Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny, with a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 6:00 AM and sunset 7:59 PM, for 13h 59m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6:30 PM, and the Whitewater School Board will meet in Central Office beginning at 7 PM.
On this day in 1961, the East German communist government begins construction of the Berlin Wall:
The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer … was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989.[1] Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall cut off (by land) West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989.[2] Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992.[1][3] The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls,[4] accompanied by a wide area (later known as the “death strip”) that contained anti-vehicle trenches, “fakir beds” and other defenses.
Recommended for reading in full —
Jesse Garza reports Trump says Harley-Davidson boycott would be ‘great’:President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that it’s “great” some Harley-Davidson motorcycle owners plan to halt future purchases of the bike in response to plans by the Milwaukee-based company to move some production overseas.
(One reads “While saying nothing about the president’s latest swipe at Harley-Davidson, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson quickly issued a tweet of his own telling Baldwin, “you don’t understand our economy …. “We do need better trade deals, not the ones engineered by you and other members of the political class,” Nicholson said.” Nicholson’s reply is laughably rhetorical – anyone who truly understands the economics of this sees that tariffs are, in effect, bad taxes. It’s Nicholson who either doesn’t understand or simply battens on the ignorance of Trump-leaning voters.)
Rex Nutting asks Confused by emoluments? The Founding Fathers would have impeached Trump in a New York minute:
It seems the Founding Fathers had Donald Trump (or someone very like him) in mind when they wrote those clauses into the Constitution. They were concerned about our government officials being corrupted by foreign or domestic powers. Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist Paper #73 that the domestic emoluments clause was designed to keep the president independent and incorruptible.
The key passage in the Constitution is Article I, Section 9: “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
The point of this clause is to prevent any foreign power from gaining influence over the U.S. government by providing gifts, titles, jobs or other benefits to its officials.
No exceptions
Article II, Section 1 specifically limits the president and does not allow Congress to approve exceptions: “The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”
(Emphasis in original.)
Max Boot observes You can tell who Trump is through the company he keeps:Tom Boggioni writes Authoritarianism expert hints Lindsey Graham may be covering for Trump due to the 2016 Russian hacking of his own emails:There was no secret about Manafort’s record as an influence-peddler on behalf of corrupt dictators and oligarchs when he went to work for Trump. On April 13, 2016, Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake wrote a prescient article headlined: “Trump Just Hired His Next Scandal.” Trump couldn’t have cared less. His whole career, he has surrounded himself with sleazy characters such as the Russian-born mob associate Felix Sater, who served prison time for assault and later pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges, as well as lawyer-cum-fixer Michael Cohen, who is reportedly under investigation for a variety of possible crimes, including tax fraud.
These are the kind of people Trump feels comfortable around, because this is the kind of person Trump is. He is, after all, the guy who paid $25 million to settle fraud charges against him from students of Trump University. The guy who arranged for payoffs to a Playboy playmate and a porn star with whom he had affairs. The guy who lies an average of 7.6 times a day.
And because everyone knows what kind of person Trump is, he attracts kindred souls. Manafort and Gates are only Exhibits A and B. There is also Exhibit C: Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), the first member of Congress to endorse Trump, is facing federal charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and false statements as part of an alleged insider-trading scheme. Exhibit D is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who has been accused by Forbes magazine, hardly an anti-Trump rag, of bilking business associates out of $120 million. (Both Collins and Ross have denied the charges.)
Much goes into Designing the Perfect Airport Runway:“Lindsey Graham, talk about confusing, he confuses me,” Capehart stated. “On some days he is ‘the president must be held accountable,’ and then here he seems to be carrying the president’s water. Can you explain what he is doing?”
“I can offer some theories. Lindsey Graham was one of the people who called for the investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to the Kremlin,” Kendzior began. “He did that all the way back in 2016 before Trump was inaugurated. He has then done a complete 180. He’s been supporting Trump, he’s been covering for Trump.”
“There are a few things we should remember, ” she advised. “The RNC was hacked; no one knows what happened to those emails. Lindsey Graham personally was hackedand nobody knows who has those emails. The RNC is complicit financially and politically and broadly in what the Trump campaign has done in terms of illicit interactions with Russia.”