Good morning.

A new month begins with showers and thunderstorms in Whitewater and a high of sixty-one.  Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 6:35 PM, for 11h 42m 12s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1890, an act of Congress creates Yosemite National Park.

Recommended for reading in full —  The end of GOP conservativism, why Trump can’t win the war on demography, working Americans are worse off under Trump, the Senate’s Kavanaugh hearing was about shielding Kavanaugh, and video on how we may get to Alpha Centauri  —

Conservative Eliot A. Cohen writes The Republican Party Abandons Conservatism:

There has always been a dark side to American conservatism, much of it originating in the antebellum curse of a society, large parts of which favored slavery and the extermination of America’s native population, the exclusion of immigrants from American life, and discrimination against Catholics and Jews. Many of us had hoped that the civil-rights achievements of the mid-20th century (in which Republicans were indispensable partners), changing social norms regarding women, and that rising levels of education had eliminated the germs that produced secession, lynching, and Indian massacres. Instead, those microbes simply went into dormancy, and now, in the presence of Trump, erupt again like plague buboes—bitter, potent and vile.

….

It is impossible at this moment to envisage the Republican Party coming back. Like a brontosaurus with some brain-eating disorder it might lumber forward in the direction dictated by its past, favoring deregulation of businesses here and standing up to a rising China there, but there will be no higher mental functioning at work. And so it will plod into a future in which it is detested in a general way by women, African Americans, recent immigrants, and the educated young as well as progressives pure and simple. It might stumble into a political tar pit and cease to exist or it might survive as a curious, decaying relic of more savage times and more primitive instincts, lashing out and crushing things but incapable of much else.

Intellectuals do not build American political parties. Politicians do. The most we can do is point out the truths as we see them, and cheer on those who can do the necessary work. It is supposedly inconceivable that a genuinely conservative party could emerge, but then again, who thought the United States could be where it is now? And progressives, no less than bereft conservatives, should want this to happen, because the conservative virtues remain real virtues, the conservative insights real insights, and the conservative temperament an indispensable internal gyro keeping a country stable and sane. “Cometh the hour, cometh the man” runs the proverb. The hour is upon the country: Conservatives wait for the men (or more likely women) to meet it.

William H. Frey contends Trump Can’t Win the War on Demography:

Since the early days of his campaign, from his proposal to build a wall along the Mexican border to his discredited committee on voter fraud, President Trump has declared war on America’s changing demography. His administration has followed through on that strategy with a proposal to add a question to the 2020 census asking about citizenship. If the question remains on the form, millions of households, particularly Hispanic and Asian-American, could skip the census, leading to an overrepresentation of white Americans during this once-a-decade count.

Six lawsuits seeking to remove the proposed question are moving through the federal courts, with the first trial likely to take place this fall.

If it is added to the census form, the citizenship question will distort our understanding of who resides in the country. What this selective underenumeration will not do is make America’s growing racial minority populations disappear. The losers from this undercount include members of Mr. Trump’s older white base, who will suffer from lost investments in a younger generation, whose successes and contributions to the economy will be necessary to keep America great.

The demographic trends make this plain. America’s white population is growing tepidly because of substantial declines among younger whites. Since 2000, the white population under the age of 18 has shrunk by seven million, and declines are projected among white 20-somethings and 30-somethings over the next two decades and beyond. This is a result of both low fertility rates among young whites and modest white immigration — a trend that is not likely to change despite Mr. Trump’s wish for more immigrants from Norway.

Robert J. Shapiro writes Don’t be fooled: Working Americans are worse off under Trump:

Another blow to the White House’s preferred economic narrative: The current earnings decline is a new development. Using the same measure, real median weekly earnings increased substantially during Barack Obama’s final 18 months as president.

Before adjusting for inflation, median weekly earnings increased during Obama’s last 18 months from $803 in the third quarter of 2015 to $849 in the last quarter of 2016. People’s average weekly earnings thus increased $46, or 5.73 percent, before adjusting for inflation. Over the same months, cumulative inflation from July 2015 to December 2016 was 1.12 percent, so the real earnings of a typical working person clearly increased. By how much? Adjust the median weekly earnings in December 2016 of $849 for the 1.08 percent inflation over the preceding 18 months, which comes to $838.82. In real terms, the weekly earnings of a typical employed American increased $35.82, or 4.5 percent, over Obama’s last 18 months in office, growing from $803 in the third quarter of 2015 to $838.82 in the fourth quarter of 2016.

In Ronald Reagan’s succinct terms, average working Americans are worse off under the Trump presidency than they were under Obama’s. Yes, low unemployment is something to applaud, but there might be a good reason that so many who have jobs aren’t clapping.

Matt Thompson writes This Was Never About Finding Out the Truth (“Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate was a lesson in power—who wields it, and at whose expense”):

The all-male body of Republicans leading the Senate Judiciary Committee were attuned enough to the paper-thin foundation of their credibility that they asked a female prosecutor to lead in the questioning on Thursday. But after Brett Kavanaugh demonstrated his willingness to wield power, to bark derisively at Senator Amy Klobuchar, the woman who was questioning him, the men on the committee grew more confident in their own. “Boy, you all want power,” seethed Senator Lindsey Graham, reclaiming his time. “God, I hope you never get it.”

“A conservatism … organized around the fears and grievances of prominent men, and seemingly indifferent to the legitimacy of certain kinds of female anger—will end up defining all its constituent parts, all its causes and concerns, as subordinate to the defense of male impunity,” wrote Ross Douthat in The New York Times. “If [Kavanaugh’s] accuser testifies publicly and credibly, if her allegation isn’t undermined by a week of scrutiny and testimony, if it remains unprovable but squarely in the realm of plausibility, then all the abortion opponents who were supporting him should hope that his nomination is withdrawn—with, ideally, a woman nominated in his place.”

….

How, against this backdrop, can the fiction persist that this spectacle has been in pursuit of truth? If truth, rather than power, were the object, we would have to look more carefully at the patchwork of claims about Kavanaugh’s temperancethat his classmates contradict. If truth were the object, we would have to speak more plainly about a band of men gathered for the second time in recent history to speed another man past charges of sexual misbehavior into our nation’s highest court. And we would have to stop pretending that one of the main engines of our politics at this moment is not who holds power over women—not merely over women’s rights or bodies, but over the very reality they inhabit.

So, How Will We Get to Alpha Centauri?:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of fifty-one.  Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 6:37 PM, for 11h 45m 05s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 70.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1938, the Munich Agreement temporarily sates Nazi Germany’s territorial ambitions: “permitting Nazi Germany’s annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia, along the country’s borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation, the “Sudetenland”, was coined. The agreement was signed in the German city of Munich early on 30 September 1938 (although dated 29 September) after being negotiated upon by the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future ownership of the Sudetenland in the face of demands made by Adolf Hitler. The agreement was signed by the government leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, but not Czechoslovakia, who were not invited to the conference, even though the Sudetenland was of immense strategic importance to Czechoslovakia as most of its border defenses and banks were situated there,[1][2] as well as heavy industrial districts.[3] The Agreement was soon followed by dismemberment of the Czech state.  Today, it is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement, and the term has become “a byword for the futility of appeasing expansionist totalitarian states”.[4]”

Recommended for reading in full —  Who’s left behind after the Great Recession, Voter ID suppresses the vote, the most hardcore Trumpists are secular ones, a reminder of the WEDC’s corruption,  and video revealing the secrets on the world’s best green tea   —

Lauren Bauer and Jay Shambaugh write Workers with low levels of education still haven’t recovered from the Great Recession:

Those with less education were disproportionately harmed by the Great Recession (figure 2).2 We see that graduate degree holders—and to a lesser extent bachelor’s degree holders—experienced smaller reductions in employment during the recession. For those with no postsecondary degree, the employment rate gap in 2011 was 5 percent or more, while it was just 2 percent for those with a bachelor’s degree.

Recovery from the bottom of the trough occurred earlier for those with more education. The first upturn among graduate degree holders was between 2009 and 2010, between 2010 and 2011 for those with a bachelor’s degree. By 2018, only those with bachelor’s or graduate degrees had returned to their demographically adjusted pre-recession employment rate.

The recession was particularly hard on those without a high school diploma. In 2010 and 2011, this group had an employment-to-population ratio that was fully six percentage points lower than in 2007. Those with a high school diploma and/or some college followed a similar trend through this period, with a slightly shallower trough during the worst of the recession than those who didn’t graduate from high school. In recent years, workers without a postsecondary degree have seen improving employment outcomes, though a gap remains.3

Not only have less-educated groups not recovered as fully from the recession, they started at lower levels of employment rates prior to the crisis such that at this point, amongst those aged 25 and higher, 72.5 percent of those with a bachelor’s degree work compared to just 55 percent of those with only a high school degree.

Cameron Smith reports Voter ID linked to lower turnout in Wisconsin, other states; students, people of color, elderly most affected:

Challengers to the voter ID law had argued that hundreds of thousands of valid Wisconsin voters — many of them Hispanic, African-American and students — could be barred from casting ballots because of the identification requirement.

Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studied voter turnout in Wisconsin after the state implemented a voter ID requirement. Mayer’s study, commissioned by the Dane County clerk’s office, concluded that between 7.8 and 15.5 percent of eligible voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties had been deterred from voting due to confusion over voter ID requirements or lack of proper identification.

A UW-Madison study commissioned by Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell in 2017 tried to measure the effect. The study estimated that thousands of registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties were deterred or prevented from voting because of the photo ID requirement in the 2016 presidential election — a situation that more heavily affected low-income people and African-Americans. The survey was mailed to 2,400 registered voters; 293 were returned.

Based on the sampling weight, UW-Madison political science professor Kenneth Mayer concluded that between 7.8 and 15.5 percent of eligible voters in these two counties had been deterred from voting due to confusion over voter ID requirements or lack of proper identification. That equated to between 11,701 and 23,252 people, the study concluded.

Trump won Wisconsin by 22,748 votes.

Emily Ekins writes The Liberalism of the Religious Right (“Conservatives who attend church have more moderate views than secular conservatives on issues like race, immigration and identity”):

President Trump has been a regular speaker at recent Values Voter Summits, and for this year’s event, he will send Vice President Mike Pence to rally the religious right. This will not surprise many people on the left who have questioned the authenticity of social conservatives’ values and their place in the Trump-Pence coalition. They think the religious right has compromised its Christian values in order to attain political power for Republicans.

But new data suggest the left may have a lot more common ground with some of these conservatives than it thinks. In a Democracy Fund Voter Study Group report, I found that religious conservatives are far more supportive of diversity and immigration than secular conservatives. Religion appears to actually be moderating conservative attitudes, particularly on some of the most polarizing issues of our time: race, immigration and identity.

….

Many progressives hope that encouraging conservatives to disengage from religion will make them more tolerant. But if the data serve as any guide, doing so may in fact make it even harder for left and right to meet in a more compassionate middle.

(See also Ross Douthat’s Conservatism After Christianity. It’s true that many prominent evangelical leaders are Trumpists, but the most fervid Trumpists among the rank-and-file are secular rightists. They’ve replaced religion with an aggressive, bigoted nationalism. Secularism, like religion, tends in more than one direction. Those who think that secularism necessarily tends toward the left are simply wrong, as good data show.)

One Wisconsin Now reminds of what the WEDC has done to Wisconsin:

The first four years after @ScottWalker‘s WEDC popped up $700 million in grants went Walker campaign donors. Sixty percent of all handouts went to Scott Walker donors. Our full report from 2015. https://t.co/KiSayMGTPG pic.twitter.com/mwSLnswQ6g

— One Wisconsin Now (@onewisconsinnow) August 30, 2018

Learn The Secret Behind the World’s Best Green Tea:

In Hangzhou, China, there’s a local saying that frying is always better than boiling. So that’s exactly how the world-famous Dragon Well tea gets prepared. Fan Shenghua’s family has made this special green tea for over one thousand years, but he fears the next generation will not carry it forward. For now, he’s keeping the unique methodology alive in his Tongwu Village home.

Good morning.

 Saturday in Whitewater will be increasingly cloudy with a high of fifty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 6:38 PM, for 11h 47m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 80.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1957, the Packers dedicate a new stadium: “On this date, the Green Bay Packers dedicated City Stadium, now known as Lambeau Field, and defeated the Chicago Bears, 21-17. In the capacity crowd of 32,132 was Vice President Richard Nixon.”

Recommended for reading in full —  Wisconsin DOT pays twice for work, analysis indicates Wisconsin lower Wisconsin job creation, Thomas Paine on Donald Trump, toxic waterways in North Carolina, and video telling about a dog and a shaky bridge  —

Raquel Rutledge reports Investigation: Wisconsin DOT knowingly paid twice on stretch of roadwork for Zoo Interchange:

As a percentage of the nearly $200 million budget for rebuilding a chunk of Wisconsin’s busiest freeway, $404,250 might seem insignificant.

But what if the money were paid by Wisconsin taxpayers for work that was never done? And what if the state knew it when the bill was paid?

That’s what happened when contractors for the Milwaukee Zoo Interchange project double billed the state for 15,000 cubic yards of gravel, enough to help pave one lane of highway for five miles.

Although a project engineer with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation discovered the discrepancy in advance, and alerted supervisors, those in charge insisted the contractor be paid the additional money anyway, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has found.

Joy Powers reports Analyst Finds Gov. Scott Walker May Have Cost Wisconsin 80,000 Jobs:

When Gov. Scott Walker mounted his first gubernatorial campaign he made a bold claim: that during his first term as governor he would create 250,000 jobs for Wisconsinites. He is just now nearing that figure after nearly two terms on the job.

Most economists believe that governors have a limited impact on how many jobs are created in a given state. That being said, local economist Bruce Thompson [professor emeritus at the Rader School of Business at the Milwaukee School of Engineering] believes Walker’s policies may have actually resulted in a loss of 80,000 jobs in Wisconsin.

Thompson created an algorithm which essentially calculates how many jobs would have been created in Wisconsin, regardless of who was governor. He did this by using data from several states in the upper Midwest: Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. The data comes from labor reports from each state, collected since 1990.

(Job creation, often touted by the Walker Admin and WEDC, does not consider the quality of the jobs created. Nonetheless, it’s notable that even by a common Walker and WEDC metric, there’s reason to question claims of success.)

Clive Irving writes Thomas Paine Knew How to Deal With a Mad King Like Trump:

America has become careless with its democracy. So careless, it seems, that it is allowing the return of the very institution that it had to remove in the course of its birth as a free nation: an absolute monarchy.

We have a man in the White House with all the inclinations of an unhinged monarch who on a daily basis acts as though he is above the law. And, as though in a medieval court, he is surrounded by a conniving bunch of supplicants and robber barons.

It is a good time, therefore, to remember that the principles of American democracy were crafted as a response to the outrages of kingly powers, in the person of George III. One of the authors of those principles described the threat that had to be faced:

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; ‘tis dearness only that gives everything its value.”

Reading this, Washington, declared: “A few more of such flaming arguments will not leave numbers at a loss to decide on the propriety of separation.”

Rebecca Leber reports Two Weeks After Florence, We Still Don’t Know How Toxic Carolina Waterways Are:

Coal ash is toxic stuff. A combustion byproduct, it is a concentrated mix of heavy metals, arsenic, mercury, and other unpleasant materials typically held in landfills and ponds that have historically been monitored by little federal oversight. So far, the daily sampling the Waterkeeper Alliance, a water advocacy organization, has taken from three flood plains, and what Lisenby has seen—gray, soupy coal refuse turning the water into thick muck and the floating islands of coal ash—does not reconcile with the preliminary report from Duke Energy, one of the largest utilities in the country.

Duke Energy admitted that last week the floodwaters from Florence had breached at least one dam responsible for preventing one of its coal ash ponds at a retired Sutton coal plant in Wilmington from flowing into the Cape Fear River. Days later, Duke Energy announced that its own water sampling showed negligible impact to the river.

Duke claimed that the floating islands of coal ash—in some cases amounting to 180 dump trucks worth of ashy material—is relatively harmless. Even though Duke’s testing at the L.V. Sutton Power Station showed elevated levels of arsenic and heavy metals, they were all within state requirements. While the state is still waiting for its own lab results, activists have raised questions about the accuracy of Duke’s testing.

Galloping Gertie and a Three-Legged Dog…

Good morning.

 Friday in Whitewater will see morning showers with a high of fifty-five.  Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 6:40 PM, for 11h 50m 51s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, Ted Williams becomes the last player to hit over .400 (he finished the season at .406).

Recommended for reading in full —  ABA recommends Kavanaugh nomination delay, Walker Admin confiscates millions from disabled, what Erik Prince talked about with Russians, Madison nurse charged with injuring babies, video of the world’s largest battery factory  —

Manu Raju reports American Bar Association: Delay Kavanaugh until FBI investigates assault allegations:

The American Bar Association is calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to halt the consideration of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh until an FBI investigation is completed into the sexual assault allegations that have roiled his nomination.

In a strongly worded letter obtained by CNN Thursday, the organization said it is making the extraordinary request “because of the ABA’s respect for the rule of law and due process under law,” siding with concerns voiced by Senate Democrats since Christine Blasey Ford’s decades-old allegations became public.

“The basic principles that underscore the Senate’s constitutional duty of advice and consent on federal judicial nominees require nothing less than a careful examination of the accusations and facts by the FBI,” said Robert Carlson, president of the organization, in a Thursday night letter addressed to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

“Each appointment to our nation’s Highest Court (as with all others) is simply too important to rush to a vote,” Carlson wrote. “Deciding to proceed without conducting additional investigation would not only have a lasting impact on the Senate’s reputation, but it will also negatively affect the great trust necessary for the American people to have in the Supreme Court.”

Daniel Hatcher writes Scott Walker confiscates millions from disabled and orphaned foster children:

Gov. Scott Walker’s administration has been partnering with a private company to search for foster children who are disabled or have dead birth parents — in order to take their money for state revenue. The state is even confiscating veterans’ benefits from foster children whose parents died in the military.

Contract documents obtained by public records request explain the practice. A 2011 contract signed with MAXIMUS Inc. shows that Wisconsin has collaborated with the company to maximize revenue obtained from foster children. In part of the contract focused on Milwaukee County, MAXIMUS has helped the state increase the number of children classified as disabled and to locate children with deceased birth parents — not to provide more services to the children, but so the state can take their resources.

In Milwaukee County alone, the Walker administration has been taking between $3 million and over $4 million in survivor and disability benefits from foster children each year — and the state has been taking millions more from foster children in other jurisdictions.

MAXIMUS has helped the state apply for the children’s Social Security disability (SSI) and and survivor benefits, and helped the state insert itself as representative payee to gain control of the children’s money. As representative payee, the state is obligated to use or conserve the children’s money only in their individualized best interests. But instead, the state abuses its position of trust and diverts the children’s money to state coffers — taking the children’s funds to repay state foster care costs that the children rightfully have no legal obligation to pay for.

Betsy Woodruff and Erin Banco report Revealed: What Erik Prince and Moscow’s Money Man Discussed in That Infamous Seychelles Meeting:

Joint U.S.-Russian raids to kill top terrorists. Teamwork between an American government agency and a sanctioned Russian fund. Moscow pouring money into the Midwest.

These are just a few of the ideas the head of a Russian sovereign wealth fund touched on during his meeting with former Blackwater head Erik Prince in the Seychelles, just weeks before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a memo exclusively reviewed by The Daily Beast.

The meeting between Prince, an influential Trump ally, and Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the sanctioned fund, took place on Jan. 11, 2017, at the Four Seasons Hotel in a bar overlooking the Indian Ocean. George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who advises the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, was also present.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has looked into the meeting as part of his larger investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. And nearly a year after the meeting, Prince told Congress his discussion with Dmitriev was just happenstance and took place “over a beer.” Prince also said he did not attend the meeting as a representative of the Trump team.

Shamane Mills reports NICU Nurse Charged With Injuring Several Infants In Madison Hospital:

A former nurse accused of injuring 10 newborns at a Wisconsin hospital has been charged with child abuse.

A criminal complaint filed in Dane County charges 43-year-old Christopher Kaphaem with 19 felonies relating to injuries on infants born prematurely from March 2017 through early 2018.

….

According to the complaint, a pediatrician with the University of Wisconsin Child Protection program reviewed the records of 40 infants who had been in the neonatal intensive care unit, reviewing medical histories, blood samples and bone mineralization samples to rule out medical causes for injuries to infants.

Investigators later identified a total of 10 infants that Kaphaem had cared for with injuries consistent with child abuse.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says five infants suffered serious injuries. The charges include intentional child abuse and abuse of a patient causing great bodily harm to babies. The injuries ranged from bruises to a broken arm and a skull fracture.

Kaphaem worked in UnityPoint Health-Meriter’s NICU since October of 2016 and worked overnight. Fellow nurses told detectives that Kaphaem would often close the door to do an infant’s care exam.

According to detectives who interviewed nurses who worked with Kaphaem, he had once told a fellow nurse “he was happy to work in the NICU because he would not have to deal with patients talking back to him.”

Get a look at the world’s largest battery factory:

Get a look at the world’s largest battery factory ? pic.twitter.com/yiLp14T7Ho

— CNET (@CNET) September 28, 2018

Good morning.

 Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of sixty-seven.  Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 6:42 PM, for 11h 53m 43s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, the 29th Wisconsin Infantry musters in: “The 29th Wisconsin Infantry mustered in. It would go on to participate in the battles of Port Gibson, Champion Hill, the Sieges of Vicksburg and Jackson, the Red River Campaign, the siege of Spanish Fort and the capture of Fort Blakely, Alabama.”

Recommended for reading in full —  New techniques of Russian propaganda, Rand Paul fails to lessen Russian sanctions, suspected Russian assassin was a military agent, not a ‘tourist,’ the new Federal Reserve chairman sees risks of tariffs, and video of Hindu bagpipers in New Jersey —

Kevin Roose reports Is a New Russian Meddling Tactic Hiding in Plain Sight?:

To an untrained eye, USAReally might look like any other fledgling news organization vying for attention in a crowded media landscape. Its website publishes a steady stream of stories on hot-button political issues like race, immigration and income inequality. It has reader polls, a video section and a daily podcast.

But this is no ordinary media start-up. USAReally is based in Moscow and has received funding from the Federal News Agency, a Russian media conglomerate with ties to the Internet Research Agency, the “troll farm” whose employees were indicted by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

Caught flat-footed by the influence campaigns of 2016, intelligence agencies and tech companies in the United States have spent months looking for hidden Russian footprints ahead of the midterm elections.

USAReally’s website, which began publishing in May, does not advertise its Russian roots. But in many ways, it is operating in plain sight.

Andrew Desiderio reports Rand Paul’s Push to Lift Some Russia Sanctions Fizzles (“‘It was soundly defeated for obvious reasons,’ Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) told The Daily Beast”):

Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) push to lift U.S. sanctions on Russian lawmakers failed on Wednesday, with his colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee questioning the motives behind the proposal.

An aide said Paul was the only lawmaker to vote for his amendment, which would scrap U.S. sanctions on members of the Russian Federal Assembly if Moscow agrees to lift its sanctions on American lawmakers. The 20 other senators on the foreign relations panel voted against it. The Daily Beast first reported that Paul would be introducing the amendment.

The Kentucky lawmaker’s push to normalize U.S.-Russia relations comes a month after he traveled to Moscow and met with Russian lawmakers. During that trip, he invited members of Russia’s legislature to visit the U.S. But many of them are subject to U.S. sanctions and are therefore unable to travel to the United States.

(Hard to overstate what a despicable fellow traveler Rand Paul has become. See also Appeasement Isn’t Peace.)

The Committee to Investigate Russia writes Skripal Poison Suspect is GRU Colonel:

Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, the two Russian men suspected of poisoning former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in England on March 4th, went on RT earlier this month to claim they were in the fitness industry and tourists in Salisbury on holiday the weekend in question.

In fact, Boshirov is really Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a Russian military intelligence (GRU) officer.

Online investigative outlet Bellingcat and The Insider uncovered the truth:

The suspect using the cover identity of “Ruslan Boshirov” is in fact Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a highly decorated GRU officer bestowed with Russia’s highest state award, Hero of the Russian Federation. Following Bellingcat’s own identification, multiple sources familiar with the person and/or the investigation have confirmed the suspect’s identity.

This finding eliminates any remaining doubt that the two suspects in the Novichok poisonings were in fact Russian officers operating on a clandestine government mission.

While civilians in Russia can generally own more than one passport, no civilian – or even an intelligence service officer on a personal trip – can cross the state border under a fake identity. The discovery also highlights the extent of the effort – and public diplomacy risk – Russia has taken to protect the identities of the officers. President Putin publicly vouched that “Boshirov” and “Petrov” are civilians. As it is established practice that the awards Hero of the Russian Federation are handed out by the Russian president personally, it is highly likely that Vladimir Putin would have been familiar with the identity of Colonel Chepiga, given that only a handful of officers receive this award each year.

(…)

Bellingcat has contacted confidentially a former Russian military officer of similar rank as Colonel Chepiga, in order to receive a reaction to what we found. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed surprise that at least one of the operatives engaged in the operation in Salisbury had the rank of colonel. Even more surprising was the suspects’ prior award of the highest military recognition.

In our source’s words, an operation of this sort would have typically required a lower-ranked, “field operative” with a military rank of “no higher than captain.” The source further surmised that to send a highly decorated colonel back to a field job would be highly extraordinary, and would imply that “the job was ordered at the highest level.”

The Telegraph:

The true identity of his accomplice Alexander Petrov remains unclear, but The Telegraph has established that he was travelling under his real first name and had only changed his surname to an alias.

Counter-terrorism police and the security services are understood to know his real name.

Skripal Suspect Boshirov Identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga (Bellingcat)

Skripal ‘hitman’ unmasked as GRU colonel awarded Russia’s highest military honour by Vladimir Putin

Tory Newmyer writes Trump and his Fed chair present conflicting views on trade:

[Federal Reserve Chairman] Powell — measured to the point of hedging on several key fronts, businesslike and brief in his answers — pointed to a fundamentally strong economy as justifying the central bank’s decision to hike interest rates by a quarter-point for the third time this year while penciling in a fourth for December. Yet he warned of a “rising chorus of concerns from businesses all over the country about disruption of supply chains, materials cost increases,” from the administration’s trade confrontations.

“If this, perhaps inadvertently, goes to a place where we have widespread tariffs that remain in place for a long time, a more protectionist world, that’s going to be bad for the United States economy,” Powell said. (Watch the whole news conference here.)

(Emphasis in original.)

Meet The Hindu Bagpipers of New Jersey:

Good morning.

 Wednesday in Whitewater will see a mixture of clouds and sun with a high of sixty-three.  Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 6:44 PM, for 11h 56m 36s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1960, the first Kennedy-Nixon debate takes place.

Recommended for reading in full — Evers considers tax cuts for needy families, Walker’s former transportation secretary escalates criticism, members of the U.N. laugh at Trump, Russian propagandists try new tricks, and video of a bear catching fish underwater —

Ximena Conde reports Evers Says He’ll Prioritize Tax Cut For Wisconsin’s Neediest Families:

Tony Evers, the state superintendent of public schools and Democratic gubernatorial candidate, says he wants to help more than 860,000 of Wisconsin’s neediest families with a tax break. But how he would fund those cuts is a fluid process.

Speaking at a Milwaukee Rotary Club event Tuesday, Evers cited an August United Way of Wisconsin report that found almost 40 percent of Wisconsin families struggled to pay for basic needs like transportation and child care.

Evers said giving these families a tax cut would boost the state’s economy more evenly. Funding these cuts, he said, is a matter of priorities.

“You go to the budget, you get the best you can and you try to do it without any taxes and it happens,” Evers said. “It happens every single time.”

Evers maintains the state can find savings in parts of government, including the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the state’s job creation agency, which Evers has vowed to eliminate and replace.

Mark Sommerhauser reports Scott Walker dismisses former transportation chief’s heightened criticism of his roads stance:

In a Tuesday interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, Mark Gottlieb, a Republican who led the state Department of Transportation from 2011 to 2017, also said Walker is “fear-mongering” by claiming his campaign opponent, Democrat Tony Evers, could raise the gas tax by as much as a dollar per gallon.

Those comments came shortly before Walker appeared at a Milton Interstate rest stop Tuesday, touting his expedited plans for part of the Interstate 39-90 project in Dane and Rock counties.

How to pay for roads and bridges has been a longstanding political flashpoint for Walker. Gottlieb’s latest remarks are an indicator the issue will not abate as the general election nears.

David Nakamura reports ‘People actually laughed at a president’: At U.N. speech, Trump suffers the fate he always feared:

President Trump has long argued that the United States has been taken advantage of by other nations — a “laughing stock to the entire World,” he said on Twitter in 2014 — and his political rise was based on the premise that he had the strength and resolve to change that.

But at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump got a comeuppance on the world’s biggest stage. Delivering a speech that aimed to establish U.S. “sovereignty” over the whims and needs of other nations, the president’s triumphant moment was marred in the first minute when he was met by laughter — at his expense.

The embarrassing exchange came when Trump boasted that his administration had accomplished more over two years than “almost any administration” in American history, eliciting audible guffaws in the cavernous chamber hall.

 Ben Collins reports On Reddit, Russian propagandists try new tricks:

The ongoing cat-and-mouse game between Russia-linked propagandists and tech companies now includes a simple tactic the Russians are using to sidestep social media bans — changing web addresses.

Reddit users last week were able to trace links posted to a pro-Trump community back to a Russian propaganda website that shares web infrastructure with the Kremlin’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). The links appeared to have been custom-made to appeal to a particular community, /r/The_Donald, which is known to be the most fervent and active in support of the president.

The address-changing effort highlights how propagandists continue to push disinformation on digital media platforms, employing new strategies to hide their origins as companies begin to crack down on foreign influence campaigns.

Cosimo Mortola, an analyst who tracks Russian disinformation for security firm FireEye, said that propaganda operations that started years ago have learned new tricks.

“We’ve been tracking the IRA for several years and there’s no doubt that they’re getting more sophisticated,” Mortola said.

Amazing Footage Shows Bears Catching Fish Underwater: