Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 5:53 PM, for 10h 28m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 46.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred fifty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1787, the first of The Federalist Papers is published:
….The Federalist articles appeared in three New York newspapers: The Independent Journal, the New-York Packet, and the Daily Advertiser, beginning on October 27, 1787. Although written and published with haste, The Federalist articles were widely read and greatly influenced the shape of American political institutions.[13]Between them, Hamilton, Madison and Jay kept up a rapid pace, with at times three or four new essays by Publius appearing in the papers in a week. Garry Wills observes that the pace of production “overwhelmed” any possible response: “Who, given ample time could have answered such a battery of arguments? And no time was given.”[14] Hamilton also encouraged the reprinting of the essay in newspapers outside New York state, and indeed they were published in several other states where the ratification debate was taking place. However, they were only irregularly published outside New York, and in other parts of the country they were often overshadowed by local writers.[15]….
It’s worth noting – today, tomorrow, forever – that from America’s earliest days on this continent, we have had a robust tradition of anonymous and pseudonymous speech. One does not embrace this tradition in the belief that one is anything like the great men who centuries ago embodied this tradition – one embraces it imperfectly and humbly as homage to the far greater men and women than oneself who have come before, and in the confident hope that far greater men and women than oneself are yet to come.
On this day in 1864, Wisconsinite William Cushing serves the Union well and ably:
On this date William Cushing led an expedition to sink the Confederate ram, the Albermarle, which had imposed a blockade near Plymouth, North Carolina and had been sinking Union ships. Cushing’s plan was extremely dangerous and only he and one other soldier escaped drowning or capture. Cushing pulled very close to the Confederate ironclad and exploded a torpedo under it while under heavy fire. Cushing’s crew abandonded ship as it began to sink. The Albemarle also sunk. Cushing received a “letter of thanks” from Congress and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. He died in 1874 due to ill health and is buried in the Naval Cemetery at Annapolis, Maryland.
Recommended for reading in full —
The National (a Canadian publication) has a short documentary on The Magnitsky Act: How Canada set out to punish Russia’s human rights abusers:
The death of tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in Russian prison inspired legislation in Canada and the United States to punish foreign officials responsible for gross human rights violations.
Erik Wemple observes The Hill’s flimsy Russia-uranium story lands with maximum effect:
None of this was news. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, did extensive stories about the investigation into Mikerin. So the Hill performed an elaborate and creative repackaging exercise — marshaling already-known information into a newsy-sounding headline: “FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal with Moscow.” It worked, at least as far as Fox News was concerned. The leading cable-news network lent a great deal of programming to the Hill piece, all rigged to engineer further suspicion of Clinton. In an interview with Hill Editor in Chief Bob Cusack last Thursday, Fox News host Jon Scott said, “Obviously your outlet has done some digging but it seems like a huge story that ought to be blared from the mountaintops and it has not gotten a lot of attention.”
Maybe that’s because mainstream outlets have smoked out the preposterous conspiracy-mongering in the Hill’s story. Over a few paragraphs, the story managed to suggest that the Justice Department, which successfully prosecuted Mikerin for his crimes, somehow sought to play down its achievements on this front — perhaps to suppress the news and prevent Clinton from suffering embarrassment over the Uranium One transaction (and it appears she was not personally involved). Here is the astonishing passage from the Solomon-Spann story:
Bringing down a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme that had both compromised a sensitive uranium transportation asset inside the U.S. and facilitated international money laundering would seem a major feather in any law enforcement agency’s cap.
But the Justice Department and FBI took little credit in 2014 when Mikerin, the Russian financier and the trucking firm executives were arrested and charged.
The only public statement occurred a year later when the Justice Department put out a little-noticed press release in August 2015, just days before Labor Day. The release noted that the various defendants had reached plea deals.
Oh really! Pause for a second and ponder the illogic in the text here. The Hill is writing that the issuance of a press release counts as evidence that the Justice Department was taking “little credit” for its work. Wouldn’t the act of not issuing a press release be better evidence thereof? Or how about just not pursuing the case at all?
(Flimsy is the key description here: all this has been reported before, and better, elsewhere – The Hill’s offered by design a deceptive talking point for Fox, Trump, and the House GOP.)
Matthew Dallek writes of Gen. John Kelly’s authoritarian bent as WH chief of staff:
….But not everyone who puts on, and takes off, a general’s uniform is another George Washington. Indeed, Kelly’s performance makes it clear that those who have been placing their hopes in Trump’s trio of generals-turned-advisers are making a mistake.
Kelly’s strain of military thinking puts him at odds with a society in which, as he points out, only a tiny fraction serves, or even knows anyone who serves, and in which few men and women in uniform come from the ranks of the United States’ elite professions, which dominate the nation’s most influential institutions. Kelly, then, embodies a clash of cultures, a lifelong military man now playing a hotly contested political civilian role, who looks askance at the nation’s civilian democratic culture.
That is an unhealthy tendency, and, at times, Kelly’s remarks suggested an authoritarian streak that he seems to share with his boss, the president. He lamented the loss of a mythic time in which “women were sacred and looked upon with great honor,” a time, he reminisced, when Gold Star families and religion were treated as “sacred” topics to be upheld and venerated by all Americans.
Kelly conveyed the sense that because he and others in the military have worn the uniform, served in combat and risked their lives (and in Kelly’s case, sacrificed a son), he feels entitled to make up stories about a member of Congress, an African-American woman, and to exclude civilians in a setting, the White House briefing room, that is of course paid for by and meant to serve every citizen. Behind his calm demeanor, he showed the country a frustration, anger and grievance that complements Trump’s us-against-the-world mentality and political style.
Countless military commanders have been able to make the leap from uniform to serve in elective or appointed political office, and they have done so in ways that uphold and even enhance America’s civilian democratic traditions. Washington showed the way when he shed his uniform and embraced a civilian role, leading the United States as a democratic republic, with a healthy respect for liberty….
Reuters reports that Putin says Trump should be respected:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday [10.17] President Donald Trump should be respected because he has a democratic mandate.
“He has been elected by the American people and at least because of this he should be respected, even if we disagree with his position,” Putin said at a forum with scholars.
(Putin – dictator, murderer, imperialist, and liar – thinks that we should respect the man he helped elect, Trump – authoritarian, nativist, ignoramus, and liar). The answer is no, and no again.
So, What Makes Peanut Butter Stick to the Top of Your Mouth?: