Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-three. Sunrise is 6:57 AM and sunset 5:06 PM, for 12h 09m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred thirty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 2003, and American-led coalition invades Iraq. On this day in 1865, the 21st, 22nd and 25th Wisconsin Infantry regiments take part in the battle at Goldsborough, North Carolina, during the Campaign of the Carolinas.

Recommended for reading in full —

Craig Gilbert reports that Rural Wisconsin takes hit in GOP health plan after backing Donald Trump: “No congressional district in Wisconsin delivered a bigger victory margin for Donald Trump last fall (20 points) than the rural northern one represented by Republican Sean Duffy. But by one key measure, no district in Wisconsin would lose more health care aid under the GOP plan to replace Obamacare. Wisconsin is part of a national pattern in which the Obamacare enrollees who appear to be hit the hardest by the Republican plan fit the demographic and geographic profile of Trump’s political base. These enrollees are in their 50s and early 60s. Trump won that group by 15 points in Wisconsin, according to exit polling. And they disproportionately live in rural areas that voted for Trump and are represented by Republicans in Congress….The biggest losses in tax credits in Wisconsin would occur in two mostly rural congressional districts, the northern seat held by Duffy and the western seat held by Democrat Ron Kind. Duffy’s district has the highest number of Obamacare enrollees in the state (more than 35,000 last year) and Kind’s has the third highest. Both areas were carried by Trump last fall. They are also the two congressional districts in Wisconsin that saw the biggest swings toward the GOP in 2016. In both districts, a 60-year-old making $30,000 would lose an average of more than $5,500 a year in health care tax credits under the GOP plan, based on a Journal Sentinel analysis of the Kaiser data [from a Kaiser Family Foundation study].

Jon Parles reports that Chuck Berry Dies at 90; Helped Define Rock ’n’ Roll: “While Elvis Presley was rock’s first pop star and teenage heartthrob, Mr. Berry was its master theorist and conceptual genius, the songwriter who understood what the kids wanted before they knew themselves. With songs like “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roll Over Beethoven,” he gave his listeners more than they knew they were getting from jukebox entertainment. His guitar lines wired the lean twang of country and the bite of the blues into phrases with both a streamlined trajectory and a long memory. And tucked into the lighthearted, telegraphic narratives that he sang with such clear enunciation was a sly defiance, upending convention to claim the pleasures of the moment.”

Kevin Sack reports that Door-Busting Drug Raids Leave a Trail of Blood – Using SWAT officers to storm into homes to execute search warrants has led time and again to avoidable deaths, gruesome injuries and costly legal settlements: “As policing has militarized to fight a faltering war on drugs, few tactics have proved as dangerous as the use of forcible-entry raids to serve narcotics search warrants, which regularly introduce staggering levels of violence into missions that might be accomplished through patient stakeouts or simple knocks at the door. Thousands of times a year, these “dynamic entry” raids exploit the element of surprise to effect seizures and arrests of neighborhood drug dealers. But they have also led time and again to avoidable deaths, gruesome injuries, demolished property, enduring trauma, blackened reputations and multimillion-dollar legal settlements at taxpayer expense, an investigation by The New York Times found. For the most part, governments at all levels have chosen not to quantify the toll by requiring reporting on SWAT operations. But The Times’s investigation, which relied on dozens of open-record requests and thousands of pages from police and court files, found that at least 81 civilians and 13 law enforcement officers died in such raids from 2010 through 2016. Scores of others were maimed or wounded.”

Monopoly has three new tokens, one of which is a dinosaur:

The people have spoken, and soon you will be able to play Monopoly as a T-rex https://t.co/bPk8q2AiNl

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 17, 2017

What’s a Boxersled? It’s a Subaru WRX STI on an Olympic bobsled run:

Good morning.

Whitewater’s Saturday will be cloudy with a high of forty-four. Sunrise is 6:59 AM and sunset 7:05 PM, for 12h 06m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 69.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred thirtieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court hands down a decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, holding that the right of an indigent defendant in a criminal trial to have the assistance of counsel is a fundamental right essential to a fair trial, and petitioner’s trial and conviction without the assistance of counsel violated the Fourteenth Amendment (Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455, overruled). On this day in 1954, Parker Pen employees in Janesville, Wisconsin win a wage increase (“a 5-cent-an-hour wage increase in contract negotiations. After the raise, male employees made a base pay of $1.95 an hour while their female counterparts were paid $1.62 an hour”).

Recommended for reading in full —

Matea Gold describes How the Mercer family’s partnership with Stephen Bannon shaped the populist climate: “The Mercers, Republican mega-donors who had spent millions on the failed presidential bid of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and Bannon, then executive chairman of Breitbart News Network, were still weeks from formally aligning with Donald Trump’s campaign. But the festivities that balmy evening aboard the Sea Owl, the Mercers’ luxurious yacht, marked the growing influence of their financial and political partnership in shaping the 2016 campaign — and in encouraging the populist surge now reverberating around the world. The Mercers’ approach is far different from that of other big donors. While better-known players such as the Koch brothers on the right and George Soros on the left focus on mobilizing activists and voters, the Mercers have exerted pressure on the political system by helping erect an alternative media ecosystem, whose storylines dominated the 2016 race. Their alliance with Bannon provided fuel for the narrative that drove Trump’s victory: that dangerous immigrants are ruining the country and corrupt power brokers are sabotaging Washington.”

Louise Mensch explains What to Ask About Russian Hacking: “The framing of the committee’s questions matters immensely. Legally, witnesses cannot confirm or deny even the existence of a current national security investigation. The very mention of a “FISA warrant” would allow Mr. Sessions to avoid the substance by excusing himself from commenting. Committee members must therefore word their questions without reference to any case. I would simply ask Mr. Sessions this: “Was the president’s tweet about a wiretap at Trump Tower, to your knowledge, illegal? If so, to whom have you reported this offense? “To your knowledge, did any person illegally inform the president that there was a wiretap at Trump Tower?” The president’s unwillingness to answer questions about contacts between his campaign team and Russian officials, and the pattern of contradictory and misleading statements on those contacts, are toxic. Never in American history has a president been suspected of collaborating with a hostile foreign power to win an election. The founders provided three equal branches of government to protect the republic. The American people now depend on the House committee to do its job and uncover the truth.”

Consider how hippos almost became a common American food:

Good morning.

St. Patrick’s Day in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 7:01 AM and sunset 5:04 PM, for 12h 03m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 78.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred twenty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission is scheduled to meet today at 5 PM.

On this day in 1776, the Siege of Boston ends, with 120 British ships evacuating Boston Harbor. On this day in 1941, Milwaukee’s airport is named for air-power pioneer General William Mitchell.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Mary Spicuzza reports that Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett mocks Sheriff David Clarke for ‘fighting crime’ on cable shows: “I think he’s got a great gig going right now. He’s fightin’ crime one conservative cable TV show at a time,” Barrett said Wednesday during an interview with Wisconsin Eye and the Journal Sentinel. “He’s made a great name for himself, I think, as the darling of the conservative cable network. I think he can make a ton of money doing that.” When asked if Clarke was doing TV appearances at the expense of doing his job as sheriff, Barrett said, “I think if you were to ask people who know what’s going on here, they would say that he rode his horse out of town a long time ago.”

Michael Gerson observes that Trump has picked a deeply disturbing hero: “But Jackson’s vices were not merely personal. Many of the Founders had been internally conflicted slaveholders. Jackson was not one for psychic struggle. Meacham recounts that Jackson once authored an “Advertisement for Runaway Slave” that offered $50 for the return of the slave “and ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him.” Such attitudes were not disqualifying in Jackson’s America. And much of Jackson’s reputation depended on being a frontier Indian fighter. This was a president who once earned the Indian nickname “Sharp Knife.” In a battle against the Red Stick Creeks, Jackson set about to “exterminate them” (his words). Hundreds of fighters and civilians were killed trying to flee across the Tallapoosa River. By one account, “the river ran red with blood.” A sharp knife indeed….Why discuss this ancient history (which is not really so ancient to the Cherokee)? Because Trump, in visiting Jackson’s Hermitage, has invited us. Jackson was wrong — badly, culpably wrong — on the largest issue of his time: the dignity and value of people of color. “The tragedy of Jackson’s life,” admits Meacham, “is that a man dedicated to freedom failed to see liberty as a universal, not a particular, gift.” There is no refuge in the argument that Jackson merely reflected the values of his time. Jackson’s opponent in two elections, John Quincy Adams, viewed slavery as “the great and foul stain upon the North American Union.” Henry Clay called Indian expulsion “a foul and lasting stain upon the good faith, humanity and character of the nation.” And Jackson’s reputation will always bear those indelible marks.”

David Sanger reports that Tillerson Says No Negotiations With North Korea on Nuclear Program: “SEOUL, South Korea — Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson ruled out on Friday opening any negotiation with North Korea to freeze its nuclear and missile programs and said for the first time that the Trump administration might be forced to take pre-emptive action “if they elevate the threat of their weapons program” to an unacceptable level. Mr. Tillerson’s comments in Seoul, a day before he travels to Beijing to meet Chinese leaders, explicitly rejected any return to the bargaining table in an effort to buy time by halting North Korea’s accelerating testing program, which the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, said on New Year’s Day was in the “final stages” of preparation for the first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States. The secretary of state’s comments were the Trump administration’s first public hint at the options being considered, and made clear that none involved a negotiated settlement or waiting for the North Korean government to collapse.”

Karoline Kan asks Tai Chi Encourages Calm. So Why Are Its Chinese Fans Stressing Out?: “Last year, Indian yoga made Unesco’s list. In 2011, South Korea’s taekkyeon became the first martial art so honored. So why can’t Chinese tai chi win similar international recognition? That is the question on Yan Shuangjun’s mind as the annual deadline approaches for nominations to Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list, established by the United Nations agency to celebrate and protect the world’s cultural diversity. For the past decade, Mr. Yan has lobbied for the inclusion of tai chi, a centuries-old martial art that combines flowing movements with deep breathing and meditation. “Through tai chi, one can understand Chinese culture, from medicine to literature, from philosophy to art,” said Mr. Yan, who heads the Tai Chi Unesco Heritage Application Group in Wen County, Henan Province, widely thought to be the martial art’s birthplace. As much as tai chi advocates and fans insist that it embodies unique aspects of Chinese culture, they fear that if China does not secure it a Unesco listing, other countries might move ahead with their own variants. It would not be the first time, they say.”

What lies beneath?  A harvest:

Good morning.

Whitewater’s Thursday will be sunny with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 7:02 AM and sunset 5:03 PM, for 12h 00m 35s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 86% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred twenty-eighth third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Fire Department has a scheduled business meeting at 7 PM.

James Madison is born on this day in 1751. On this day in 1926, Dr. Robert Goddard successfully tests the world’s first liquid-fuelled rocket.

Recommended for reading in full —

Derek Hawkins reports that Trump’s talk — ‘Muslim ban,’ ‘Islam hates us’ — comes back to bite him in court again: “in his blistering opinion Wednesday freezing Trump’s the new travel ban, U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson said statements by Trump and his senior advisers were precisely what called its legality into question. “These plainly-worded statements, made in the months leading up to and contemporaneous with the signing of the Executive Order, and, in many cases, made by the Executive himself, betray the Executive Order’s stated secular purpose,” Watson wrote. And early Thursday morning, a federal judge ruling in a related case in Maryland said the order was “the realization of the long-envisioned Muslim ban,” as The Washington Post reported. Though U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang’s opinion was narrower in scope than Watsons, he still found room to take aim at statements by Trump and his advisers, saying they showed “animus toward Muslims and intention to impose a ban on Muslims entering the United States.” In short, Trump’s loose talk had come back to bite him yet again. Only this time the criticism was coming straight from a federal judge.”

Charles Blow considers the Disciples of a False Prophet: “The con Donald Trump committed on his voters is slowly coming undone. He is not honest. He is not a brilliant deal maker. He is not even competent. His entire life, Trump has sold shimmer and called it silver. It was and is all an illusion, a brand built on selling banality with braggadocio. He shaped vapors into dreams and delivered them to those hungry for a taste of the showy, hollow form of the high life he came to represent. He was successful at exploiting those with an ostentatious appetite for the air of success. Trump’s life story is a pyramid scheme of ambitions. He took that history to a people struggling through a drought of opportunity and he exploited their weaknesses: a shrinking sense of economic security and growing nativist tendencies. But Trump doesn’t speak so much from facts as from feelings. For him, the truth is malleable and a lie is valuable. He creates his own reality rather than living in the reality of others. Deception is just a tool; betrayal is just an inconvenience.”

Peter Baker reports that In Trump Budget, More for Military, as His Supporters May Lose Out: “But in his first spending blueprint since taking office, Mr. Trump also made choices demonstrating that parts of America will be more first than others — and some of the budget losers, it turns out, may be some of the very constituencies that have been most supportive of the new president during his improbable rise to power. While border guards will have more prisons to lock up unauthorized immigrants, rural communities will lose grants and loans to build water facilities and financing to keep their airports open. As charter schools are bolstered, after-school and summer programs will lose money. As law enforcement agents get more help to fight the opioid epidemic, lower-income Americans will have less access to home energy aid, job training programs and legal services.”

Alex Isenstadt and Kenneth P. Vogel describes how Paranoia seizes Trump’s White House: “A culture of paranoia is consuming the Trump administration, with staffers increasingly preoccupied with perceived enemies—inside their own government. In interviews, nearly a dozen White House aides and federal agency staffers described a litany of suspicions: that rival factions in the administration are trying to embarrass them, that civil servants opposed to President Donald Trump are trying to undermine him, and even that a “deep state” of career military and intelligence officials is out to destroy them. Aides are going to great lengths to protect themselves. They’re turning off work-issued smartphones and putting them in drawers when they arrive home from work out of fear that they could be used to eavesdrop. They’re staying mum in meetings out of concern that their comments could be leaked to the press by foes. Many are using encrypted apps that automatically delete messages once they’ve been read, or are leaving their personal cell phones at home in case their bosses initiate phone checks of the sort that press secretary Sean Spicer deployed last month to identify leakers on his team. It’s an environment of fear that has hamstrung the routine functioning of the executive branch. Senior advisers are spending much of their time trying to protect turf, key positions have remained vacant due to a reluctance to hire people deemed insufficiently loyal, and Trump’s ambitious agenda has been eclipsed by headlines surrounding his unproven claim that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone lines. One senior administration aide, who like most others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the degree of suspicion had created a toxicity that was unsustainable.”

The Slam Poets of Istanbul are worthy examples for anyone:

Every week, a group of young people meet in Taksim Square to perform spoken-word poems. They are led by a woman named Merve Pehlivan, who is profiled in this short film. “As a Turkish person myself, I feel the extent to which we have been divided as a society and we have stopped talking with each other,” she says. “I’m a very strong supporter of freedom of expression and of diversity of opinion.” This documentary was filmed by Tara Milutis three days after the Reina nightclub attack, which killed 39 people.

Good morning.

Wednesday in this small Midwestern town will be mostly sunny with a high of thirty-three. Sunrise is 7:04 AM and sunset 5:02 PM, for 11h 57m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred twenty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Park & Rec Board meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 44 B.C., Caesar meets his end.  On this day in 1862, the 17th and 18th Wisconsin Infantry regiments muster in at Madison and Milwaukee, respectively.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Stand Up Republic has a new video online, entitled Sunshine, on Trump’s ties to Vladimir Putin:

Charles V. Bagli and Michael Forsythe report Kushners, Trump In-Laws, Weigh $400 Million Deal with Chinese Firm: “A New York real estate company owned by the family of President Trump’s son-in-law has been negotiating to sell a $400 million stake in its Fifth Avenue flagship skyscraper to a Chinese insurance company with ties to leading families of the Communist Party. The Chinese company, Anbang Insurance Group, would pay to get a high-profile piece of Manhattan real estate and would commit to spending billions more to completely transform the 60-year-old tower into a chic condominium and retail citadel. If signed, the potential agreement would create a financial marriage of two politically powerful families in the world’s two biggest economies, but it would also present the possibility of glaring conflicts of interest. The Kushner family, owners of the tower, would reap a financial windfall courtesy of a Chinese company, even as Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump as well as his son-in-law, helps oversee American foreign policy. News of the negotiations surfaced as President Trump and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, were preparing for their first meeting, to be held next month.”

Michael Schwirtz and Joseph Goldstein describe how Russian Espionage Piggybacks on a Cybercriminal’s Hacking: “To the F.B.I., Evgeniy M. Bogachev is the most wanted cybercriminal in the world. The bureau has announced a $3 million bounty for his capture, the most ever for computer crimes, and has been trying to track his movements in hopes of grabbing him if he strays outside his home turf in Russia. He has been indicted in the United States, accused of creating a sprawling network of virus-infected computers to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars from bank accounts around the world, targeting anyone with enough money worth stealing — from a pest control company in North Carolina to a police department in Massachusetts to a Native American tribe in Washington. In December, the Obama administration announced sanctions against Mr. Bogachev and five others in response to intelligence agencies’ conclusions that Russia had meddled in the presidential election. Publicly, law enforcement officials said it was his criminal exploits that landed Mr. Bogachev on the sanctions list, not any specific role in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. But it is clear that for Russia, he is more than just a criminal. At one point, Mr. Bogachev had control over as many as a million computers in multiple countries, with possible access to everything from family vacation photographs and term papers to business proposals and highly confidential personal information. It is almost certain that computers belonging to government officials and contractors in a number of countries were among the infected devices. For Russia’s surveillance-obsessed intelligence community, Mr. Bogachev’s exploits may have created an irresistible opportunity for espionage.”

Matthew Fay, addressing Trump’s proposed military spending increase, asks $54 Billion for What?: “As noted above, America is already relatively immune to conventional military threats. So unless he is serious about deterring threats against American allies—whom he has accused of being “obsolete” free riders—the idea that additional defense spending is necessary for deterrence seems like overkill. It also comes at the expense of complementary “soft power” measures in the form of diplomacy and foreign aid. But for someone who reports suggested thought his inauguration should include rocket launchers as part of a military parade, the forty-fifth president might be thinking about a military build-up in symbolic, rather than strategic, terms.”

Tech Insider tells What you need to know about world’s largest telescope: