Good morning.
Midweek in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 12m 40s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 88.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred thirty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Phineas Taylor “P. T.” Barnum is born this day in 1810. On this day in 1832, Gen. Atkinson and his soldiers enter the Trembling Lands during the Black Hawk War: “The area was some 10 square miles and contained a large bog. Although the land appeared safe, it would undulate or tremble for yards when pressure was applied. Many of the militiamen were on horses, which plunged to their bellies in the swamp. The “trembling lands” forced Atkinson to retrace his steps back toward the Rock River, in the process losing days in his pursuit of Black Hawk.”
Recommended for reading in full —
David Rothkopf contends that The greatest threat facing the United States is its own president:
I asked Petraeus, a man I respect, if he thought the president was fit to serve. His response was, “It’s immaterial.” He argued that because the team around Trump was so good, they could offset whatever deficits he might have. I was floored. It was a stunningly weak defense.
That is where we are now. The president’s tweeting hysterically at the media is just an element of this. So too is his malignant and ever-visible narcissism. The president has demonstrated himself to have zero impulse control and a tendency to damage vital international relationships with ill-considered outbursts, to trust very few of the people in his own government, and to reportedly rant and shout at staff and even at the television sets he obsessively watches.
Whether he is actually clinically ill is a matter for psychiatric professionals to consider. But when you take the above behaviors and combine them with his resistance to doing the work needed to be president, to sitting down for briefings, to reading background materials, to familiarizing himself with details enough to manage his staff, there is clearly a problem. Compound it with his deliberate reluctance to fill key positions in government and his wild flip-flopping on critical issues from relations with China to trade, and you come to a conclusion that it may be that Trump’s fitness to serve as president is our nation’s core national security issue.
Patrick Granfield explains Why Trump Should Embrace America’s Immigrant Soldiers:
The men who declared American independence 241 years ago today were largely landowners and merchants, already well established in society. Not so, however, for many of the soldiers who helped secure that independence over the course of the Revolutionary War.
From the nation’s very first days, some of its finest soldiers have been immigrants and, yes, even foreigners. As President Trump and his team celebrate their first Fourth of July in office—and as they continue shaping their immigration policies—they would do well to reflect on this tradition and its importance to the United States’ security….
Millions of immigrant soldiers would follow in their footsteps. They include 100,000 U.S. troops who arrived in Europe a century ago to fight the First World War, immigrants who did not become citizens until their naturalization after a victorious return. And they include more than 100,000 men and women from this century who have earned their citizenship through military service since the September 11 attacks.
Jim Rutenberg writes that an Independent Press Is Under Siege as Freedom Rings:
You’re old enough to know that you can’t always have a feel-good birthday. And let’s face it: This Fourth of July just isn’t going to be one of them.
How could it be when one of the pillars of our 241-year-old republic — the First Amendment — is under near-daily assault from the highest levels of the government?
When the president of the United States makes viciously personal attacks against journalists — and then doubles down over the weekend by posting a video on Twitter showing himself tackling and beating a figure with a CNN logo superimposed on his head? (Every time you think he’s reached the limit …)
John Stoeher writes of Exposing the Fraud That Is [White Nationalist and Trump Supporter] Richard Spencer:
Richard Spencer lives on his family’s fortune. That wealth in part comes from owning, for generations, huge tracts of land used in growing cotton. That cotton is subsidized, like many farming operations, to maintain prices by the federal government.
Moreover, Spencer dropped out of graduate school and does not appear to have held down a real job before founding his “think tank.” No one knows where he got the money to found it. The National Policy Institute has lost its tax-exempt status.
What do we make of these facts?
For one thing, it’s hard to maintain the veneer of strength and purity when you are vulnerable to accusations of being a mama’s boy. (His parents are evidently mainstream Republican who dislike their son’s embrace of fascism, but not enough, apparently, to cut him off.)
For another, it’s hard to maintain an image of authenticity as the one true voice of an oppressed white people when your money comes from mommy and daddy, instead of a deep pool of contributors who might nominally represent a truly democratic yearning. White nationalism ends up taking a back seat to his carefully constructed image and in doing so risks revealing Spencer as being a fraud.
Here’s What’s Up for July 2017: