Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 91. Sunrise is 5:57 AM and sunset 8:02 PM, for 14h 05m 51s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6:00 PM.

On this day in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution is chartered by the United States Congress after James Smithson donates $500,000.

Justin Fox, using four different measures, writes GDP Growth Under Trump Was the Worst Since Hoover:

Oh, dearie me: is it possible that a man sued time and again for fraud and other serious misconduct might have – let’s just spitball here – exaggerated his administration’s economic performance?

How surprising is that?

Slideshow: Venezuela couple nurses sloths at home shelter:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 82. Sunrise is 5:54 AM and sunset 8:05 PM, for 14h 10m 46s of daytime.  The moon is new with none of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1918, the Battle of Amiens begins a string of almost continuous Allied victories with a push through the German front lines (the Hundred Days Offensive).

In Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal, the paper’s editorial board writes that Steve Nass and Co. make it harder to fight COVID.  A portion of the editorial appears immediately below:

Here we go again: State lawmakers are needlessly complicating reasonable health rules that will help keep our schools and economy open.

Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, is insisting that universities seek approval from him and a handful of his skeptical colleagues for masking, vaccine and testing requirements on state campuses.

Never mind that University of Wisconsin System schools have adopted and adjusted similar rules for more than a year now, which helped control COVID-19 among students, staff and surrounding communities.

Never mind that UW System President Tommy Thompson — the former Republican governor who led the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush — is insisting state universities need flexibility to adapt to changing health threats.

Nass and a handful of his fellow GOP lawmakers don’t want to hear any of that. They are bent on micromanaging public health policy at UW schools, which Thompson correctly warns would cripple sensible precautions as students return for fall classes next month.

Nass’ Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules voted 6-4 last week — without a formal meeting or public hearing — to require universities to submit plans for COVID-19 policies within 30 days. This came just as UW-Madison was announcing it will reinstate its indoor mask mandate for students, staff and visitors. UW-Milwaukee previously announced it was bringing back masks inside its buildings. In addition, UW-Milwaukee will require weekly testing for unvaccinated students and employees.

That’s similar to what many state and local governments, health facilities and private businesses are doing to protect against a highly contagious strain of the coronavirus. The delta variant is infecting more than 1,000 people a day in Wisconsin — especially the unvaccinated. It is even sickening some vaccinated people, though not as often or as severely.

Nass’s efforts will make the fight against COVID harder, but then Nass isn’t fighting COVID. He’s fighting, as he has for most of his political career,  a long list of perceived human enemies: moderates, liberals, progressives, socialists, Marxists, Democrats of any kind, Republicans in Name Only, the college-educated, and ‘outspoken’ Black, Latino, or other minorities.

Nass is often listed as representing Whitewater, but his state senate district does not include the City of Whitewater, and he could never win an election in the city proper. When Nass travels into the city, he visits a place where a majority now does – and always will – reject his politics. When Whitewater’s school superintendent annually hosts Nass (among others) at a legislative breakfast, in Nass that administrator is hosting someone who makes his host look obsequious.

His right-wing politics is, like Nass himself, mostly low and dull: cruelty as a form of self-aggrandizement coupled with schadenfreude. Having read or listened to Nass for years, one can affirm that there’s not a word that he has said (or that has been written for him) that is elegant or elevated. His latest maneuver reeks of attention-seeking. As with others of his politics, Nass likely feeds on the outrage he produces in others. (For many of us, it’s not outrage, truly, but contempt that Nass evokes.)

He has been the area’s troll-king, although now a new generation of Trump-only-men has eclipsed him. Nass is not half so outrageous as he is plodding and predictable.

And so, and so, his present condition: a Troll-King in Autumn. 

Officers Tackle Alligator Found on Lawn of Mississippi Home:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see thunderstorms with a high of 82. Sunrise is 5:53 AM and sunset 8:07 PM, for 14h 13m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1944, IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Laurel White reports ‘Audit The Vote’ Rally Draws Thousands to Wisconsin Capitol:

“It is time for this GOP-controlled Legislature to stand up, to exercise their duty under the constitution and not let some other branch trample all over it,” [former Milwaukee sheriff David] Clarke told the rally crowd, which he also led in a chant of “Vos has gotta go!”

Clarke argued Vos and other state leaders are ignoring the will of the people.

“This is about what you want — not these public rulers. I do not care what they think,” he said. “They were sent here to carry out your will, not theirs.”

(These conservative populists – a right-wing horde – want what they want, and for them Assembly Speaker Vos is nothing unless he does everything they want.)

Linda Qu reports No, there is no evidence that migrants are driving the surge in coronavirus cases:

Officials have said that positive test results among migrants have increased in recent weeks. A spokesman for Hidalgo County in Texas, which is in the Rio Grande Valley, where many migrants cross the border, said that the positivity rate for migrants was about 16 percent this week, as of Thursday.

But public health experts said there was no evidence that migrants were driving the surge of coronavirus. The positivity rate for residents of Hidalgo County — excluding migrants — was 17.59 percent this week.

While Texas is experiencing many more cases than a couple of months ago, many of the major outbreaks are occurring in states — such as Missouri and Arkansas — that do not border Mexico, said Dr. Jaquelin P. Dudley, associate director of the LaMontagne Center for Infectious Disease and a professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jonathan Freedland writes Trump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream: 

It seems nothing will shift the conviction of the faithful, not even the latest confirmation that it was Trump, not Biden, who was determined to rob the people of their democratic will: “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me,” Trump told his acting attorney general last December, according to a newly released note taken by the latter’s deputy. Meanwhile, an Arizona state senator has called for election officials to be held in solitary confinement.

The Republican tribe cleave loyally to the other defining feature of 2020 Trumpism: the refusal to believe in the reality of Covid and to do what’s needed to thwart the virus. And so the single greatest predictor of whether an American has been vaccinated or not is whether they voted for Biden or Trump last November. As of last month, 86% of Democrats had received at least one shot; among Republicans it was only 45%.

(See also Man and Movement.)

Shirin Ghaffary writes “People do not trust that Facebook is a healthy ecosystem”:

New York University researcher Laura Edelson is at the center of the latest major Facebook controversy over the misinformation that’s eroding our democracy and encouraging Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy.

Earlier this week, Facebook abruptly shut down the personal Facebook accounts and research tools of Edelson and two of her colleagues at the NYU Ad Observatory, which studies political advertisements and misinformation on the platform.

Facebook says the Ad Observatory was violating people’s privacy by tracking some users’ data without their permission through its Ad Observer browser extension tool. Edelson denies this and said that her team only collected data from people who volunteered to share their information. Facebook’s move drew condemnation from free speech advocates and lawmakers, who accused Facebook of squelching independent research. The FTC criticized Facebook’s decision, saying the company’s initial rationale was “inaccurate.”

And Edelson says Facebook is trying to stifle her work, which has shown that ?Facebook has failed to disclose who pays for some political ads and that Facebook users engage with misinformation more than other kinds of information on the platform. “It doesn’t like what we’re finding, and I think it is taking measures to silence us,” Edelson told Recode in her first in-depth interview since the accounts were suspended.

(Edelson means, of course, that sensible people doubt that Facebook is a healthy ecosystem. Those sensible people are right.)

Hungry Ducks Swarm Farmer in Vietnam:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:52 AM and sunset 8:08 PM, for 14h 15m 35s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 4.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Fire Department will hold a business meeting @ 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1945, after years of war and refusal to surrender under the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, Japan is devastated yet further when an atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima by the United States.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Devi Shastri reports Support for COVID measures builds as UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stout, UW-La Crosse now ‘expect’ masks:

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, UW-Stout and UW-La Crosse have announced they “expect” employees, students and guests to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status, stopping short of reinstating a requirement as two other UW schools have.

The UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stout guidance is effective Aug. 9. It does not apply to students in Marshfield and Barron County at this time, as county COVID-19 transmission rates there are not at “high” or “substantial” levels as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The UW-La Crosse guidance went into effect immediately.

Wisconsin colleges are re-evaluating masking rules in the wake of new CDC guidance and rising COVID-19 cases across the state.

Last week, UW-Milwaukee was the first major college to return to explicitly requiring masks, followed a few days later by UW-Madison, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Edgewood College — a private school in Madison — and, most recently, Madison Area Technical College.

 Scott Girard reports Wisconsin private schools saw enrollment decline along with public schools:

The Wisconsin Policy Forum highlighted new private school enrollment data from the 2020-21 school year in its latest report, showing that the sector declined along with public schools, albeit at a lower level.

Private school enrollment last year declined 1.5%, while public school enrollment around the state dropped 2.9%. Both sectors saw the largest drops in early grades.

“The figures offer at least a partial counterpoint to speculation about a potential surge in private school enrollment during the pandemic as many public schools continued remote instruction through the fall and winter,” the report states.

For public schools, pre-K and kindergarten enrollment “plunged,” the report notes, while first through eighth grades saw a smaller decline and high school enrollment “actually increased slightly.” Private schools, meanwhile, saw a 15.4% decline in pre-K and 4K enrollment for the year, while K-12 enrollment “essentially held flat.”

Philip Bump writes Hungary turned to authoritarian nationalism. So Tucker Carlson went to Hungary:

Carlson and other polished conservatives, such as Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, argue forcefully for the primacy of American families. They espouse a largely unobjectionable position — that the government should make it easier to have children — but frame it in contrast with the less-ideal or problematic form of population growth that accompanies increased immigration. Vance, a politician, massages this idea a lot. Carlson, a firebrand, does not. To hear Carlson tell it, the country is imperiled by immigration at an existential level, at risk of seeing its essence diluted, and increased procreation by Americans is less a good in and of itself than as a bulwark against change.

He frames this — in the same way that many white nationalists do — as a broad battle between Western civilization and outsider hordes encouraged by a cabal of elites who are eager to see traditional values collapse. Those who engage in the defense of the West are presented by Carlson as heroes of the cause.

In February 2018, for example, he praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for defying the European Union on the issue of immigration.

“At least one politician in Europe is fearlessly raising an alarm about the kind of society European elites want to create, one that is rejected unanimously almost by European citizens,” Carlson said. “In a speech yesterday kicking off his party’s bid for reelection, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned that politicians in Brussels, Berlin and Paris are going to destroy Western civilization with their enthusiasm for mass migration left unchecked.”

Glass Frogs:

See also Perfectly Clear (‘Glass frogs, the tiny, translucent amphibians of Central and South America, are full of surprises’).

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 85. Sunrise is 5:51 AM and sunset 8:09 PM, for 14h 17m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 9.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1974, President Nixon, under orders of the US Supreme Court, releases the “Smoking Gun” tape, recorded on June 23, 1972, clearly revealing his actions in covering up and interfering investigations into the break-in.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Michael Gerson writes We shouldn’t be cruel about covid deaths. We should focus on getting everyone vaccinated:

Some of America may be suffering an outbreak of schadenfreude. Many have walked past the empty vaccination sites at Walmart and Costco, in a country where only half the people have taken the full dose of a miracle medicine that could save their lives. At some point, doesn’t recklessness deserve its reward?

But God help us if everyone got the health outcomes we deserved, when we eat poorly, or refuse to exercise, or ignore symptoms of illness — any of which might eventually bring a higher risk of death than covid vaccine hesitancy. Some of us take our recklessness in smaller, extended dosages.

….

Yet it is political figures who merit the most disgust. Consider Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. His state is the epicenter of the delta outbreak, accounting for 1 of every 5 new covid infections nationwide. Yet he is not, as the Daytona Beach News-Journal points out, holding daily emergency briefings. Instead: “DeSantis sent out a campaign email accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci … of somehow scheming with the Chinese over the spread of the coronavirus — while at the same time proclaiming the economic folly of taking basic precautions against the disease.” Last month, the DeSantis campaign rolled out a line of T-shirts and beer koozies with anti-Fauci themes. “Yep,” the News-Journal concluded, “He has merch.”

This remains lethal lunacy.

CBS News reports Target to require workers to mask up in areas where Delta variant is surging:

Minneapolis-based Target said Monday that, starting August 3, it will require all store workers in counties that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says face a “substantial or high risk of transmission” to wear face coverings. The big-box retailer, which has more than 1,900 stores, also said it will continue recommending that customers wear masks in its locations, but stopped short of requiring face coverings.

Juliette Kayyem writes Unvaccinated People Need to Bear the Burden: 

The number of COVID-19 cases keeps growing, even though remarkably safe, effective vaccines are widely available, at least to adults. Many public agencies are responding by reimposing masking rules on everyone. But at this stage of the pandemic, tougher universal restrictions are not the solution to continuing viral spread. While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people. The White House has rejected a nationwide vaccine mandate—a sweeping suggestion that the Biden administration could not easily enact if it wanted to—but a no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take. It will help limit the risk of transmission at destinations where unvaccinated people travel—and, by setting norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people, will also help raise the stagnant vaccination rates that are keeping both the economy and society from fully recovering.

Isaac Stanley-Becker and David A. Fahrenthold report His campaign is over. But Trump’s political groups are still spending donor money at his properties:

Save America, the leadership PAC where former president Donald Trump is asking loyalists to direct their political contributions, paid for lodging about two dozen times in the first six months of 2021.

Nine of those times, the payments went to properties owned by the former president, according to a filing made public on Saturday. All told, the PAC sent at least $68,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection, showing how the real estate mogul — long after ending his presidential campaign and leaving office — continues to use donor money at his own properties.

‘Explosive Growth’ of California’s Dixie Fire Forces 15,000 to Evacuate:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 84. Sunrise is 5:50 AM and sunset 8:10 PM, for 14h 20m 18s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 16% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1821, The Saturday Evening Post is published for the first time as a weekly newspaper.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Hope Karnopp and Devi Shastri report Republican-led committee votes to block UW campuses’ COVID-19 requirements; UW-Madison immediately issues mask mandate:

MADISON – University of Wisconsin officials who want to ward off a rising COVID-19 caseload now must get permission from the Legislature to implement masking, testing or vaccination requirements, according to a plan Republicans adopted Tuesday.

Within hours, UW-Madison’s chancellor tested the issue by imposing a mask requirement without saying whether she would seek the approval of lawmakers.

The Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules voted remotely without holding debate on the motion to require legislative approval for COVID policies on campuses. All six Republicans voted for the proposal and all four Democrats voted against it.

Republicans say the vote means the UW System must now get approval from lawmakers before putting in place any COVID rules. Democrats dispute that, saying the system still has the power to act on its own.

UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank signaled she believed she could act on her own by issuing a campuswide mask mandate soon after the committee vote.

Her order will require people — whether vaccinated or not — to wear masks when they are in campus buildings, in campus buses or riding with others in university vehicles. There are exceptions for when people are eating and drinking, in their dorm rooms or alone in offices. It takes effect Thursday.

Between the committee’s vote and Blank issuing her order, system officials did not respond to questions from the Journal Sentinel about whether they believed campuses could act on their own.

“Today’s action feels like a political statement; our focus is to ensure we are doing what needs to be done now to safely open for in-person teaching this fall,” UW System spokesman Mark Pitsch said of the committee’s vote.

Republican Sen. Steve Nass of Whitewater introduced the motion last week, which directs the UW Board of Regents to issue any current or future systemwide or campus-by-campus COVID-19 requirements as emergency rules, which the committee could block in part or whole

See also Steve Nass: Troll-King in Autumn.

Laura Bassett writes Biden calls on Andrew Cuomo to resign. He’s not the only Cuomo who needs to go:

The [New York Attorney General’s] report also noted that CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, the governor’s brother, was part of a small team of advisers who helped him respond to the allegations. The journalist Cuomo seems to have gone so far as to draft a statement for his powerful brother in February of this year.

“Sometimes I am playful and make jokes,” the statement says. “You have seen me do it at briefings hundreds of times. My only desire is to add some levity and banter to what is a very serious business.”

The governor Cuomo appeared to take some of those tips, trying to spin the report on camera Tuesday alongside a bizarre montage of him kissing and touching people. He denied the allegations, refused to admit to any misconduct and said he was just being “playful,” which somehow got misinterpreted as flirtation.

“I do on occasion say, ‘Ciao, bella,'” the governor said. “I do banter with people. I do tell jokes — some better than others.”

“I try to put people at ease. I try to make them smile. I try to connect with them,” he continued. “I now understand that there are generational or cultural perspectives that frankly I haven’t fully appreciated.”

Of course, according to the employees in James’ report, the governor’s self-described “banter” neither made them smile nor put them at ease. The women he harassed described his behavior as “deeply humiliating, uncomfortable, offensive” and “inappropriate.” The report concluded that he created a “hostile work environment” that was “rife with fear and intimidation” and that he clearly violated federal and state law.

Given this information, Andrew Cuomo should resign immediately or be impeached.

His brother, too, should resign from covering politics or be fired. It’s extremely inappropriate and unethical for a journalist to advise and craft the statements of a politician, regardless of family relation.

 Wild coyote circles beachgoer for 10 minutes:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:49 AM and sunset 8:12 PM, for 14h 22m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 23.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1958, the world’s first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, becomes the first vessel to complete a submerged transit of the geographical North Pole.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Devi Shastri and Hope Karnopp report ‘This is madness’: Between politics and public health, UW schools work to adapt for fall:

Now, a proposal by state Sen. Steven Nass, R-Whitewater, is adding to the uncertainty and raising questions about how political influences could still stand to hamper the UW System’s fall planning.

If passed, Nass’ motion would direct the UW Board of Regents to issue its COVID-19 policies as emergency rules subject to legislative approval. The Republican-controlled rules committee, which Nass co-chairs, could then block part or all of those rules.

….

Opponents throughout the UW System say the change, if passed, would at least slow down the system’s reaction time by requiring an added layer of legislative approval for any COVID-19 protocol. At worst, they fear, it would end public health efforts like mask mandates altogether, leaving schools without the tools they used to curb COVID-19’s spread last school year.

“I feel like in some ways, going into this fall is actually worse than March 2020 or going into last fall, because at this point, things have been so politicized, people are so tired,” said Tracy Hawkins, chair of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s faculty senate. “(The pandemic) is not just a blip anymore. It has been a substantial portion of people’s college experience now. So it’s like the emotions of it are running even higher.”

….

Experts from the American College Health Association to the editor-in-chief of the leading journal Science have called for vaccination mandates on college campuses. While UW System schools still have made no indication they would require vaccination against COVID-19 this fall, some 623 campuses nationwide now do, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

That, as of last week, includes half of the Big Ten conference, of which UW-Madison is a part.

Michigan State University was the latest to impose a mandate on indoor masking and COVID-19 vaccination. President Samuel Stanley Jr. wrote that CDC data on the delta variant’s spread among vaccinated people was “concerning and significantly shifts the landscape.”

See also Steve Nass: Troll-King in Autumn.

Mick DeBonis reports As many Republicans try to rewrite history of Jan. 6 attack, Sen. Ron Johnson suggests FBI knew more than it has said:

“I don’t say this publicly, but are you watching what’s happening in Michigan?” Johnson said while discussing the Capitol attack with some of the event’s attendees. “…So you think the FBI had fully infiltrated the militias in Michigan, but they don’t know squat about what was happening on January 6th or what was happening with these groups? I’d say there is way more to the story.”

….

No credible evidence has emerged that the FBI had detailed foreknowledge of a violent assault on the Capitol or that its agents or operatives played a role in fomenting it. No specific claim of FBI involvement has surfaced in court filings made in the hundreds of cases filed against alleged Capitol assailants.

But the allegations have persisted in recent weeks as Republican supporters of former president Donald Trump, who falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen and encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol as Congress counted electoral votes on Jan. 6, have consistently sought to finger other culprits for the breach of the Capitol.

See also Whether Ambitious, Compromised, or Crackpot, Sen. Ron Johnson Doesn’t Disappoint.

Russian space module mishap pushes ISS out of position: