Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-three, and a likelihood of scattered afternoon thundershowers. Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 15m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 64.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred thirty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Map by Hal Jespersen, www.posix.com/CW
On this day in 1863, Union and Confederate forces fight for a second day at the Battle of Gettysburg:
On the second day of battle, most of both armies had assembled. The Union line was laid out in a defensive formation resembling a fishhook. In the late afternoon of July 2, Lee launched a heavy assault on the Union left flank, and fierce fighting raged at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil’s Den, and the Peach Orchard. On the Union right, Confederate demonstrations escalated into full-scale assaults on Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill. All across the battlefield, despite significant losses, the Union defenders held their lines.
On the night of July 2nd, “Union Major General George Meade held a council of leaders to decide what to do next. Lieutenant Frank Haskell, of Madison, was present when they voted to “allow the Rebel to come up and smash his head against [their position] to any reasonable extent he desired, as he had to-day. After some two hours the council dissolved, and the officers went their several ways.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Jeremy Kryt reveals Inside Trump’s Disastrous ‘Secret’ Drug War Plans for Central America:
Gang violence is one of the driving factors behind the Central American migrant crisis, which has sent hundreds of thousands fleeing northward, many of them children.
All that mayhem finally caught the attention of the Trump regime. But, as usual when it comes to narcotics interdiction efforts under Trump, the proffered solution seems to be more show than substance—all at the expense of American taxpayers.
A shadowy summit last month in Miami brought together Vice President Mike Pence, high-powered cabinet members like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the leaders of all three Triangle nations, and officials from at least nine other countries. The plan they espoused? Spend untold millions more dollars on a strategy that, according to experts, is guaranteed to fail. So what’s not to like about that?
Krishnadev Calumar describes How Russian Journalists Dealt With Fake News:
Alexey Kovalev, a Russian journalist who was also at the Aspen panel, said he didn’t like the term “fake news.” It’s a problem, he said, but it’s not the whole problem.
“Fake news is completely made up pieces of information, concocted with a clear intention to deceive,” he said. “It’s not so much a problem as genuine news that has no informational value at all: endless repetition of every nonsensical statement.”
He said part of the problem in Russia is that few publications can afford full-time fact-checkers. “It’s extremely easy to put out anything you want because there will be no one to challenge you,” he said. “Very few people will care and speak out publicly.”
Russian state TV often broadcast segments of completely fake news—such as stories on Russian military operations against the U.S., he said. These events are then discussed on TV as if they happened. Part of the problem, he said, is that independent media organizations like his are “competing against a state-owned industry funded to the tune of $1.5 billion a year.”
“I’ll never in my life be able to commit one-tenth” of that, he said.
Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews of the Rand Corporation outline The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model:
Gregory S. Schneider and Alex Horton report on how Von Spakovsky riled Fairfax with voter fraud efforts; Trump just elevated him:
From pursuing voter fraud in the George W. Bush Justice Department to policing polling places on the Fairfax County Electoral Board, Hans von Spakovsky has been a national lightning rod on the issue of voter integrity.
Now that President Trump has named the Virginia lawyer to the new Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, the man the New Yorker magazine called the source of “the voter-fraud myth” has perhaps his greatest chance to influence Americans’ access to the polls….
Over the years, von Spakovsky has been accused of masterminding widespread efforts to suppress voting by marginalized populations, particularly African Americans and immigrants, who tend to vote for Democrats.
Von Spakovsky argued against renewing the Voting Rights Act while serving in Bush’s Justice Department. Bush later named him to the Federal Election Commission with a recess appointment, but so many senators objected that von Spakovsky eventually withdrew.
Similarly, after he served as vice chairman of the three-member Fairfax County Electoral Board between 2010 and 2012, Democrats objected to his reappointment. Local judges, who name the panel based on recommendations from the party of the current governor — who at the time was Republican Robert F. McDonnell — took the unusual step of not renewing von Spakovsky’s appointment.
Renata Flores is Saving an Ancient Language Through Pop Music:
Renata Flores is a 16-year-old singer from Peru who is using her voice to save an ancient Incan language. Though Quechua is the second-most spoken language in Peru, native speakers have suffered from discrimination and social stigma for generations, and today, many young people aren’t learning the language at all. But with her powerful vocals to covers of pop songs by Michael Jackson and Alicia Keys in her native tongue, Flores is sparking a renewed celebration of Quechuan language and culture.