Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-six.  Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 14h 45m 27s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 9.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

 On this day in 1903, Ford Motor Company sells its first car.

Recommended for reading in full —

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write Nothing Can Justify the Attack on Portland:

So why is the Trump administration sending into American cities officers who aren’t appropriately trained for the mission, are acting on legal authority that will require litigation to defend, and are being deployed to address a problem that the federal government could address by means far less provocative and in a fashion far less likely to escalate disorder?

The answer is unfortunately obvious. Having given up on controlling the pandemic that has now killed more than 140,000 Americans, and faced with dimming reelection prospects, Trump is doing his best to substantiate the tough-guy vision of the presidency that has always appealed to him. During earlier stages of his administration, he played out this fantasy along the southern border of the United States by deploying troops to the American Southwest and warning about “caravans” of travelers illegally entering the country. Now, as officers typically tasked with enforcing the border have been deployed into Portland, Trump’s apocalyptic warnings about the need for a brutal response to any perceived threat have also moved from the edge of the country into American cities.

Josh Barro writes The Economy Won’t Be Recovering Anytime Soon:

Real-time data from the Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker, sponsored by Harvard and Brown universities and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, shows that consumer spending remains far above the levels from March and April but stopped rising in mid-June and remains below last year’s levels. The recent retrenchment has been national — consumer-spending growth has stalled not just in COVID hot spots like Texas and Arizona but also in states like New York that are performing much better. That suggests consumers are looking at the big picture rather than reacting to outbreaks in their own area. And the grim outlook for schools’ reopening in the fall will serve as a further drain on the economy, making it tough for parents to resume normal work schedules.

The “V-shaped recovery” that Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow forecast as recently as July 8 is not in the cards. A double-dip recession is possible, but the most probable outcome right now looks like treading water, with the fast recovery of the late spring turning into a long, slow slog. Fewer jobs will be created, and many businesses will find themselves unable to stay afloat until conditions improve. Exactly how rough the economic recovery will be depends on many variables, but three will be key: the extent and persistence of COVID outbreaks, whether and how robustly Congress extends additional economic aid to workers and businesses, and whether and when an effective vaccine is widely distributed.

COVID19 – The big questions 6 months on:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty.  Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 14h 47m 21s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Tax Incremental Finance Joint Review Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 10 AM, and the Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

 On this day in 1943, Allied forces capture Palermo during the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Ryan McCarthy reports “Outright Lies”: Voting Misinformation Flourishes on Facebook (‘While the social media giant says it opposes voter suppression, the data shows a stark picture: Nearly half of all top-performing posts that mentioned voting by mail were false or misleading’):

Facebook’s community standards ban “misrepresentation of who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information and/or materials must be provided in order to vote.” But an analysis by ProPublica and First Draft, a global nonprofit that researches misinformation, shows that Facebook is rife with false or misleading claims about voting, particularly regarding voting by mail, which is the safest way of casting a ballot during the pandemic. Many of these falsehoods appear to violate Facebook’s standards yet have not been taken down or labeled as inaccurate. Some of them, generalizing from one or two cases, portrayed people of color as the face of voter fraud.

The false claims, including conspiracy theories about stolen elections or outright misrepresentations about voting by mail by Trump and prominent conservative outlets, are often among the most popular posts about voting on Facebook, according to a review of engagement data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool.

On Facebook, interactions — the number of comments, likes, reactions and shares that a post attracts — are a proxy for popularity. Of the top 50 posts, ranked by total interactions, that mentioned voting by mail since April 1, 22 contained false or substantially misleading claims about voting, particularly about mail-in ballots.

 Shamane Mills reports Wisconsin Cities Getting $6.3M In Grants To Help With Elections During Pandemic:

Five Wisconsin cities will get a total of $6.3 million in grants to help administer elections during the coronavirus pandemic.

The money comes from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit voting advocacy group, and will be distributed to Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine.

“We’re obviously thrilled,” said Racine Mayor Cory Mason. “The big winners in all of this are the voters who are going to be able to vote safely this year in the midst of the pandemic.”

Long lines at some Wisconsin polling places during the state’s April election, which was conducted under a statewide stay-at-home order, drew national attention as voters and poll workers weighed potential safety risks against civic duty.

Ecologists Dig Prairie Dogs, And You Should Too:

Prairie dogs are ecosystem engineers. As they go about their lives, they change their surroundings in ways that provide shelter, food and even nurseries for other species. On the grasslands of Montana, prairie dog colonies are islands of biodiversity.

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with light evening rain, and a high of eighty-one.  Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 14h 49m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Common Council meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.

 On this day in 1921, General Billy Mitchell tests his theory of air power by flying a De Havilland DH-4B fighter in a bombing demonstration that showed a naval ship could be sunk by air bombardment.

Recommended for reading in full —

Gregory Pratt and Jeremy Gorner report Homeland Security making plans to deploy some 150 agents in Chicago this week, with scope of duty unknown:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is crafting plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to Chicago this week, the Chicago Tribune has learned, a move that would come amid growing controversy nationally about federal force being used in American cities.

The Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, agents are set to assist other federal law enforcement and Chicago police in crime-fighting efforts, according to sources familiar with the matter, though a specific plan on what the agents will be doing had not been made public.

Federal agents being used to confront street protesters in Portland, Oregon, has raised alarm in many circles. Chicago, too, has dealt with protests that have led to injuries in recent days.

At an unrelated news conference Monday morning, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she has great concerns about the general possibility of President Donald Trump sending feds to Chicago based on what has happened in Portland.

If Trump wants to help, she said, he could boost federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives resources and fully fund prosecutors.

“We don’t need federal agents without any insignia taking people off the streets and holding them, I think, unlawfully,” Lightfoot said.

 Eder Campuzano reports Feds, right-wing media paint Portland as ‘city under siege.’ A tour of town shows otherwise:

One America News Network describes “violence gripping the city.” A Fox News headline blares “Portland protesters flood police precinct, chant about burning it down.” The New York Post reported Saturday that Portland “descended into violence.”

Many people who live in Portland, including Alexander, heard over the past few days from worried relatives in other states who feared that their loved ones in Portland might have been affected by fires or caught in police crossfire as they went about their day.

The images that populate national media feeds, however, come almost exclusively from a tiny point of the city: a 12-block area surrounding the Justice Center and federal courthouse.

 

And they occur exclusively during late-night hours in which only a couple hundred or fewer protesters and scores of police officers are out in the city’s coronavirus-hollowed downtown.

Those events are hardly representative of daily life, including peaceful anti-racism demonstrations that have drawn tens of thousands of protesters, in a city of 650,000 people that encompasses 145 square miles.

The vast majority of Portland residents spend quiet home-bound lives on hushed tree-lined streets with coronavirus and its resulting economic catastrophe as the greatest threat to their well-being.

Crying bear cub climbs ladder out of Eagle River basement to freedom:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty.  Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:26 PM, for 14h 51m 02s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Library Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.

 On this day in 1969, Apollo 11‘s crew successfully lands on the Moon, and Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on its surface.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Marissa J. Lang reports A Navy vet asked federal officers in Portland to remember their oaths. Then they broke his hand:

PORTLAND, Ore. — He came to the protest with a question. He left with two broken bones in a confrontation with federal officers that went viral .

Christopher David had watched in horror as videos surfaced of federal officers in camouflage throwing Portland Ore., protesters into unmarked vans. The 53-year-old Portland resident had heard the stories: protesters injured, gassed, sprayed with chemicals that tugged at their nostrils and burned their eyes.

David, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and former member of the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps, said he wanted to know what the officers involved thought of the oath they had sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.

So, he said, on Saturday evening, he headed to downtown Portland to ask them.

….

Just as he was about to leave, David said, the federal officers emerged. They rushed a line of protesters nearby, knocking protesters to the ground. David walked toward a gap in the line, calling out to the officers.

“Why are you not honoring your oath?” he bellowed. “Why are you not honoring your oath to the Constitution?”

An officer trained his weapon on David’s chest as several agents pushed him, sending David stumbling backward. But he regained his center and tried again. Another agent raised his baton and began to beat David, who stood unwavering with his arms at his sides. Then another officer unloaded a canister of chemical irritant spray into David’s face.

….

“It’s just us normal people out there,” he said. “There were a whole group of pregnant moms standing out there linking arms and they got gassed. You hear people like [President] Trump say it’s just a bunch of wacko fringe people in liberal cities who are out there, but no way. We’re all just normal people who think what’s happening is wrong.”

 Will Sommer reports Trump Campaign Legal Adviser Appears on Kremlin-Backed TV:

RT, which was formerly known as Russia Today, has been routinely criticized as a propaganda outlet for Kremlin interests. Its programming is often hyper critical of U.S. policy and in 2016 its editorial content seemed designed for two major purposes: to foster social unrest in the United States and (perhaps relatedly) boost Trump’s candidacy.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence eventually released a report that said the network, whose videos receive millions of views online, produced content “aimed at undermining viewers’ trust of US democratic procedures.” The assessment, released in 2017, added that RT was a key part of the Russian efforts to meddle in that presidential election as part of a “Kremlin directed campaign to undermine faith in the US Government and fuel political protest.”

 7.20.1969:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset 8:27 PM, for 14h 52m 48s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1977, the world’s first Global Positioning System signal was transmitted from Navigation Technology Satellite 2 to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at 12:41 a.m. Eastern time.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Michael D. Shear, Noah Weiland, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, and David E. Sanger report Inside Trump’s Failure: The Rush to Abandon Leadership Role on the Virus:

Unlike Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx is a strong believer in models that forecast the course of an outbreak. Dr. Fauci has cautioned that “models are only models” and that real-world outcomes depend on how people respond to calls for changes in behavior — to stay home, for example, or wear masks in public — sacrifices that required a sense of shared national responsibility.

In his decades of responding to outbreaks, Dr. Fauci, a voracious reader of political histories, learned to rely on reports from the ground. Late at night in his home office this spring, Dr. Fauci, who declined to comment for this article, dialed health officials in New Orleans, New York and Chicago, where he heard desperation unrecognizable in the more sanguine White House meetings.

Dr. Fauci had his own critics, who said he relied on anecdotes and experience rather than data, and who felt he was not sufficiently attuned to the devastating economic and social consequences of a national lockdown.

As the pandemic worsened, Dr. Fauci’s darker view of the circumstances was countered by the reassurances ostensibly offered by Dr. Birx’s data.

….

Dr. Birx began using versions of the phrase “putting out the embers,” wording that was later picked up by the press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, and by Mr. Trump himself.

….

Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami, a Republican, said that the White House approach had only one focus: reopening businesses, instead of anticipating how cities and states should respond if cases surged again.

“It was all predicated on reduction, open, reduction, open more, reduction, open,” he said. “There was never what happens if there is an increase after you reopen?”

Other nations had moved aggressively to employ an array of techniques that Mr. Trump never mobilized on a federal level, including national testing strategies and contact tracing to track down and isolate people who had interacted with newly diagnosed patients.

“These things were done in Germany, in Italy, in Greece, Vietnam, in Singapore, in New Zealand and in China,” said Andy Slavitt, a former federal health care official who had been advising the White House.

“They were not secret,” he said. “Not mysterious. And these were not all wealthy countries. They just took accountability for getting it done. But we did not do that here. There was zero chance here that we would ever have been in a situation where we would be dealing with ‘embers.’ ”

Living in the Valley of the Moon: