Good morning.
Constitution Day in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-four. Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 6:59 PM, for 12h 21m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 8.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred twelfth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1787, a majority of the delegates to the constitutional convention in Philadelphia sign the proposed United States Constitution. On this day in 1862, at the Battle of Antietam, the “2nd, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments were in the thickest of the fighting. The 6th Infantry led a charge that killed or wounded 150 of its 280 men. Of the 800 officers and men in the Iron Brigade who marched out that morning, 343 were wounded or killed.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Jim Rutenberg writes of RT, Sputnik and Russia’s New Theory of War:
….But all of this [prior incidents of Russian propaganda] paled in comparison with the role that Russian information networks are suspected to have played in the American presidential election of 2016. In early January, two weeks before Donald J. Trump took office, American intelligence officials released a declassified version of a report — prepared jointly by the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency — titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections.” It detailed what an Obama-era Pentagon intelligence official, Michael Vickers, described in an interview in June with NBC News as “the political equivalent of 9/11.” “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,” the authors wrote. “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency.” According to the report, “Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”
The intelligence assessment detailed some cloak-and-dagger activities, like the murky web of Russian (if not directly government-affiliated or financed) hackers who infiltrated voting systems and stole gigabytes’ worth of email and other documents from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. But most of the assessment concerned machinations that were plainly visible to anyone with a cable subscription or an internet connection: the coordinated activities of the TV and online-media properties and social-media accounts that made up, in the report’s words, “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine.”
The assessment devoted nearly half its pages to a single cable network: RT. The Kremlin started RT — shortened from the original Russia Today — a dozen years ago to improve Russia’s image abroad. It operates in several world capitals and is carried on cable and satellite networks across the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. RT and the rest of the Russian information machine were working with “covert intelligence operations” to do no less than “undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order,” the assessment stated. And, it warned ominously, “Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes.” On Sept. 11, RT announced that the Justice Department had asked a company providing all production and operations services for RT America in the United States to register as a “foreign agent” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a World War II-era law that was originally devised for Nazi propaganda. Also on Sept. 11, Yahoo Newsreported that a former correspondent at Sputnik was speaking with the F.B.I. as part of an investigation into whether it was violating FARA….
(Putin’s Russia – ruled by a murderous imperialist – is an enemy of the United States. Americans who favor Putinism are fellow travelers, Americans who cooperate with Putinism are fifth columnists.)
Russ Choma reports that the Trump Administration Refuses to Turn Over Mar-A-Lago Records (“After saying it would release a list of visitors to the “Winter White House,” the administration broke its promise”):
A watchdog group is threatening to renew a legal fight against the Trump administration following the White House’s decision Friday to withhold the names of thousands of people who have visited the president’s exclusive Florida club since January.
Back in July, after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington first filed a lawsuit to obtain the Mar-A-Lago records, the administration seemed surprisingly agreeable, voluntarily promising to release something by September 8. That deadline was pushed back at the last minute, but at noon on Friday, the administration turned over its list of visitors: There were just 22 names, all of them members of the Japanese prime minister’s entourage. CREW and other ethics experts immediately cried foul.
At issue is the fact that the US Secret Service keeps careful track of everyone who enters the Mar-A-Lago club, dubbed the “Winter White House” by the administration. Trump has stayed there dozens of nights since he took office, holding court in the public areas, greeting members (who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in initiation and membership fees), and crashing weddings in the rented-out ballroom. The Secret Service keeps a similar set of records for visitors to the actual White House—a set of names that the Obama administration released regularly, but which the Trump administration so far has not. In January, watchdogs filed a Freedom of Information request for the Secret Service records, and then in April, CREW filed a subsequent lawsuit demanding that the Secret Service respond to the FOIA the way the Obama administration had. In July, the administration agreed that it would, at least, release any records that were “responsive” to CREW’s request….
Jason Leopold reports that Trump Advisers Secretly Met With Jordan’s King While One Was Pushing A Huge Nuclear Power Deal (“Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, and Steve Bannon met with King Abdullah II while Flynn was reportedly pressing for a controversial, for-profit deal to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East”):
In the days leading up to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, when his soon-to-be national security adviser Michael Flynn was reportedly pushing a multibillion-dollar deal to build nuclear reactors in Jordan and other Middle East nations, Flynn and two other top Trump advisers held a secret meeting with the king of Jordan.
The meeting — details of which have never been reported — is the latest in a series of secret, high-stakes contacts between Trump advisers and foreign governments that have raised concerns about how, in particular, Flynn and senior adviser Jared Kushner handled their personal business interests as they entered key positions of power. And the nuclear project raised additional security concerns about expanding nuclear technology in a tinderbox region of the world. One expert compared it to providing “a nuclear weapons starter kit.”
On the morning of Jan. 5, Flynn, Kushner, and former chief strategist Steve Bannon greeted King Abdullah II at the Four Seasons hotel in lower Manhattan, then took off in a fleet of SUVs and a sedan to a different location….
Greg Fish advises Wake Up GOP: Trump Is Not An Anomaly?—?This Is Who You Are (“Republicans are no longer the conservative party and Trump is not an aberration. And conservatives need to face some hard facts…”):
….Maybe it’s because the Republican Party, the group that claims to represent them, their ideas, and their interests, is no longer their party, what it calls conservatism is just an angry hodgepodge of grievances and scapegoating, and its leader is a shiftless, amoral populist whose political career is just a publicity stunt that spiraled completely out of control. Even worse, its base seems to display an almost cultish devotion to him, hanging on his every word, ready to turn obvious missteps into tales of victorious triumph over their many enemies. And conservative leaders warning fellow Republicans of this are in denial of how it got this way and just how angry and entitled their base has become at its core….
Now, it would be one thing if this was just the opinion of a fringe. Every political movement in every nation on Earth has a small group of extremists who are very vocal, but whose votes hardly steer national policy, if they can even make a dent in their local political landscape. But there’s a disturbingly large number of voters in the Republican base which are totally fine with this and believe Trump is doing a fantastic job.
That might be surprising enough, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Some 6 in 10 of them say that no matter what he does, they will never, ever stop approving of him, and after all we’ve been through so far, 96% of them say they’re satisfied with their vote. Far from reflecting on Trump’s job performance as his overall approval ratings keep sliding month after month, they’re doubling down, digging in their heels, and maintaining they didn’t make a mistake and that it’s the world that’s mistaken instead….
Great Big Story tells of Radio Free Orca: A Broadcast for World Peace:
In the 1960s, Paul Spong was a young neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia. Then, part of his job was to study orcas (or killer whales) at an aquarium. But Spong quickly understood how badly these highly sentient, intelligent creatures suffered in captivity. So he moved to a remote island six hours north of Vancouver and founded OrcaLab—a scientific outpost committed to studying orcas in the wild without disturbing them. Using hydrophones and video cameras, Spong and his team can listen to and track orcas within a 31-mile radius. Over the course of almost 50 years, Spong has learned a great deal about these wondrous ocean dwellers. It has given him a sense of inner peace. To help others understand more about orcas, OrcaLab broadcasts its audio feed live through its website, which you can see here: http://www.orca-live.net.