-election, after all — the state’s top elections official speaking of “concern” about increased early and absentee voting raises further questions about a conflict of interest.
