Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 52.  Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 7:16 PM, for 12h 32m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1981, the Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Shawn Hubler, Tim Arango, and Anemona Hartocollis report U.S.C. Agrees to Pay $1.1 Billion to Patients of Gynecologist Accused of Abuse (‘The staggering sum — a combination of three sets of settlements with hundreds of alleged victims of Dr. George Tyndall — sets a record for collegiate sex abuse payouts’):

“On one hand, it really exemplifies the gravity of what Tyndall’s survivors had to experience, and really set in stone our truth as to what occurred,” said Ms. Morgan, now a 27-year-old lawyer. “But it’s also a really grueling reminder of the price tag U.S.C. was willing to put on our safety and our mental health.”

John C. Manly, who represented the third group of plaintiffs, said that “the reason U.S.C. paid this money was that there was culpability — they knew early on, in the early ’90s and all the way through his tenure that this was happening.”

This week’s settlement, which he said would be distributed among the plaintiffs in awards ranging from about $250,000 to several million dollars, will provide by far the largest per-victim payout, he said. But combined, the outcome of the litigation sends a message, he added: “If you’re an institution of higher education, you will pay if you do this.”

  Anne Applebaum describes The Science of Making Americans Hurt Their Own Country:

The problem is not only the outgrowth of the peculiar climate created by Donald Trump—however simple and satisfying such an explanation might be. Think, for a moment, about why the Russian state indulges in this kind of activity, year in and year out, despite the political costs and the risk of sanctions: Because it’s very cheap, it’s very easy, and a lot of evidence suggests that it works.

For decades now, Russian security services have studied a concept called “reflexive control”—the science of how to get your enemies to make mistakes. To be successful, practitioners must first analyze their opponents deeply, to understand where they get their information and why they trust it; then they need to find ways of playing with those trusted sources, in order to insert errors and mistakes. This way of thinking has huge implications for the military; consider how a piece of incorrect information might get a general to make a mistake. But it works in politics too. The Russian security services have now studied us and worked out (it probably wasn’t very hard) that large numbers of Americans—not only Fox News pundits and OANN broadcasters but also members of Congress—are very happy to accept sensational information, however tainted, from any source that happens to provide it. As long as it suits their partisan frames, and as long as it can be used against their opponents, they don’t care who invented it or for what purpose.

As a result, supplying an edited audiotape or a piece of false evidence to one of the bottom-feeders of the information ecosystem is incredibly easy; after that, others will ensure that it rises up the food chain. Russian disinformation doesn’t succeed thanks to the genius of Russians; it succeeds thanks to the sharp partisanship of Americans. Russian disinformation works because Americans allow it to work—and because those same Americans don’t care anymore about the harm they do to their country.

Slideshow: Spring in blossom around the world:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 51.  Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset 7:15 PM, for 12h 29m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1945, the Battle of Iwo Jima ends as the island is officially secured by American forces.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Sarah Binder writes Mitch McConnell is wrong. Here’s the filibuster’s ‘racial history’:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 49.  Sunrise is 6:46 AM and sunset 7:13 PM, for 12h 27m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1965, civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. successfully complete their 4-day, 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Daphne Chen reports Appeals court weighs lawsuit over naming businesses linked to COVID-19 outbreaks:

A Wisconsin appeals court heard arguments Wednesday over a lawsuit regarding the release of data on businesses linked to COVID-19 cases — records first requested by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel more than nine months ago.

Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby, sued in October to stop the release of the information to media outlets, arguing that disclosure of the information would “irreparably harm” businesses.

The Madison-based District IV Court of Appeals agreed to take on the case after a Waukesha County circuit judge sided with WMC and temporarily blocked the state health department from releasing the data.

….

Lawyers for the Journal Sentinel and the state have argued that the business lobby is not one of the groups awarded the right to challenge the release of public records as defined by the state Legislature.

However, on Wednesday, WMC attorney Ryan Walsh argued that the organization has the standing to sue because the data — which does not contain the names of people — is derived from confidential medical records.

“It can’t be that any record in the government’s possession is an open record,” Walsh said. “(The state) has all kinds of records that can’t be released. What I’m asking the court to consider is the broad implications of this case.” 

Judges Kloppenburg and Fitzpatrick questioned Walsh on whether the WMC can speak for businesses who are not members of the association, and whether the WMC represents business owners or employees.

“We don’t understand how you can be also taking on the mantle of speaking for the interest of the employees,” Kloppenburg said, adding that some employees “might want the public to know that there have been a lot of COVID cases where they’re working.”

 Greg Sargent writes How Trump is exposing the ugly truth about the GOP plan to retake power:

The focus-grouped phrase justifying all this is “election integrity.” That’s the name of a new group, run by the Republican National Committee, that is developing more such proposals for export to states.

But Trump has already told us what standing for “election integrity” really means: making it harder to vote for the express purpose of making it easier for Republicans to win future elections.

Trump made this explicit during his Conservative Political Action Conference speech. He declared that the GOP must be the party of “election integrity” and that this means reversing efforts to make it easier to vote wherever possible and that this is an “urgent” matter facing the GOP.

Speaking about the 2020 election, Trump said: “We can never allow this to happen again.”

It is “urgent” for the GOP to make it harder to vote wherever possible, in the name of “election integrity,” and the 2020 election loss drove this home.

Christina Jewett and Lauren Weber report Former Covid official Deborah Birx joins company behind hazardous air-cleaners banned in California:

The former top White House coronavirus adviser under President Donald Trump, Dr Deborah Birx, has joined an air-cleaning company that built its business, in part, on technology that is now banned in California due to health hazards.

 Dolphins Spotted Swimming in New York’s East River Tuesday Morning: 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see occasional showers with a high of 55.  Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 7:12 PM, for 12h 24m 04s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 77.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5 PM.

On this day in 1895, Joshua Slocum, the first person to sail single-handedly around the world, sets sail from Boston, Massachusetts aboard the sloop Spray.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Brian Klaas writes of Peter Pomerantsev in He worked in Russian media. He recognizes the same tactics at Fox News:

In a newly released report, U.S. intelligence agencies outline how Russia yet again sought to subvert American democracy. The findings confirm that the Kremlin tried to plant damaging disinformation about Joe Biden among associates of then-President Donald Trump.

That report and others that preceded it are important, because the foreign threat to American democracy is real and growing. But they should not distract us from a disturbing reality: The most serious danger to the United States from the Russian propaganda playbook doesn’t come from Moscow. It comes from Manhattan, where Fox News prime-time hosts broadcast conspiracy theories and disinformation while mimicking tactics that insiders in Russian media easily recognize.

….

Specifically, Pomerantsev points to two major areas of strategic overlap. First, there’s a shared war on facts that tries to convince the viewer that accountability is a fool’s errand because true objectivity does not exist.

“There’s this kind of pop-postmodernism, where Sean Hannity will say things like objectivity doesn’t exist, everybody’s biased,” Pomerantsev says. He points to Hannity’s infamous interview with Ted Koppel, in which he contrasted his own style with what he sees as the charade of “objective” facts in other areas of the press. “I don’t pretend that I’m fair and balanced and objective,” Hannity bizarrely boasted.

“That’s exactly the same argument the Russians make,” Pomerantsev says. He recalls a famous phrase uttered by Dmitry Kiselev, a prime-time TV host who was also appointed by Vladimir Putin to run Kremlin’s international propaganda network, Rossiya Segodnya. “Objectivity is a myth that is proposed and imposed on us.”

….

Pomerantsev sees another commonality between Fox News and Russian media. Both, he argues, treat news as entertainment, complete with characters designed to depict those who hold opposing viewpoints as buffoonish caricatures. “They turn everything into a Jerry Springer show. … Essentially, Tucker Carlson has ‘idiot liberals’ on.” Fox, he says, likes to present extreme left-wingers whose positions can be easily caricatured; Russian TV uses cartoonish members of the opposition as objects of ridicule.

 Sam Levine reports Republicans wage ‘coordinated onslaught’ on voting rights:

Republicans have openly talked about their intentions. “Everybody shouldn’t be voting,” John Kavanagh, a Republican in the Arizona state legislature, told CNN earlier this month. “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

Some Republicans say that their efforts to put new voting restrictions in place are part of an effort to restore confidence in elections and prevent voter fraud, which is extremely rare.

But others have shown that their motivation is anti-democratic. Trump dismissed proposals to make it easier to vote last year by saying: “You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” And this month, Michael Carvin, a lawyer representing the Arizona Republican party, said something similar when Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked him what interest the party had in defending two Arizona voting restrictions. Lifting those restrictions, Carvin said, “puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game.”

(Video link updated) Suez Canal Blocked by Stuck Container Ship: 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 64.  Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 7:11 PM, for 12h 21m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 68.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa. The trip is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Erin Cunningham reports NIH questions AstraZeneca trial data, calls it ‘incomplete’:

British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca may have only used partial data when it announced the results from a U.S. trial of its coronavirus vaccine, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said Tuesday in a highly unusual rebuke.

The agency, part of the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement that it was concerned AstraZeneca used outdated information from the large-scale trial when it reported the results Monday, “which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.”

It urged the company, which developed its vaccine with Oxford University, to work with the U.S. Data Safety and Monitoring Board to review the data and release the updated information “as quickly as possible.” AstraZeneca had said Monday that the vaccine was shown to be 79 percent effective against symptomatic covid-19 — and that it was 100 percent effective against severe illness.

 Michael Gerson writes Ron Johnson isn’t a Republican outlier:

There have always been bigots with access to a microphone. But in this case [Johnson’s remarks on Black Lives Matter], Johnson did not face the hygienic repudiation of his party. Republican leaders preferred a different strategy: putting their fingers in their ears and humming loudly. Republicans have abolished their ideological police.

The reason is simple. After four years of Donald Trump, Johnson’s sentiments are not out of the Republican mainstream. They are an application of the prevailing Republican ideology — that the “real” America is under assault by the dangerous other: Violent immigrants. Angry Blacks. Antifa terrorists. Suspicious Muslims. And don’t forget “the China virus.”

Trump did not create such views. But he normalized them in an unprecedented fashion. Under Trump’s cover, this has been revealed as the majority position of Republicans, or at least engaged, activist Republicans. A recent New York Times poll found 65 percent of people who identify with the GOP to still be Trump “die-hards,” Trump “boosters” or captive to conspiracy theories. And most of the rest find nothing disqualifying in Trump’s pathologically divisive performance as president.

(Gerson is right that Johnson is not an outlier among ordinary Republicans on race, or among other false notions he holds. He is, however, notably eager among the Senate’s GOP caucus to peddle these views at any opportunity.)

Danielle Kaeding reports Audubon Plan Aims To Restore Nearly 300K Acres Of Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands To Benefit Birds:

A new report from the Great Lakes regional arm of the National Audubon Society is outlining its plan to restore and protect a dozen areas that support region’s birds. Climate change, development and invasive species are threatening coastal areas of the Great Lakes region that is home to 350 bird species.

Great Lakes Audubon has identified 12 regions and nearly 300,000 acres of coastal wetlands for protection and restoration to benefit 14 marsh bird species that have been on the decline. Shrinking bird populations in the region are part of a larger trend as North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970.

….

The 12 sites include 10 projects in Green Bay and the St. Louis River estuary in the Twin Ports where the black tern hasn’t been seen since the 1990s. The largest project prioritized in the estuary seeks to restore 850 acres of marsh in Allouez Bay in Superior that would support the species.

  ‘You can’t escape the smell’: mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 60.  Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 7:10 PM, for 12h 18m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 58.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Downtown Whitewater, Inc. meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

On this day in 1993, the Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips (80586), featuring a 60 MHz clock speed, 100+ MIPS, and a 64-bit data path.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Robin Stein, Haley Willis, Danielle Miller, and Michael S. Schmidt report ‘We’ve Lost the Line!’: Radio Traffic Reveals Police Under Siege at Capitol (‘The Times obtained District of Columbia police radio communications and synchronized them with footage from the scene to show in real time how officers tried and failed to stop the attack on the U.S. Capitol’):

 Katie Benner reports Evidence in Capitol Attack Most Likely Supports Sedition Charges, Prosecutor Says:

Evidence the government obtained in the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol most likely meets the bar necessary to charge some of the suspects with sedition, Michael R. Sherwin, the federal prosecutor who had been leading the Justice Department’s inquiry, said in an interview that aired on Sunday.

The department has rarely brought charges of sedition, the crime of conspiring to overthrow the government.

But in an interview with “60 Minutes,” Mr. Sherwin said prosecutors had evidence that most likely proved such a charge.

“I personally believe the evidence is trending toward that, and probably meets those elements,” Mr. Sherwin said. “I believe the facts do support those charges. And I think that, as we go forward, more facts will support that.”

….

The statute on seditious conspiracy also says that people who conspire to “oppose by force the authority” of the government or use force “to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States” can be charged with sedition.

 Sophie Carson reports Wisconsin QAnon believer shot paintball gun at Army Reserve members in Pewaukee, threatened ‘mass casualty’ event, prosecutors say:

A heavily armed Waukesha County man and QAnon believer who recently traveled to Washington, D.C., and promised violence there was twice taken into custody and released before being arrested Friday on federal charges.

Prosecutors say Ian Alan Olson, 31, of Nashotah drove a car spray-painted with QAnon slogans to the Wisconsin Army Reserve Center in Pewaukee on March 15 and shouted, “This is for America,” before he fired paintball rounds at two reservists nearby.

He also told intake staff at the Waukesha County Jail that he would “cause mass casualty” if he were released, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.

“I am ready for this. How many people need to die for a message to get across,” he said, according to the complaint.

 Video of the volcanic eruption at Iceland’s Geldingardalur valley in Reykjanes peninsula: 

A new video of the eruption at Geldingardalur valley in Reykjanes peninsula. Taken from the Coast Guard helicopter. #Reykjanes #Eruption #Fagradalsfjall pic.twitter.com/B862heMzQL

— Icelandic Meteorological Office – IMO (@Vedurstofan) March 19, 2021

.

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 65.  Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 7:09 PM, for 12h 15m 18s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 49% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Anne Applebaum, 12.19.19, writes The False Romance of Russia (‘American conservatives who find themselves identifying with Putin’s regime refuse to see the country for what it actually is’):

Sherwood Eddy was a prominent American missionary as well as that now rare thing, a Christian socialist. In the 1920s and ’30s, he made more than a dozen trips to the Soviet Union. He was not blind to the problems of the U.S.S.R., but he also found much to like. In place of squabbling, corrupt democratic politicians, he wrote in one of his books on the country, “Stalin rules … by his sagacity, his honesty, his rugged courage, his indomitable will and titanic energy.” Instead of the greed he found so pervasive in America, Russians seemed to him to be working for the joy of working.

Above all, though, he thought he had found in Russia something that his own individualistic society lacked: a “unified philosophy of life.” In Russia, he wrote, “all life is focused in a central purpose. It is directed to a single high end and energized by such powerful and glowing motivation that life seems to have supreme significance.”

Eddy was wrong about much of what he saw. Joseph Stalin was a liar and a mass murderer; Russians worked because they were hungry and afraid. The “unified philosophy of life” was a chimera, and the reality was a totalitarian state that used terror and propaganda to maintain that unity. But Eddy, like others in his era, was predisposed to admire the Soviet Union precisely because he was so critical of the economics and politics of his own country, Depression-era America. In this, he was not alone.

….

But in the 21st century, we must also contend with a new phenomenon: right-wing intellectuals, now deeply critical of their own societies, who have begun paying court to right-wing dictators who dislike America. And their motives are curiously familiar. All around them, they see degeneracy, racial mixing, demographic change, “political correctness,” same-sex marriage, religious decline. The America that they actually inhabit no longer matches the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America that they remember, or think they remember. And so they have begun to look abroad, seeking to find the spiritually unified, ethnically pure nations that, they imagine, are morally stronger than their own. Nations, for example, such as Russia.

 Masha Gessen writes How Joe Biden Rattled Vladimir Putin:

Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have been having an unusually lively exchange. On Wednesday, in a televised interview, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Biden if he knew Putin and if he thought he was a killer. Biden responded, “Hmm, I do,” which most observers interpreted as a yes to both questions. Biden also twice promised that Putin would face repercussions, both for attempting to interfere in the 2020 election, on behalf of Donald Trump, and for being a killer. In response, Russia recalled its U.S. Ambassador to Moscow for consultations—a diplomatic move that says, “We are not talking to you.”

But then Russia kept talking to the United States. Putin wished Biden good health. On Thursday, Putin said, “Now, for the statement of my American colleague: How would I respond to him? I would say to him, ‘Be healthy.’ ” He smiled. “I wish him health. I say this without irony. This is not a joke.”

….

It’s rare for Putin to spend this much time speaking directly to the camera, apparently unscripted, on a single issue. One gets the feeling that he will be coming back to this topic in the days to come. Such is the effect on Putin of the U.S. President saying something that’s true, even if it’s just “Hmm, I do.”

(Ignorant commentators on Fox News think Putin’s replies are a sign of his strength. Gessen – a Russian-born American who has studied Putin – knows better: Putin has responded from weakness, repeatedly and agitatedly, after Biden’s three simple, truthful words.)

  How 3.5 Million Oysters Are Harvested At This Virginia Farm Every Year:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 57.  Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 7:08 PM, for 12h 12m 24s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 39.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1815, after escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Sarah Volpenhein reports Wisconsin reclassifies 1,000 past COVID-19 deaths, now reports 45% of all deaths were in long-term care facilities:

In the last two weeks, Wisconsin health officials have attributed nearly 1,000 more COVID-19 deaths to long-term care facilities, people that for months had been marked as having died in an “unknown” housing setting.

The state is now reporting 45% of the people who died from COVID-19 were in long-term care facilities, when for months the state had only linked between 26% and 30% of COVID-19 fatalities to long-term care.

Those earlier percentages were much lower than in most other states, including many neighboring ones, and the differences raised questions about the accuracy and timeliness of Wisconsin’s count of long-term care deaths.

Until recently, the state was missing information in about half of all COVID-19 deaths and could not say whether those people were long-term care residents. They were listed as COVID-19 deaths with an “unknown” housing setting.

Now, many of them have been reclassified as long-term care residents, a category that covers nursing homes and assisted living centers.

….

David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School whose research focuses on long-term care, said the delay ended up making the situation in Wisconsin’s long-term care facilities appear less dire than it was.

“This is not something that you should have to go back and correct after the fact,” he said. “You can look at 40-some (other) states that seem to be able to do this in real-time.”

(Note well: When this pandemic began, a Whitewater publication obligingly and presumptively reported that a local senior home had no cases of COVID-19. This was never likely to last, and it did not. See from 5.26.20 Fairhaven Conducts 407 Resident and Staff COVID-19 Tests – Update: 100% negative. A mixture of obliging stories and amateur epidemiology serves no one.)

Alan Yuhas reports Man Says He Lived in Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium for Years:

Like other Vietnam veterans in the 1970s, Tom Garvey chased one job after another, fending off memories. Unlike other veterans, he says he turned a concession stand in a major American stadium into a place to crash for three years.

The venue was Veterans Stadium, capacity some 60,000, home to two professional teams and, partly, where Philadelphia fans earned an infamous reputation as either the best worst fans or the worst best fans in the United States.

For Mr. Garvey, now 78, it was also a home, a community and a kind of purgatory as he adapted to life after war. He has detailed his years as a secret stadium dweller, from 1979 into 1981, in a self-published book, “The Secret Apartment,” and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported his story last week.

In an interview at his home outside the city, in Ambler, Pa., Mr. Garvey, a retired real estate agent, said he took no photos of the room because he feared being caught by the authorities or, worse, the uncles who got him a job running the stadium’s parking lots. The concession stand, like the rest of Veterans Stadium, was demolished in 2004.

But four people — including Bill Bradley and Jerry Sisemore, former Philadelphia Eagles and members of the team’s hall of fame — said in interviews that they had visited the apartment. Three others said they knew of it at the time, including Vince Papale, a former Eagles receiver, and Skip Denenberg, a musician.

Russian man walks his pet geese: