Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 6:12 PM, for 11h 04m 29s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 28.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred thirty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1066, William the Conqueror is victorious at the Battle of Hastings. On this day in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt is shot in Milwaukee:
On the night of October 14, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was shot in Milwaukee. Roosevelt was in Wisconsin stumping as the presidential candidate of the new, independent Progressive Party, which had split from the Republican Party earlier that year. Roosevelt already had served two terms as chief executive (1901-1909), but was seeking the office again as the champion of progressive reform. Unbeknownst to Roosevelt, a New York bartender named John Schrank had been stalking him for three weeks through eight states. As Roosevelt left Milwaukee’s Hotel Gilpatrick for a speaking engagement at the Milwaukee Auditorium and stood waving to the gathered crowd, Schrank fired a .38-caliber revolver that he had hidden in his coat.
Roosevelt was hit in the right side of the chest and the bullet lodged in his chest wall. Seeing the blood on his shirt, vest, and coat, his aides pleaded with him to seek medical help, but Roosevelt trivialized the wound and insisted on keeping his commitment. His life was probably saved by the speech, since the contents of his coat pocket — his metal spectacle case and the thick, folded manuscript of his talk — had absorbed much of the force of the bullet. Throughout the evening he made light of the wound, declaring at one point, “It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose,” but the candidate spend the next week in the hospital and carried the bullet inside him the rest of his life.
Schrank, the would-be assassin, was examined by psychiatrists, who recommended that he be committed to an asylum. A judge concurred and Schrank spent the remainder of his life incarcerated, first at the Northern Hospital for the Insane in Oshkosh, then at Central State Hospital for the criminally insane at the state prison at Waupun. The glass Roosevelt drank from on stage that night was acquired by the Wisconsin Historical Museum. You can read more about the assassination attempt on their Museum Object of Week pages.
Recommended for reading in full —
Hunter Walker and Michael Isikoff report FBI document cache sheds light on inner workings of Russia’s U.S. news (and propaganda) network:
WASHINGTON — On Jan. 23, 2017, the day he started as a Washington correspondent for Sputnik, Andrew Feinberg was emailed a copy of a “style guide” that laid out the organization’s mission.
The 103-page handbook for publications of Sputnik’s Kremlin-owned parent company, Rossiya Segodnya, made it clear that traditional journalistic neutrality was not the company’s mandate. Instead, Sputnik reporters were told they should provide readers “with a Russian viewpoint” on issues and “maintain allegiance” to the country.
“Our main goal is to inform the international audience about Russia’s political, economic and ideological stance on both local and global issues,” the guide reads. “To this end, we must always strive to be objective but we must also stay true to the national interest of the Russian Federation.”
The guide, which was written in English, is included among more than 10,000 internal Sputnik messages on a thumb drive that Feinberg provided to the FBI, which is investigating the agency for possible violations of the law that requires agents of foreign nations to register with the Justice Department. The guide appears to contradict repeated claims by Sputnik executives that they follow traditional journalistic standards and operate independently of the Kremlin. are dedicated to objective reporting. For example, in August, when Sputnik opened a headquarters in Scotland, Sputnik editor and director Nikolai Gorshkov told a local news agency, “No one has ever called me from Moscow”….
(Liars, speaking small truths only to advance greater lies.)
Max Boot observes Russia Has Invented Social Media Blitzkrieg (“And it’s time that America learns to defend itself”):
The tank was a British invention, built to penetrate German trenches during World War I. But it was the Germans who, during the interwar period, figured out how to most effectively utilize the tank, in coordination with aircraft and infantry, for offensive operations. Thus was born the blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) that allowed the Germans to overrun much of Europe in 1939-1940. The British and the French, who still had more and better tanks, were helpless to resist the onslaught.
Something similar seems to have happened with social media networks. All of the leading social media platforms — Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Google — are American inventions. Yet the Russians weaponized them to wage political war.
The 2016 U.S. presidential election was as shocking, in its own way, as the fall of France in May 1940. The complacent French thought they were secure behind the Maginot Line until the German panzers penetrated the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes Forest. Likewise the complacent Hillary Clinton campaign thought it was secure because of its hordes of cash, its extensive on-the-ground operation, and the sheer awfulness of its opponent. Surprise! The Russians stole Democratic Party emails and, acting through cutouts like WikiLeaks, leaked the most damaging tidbits. Then social media did the rest. And lo and behold on Nov. 8, 2016, the unthinkable occurred: Donald Trump was elected president of the United States….
Nick Bilton recounts Donald Trump’s Fake Renior: The Untold Story (“Trump biographer Tim O’Brien talks about his years covering the developer turned reality star turned president—including a bizarre incident involving a fake impressionist painting”):
Years ago, while reporting a book about a real-estate developer and reality-TV star named Donald Trump, Tim O’Brienaccompanied his subject on a private jet ride to Los Angeles. The plane, as you can imagine, was overly ornate; hanging on one wall, for instance, was a painting of two young girls—one in an orange hat, the other wearing a floral bonnet—in the impressionistic style of Renoir.
Curious, O’Brien asked Trump about the painting: was it an original Renoir? Trump replied in the affirmative. It was, he said. “No, it’s not Donald,” O’Brien responded. But, once again, Trump protested that it was.
“Donald, it’s not,” O’Brien said adamantly. “I grew up in Chicago, that Renoir is called Two Sisters on the Terrace, and it’s hanging on a wall at the Art Institute of Chicago.” He concluded emphatically: “That’s not an original.”
Trump, of course, did not agree, but O’Brien dropped the conversation topic and moved on with his interview. He thought that he had heard the last of the Renoir conversation. But the next day, when they boarded the plane to head back to New York City, Trump again pointed to the painting, and as if the conversation had never happened, he pointed to the fake and proclaimed, “You know, that’s an original Renoir.” O’Brien chose not to engage, and dropped the conversation….
Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb report Roger Stone attorney says he complied with request for Assange contact:
An attorney for Roger Stone says the longtime confidante to President Donald Trump has complied with the House Russia investigators’ request for him to provide the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange.
But Stone’s attorney, Grant Smith, would not say whether that meant Stone had in fact revealed the identity of his WikiLeaks go-between to the House intelligence committee.
“Mr. Stone has complied with the committee’s requests. No further statement will be issued,” Smith said, declining to answer any additional questions….