Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of sixty-five. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 19m 48s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the nine hundred fiftieth day.
On this day in 1832, Henry Dodge and his militia fight at the Battle of the Pecatonica:
On the morning of June 16, 1832, Colonel Henry Dodge led a party of volunteer militia on horseback in pursuit of a group of thirteen Kickapoo Indians. The militia cornered the party at a bend in the Pecatonica River in present-day eastern Lafayette County. In the quick and fierce battle that ensued, all thirteen Native Americans were killed and three militiamen wounded. This small engagement of the 1832 Black Hawk War marked an early success against Black Hawk’s band and served to enhance the reputation of Dodge, who became Wisconsin’s first territorial governor four years later.
Recommended for reading in full:
Colin Lecher reports Russia used social media to keep EU voters at home, report finds:
The report, an update on a continuing plan to battle disinformation, said some progress had been made in deterring malicious campaigns. Officials said plans to tackle disinformation campaigns through a task force had shown progress, and that work with tech companies had also stemmed the tide of false information.
The report said it could not “identify a distinct cross-border” attempt to specifically target European elections. But, the report also found, “evidence collected revealed a continued and sustained disinformation activity by Russian sources aiming to suppress turnout and influence voter preferences.” The activity included challenging the EU’s “democratic legitimacy” and exploiting controversial topics like immigration, with actors using images like the Notre Dame Cathedral fire “to illustrate the alleged decline of Western and Christian values in the EU.”
According to the report, the number of disinformation cases attributed to Russian sources doubled between 2018 and 2019, jumping from about 430 in January 2018 to nearly 1,000 a year later. While Russia was singled out for the efforts, the EU said “other external actors were also involved.”
(The most immediate threat to Western and Christian values in Europe comes from Putin’s Russia and Putin’s American admirer in the White House.)
Margaret Sullivan writes Sarah Sanders was the disdainful Queen of Gaslighting:
When Sarah Sanders said Thursday that she hopes to be remembered for her transparency and honesty, the first impulse was to laugh.
But lying to citizens while being paid by them really isn’t all that funny.
Sanders took on an impossible job when she became President Trump’s spokeswoman, a job that’s about to reach a welcome conclusion.
She would claim to represent the truth on behalf of a president who lies.
She did it disrespectfully and apparently without shame or an understanding of what the role of White House press secretary should be.
She misled reporters or tried to, and through them, misled the American people. And all with her distinctive curled-lip disdain.