Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will see occasional rain with a high of forty-five. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 6:03 PM, for 10h 48m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.0% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred eleventh day.
On this day in 1944, MacArthur returns to the Philippines:
Recommended for reading in full — Scott Walker fails sportsmen, Mueller probes connections to WikiLeaks, Putin aims to rule for life, politicians’ racial attacks, and video on the special genius of dogs —
Patrick Durkin writes Gov. Scott Walker fails to deliver on campaign promises to sportsmen [listing 10 of 21 examples in full article]:
Here’s why: Walker doesn’t know a .30-06 from a .30-30 cartridge, a Rage from a Muzzy broadhead, or a spinning reel from a baitcaster. Even so, he enthusiastically politicizes hunting and fishing to seek support from hunters, anglers, trappers and other conservationists.
In return, he hip-checks them from his treestand. Consider these 21 examples, which weren’t outlined in Scott’s Plan:
In 2011, Gov. Walker signed Act 21, which revamped administrative rule-making for state agencies. The act curtailed the Wisconsin Conservation Congress’ citizen-based advisory role to the seven-citizen Natural Resources Board, which sets DNR policy. Those rule-making powers now reside with the governor.
In 2011, Walker signed legislation ending “earn-a-buck” regulations, which required hunters to shoot a doe or fawn before shooting a buck. The only alternative for reducing deer herds is antlerless-only hunts, which no county has imposed.
After contracting Texas biologist James Kroll as the state’s “deer czar” in 2012, Walker entrusted DNR secretary Cathy Stepp to work with 50 citizen-volunteers in four committees to craft “action plans” for Kroll’s 80-plus recommendations. Walker then sat silent in 2013 when Stepp and DNR Board member Greg Kazmierski largely ignored the citizens’ efforts, and wrote their own plan. Their hodgepodge of regulations provides no regional coordination between the state’s 72 counties, no “tools” for reducing herds when needed, and no systematic testing program for monitoring chronic wasting disease.
Walker never urges hunters to get their deer tested for CWD, and his administration has slashed CWD funding. The DNR’s CWD budget averaged $1.14 million annually from 2012 through 2018, basically half of its $2.21 million average from 2008 through 2011, and a quarter of its $4.8 million average from 2004 through 2007. Meanwhile, CWD is worsening in southern Wisconsin’s endemic region. In 2010, the DNR found 219 CWD cases in 7,097 deer tested in the agency’s Southern farmlands region, a 3 percent infection rate. In 2017, the DNR found 558 CWD cases in 5,545 tests in that region, a 10.6 percent rate.
Walker sat quiet in 2011-12 as Stepp and Kazmierski eliminated October antlerless-only firearms hunts to control deer herds. They also ended buck hunting during southern Wisconsin’s late-December gun season, even though male deer are more likely to carry CWD.
During his first term, Walker let Stepp kill regular participation by UW-Madison researchers, retired DNR biologists and active DNR biologists in citizen advisory committees on fish and wildlife management.
In 2015, Walker helped eliminate the DNR’s 60-person science services bureau, eventually paring its staff to 15 researchers, and reassigning them to fisheries, wildlife and wastewater management programs.
Walker vetoed language in the state’s 2015-17 budget to allow people to walk “directly across the tracks of any railroad.” The Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee had inserted that phrase into the budget so people could legally cross railroad tracks to reach public hunting and fishing areas.
In 2015, Walker ended taxpayer support for state parks. Subsequent cuts eliminated the parks’ ranger force. Attempts to fill that void with the DNR’s hunter-funded conservation wardens failed this year.
In 2015, Walker eroded the state’s historic public-trust doctrine governing waterways by signing legislation to open more shoreline development.
Byron Tau, Shelby Holliday, and Dustin Volz report Mueller Probes WikiLeaks’ Contacts With Conservative Activists:
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is scrutinizing how a collection of activists and pundits intersected with WikiLeaks, the website that U.S. officials say was the primary conduit for publishing materials stolen by Russia, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Mueller’s team has recently questioned witnesses about the activities of longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone, including his contacts with WikiLeaks, and has obtained telephone records, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Investigators also have evidence that the late GOP activist Peter W. Smithmay have had advance knowledge of details about the release of emails from a top Hillary Clinton campaign official by WikiLeaks, one person familiar with the matter said. They have questioned Mr. Smith’s associates, the person said.
Right-wing pundit Jerome Corsi was also questioned by investigators about his interactions with Mr. Stone and WikiLeaks before a grand jury in September, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Corsi declined to comment. A lawyer for Mr. Stone said he hasn’t been contacted by the special counsel. Mr. Smith died last year.
Mr. Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Throughout 2016, Messrs. Stone, Smith and Corsi, who long worked on the margins of Republican politics, tried to dig up incriminating information about Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, according to emails and some public comments. A lawyer for President Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
(These ‘activists’ look more like opportunistic fifth-columnists.)
Nico Hines reports Confessions of an Ex-Kremlin Propagandist: ‘Dictator’ Putin Will Rule Forever:
Vladimir Putin will fight to preserve his authoritarian grip on Russia for decades, according to a former Kremlin insider who has a unique insight into some of the president’s most closely-held beliefs.
Vitaly Mansky was granted unparalleled access to the Kremlin and Putin’s original presidential campaign in order to make films for state TV, which were effectively pro-Putin propaganda. He has now turned against the Russian president, making an extraordinary documentary—using footage shot from the inside—that explores Putin’s uncompromising thirst for power and his quest to restore what he sees as Soviet-era glory to the country.
Mansky told The Daily Beast that Putin’s dictatorial instincts and record in the Kremlin meant he now “has no choice” but to cling to power forever.
Not only was the filmmaker allowed to accompany Putin during the first years of his presidency, but he was given a license to question him on camera in a way that has not been seen in almost two decades since.
That footage remained under lock and key until now.
In Putin’s Witnesses, which is up for the Grierson Award for best documentary at the London Film Festival this week, we see the president’s unguarded explanation of how he will enforce full control over Russia and restore the Soviet Union’s prioritization of state over the individual. In one candid conversation in the back of his official car, he explores the limits of democratic authority.
….
“Putin has studied the lives and history of his predecessors very well,” said Mansky, suggesting he will try to stay in power for the next 20 or 30 years. “He has no choice now.”
“Not only would he not like to follow in the footsteps of Ceau?escu and Milosevic, he wouldn’t even want to follow the fate of Pinochet who could have faced the courts in his own country.”
(The stronger the dictatorial grip, the more dangerous for the dictator in uncurling his fingers .)
Julia Craven reports Here’s A Running List Of Racist Attacks On Candidates Of Color [list in full article]:
People of color are running for state and national office, and the country has responded with the most American of traditions: by attacking them in very racist ways.
Some attacks are coded. Some are frankly stated. To keep track, we’ve begun a running list, limited to attacks made on candidates of color by their opponents, by opposing political organizations or by opposing campaign surrogates. We’ll make exceptions, however, where a third-party act against a candidate is so racist that it can’t be ignored. For each candidate we’ve graded the attacks on their subtlety using a scale of one to five white hands, in honor of the infamous Jesse Helms ad— five being the most explicit.
If you’re aware of anything not listed here, send an email tojulia.craven@huffpost.comor scoops@huffpost.com.