You might know a Tiger, a Tigger or a Mr. Whiskers. But how many cats are really living in the streets and sleeping on the couches of the District?
By spending $1.5 million over three years, a consortium of scientists and animal welfare organizations thinks it can find out with an initiative known as the DC Cat Count, which launches Tuesday.
The cat census, organized by the Humane Rescue Alliance, the Humane Society of the United States, PetSmart Charities and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, will help animal advocates understand how many felines are in the city and how to cope with cats that don’t have a home.
….
The project is planned to last three years, with the $1.5 million price tag funded by animal advocacy nonprofit groups.
From far away in Whitewater, Wisconsin, it might appear as though no one would have an answer to the question of how many cats are in Washington, D.C.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with scattered showers, and a high of seventy-three. Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:27 PM, for 14h 51m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the six hundred fourteenth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the Moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC. Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface six hours after landing on July 21 at 02:56:15 UTC; Aldrin joined him about 20 minutes later. They spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft, and collected 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of lunar material to bring back to Earth. Michael Collins piloted the command module Columbia alone in lunar orbit while they were on the Moon’s surface. Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21.5 hours on the lunar surface before rejoining Columbia in lunar orbit.
During my 27 years as a Foreign Service officer, I was present at a number of summit meetings between U.S. and Soviet or Russian leaders, during both Republican and Democratic administrations. Some summits went well. Some went poorly. In every case, however, the American public knew very quickly—usually within hours—what agreements their president had reached with his Soviet or Russian counterpart.
Three days now have passed since Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in Helsinki. Russian officials are talking about agreements coming out of that meeting, but Americans have no idea what was agreed. This is not normal.
What we do know about Helsinki largely comes from the joint Trump-Putin press briefing, perhaps the most embarrassing post-summit press conference performance ever by an American president. The presidents described the topics they discussed but offered no detail on any agreements.
The summit did not produce a joint statement, which typically offers the vehicle to record and report on agreements reached. Following a more normal summit, National Security Advisor John Bolton or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who took part in the larger meeting following the Trump-Putin one-on-one session, would have briefed the press on the summit results, including any agreements. Alternatively, Bolton or another senior National Security Council official would have briefed the press on background.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – With one week left on a court-ordered deadline to reunite children and parents separated by U.S. immigration officials, government lawyers reported on Thursday that 364 of some 2,500 families with children aged 5 and older have been brought back together.It was unclear from the status report, filed as part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging parent-child separations at the border, exactly how many more reunifications were likely.
President Donald Trump has indicated that he is willing to slap tariffs on every Chinese good imported to the U.S. should the need arise.
“I’m ready to go to 500,” the president told CNBC’s Joe Kernen in a “Squawk Box” interview aired Friday.
The reference is to the dollar amount of Chinese imports the U.S. accepted in 2017 — $505.5 billion to be exact, compared with the $129.9 billion the U.S. exported to China, according to Census Bureau data.
Less than a week after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteinannounced Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence or G.R.U. officers for 2016 election hacking, Microsoft says the cyber criminals are at it again.
Speaking on a panel at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday, Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president for customer security and trust, said that his team had discovered a spear-phishing campaign targeting three candidates running for election in 2018. Analysts traced them to a group Microsoft has nicknamed Strontium, which is closely tracked by every major threat intelligence company and is widely accepted to be run by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
Burt declined to name the candidates during the event, citing privacy concerns, and didn’t say which party they belonged to, but implied they were candidates of note and running for reelection.
“They were all people who, because of their positions, might have been interesting targets from an espionage standpoint, as well as an election disruption standpoint,” Burt said.
“Earlier this year, we did discover that a fake Microsoft domain had been established as the landing page for phishing attacks,” said … Burt … “And we saw metadata that suggested those phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for election in the midterm elections.”
(…)
Microsoft took down the fake domain and worked with the federal government to block the phishing messages. Burt said that none of the targeted campaign staffers were infected.
Burt did not specify whether the hacking attempts originated from Russia.
GRU hackers are believed to be behind a number of global hack-and-leak operations aimed at entities adversarial to Russia, including French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 campaign and the World Anti-Doping Agency, whose reports led to Russia’s ban from the 2018 Olympics over its massive doping program.
In recent weeks, officials from the Department of Homeland Security have insisted that though they’re watchful of potential Russian hacking, they’ve seen no sustained campaign against election systems.
(…)
When asked by BuzzFeed News, Microsoft also declined to address which parties it had seen targeted … A representative from the Democratic National Committee, Xochitl Hinojosa, didn’t address whether any Democrats had been targeted, but told BuzzFeed News that “We saw the Russians attack our democracy in 2016 and we know they’re a threat in 2018, 2020 and beyond. Unfortunately, the President refuses to acknowledge this serious threat to our country, and House Republicans are refusing to increase funding for election security.”
DES MOINES, Iowa — A flurry of tornadoes swept through central Iowa, injuring at least 17 people Thursday, flattening buildings in three cities and forcing an evacuation of a hospital. The tornadoes formed unexpectedly and hit the cities of Marshalltown, Pella and Bondurant as surprised residents ran for cover.
Hardest hit appeared to be Marshalltown, a city of 27,000 people about 50 miles northeast of Des Moines, where brick walls collapsed in the streets, roofs were blown off buildings and the cupola of the historic courthouse tumbled 175 feet to the ground.
One tornado slammed into an agricultural machinery plant in Iowa as some people were working, injuring at least seven people. That tornado hit in the town of Pella, about 40 miles southeast of Des Moines.
Whitewater, like many small towns, is marketing mad: claims, professions, insistence, publicizing, and declarations exceed actual conditions. Newly-increased fines over Whitewater’s available parking spaces on campus illustrate this problem.
The local campus is large, relative to the non-campus parts of the city, and that places pressure on both campus and non-campus residents for parking spaces. To address this problem, the campus police department has quadrupled fines for parking without a permit in the wrong spot on campus (“No one likes getting a parking ticket, and now it may feel even worse for those at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater”).
Campus police chief Kiederlen wants compliance and others’ attention, and he’s settled on an old-school way to get it.
He assures the community that these fines will apply to those on campus, and that for others (non-students in town) there’s a possibility of a waiver. (Ironically, one supposes that this is Kiederlen’s version of a catch and release program for non-campus residents.)
The program is unwittingly counter-productive. The university wants to assure the whole community that it’s a good partner, that it’s a ‘college of distinction,’ that everyone should enjoy music on campus, and that there’s a sesquicentennial anniversary to celebrate, but you’ll have to talk to campus police if you want to get out of a hundred-dollar ticket.
(Obvious point: I’ve not received a ticket on campus; these remarks are not delivered after having received one.)
A few such tickets to residents, however – even if later waived – will cause a frustration that can only exacerbate a town-gown divide that this university has faced under this and former chancellors. (Saunders, Telfer, Kopper: not one of them made this relationship meaningfully better.)
In the end, this university cannot help but undermine its own messaging time and again. (Indeed, the media relations team mostly deals in dull and boilerplate statements, and is better at demanding exorbitant fees for public records requests from students than advancing an effective, persuasive message. Note to all concerned: one should expect a different response to such a demand, if ever a request were made.)
Structural problems (like parking) have been poorly addressed and not as structural solutions (e.g., building garages), and enforcement solutions (fine them until they comply!) are a poor and counter-productive substitute.
Thursday in Whitewater will be increasingly cloudy, with a couple of showers and a thunderstorm this afternoon, and a high of seventy-eight. Sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset 8:28 PM, for 14h 53m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 47.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the six hundred thirteenth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.
Whitewater’s Community Involvement and Cable Television Commission meets today at 5 PM.
The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele, found in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic script and Demotic script, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. As the decree has only minor differences between the three versions, the Rosetta Stone proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Napoleon’s 1798 campaign in Egypt came at (and helped cause) the beginning of a burst of Egyptomania in Europe, and especially France. A corps of 167 technical experts (savants), known as the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, accompanied the French expeditionary army to Egypt. On July 15, 1799, French soldiers under the command of Colonel d’Hautpoul were strengthening the defences of Fort Julien, a couple of miles north-east of the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (modern-day Rashid). Lieutenant Pierre-François Bouchard spotted a slab with inscriptions on one side that the soldiers had uncovered.[36] He and d’Hautpoul saw at once that it might be important and informed General Jacques-François Menou, who happened to be at Rosetta.[A] The find was announced to Napoleon’s newly founded scientific association in Cairo, the Institut d’Égypte, in a report by Commission member Michel Ange Lancret noting that it contained three inscriptions, the first in hieroglyphs and the third in Greek, and rightly suggesting that the three inscriptions were versions of the same text. Lancret’s report, dated July 19, 1799, was read to a meeting of the Institute soon after July 25. Bouchard, meanwhile, transported the stone to Cairo for examination by scholars. Napoleon himself inspected what had already begun to be called la Pierre de Rosette, the Rosetta Stone, shortly before his return to France in August 1799.[9]
The Russian woman arrested this week on charges of being a foreign agent has ties to Russian intelligence operatives and was in contact with them while in the United States, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Maria Butina, 29, also cultivated a “personal relationship” with an American Republican consultant as part of her cover and offered sex to at least one other person “in exchange for a position within a special interest organization,” according to a court filing.
After a hearing on Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson denied Butina’s request to be released on bail, finding that no combination of conditions would ensure her return to court.
WASHINGTON — For four years, a Russian accused of being a covert agent pursued a brazen effort to infiltrate conservative circles and influence powerful Republicans while she secretly was in contact with Russian intelligence operatives, a senior Russian official and a billionaire oligarch close to the Kremlin whom she called her “funder,” federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.
The woman, Maria Butina, carried out her campaign through a series of deceptions that began in 2014, if not earlier, prosecutors said. She lied to obtain a student visa to pursue graduate work at American University in 2016. Apparently hoping for a work visa that would grant her a longer stay, she offered one American sex in exchange for a job. She moved in with a Republican political operative nearly twice her age, describing him as her boyfriend. But she privately expressed “disdain” for him and had him do her homework, prosecutors said.
In a dramatic two-hour hearing in Federal District Court here, prosecutors said that Ms. Butina, who is charged with conspiracy and illegally acting as an agent of the Russian government, was the point person in a calculated, long-term campaign intended to steer high-level politicians toward Moscow’s objectives. Though prosecutors did not name any party or politician, Ms. Butina’s efforts were clearly aimed at Republican leaders, especially those with White House aspirations in 2016, including Donald J. Trump.
Walker posed for a photo with her at a National Rifle Association meeting in Tennessee in 2015. In the photo, Walker stood between Butina and Alexander Torshin, who is not named in court filings but is the “Russian official” who gave Butina orders as part of the conspiracy, according to the New York Times.
At the time of the photo at the NRA event, Walker was preparing to launch his presidential bid. Soon afterward, Butina attended Walker’s event announcing his campaign launch.
Walker said he has not been contacted by authorities and knows of no one from his campaign who has been.
Walker said he did not recall whether he spoke Russian to her but did take one semester of the language in college.
Asked if he remembered talking to her, Walker said, “Well, I do now because it’s all over the media. But to me, it’s just another person we met.”
In a court filing Wednesday, prosecutors alleged Butina was in touch with Russian intelligence operatives and once offered sex to someone in exchange for a position with an unnamed special interest group
(Walker remembered his college Russian, these years later? Perhaps, but his brief use of that language was surely meant to catch her notice, to impress. It was, in any event, a shallow effort: unless one is prepared for a full conversation, one does better to speak naturally in one’s own language.)
Walker’s encounter with Butina had been reported previously by news organizations including Mother Jones and Rolling Stone, thanks to pictures posted by Butina on her social media pages.
In a blog post attributed to Butina from April 2015, she posted a picture of herself with Walker, writing that she “did not hear any aggression towards our country, the president or my compatriots.” She also posted a picture from July 2015 taken from the crowd at Walker’s official presidential campaign kickoff July 13, 2015.
….
Butina’s connections to another Wisconsin politician were far more pronounced.
In late 2015, a group she ran helped pay for a delegation from the National Rifle Association to visit Russia. That delegation included former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke.
(I’ve never been a member of the National Rifle Association, but as others have remarked, after numerous reports of ties to Russian operatives, one has reason to wonder what nation the word ‘national’ truly describes.)
After a short time bystanders got out of their cars and rushed to help the woman out of the opening.
The bridge operator was made aware of the incident and did not move the bridge span until everyone was off of the bridge, the Menasha Police Department said.
The woman was taken to a local hospital and treated primarily for facial injuries, police said.
Over at The Atlantic, Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute scolds critics of Trump, as she believes The Anti-Trump Hysteria Isn’t Helping:
President Donald Trump’s press conference with Russia’s Vladimir Putin was a debacle. The president went from an anodyne prepared statement to a question-and-answer session that ping-ponged between stunning and appalling (with a bit of emetic thrown in for good measure). Suffice it to say, it was a new low from a chief executive who is redefining the term.
But the reaction on Twitter from the foreign-policy establishment was almost as untethered as Trump himself.
….
But it’s Trump’s words that are terrible. His policies are, in the main, not. The United States has crushed Russia beneath escalating sanctions, pulled out of the dreadful Iran deal, armed the Ukrainian opposition to Putin, stood up to China’s theft of American intellectual property, actually bombed Syrian chemical-weapons sites, and increased defense spending. Sure, there’s plenty to dislike in Trump’s foreign policy, including his trade wars, his dismissal of allies, his toying with nato, and his Obama-esque desire to skip out of Syria. But his stupid rhetoric masks a mostly normal, if not always sensible or desirable, foreign policy. And Trump’s national-security strategy is at least coherent when compared with the incoherent global retreat embraced by the last administration.
Pletka’s analysis – really a rationalization of Trumpism – is powerfully silly, twice over.
First, consider her claim that somehow those criticizing Trump for breaking decades of foreign policy norms are ‘almost’ as unhinged as Trump’s own conduct. Indeed, by her assessment, Trump is unhinged, but we should all be oh-so-careful in reply. This is part of the Trumpists’ broader civility debate: Trump says anything vulgar he wants, and in reply to acerbic criticism, his followers demand – of all things – civility.
After a man vomits all over his dinner guests, Pletka asks that he be very gently removed from the dining room.
Second, there’s her false distinction between words and actions, as though – absurdly – diplomacy had no linguistic foundation. Trump can say what he wants, but others should (under Pletka’s analysis) give no credence to those words. Perhaps Pletka thinks that if a man doesn’t beat his spouse, but ‘merely’ threatens and berates her each day, that she should disregard those mere words, and think only of his absence of action.
Words are actions, for goodness’ sake.
As for actions, on which Pletka seeks to exonerate Trump, she offers a string of falsehoods. We’ve not crushed Russia under sanctions (she’s still in Ukraine, still holding the seized territory of Crimea, still murdering expatriates abroad, still propping up the poison-gas-using regime in Syra, and still at work to interfere in another American election this fall). Pletka thinks the Iran deal was terrible, but she’ll need to show that Trump has a better alternative; if she lives to be a hundred, she’ll not be able to show Trump capable of such.
On NATO, NAFTA, the TPP, relations with Canada & Mexico, treatment of migrants, a starry-eyed view of Kim Jong-un, and on international trade with the European Union, there’s nothing ‘mostly normal’ about Trump’s foreign policy.
At home, of course, Trump exhibits a bigoted, authoritarian, self-dealing impulse that’s unlike anything American has seen from a modern president. That conduct has national and international implications that Pletka crudely ignores.
If opposing Trump in strenuous terms means that Pletka thinks us unhelpful, then we many millions who oppose him have every reason to go on being unhelpful and disappointing her again and again.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:28 PM, for 14h 55m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 37% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the six hundred twelfth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.
Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board agenda lists a meeting time of 5:30 PM today.
On this day in 1865, four Wisconsin regiments muster out: “The 3rd and 18th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 1st and 6th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries mustered out.”
So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki. Putin and I discussed many important subjects at our earlier meeting. We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match. Big results will come!So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki. Putin and I discussed many important subjects at our earlier meeting. We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match. Big results will come!
(Many of Trump’s remarks have this same childish character, with their habitual mixture of weak thinking, evident insecurity, and stunted expression. The ‘higher ends of intelligence,’ however odd, is an expression Trump uses to awe the ignorant or slow-witted into believing that somewhere, someplace, there are supposedly clever people who support Trump’s approach, and so others should fall in line.)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a master of diplomatic verbosity and sardonic barbs, summed up the results of the Helsinki summit in just three exuberant words: “better than super.”
After four years of getting short shrift by his American counterparts, Russian President Vladimir Putin was standing side by side with President Trump, who lavished him with the words of praise, respect and awe normally only heard on Russian state television.
When Putin militarily intervened in Ukraine in 2014, President Barack Obama called Russia a “regional power” that threatened its neighbors out of weakness, not strength. Russia’s annexation of Crimea set off a precipitous decline in relations with the United States. When he took office, Trump could not reverse the trend because of accusations that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election.
And then, without any change in Kremlin policy, Trump agreed to sit down one-on-one with Putin.
It’s hard to know what to say after a day—a week—like the one we’ve just experienced. On one hand, none of it should’ve come as a surprise. The full frontal assault on our closest allies in the EU and NATO, like the assault on the free press and the pointless flattery of Vladimir Putin, stretch back two years to the 2016 campaign. Donald Trump has spent this past week doing exactly what he said he would do before his election, and doubling down on the denials that anything but his own genius helped him win that election. And yet, no matter how many times we’ve heard “NO COLLUSION!,” there’s something about watching it unfold in real time that stuns in a way that—like catching a cheating partner after months of suspicion or seeing a loved one die after a terminal illness—no amount of intellectual knowing, understanding, or expecting can prepare you for.
After Trump and Putin met in Helsinki, many pundits and politicians struggled to understand what it is they saw, to rationalize it, to explain it away, to speculate on what kinds of kompromat the Russians could have on Trump, when the answer—like infidelity or death—was staring them, us, in the face. Yes, Putin has something on Trump: He helped him win. That’s the kompromat.
Facing the press after his meeting with Trump, Putin admitted—openly, arrogantly—that yes, he had wanted Trump to win in 2016. But we had known that as early as…2016. His state-run media didn’t do much to hide their boss’s preference: anyone but Hillary Clinton. I remember constantly explaining that summer why Putin preferred Trump to Clinton. Through the spring of 2016, Kremlin TV was clear that it wasn’t that Putin wanted Trump to win, it was that he wanted Clinton to lose. The propaganda machine—and, as we now know, the covert influence machine—got behind Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Jill Stein—anyone who wasn’t Clinton.
(There’s likely more Putin has on Trump, but Ioffe’s core claim is right: Putin helped elect Trump, and that alone is a powerful lever.)
For the Kremlin, the summit was only the beginning.
Russian commentators and politicians declared the meeting here between Presidents Trump and Vladimir Putin a triumph, concluding that Trump was finally serious about fulfilling his campaign promise to improve relations with Moscow.
“It is here in Helsinki where the first step toward a better future was made,” government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta proclaimed.
Now, Russian officials are waiting to see whether Trump’s words will translate into action or fall flat in the face of a U.S. establishment that they view as determined to reverse the thaw.
Andrei Klimov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said in an interview Tuesday that he expected senior U.S. and Russian officials to meet repeatedly in the next six months and hammer out a “road map” toward resolving contentious issues and deepening cooperation.
In 1865, cartoonist Oscar Harpel drew A Proper Family Re-Union, depicting notorious American traitors Benedict Arnold and Jefferson Davis drinking a treason toddy of Satan’s creation.
I’ll not presume to make the theological claim that Trump will, in fact, one day find himself in the company of those three, but as a political matter, America’s going to need a bigger cartoon.
A biting cartoon showing Confederate president Jefferson Davis in league with both the devil and Revolutionary War traitor Benedict Arnold. Arnold and Davis stir a cauldron of “Treason Toddy,” a brew into which the devil drops miniature black slaves. The devil holds a pitchfork and gloats, “I feel proud of my American sons–Benedict and Jeff.” Davis, dressed in a bonnet, shawl, and dress (see “The Chas-ed “Old Lady” of the C.S.A.,” no. 1865-11) [popular accounts at the time claimed Davis disguised himself to avoid Union capture], explains to his fellow traitor, “Well, Arnold, the C.S.A. [Confederate States of America] are “done gone” so I have come home.” Arnold greets him, “Welcome, Davis! Thou shalt be warmly received by thy father.” At the cauldron base, marked “1865,” lie two skulls, marked “Libby” and “Andersonville,”–no doubt intended to represent Union victims of the two notorious Confederate prisons Libby and Andersonville. Copperheads writhe on the ground. Near Davis’s feet are a bag of “Stolen Gold” and a valise marked with his initials and “C.S.A. 1865.”
This Wednesday, July 18th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Loving Vincent @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building.
Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman direct the one-hour, thirty-four-minute animated biography:
A year after the death of the artist, Vincent van Gogh, Postman Roulin gets his slacker son, Armand, to hand deliver the artist’s final letter written to his now late brother, Theo, to some worthy recipient after multiple failed postal delivery attempts. Although disdainful of this seemingly pointless chore, Armand travels to Auvers-sur-Oise where a purported close companion to Vincent, Dr. Gachet, lives. Having to wait until the doctor returns from business, Armand meets many of the people of that village who not only knew Vincent, but were apparently also models and inspirations for his art. In doing so, Armond becomes increasingly fascinated in the psyche and fate of Van Gogh as numerous suspicious details fail to add up. However, as Armond digs further, he comes to realize that Vincent’s troubled life is as much a matter of interpretation as his paintings and there are no easy answers for a man whose work and tragedy would only be truly appreciated in the future. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
Filmmaking for “[e]ach of the film’s 65,000 frames is an oil painting on canvas, using the same technique as Van Gogh, created by a team of 125 painters.[10] The film premiered at the 2017 Annecy International Animated Film Festival.[2] It won Best Animated Feature Film Award at the 30th European Film Awards in Berlin and was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 90th Academy Awards.”
The cast includes Robert Gulaczyk as Vincent van Gogh, Douglas Booth as Armand Roulin, Jerome Flynn as Paul Gachet, and Saoirse Ronan as Marguerite Gachet.” The film is rated PG-13 by the MPAA.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:32 AM and sunset 8:29 PM, for 14h 57m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 26.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the six hundred eleventh day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.
The Whitewater Unified School District’s Citizens Financial Advisory Committee meets at 6 PM, and the Whitewater Common Council at 6:30 PM.
The Committee to Investigate Russia ably captures the reaction to the Trump-Putin summit in a post entitled Shock, Outrage, and Disgust:
UPDATE: Putin was pleased with Trump’s performance.
Career intelligence officers, Democrats, and Republicans weigh in on President Trump’s stunning appearance alongside Vladimir Putin during which the president of the United States sided with the Russian authoritarian over his own intelligence officials and attacked both Democrats and the FBI.
While the reaction is overwhelmingly negative, some Republicans still refuse to take a strong stance against President Trump, with at least a couple defending him.
Former CIA Director:
Former Acting CIA Director and CIR Advisory Board member:
“The Senate Intelligence Committee has reviewed the 2017 IC assessment and found no reason to doubt its conclusion that President Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the 2016 U.S. elections with the goal of undermining faith in our democratic process. Russia has conducted a coordinated cyberattack on state election systems, and hacked critical infrastructure. They have used social media to sow chaos and discord in our society. They have beaten and harassed U.S. diplomats and violated anti-proliferation treaties. Any statement by Vladimir Putin contrary to these facts is a lie and should be recognized as one by the President.
“Vladimir Putin is not our friend and never has been. Nor does he want to be our friend. His regime’s actions prove it. We must make clear that the United States will not tolerate hostile Russian activities against us or our allies.”
“Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.
“President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.
“It is tempting to describe the press conference as a pathetic rout – as an illustration of the perils of under-preparation and inexperience. But these were not the errant tweets of a novice politician. These were the deliberate choices of a president who seems determined to realize his delusions of a warm relationship with Putin’s regime without any regard for the true nature of his rule, his violent disregard for the sovereignty of his neighbors, his complicity in the slaughter of the Syrian people, his violation of international treaties, and his assault on democratic institutions throughout the world.
“Coming close on the heels of President Trump’s bombastic and erratic conduct towards our closest friends and allies in Brussels and Britain, today’s press conference marks a recent low point in the history of the American Presidency. That the president was attended in Helsinki by a team of competent and patriotic advisors makes his blunders and capitulations all the more painful and inexplicable.
“No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are—a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. American presidents must be the champions of that cause if it is to succeed. Americans are waiting and hoping for President Trump to embrace that sacred responsibility. One can only hope they are not waiting totally in vain.”
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT):
Senator Bob Corker (R-TN):
….
Current Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats issued the following statement:
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE): “This is bizarre and flat-out wrong. The United States is not to blame. America wants a good relationship with the Russian people but Vladimir Putin and his thugs are responsible for Soviet-style aggression. When the President plays these moral equivalence games, he gives Putin a propaganda win he desperately needs.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “Missed opportunity by President Trump to firmly hold Russia accountable for 2016 meddling and deliver a strong warning regarding future elections. This answer by President Trump will be seen by Russia as a sign of weakness and create far more problems than it solves. … if it were me, I’d check the soccer ball [that Putin gave Trump] for listening devices and never allow it in the White House.”
Rep. Pete King (R-NY): “[I] strongly disagree” with Trump’s statement that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election. “[I’m] disappointed, not flabbergasted.” King added that having Russia cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller “would be like bringing ISIS into a joint terrorism task force.”
Fox Business host Neil Cavuto: “That’s what made his performance disgusting. I’m sorry its the way I feel. It’s not a right or left thing, it’s just wrong. A U.S. president on foreign soil talking to our biggest enemy, or adversary, or competitor … is essentially letting the guy get away with this and not even offering a mild criticism, that set’s us back a lot.”
Monday in Whitewater will see scattered morning showers and a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:30 AM and sunset 8:31 PM, for 14h 58m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the six hundred tenth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.
The Downtown Whitewater Board meets at 5 PM, the Whitewater Unified School District’s Policy Review Committee at 6 PM, and the Library Board at 6:30 PM.
Looking at this case through a counterintelligence lens raises an intriguing new series of questions. In putting all the detail into the indictment, Mueller was giving Russian intelligence a hint of how much America can see. But this public disclosure may mask much deeper capabilities — perhaps a capacity to expose many more layers of GRU military-intelligence operations and those by the Russian civilian spy services, the FSB and the SVR. American intelligence agencies rarely tip their hand this way by disclosing so much in an indictment; clearly they did so here to send messages.
Explains one former CIA officer: “Given that we clearly had so much of the Russian internal communication and cyber footprints, they must be asking what else do we have? Do we have communications between the units and more senior officers in the GRU? With the General Staff? With the Kremlin? With Putin? Probably not the latter directly, but the Russians are very bureaucratic and it’s hard for me to imagine there is not a clear trail of higher level approvals, progress reports, etc.”
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The indictment also sends a message to President Trump and members of his entourage who are potential targets of Mueller’s probe: Here’s a hint of what we know; how much are you willing to wager that we don’t know a lot more about Russian contacts and collusion? For example, the indictment is a proffer of Mueller’s information about contacts between GRU cut-out “Guccifer 2.0” and Roger Stone, Trump’s friend and adviser. What else does Mueller have?
The effect on American growth stands to be small but noticeable, economists said. Paul Ashworth, the chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, said he estimated the hit at 0.1 or 0.2 percentage points of GDP. Morgan Stanley put the direct impact at 0.3 percentage points, with a variety of other forecasters and economic analysts coming up with similar numbers. “There is no question that the short-run impact of the tariffs is to weaken G.D.P.,” said Chris Varvares of Macroeconomic Advisers by IHS Markit, a forecasting firm. That said, he added, “even sizable tariffs are not recession-inducing” given the kind of growth the country is seeing right now.
But the trade war is more than just tariffs. Trump’s actions might reduce consumer confidence, undercut business investment, and reduce investors’ appetite for risk. Companies anticipating more tariffs and export barriers, for instance, might choose not to expand their operations in the United States. “Since workers and firms don’t know if they might be impacted by retaliatory tariffs, including losing your job or shutting down your firm, the U.S. imposing tariffs is the economic equivalent of a game of Russian roulette,” Varvares said, adding that the economic impact of such decision-making was far harder to model and measure.
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Even if the overall GDP effect remains muted—just a few tenths of a percentage point—some communities and consumers stand to feel it much harder than others. Agricultural businesses, for instance, are bracing for tariffs. “For soybean producers like me this is a direct financial hit,” Brent Bible, a soy and corn farmer based in Indiana, said in a statement. “This is money out of my pocket. These tariffs could mean the difference between a profit and a loss for an entire year’s worth of work out in the field, and that’s only in the near term.” The auto industry is also warning that Trump’s threatened tariffs might cost thousands of production jobs—losses that would be concentrated in Rust Belt states like Michigan, among others.
“Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!”
(Putin seizes Crimea, foments war in eastern Ukraine, bolsters a mass-murdering dictator in Syria, orders the murder of expatriates abroad, and interferes in American elections, but Trump sees America at fault. There’s no poodle half so devoted to its owner as Trump is to Putin.)
Cities across the United States are grappling with how to deal with dockless electric scooters that have begun appearing along sidewalks overnight without any regulations.
Lawsuits and cease-and-desist orders have sometimes followed the arrival of California-based companies Bird Rides Inc., LimeBike and Spin. Some cities say the scooters are illegal to operate on streets or sidewalks where they get dangerously close to pedestrians. And because the scooters are dockless, they’re parked anywhere when a ride is over, causing cities heartburn over blocking sidewalks.
Now, the city of Milwaukee wants to get Bird scooters off its streets and sidewalks after they appeared in late-June.
(‘Without any regulations’ – the popularity or unpopularity of the devices will always be a more powerful constraint than a municipal ordinance.)
Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon thunderstorms and a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 5:30 AM and sunset 8:31 PM, for 15h 00m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 9.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the six hundred ninth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.
The Western Wisconsin Derecho was a severe weather system that moved through several western counties on July 15, 1980. It cut a 20-mile-wide swath through St Croix, Pierce, Dunn, Eau Claire, Chippewa, and Clark counties. Although much of the storm’s damage was caused by straight-line winds in excess of 100 mph, several tornadoes were also reported. The storm caused nearly $160M in damage (1980 dollars) and killed three people.
Recommended for reading in full —
John Sipher reports Why American Spies Worry When Trump Meets Putin (“Just as the Russian leader has unleashed his intelligence and security services, the American president has kneecapped and undermined his own”):
It was going to be Donald Trump’s “easiest” meeting, at least according to Trump himself. After a week of tense exchanges with allies in Brussels and then the U.K., the U.S president would head to Helsinki for his first formal summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Then on Friday, right as the president was settling down to tea with the Queen, the indictments came; the Justice Department accused 12 officers of Russian intelligence with specific crimes related to meddling in the 2016 election—the one U.S. intelligence says the Russians wanted to throw to Trump.
If Trump is worried this will cast a pall over the summit, American intelligence officials have plenty of other reasons to worry about the meeting. Notwithstanding any indictment-related awkwardness, the summit will still be a gift to Putin—an unearned opportunity for him to break out of his immediate struggles and achieve a variety of otherwise impossible goals. Indeed, through a number of aggressive and provocative actions that appeared to provide short-term wins, Putin has nonetheless gotten himself trapped. His country is heavily sanctioned, economically weak, overextended, and lacking in allies. His unprovoked land grab in Crimea, attack on neighboring Ukraine, electoral interference in the U.S. and Europe, assassination of opponents, support to Syria’s bloody dictator Bashar al-Assad and constant lies have left him ostracized in much of the developed world. He can no longer offer his people wealth or the vision of a better future. He instead relies on the tools of oppression and scapegoats to blame for his failures. The dynamic is unlikely to change anytime soon.
And yet despite all this, and even with the indictments, Putin walks into the summit with a distinct advantage. Just as Putin has unleashed his intelligence and security services, Trump has kneecapped and undermined his own.
The fact that this top-level tête-à-tête is set to take place provides confirmation that Putin’s Russia was able to end the country’s isolation without giving an inch. The summit was preceded by the recent visit from eight Republican lawmakers, most of whom celebrated the Fourth of July in Moscow. On Russian state television, both of these events have been portrayed as concessions by the United States. Appearing on state TV, Igor Korotchenko, member of the Defense Ministry’s public advisory council, argued that Russia should look down on Americans the same way the Soviet Union did: “You came to us, because you need something.” In an ongoing confrontation with the Russians, America blinked first. The Kremlin is barreling through, with eyes wide open.
Russian state media are hard at work, praising Putin’s strategy that is finally paying off. That is not surprising, as the state media in Russia are fully controlled by the government. Positions conveyed by the Kremlin’s bullhorns reflect only what is considered permissible by the state. On Russian state television, criticism of Putin is unheard of, and mildly dissenting views are allowed mostly so they can be mocked. Government-controlled propaganda, combined with fear of retribution, secure consistently high approval ratings for the seemingly irreplaceable Russian leader. Putin is always portrayed as a masterful chess player whose every move is pure genius. State TV is already providing a preview of Putin’s likely strategy: flatter Trump’s ego and bond over common enemies, blaming past U.S.-Russia tensions on the U.S. “deep state,” the news media and, most of all, President Barack Obama and Trump’s former rival, Hillary Clinton.
(Julia Davis speaks Russian, and daily translates Russian state television’s utter contempt for Trump – as sucker and pawn – so that English-speaking readers will know, among other things, how little the Russians think of Trump. I’ve been following @JuliaDavisNews for quite some time – highly recommended.)
His role in the election of Mr. Trump was even more direct. Most notable was his refusal to hold a confirmation hearing, let alone a vote on Merrick Garland, Mr. Obama’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, despite the fact that the nomination was made a full 10 months before the end of Mr. Obama’s term. This refusal exploded norms and dismayed Beltway arbiters who had long accepted Mr. McConnell’s claim to be a guardian of Washington institutions. It also provided crucial motivation to Republicans who had grave qualms about Mr. Trump but were able to justify voting for him as “saving Scalia’s seat.”
Mr. McConnell’s other form of aid for Mr. Trump was more hidden. As The Washington Post reported a month after the 2016 election, Mr. Obama had been prepared that September to go public with a C.I.A. assessment laying bare the extent of Russian intervention in the election. But he was largely dissuaded by a threat from Mr. McConnell. During a secret briefing for congressional leaders, The Post reported, Mr. McConnell “raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.” The Obama administration kept mum, and voters had to wait until after Mr. Trump’s election to learn the depth of Russian involvement.
Now, with the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, it is evident just how much of a lasting legacy Mitch McConnell’s will leave the country: Donald Trump will have at least two lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court. The president has — and will now enjoy — greater latitude in filling those seats as a result of Mr. McConnell’s doing away last year with the 60-vote requirement for Senate confirmation, to get Neil Gorsuch seated. In the day and a half before Justice Kennedy’s announcement, the impact of the Scalia seat was made plain again, as the court issued 5-4 rulings in favor of Mr. Trump’s “travel ban” and anti-abortion groups, and against public employee unions.
Anita Osvatic is a board member of the Croatian Eagles Soccer Club in Franklin, Wisconsin and is a second-generation Croatian-American.
Osvatic said there are about 15,000 people in Wisconsin of Croatian descent. Adding that for many of them, Sunday’s match is more than a sporting event.
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Also watching, but at the French-themed Bastille Days in downtown Milwaukee, will be Fred Gillich.
He runs a T-shirt booth there, and is a longtime soccer fan. He says his ancestry goes back to the Alsace-Lorraine region of France and Germany.
Gillich said that while he’d prefer that the French team win Sunday’s match, he appreciates the Croatian team doing well as an underdog.
Martin Frost is the last working fore-edge painter in the world. Dating back centuries, the delicate art form places intricate scenes on the side of books, cheekily hidden beneath gold gilded pages. The beautiful paintings are only visible to the trained eye, but once you unlock the secret, you’ll find pure magic.
Saturday in Whitewater will see a mix of clouds and sun, an occasional thunderstorm, and a high of eighty-two. Sunrise is 5:29 AM and sunset 8:31 PM, for 15h 01m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the six hundred eighth day.Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.
Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries to the national day of France, which is celebrated on the 14th of July each year. In French, it is formally called la Fête Nationale….
The French National Day is the anniversary of Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789,[1][2] a turning point of the French Revolution,[4] as well as the Fête de la Fédération which celebrated the unity of the French people on 14 July 1790. Celebrations are held throughout France. The oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe is held on the morning of 14 July, on the Champs-Élysées in Paris in front of the President of the Republic, along with other French officials and foreign guests.[5][6]
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In the debate leading up to the adoption of the holiday, Henri Martin, chairman of the French Senate, addressed that chamber on 29 June 1880:
Do not forget that behind this 14 July, where victory of the new era over the ancien régime was bought by fighting, do not forget that after the day of 14 July 1789, there was the day of 14 July 1790 … This [latter] day cannot be blamed for having shed a drop of blood, for having divided the country. It was the consecration of the unity of France … If some of you might have scruples against the first 14 July, they certainly hold none against the second. Whatever difference which might part us, something hovers over them, it is the great images of national unity, which we all desire, for which we would all stand, willing to die if necessary.
— Henri Martin, Chairman of the Sénat, 1880[17]
The timing of the indictment given the upcoming Helsinki summit is a powerful show of strength by federal law enforcement. Let’s presume that Mueller did not time this indictment to precede the summit by way of embarrassing Trump on the international stage. It is enough to note that he also did not hold off on the indictment for a few days by way of sparing Trump embarrassment—and that Rosenstein did not force him to. Indeed, Rosenstein said at his press conference that it is “important for the president to know what information was uncovered because he has to make very important decisions for the country” and therefore “he needs to know what evidence there is of foreign election interference.” But of course Rosenstein and Mueller did not just let Trump know. They also let the world know, which has the effect—intended or not—of boxing in the president as he meets with an adversary national leader.
Put less delicately: Rosenstein has informed the president, and the world, before Trump talks to Putin one-on-one that his own Justice Department is prepared to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, in public, using admissible evidence, that the president of the Russian Federation has been lying to Trump about Russian non-involvement in the 2016 election hacking.
HELSINKI — Before he embarked on a week of transatlantic diplomacy, President Trump sat down with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who previewed for the boss an explosive development: The Justice Department would soon indict 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking Democratic emails to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For the first time, the United States would be charging Russian government agents with planning and executing a sustained cyberattack to disrupt America’s democratic process. Yet Trump gave no sign in his commentary in Europe this week that he appreciated the magnitude of what he had been told was coming.
Instead, he repeated his frequent attacks on the integrity of the wide-ranging Russia probe led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — while offering kind words for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he is slated to meet here in Helsinki on Monday.
Trump said Putin should not be considered his enemy but rather his competitor — and after spending some time together here in this vibrant seaside Nordic capital, Trump said he hoped they might quickly become friends.
4. But Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin suggested upon his return that the U.S. has gone too far in punishing Russia for its election meddling:
“I’ve been pretty upfront that the election interference—as serious as that was, and unacceptable—is not the greatest threat to our democracy … We’ve blown it way out of proportion.” (Id.)
5. “Johnson elaborated on his position in a Monday interview with WOSH-AM radio, in which he said there were more serious threats” and that it’s “very difficult to really meddle in our elections. It just is. These are locally run, it’s almost impossible to change the vote tally.”
6. Johnson is wrong. As explained in the July 2017 congressional testimony of Computer Science Professor Alex Halderman, “hacking a national election in the United States would be, well, shockingly easy.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD3qqBfU0no
21. Senator Johnson of Wisconsin, however, may have an incentive to deny the vulnerability of U.S. elections to meddling by Russia or even domestic actors.
22. During the 2015–16 election cycle, the Political Action Committee for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker accepted $1.1 million “from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.”
Craig Gilbert observes GOP senate primary in Wisconsin already reflects north-south divide within party:
The fight to pick a Republican nominee against U.S. Senate Democrat Tammy Baldwin is playing out along a familiar GOP fault line in Wisconsin.
North versus South.
In GOP primary polls this year, state Sen. Leah Vukmir is leading by double-digits in populous southeast Wisconsin, her home turf. Marine Corps veteran and first-time candidate Kevin Nicholson is well ahead in the rest of Wisconsin, especially the rural north and west.
If this schism sounds familiar by now, there’s a reason. It was a defining feature of the state’s past three Republican presidential primaries and the GOP primary for governor that launched Scott Walker in 2010.
