Good morning.
Midweek in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 7:18 PM, for 12h 38m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1867, legendary pitcher Denton True “Cy” Young is born. On this day in 1865, Union soldiers including Wisconsin regiments, follow retreating Confederates in a series of battles fought March 29 – April 9, 1865 in the Appomattox Campaign.
Recommended for reading in full —
Campbell Robertson reports that Coal Miners Hope Trump’s Order Will Help. But Few Are Counting on It: “Gary Bentley, who spent a dozen years as a coal miner in eastern Kentucky, is less optimistic. Now working as a mechanic and writing about his years in the mines, he does not see a big turnaround coming. Blaming environment regulations is an old tradition, he said, one encouraged by the coal industry’s lobbyists. But it ignores too many hard facts, he said, like the increase in mechanization and the abundance of cheap natural gas. “It’s not going to make a comeback,” Mr. Bentley said of coal mining in central Appalachia. “But you get a certain amount of desperation, where you’re willing to believe stuff even though you know in your gut it’s not true.” As much of coal country happily welcomed the news out of Washington, Mr. Bentley pointed to an announcement closer to home: This month the municipal utility of Owensboro, Ky., said its power plant, after 117 years, was going to phase out the burning of coal altogether.”
Niraj Chokshi and Manny Fernandez report that Ex-Congressman From Texas Charged With Stealing Charitable Donations: “A former United States representative from Texas and one of his aides were indicted on Tuesday on charges that they stole hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for charity, some of which was used to illegally finance his campaigns. The former representative, Steve Stockman, 60, and the former director of special projects in his congressional office, Jason Posey, 46, were charged in a 28-count indictment related to the alleged yearslong fraud scheme. The charges included mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission and money laundering, the Justice Department said in a statement. Mr. Stockman, a Republican, solicited $1.25 million in charitable donations from May 2010 to October 2014 that was later used for other purposes, the Justice Department said.Dane Ball, who represents Mr. Stockman along with his colleagues at the law firm Smyser Kaplan & Veselka, said the former congressman plans to plead not guilty. “Similar to what Steve said outside the courthouse after his arrest, he’s innocent and we are reviewing the indictment now,” Mr. Ball said on Tuesday night.”
Alaura Weaver describes From Russia, With Lies: Soviet-Style Disinformation And The Culture War That Helped Spread It: “And when there’s an outright conspiracy like the Russian disinformation campaign staring them in the face, because the mainstream media is reporting it, they are skeptical. Communist disinformation tactics would never have taken root if it weren’t for the fertile soil of division within American culture. And as we can see from the birth of the culture wars throughout the mid-twentieth century up to present day, the more intolerant we are of each other’s ideas, the more open we are to suspicion about the motivations and actions of the bearers of those ideas. What will it take to remove the stain of dezinformatsiya from our democracy? History shows that the strongest defense against a campaign of mistruths is an aggressive press who are willing to dive deep into the sources of information before they report on it. Let the work begin.”
Dr. John Schindler defines The 9 Russian Words That Explain KremlinGate: “As the Trump administration’s Russia problem shows no sign of going away, protesting presidential tweets notwithstanding, it’s time to think about it properly. Understanding what the Kremlin’s up to helps to see the big picture. This means learning a bit of spy lingo. Espionage, like everything else, has its own culture—including special verbiage—which varies from country to country. Russia’s espionage culture is unique and in key ways markedly different from how Western countries approach the spy-game. It’s a product of the Soviet secret police, that brutal and cunning force, and it’s no accident that Vladimir Putin’s spies proudly call themselves Chekists today to commemorate them—just as they did in the days of the KGB. “There are no ‘former’ Chekists,” as the KGB veteran Putin has stated, and this attitude permeates his Kremlin.
The threat to our democracy posed by Moscow’s spy-games won’t recede on its own. As Rick Ledgett, NSA’s straight-talking deputy director, stated last week, “This is a challenge to the foundations of our democracy.” He went on: “How do we counter that?” adding, “What do we do as a nation to make it stop?” This first thing we must do is gain a reality-based understanding of the SpyWar we’re in with Moscow. So, let’s walk through a few of the most important Russian espionage terms to shed some light on what’s really going on between Washington and the Kremlin.”
On Binging with Babish, it’s Cubanos from Chef: