Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of sixty. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 6:00 PM, for 10h 42m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred thirteenth day.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM.
On this day in 1862, Pres. Kennedy speaks to the nation about the presence of Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba:
Recommended for reading in full — The gender gap in Wisconsin, AG Schimel’s out-of-state filings, an election that goes far beyond policy issues, attack ads on immigration, and video on the origin of the bigfoot legend —
Craig Gilbert writes GOP’s fate in Wisconsin this fall is tied to the widening gender gap over Trump:
Barack Obama was a popular guy in Wisconsin, winning here twice with ease.
But he was never, ever as popular with male voters in Wisconsin as Donald Trump is today.
At the same time, even at the lowest points of his presidency, Obama was far more popular with female voters in Wisconsin than Trump has ever been.
Both presidents have faced a gender gap.
But Trump’s gender gap looks nothing like Obama’s, and the differences are illuminating.
With roughly two weeks to go in the campaign, the gender gap over President Trump and the two parties is shaping this election.
Trump has terrible numbers with women (34 percent approval), according to the most recent Wisconsin poll conducted by the Marquette Law School. But he enjoys his highest approval ever with men (59 percent). The size of that gap is unprecedented in Marquette’s polling.
Trump’s gains among men and his unpopularity with women are potent, competing forces in the 2018 mid-terms.
Christa Westerberg writes AG Schimel’s office working nationwide for private interests:
Over the last three years, a group of Wisconsin lawyers has been filing briefs in federal courts across the country, taking the side of private interests in cases involving the environment, employment and gun laws.
These lawyers aren’t from a private law firm or the Chamber of Commerce. They are taxpayer-funded, state employees who work at the Wisconsin Department of Justice under Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel.
Historically, the attorney general has exercised limited authority in Wisconsin. But under Schimel, the Department of Justice has expanded its practice of filing amicus curiae or “friend of the court” briefs in courts across the country, even in cases where Wisconsin residents do not have a direct or remote interest.
In one recent case in New York, Schimel signed onto a brief siding with Exxon Mobil against two other states’ attorneys general. Exxon Mobil had filed a lawsuit to block investigations into whether it had concealed information about climate change from consumers and investors.
Schimel’s brief claimed that the company was being unfairly investigated by New York and Massachusetts for taking a position on a “public policy debate.” The brief also claimed “the debate remains unsettled” about climate change.
(How many of these out-of-state interests were – or became – Schimel donors?)
Jennifer Rubin observes An election that goes way beyond policy issues:
With about two weeks to go before the midterms that could strip President Trump of the protection a Republican House and Senate afford him, Trump has returned to his favorite hits — mocking women’s looks (“Horseface,” he called the adult-film actress to whom he paid hush money), fanning hysteria about a caravan of immigrants from Central America and cheering on violence against the press. He seems convinced that if he can turn up the venom, resentment and fear high enough among his male, white, rural voters he’ll save himself and the party from disaster. He appears unaware or unconcerned that he is thereby lighting a fire under women voters, college-educated voters, young voters and nonwhite voters who are now running in record numbers to the polls in early voting and into the arms of Democrats.
Americans cannot tell whether Trump is so corrupted and compromised that he’s running Middle East policy to secure his own finances. The reason we do not know for certain is that Republicans refuse to look for answers. Even during Watergate we did not experience such profound and unchecked corruption, such utter disregard for elected officials’ constitutional oaths to serve the people’s interests, not their own.
The corruption eating away at the presidency is not merely financial, of course. Conservative Trump critic and former adviser to President George W. Bush, Peter Wehner, in recent days eloquently addressed the moral dimension of the Saudi situation. “I think the fundamental interpretative fact of the Trump presidency – and I think that this Saudi example is only one manifestation of it – is this is a person [Trump] who is fundamentally amoral and immoral,” he said during an MSNBC appearance. “He is a man without human empathy or without human sympathy, and in many respects a man without conscience; and I think what you’ve seen over the last several days is a person who’s reacting that way.” Wehner continued, “And I think that we’ve seen that lack of human empathy and conscience in almost every arena of the Trump presidency. It explains the cruelty, it explains the policy at the border, separating kids from [parents], it explains the pathological lies, it explains the fact that he’s a man without loyalty — and I think this is just the latest arena in which we’re seeing this ugly drama play itself out.”
In short, the country is convulsed by a president whose personal corruption and moral vacuity offend our deepest-held convictions and our self-image as a citizens of the world’s leading democracy. His devoted cult and his cynical apologists are content to be lied to and receive trinkets (e.g., a tax cut that really doesn’t benefit most of them). The rest of us are not. The energy, the anger and the sense of urgency we see in the run up to the midterm elections reflects voters’ disgust and dismay over a president and a party who sully our democracy.
Sabrina Siddiqui reports Republican attack ads echo Trump’s anti-immigration message to whip up fear among supporters:
The outline of a child skips across the sidewalk as the narrator of a political ad targeting Matt Cartwright, a Democratic congressman in Pennsylvania, ominously declares: “A young girl, raped by an illegal given sanctuary in Philadelphia.”
“She was five years old. Her life will never be the same,” the voice concludes.
In another spot, aimed at Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat from Arizona, a white woman locks the doors and windows of her home as police lights flicker outside. “They talk about solving illegal immigration, but nothing happens,” she opines. “We who live here are forgotten.”
Other attack ads flash images of tattooed gang members behind prison bars while accusing Democratic incumbents of failing to secure America’s borders.
The stark imagery embodies much of the Republican messaging on immigration ahead of the November midterm elections. Donald Trump, while stumping for Republican candidates across the country, has railed against illegal immigration and sounded the alarm over MS-13, a transnational criminal organization that represents less than 1% of gangs in the United States.