Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-three. Sunrise is 6:12 AM and sunset 7:40 PM, for 13h 27m 23s of daytime. The moon is nearly full with 99.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1835, The Sun, a New York Newspaper, publishes what we now know as the Great Moon Hoax:
The “Great Moon Hoax” refers to a series of six articles that were published in The Sun, a New York newspaper, beginning on August 25, 1835, about the supposed discovery of life and even civilization on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, one of the best-known astronomers of that time.
….
The articles described fantastic animals on the Moon, including bison, goats, unicorns, bipedal tail-less beavers and bat-like winged humanoids (“Vespertilio-homo”) who built temples. There were trees, oceans and beaches. These discoveries were supposedly made with “an immense telescope of an entirely new principle.”
The author of the narrative was ostensibly Dr. Andrew Grant, the travelling companion and amanuensis of Sir John Herschel, but Grant was fictitious.
Eventually, the authors announced that the observations had been terminated by the destruction of the telescope, by means of the Sun causing the lens to act as a “burning glass,” setting fire to the observatory.[2]
Recommended for reading in full —
Natasha Bertrand contends New York Prosecutors May Pose a Bigger Threat to Trump Than Mueller (“The offer of immunity to the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer is reminiscent of moves law enforcement used as they were taking down the Mafia”):Mimi Rocah and Elie Honig write Cohen, Pecker, Weisselberg: The Men With Trump’s Secrets Work for the Feds Now (“Prosecutors immunized the president’s accountant and tabloid confidant. His former fixer implicated him in court. This is far from over”):The man who knows “where all the financial bodies are buried” in President Donald Trump’s namesake organization may now lead prosecutors in the Southern District of New York directly to them.
Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer who also serves as the treasurer of the Trump Foundation, has been granted immunity by prosecutors in their ongoing investigation of Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen. The significance of his flip, paired with Cohen’s recent plea deal, cannot be overstated: It took slightly more than a year for two of the president’s longest-serving employees, considered by many to be the last who would ever turn on him, to cooperate with federal investigators—and, in Cohen’s case, directly implicate Trump in a crime. But the news also marked a turning point in the legal assault on Trumpworld: SDNY prosecutors may now pose a more immediate threat to the president than Special Counsel Robert Mueller does.
….
“This is a classic move in investigations of a criminal organization,” said Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who was part of the team that convicted the Gambino family boss John Gotti. “They’re moving up the ladder. Peripheral characters are given immunity, witnesses testify, but they’re ultimately keeping their eye on the prize.”
James Fallows offers The Greatest Disappointment of the Trump Presidency (“The institutional fabric of the United States has proven more tenacious and resilient in responding than many feared. The Republican Congress has not”):We now know from the charging document (called an Information) to which Cohen pleaded guilty, that several other people, identified but not named, were involved in that scheme. The Information identifies a “Chairman of a Media Company,” and Executive-1 and Executive-2 of what is clearly the Trump Organization, as participating in this scheme. Based on reporting and the facts in the Information, it’s clear that the media chairman is David Pecker of American Media, Inc. (the National Enquirer), a longtime ally of Trump, and that Executive-1 is Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization.
And we now know, based on further reporting, that both of those men received some kind of immunity deal in exchange for their cooperation. Usually, immunity entails giving essentially a pass on prosecution to someone who has some criminal exposure but is less culpable than people about whom they can testify.
Eliot Cohen speculates How This Will End (“Sooner or later, tyrants are always abandoned by their followers”):Still: The struggle for the country’s values and future continues, as a struggle, rather than as a settled and tragic result. The complex institutional fabric of the country has proven more tenacious and resilient than many people might have guessed or feared. A generation from now, the verdict on our era could be: irrecoverable tragedy. But that verdict is not yet determined.
Is there a surprise, a disappointment, and a settled tragedy so far? There is. It is the same one I described last year, in the first summer of the Trump age:
The major weakness these six months have revealed in our governing system is almost too obvious to mention, but I’ll name it anyway. It is the refusal, so far, by any significant Republican figure in Congress to apply to Donald Trump the standards its members know the country depends on for long-term survival of its government. A system of checks and balances relies on each of its component branches resisting overreach by the others. The judiciary has done its part; Paul Ryan’s House and Mitch McConnell’s Senate have not. We’re seeing the difference that can make.
JPL, GO!:But to really get the feel for the Trump administration’s end, we must turn to the finest political psychologist of them all, William Shakespeare. The text is in the final act of what superstitious actors only refer to as the “Scottish play.” One of the nobles who has turned on their murderous usurper king describes Macbeth’s predicament:
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
And so it will be for Trump. To be clear, these are very different people. Macbeth is an utterly absorbing, troubling, tragic, and compelling figure. Unlike America’s germaphobic president, who copped five draft deferments and has yet to visit the thousands of American soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan or Iraq, he is physically brave. In fact, the first thing we hear about him is that in the heat of battle with a rebel against King Duncan (whom he later murders) Macbeth “unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops.” He is apparently faithful to his wife, has a conscience (that he overcomes), knows guilt and remorse, and has self-knowledge. He also has a pretty good command of the English language. In all these respects he is as unlike Trump as one can be.
But in the moment of losing power, the two will be alike. A tyrant is unloved, and although the laws and institutions of the United States have proven a brake on Trump, his spirit remains tyrannical—that is, utterly self-absorbed and self-concerned, indifferent to the suffering of others, knowing no moral restraint. He expects fealty and gives none. Such people can exert power for a long time, by playing on the fear and cupidity, the gullibility and the hatreds of those around them. Ideological fervor can substitute for personal affection and attachment for a time, and so too can blind terror and sheer stupidity, but in the end, these fall away as well.