Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty. Sunrise is 6:33 AM and sunset 5:41 PM, for 11h 07m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 84.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM today.

On this day in 1815, exiled French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from Elba, to begin the Hundred Days, during which he would inflict further militarism and suffering on the people of Europe. On this day in 1863, Wisconsin’s Irish residents order a regimental flag for “the 17th Wisconsin Infantry. The flag was to be presented to Colonel Adam Malloy from all of the state’s Irish citizens.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Jane Perlez and Javier C. Hernandez report President Xi’s Strongman Rule Raises New Fears of Hostility and Repression:

President Xi Jinping’s efforts to indefinitely extend his rule as China’s leader, announced on Sunday, raised fresh fears in China of a resurgence of strongman politics — and fears abroad of a new era of hostility and gridlock.

…

But Mr. Xi’s assumption of unfettered power may not work out the way he thinks, said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and a former senior Australian defense official.

“The risks to his personal fortunes are huge,” he said. “What if the People’s Liberation Army decides he should be cut loose?” And, he added, “What if growth slows more than expected?”

…

Moreover, he added, “Where does one ever see the ‘president for life’ model end well?”

➤ Philip Rucker, Joshua Partlow, and Nick Miroff report After testy call with Trump over border wall, Mexican president shelves plan to visit White House:

Tentative plans for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to make his first visit to the White House to meet with President Trump were scuttled this week after a testy call between the two leaders ended in an impasse over Trump’s promised border wall, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

Peña Nieto was eyeing an official trip to Washington this month or in March, but both countries agreed to call off the plan after Trump would not agree to publicly affirm Mexico’s position that it would not fund construction of a border wall that the Mexican people widely consider offensive, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential conversation.

…

One Mexican official said Trump “lost his temper.” But U.S. officials described him instead as being frustrated and exasperated, saying Trump believed it was unreasonable for Peña Nieto to expect him to back off his crowd-pleasing campaign promise of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall.

(Trump’s so self-absorbed that he thinks others will simply agree to what he finds crowd-pleasing. Even stranger are the Trump officials who think that what’s crowd-pleasing for Trump’s lumpen horde would be acceptable to reasonable and knowledgeable people anywhere else, in America or abroad.)

➤ Michael Birnbaum reports Sweden is taking on Russian meddling ahead of fall elections. The White House might take note:

Hundreds of local election workers have been trained to spot and resist foreign influence. The country’s biggest media outlets have teamed up to combat false news. Political parties scour their email systems to close hacker-friendly holes.

The goal: to Russia-proof ­Sweden’s political system so that what happened in the United States in 2016 can never happen in this Nordic country of 10 million people.

Although the general election isn’t until Sept. 9, officials say their preemptive actions may already have dissuaded the Kremlin from interfering. In Washington, meanwhile, the FBI says it has received no White House orders to secure the 2018 midterms against Russian influence.

“It would be very risky for a foreign nation to do this now,” said Mikael Tofvesson, who heads the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency’s effort to safeguard elections from malicious foreign influence. “It could risk a backlash. It would be an exposure of their methods.”

The efforts, which are supported by parties across the political spectrum, contrast with the bitterly partisan discussion in Washington about Russia’s behavior during the 2016 election.

(There is a partisan discussion in Washington because so many GOP politicians and operatives have become fellow travelers with Putinism. These men commonly wear American flags of red, white, and blue on their lapels, but it’s a tricolor banner of white, blue, and red that more closely represents their aspirations.)

➤ Sarah Kendzior considers Why Former Trump Staffers May Be Walking Security Threats (“With many White House officials on interim clearances, the president appears to be more interested in personal loyalty than national security”):

Trump’s White House has long been a revolving door, with a turnover rate of 34%. While departures of incompetent or immoral staffers have often inspired public relief, they are actually cause for alarm. That revolving door leads into a bustling marketplace of state secrets, one whose temptations should not be shrugged off given that basic standards of loyalty to country have been put into question by this administration’s actions.

Among the departed White House staffers are former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who has admitted guilt in the Kremlin interference probe; white nationalist (and fellow domestic abuser ) Steve Bannon, who has vowed to destroy the United States; and extremist Seb Gorka, who has ties to neo-Nazi organizations and is being investigated by police in Hungary. (Gorka, like Porter, worked as a Trump advisor despite being denied clearance as a result of his 2016 arrest in the U.S. for bringing a weapon through an airport.)

Men who have already colluded with a foreign power, committed acts of violence, or threatened to destroy the U.S. now know some of the country’s secrets, and it’s easy to imagine the damage they could do in the era of WikiLeaks and illicit foreign deals. Fellow federal indictee Paul Manafort, for example, used his access as Trump’s campaign manager to offer “private briefings” to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is a close friend of Vladimir Putin and to whom Manafort is alleged to owe a great deal of money.

➤ Could Growing Vaccines in Plants Save Lives?:

This flu season has been nasty in large part because the vaccine didn’t work as well as past versions. So scientists are on the hunt for new ways to make better vaccines and think they might have found one — by growing them in plants..

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 5:40 PM, for 11h 04m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1793, Pres. Washington holds the first recorded American cabinet meeting, at Mount Vernon, with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. On this day in 1862, James Loom demonstrates a new cannon at Camp Randall: “a new breech-loading cannon at Camp Randall in Madison, Wisconsin The cannon was said to be effectively discharged 50 times in four minutes.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Intel Committee Ranking Member Schiff Releases Democratic Response Memo:

“After reviewing the memorandum drafted by committee Republicans that was made public at the beginning of this month, the FBI rightly expressed its ‘grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.’

“Here are some of the material facts the Majority deliberately omitted:

·         The FBI supplied information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that Russia might be colluding with Trump campaign associates. DOJ provided the Court with a comprehensive explanation of Russia’s election interference including evidence that Russia courted another Trump foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, and that Russian agents previewed their dissemination of information damaging to Hillary Clinton. Russian assistance would, as we would learn in the Papadopoulos plea, take the form of the anonymous disclosure of thousands of Hillary Clinton and DNC emails.

·         The FBI had ample reason to believe that Carter Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power based on his history, including the fact that he had previously been a target of Russian recruitment, his travel to Russia, and other information. The renewals of the FISA were also appropriate and based on new information obtained by law enforcement.

·         The FBI did disclose that those who employed Christopher Steele were likely motivated to discredit Trump’s presidential campaign. The Bureau used proper masking procedures so as not to reveal the identities of U.S. persons not subject to the FISA, but made clear that the likely purpose was opposition research.

·         Contrary to the Majority’s assertions, the FBI and DOJ did not use a Yahoo News article to corroborate Steele; it was referenced alongside another article and a letter Page wrote to then FBI Director James Comey to inform the court of Page’s public denials.

“The Democratic response memo released today should put to rest any concerns that the American people might have as to the conduct of the FBI, the Justice Department and the FISC.  Our extensive review of the initial FISA application and three subsequent renewals failed to uncover any evidence of illegal, unethical, or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement and instead revealed that both the FBI and DOJ made extensive showings to justify all four requests.

“The document that we are releasing today is the product of a good faith negotiation between the Minority and the FBI and DOJ. But it is unfortunate that the weekend release of the Democratic memo by the White House was delayed beyond what was necessary and to the advantage of those seeking to mislead the American public. From the beginning, the HPSCI Minority expressed its support for any limited redactions to protect sources and methods, as well as sensitive ongoing investigative equities, and these redactions were agreed to at the expert level over a week ago.

“Now that the public has a clearer understanding of the early phases of the investigation, it is time for our committee to return to the core investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, the role U.S. persons played in that interference and what we need to do to protect the country going forward.”

The memo is available here and here. A fact sheet from HPSCI Minority is here. The accompanying letter sent by the Department of Justice is here.

➤ Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes consider Takeaways From the House Intelligence Democrats’ Memo:

President Trump lost no time dismissing the memo released Saturday by the House intelligence committee Democrats in response to the earlier memo prepared by Rep. Devin Nunes on the origins of the Carter Page surveillance:

Trump is quite wrong that the Democratic memo is a bust.

While the “Demo,” as we’ll call it for short, certainly contains its share of political rhetoric, the facts it alleges are worth serious consideration. If they are true even in substantial measure, let alone in all of their particulars,  they rather lay waste to the original Nunes document. This despite a number of redactions in the Demo that apparently were the condition of its declassification and that make it hard to parse in some places.

The document is devastating because the core claim of ranking Democrat Adam Schiff and his colleagues is that the House intelligence committee majority left out key facts from its analysis in such fashion as to effectively lie about the FBI’s FISA application against former Trump adviser Carter Page in the fall of 2016. The supposedly left-out facts constitute the body of the Demo. And if the Democrats are being even generally accurate as to the material that the majority omitted from the original memo, then there is little left of the original document. Entitled “Correcting the Record—the Russia Investigations,” the document thus raises serious questions, certainly not for the first time, about whether Chairman Nunes and his colleagues are acting in good faith.

➤Ellen Nakashima reports Russian spies hacked the Olympics and tried to make it look like North Korea did it, U.S. officials say:

Russian military spies hacked several hundred computers used by authorities at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, according to U.S. intelligence.

They did so while trying to make it appear as though the intrusion was conducted by North Korea, what is known as a “false-flag” operation, said two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Officials in PyeongChang acknowledged that the Games were hit by a cyberattack during the Feb. 9 Opening Ceremonies but had refused to confirm whether Russia was responsible. That evening there were disruptions to the Internet, broadcast systems and the Olympics website. Many attendees were unable to print their tickets for the ceremony, resulting in empty seats.

Analysts surmise the disruption was retaliation against the International Olympic Committee for banning the Russian team from the Winter Games due to doping violations. No officials from Russia’s Olympic federation were allowed to attend, and while some athletes were permitted to compete under the designation “Olympic Athletes from Russia,” they were unable to display the Russian flag on their uniforms and, if they won medals, their country’s anthem was not played.

As of early February, the Russian military agency GRU had access to as many as 300 Olympic-related computers, according to an intelligence report this month.

➤ Marc Fisher reports Inside the Manafort money machine: A decade of influence-peddling, lavish spending and alleged fraud:

As Donald Trump crisscrossed the nation promising to drain the swamp, two of his top advisers were busy illegally building a colossal fortress of riches deep inside that swamp, according to federal prosecutors.

For a decade prior and on through Trump’s populist crusade, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates used offshore accounts, hidden income, falsified documents and laundered cash to maintain Manafort’s lush life of multiple homes, fine art, exquisite clothes and exotic travel, the government says.

In a richly detailed expanded indictment filed Thursday, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III parted the curtain shielding how two longtime Washington influence merchants worked the system. The government contends that Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign chairman for five months before being fired, used people all around him, from his buddy Gates to banks, clients and the IRS, to build a life of conspicuous consumption.

Gates, who was Manafort’s deputy in their lobbying firm and on the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy and lying to the FBI, cutting a deal with prosecutors to give them information that could help Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

➤ Building the World’s Biggest Stage Out of Lego blocks:

After being bullied in school, Alexandro Kröger Degerfeldt decided to build a world of his own. Using Lego, Degerfeldt found refuge in replicating and filming the performances of his favorite reality show, the Eurovision talent competition. Fourteen years later, he has accumulated thousands of views on his videos and has even worked with the show itself. What started off as an escape from bullying has now become Degerfeldt’s biggest dream come true. Now, he’s showing the bullies who’s boss.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 5:38 PM, for 11h 02m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 63.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1868, the U.S. House of Representatives votes 126-47 to impeach Pres. Andrew Johnson. (He narrowly avoided removal from office by the U.S. Senate.)

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Jeff Stein reports The math in Trump’s infrastructure plan is off by 98 percent, UPenn economists say:

President Trump is overselling the financial impact of his proposed $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan by about $1.3 trillion, according to economists at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Earlier this month, the White House unveiled a proposal that it said would stimulate $1.5 trillion in new infrastructure spending through a $200 billion federal investment. The White House said the other $1.3 trillion would come from new state, local and private spending unleashed by its spending plan.

But the Penn Wharton Budget Model team found that the new federal investment would lead at most to an additional $30 billion in state, local and private spending, or about 2 percent of the amount envisioned by the White House.

(98% off …)

➤ Sheera Frenkel and Daisuke Wakabayaski report After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced:

SAN FRANCISCO — One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate.

The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

“This is pretty typical for them, to hop on breaking news like this,” said Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of New Knowledge, a company that tracks online disinformation campaigns. “The bots focus on anything that is divisive for Americans. Almost systematically.”

One of the most divisive issues in the nation is how to handle guns, pitting Second Amendment advocates against proponents of gun control. And the messages from these automated accounts, or bots, were designed to widen the divide and make compromise even more difficult.

Any news event — no matter how tragic — has become fodder to spread inflammatory messages in what is believed to be a far-reaching Russian disinformation campaign. The disinformation comes in various forms: conspiracy videos on YouTube, fake interest groups on Facebook, and armies of bot accounts that can hijack a topic or discussion on Twitter.

➤ Jeremy Raff writes  So What? Maybe It Is a Concentration Camp’ (“Joe Arpaio made his name by building a harsh jail in the desert. Now, Trump is promising to take his punitive approach to immigration national”):

On the eve of the Iowa Caucuses in January 2016, when Donald Trump’s presidential campaign still seemed a long-shot, he landed a crucial endorsement. Joe Arpaio, the Phoenix-area sheriff hailed by conservative activists for being tough on immigration, embraced Trump with a prescient message. “Everything I believe in,” Arpaio declared, “he’s going to do when he becomes president.”

The former sheriff rose to national prominence by running an outdoor jail in the desert he once proudly referred to as a “concentration camp.” Arpaio, who is now running for the United States Senate, sees no reason to reconsider the remark. “I’m not going to back down,” Arpaio said in a recent interview. “So what? Maybe it is a concentration camp. I don’t want to make it look nice, like the Hilton Hotel. I want to say it’s a tough place so people don’t want to come there.”

Now Trump, his most prominent champion, is working to execute an Arpaio-style immigration crackdown at a scale neither may have imagined in Iowa. America’s immigrant detention centers have proliferated in recent decades as a result of bipartisan investment. But the Trump administration is aggressively expanding these facilities, where conditions often seem punitively harsh, locking up many immigrants who pose no obvious threat to public safety. A year into President Trump’s crackdown, tens of thousands of immigrants are living the consequences, and fighting against deportation from behind bars.

(These lumpen men now wield wrongly federal power over hundreds of millions.)

➤ Jordan Brunner writes of Kaspersky Lab v. DHS: The Government’s Response and Kaspersky’s Reply:

In December 2017, the Russia-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security over an order labeling Kaspersky software an “information security risk” and ordering the removal of all relevant software from government national security systems after a review process of 90 days. The firm applied for a preliminary injunction under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), arguing the order was “arbitrary and capricious.” Lawfare has previously summarized the lawsuit.

In February, the litigation between Kaspersky and DHS heated up. On Feb. 5, the government filed its response to Kaspersky’s application for a preliminary injunction, along with its evidentiary file. The evidentiary file includes a document entitled the “Maggs Report,” on which DHS relied in making its decision to link Russian espionage services and Kaspersky so closely together. On Feb. 12, Kaspersky filed its reply to these documents. The following is an update to this litigation providing a summary of all the above documents.

The “Maggs Report”

Though only briefly mentioned by both Kaspersky in its application for a preliminary injunction and by the government in its brief in opposition below, the Maggs Report, authored by Russian law expert Peter Maggs of the University of Illinois College of Law, provides a strong underpinning to the DHS says Kaspersky software presented an information security risk because of Kaspersky’s Russian connections. First, Maggs explains that Federal Law No. 40-FZ outlines a legal obligation by Kaspersky to assist Russian FSB officials in the execution of their duties, “including counterintelligence and intelligence activity.” Russian law also permits FSB personnel to be embedded in private enterprises, including Kaspersky, under the same law. Furthermore, because Kaspersky qualifies as an “organizer of the dissemination of information on the Internet” under Article 10. 1 of Federal Law No. 149-FZ, it is required to provide the FSB with metadata (as of July 1, 2018), and is also required to provide Russian officials with decryption keys for its data transmissions. Articles 6 and 8 of Federal Law No. 144-FZ also require Kaspersky to install equipment for the FSB to monitor data transmissions.

➤ How are Pillows Made?

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 5:37 PM, for 10h 59m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous, with 53.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1945, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima capture Mount Suribachi, where they raised two American flags (the second flag-raising was captured in an iconic Associated Press photograph.)

On this day in 1846, malted-milk magnate William Horlick is born: “A noted food manufacturer and philanthopist, Horlick arrived in the U.S. in 1869 and settled in Racine. In 1872 he moved to Chicago with his brother and began to manufacture food products. In 1876 his company moved to Racine where he began to experiment with creating a dried milk product. In 1887 he trademarked Malted Milk. In 1889 he opened a company branch in New York City and another in England the following year. He constructed additional plants in Racine in 1902 and 1905. The company name was changed to Horlick’s Malted Milk Co. in 1906. This success enabled Horlick to achieve a widespread reputation as a philanthropist in Racine. He also helped fund the first Byrd expedition to the South Pole and the Amundsen expedition to the North Pole. After his death in 1936, control of the company passed to his son, Ander James Horlick.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ellen Nakashima, Karen DeYoung and Liz Sly report Putin ally said to be in touch with Kremlin, Assad before his mercenaries attacked U.S. troops:

A Russian oligarch believed to control the Russian mercenaries who attacked U.S. troops and their allies in Syria this month was in close touch with Kremlin and ­Syrian officials in the days and weeks before and after the assault, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

In intercepted communications in late January, the oligarch, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, told a senior Syrian official that he had “secured permission” from an unspecified Russian minister to move forward with a “fast and strong” initiative that would take place in early February.

…

The recent incident took place on the night of Feb. 7-8, when a headquarters base of U.S. troops and their Syrian allies, located near a strategic oil field several miles east of the river and close to the town of Deir al-Zour, was attacked by 300 to 500 “pro-regime” forces.

The Americans quickly mobilized a ferocious response, including AC-130 gunships, jet warplanes and Apache attack helicopters. After three hours, the attacking force retreated, leaving behind what the U.S. military said was about 100 dead attackers. No casualties were reported among the Americans and their allies, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

(Our fellow Americans were victorious here, successfully defending themselves, and inflicting a deserved blow against Russian mercenaries. Americans at home who support Putin – including Trump’s servile response to Putin’s Russia – provide support for America’s deadly – literally deadly – enemies.)

➤ Mark  Mazzetti and Maggie Haberman report Rick Gates, Trump Campaign Aide, to Plead Guilty in Mueller Inquiry and Cooperate:

WASHINGTON — A former top adviser to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign indicted by the special counsel was expected to plead guilty as soon as Friday afternoon, according to two people familiar with his plea agreement, a move that signals he is cooperating with the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

The adviser, Rick Gates, is a longtime political consultant who once served as Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman. The plea deal could be a significant development in the investigation — a sign that Mr. Gates plans to offer incriminating information against his longtime associate and the former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, or other members of the Trump campaign in exchange for a lighter punishment.

The deal comes as the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has been raising pressure on Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort with dozens of new charges of money laundering and bank fraud that were unsealed on Thursday. Mr. Mueller first indicted both men in October, and both pleaded not guilty.

➤ Do all Christians believe that the Earth is for humanity to exploit? No, not all:

Actually, what God told us was something else: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). But we have done too much tilling and not enough keeping. https://t.co/R49J2EFXco

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) February 23, 2018

➤ Do all Christians believe that God, Himself, grants an express right to gun ownership? No, not all:

Others may believe this, but the Catholic Church does not teach that individual civilians have a natural right to own a gun. While recognizing the natural right to self-defense, the US bishops have also repeatedly called for major restrictions on gun ownership. https://t.co/1yaWZL4o28

— Matt Malone, S.J. (@Americaeditor) February 22, 2018

➤ Rep. John Lewis reminds us, from a tweet in 2016, that there’s sometimes good trouble:

Sometimes you have to get in the way. You have to make some noise by speaking up and speaking out against injustice & inaction #goodtrouble

— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) June 22, 2016

➤ So, How Long Are You Contagious With The Flu?:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 5:36 PM, for 10h 56m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 42% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred sixty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Alcohol & Licensing Committee meets at 6 PM,  the Whitewater Fire Department has a business meeting scheduled for 6:30 PM, and Common Council also meets at 6:30 PM.

George Washington is born on this day in 1732.

On this day in 1922, an ice storm brings havoc to Wisconsin: “Unprecedented freezing rain and snow assaulted the Midwest February 21-23, 1922. In Wisconsin the central and southern parts of the state were most severely affected, with the counties between Lake Winnebago and Lake Michigan south to Racine being hardest hit. Ice coated trees and power lines, bringing them down and cutting off electricity, telephone and telegraph services. Cities were isolated, roads were impassable, rivers rose, streets and basements flooded, and train service stopped or slowed.

Near Little Chute a passenger train went off the rails, injuring several crew members. Appleton housed 150 stranded traveling salesmen, near Plymouth a sheet of river ice 35 feet long and nearly three feet thick washed onto the river bank, while in Sheboygan police rescued a flock of chickens and ducks from their flooded coop and a sick woman from her flooded home. Icy streets caused numerous automobile accidents, but the only reported deaths were a team of horses in Appleton that were electrocuted by a fallen power line.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Eric Levitz writes Trump Is No Longer Bothering to Conceal His Corruption:

Donald Trump has, by his own account, spent much of his adult life trying to enrich himself through corruption: During his presidential campaign, the mogul claimed that he had routinely tried to buy policy favors from elected officials by donating to their campaigns.

Given these realities, many experts in government ethics believe that Trump had an obligation to take extraordinary measures to insulate himself from conflicts of interest once be became president — up to and including divesting himself from a wide range of foreign assets. Of course, Trump refused to do any such thing. Instead, he vowed to place his assets into what he referred to as a “blind trust,” but was actually an entity that would allow him perfect knowledge of his holdings — and that would be managed by his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr. The president’s sole concession to ethical propriety was the stipulation that neither Eric nor Don Jr. would have any role whatsoever in his administration.

“The company and policy and government are completely separated,” Eric Trump assured the Washington Post last year. “We have built an unbelievable wall in between the two.”

The key word there was “unbelievable.” The president has never been willing to expend much effort on maintaining such a facade. In the first weeks after his election, Trump invited Eric and Don Jr. to a policy meeting with tech executives, met with his Indian business partners, and allowed his D.C. hotel to begin courting the patronage of foreign diplomats. In the first year after his inauguration, he mixed politics and business in ever more blatant ways.

But Don Jr.’s trip to India represents a kind of “coming-out party” for the Trumpist kleptocracy: According the the Washington Post, the manager of the president’s “blind trust” will travel to Mumbai this week to promote his family’s real-estate projects, sell access to himself for $38,000 a head, and give a foreign policy speech (ostensibly) on behalf of his father’s administration at a global business summit ….

➤ Evan McMullin writes It’s Clear: Donald Trump Welcomes Russia’s Subversion of Our Democracy (“The president’s response to Bob Mueller’s latest indictments is disturbing but all too expected at this point”):

But Friday’s indictments from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and the president’s response to them, point to a more troubling and increasingly likely motivation: President Trump does not want to stop Kremlin interference intended to sway our elections in his favor. Rather, he welcomes it.

The Special Counsel’s revelations provided a detailed description of part of the modern information warfare Russia has waged against our country since at least 2014. It was a highly-coordinated assault, employing foreign agents on U.S. soil as well as Moscow-based internet operatives.

And yet, in response to this news, the president still couldn’t muster a forceful rebuke of Putin’s regime. Nor would he vow to hold it accountable and deter future attacks. On the contrary, he tried to spin the entire ordeal as an exoneration.

This is either willful ignorance or, more likely, disloyal opportunism. That’s because, whether he admits it or not, the president must know that the story he publicly calls a “hoax” is real. We have detailed evidence of Moscow’s subversion of our democracy. But it seems unlikely that the president will change his tune and take action to counter it.

“I can’t say I’ve been specifically directed to blunt or actually stop” Russian influence operations, NSA Director Mike Rogers shockingly revealed to the Senate Intelligence Committee this week. Rogers and the nation’s other top intelligence chiefs were on the Hill to provide their annual Worldwide Threats Assessment.

(Donald Trump reveals himself as worse even than a fellow traveler – he’s effectually a fifth columnist for Putin. Indeed, he’s likely the highest-placed fifth columnist in modern times.)

➤ Danielle Root, Liz Kennedy, Michael Sozan, and Jerry Parshall survey Election Security in All 50 States:

In 2016, America’s elections were targeted by a foreign nation-state intent on infiltrating and manipulating our electoral system. On September 22, 2017, it was reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified 21 states that were targeted by hackers during the 2016 election.¹ Among those states notified by DHS were: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington.² Arizona, California, Iowa, Texas, and Wisconsin were also among those states originally contacted by DHS. However, those states have denied that their election systems were attacked.³ Ultimately, hackers only reportedly succeeded in breaching the voter registration system of one state: Illinois.⁴ And while DHS did not name those responsible for the attempted hacks, many believe the culprits can be traced back to Russia.⁵ Experts have warned that a future attack on our election infrastructure, by Russia or other malicious actors, is all but guaranteed.⁶

…

In August 2017, the Center for American Progress released a report entitled “9 Solutions for Securing America’s Elections,” laying out nine vulnerabilities in election infrastructure and solutions to help improve election security in time for the 2018 and 2020 elections.¹⁵ This report builds on that analysis to provide an overview of election security and preparedness in each state, looking specifically at state requirements and practices related to:

1. Minimum cybersecurity standards for voter registration systems
2. Voter-verified paper ballots
3. Post-election audits that test election results
4. Ballot accounting and reconciliation
5. Return of voted paper absentee ballots
6. Voting machine certification requirements
7. Pre-election logic and accuracy testing

This report provides an overview of state compliance with baseline standards to protect their elections from hacking and machine malfunction. Some experts may contend that additional standards, beyond those mentioned here, should be required of states to improve election security. The chief purpose of this report is to provide information on how states are faring in meeting even the minimum standards necessary to help secure their elections.

(One reads that Wisconsin is no better than average in her election security: “Wisconsin adheres to minimum cybersecurity best practices related to voter registration systems and conducts its elections using paper ballots and voting machines that provide a paper record. But the state’s failure to carry out post-election audits that test the accuracy of election outcomes leaves the state open to undetected hacking and other Election Day problems.”)

➤ Chris Hayes contends that House Speaker Paul Ryan likes to say the same thing after gun massacres:

➤ So, What’s Up With the Bizarre Hollywood Phenomenon of “Twin Films”?:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty. Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 5:35 PM, for 10h 53m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 30.42% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred sixty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

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

On this day in 1885, the Washington Monument is dedicated: “some 800 people attended a dedication ceremony for the Washington Monument, an obelisk situated roughly due west of the U.S. Capitol and due south of the White House. After construction had been suspended in 1876 due to lack of funds, Congress passed a concurrent resolution, appropriating $2 million to complete the monument to the American Revolutionary War leader and the nation’s first president. Sen. John Sherman (R-Ohio), chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee for the Monument, noted that the edifice was “simple in form, admirable in proportions, composed of enduring marble and granite, resting upon foundations broad and deep.”

On this day in 1918, the Wisconsin Assembly rejects a denunciation of La Follette: “a move to denounce Sen. Robert La Follette and the nine Wisconsin congressmen who refused to support World War I failed in the State Assembly, by a vote of 76-15. Calling LaFollette “disloyal,” the amendment’s originator, Democrat John F. Donnelly, insisted that La Follette’s position did not reflect “the sentiment of the people of Wisconsin. We should not lack the courage to condemn his actions.” Reflecting the majority opinion, Assemblyman Charles F. Hart retorted that “The Wisconsin State Legislature went on record by passing a resolution telling the President that the people of this state did not want war. Now we are condemning them for doing that which we asked them to do.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Jim Rutenberg, Megan Twohey, Rebecca R. Ruiz, Mike McIntire, and Maggie Haberman report Tools of Trump’s Fixer: Payouts, Intimidation and the Tabloids:

In early 2016, after a legal affairs website uncovered old court cases in which a female former Trump business partner had accused him of sexual misconduct, Mr. Cohen released a statement suggesting that the woman, Jill Harth, “would acknowledge” that the story was false. Ms. Harth said the statement was made without her permission, and that she stands by her claims. It was not the last time Mr. Cohen would present a denial on behalf of a woman who had alleged a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.

In August of that year, Mr. Cohen learned details of a deal that American Media had struck with a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, that prevented her from going public about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen was not representing anyone in the confidential agreement, but he was apprised of it by Ms. McDougal’s lawyer, and earlier had been made aware of her attempt to tell her story by the media company, according to interviews and an email reviewed by The New York Times.

Two months later, Mr. Cohen played a direct role in a similar deal involving an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, who once said she had had an affair with Mr. Trump. Last week, Mr. Cohen said he used his own money for the $130,000 payment to her, which has prompted a complaint alleging that Mr. Cohen violated campaign finance regulations. Legal experts also have noted that the payment on behalf of his client may have violated New York’s ethics rules.

Mr. Cohen, who is still described as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer although he is no longer on the Trump Organization payroll, has denied any wrongdoing and insists the arrangement was legal. In an interview, he disputed details of some of his other activities that were described to The Times. But he has never shied away from his role as Mr. Trump’s loyal defender. “It is not like I just work for Mr. Trump,” Mr. Cohen said in an interview in 2016. “I am his friend, and I would do just about anything for him and also his family.”

➤ Asha Rangappa observes For Mueller, this is only the beginning [additional items in linked essay]:

Critics of Mueller’s investigation have been quick to suggest the indictment proves that no collusion took place between the Trump campaign and Russia. President Donald Trump reiterated as much in a string of tweets on Saturday and Sunday, in which he argued yet again “that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems” and that the Russians “are laughing their asses off in Moscow!”

And although this indictment does not make the allegation of Trump campaign collusion explicitly, it may be too early to jump to any definitive conclusions. As a lawyer and former FBI agent who conducted counterintelligence investigations, I believe Mueller achieved five things with this indictment, all of which suggest this is not the end of the story.
1. Neutralizing Russia

The most extraordinary aspect of Mueller’s indictment is that it lays out, in great detail, one aspect of a large-scale Russian intelligence operation against the United States. It’s not surprising that the FBI uncovered the operation: As part of its counterintelligence mandate, the FBI’s job is to identify and disrupt the activities of foreign spies in the United States.

➤ Neil MacFarquhar reports Russian Trolls Were Sloppy, but Indictment Still ‘Points at the Kremlin’:

MOSCOW — Trolling political opponents has become so routine in Russia, such a part of the everyday landscape, that operations are typically performed without much effort to cover any tracks.

So when Russian trolling techniques were exported to the United States as part of the effort to influence the 2016 presidential election, it seems to have been done with the same lack of discipline that characterizes the practice in Russia.

That devil-may-care attitude helped make possible the identification and indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian companies, with the United States accusing them of trying to subvert the election, including efforts to bolster the candidacy of Donald J. Trump and undercut the campaign of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Just because the operation was thinly veiled, however, does not mean that the Russian trolling — creating provocative online posts about immigration, religion and race to try to sway voters — lacked high-level support.

Indeed, ever since the first reports surfaced in 2014 about the existence of a troll farm called the Internet Research Agency, there have been questions about its Kremlin ties.

➤ Natalia V. Osipova and Aaron Byrd answer the question How Do Russian Bots Work?:

➤ This Brewery Uses Crayfish To Control Water Purity:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 5:33 PM, for 10h 50m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 22% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred sixty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1962, John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth.

On this day in 1950, “in a six-hour speech delivered before the U.S. Senate, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed he had the names of 81 U.S. government officials actively engaged in Communist activities, including ‘one of our foreign ministers.’ “

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker report For the weary White House, Florida shooting offered a ‘reprieve’ from scandals:

“For everyone, it was a distraction or a reprieve,” said the White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal conversations. “A lot of people here felt like it was a reprieve from seven or eight days of just getting pummeled.”

The official likened the brief political calm to the aftermath of the October shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 dead and hundreds more injured. That tragedy united White House aides and the country in their shared mourning for the victims and their families.

“But as we all know, sadly, when the coverage dies down a little bit, we’ll be back through the chaos,” the official said.

(There is the perversity of Trump and his ilk: for them, the Parkland shootings are an opportunity to be seized as a distraction from Administration misdeeds. Not merely and wholly a tragedy, but for them an opportunity.)

➤ Jennifer Rubin observes Trump, panicking, reveals the depths of his awfulness:

Aside from the blizzard of lies, one is struck by how frantic Trump sounds. The number and looniness of the tweets arguably exceed anything he has previously done. His conduct reaffirms the basic outline of an obstruction charge: Desperate to disable a Russia probe that would be personally embarrassing to him, he has tried in many ways to interfere with and end the investigation. In doing so, he, at the very least, has abused his office. In turning on his inquisitors rather than to the job of protecting America from Russian influence, he confirms his peculiar fidelity to Vladimir Putin and reminds us he continues to violate his oath of office. There is no doubt he has, based on what we already known, committed actions constituting an abuse of his office. What, if anything special counsel Robert S. Mueller III intends to do about it remains to be seen. Trump’s meltdown over two days is likely to re-raise questions about his mental stability and temperamental fitness to govern.

➤ Anne Applebaum explains Why Facebook is afraid of Robert Mueller:

In a short string of tweets, in other words, Facebook’s vice president for advertising [Rob Goldman] twisted and obfuscated the issues almost beyond recognition. For one, the indictment states clearly that the Russians were not merely buying ads: It alleges that they used fake American identities, fraudulently obtained PayPal accounts and fraudulent Social Security numbers to set up Facebook pages for groups such as “Blacktivist,” “Secured Borders” and “Army of Jesus.” They did indeed use those pages to spread fear and hatred, reaching tens and possibly hundreds of millions of people.

They [the Russians] began this project in 2014, well before the election. And when the election began, they were under clear instructions, according to the indictment, to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary [Clinton] and the rest (except [Bernie] Sanders and Trump—we support them).” By the time the election began in earnest, the attempt to “divide America” was an attempt to elect Trump. They pushed anti-Clinton messages on websites aimed at the far-right fringe and tried to suppress voter turnout on websites aimed at minorities. I’m not sure where Goldman’s idea that “swaying the election was not the main goal” comes from, but it is diametrically opposed to the content of Mueller’s indictment. No wonder Trump tweeted this on Saturday: “The Fake News Media never fails. Hard to ignore the fact from the Vice President of Facebook Ads, Rob Goldman!”

But Goldman is right to be afraid. The social media companies, including Facebook as well as Twitter, YouTube and Reddit, really do bear a part of the responsibility for the growing polarization and bitter partisanship in American life that the Russians, and not only the Russians, sought to exploit. They have not become conduits for Russian propaganda, and not only Russian propaganda, by accident. The Facebook algorithm, by its very nature, is pushing Americans, and everybody else, into ever more partisan echo chambers — and people who read highly partisan material are much more likely to believe false stories.

➤ Shimon Prokupecz, Kara Scannell, and Gloria Borger report Exclusive: Mueller’s interest in Kushner grows to include foreign financing efforts:

During the presidential transition, Kushner was a lead contact for foreign governments, speaking to “over fifty contacts with people from over fifteen countries,” according to a statement he gave to congressional investigators. Before joining the administration, Kushner was also working to divest his interests in Kushner Companies, the family company founded by his father. In early 2017, Kushner also divested from the 666 Fifth Avenue property that his family’s company purchased in 2007 for $1.8 billion. The interests were sold to a family trust that Kushner does not benefit from, a spokesperson said at the time.

One line of questioning from Mueller’s team involves discussions Kushner had with Chinese investors during the transition, according to the sources familiar with the inquiry.

A week after Trump’s election, Kushner met with the chairman and other executives of Anbang Insurance, the Chinese conglomerate that also owns the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, according to The New York Times.

At the time, Kushner and Anbang’s chairman, Wu Xiaohui, were close to finishing a deal for the Chinese insurer to invest in the flagship Kushner Companies property, 666 Fifth Avenue. Talks between the two companies collapsed in March, according to the Times.

➤ Here’s video of a cougar that makes its way right up to Brookfield home: