Daily Bread for 4.23.20

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with areas of drizzle and a high of fifty-five.  Sunrise is 5:58 AM and sunset 7:47 PM, for 13h 49m 17s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the one thousand two hundred sixty-second day.

 Whitewater’s school board meets in closed session at 5:45 PM to consider its two finalists for district administrator.

 On this day in 1954, Hank Aaron, playing for the Milwaukee Braves, hit his first major league home run.

Recommended for reading in full —

 The Washington Post editorial board writes The Russia hoax was never a hoax. An encouraging bipartisan report confirms it:

THE SENATE Intelligence Committee has released a bipartisan report with a stark bottom line: What President Trump calls the “Russia hoax” isn’t a hoax at all.

The fourth and latest installment in lawmakers’ review of Moscow’s meddling examines a January 2017 assessment by the nation’s spy agencies that Mr. Trump has repeatedly attempted to discredit — and confirms it, unanimously. Russia sought to subvert Americans’ belief in our democracy, bring down Hillary Clinton and bolster her rival. That these legislators from both sides of the aisle are willing to say as much after three years of thorough investigation is an encouraging sign of some independent thinking still left in government. It’s also a reminder of the peril this independence is in today.

The committee members conclude that the intelligence community produced a “coherent and well-constructed …basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election” despite a tight time frame.

Will Sommer and Jackie Kucinich report Anti-Vaxxers and Lockdown Protesters Form an Unholy Alliance:

Bigtree [Del Bigtree, notorious anti-vaccination activist] isn’t the only drawing connections between the anti-vaccine movement—which advocates for the fallacious notion that vaccines cause autism or other ailments—and the movements against the stay-at-home orders. Anti-vaccine activists have pushed a hashtag calling for President Donald Trump to fire the government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci—a message that evolved into a “Fire Fauci” chant at the Texas rally Bigtree attended. Some participants in the reopening rallies have also adopted “I Do Not Consent” as their go-to sign formulation, which is the same language that’s become a popular phrase for anti-vaccination activists.

“That’s one of their biggest slogans,” said Amy Pisani, the executive director of pro-vaccine group Vaccinate Your Family.

The predominantly right-wing activists calling for states to reopen businesses amid the pandemic have also criticized vaccines in their online communities. On “Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine,” a Facebook group with more than 350,000 members that has become a hotbed for anti-social distancing protests in the state, thousands of members said they wouldn’t take any future vaccine. Some posters pushed conspiracy theories that the vaccine would be the “mark of the Beast” or a tracking device used by billionaire Bill Gates.

Shake Shack Returns $10M Loan from COVID-19 Stimulus Bill: