Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 6:33 PM, for 11h 38m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 88.4% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the {tooltip}three hundred twenty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1780, Benedict Arnold’s accomplice, British officer John André, is hanged for espionage. (Arnold escaped capture by traveling to occupied New York in HMS Vulture.) On this day in 1958, Janesville’s auto workers strike: “On this date 4,000 members of United Auto Workers Locals 95 (Fisher Body) and 121 (Chevrolet) at Janesville’s two GM plants walked off the job as part of a national strike over GM’s refusal to agree to a contract patterned after those reached with Ford and Chrysler. The desired contract demanded pay increases of 24 to 30 cents an hour and raises in supplemental unemployment benefits and severance pay.”

Recommended for reading in full —

James West reports Leaked White House Memo Details Puerto Rico Spin: “The Storm Caused These Problems, Not Our Response” (“Meanwhile, Trump is blaming “politically motivated ingrates” for criticism):

When White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert returned from a trip to Puerto Rico last week, he got to work telling his colleagues exactly how the Trump administration could put a positive spin on the government’s troubled hurricane relief efforts, according to a leaked memo obtained by Axios.

“I hope to turn the corner on our public communications,” he wrote to White House staff, before detailing new, more-upbeat “themes” he’d like to see the administration highlight over the next couple of days. “Planned hits, tweets, tv bookings and other work will limit the need for reactionary efforts,” he wrote.

One of Bossert’s talking points for responding to criticism of the relief efforts: “The storm caused these problems, not our response to it.” Here’s a longer excerpt from the memo (and go over to Axios for the full report):

I recommend that today and tomorrow we use the general theme of supporting the governor and standing with the people of Puerto Rico to get them food, water, shelter and emergency medical care. Monday and Tuesday we can pivot hopefully to a theme of stabilizing as we address temporary housing and sustaining the flow of commodities and basic government services, including temporary power. After that we focus on restoration of basic services throughout next week and next weekend. Then we start a theme of recovery planning for the bright future that lies ahead for Puerto Rico. Planned hits, tweets, tv bookings and other work will limit the need for reactionary efforts.

The storm caused these problems, not our response to it. We have pushed about as much stuff and people through a tiny hole in as short a timeframe as possible.

Meanwhile, it didn’t take my colleague AJ Vicens long to find a town in Puerto Rico entirely cut off from the help Bossert asserts is making such a difference on the island.

“You are the first person to come here,” a woman told him. According to residents Vicens interviewed, none of the 10,000 federal workers on the island had made it to Ciales, just 45 minutes from San Juan, by the time he got there yesterday. People in the town described a scene of utter desperation. (Follow Vicens on Twitter for regular updates from the island.)

Denise Clifton reports Fake News on Twitter Flooded Swing States That Helped Trump Win (“A new study reveals how junk content—including from Russia—hit Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, and beyond”):

….Efforts by Vladimir Putin’s regime were among the polarizing content captured in the new Oxford study. “We know the Russians have literally invested in social media,” Bradshaw told Mother Jones, referring to reports of Russian-bought Facebook ads as well as sophisticated training of Russian disinformation workers detailed in another recent study by the team. “Swing states would be the ones you would want to target.”

The dubious Twitter content in the new study also contained polarizing YouTube videos–including some produced by the Kremlin-controlled RT network, which were uploaded without any information identifying them as Russian-produced. All the YouTube videos have since been taken down, according to Bradshaw; it’s unclear whether the accounts were deleted by the users, or if YouTube removed the content.

The Oxford researchers captured 22 million tweets from November 1 to November 11 in 2016, and they have been scrutinizing the dataset to better understand the impact of disinformation on the US election. The team has also analyzed propaganda operations in more than two dozen countries, using a combination of reports from trusted media sources and think tanks, and cross-checking that information with experts on the ground. Their recent research has additional revelations about how disinformation works in the social-media age, including from Moscow.

Putin’s big investment in information warfare

In studying Russia’s propaganda efforts targeting both domestic and international populations, the Oxford researchers found evidence of increasing military expenditures on social-media operations since 2014. They also learned of a sophisticated training system for workers employed by Putin’s disinformation apparatus: “They have invested millions of dollars into training staff and setting targets for them,” Bradshaw says. She described a working environment where English training is provided to improve messaging for Western audiences: Supervisors hand out topical talking points to include in coordinated messaging, workers’ content is edited, and output is audited, with rewards given to more productive workers….

John Barlow writes How partisan is too partisan? Wrong question:

The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to tackle one of the most divisive issues in election law: partisan gerrymandering. The June announcement that the court will review the problem in a case from Wisconsin has caused some to wonder: Do we really want the Supreme Court to decide how partisan is too partisan?

This misstates the problem. The question is not whether the courts should decide how partisan is too partisan. It is how to make it possible for voters to decide that for themselves.

Right now, due to a combination of polarized voting and partisan gerrymandering, primary voters rule the roost. As a result, a relatively small number of primary voters are vastly overrepresented in our legislative bodies while voters who show up only in general elections are vastly underrepresented. The most partisan voters end up deciding how partisan is too partisan. That’s the problem….

Bill Barrow reports GOP governors launch ‘news’ site critics call propaganda:

ATLANTA (AP) — Republican governors are getting into the “news” business.

The Republican Governors Association has quietly launched an online publication that looks like a media outlet and is branded as such on social media. The Free Telegraph blares headlines about the virtues of GOP governors, while framing Democrats negatively. It asks readers to sign up for breaking news alerts. It launched in the summer bearing no acknowledgement that it was a product of an official party committee whose sole purpose is to get more Republicans elected.

Only after The Associated Press inquired about the site last week was a disclosure added to The Free Telegraph’s pages identifying the publication’s partisan source.

The governors association describes the website as routine political communication. Critics, including some Republicans, say it pushes the limits of honest campaign tactics in an era of increasingly partisan media and a proliferation of “fake news” sites, including those whose material became part of an apparent Russian propaganda effort during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“It’s propaganda for sure, even if they have objective standards and all the reporting is 100 percent accurate,” said Republican communications veteran Rick Tyler, whose resume includes Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign….

Fields of Sunflowers in Castilla-La Mancha:

Good morning.

A new month begins in Whitewater with partly cloudy skies and a high of seventy-one. Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 6:34 PM, for 11h 41m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 80.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred twenty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Valentin Blatz is born this day in 1826: “On this date Valentin(e) Blatz, founder of the Blatz Brewing Co., was born at Miltenberg-on-the-Main, Bavaria. The son of Casper and Barbara Blatz, his father owned a brewery in Miltenberg. Valentine Blatz migrated to New York in August 1848 and moved to Milwaukee in 1849. Blatz operated one of the most successful breweries in Milwaukee. [Source: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Archive]” On this day in 1861,  On this day in 1861, the 4th and 5th Wisconsin Light Artillery Batteries muster in: “Recruited in various towns around the state, the batteries gathered at Camp Utley in Racine for training. They spent three months learning how to transport and operate cannons before heading to different parts of the Southern front in January 1862.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn writes that These Numbers Show Just How Bad Trump Has Been for Immigrants:

Between January and July of this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal history skyrocketed by more than 200 percent, according to a Reuters analysis—jumping from 1,411 arrests in January to a whopping 4,399 in July. Arrests of immigrants with criminal records have also increased but by a much smaller margin of 17 percent.

Reuters’ findings demonstrate the chilling effects of President Trump’s crackdown—and that his policies have led to repercussions across the justice system and multiple borders….

While Reuters only looks at data through July, the Washington Post reports the trend is ongoing; immigrants without criminal records have become the fastest-growing category of ICE arrests this year….

Reuters also found that immigrants’ lives in the US are more imperiled because those who were previously spared from deportation orders under the Obama administration are now seeing their cases reopened. Between March and May, the Trump administration has requested the courts reopen more than 1,300 cases. During that same period, the Obama administration requested 430.

John Burnett reports Border Patrol Arrests Parents While Infant Awaits Serious Operation:

When 2-month-old Isaac Enrique Sanchez was diagnosed with pyloric stenosis, a condition that causes vomiting, dehydration and weight loss in infants, his parents were told that their son’s condition was curable. The problem was that no hospital in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas had a pediatric surgery team capable of performing the operation on his stomach.

To make Isaac well, Oscar and Irma Sanchez would need to take their infant son to Driscoll Children’s Hospital, in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was just a couple of hours up the highway, but for them it was a world away.

The Sanchezes, who are undocumented, would need to pass a Border Patrol checkpoint.

“The nurse told us we had to go there,” Oscar says in Spanish. “We said we couldn’t go.”

While they pondered their predicament in a Harlingen, Texas, hospital, a Border Patrol agent showed up in the waiting room — Oscar Sanchez suspects a nurse turned them in — and said he could arrange for officers to escort the parents through the checkpoint to Corpus. But the agent said when they arrived, they would be arrested and put into deportation proceedings. The couple agreed.

The events that followed at the Corpus Christi hospital are the latest developments in a national controversy over so-called sensitive locations. Under President Barack Obama, the Department of Homeland Security adopted a policy that immigration agents should avoid enforcement actions at hospitals, schools, churches and public demonstrations unless there are special circumstances….

Advocates are puzzled why the Border Patrol chose to put the Sanchezes under such intense supervision, which one would expect for higher-value targets like drug traffickers or MS-13 gang members. The couple has no criminal records. They overstayed visitors visas that were issued 12 years ago. He works construction and landscaping; she stays home with their four children, all of whom are citizens.

David Corn asks Who’s Telling the Truth About the Russia Meeting: Kushner or Trump Jr.?:

For months, Donald Trump and his lieutenants insisted there was no collusion between the Trump crowd and Vladimir Putin’s regime during the 2016 election. But after news broke of the June 9, 2016, meeting that brought Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort together with a Kremlin emissary bearing dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of a secret Russia government effort to help Trump, no one could accurately say there had been no collaboration between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. So the Trump crew then shifted its denials and claimed that nothing came out of the meeting. But given that the Trump camp first covered up the existence of the meeting and then lied about its origin and purpose—until Trump Jr. was forced to release emails about the gathering—there is no good reason to accept the assertion that the session was a bust. Moreover, a review of the recent statements issued by Trump Jr. and Kushner about the meeting reveals an important contradiction between their accounts.

The emails sent before the meeting indicated that a representative of the Russian prosecutor general would be conveying government information that the Trump campaign could use against Clinton, and Trump Jr. expressed enthusiasm about this prospect. Kushner and Manafort received those emails, as well. Both Kushner and Trump Jr. have recently put out similar statements that dismiss the whole episode as a nothing-burger. But there is an intriguing difference in their recollections….

What’s different? Trump Jr. recounted that Kushner was present when Veselnitskaya discussed contributions to Clinton and the DNC that the Russians thought could somehow be used against Clinton. Kushner asserted he only heard the Russian lawyer talk about the adoption issue.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of sixty-eight. Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 6:36 PM, for 11h 44m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 73.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred twenty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1938, British Prime Minister Chamberlain, after signing the Munich Agreement conceding Nazi Germany’s annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia, declares ‘peace for our time.’ On this day in 1859, Lincoln visits Wisconsin and observes of agriculture that “Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.” Lincoln’s full speech is online, and concludes hopefully:

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! “And this, too, shall pass away.” And yet, let us hope, it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us, and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Abby Phillip, Ed O’Keefe, Nick Miroff and Damian Paletta report on a Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club hurt the response to Maria:

As Hurricane Maria made landfall on Wednesday, Sept. 20, there was a frenzy of activity publicly and privately. The next day, President Trump called local officials on the island, issued an emergency declaration and pledged that all federal resources would be directed to help.

But then for four days after that — as storm-ravaged Puerto Rico struggled for food and water amid the darkness of power outages — Trump and his top aides effectively went dark themselves.

Trump jetted to New Jersey that Thursday night to spend a long weekend at his private golf club there, save for a quick trip to Alabama for a political rally. Neither Trump nor any of his senior White House aides said a word publicly about the unfolding crisis.

Trump did hold a meeting at his golf club that Friday with half a dozen Cabinet officials — including acting Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke, who oversees disaster response — but the gathering was to discuss his new travel ban, not the hurricane. Duke and Trump spoke briefly about Puerto Rico but did not talk again until Tuesday, an administration official said.

Administration officials would not say whether the president spoke with any other top officials involved in the storm response while in Bedminster, N.J. He spent much of his time over those four days fixated on his escalating public feuds with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with fellow Republicans in Congress and with the National Football League over protests during the national anthem.

(Trump, having wasted days on golfing and culture-war feuds, now blames Puerto Ricans: “…Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They…….want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.” It’s a lie that racial minorities in America work less industriously than others, but music to the ears of self-satisfied bigots. Indeed, Jennifer Rubin is right: it’s the core of Trump’s support that is, in fact, less productive than the majority of America that opposes him. See Trump vs. an America that works.)

Ronald Radosh writes that Steve Bannon Is Winning With the Old Communist Party Playbook:

As Bannon, who see himself as a student of history, may know, his tactics mirror those that gave hope to American Communists in the 1940s, but finally fell short. The CPUSA had established a third party, the Progressive Party, which ran Henry A. Wallace for president in 1948. Their hope was that the unions and others on the left would actually put Wallace in the White House, since Truman was running against Republican Thomas Dewey and racist Southern Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond.

That February, a special election was held to fill a vacancy in New York City’s 24th Congressional District. Four candidates ran: a Democrat, a Republican, a member of the Liberal Party, and a pro-Communist supporter of the Wallace third party, Leo Isacson, who ran on the ticket of the Communist-led American Labor Party. Unexpectedly, and to the great shock of the political establishment, Isacson won.

Isacson’s victory, said Wallace—sounding something like Bannon now—proved that his “so-called third party would be the first party in 1948.” National Democrats panicked, thinking that this race showed Wallace’s strength. They were all wrong. The local victory had no national implications, and was not repeated anywhere else. Wallace was defeated overwhelmingly in November, without winning even one electoral vote.

Likewise, Judge Moore’s victory in Alabama’s very peculiar and particular race this week does not mean Bannon can repeat his success in other states in 2018. As they say, all politics is local.

There are, though, other parallels between Bannon’s strategy and that used by the American Communist Party during the New Deal, from 1935 to 1939 and then from 1941 through 1945. During those years, one part of FDR’s coalition was the American Communist Party. At home in the United States, the party called for a “Popular or Democratic Front” against fascism, uniting Communists with Socialists and Liberals, in support of the Roosevelt administration. The party’s leader, Earl Browder, his biographer James G. Ryan writes, “strove passionately to make the Communists not merely the left’s largest party, but a fully legitimate component of the Roosevelt coalition.” Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes write that “the essence of the Democratic Front policy, a variant of the Popular Front line officially adopted in 1938, was that the Communist Party had agreed to accept a junior and hidden role in the New Deal and labor movements”….

John Meyer reports NSA warned White House against using personal email:

The National Security Agency warned senior White House officials in classified briefings that improper use of personal cellphones and email could make them vulnerable to espionage by Russia, China, Iran and other adversaries, according to officials familiar with the briefings.

The briefings came soon after President Donald Trump was sworn into office on Jan. 20, and before some top aides, including senior adviser Jared Kushner, used their personal email and phones to conduct official White House business, as disclosed by POLITICO this week.

The NSA briefers explained that cyberspies could be using sophisticated malware to turn the personal cellphones of White House aides into clandestine listening devices, to take photos and video without the user’s knowledge and to transfer vast amounts of data via Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth, according to one former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the briefings.

The briefings were held in the White House Situation Room because of the sensitivity of the topics discussed, according to that official and three other former officials familiar with such briefings, which have been given to each incoming administration….

James Hohmann explains Why the divider in chief embraces culture wars:

….This scorched-earth strategy has taken a toll on Trump’s image, but it has also kept his core supporters relatively loyal.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll published Sunday finds that most Americans already see Trump as a divisive figure. “Overall, Trump’s image continues to be negative, with 39 percent of Americans approving and 57 percent disapproving of the president’s job performance,” Scott Clement and Philip Rucker report. “More broadly, more than twice as many Americans say Trump is doing more to divide the country than to unify it, 66 percent vs. 28 percent. The margin is significantly more negative than those recorded for Obama and Bush; at most, 55 percent of Americans said Obama or Bush was dividing the country.”

“Among registered voters who identify as independents — a group Trump won by four percentage points in last year’s election — 62 percent say Trump has done more to divide the country than unite it,” per Scott and Phil. “Among Republican voters, however, about 6 in 10 say Trump is making strides toward unity. Still, confidence in Trump as a unifying force has declined even among those in his party. While 9 percent of Republican voters in a poll last November by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School had expected that Trump would divide the country, the new Post-ABC poll finds 31 percent of Republicans say Trump’s actions are dividing the country today” [Hohmann offers more examples]….

Here’s what it’s like Living With 80,000 Birds to Make Bird Nest Soup:

Resting on a steep hill on the island of San Pascual, Philippines, is a house that’s home to one man and 80,000 birds. These tiny black-and-brown birds are known as “swiftlets,” and they’re a hot commodity in the country. Their nests are formed from hardened saliva, the very special ingredient used to make bird’s nest soup, a Filipino delicacy. So, when the little creatures began to infiltrate his home, Eddie “Macoy” Espares welcomed them — he even gave them a floor in his house. And, despite the noticeable stench his new roommates bring, Espares has no problem “nesting” with his unlikely boarders.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of sixty-eight. Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 6:38 PM, for 11h 47m 16s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 63.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred twenty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

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

Recommended for reading in full —

Elizabeth Dwoskin, Adam Entous and Karoun Demirjian report Twitter finds hundreds of accounts tied to Russian operatives:

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter said Thursday that it had shut down 201 accounts that were tied to the same Russian operatives who posted thousands of political ads on Facebook, but the effort frustrated lawmakers who said the problem is far broader than the company appeared to know.

The company said it also found three accounts from the news site RT — which Twitter linked to the Kremlin — that spent $274,100 in ads on its platform in 2016.

Despite the disclosures, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) questioned whether the company is doing enough to stop Russian operatives from using its platform to spread disinformation and division in U.S. society.
Warner said Twitter’s presentation to a closed-door meeting of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers Thursday morning was “deeply disappointing” and “inadequate on almost every level.” Twitter also made a presentation to House Intelligence Committee staffers in the afternoon.

The company “showed an enormous lack of understanding .?.?. about how serious this issue is, the threat it poses to democratic institutions,” a visibly frustrated Warner said….

(Honest to goodness, Twitter executives must think every senator is a dolt – there’s no reputable analyst anywhere who thinks the number of Russian propaganda accounts is in the hundreds – the number is surely far larger, by orders of magnitude.)

Natasha Bertrand and Sonam Sheth write A clear picture is emerging of how Russia used Facebook to sway the election — here’s what we know so far:

Here’s what we know so far about how the Russians used one of the biggest tech companies in the world to energize and influence American voters:

They created Facebook events for rallies in several states.Russia-linked Facebook groups like Heart of Texas and SecuredBorders tried to organize anti-immigrant rallies in Texas and Idaho in the months leading up to the election. Another group, Being Patriotic, organized pro-Donald Trump flash mobs across Florida in August 2016, according to The Daily Beast.

They purchased ads that promoted outsider candidates and exploited racial tensions. The ads boosted Trump, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, and at least one ad centered on the Black Lives Matter movement. A group impersonating a California-based Muslim organization was also set up to push fake stories about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.

They created accounts to amplify emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. Members of the hacking group connected to the GRU created the DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 accounts in June 2016 to help spread the emails stolen in late 2015, The Post reported.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been criticized by those who say he shrugged off warnings about the fake-news epidemic on the platform. The Post reported that President Barack Obama asked him just after the election to take it seriously, but that Zuckerberg replied that the company’s power to control the spread of information was limited.

Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman write that Trump’s N.F.L. Critique a Calculated Attempt to Shore Up His Base:

Over the weekend, Mr. Trump, while with a small group of advisers in the dining room of his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., asked a few members what they thought of his attack on Mr. Kaepernick. The response, according to one Trump associate, was polite but decidedly lukewarm.

Mr. Trump responded by telling people that it was a huge hit with his base, making it clear that he did not mind alienating his critics if it meant solidifying his core support.

“The president’s critics have it wrong,” Kellyanne Conway, a White House adviser who served as Mr. Trump’s campaign manager and pollster in 2016, said Monday. “They call him impulsive. He is intuitive.”

(On the contrary, Conway has it wrong: we don’t think he’s impulsive, we think he’s a bigoted American autocrat under the thumb of a Russian autocrat.)

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II has published a new book, The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics and Division of Fear, and here’s an excerpt:

I started to share a bit of insight I’d learned from my son, who studied environmental science in college. He told me, “Daddy, if you ever get lost in mountainous terrain, it’s important to know that there’s something called a snake line. Below the snake line, you might run into a copperhead or a rattlesnake sunning on the rocks of our Blue Ridge Mountains. But if you can get above the snake line, you’re safe, because those venomous creatures can’t live up there.” Moral Mondays were exposing the extremism of venomous politics in our state and helping folk see what dangerous terrain we had gotten ourselves into. But I kept telling them that there was a snake line somewhere on the mountain. If we could just move together toward higher ground, we’d be all right. The important thing was not to give up. The important thing was to keep on climbing. Every week I cried out against the nightmare we were witnessing to hold out the hope of higher ground.

This public proclamation was essential to our liturgy, but it was not the end. Every week when I was finished preaching, I invited people to come forward and make a public profession of their faith in a new North Carolina by exercising their constitutional right to petition their legislators in the General Assembly. They knew, of course, that they were risking arrest. Each person who had decided to make this public witness wore an armband to signify that they’d spent the afternoon doing nonviolence training at a local church. But it was an awe-inspiring sight, week after week, to watch the crowd part and make way for these nonviolent foot soldiers who were ready to sacrifice their own freedom to put our proposed future into practice. A Presbyterian minister from Charlotte, attending his first Moral Monday, said, “Never in my life have I seen the proclaimed Word put on flesh and move into such a direct action.” Some of us who’d been doing liturgy all of our lives began to realize its power in the public square….

Lior Suchard will have you see what you don’t believe:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset is 6:40 PM, for 11h 50m 09s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 54.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred twenty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1787, the Articles Congress (Congress under the Articles of Confederation) submitted the draft of a new constitution for states’ ratification. On this day in 1862, the 16th Wisconsin Infantry protect civilians: “[t]he 16th Wisconsin Infantry arrived at Redbone Church, 11 miles from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to protect civilians as they fled the city (Source: E.B. Quiner’s Military History of Wisconsin (Chicago, 1866), page 638).”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Brian Ross, Rhonda Schwartz, Matthew Mosk, and Megan Christie report that Russian-generated Facebook posts pushed Trump as ‘only viable option’:

Several anti-immigrant messages with an explicit pro-Trump slant are included among the 3,000 pieces of Russian-linked political content Facebook plans to turn over to Congressional investigators, ABC News has learned.

Posts that circulated to a targeted, swing-state audience on the social media site railed against illegal immigrants and claimed “the only viable option is to elect Trump.” They were shared by what looked like a grassroots American group called Secured Borders, but Congressional investigators say the group is actually a Russian fabrication designed to influence American voters during and after the presidential election.

“Their goal was to spread dissension, was to split our country apart, and they did a pretty good job,” said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee….

Dylan Byers reports in an Exclusive: Russian-bought Black Lives Matter ad on Facebook targeted Baltimore and Ferguson:

The Black Lives Matter ad appeared on Facebook at some point in late 2015 or early 2016, the sources said. The sources said it appears the ad was meant to appear both as supporting Black Lives Matter but also could be seen as portraying the group as threatening to some residents of Baltimore and Ferguson.

Related: Russian-bought Facebook ads sought to amplify political divisions

New descriptions of the Russian-bought ads shared with CNN suggest that the apparent goal of the Russian buyers was to amplify political discord and fuel an atmosphere of incivility and chaos, though not necessarily to promote one candidate or cause over another. Facebook’s review of Russian efforts on its platform focused on a timeframe from June 2015 to May 2017.

These ranged from posts promoting Black Lives Matter to posts promoting gun rights and the Second Amendment to posts warning about what they said was the threat undocumented immigrants posed to American democracy. Beyond the election, Russians have sought to raise questions about western democracies.

“This is consistent with the overall goal of creating discord inside the body politic here in the United States, and really across the West,” Steve Hall, the former CIA officer and CNN National Security Analyst, said. “It shows they the level of sophistication of their targeting. They are able to sow discord in a very granular nature, target certain communities and link them up with certain issues”…

Ben Collins, Kevin Poulsen, and Spencer Ackerman report in an Exclusive: Russians Impersonated Real American Muslims to Stir Chaos on Facebook and Instagram (“Kremlin trolls stole the identity of an authentic U.S. Muslim organization—first to smear John McCain and Hillary Clinton, then to sing her praises”):

The Facebook group United Muslims of America was neither united, Muslim, nor American.

Instead, sources familiar with the group tell The Daily Beast, it was an imposter account on the world’s largest social network that’s been traced back to the Russian government.

Using the account as a front to reach American Muslims and their allies, the Russians pushed memes that claimed Hillary Clinton admitted the U.S. “created, funded and armed” al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State; claimed that John McCain was ISIS’ true founder; whitewashed blood-drenched dictator Moammar Gadhafi and praised him for not having a “Rothschild-owned central bank”; and falsely alleged Osama bin Laden was a “CIA agent”….

Renato Mariotti writes of Method to the “Madness”: Dissecting Roger Stone’s Statement to Congress, by a Former Fed Prosecutor:

Dissecting Roger Stone’s statement was a very different exercise than my prior dissections of statements by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Michael Cohen. Stone’s statement is a strident piece of political rhetoric meant to politicize his interview, attack members of Congress on the committee, and distract from problematic activities he engaged in throughout the election. It is unclear to me why Stone’s lawyers are permitting him to continue to make aggressive, wide-ranging assertions about his activity. Nonetheless, there is a method to what appears to be “madness.” If you put aside Stone’s distractions and political attacks, his factual assertions are carefully written to exclude things that perhaps he cannot deny. Take a look below and read between the lines [Atty. Mariotti’s analysis follows]….

Here are 5 tips for taking better photos on your iPhone:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 6:41 PM, for 11h 53m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 44.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred twenty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Fire Department has a business meeting scheduled for 6:30 PM.

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

Recommended for reading in full — 

Adam Serwer sees A Nation of Snowflakes (“The greatest threats to free speech in America come from the state, not from activists on college campuses”):

The American left is waging war on free speech. That’s the consensus from center-left to far right; even Nazis and white supremacists seek to wave the First Amendment like a bloody shirt. But the greatest contemporary threat to free speech comes not from antifa radicals or campus leftists, but from a president prepared to use the power and authority of government to chill or suppress controversial speech, and the political movement that put him in office, and now applauds and extends his efforts….

Neither have some conservatives disdained to use of the power or authority of the state to censor free speech. Republican legislators have proposed “Blue Lives Matter” bills that essentially criminalize peaceful protest; bills that all but outlaw protest itself; and bills that offer some protections to drivers who strike protestors with automobiles. GOP lawmakers have used the state to restrict speech, such as barring doctors from raising abortion or guns with patients, opposition to the construction of Muslim religious buildings, and attempts to stifle anti-Israel activism.

There’s physical assault of a reporter by a Republican candidate in Montana; Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s prosecution and re-prosecution of an activist who laughed at him during his confirmation hearing; his multiple public refusals to rule out prosecuting journalists; the president’s vows to imprison his political rivals; his encouragement of violence against protesters; Trump’s threat to tax Amazon because its owner Jeff Bezos is also the owner of The Washington Post, which has published coverage critical of the president; the White House’s demands that ESPN fire Jemele Hill, a black on-air host who called the president a white supremacist; and Trump’s attempt to chill press criticism by naming the media an “enemy of the people” have all drawn cheers from some conservative commentators.

In this sense, Trump’s views on free speech, exemplified by his threat to cut off federal funding to Berkeley on free-speech grounds, and his later demand that NFL team owners fire players who protest police brutality, perfectly exemplify the strain of conservatism that insists those on the left are sensitive snowflakes who cannot sustain a dissenting view, and that simultaneously angrily demands that the state and society sanction the left for the expression of political views it finds distasteful….

(Trumpists insist others are snowflakes, but they are, themselves, the first ones to melt when the temperature rises.)

Patrick Marley reports In reversal, feds proclaim Russians did not seek to hack Wisconsin’s election system:

MADISON – The federal Department of Homeland Security reversed itself Tuesday and told Wisconsin officials that the Russian government had not tried to hack the state’s voter registration system last year.

Instead, Homeland Security said, the Russians had attempted to access a computer system controlled by another state agency.

The development — disclosed during a meeting of the Wisconsin Elections Commission — came four days after federal officials told the state that Russians had tried to hack systems in Wisconsin and 20 other states….

(The Trump Administration cares so little about Russian interference in the American electoral process that it cannot even produce an accurate accounting hundreds of days after Trump’s poorly-attended inaugural.)

Joseph Bernstein reports that Steve Bannon Sought To Infiltrate Facebook Hiring:

Steve Bannon plotted to plant a mole inside Facebook, according to emails sent days before the Breitbart boss took over Donald Trump’s campaign and obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The email exchange with a conservative Washington operative reveals the importance that the giant tech platform — now reeling from its role in the 2016 election — held for one of the campaign’s central figures. And it also shows the lengths to which the brawling new American right is willing to go to keep tabs on and gain leverage over the Silicon Valley giants it used to help elect Trump — but whose executives it also sees as part of the globalist enemy.

The idea to infiltrate Facebook came to Bannon from Chris Gacek, a former congressional staffer who is now an official at the Family Research Council, which lobbies against abortion and many LGBT rights.

“There is one for a DC-based ‘Public Policy Manager’ at Facebook’s What’s APP [sic] division,” Gacek, the senior fellow for regulatory affairs at the group, wrote on Aug. 1, 2016. “LinkedIn sent me a notice about some job openings.”

“This seems perfect for Breitbart to flood the zone with candidates of all stripe who will report back to you / Milo with INTEL about the job application process over at FB,” he continued….

Josh Dawsey reports that Russian-funded Facebook ads backed Stein, Sanders and Trump:

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was the beneficiary of at least one of the Russian-bought political ads on Facebook that federal government officials suspect were intended to influence the 2016 election.

Other advertisements paid for by shadowy Russian buyers criticized Hillary Clinton and promoted Donald Trump. Some backed Bernie Sanders and his platform even after his presidential campaign had ended, according to a person with knowledge of the ads.

The pro-Stein ad came late in the political campaign and pushed her candidacy for president, this person said.

“Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein,” the ad reads. “Trust me. It’s not a wasted vote. … The only way to take our country back is to stop voting for the corporations and banks that own us. #GrowaSpineVoteJillStein.”

The ads show a complicated effort that didn’t necessarily hew to promoting Trump and bashing Clinton. Instead, they show a desire to create divisions while sometimes praising Trump, Sanders and Stein. A number of the ads seemed to question Clinton’s authenticity and tout some of the liberal criticisms of her candidacy….

(This is predictable: Putin’s primary aims were to undermine the American constitutional order generally, and Sec. Clinton specifically. Trump wasn’t the only candidate by which Putin sought to weaken Clinton – Trump was simply the best means by which to damage America.)

There are model builders, but this man built a giant model of a “Star Wars” AT-AT in his yard:

Well done, very well done.

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see a likelihood of afternoon thundershowers with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 6:43 PM, for 11h 55m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 35.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred twenty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater municipal government has scheduled a public information meeting today on Construction and Resurfacing of WIS 59/Reconstruction Newcomb Street Intersection from 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM.

On this day in 1937, Orson Welles’s The Shadow radio program begins on the Mutual Broadcasting System. On this day in 1864, the 11th Wisconsin Infantry participates in an expedition from Napoleonville to Grand River and Bayou Pigeon, Louisiana.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Ari Berman writes that A New Study Shows Just How Many Americans Were Blocked From Voting in Wisconsin Last Year:

A comprehensive study released today suggests how many missing votes can be attributed to the new law. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison surveyed registered voters who didn’t cast a 2016 ballot in the state’s two biggest counties—Milwaukee and Dane, which is home to Madison. More than 1 out of 10 nonvoters (11.2 percent) said they lacked acceptable voter ID and cited the law as a reason why they didn’t vote; 6.4 percent of respondents said the voter ID law was the “main reason” they didn’t vote.

The study’s lead author, University of Wisconsin political scientist Kenneth Mayer, says between roughly 9,000 and 23,000 registered voters in the reliably Democratic counties were deterred from voting by the ID law. Extrapolating statewide, he says the data suggests as many as 45,000 voters sat out the election. “We have hard evidence there were tens of thousands of people who were unable to vote because of the voter ID law,” Mayer told me.

The study, which was funded by Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, provides some of the firmest evidence yet that new restrictions on voting lead to voter disenfranchisement. It’s a strong rebuke to supporters of voter ID laws like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has claimed that the notion the voter ID law reduced participation is a “load of crap.” (Wisconsin saw its lowest turnout since 2000, and there were 41,000 fewer voters in Milwaukee compared with 2012.)

After the study’s release, McDonell and Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson joined together in calling for an immediate suspension of the law. “It is completely unacceptable that thousands of voters were deterred from exercising their sacred right to vote due to this law. Citizens’ basic belief in their democracy is seriously eroded when those in power target some for exclusion from self-government,” said McDonell….

Adam Entous, Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin report Russian operatives used Facebook ads to exploit America’s racial and religious divisions:

The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with some ads promoting African American rights groups, including Black Lives Matter, and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat, say people familiar with the covert influence campaign.

The Russian campaign — taking advantage of Facebook’s ability to send contrary messages to different groups of users based on their political and demographic characteristics — also sought to sow discord among religious groups. Other ads highlighted support for Democrat Hillary Clinton among Muslim women.

These targeted messages, along with others that have surfaced in recent days, highlight the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another.

(Putin’s bots and trolls aim to divide Americans, turning members of our free society against each other; Trump tries the same each day, ceaselessly fomenting tension within our society.)

Matt Apuzzo and Maggie Haberman report that At Least 6 White House Advisers Used Private Email Accounts: