“I think I was right that Donald Trump could not be trusted with those basic responsibilities of a U.S. President.”
Are you a Republican, ex-Republican, or Trump-voter who won’t support the president this November? Share your story here: https://rvat.org/tell-your-story
To get involved in the project, go to https://rvat.org/get-involved
To help support their mission, go to https://rvat.org/donate
Matt Zapotsky reports Stephen Bannon, three others charged with defrauding donors to online fundraising campaign for border wall:
Federal prosecutors in New York on Thursday unsealed criminal charges against Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, and three other men they alleged defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors using an online crowdfunding campaign that was advertised as raising money to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.
In a news release, prosecutors said Bannon and another organizer of the campaign, Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, claimed they would not take any compensation as part of the campaign, called “We Build The Wall,” but that was a lie. Bannon, prosecutors alleged, received more than $1 million through a nonprofit he controlled, sending hundreds of thousands out to Kolfage while keeping a “substantial portion” for himself.
In one night, through two speakers, the Democrats succinctly made their case against Donald Trump (through Barack Obama) and for an alternative (through Kamala Harris). There have been, we may be grateful, few times that America has faced so existential a threat as Trumpism. No one would envy us these times; no caring person would wish times like these on a future generation.
Good morning. 
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-two. Sunrise is 6:08 AM and sunset 7:47 PM, for 13h 39m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1968, Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring.
Recommended for reading in full —
David Smith and Julia Carrie Wong report Trump tacitly endorses baseless QAnon conspiracy theory linked to violence:
Followers of the QAnon movement believe without evidence that Trump is fighting a Satanic “deep state” of global elites involved in paedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children.
Yet asked about the theory at Wednesday’s White House press briefing, the US president failed to condemn it. “I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate,” he said. “I have heard that it is gaining in popularity.”
Supporters of QAnon share Trump’s concerns about rising crime in Democratic-led cities, the president continued. “These are people that don’t like seeing what’s going on in places like Portland and places like Chicago and New York and other cities and states. I’ve heard these are people that love our country and they just don’t like seeing it.”
A reporter followed up, pointing out that QAnon supporters believe Trump is “secretly saving the world from this Satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals”. The president replied flippantly: “I haven’t heard that but is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?
See also FBI Labels Fringe Conspiracy Theories as Domestic Terrorism Threat.
Benjamin Wittes writes Republican Senators Misrepresent Their Own Russia Report:
Here are some of the committee’s own findings about Trump campaign engagement with the Russian electoral interference—findings subscribed to by each and every one of the senators who protests that they did not find “collusion”:
- “The Committee found that Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services . . . represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”
- “While [Russian military intelligence] and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”
- “Trump and senior Campaign officials sought to obtain advance information about WikiLeaks’s planned releases through Roger Stone.”
- “The Committee further found that Papadopoulos’s efforts introduced him to several individuals that raise counterintelligence concerns, due to their associations with individuals from hostile foreign governments, as well as actions these individuals undertook. The Committee assesses that Papadopoulos was not a witting cooptee of the Russian intelligence services, but nonetheless presented a prime intelligence target and potential vector for malign Russian influence.”
It goes on. And on. And on.
Get a load of cuties Itchy and Scratchy, the latest baby Tasmanian devils born to conservation project Aussie Ark. The org works to replenish the devil population after disease depleted the species by up to 90% pic.twitter.com/bq44xThaX4
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 19, 2020
Under the threat from Trumpism, the Democrats of this convention have built a coalition, of themselves supportive independents, that looks like America. In their roll call vote last night, one saw the success of their efforts. Those opposed to Trump might have wilted under pressure from the power of the federal executive branch, but they have instead grown ever stronger by forming a majoritarian movement that advances America’s hopeful political tradition of evolving liberty and justice.
Against the most powerful man in all the world, they have arrayed millions upon millions of less powerful men and women committed to a constitutional ideal.
Democratic delegates from all 50 U.S. states and seven territories cast their official votes for the 2020 presidential nominee during a virtual roll call on the second night of the Democratic National Convention. Speaking from notable locations in their home regions — from ocean shores in Puerto Rico to tribal lands in New Mexico and South Dakota — delegates highlighted their policy priorities and announced vote tallies for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny seventy-nine. Sunrise is 6:07 AM and sunset 7:49 PM, for 13h 42m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Tech Park board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 8:00 AM, and the Parks & Rec Board by audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1812, American frigate USS Constitution defeats the British frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia earning the nickname “Old Ironsides.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Luke Harding and Julian Borger report US Senate report goes beyond Mueller to lay bare Trump campaign’s Russia links (‘Bipartisan intelligence panel says that Russian who worked on Trump’s 2016 bid was career spy, amid a stunning range of contacts’):
A report by the Senate intelligence committee provides a treasure trove of new details about Donald Trump’s relationship with Moscow, and says that a Russian national who worked closely with Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 was a career intelligence officer.
The bipartisan report runs to nearly 1,000 pages and goes further than last year’s investigation into Russian election interference by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. It lays out a stunning web of contacts between Trump, his top election aides and Russian government officials, in the months leading up to the 2016 election.
The Senate panel identifies Konstantin Kilimnik as a Russian intelligence officer employed by the GRU, the military intelligence agency behind the 2018 poisoning of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal. It cites evidence – some of it redacted – linking Kilimnik to the GRU’s hacking and dumping of Democratic party emails.
Kilimnik worked for over a decade in Ukraine with Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager. In 2016 Manafort met with Kilimnik, discussed how Trump might beat Hillary Clinton, and gave the Russian spy internal polling data. The committee said it couldn’t “reliably determine” why Manafort handed over this information, or what exactly Kilimnik did with it.
It describes Manafort’s willingness to pass on confidential material to alleged Moscow agents as a “grave counterintelligence threat”. The report dubs Kilimnik part of “a cadre of individuals ostensibly operating outside of the Russian government but who nonetheless implement Kremlin-directed influence operations”. It adds that key oligarchs including Oleg Deripaskafund these operations, together with the Kremlin.
The investigation found that Kilimnik tweets under the pseudonym Petro Baranenko (@PBaranenko). The account regularly propagates Moscow’s line on international issues, such as the conflict in Ukraine and the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.
The fact that a Republican-controlled Senate panel established a direct connection between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence makes it harder for Trump and his supporters to allege that the investigation into possible collusion was a “witch-hunt” or “hoax” as the president has repeatedly claimed, in the remaining three months before the election.
Paul Waldman writes A new bipartisan report raises the question: If this isn’t ‘collusion,’ what is?:
So here’s what we’re left with. The person running the Trump campaign had a close associate who is a Russian intelligence officer, with whom he was sharing confidential campaign information as Russia mounted its effort to help Trump get elected.
As part of that effort, Russia broke into Democratic systems, then passed damaging information to WikiLeaks for carefully timed release. The president’s longtime friend had a line into the “leak” part of Russia’s hack-and-leak, through which he learned the subject and timing of upcoming leaks and kept Trump personally informed.
If that’s not “collusion,” what is?
Elephant Shrew Species Rediscovered in Djibouti After 50 Years:
more >>As it turns out, while testing her microphone before going live at the first night of the Democratic National Convention, Gov. Whitmer of Michigan used a spicy test line:
Gov. Whitmer (D-MI) jokes before going live: "It's not just Shark Week … it's Shark Week *mouths expletive*" pic.twitter.com/KSndbTvLZi
— The Recount (@therecount) August 18, 2020
Via Gretchen Whitmer Drops Hilarious Hot Mic F-Bomb Just Seconds Before DNC Speech.
(Her test line was, in fact, admirably funny, and even more so as she delivered it in a pronounced Upper Midwest – Michigan accent.)
So, the Democrats held the first night of their audiovisual convention Monday night. There were, watching, millions of us who are not Democrats, but are yet resolved and confirmed against Trump his autocratic nativism. Although some like us have melted away, for the remnant of which we are a part Never Trump means never Trump. We find ourselves, fortunately and happily, part of a grand coalition of opposition and resistance, against a true threat to the American constitutional order. It is, necessarily, around the large, established Democratic Party that this grand coalition will fight this fall. No one of us can assure victory; without the Democrats we would be assured of defeat.
For all the prominent speakers at the first night of the Democratic convention, perhaps no one will remain so long in memory as Kristin Urquiza, speaking of her late father, Mark Anthony Urquiza:
Kristin Urquiza, who recently lost her father to COVID-19, addressed Democrats on Aug. 17 during the first night of the Democratic National Convention. Urquiza’s father died this year at the age of 65 as a result of the coronavirus. She said her dad was healthy, but by trusting President Donald Trump’s assurances that the coronavirus was under control, he “paid with his life.” “Donald Trump may not have caused the coronavirus, but his dishonesty and irresponsible actions made it so much worse,” Urquiza said, calling for a leader with a national, data-driven response to COVID-19. Urquiza’s remarks were part of the convention’s first night of programming. The coronavirus pandemic upended both parties’ traditional conventions. Instead, the program each night featured a number of speakers and musical performances virtually across the country.
At last night’s meeting of the Whitewater Unified School District’s board, the board heard (and approved on a 6-0 vote) the online platform for students choosing the virtual instruction and required staffing. (Video, 43:50.) Some students have chosen a purely virtual format, and much of the board discussion was about an all-virtual provider. The district chose Edgenuity as its wholly virtual model, a model that will include district employee oversight over students’ virtual instruction on that platform. Many other students will take classes through a format that that includes face-to-face meetings and online instruction from district teachers.
Embedded above is the video of the meeting; at the bottom of this post is a district description of the choices between the two options for 9.1 to 9.25. (Some parents will perhaps remain with the virtual option through the school year; others may change from one format to another as public health conditions change.)
A few remarks —
1. The Description of Instructional Options. Beginning early in the discussion, the district’s administrator described the main purpose of the meeting as explaining the preferred platform for those students choosing a virtual option. (Video, 7:00.) The curriculum director described that virtual platform offering (Video, 7:50), and how the virtual model for elementary school students will be different from virtual instruction for students in grades 6 to 12. (Video, 11:30.)
2. Complicated. Beginning about a half hour into the meeting, a board member bemoans how complicated all these options will be for parents. (Video, 28:10.) It’s not notably complicated at all. It only becomes complicated when one drifts from the main line of discussion into peripheral matters: JEDI options (Video, 24:54), or a question about picking and choosing between virtual options that anyone listening to the prior presentation with attention would know is not part of the district’s preferred method (Video, 12:55).
Most people are very sharp, and perform equally complicated tasks daily: reading labels, making purchases, using technology. These matters are only too complicated if one underestimates others (while perhaps overestimating oneself by proud comparison). There’s vanity in supposing that only some can grasp these choices.
Anyone who can compare prices that include shipping costs (Video, 56:09) should manage this discussion without feeling it’s notably hard to do so.
3. Good Order. This board is in the habit of allowing questions at any point in a presentation, even when it’s not topical. (Video, 25:00.) Board members should exhibit greater personal discipline, and wait until presentations are done before interrupting to ask a question (including, of course, tangential ones). When a presentation is done, everyone should have a chance – in a guided round robin – to ask questions. If a board member has no questions on that topic, he or she need only say ‘no questions at this time.’ One could always return for a second round, in the same guided way, to see if new questions have emerged when the first round is done.
Perhaps a tolerance for interruption seems to this board as mere courtesy to one of their own. All of this comes at the cost of clarity of communication. Allowing a conversation to be sidetracked is less at the the board’s expense than at the community’s expense. A public body that manages its meetings this way creates its own problems, and worse problems for those it claims to serve.
4. Confidence. Early in the district administrator’s presentation, she observes that the school administration has grown more confident in its approach. (Video, 4:40.) That’s evident across these meetings, whatever one thinks of the particulars of these plans. I’ve no prediction about the course of the pandemic in Whitewater, but the collapsing athletic programing in districts beyond the city at least suggests a difficult autumn. It’s simply not the case that leaders of all those programs – many of them near but outside Whitewater – wanted to cancel, or were timid. The public health conditions of this country are notably worse than any rational person would have hoped, and ignoring our circumstances will not make them ago away.
5. Translations. I’m a native English speaker who lives in a multilingual community: Whitewater, Wisconsin. The district’s English-language summary sheet, embedded below, should also be published by the district in Spanish.
Previously: Whitewater Schools’ Community Focus Group, 7.8.20, The Whitewater Unified School District’s Proposed Fall Instructional Plans, The Whitewater School Board’s Decision on Early Fall Instruction: 4 Points, Whitewater School Board Meeting, 8.3.20: 6 Points, and Whitewater School Board Meeting, 8.10.20: 9 Points.
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-five. Sunrise is 6:05 AM and sunset 7:50 PM, for 13h 44m 46s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1868, French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium.
Recommended for reading in full —
David Lawler writes The U.S. is far behind other rich countries in coronavirus response:
Over the past several weeks, the coronavirus has killed Americans at six times the average rate in other rich countries. And we’re recording about eight times more infections.
Why it matters: The virus burned through the rich world like wildfire in the spring, but this new data confirms that the U.S. is one of very few wealthy countries that have failed to suppress it since then.
Breaking it down: The World Bank’s list of “high-income economies” includes 83 countries and territories, ranging from Austria to Bermuda to Chile. Their populations add up to 907 million — 2.7 times America’s.
- As of July 1, they’d collectively recorded virtually the same number of cases as the U.S., and 1.6 times as many deaths.
- Since then, however, 75% of all new cases and 69% of all deaths recorded anywhere in the rich world came in the U.S., which accounts for 27% of the group’s population.
- The U.S. is conducting more testing than many other countries. But that’s only a small part of the story.
How it happened: Other rich countries saw pandemic peaks that were just as terrifying as America’s. But while they climbed down afterwards, the U.S. remained trapped near the summit.
- Italy, for example, had recorded 34,767 deaths as of July 1 but has seen just 458 since.
CBS News reports New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern calls Trump’s claim of virus surge “patently wrong”:
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday slapped down Donald Trump’s talk of an out-of-control coronavirus “surge” in New Zealand as “patently wrong”:
She expressed dismay after the U.S. president exaggerated the new virus outbreak in New Zealand as a “huge surge” that Americans would do well to avoid.
“Anyone who is following,” Ardern said, “will quite easily see that New Zealand’s nine cases in a day does not compare to the United States’ tens of thousands.”
Rachel Hatzipanagos reports ‘Latinx’ not a preferred term among Hispanics, survey says:
Despite the increasing use of “Latinx” in the news media and by some politicians, the gender-neutral word to describe people of Latin American descent is not the preferred term among that group. Less than a quarter, 23 percent, of those who identify as Hispanic or Latino have even heard of the term “Latinx,” a new Pew Research Center survey found.
Some groups within those who identify as Latino are more likely to use the term than others, said Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of global migration and demography research at Pew.
“Younger people, college-educated Hispanics and notably young Hispanic women were the ones most likely to say that they used the term ‘Latinx’ themselves to describe their identity,” Lopez said.
Overall, “Hispanic” is preferred by a 61 percent majority of people of Latin American descent, followed by “Latino,” which is preferred by 29 percent, Pew found. Left-leaning people seemed to be more likely to have heard the term “Latinx.”
(Best to use the terms that a majority of a group wishes be used to describe itself than to apply a term to them.)
Why Elon Musk Was So Nervous About Crew Dragon’s Splashdown:
more >>See also Miles Taylor, At Homeland Security, I saw firsthand how dangerous Trump is for America:
The president has tried to turn DHS, the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, into a tool used for his political benefit. He insisted on a near-total focus on issues that he said were central to his reelection — in particular building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. Though he was often talked out of bad ideas at the last moment, the president would make obviously partisan requests of DHS, including when he told us to close the California-Mexico border during a March 28, 2019, Oval Office meeting — it would be better for him politically, he said, than closing long stretches of the Texas or Arizona border — or to “dump” illegal immigrants in Democratic-leaning sanctuary cities and states to overload their authorities, as he insisted several times.
Trump’s indiscipline was also a constant source of frustration. One day in February 2019, when congressional leaders were waiting for an answer from the White House on a pending deal to avoid a second government shutdown, the president demanded a DHS phone briefing to discuss the color of the wall. He was particularly interested in the merits of using spray paint and how the steel structure should be coated. Episodes like this occurred almost weekly.
Kelly Meyerhofer reports UW-Madison still waiting on Foxconn’s $100 million pledge 2 years later:
Foxconn Technology Group gave no money to UW-Madison over the past year, renewing questions about the company’s commitment to its $100 million pledge to the university nearly two years ago.
UW-Madison received $700,000 in the first of a five-year agreement — less than 1% of the company’s overall commitment. Records show the university has received no additional money in the second year of the agreement.
No reasonable person should be surprised…
Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers, Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition, Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, Foxconn Roundup, Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere, Foxconn: Evidence of Bad Policy Judgment, Foxconn: Behind Those Headlines, Foxconn: On Shaky Ground, Literally, Foxconn: Heckuva Supply Chain They Have There…, Foxconn: Still Empty, and the Chairman of the Board Needs a Nap, Foxconn: Cleanup on Aisle 4, Foxconn: The Closer One Gets, The Worse It Is, Foxconn Confirm Gov. Evers’s Claim of a Renegotiation Discussion, America’s Best Know Better, Despite Denials, Foxconn’s Empty Buildings Are Still Empty, Right on Schedule – A Foxconn Delay, Foxconn: Reality as a (Predictable) Disappointment, Town Residents Claim Trump’s Foxconn Factory Deal Failed Them, Foxconn: Independent Study Confirms Project is Beyond Repair, It Shouldn’t, Foxconn: Wrecking Ordinary Lives for Nothing, Hey, Wisconsin, How About an Airport-Coffee Robot?, Be Patient, UW-Madison: Only $99,300,000.00 to Go!, Foxconn: First In, Now Out, Foxconn on the Same Day: Yes…um, just kidding, we mean no, Foxconn: ‘Innovation Centers’ Gone in a Puff of Smoke, Foxconn: Worse Than Nothing, Foxconn: State of Wisconsin Demands Accountability, Foreign Corporation Stalls, Foxconn Notices the Noticeable, Journal Sentinel’s Rick Romell Reports the Obvious about Foxconn Project, and Foxconn’s ‘Innovation’ Centers: Still Empty a Year Later.
