Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-six. Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 7:20 PM, for 12h 44m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 15.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1889, at 2:25 PM, Gustave Eiffel hoists a large French Tricolour to the top of his completed tower. On this day in 1998, the Brewers play their first game as a National League Team.

Recommended for reading in full —

Danny Westneat writes that UW professor: The information war is real, and we’re losing it: “[University of Washington professor Kate] Starbird argues in a new paper, set to be presented at a computational social-science conference in May, that these “strange clusters” of wild conspiracy talk, when mapped, point to an emerging alternative media ecosystem on the web of surprising power and reach. It features sites such as Infowars.com, hosted by informal President Donald Trump adviser Alex Jones, which has pushed a range of conspiracies, including that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a staged fake. There are dozens of other conspiracy-propagating websites such as beforeitsnews.com, nodisinfo.com and veteranstoday.com. Starbird cataloged 81 of them, linked through a huge community of interest connected by shared followers on Twitter, with many of the tweets replicated by automated bots.”

Aaron Blake describes The White House’s Sally Yates problem: “Sally Yates was President Trump’s acting attorney general for just 10 days before she was fired. But two months later, she continues to give the Trump administration big-time headaches. The Washington Post’s Devlin Barrett and Adam Entous just broke a big story: that the Trump administration fought to prevent Yates from testifying in front of the House Intelligence Committee just before Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) canceled her hearing. Per emails Barrett and Entous obtained, the Justice Department claimed that a large portion of Yates’s testimony was barred from being discussed at a hearing because of presidential communication privilege. That’s troublesome for the White House, because two other administration officials — FBI Director James B. Comey and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers — already have testified publicly before the committee. During their testimony, they declined to discuss certain things pertaining to open investigations. But Comey did confirm that there was an ongoing investigation of possible ties between Russian officials and members of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and transition team.”

Sarah Kendzior explains Why Trump’s ties to Russia would be way worse than Watergate: “If you were the president of the United States, sworn under oath to protect and serve the public, wouldn’t you want foreign interference in your campaign to be investigated – at the very least, to prevent the recurrence of similar actions? Or would you try to impede the investigation, by smearing those who seek it (among them intelligence officials, legislators, and reporters) and by installing officials who either benefit from the Russian relationship (like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson), seem selected in order to obfuscate the Russian relationship (like Attorney General Jeff Sessions), or both? Trump chose to assemble an administration designed to cover up and aid his shady dealings with the Kremlin, leading to an administration so spectacularly corrupt and inept it has no corollary in US history.”

Nicholas Casey and Patricia Torres report that Venezuela Muzzles Legislature, Moving Closer to One-Man Rule: “IQUITOS, Peru — Venezuela took its strongest step yet toward one-man rule under the leftist President Nicolás Maduro as his loyalists on the Supreme Court seized power from the National Assembly in a ruling late Wednesday night. The ruling effectively dissolved the elected legislature, which is led by Mr. Maduro’s opponents, and allows the court to write laws itself, experts said. The move caps a year in which the last vestiges of Venezuela’s democracy have been torn down, critics and regional leaders say, leaving what many now describe as not just an authoritarian regime, but an outright dictatorship. “What we have warned of has finally come to pass,” said Luis Almagro, the head of the Organization of American States, a regional diplomacy group that includes Venezuela and is investigating the country for violating the bloc’s Democratic Charter.”

There’s a Puzzle in Poland: Who Bent the Trees?

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 7:19 PM, for 12h 41m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets today at 11:30 AM.

On this day in 1867, the United States and Russia reach an agreement for the United States’ purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire at a price of $7.2 million dollars.  On this day in 1865, the 6th, 7th and 36th Wisconsin Infantry regiments fight in the Battle at Gravelly Run, which was one of a series of engagements that ultimately drove Confederate forces out of Petersburg.

Recommended for reading in full — 

John Schmid reports that Immigration was, is and will be a source of renewal in Milwaukee: “At the middle of the last century, Alfonso Morales left his home in rural Mexico to work migrant farm jobs in the United States. He eventually reached Milwaukee, learned the construction trades and settled down. Alfonso Jr., the ninth of his 10 children, was the first in the family to go to college. At 46, the son is now a Milwaukee police captain, having worked as a beat cop, detective and district commander. The son also has become an authority on Clarke Square, on the near south side.  Clarke Square has been a port of entry for immigrants since 1795, when a French-speaking Canadian became the first white settler to build the first house in what later became the city of Milwaukee. Morales policed Clarke Square for years and knows every alley, tavern and ethnicity within its 48 square blocks, immediately south of the city’s Menomonee Valley. A history buff, he explains how early European arrivals built sturdy second homes in their cramped backyards, which helped accommodate the next wave of Germans, Poles, Irish and Bohemians. Much of Clarke Square today is populated by people of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent. They are joined by Asians and Central Americans who live alongside long-term residents of European descent. The shadow of a large Lao Buddhist temple falls across National Ave. where taco trucks serve burritos and tortas.”

Scott Malone reports ‘Religious left’ emerging as U.S. political force in Trump era: “Since President Donald Trump’s election, monthly lectures on social justice at the 600-seat Gothic chapel of New York’s Union Theological Seminary have been filled to capacity with crowds three times what they usually draw. In January, the 181-year-old Upper Manhattan graduate school, whose architecture evokes London’s Westminster Abbey, turned away about 1,000 people from a lecture on mass incarceration. In the nine years that Reverend Serene Jones has served as its president, she has never seen such crowds. “The election of Trump has been a clarion call to progressives in the Protestant and Catholic churches in America to move out of a place of primarily professing progressive policies to really taking action,” she said. Although not as powerful as the religious right, which has been credited with helping elect Republican presidents and boasts well-known leaders such as Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, the “religious left” is now slowly coming together as a force in U.S. politics. This disparate group, traditionally seen as lacking clout, has been propelled into political activism by Trump’s policies on immigration, healthcare and social welfare, according to clergy members, activists and academics. A key test will be how well it will be able to translate its mobilization into votes in the 2018 midterm congressional elections.”

Jonathan Z. Larsen reports Why FBI Can’t Tell All on Trump, Russia: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation cannot tell us what we need to know about Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia. Why? Because doing so would jeopardize a long-running, ultra-sensitive operation targeting mobsters tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and to Trump. But the Feds’ stonewalling risks something far more dangerous: Failing to resolve a crisis of trust in America’s president. WhoWhatWhy provides the details of a two-month investigation in this 6,500-word exposé. The FBI apparently knew, directly or indirectly, based upon available facts, that prior to Election Day, Trump and his campaign had personal and business dealings with certain individuals and entities linked to criminal elements — including reputed Russian gangsters — connected to Putin. The same facts suggest that the FBI knew or should have known enough prior to the election to justify informing the public about its ongoing investigation of potentially compromising relationships between Trump, Putin, and Russian mobsters — even if it meant losing or exposing a valued informant.”

Nicole Hemmer observes that “Scientific racism” is on the rise on the right. But it’s been lurking there for years: “For those dissatisfied with The Bell Curve’s explanation of racial differences, another book came along a year later offering an alternative. The problems black Americans faced were not due to their inferior genetics, Dinesh D’Souza argued, but due to their inferior culture. That was the idea at the core of The End of Racism, the 1995 book that D’Souza wrote in an office down the hall from Murray at AEI. The book was a broadside against multiculturalism and cultural relativism. In it, D’Souza argued for the supremacy of Western (white) culture, maintaining that problems of high incarceration rates and poverty were caused not by racist institutions but by a corruption at the heart of black society, which he described as “self-defeating” and “irresponsible.” In language reminiscent of Donald Trump’s diatribes about black neighborhoods, D’Souza described inner cities as places where “the streets are irrigated with alcohol, urine, and blood.” Racism, he argued, is simply rational discrimination, the ability of observes to detect that black culture is worse than white culture. It was not racism but anti-racism that was to blame for African-Americans’ plight, he maintained, arguing that black civil rights activists and white liberal Democrats had a vested interest in keeping “the black underclass” down. Like Murray, D’Souza cloaked his arguments in academic garb: extensive citations, lengthy expositions, detailed history. But like The Bell Curve, The End of Racism was about promoting conservative policy, starting with the premise that the problems black Americans faced were not the result of racism and that no outside intervention — especially not affirmative action — could solve them.”

Watch a rocket test create a beautiful double rainbow:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 7:18 PM, for 12h 38m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1867, legendary pitcher Denton True “Cy” Young is born. On this day in 1865, Union soldiers including Wisconsin regiments, follow retreating Confederates in a series of battles fought March 29 – April 9, 1865 in the Appomattox Campaign.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Campbell Robertson reports that Coal Miners Hope Trump’s Order Will Help. But Few Are Counting on It: “Gary Bentley, who spent a dozen years as a coal miner in eastern Kentucky, is less optimistic. Now working as a mechanic and writing about his years in the mines, he does not see a big turnaround coming. Blaming environment regulations is an old tradition, he said, one encouraged by the coal industry’s lobbyists. But it ignores too many hard facts, he said, like the increase in mechanization and the abundance of cheap natural gas. “It’s not going to make a comeback,” Mr. Bentley said of coal mining in central Appalachia. “But you get a certain amount of desperation, where you’re willing to believe stuff even though you know in your gut it’s not true.” As much of coal country happily welcomed the news out of Washington, Mr. Bentley pointed to an announcement closer to home: This month the municipal utility of Owensboro, Ky., said its power plant, after 117 years, was going to phase out the burning of coal altogether.”

Niraj Chokshi and Manny Fernandez report that Ex-Congressman From Texas Charged With Stealing Charitable Donations: “A former United States representative from Texas and one of his aides were indicted on Tuesday on charges that they stole hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for charity, some of which was used to illegally finance his campaigns. The former representative, Steve Stockman, 60, and the former director of special projects in his congressional office, Jason Posey, 46, were charged in a 28-count indictment related to the alleged yearslong fraud scheme. The charges included mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission and money laundering, the Justice Department said in a statement. Mr. Stockman, a Republican, solicited $1.25 million in charitable donations from May 2010 to October 2014 that was later used for other purposes, the Justice Department said.Dane Ball, who represents Mr. Stockman along with his colleagues at the law firm Smyser Kaplan & Veselka, said the former congressman plans to plead not guilty. “Similar to what Steve said outside the courthouse after his arrest, he’s innocent and we are reviewing the indictment now,” Mr. Ball said on Tuesday night.”

Alaura Weaver describes From Russia, With Lies: Soviet-Style Disinformation And The Culture War That Helped Spread It: “And when there’s an outright conspiracy like the Russian disinformation campaign staring them in the face, because the mainstream media is reporting it, they are skeptical. Communist disinformation tactics would never have taken root if it weren’t for the fertile soil of division within American culture. And as we can see from the birth of the culture wars throughout the mid-twentieth century up to present day, the more intolerant we are of each other’s ideas, the more open we are to suspicion about the motivations and actions of the bearers of those ideas. What will it take to remove the stain of dezinformatsiya from our democracy? History shows that the strongest defense against a campaign of mistruths is an aggressive press who are willing to dive deep into the sources of information before they report on it. Let the work begin.”

Dr. John Schindler defines The 9 Russian Words That Explain KremlinGate: “As the Trump administration’s Russia problem shows no sign of going away, protesting presidential tweets notwithstanding, it’s time to think about it properly. Understanding what the Kremlin’s up to helps to see the big picture. This means learning a bit of spy lingo. Espionage, like everything else, has its own culture—including special verbiage—which varies from country to country. Russia’s espionage culture is unique and in key ways markedly different from how Western countries approach the spy-game. It’s a product of the Soviet secret police, that brutal and cunning force, and it’s no accident that Vladimir Putin’s spies proudly call themselves Chekists today to commemorate them—just as they did in the days of the KGB. “There are no ‘former’ Chekists,” as the KGB veteran Putin has stated, and this attitude permeates his Kremlin.
The threat to our democracy posed by Moscow’s spy-games won’t recede on its own. As Rick Ledgett, NSA’s straight-talking deputy director, stated last week, “This is a challenge to the foundations of our democracy.” He went on: “How do we counter that?” adding, “What do we do as a nation to make it stop?” This first thing we must do is gain a reality-based understanding of the SpyWar we’re in with Moscow. So, let’s walk through a few of the most important Russian espionage terms to shed some light on what’s really going on between Washington and the Kremlin.”

On Binging with Babish, it’s Cubanos from Chef:

Good morning.

Whitewater’s Tuesday will be increasingly sunny with a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 7:17 PM, for 12h 35m 38s of daytime. The moon is new, with .2% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the {tooltip}one hundred fortieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania has a partial nuclear meltdown in reactor number 2: “It was the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.^[2] The incident was rated a five on the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale: Accident With Wider Consequences.^[3][4]” On this day in 1954, a “Joe Must Go” a bipartisan grassroots campaign to recall Sen. Joe McCarthy from the Senate, begins in earnest with an organizational meeting in Sauk City. The campaign failed, but not before garnering 335,000 signatures.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Max Ehrenfreund sees The looming split between Trump and Ryan: “President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan both want to rewrite the tax code, but their proposals differ on how much tax relief to give the middle class. Trump wants a tax cut across the board, according to the plan he published during the campaign. He has proposed relief for the wealthy especially, but also for less affluent households. The plan that Ryan (R-Wis.) and his colleagues in the House have put forward would not substantially reduce taxes for the middle class, and many households would pay more. Trump’s plan arguably reflects his unique style of conservative populism. The proposal would be extremely costly for the government, and the president’s past comments suggest he would be willing to put the federal government deeper into debt to fund breaks for the middle class. Ryan’s plan would instead simplify and streamline the tax code in accordance with conservative orthodoxy, eliminating the goodies for households with modest incomes that Trump would preserve or expand. In all, taxpayers with roughly average incomes could expect a tax cut of around $1,100 a year under Trump’s plan, compared to just $60 under Ryan’s plan once the proposals were fully implemented. Now, after even a united Trump-Ryan effort on health care failed to win over enough Republicans to get through the House, their hopes of passing a tax plan depend on getting on the same page quickly.”

Jeet Heer writes about The Death of Paul Ryan, Policy Genius: “Ryan’s sparkly reputation rested partly, of course, on the soft bigotry of low expectations (better than you would expect a Republican to be!), but also on appearance. Ryan looks like a thoughtful man. He can furrow his brow in simulation of abstract reasoning. Not everyone was fooled. Paul Krugman called him a “flimflam man,” pointing out that the numbers Ryan touted in his imaginary budget didn’t add up, with the proposed tax cuts creating much bigger deficits than Ryan acknowledges. The AHCA fiasco vindicates Krugman’s harsh judgment. The “reform” was hated not just by Democrats but by actual Republican policy wonks—people who were critical of Obamacare, but saw the AHCA as doing nothing to make it better. In a devastating critique in Forbes, Avik Roy, one of the foremost conservative experts in the field, got to the heart of Ryan’s plan. “Expanding subsidies for high earners, and cutting health coverage off from the working poor: It sounds like a left-wing caricature of mustache-twirling, top-hatted Republican fat cats.” Roy, the president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, is a genuine conservative wonk with a real concern for the impact of policy. Paul Ryan is a pretend wonk who throws around numbers to impress the likes of Mitt Romney and Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the Republican Party only uses real wonks like Roy when they want to criticize Democrats. When policy gets made, it falls to Ryan. Perhaps the only positive outcome of the current turmoil is that it might, at long last, destroy Ryan’s reputation for policy expertise.”

Julia Ioffe considers What Russia’s Latest Protests Mean for Putin: “First and foremost, it was a tremendous show of power by Navalny, who has declared that he is running for president of Russia in 2018. He is a long shot at best, and the Kremlin may not even allow him on the ballot. Yet he showed he has real political power and that tens of thousands of people across the country see him as a legitimate leader, despite the Kremlin’s assiduous work to marginalize him by keeping him off government-controlled television—still Russians’ main source of news—and inventing a half-dozen criminal cases against him. Second, it indicated that despite the government’s total control of television and creeping control of the web, technology and social media are still powerful tools. By Sunday, the Medvedev expose had been viewed nearly 12 million times. By comparison, 52 million people voted in September’s parliamentary elections. It doesn’t mean that all those viewers believed it or agreed with its anti-Kremlin message, but it means they at least saw it, even though it wasn’t shown on state TV. It also means that Navalny, with his YouTube channel, which was doing a live broadcast during the protests, can reach past Kremlin TV and influence people even in the heart of Putin country.”

Laura Schulte reports that the Hodag [has been] added to ‘Fantastic Beasts’ roster: “RHINELANDER – Those on the hunt for magic creatures in central Wisconsin won’t have to travel far to spot one. The legendary Hodag has officially been deemed a “fantastic beast” by J.K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” series. Rowling added the beast to her book “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” on March 14. The book was originally released in 2001, as one of Harry Potter’s textbooks, written by fictional author Newt Scamander, according to Rowling’s site, www.pottermore.com. The small book was also the basis for the movie of the same name, released in 2016. In the book, Rowling describes the Hodag as “horned, with red, glowing eyes and long fangs, and the size of a large dog. The Hodag’s magic resides largely in its horns which, when powdered, make a man immune to the effects of alcohol and able to go without sleep for seven days and seven nights.” The passage also notes the Hodag is found in a “protected area around Wisconsin.”

Robert Lustig reveals foods with loads of hidden sugar:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty-one. Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 7:16 PM, for 12h 32m 44s of daytime. The moon is new, with .4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred thirty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority is scheduled to meet this afternon at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1513, Juan Ponce de León spots what he believes is an island, but was likely his first sighting of Florida. On this day in 1865, the 8th, 11th, 14th, 20th, 23rd, 27th, 28th, 29th, 33rd and 35th Wisconsin Infantry regiments join in the Battle of Spanish Fort began on the Gulf Coast of Alabama.

Recommended for reading in full —

John Schmid and Kevin Crowe report on An intractable problem (for the last half-century, Milwaukee has been caught in a relentless social and economic spiral): “At the start of the 1970s, Milwaukee’s industrial heyday, just 17% of the city’s population lived in census tracts in which 20% to 40% of the residents lived below the federal poverty line. That’s a level labeled “concentrated poverty,” and social scientists consider it the combustion point for social toxins like crime, teen pregnancies, dropping out of school. (A Milwaukee census tract averages about 3,000 people.) Milwaukee’s rate was far healthier than other industrial cities like Detroit (25%), Philadelphia (21%) or Chicago (20%). By the end of that watershed decade, amid the first wave of industrial shutdowns, 22% of the city lived in 20%-40% poverty tracts, and there was a proliferation of “extreme poverty” tracts, where 40% or more lived below the line. Then came the booming ’80s and the greatest bull market on Wall Street since the 1920s. The aphorism is that a rising economic tide lifts all boats, but Milwaukee missed out. By the end of the decade, the percentage of people living in tracts with 20%-plus poverty rose to 43.5% — including both concentrated and extreme poverty. During the tech-driven ’90s, as the internet minted new fortunes and Google was born, the number of 20%-40% tracts increased from 48 to 74. By the end of the decade, the percentage of city residents in 20%-plus tracts was 47.2%, almost half the city’s population. By 2014, 145 of the city’s 209 census tracts — home to almost three-quarters of the city’s population — had at least 20% of the population living in poverty, and more than one out of four Milwaukeeans lived in neighborhoods of extreme poverty.”

Margaret Sullivan notes that Scott Pelley is pulling no punches on the nightly news — and people are taking notice: “Pelley, of CBS Evening News, has set himself apart — especially in recent weeks — with a spate of such assessments, night after night. Perhaps the most notable one, on Feb. 7, went like this: “It has been a busy day for presidential statements divorced from reality. Mr. Trump said this morning that any polls that show disapproval of his immigration ban are fake. He singled out a federal judge for ridicule after the judge suspended his ban, and Mr. Trump said that the ruling now means that anyone can enter the country. The president’s fictitious claims, whether imaginary or fabricated, are now worrying even his backers, particularly after he insisted that millions of people voted illegally, giving Hillary Clinton her popular-vote victory.” And then Pelley added a reality-check kicker: “There is not one state election official, Democrat or Republican, who supports that claim.” There are plenty of other examples: One evening last month, he described Trump aide Kellyanne Conway as “a fearless fabulist.” Another night, he referred to the president as having had “another Twitter tantrum.” Far more than his competitors — Lester Holt on NBC and David Muir on ABC — Pelley is using words and approaches that pull no punches. It’s not that the others don’t provide fact-checks or report on criticism; they do. But Pelley, 59, despite his calm delivery, is dogged, night after night — and far blunter.”

Colbert King contends It’s time for the feds to follow the Russian money: “There’s plenty of ground for federal agencies to plow. The Financial Times reported in October that an investigation that it conducted had turned up evidence of ties between one Trump venture and an alleged international money-laundering network. Title deeds, bank records and correspondence showed that a Kazakh family accused of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars bought apartments in a Manhattan building part-owned by Trump and pursued business ventures with one of his partners. This week, ABC News reported that from 2011 to 2013, the FBI had a warrant to eavesdrop on a Russian money-laundering network that operated out of Trump Tower in New York. “The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment of more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov,” ABC’s Brian Ross and Matthew Mosk reported. “He was the only target to slip away, and he remains a fugitive from American justice.” Bloomberg Businessweek reported this month: “Two months before Trump broke ground in New York in October 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion in domestic debt, and some of the biggest banks started to collapse. Millionaires scrambled to get their money out and into New York. Real estate provides a safe haven for overseas investors. It has few reporting requirements and is a preferred way to move cash of questionable provenance. Amid the turmoil, buyers found a dearth of available projects. Trump World Tower, opened in 2001, became a prominent depository of Russian money.”

Conor Dougherty reports that the Push for Internet Privacy Rules Moves to Statehouses: “California and Connecticut, for instance, recently updated laws that restrict government access to online communications like email, and New Mexico could follow soon. Last year, Nebraska and West Virginia passed laws that limit how companies can monitor employees’ social media accounts, while legislators in Hawaii, Missouri and elsewhere are pushing similar bills for employees, as well as for students and tenants. “More and more, states have taken the position that, if Congress is not willing or able to enact strong privacy laws, their legislatures will no longer sit on their hands,” said Chad Marlow, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union. Online privacy is the rare issue that draws together legislators from the left and the far right. At the state level, anyway, some of the progress has come from a marriage between progressive Democrats and libertarian-minded Republicans, who see privacy as a bedrock principle, Mr. Marlow said.”

Good morning.

Whitewater will have a rainy Sunday, with a high of fifty-seven. Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset is 7:15 PM, for 12h 29m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred thirty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1881, famous Civil War mascot Old Abe dies from injuries he sustained during a fire at the State Capitol. He was the mascot for Company C, an Eau Claire infantry unit that was part of the Wisconsin 8th Regiment. His fame continued after the war:

After Wisconsin took possession of Old Abe, state officials classified him as a “War Relic” and created an “Eagle Department” in the Capitol building, which included a two-room “apartment,” a custom bathtub for the eagle, and a caretaker. Later John Hill served in this capacity.[23] Old Abe became a nationally known celebrity, whose presence at events was requested by individuals and organizations from the state and the country. Old Abe appeared at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the 1880 Grand Army of the Republic National Convention. Other events were fundraisers for charities, which included: the 1865 Northwest Sanitary Fair in Illinois, Soldiers’ Home Fair, Soldier’s Orphan’s Home, Harvey Hospital, and Ladies Aid Society of Chippewa Falls.[3] In February 1881, a small fire broke out in the basement of the Capitol. After Old Abe raised an alarm, the fire was quickly put out. However, the eagle inhaled a large amount of thick black smoke, and about a month later, lost strength and began to decline. On March 26, 1881, in spite of the efforts of numerous doctors, Old Abe died in the arms of caretaker George Gilles.[23]

On September 17, 1881, Old Abe’s stuffed remains were placed in a glass display case located in the rotunda of the Capitol. Four years later, Old Abe was moved, within the Capitol, from the rotunda to the G.A.R. Memorial Hall. In 1900, his remains were transferred to the new building of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. However, pressure from veterans convinced Governor Robert M. Lafollette to return Old Abe to the Capitol building in 1903. That year, President Theodore Roosevelt viewed the remains and expressed his pleasure at being able to see the eagle he had studied in school as a child. In 1904, Old Abe’s remains and the glass case were destroyed in a fire that razed the Capitol building.[23]

Since 1915, a replica of Old Abe has presided over the

Wisconsin State Assembly Chamber in the Capitol, and another is on display at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison.[24] A stone sculpture of the eagle is at the top of the Camp Randall Arch.[11]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Tim Alberta describes events from Inside the GOP’s Health Care Debacle: “Donald Trump had heard enough about policy and process. It was Thursday afternoon and members of the House Freedom Caucus were peppering the president with wonkish concerns about the American Health Care Act—the language that would leave Obamacare’s “essential health benefits” in place, the community rating provision that limited what insurers could charge certain patients, and whether the next two steps of Speaker Paul Ryan’s master plan were even feasible—when Trump decided to cut them off. “Forget about the little shit,” Trump said, according to multiple sources in the room. “Let’s focus on the big picture here.” The group of roughly 30 House conservatives, gathered around a mammoth, oval-shaped conference table in the Cabinet Room of the White House, exchanged disapproving looks. Trump wanted to emphasize the political ramifications of the bill’s defeat; specifically, he said, it would derail his first-term agenda and imperil his prospects for reelection in 2020. The lawmakers nodded and said they understood. And yet they were disturbed by his dismissiveness. For many of the members, the “little shit” meant the policy details that could make or break their support for the bill—and have far-reaching implications for their constituents and the country.”

Matt Flegenheimer and  Thomas Kaplan contend that Paul Ryan Emerges From Health Care Defeat Badly Damaged: “Less than 18 months after being elected speaker, Mr. Ryan has emerged from the defeat of the health care bill badly damaged, retaining a grip on the job but left to confront the realities of his failure — imperiling the odd-couple partnership that was supposed to sustain a new era of conservative government under unified Republican rule.”

Graydon Carter contends that the Trump Presidency is Already a Joke (But It’s No laughing Matter): “Trump’s one brief moment of acting presidential—when he read off a teleprompter for 60 minutes and 10 seconds during his address to Congress—served only to show just how low the bar for presidential behavior has plummeted since January. Watching TV commentators applaud him for containing himself for a little over an hour was like hearing a parent praise a difficult child for not pooping in his pants during a pre-school interview. Besides, vintage Trump is not going anywhere anytime soon. A couple of weeks earlier, during a visit by the Japanese prime minister, Shinz? Abe, the president told an acquaintance that he was obsessed with the translator’s breasts—although he expressed this in his own, fragrant fashion.”

Hannah Levintova outlines The Long, Twisted, and Bizarre History of the Trump-Russia Scandal: “The Trump-Russia scandal—with all its bizarre and troubling twists and turns—has become a controversy that is defining the Trump presidency. The FBI recently disclosed that since July it has been conducting a counterintelligence investigation into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russia, as part of its probe of Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election. Citing “US officials,” CNN reported that the bureau has gathered information suggesting coordination between Trump campaign officials and suspected Russian operatives. Each day seems to bring a new revelation—and a new Trump administration denial or deflection. It’s tough to keep track of all the relevant events, pertinent ties, key statements, and unraveling claims. So we’ve compiled what we know so far into the timeline below, which covers Trump’s 30-year history with Russia.  We will continue to update the timeline regularly as events unfold. (Click here to go directly to the most recent entry.) Please email us at scoop@motherjones.com if you have a tip or we’ve left anything out.”

People on Twitter are mocking Trump for pretending to drive a big rig truck (instead of reading and comprehending the details of health care legislation that he dismissively described as “the little shit“):