Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of seventy-seven.  Sunrise is 6:08 AM and sunset 7:46 PM, for 13h 38m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 79.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s  Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 6 PM, and Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1959, Hawaii becomes a state.

Recommended for reading in full — 

  Aaron Blake writes Trump blurts out another Lester Holt moment:

It really was the Russia investigation all along.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal posted late Wednesday, President Trump once again gave away the ballgame when it comes to his efforts to affect the probe and tear down its leaders (both current and former). He confessed that his true motivation for revoking former CIA director John Brennan’s security clearance was the “rigged witch hunt” that Brennan once “led.”

“I call it the rigged witch hunt; [it] is a sham,” Trump told the Journal’s Peter Nicholas and Michael C. Bender. “And these people led it!”

He added: “So I think it’s something that had to be done.”

You could be forgiven for having flashbacks to Trump’s interview with NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt in the aftermath of his firing last year of James B. Comey as FBI director. Then, as now, the White House offered a series of motivations for the crackdown on a person who was a liability in the Russia probe. Then, as now, it seemed clear what the actual motivation was. And then, as now, Trump appeared to go out and just admit the actual motivation.

Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg report Microsoft says it has found a Russian operation targeting U.S. political institutions:

A group affiliated with the Russian government created phony versions of six websites — including some related to public policy and to the U.S. Senate — with the apparent goal of hacking into the computers of people who were tricked into visiting, according to Microsoft, which said Monday night that it discovered and disabled the fake sites.

The effort by the notorious APT28 hacking group, which has been publicly linked to a Russian intelligence agency and actively interfered in the 2016 presidential election, underscores the aggressive role that Russian operatives are playing ahead of the midterm elections in the United States. U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that the November vote is a major focus for interference efforts. Microsoft said the sites were created over the past several months and that the company was able to catch them early, as they were being set up. It did not go into more specifics.

Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit, which is responsible for the company’s response to email phishing schemes, took the lead role in finding and disabling the sites, and the company is launching an effort to provide expanded cybersecurity protection for campaigns and election agencies that use Microsoft products.

Julie Hirschfeld Davis reports Trump Says Hispanic-American Border Patrol Agent ‘Speaks Perfect English’:

WASHINGTON — It was supposed to be a White House salute to the heroism of immigration agents who put their lives on the line to protect Americans. But on Monday, President Trump appeared to have something else on his mind: the ethnicity of one of the men he was honoring.

“Speaks perfect English,” Mr. Trump blurted out as he encouraged Adrian Anzaldua, a Hispanic-American Border Patrol agent and dog handler from Texas, to join him onstage in the East Room. Mr. Anzaldua recently arrested a smuggler in Laredo who had tried to bring 78 people into the United States illegally inside a truck trailer.

(Trump’s a bigoted authoritarian grifter, but as his remarks again demonstrate, he’s also a notably vulgar and obvious one.)

Nick Miroff reports Border arrest data suggests Trump’s push to split migrant families had little deterrent effect:

The number of migrant families taken into custody along the U.S. border with Mexico remained nearly unchanged from June to July, according to government data released Wednesday [8.8], an indication the Trump administration’s controversial move to separate thousands of parents and children did little to deter others from attempting the journey.

U.S. border agents arrested 9,258 family members along America’s southwest border last month, down slightly from 9,434 in June and 9,485 in May.

The administration cited a springtime surge of parents crossing illegally with children as justification for its “zero tolerance” prosecution initiative, which led to the separation of approximately 2,500 families between May 5 and June 20, when public outcry forced President Trump to end the practice.

Since then, some of the policy’s defenders have argued the separations would have had a stronger deterrent effect if allowed more time. They insist its true impact would not be apparent until word of the crackdown had spread to rural Central America, prompting parents to reconsider travel plans.

But the July arrest totals released Wednesday suggest the separations made little difference. While families continued to arrive at roughly the same rate, the number of unaccompanied minors taken into custody dropped from 5,093 in June to 3,938 in July, even though that group wasn’t a target of the “zero tolerance” crackdown.

The Secret to Ant Efficiency Is [Occasional] Idleness:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of seventy-six.  Sunrise is 6:07 AM and sunset 7:48 PM, for 13h 40m 50s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 71.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 6 PM, and Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.

On the night of August 20-21, 1968, Soviet and other communist forces invade Czechoslovakia to crush Alexander Dubcek’s Prague Spring liberalization reforms.

On this day in 1794, American soldiers defeat a tribal confederation at the Battle of Fallen Timbers:

On this date American troops under General “Mad” Anthony Wayne defeated a confederation of Indian forces led by Little Turtle of the Miamis and Blue Jacket of the Shawnees. Wayne’s soldiers, who included future Western explorer William Clark and future President William Henry Harrison, won the battle in less than an hour with the loss of some 30 men killed. (The number of Indian casualties is uncertain.)

The battle had several far-reaching consequences for the United States and what would later become the state of Wisconsin. The crushing defeat of the British-allied Indians convinced the British to finally evacuate their posts in the American west (an accession explicitly given in the Jay Treaty signed some three months later), eliminating forever the English presence in the early American northwest and clearing the way for American expansion. The battle also resulted in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, in which the defeated Indians ceded to Wayne the right of Americans to settle in the Ohio Valley (although the northwestern area of that country was given to the Indians). Wayne’s victory opened the gates of widespread settlement of the Old Northwest, Wisconsin included. [Source: American History Illustrated, Feb. 1969]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Eric Lindquist reports Foxconn Technology Group lease for Haymarket Landing upsets some who envisioned riverside restaurant there:

From the time developers first talked six years ago about building a massive project at the confluence of the Eau Claire and Chippewa rivers that would be the centerpiece of Eau Claire’s downtown revitalization efforts, a key component was a restaurant offering spectacular river views.

The restaurant, which was to include a patio with outside dining, was proposed for the retail space on the ground floor of what became Haymarket Landing, a six-story multiuse building that began housing UW-Eau Claire students in August 2016 in apartments on the upper five floors.

But two years later, with the Pablo Center at the Confluence — the community performing arts center that is half of the Confluence Project — about to open next month, the space once designated for the long-awaited riverside restaurant on developer drawings is now committed to the controversial Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn Technology Group for a planned innovation center.  And some people aren’t happy about the change.

“There has been a lot of overwhelmingly negative feedback about it,” City Council acting President Andrew Werthmann said. “I think that’s because we as a community were investing in a certain vision for downtown and that space, and this is not in keeping with that vision.”

(Given the choice, residents of Eau Claire would rather have a restaurant than a Foxconn ‘innovation center.’  Good for them – they’re showing more sense than policymakers in Whitewater did a decade ago when they repurposed a grant for flood victims and unemployed autoworkers into a third-tier university building innovation center in Whitewater.  They’re also showing more economic sense than the Greater Whitewater Committee did when it invited a state operative, Matt Moroney, as a guest speaker to flack Foxconn in Whitewater.)

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani claims ‘Truth isn’t truth’:

E.J. Dionne Jr. contends America is slouching toward autocracy:

The list of ominous signs goes on and on: Trump invoking Stalin’s phrase “enemies of the people” to describe a free press; the firing, one after another, of public servants who moved to expose potential wrongdoing, starting with then-FBI Director James B. Comey; Trump’s effusive praise of foreign despots; his extravagantly abusive (and often racially charged) language against opponents; and his refusal to abide by traditional practices about disclosing his own potential conflicts of interest and those of his family. Add to this the authoritarian’s habit of institutionalizing lying as a routine aspect of governing, compressed into the astonishing credo Rudolph W. Giuliani blurted out on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday: “Truth isn’t truth.”

This is not business as usual. Yet our politics proceeds as if it is. Slowly, Trump has accustomed us to behavior that, at any other recent time and with just about any other politician, would in all probability have been career-ending.

 William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess, and Maggie Haberman report Michael Cohen, Trump’s Ex-Lawyer, Investigated for Bank Fraud Over $20 Million:

Federal authorities investigating whether President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, committed bank and tax fraud have zeroed in on well over $20 million in loans obtained by taxi businesses that he and his family own, according to people familiar with the matter.

Investigators are also examining whether Mr. Cohen violated campaign finance or other laws by helping to arrange financial deals to secure the silence of women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. The inquiry has entered the final stage and prosecutors are considering filing charges by the end of August, two of the people said.

Any criminal charges against Mr. Cohen would deal a significant blow to the president. Mr. Cohen, 52, worked for the president’s company, the Trump Organization, for more than a decade. He was one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal and visible aides and called himself the president’s personal lawyer after Mr. Trump took office.

NASA offers its own version of Moonlight (Clair de Lune):

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-two.  Sunrise is 6:06 AM and sunset 7:49 PM, for 13h 43m 29s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 61.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1812, the USS Constitution defeats HMS Guerriere:

A frigate was sighted on 19 August and subsequently determined to be HMS Guerriere (38) with the words “Not The Little Belt” painted on her foretopsail.[93][Note 3] Guerriere opened fire upon entering range of Constitution, doing little damage. After a few exchanges of cannon fire between the ships, Captain Hull maneuvered Constitution into an advantageous position within 25 yards (23 m) of Guerriere. He then ordered a full double-loaded broadside of grape and round shot which took out Guerriere’s mizzenmast.[94][95] Guerriere’s maneuverability decreased with her mizzenmast dragging in the water, and she collided with Constitution, entangling her bowsprit in Constitution’s mizzen rigging. This left only Guerriere’s bow guns capable of effective fire. Hull’s cabin caught fire from the shots, but it was quickly extinguished. With the ships locked together, both captains ordered boarding parties into action, but the sea was heavy and neither party was able to board the opposing ship.[96]

At one point, the two ships rotated together counter-clockwise, with Constitution continuing to fire broadsides. When the two ships pulled apart, the force of the bowsprit’s extraction sent shock waves through Guerriere’s rigging. Her foremast collapsed, and that brought the mainmast down shortly afterward.[97] Guerriere was now a dismasted, unmanageable hulk with close to a third of her crew wounded or killed, while Constitution remained largely intact. The British surrendered.[98]

Hull had surprised the British with his heavier broadsides and his ship’s sailing ability. Adding to their astonishment, many of the British shots had rebounded harmlessly off Constitution’s hull. An American sailor reportedly exclaimed “Huzzah! her sides are made of iron!” and Constitution acquired the nickname “Old Ironsides”.[99]

The battle left Guerriere so badly damaged that she was not worth towing to port, and Hull ordered her to be burned the next morning, after transferring the British prisoners onto Constitution.[100] Constitution arrived back in Boston on 30 August, where Hull and his crew found that news of their victory had spread fast, and they were hailed as heroes.[101]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman report McGahn, White House Counsel, Has Cooperated Extensively in Mueller Inquiry:

The White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, has cooperated extensively in the special counsel investigation, sharing detailed accounts about the episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether President Trump obstructed justice, including some that investigators would not have learned of otherwise, according to a dozen current and former White House officials and others briefed on the matter.

In at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled 30 hours over the past nine months, Mr. McGahn described the president’s fury toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which he urged Mr. McGahn to respond to it. He provided the investigators examining whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice a clear view of the president’s most intimate moments with his lawyer.

Among them were Mr. Trump’s comments and actions during the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and Mr. Trump’s obsession with putting a loyalist in charge of the inquiry, including his repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to claim oversight of it. Mr. McGahn was also centrally involved in Mr. Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, which investigators might not have discovered without him.

Carol D. Leonnig, Devlin Barrett, Ellen Nakashima, and Josh Dawsey report GOP fundraiser Broidy under investigation for alleged effort to sell government influence, people familiar with probe:

The Justice Department is investigating whether longtime Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy sought to sell his influence with the Trump administration by offering to deliver U.S. government actions for foreign officials in exchange for tens of millions of dollars, according to three people familiar with the probe.

As part of the investigation, prosecutors are scrutinizing a plan that Broidy allegedly developed to try to persuade the Trump government to extradite a Chinese dissident back to his home country, a move sought by Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to two of the people.

They also are investigating claims that Broidy sought $75 million from a Malaysian business official if the Justice Department ended its investigation of a development fund run by the Malaysian government. The Malaysian probe has examined the role of the former prime minister in the embezzlement of billions of dollars from the fund.

(Emphasis added. It should – but apparently does not universally – go without saying that no worthy man or woman would participate in a plan, as alleged here, to send a dissident back to a dictatorship.)

Susan Ferriss reports In horrifying detail, women accuse U.S. customs officers of invasive body searches:

The women who’ve brought these lawsuits, including two minor girls, say CBP officers subjected them to indignities — such as strip searches while menstruating and prohibited genital probing — despite finding no contraband. Four women further allege they were handcuffed and transported to hospitals where, against their will, one underwent a pelvic exam and X-rays. In one of the cases, the woman’s lawsuit asserts she was intravenously drugged at the hospital, according to lawsuits.

Such invasive medical procedures require a detainee’s consent or a warrant. In two cases, the plaintiffs say they were billed.

A lawsuit filed in San Diego federal court on behalf of a Hispanic 16-year-old identified as C.R. alleges CBP strip-searched her last September as she and her adult sisters returned from a family visit to Mexico through the San Ysidro pedestrian port. The sisters were flagged after a false drug-sniffing dog alert, the lawsuit asserts. Female officers took C.R. aside and allegedly told the tearful girl to disrobe, hand over a sanitary pad, and squat and cough “while officers probed and shined a flashlight at her vaginal and anal areas,” the lawsuit says.

Justice Department attorneys representing officers have filed to dismiss C.R.’s suit, arguing that it was not filed properly.

Sixteen-year-old C.R.’s lawsuit details an alleged strip-search by CBP last September at the San Diego-Mexico border. Since September, two other Hispanic minors also reported to rights activists that they were detained and forced to strip upon entry. (Center for Public Integrity/Washington Post Illustration)

From May, Alexia Fernández Campbell explains Undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars in federal taxes each year:

One of the biggest misconceptions about undocumented immigrants is that they don’t pay any taxes. In his first address to Congress, President Trump set the tone for his coming immigration agenda when he said immigration costs US taxpayers “billions of dollars a year.”

A 2017 Gallup poll that asked survey respondents “whether immigrants to the United States are making the [tax] situation in the country better or worse” found that 41 percent said “worse,” while only 23 percent said “better” (33 percent said they had “no effect”).

The reality is far different. Immigrants who are authorized to work in the United States pay the same taxes as US citizens. And, contrary to the persistent myth, undocumented immigrants do in fact pay taxes too. Millions of undocumented immigrants file tax returns each year, and they are paying taxes for benefits they can’t even use.

The best estimates come from research by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, DC, think tank, which suggests that about half of undocumented workers in the United States file income tax returns. The most recent IRS data, from 2015, shows that the agency received 4.4 million income tax returns from workers who don’t have Social Security numbers, which includes a large number of undocumented immigrants. That year, they paid $23.6 billion in income taxes.

Those undocumented workers paid taxes for benefits they can’t even use, like Social Security and Medicare. They also aren’t eligible for benefits like the earned income tax credit.

(See also The biggest beneficiaries of the government safety net: working-class whites.)

In France, This Chapel Rises From a Volcano:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-two.  Sunrise is 6:05 AM and sunset 7:51 PM, for 13h 46m 08s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 52.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, the Second Battle of Weldon Railroad opens near Petersburg, Virginia:

The 2nd, 6th, 7th, 37th, and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments took part in the Second Battle of Weldon Railroad, also known as the Battle of Globe Tavern, near Petersburg, Virginia. This was the first Union victory in the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign. By destroying the railway while under heavy attack, Union troops forced Confederates to carry their provision 30 miles by wagon around Union lines to supply the city.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Conservatives Rick Esenberg and Collin Roth write To ‘Save’ Jobs, Wisconsin Republicans Set a Dangerous Precedent:

This should serve as a moment for reevaluation. Republicans talk all the time about how government doesn’t create jobs. They like to say that government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. But a desire to appear to be “pro-business” (as distinct from “pro-market”) and curry favor with working-class voters has led Republicans in many states to embrace a role for government that they once bemoaned. Instead of simply focusing on creating the proper conditions for economic growth through low taxes and a minimal regulatory burden, they have found it politically profitable to target companies and industries with incentives and handouts. Job totals are now tallied like points on a scoreboard.

Virtuous though its intent may be, this is central planning by another name. The result is market distortion, an inefficient use of resources, and a narrative of economic development built on myths and hubris. It serves neither business nor workers. Politicians have convinced themselves that without tax incentives, new jobs would never be created and lost ones would never be replaced. This is, quite simply, false. It fails to see what occurs in the economy every day when consumer choice and markets determine whether businesses succeed or fail.

(Esenberg & Roth are writing in National Review Online, so they carefully couch their criticism with qualifiers like ‘[v]irtuous though its intent may be.’  They know these policies are junk, but they have to say so carefully, to soften the blow for any pro-Trump readers who may still visit NRO.)

Dan Kaufman writes Why Education May Be the Issue That Breaks Republicans’ Decade-Long Grip on Wisconsin:

When a new academic year begins in Wisconsin a few weeks from now, the only school in Darien, a small community near the Illinois border, will remain empty. In January, local school officials proposed raising property taxes to bring in three and a half million dollars. Voters rejected the idea—it would have been the second property-tax increase in three years—forcing the district to make drastic cuts to its budget. Darien Elementary School was one of those cuts. Its teachers were laid off, and its students will be sent to other schools in the area. Similar school closings have, in recent years, occurred in a number of other rural Wisconsin towns.

It has been nearly a decade since Governor Scott Walker—who grew up near Darien—and his fellow-Republicans began implementing their vision of conservative austerity and privatization in Wisconsin. The result has been a state more attractive to corporations, with a smaller middle class and deteriorating public infrastructure and institutions—from roads to the University of Wisconsin system to public schools. During this period, Republicans have maintained nearly unbroken control of the state’s government, and Walker has become a conservative hero. This year, as he seeks reëlection to a third term, he has expressed pride about his record and has been typically implacable on most issues—except, notably, education. After the state cut more than a billion dollars in spending on schools and universities between 2011—the year Walker took office—and 2017, Walker signed a budget last year that included an increase of some six hundred and forty million dollars in K-12 spending. “I’m being aggressive on this,” Walker told the Wisconsin State Journal, in June. “We’re proclaiming proudly that I’m the pro-education governor and I want to continue to be the pro-education governor.”

This is the context for Tony Evers’s victory in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary on Tuesday. Evers, Wisconsin’s state superintendent of schools since 2009, beat out seven opponents to claim the nomination. And at sixty-six years old, with little charisma and middling name recognition, he might beat Walker in November. Until last month, no poll had ever shown Walker trailing a declared Democratic opponent by more than a few points. Then NBC/Marist released a poll showing Evers ahead of Walker by thirteen points. Another poll, by Emerson College, had Evers ahead by seven.

Jennifer Rubin contends Hanging on to Trump’s rabid base won’t be enough:

After the Helsinki debacle, 11 days of the Paul Manafort trial, contradictory statements on the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, numerous obnoxious and racist tweets, never-ending verbal duels with accusers (including past employees) and, for good measure, a senseless trade war, we shouldn’t be surprised that President Trump’s approval rating is slipping somewhat. Gallup has it down to 39 percent; Quinnipiac has it at 41 percent.

The Quinnipiac poll numbers highlight how poorly Americans think of him:

Only 31 percent of American voters like President Donald Trump as a person, while 59 percent dislike him, according to a Quinnipiac University National Poll released [Tuesday]. … By a smaller 54 – 43 percent margin, American voters dislike President Trump’s policies.

Voters disapprove 54 – 41 percent of the job Trump is doing as president, including 48 percent who disapprove strongly. Another 30 percent approve strongly.  The Trump Administration is not doing enough to help middle class Americans, voters say 58 – 38 percent.

Americans don’t need to hear a tape of Trump saying the n-word to know he “does not treat people of color with the same amount of respect he affords white people”  — by a margin of 54 percent  to 39 percent. Moreover, “American voters say 54 – 37 percent that ‘President Trump has emboldened people who hold racist beliefs to express those beliefs publicly.’ ”

Sarah Jones describes Trump’s New Strategy to Demonize Immigrants:

A draft rule, which has not been released to the public, reportedly stated, “Non-citizens who receive public benefits are not self-sufficient and are relying on the U.S. government and state and local entities for resources instead of their families, sponsors or private organizations. An alien’s receipt of public benefits comes at taxpayer expense and availability of public benefits may provide an incentive for aliens to immigrate to the United States.”

These restrictions may now be close to fruition. On Tuesday, NBC News reported that Trump’s immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, is preparing a rule that would penalize documented immigrants for using certain public benefits: Use of food stamps, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or even Obamacare could cost a documented immigrant a green card or prevent them from gaining citizenship.

….

The rule is premised on the notion that non-citizens burden citizen taxpayers by taking welfare benefits or other public funds. But the evidence doesn’t support this. Not only is it extremely difficult to immigrate legally to the United States, it’s even more difficult to access benefits after doing so. A fair examination of the evidence points to one inescapable conclusion: Trump’s policy isn’t intended to shore up the welfare state for citizens, but to undermine it by reducing immigration.

(Indeed, see The biggest beneficiaries of the government safety net: working-class whites.)

It’s a cougar v. dog faceoff:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of eighty.  Sunrise is 6:04 AM and sunset 7:53 PM, for 13h 48m 44s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 42.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, Wisconsin soldiers bury Confederate dead at Cedar Mountain, Virginia:

A soldier in the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry wrote home this day describing the aftermath of the Battle of Cedar Mountain, Virginia. He criticizes Confederate officers for withdrawing under cover of darkness and forcing Union soldiers to inter their enemies: “Instead of burying his dead, we found the plains, the hills, the villages strewn with dead and dying rebels. Oh! the sight was sickening, and beggars description. Here an arm, there a leg, yonder half of what was once a man…”

Recommended for reading in full — 

The Spectator (in a review of House of Trump, House of Putin by Craig Unger) asks Did the Russian mafia help Trump along his way to the Oval Office?:

Before he died last year, the New York muckraking reporter Wayne Barrett told me he had discovered ‘25 to 30’ connections between Donald Trump and the mob. He was talking about Italian-American organised crime but today another New York journalist, Craig Unger, says he has found ‘59’ links to the Russian mafia. He lists them all in his new book House of Trump, House of Putin, which is damning in its accumulation of detail, terrifying in its depiction of the pure evil of those Trump chose to do business with, and enraging in that — if Unger is right — Trump acted with impunity for decades to get filthy rich laundering the mob’s blood money. This is the man who now sits in the Oval Office, Unger says. In fact, he argues, they put him there.

House of Trump, House of Putin starts with Trump’s early days in business, when his lawyer was Roy Cohn, who was also consigliere to two of the five New York Italian crime families and ‘the most evil, twisted, vicious bastard ever to snort coke at Studio 54’. There were mafia figures like ‘Sonny’ Franzese, a hitman who was recorded helpfully explaining how to get rid of the bodies: ‘Dismember victim in kiddie pool. Cook div parts in microwave. Stuff parts in garbage disposal. Be patient.’ When one of these Italian gangsters met Trump to buy an apartment ‘he opened his briefcase and $200,000 in cash spilled out on Trump’s table’.

To the Russians, this was small time. Unger retells a story of Barrett’s that when a Red mafiya boss, David Bogatin, came to Trump Tower, he met Trump himself and immediately bought five apartments for $6 million in cash (about $14.5 million today). Trump didn’t seem to wonder where this money might have come from. He was one of the first developers to discover that you could sell condos to shell companies that concealed the owners’ identities, Unger says. This allowed Russian criminals ‘to launder vast amounts of money’. Trump’s willingness to sell ‘no questions asked’ was so important, Unger believes, that he gave the Russian mafia a foothold in the United States.

William H. McRaven, a retired Navy admiral, was commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014. He oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. He writes Revoke my security clearance, too, Mr. President:

Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs.

A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.

Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.

If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be.

Anna Nemtsova writes Trump Wants to Make Asbestos Great Again:

In the Russian city of Asbest in the Ural Mountains, life and work revolves around a dark pit more than 1,000 feet deep and six miles long, the largest asbestos-producing mine in the world. The future of every household in this community of about 70,000 people depends on chrysotile, the white mineral from which asbestos fibers are extracted—fibers so extremely carcinogenic that 65 countries have banned them.

The World Health Organization is unequivocal: “Exposure to asbestos, including chrysotile, causes cancer of the lung, larynx and ovary, mesothelioma (a cancer of the pleural and peritoneal linings) and asbestosis (fibrosis of the lungs).” The WHO estimated in 2014 that 107,000 people die each year because of asbestos related diseases (PDF). Worldwide, asbestos is responsible for about half of all the work-related deaths from cancer. In the United States every year mesothelioma kills from 12,000 to 15,000 Americans.

Not surprisingly, given such statistics, the company that operates the enormous mine, Uralasbest (also written as Ural Asbest), has lost many of its buyers and significantly cut down both its production volume and staff. Since 2013 more than 1,000 of some 5,000 workers have lost their jobs, and panic has gripped the city like an epidemic.

But Russia continues to insist that chrysotile is safe if used in controlled conditions—and so, enthusiastically and notoriously, does President Donald Trump.

  Jim Tankersley reports Steel Giants With Ties to Trump Officials Block Tariff Relief for Hundreds of Firms:

Two of America’s biggest steel manufacturers — both with deep ties to administration officials — have successfully objected to hundreds of requests by American companies that buy foreign steel to exempt themselves from President Trump’s stiff metal tariffs. They have argued that the imported products are readily available from American steel manufacturers.

Charlotte-based Nucor, which financed a documentary film made by a top trade adviser to Mr. Trump, and Pittsburgh-based United States Steel, which has previously employed several top administration officials, have objected to 1,600 exemption requests filed with the Commerce Department over the past several months.

To date, their efforts have never failed, resulting in denials for companies that are based in the United States but rely on imported pipes, screws, wire and other foreign steel products for their supply chains.

The Ocean’s Cosmic Lessons:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with an afternoon shower, and a high of eighty-one.  Sunrise is 6:03 AM and sunset 7:54 PM, for 13h 51m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 32.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1896, the Klondike Gold Rush begins:

The Klondike Gold Rush[n 1] was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1896 and 1899. Gold was discovered there by local miners on August 16, 1896, and, when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, it triggered a stampede of prospectors. Some became wealthy, but the majority went in vain. It has been immortalized in photographs, books, films, and artifacts.

To reach the gold fields, most took the route through the ports of Dyea and Skagway in Southeast Alaska. Here, the Klondikers could follow either the Chilkoot or the White Pass trails to the Yukon River and sail down to the Klondike. Each of them was required to bring a year’s supply of food by the Canadian authorities in order to prevent starvation. In all, their equipment weighed close to a ton, which for most had to be carried in stages by themselves. Together with mountainous terrain and cold climate, this meant that those who persisted did not arrive until summer 1898. Once there, they found few opportunities, and many left disappointed.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz reports Chicago-area manufacturer to lay off 150 people, move operations to Mexico, to avoid tariffs on Chinese metal:

Stack-On Products plans to lay off 128 people at its facility in north suburban Wauconda and 25 people at its McHenry plant when it closes both facilities Oct. 12, said Al Fletcher, human resources director for Alpha Guardian, the Las Vegas-based parent company.

“The operation is really not profitable,” Fletcher said. He said the decision to relocate operations to Juarez, Mexico, was made about two months ago when President Donald Trump announced tariffs on numerous goods and materials from China as well as other countries, to reduce what the president has called an unfair trade deficit.

“Mr. Trump is part of this,” Fletcher said. So far, the United States has imposed tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese technology goods and $3 billion of Chinese steel and aluminum, and has proposed another $16 billion.

David A. Graham observes The End of the David Clarke Era (“The successor to the controversial former Milwaukee County sheriff lost his primary on Tuesday, the latest law-enforcement officer to lose to a reformist this year”):

Remember David Clarke? He became a national celebrity for his support of Donald Trump during the 2016 election, speaking at the Republican National Convention and delivering often inflammatory remarks on the campaign trail.

But as Clarke’s large array of badges and oversize hat were intended to remind, he was first and foremost a lawman—the sheriff of Milwaukee County, in office since 2002. In that position, Clarke was a prominent advocate for giving law enforcement wide latitude, and he fiercely criticized criminal-justice reform and scrutiny of the police. These stands were notable because he is African American and a registered Democrat. It was a partly self-interested stand: Clarke was himself under scrutiny for his management of the sheriff’s department, and especially for the multiple deaths in the county jails he ran.

Clarke left office in 2017 with the promise of a job in the Trump administration that never actually materialized. (He later joined a pro-Trump political-action committee.) On Tuesday, however, the police-reform movement won a victory over Clarke’s legacy in the county, turning out his successor and former deputy in the Democratic primary for sheriff. Earnell Lucas won roughly 57 percent of the vote, handily defeating Acting Sheriff Richard Schmidt, who took 34 percent. (A third candidate finished far back.)

Margot Sanger-Katz reports Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017 (“Fentanyl is a big culprit, but there are also encouraging signs from states that have prioritized public health campaigns and addiction treatment”):

Drug overdoses killed about 72,000 Americans last year, a record number that reflects a rise of around 10 percent, according to new preliminary estimates from the Centers for Disease Control. The death toll is higher than the peak yearly death totals from H.I.V., car crashes or gun deaths.

Analysts pointed to two major reasons for the increase: A growing number of Americans are using opioids, and drugs are becoming more deadly. It is the second factor that most likely explains the bulk of the increased number of overdoses last year.

The picture is not equally bleak everywhere. In parts of New England, where a more dangerous drug supply arrived early, the number of overdoses has begun to fall. That was the case in Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island; each state has had major public health campaigns and has increased addiction treatment. Preliminary 2018 numbers from Massachusetts suggest that the death rate there may be continuing to fall.

  Aaron Blake writes Not even Republicans buy the Trump team’s ‘collusion isn’t a crime’ defense:

Rudy Giuliani has said that collusion isn’t technically a crime. President Trump has said it’s totally normal to seek opposition research — even if it was from Russia.

Not even Republicans buy these defenses.

A new poll from Quinnipiac University shows there is actually a bipartisan consensus on the appropriateness of seeking information about a political opponent from a hostile foreign country. Fully 79 percent of Americans say it’s never acceptable, including 92 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans.

(Blake notes that “[a]bout 1 in 5 Republicans (19 percent) say it is acceptable to do such a thing, even though it is rather clearly against the law.  One can reasonably count that nineteen percent as Trump’s hardcore base.  The overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens know better.)

The Parker Solar Probe is a Mission to Touch the Sun:

(The probe has begun its journey. See A Fireball and a Wall of Sound: What NASA’s Epic Solar Probe Launch Felt Like.)

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with an afternoon thunderstorm, and a high of eighty-one.  Sunrise is 6:02 AM and sunset 7:56 PM, for 13h 53m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1862, the 24th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry musters in:

On this date in Milwaukee, the 24th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry was mustered in. The 24th was organized in late 1862 from the Milwaukee and the surrounding areas under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Herman L. Page. The regiment was encamped at Camp Sigel in Milwaukee. Page resigned one day after the muster in and Charles H. Larrabee was appointed Colonel. On September 5th, the regiment left Wisconsin for Kentucky. At Louisville they were assigned to the 37th Brigade, under Colonel Gruesel, of the 11th Division, under General Phillip Sheridan. The 24th was mustered out on June 10, 1865. [Source: 24th Wisconsin Infantry page]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Craig Gilbert remarks on the Wisconsin vote in yesterday’s fall primary:

with the caveat that these things are NOT always predictive of the fall, it’s worth noting that it looks like Dem turnout clearly outstripped GOP turnout in WI even though GOP primary was closer and had much higher spending #WIPrimary https://t.co/qI3S365LjE

— Craig Gilbert (@WisVoter) August 15, 2018

Norman Eisen unpacks Presidential pardons and obstruction of justice:

• If a president were to issue pardons in order to block an investigation for a wrongful purpose—like a president protecting himself because he believed that someone who was pardoned would disclose incriminating evidence against that president—that would constitute obstruction of justice.
• Congress has said that it is a crime in the United States to obstruct justice.
• There’s a debate over whether a sitting president can be prosecuted.
• Another option would be for the Department of Justice to refer the case to Congress. With (or without) a report, Congress could have hearings in the House Judiciary Committee as to whether a president committed obstruction of justice by giving a pardon with corrupt intent to himself or those around him.
• Trump’s frequent use of pardons has broader implications.
• Many analysts and advisers to President Trump have reported that President Trump is delighted by his power to pardon, viewing it as a sign of unconstrained authority.
• Trump may be issuing pardons strategically, “dangling” pardons before witnesses who might testify against him to disincentivize them from cooperating with investigations.
• The signal of impunity this may send to witnesses, subjects, targets, and defendants participating in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is profoundly troubling.

The Committee to Investigate Russia writes Court Upholds Mueller Authority:

Business Insider:

“By investigating and prosecuting Concord, the Special Counsel did not exceed his authority,” [Judge Dabney] Friedrich wrote in her opinion.

She also rejected the company’s argument that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, acting on behalf of Attorney General Jeff Sessions after his recusal, was out of bounds in bringing in Mueller to investigate the alleged Russian meddling.

Concord’s lawyers, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, had argued that Rosenstein violated the Appointments Clause of the US Constitution in hiring Mueller in May 2017. Friedrich ruled that US Supreme Court and circuit court rulings made clear Rosenstein did have statutory authority to bring in Mueller.

  Helene Cooper and Julian E. Barnes report U.S. Officials Scrambled Behind the Scenes to Shield NATO Deal From Trump:

The work to preserve the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreement, which is usually subject to intense 11th-hour negotiations, came just weeks after Mr. Trump refused to sign off on a communiqué from the June meeting of the Group of 7 in Canada.

The rushed machinations to get the policy done, as demanded by John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, have not been previously reported. Described by European diplomats and American officials, the efforts are a sign of the lengths to which the president’s top advisers will go to protect a key and longstanding international alliance from Mr. Trump’s unpredictable antipathy.

Allied ambassadors said the American officials’ plan worked — to a degree.

Mr. Trump did almost blow up the two-day meeting in Brussels that began on July 11. He issued a vague threat that the United States could go its own way if allies resisted his demands for additional military spending. After the gathering, he also questioned a pillar of the alliance: that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all.

This Car Wash Serves the Best Filipino Food:

Good morning.

Election day in Whitewater will be partly sunny, with a high of eighty-six.  Sunrise is 6:01 AM and sunset 7:57 PM, for 13h 56m 29s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1864, a Union expedition into Georgia begins: “The 1st Wisconsin Cavalry was among the Union forces beginning an expedition to Jasper, Georgia.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Jim Sciutto and Jenna McLaughlin report Kremlin “pleased” with Helsinki summit, US and Western intelligence assesses:

Russian officials were “pleased” with the Helsinki summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, US and Western intelligence agencies have found, according to two intelligence sources with knowledge of the assessments.

The assessments, based on a broad range of intelligence, indicate that the Kremlin believes the July 16 summit delivered a better outcome than it had expected, but that Moscow is perplexed that Trump is not delivering more Russia-friendly policies in its aftermath.

The intelligence sources say the Russians were particularly satisfied with the press conference the two leaders gave in Helsinki after Trump and Putin met for about two hours without staff and accompanied only by translators. In the 45-minute press conference, Trump discredited US intelligence and American policies more broadly, saying “the United States has been foolish” about ties with Russia, a country that has engaged in ongoing attacks on US democracy.

John Sipher contends Convergence Is Worse Than Collusion (“Trump and Putin share many more goals than just Trump’s election”):

Two Donald Trump supporters were recently photographed at a rally wearing shirts emblazoned with the phrase I’D RATHER BE RUSSIAN THAN A DEMOCRAT. To some supporters of President Trump, praising Russia and denigrating Democrats is simply a means of expressing tribal loyalties, or of goading liberals. However, as heated political rhetoric becomes part of the media landscape, such fringe views are becoming more mainstream, displaying an increasing convergence of interests between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the views of Trump supporters.

While many Americans are concerned that the Trump campaign may have colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, Trump’s outright convergence of interests with Putin’s Russia may well prove far more damaging for U.S. interests in the long run. Convergence can be defined as distinct groups doing the same things for different reasons, or as a unity of interests evolving from separate starting points. Both Putin and Trump seek to inject chaos into the U.S. political system. They support an assault on U.S. foreign-policy elites, encourage fringe and radical groups, and envision a United States untethered from traditional allies. They also share a willingness to utilize informal and semi-legal means to achieve their goals. The common interest shown by Russia and the alt-right in exploiting fears surrounding the routine Jade Helm military exercise in Texas in 2015? That’s convergence.

As the Trump T-shirts signify, even collusion can be easy to justify if you view your domestic opponents as the real enemy. But having a U.S. president who shares character deficiencies with the president of Russia is one thing. Becoming the enemy is worse. Trumpism shares a disturbing amount in common with Putinism, including promoting racist hatred of outsiders; the belief that the rich are above the law; the reflexive use of propaganda lies and denial; and the shredding of legal and political norms.

(As with members of the Bund generations ago, the democratic order now faces a large & organized domestic movement with expressed sympathies for a foreign dictator.)

Tim Craig reports Once a rising star, Scott Walker is still looking for his path in Trump’s Republican Party:

Amid uncertainty over how Trump’s bombastic presidency would translate to the 2018 elections here, Walker has been trying to insulate himself from a potential Democratic onslaught.

In April, after Democrats won a hard-fought race for a state Supreme Court seat, Walker tweeted that he was likely to face a “blue wave” this year. More recently, he’s blasting donors with appeals citing various public opinion polls that show a Democratic challenger as much as 13 points ahead.

In a sign of just how competitive the race could be, the Republican Governors Association has reserved $5.1 million in television ad spending here. Last month, the Democratic Governors Association announced it had reserved $3.8 million in airtime.

(Any accommodation with Trumpism is error: cooperation is humiliation, collaboration is degradation.  A path in a party Trump dominates is the wrong path.)

  Andrew Lawler writes Colonial America’s Little Secret: It’s Always Been Miscegenation Nation (“The very first English colonists brought with them people of varied ethnicities, and the historical record is clear that they also promptly intermarried with Native Americans”):

“America was founded by white people,” says David Duke. “It was founded for white people. America was not founded to be a multiracial, multicultural society.” It’s an old belief, but one that is factually incorrect.

There is no denying the American debt to British representative democracy and common law, not to mention our language. And it is true that the bulk of our citizens trace most of their ancestry back to Europe. But thanks to excavations in trenches and among archives, we know that the United States was, from its very beginning, a multiracial and multicultural society, and it never ceased being so.

Of course, myths can’t be conquered by facts, and beliefs are not subject to scientific proof. But if we want to prevent the sort of violence that wracked a quiet Virginia college town one year ago, we will have to move beyond the corrosive concept of a nation founded by only one sort of people. We will have to embrace an America that is, as Vice President Hubert Humphrey said, is “all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.”

Divers Rescue Whale Shark From Fishing Rope: