Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of eighty-seven and an even chance of afternoon thundershowers. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:28 PM, for 15h 11m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 69.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1965, Ed White becomes the first American to conduct a spacewalk:
The spacewalk started at 3:45 p.m. EDT on the third orbit when White opened the hatch and used the hand-held maneuvering oxygen-jet gun to push himself out of the capsule.
The EVA started over the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii and lasted 23 minutes, ending over the Gulf of Mexico. Initially, White propelled himself to the end of the 8-meter tether and back to the spacecraft three times using the hand-held gun. After the first three minutes the fuel ran out and White maneuvered by twisting his body and pulling on the tether.
In a photograph taken by Commander James McDivitt taken early in the EVA over a cloud-covered Pacific Ocean, the maneuvering gun is visible in White’s right hand. The visor of his helmet is gold-plated to protect him from the unfiltered rays of the sun.
Recommended for reading in full —
The New York Times editorial board describes The Problem With Jared Kushner:
Stupidity, paranoia, malevolence — it’s hard to distinguish among competing explanations for the behavior of people in this administration. In the case of Mr. Kushner’s meeting with Sergey Kislyak, the ambassador, and his meeting that month with Sergey Gorkov, a Russian banker with close ties to the Kremlin and Russian intelligence, even the most benign of the various working theories suggests that Mr. Kushner, who had no experience in politics or diplomacy before Mr. Trump’s campaign, is in way over his head….
The problem isn’t establishing a back channel; presidential administrations and transitions have used them throughout history as a way to keep a low profile during sensitive negotiations. But communicating through Russian facilities would have exposed Mr. Kushner and others to serious risks of extortion. And there’s the bizarre and repeated secrecy around meetings with the Russian ambassador (see, e.g., Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions) that has already caused a lot of collateral damage to this administration.
Brian Ross and Matthew Mosk report that Lawmakers ask whether looming debt left Jared Kushner vulnerable to Russian influence:
Congressional investigators are seeking to determine whether President Trump’s son-in-law was vulnerable to Russian influence during and after the campaign because of financial stress facing his family firm’s signature real estate holding – a Manhattan skyscraper purchased at the height of the real estate boom.
And they are focused, officials told ABC News, on a December meeting Jared Kushner held with executives from a Russian bank.
“It’s very peculiar that of all the people he could be talking to in a transition period where you’ve got lots of balls in the air, that you end up talking to a Russian banker who is under sanction and who is related to Putin and has a KGB background,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. “I think the question has to be asked, was this about you trying to get financing for your troubled real estate that you have in New York City?”
Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima report that on a case of hypocrisy, in which the Nunes-led House Intelligence Committee asked for ‘unmaskings’ of Americans:
The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee asked U.S. spy agencies late last year to reveal the names of U.S. individuals or organizations contained in classified intelligence on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, engaging in the same practice that President Trump has accused the Obama administration of abusing, current and former officials said.
The chairman of the committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has since cast the practice of “unmasking” of U.S. individuals and organizations mentioned in classified reports as an abuse of surveillance powers by the outgoing Obama administration.
Trump has argued that investigators should focus their attention on former officials leaking names from intelligence reports, rather than whether the Kremlin coordinated its activities with the Trump campaign, an allegation he has denied. “The big story is the ‘unmasking and surveillance’ of people that took place during the Obama administration,” Trump tweeted Thursday.
According to a tally by U.S. spy agencies, the House Intelligence Committee requested five to six unmaskings of U.S. organizations or individuals related to Trump or Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton between June 2016 and January 2017.
(Unmasking has never been the vital issue here – it has always been Russian subversion of the American electoral process. Yet if Trump’s defenders find unmasking so offensive, then they should see that the offense also rests with a GOP-controlled committee.)
Joel Kotkin writes of The Great Betrayal of Middle America:
In its incoherence and lack of organization, Trump’s victory less resembled a modern social movement than a peasant’s revolt from the Middle Ages. His campaign lacked a coherent program, although its messenger, a New York narcissist, possessed a sixth sense that people “out there” were angry. Trump’s message was negative largely because he had nothing positive to say, though that had the useful effect of driving his enemies slightly insane.
So while he’s succeeded in stirring the blue hornet’s nest, he’s created no productive movement. Successful social movements—the Jacksonians, the New Dealers, the Reaganites, and the European social democrats—directly appealed to the working class with policies that for better or worse, challenged the existing social and economic hierarchy.
What’s Up for June 2017?