Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see a mix of clouds and sun with a high of seventy-two.  Sunrise is 5:24 AM and sunset 8:18 PM, for 14h 54m 34s of daytime.  The moon is new with none of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1968, “Milwaukee Bucks” is selected as the franchise name after 14,000 fans participated in a team-naming contest.

Recommended for reading in full —

Alison Durkee writes The Mike Pompeo Scandals Just Keep Piling Up:

President Donald Trump’s recent firing of State Department inspector general Steve Linick at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s request has set off a cascade of damning stories about the secretary of state’s behavior in office. And the news just keeps getting worse. Days after NBC News reported Pompeo’s frequent taxpayer-funded “Madison” dinners, which appear to be more of a political opportunity for the secretary’s presidential ambitions than official diplomatic affairs, the New York Times reports Pompeo has done even more politicking under the guise of official business. Per the Times, Pompeo has on multiple occasions used his official State trips to visit conservative donors and politicians—without putting them on his public schedule or informing reporters of the trips.

Pompeo’s reported secret visits included a dinner meeting with Republican donors while in London for a NATO meeting, and a visit with Republican billionaire Charles Koch aboard a government aircraft while on an official trip to Kansas. On an official visit to Florida in January, the secretary of state also made a mysterious detour to the Villages, a retirement community chock-full of Republican donors. The Tampa Bay Times reported in February that based on the address Pompeo visited, he was likely visiting GOP donor Mark Morse, whose family developed the Villages and has donated more than $100,000 to Republicans since January 2019. The secretary and former CIA director has also made trips to major gatherings of business leaders—which were branded as official business but prime for political schmoozing—including visiting the annual Bilderberg Meeting in Switzerland last year and the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in 2017 and 2019. (These visits are all on top of Pompeo’s repeated trips to Kansas while he was considering running for Senate there, which were so frequent that the Kansas City Star issued an op-ed proclaiming, “Mike Pompeo, either quit and run for U.S. Senate in Kansas or focus on your day job.”)

Robert Tracinski writes You Will Never Be #MAGA Enough:

It is pretty obvious that Fox News has done more to boost Donald Trump and carry water for him than any other institution. But that isn’t enough to save them. Only the most unblinkingly slavish devotion, with never a hint of even accidental criticism, will do. And so the president has been preparing to put the skids under his previous favorite media organization.

No, scratch that, his second favorite media organization. His favorite is and always will be Twitter, which is the platform he used to slide the knife between Fox’s ribs, declaring, “Fox News is no longer the same. We miss the great Roger Ailes. You have more anti-Trump people, by far, than ever before. Looking for a new outlet!”

He said this in response to a random Twitter fan who complained to Laura Ingraham, “Your colleagues at @FoxNews might as well be on @cnn because all they do is spew #FakeNews.”

….

If you stay on the Trump Train long enough you will discover—as Fox News has and OANN eventually will—that you will find that the demands for conformity are endless, capricious, and unforgiving.

 What Would It Mean If U.S. States Went Bankrupt?:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see partly cloudy skies with a high of sixty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:25 AM and sunset 8:17 PM, for 14h 52m 50s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1856, Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery fanatics.

Recommended for reading in full —

Sheera Frenkel, Ben Decker, and Davey Alba report How the ‘Plandemic’ Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread Widely Online (‘Conspiracy theories about the pandemic have gained more traction than mainstream online events. Here’s how’):

There have been plenty of jaw-dropping digital moments during the coronavirus pandemic.

There was the time this month when Taylor Swift announced she would air her “City of Lover” concert on television. The time that the cast of “The Office” reunited for an 18-minute-long Zoom wedding. And the time last month that the Pentagon posted three videos that showed unexplained “aerial phenomena.”

Yet none of those went as viral as a 26-minute video called “Plandemic,” a slickly produced narration that wrongly claimed a shadowy cabal of elites was using the virus and a potential vaccine to profit and gain power. The video featured a discredited scientist, Judy Mikovits, who said her research about the harm from vaccines had been buried.

“Plandemic” went online on May 4 when its maker, Mikki Willis, a little-known film producer, posted it to Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and a separate website set up to share the video. For three days, it gathered steam in Facebook pages dedicated to conspiracy theories and the anti-vaccine movement, most of which linked to the video hosted on YouTube. Then it tipped into the mainstream and exploded.

Just over a week after “Plandemic” was released, it had been viewed more than eight million times on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and had generated countless other posts.

William Haseltine writes Moderna’s claim of favorable results in its vaccine trial is an example of ‘publication by press release’:

The most recent example is Moderna’s claim Monday of favorable results in its vaccine trial, which it announced without revealing any of the underlying data. The announcement added billions of dollars to the value of the company, with its shares jumping almost 20 percent. Many analysts believe it contributed to a 900-point gain in the Dow Jones industrial average.

The Moderna announcement described a safety trial of its vaccine based on eight healthy participants. The claim was that in all eight people, the vaccine raised the levels of neutralizing antibodies equivalent to those found in convalescent serum of those who recovered from covid-19. What to make of that claim? Hard to say, because we have no sense of what those levels were. This is the equivalent of a chief executive of a public company announcing a favorable earnings report without supplying supporting financial data, which the Securities and Exchange Commission would never allow.

There is a legitimate question regarding what Moderna’s unsupported assertion means. The scientific and medical literature reports that some people who have recovered have little to no detectable neutralizing antibodies. There is even existing scientific literature that suggests it is possible neutralizing antibodies may not protect animals or humans from infection or reinfection by coronaviruses.

Michigan Dams Fail Forcing Evacuations Amid “Historic” Flooding:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see clouds giving way to some sun with a high of sixty-six.  Sunrise is 5:25 AM and sunset 8:16 PM, for 14h 51m 03s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 4.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 7 PM.

 On this day in 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

Recommended for reading in full —

Michael Biesecker and Jason Dearden report Trump allies lining up doctors to prescribe rapid reopening:

Republican political operatives are recruiting “extremely pro-Trump” doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible, without waiting to meet safety benchmarks proposed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

The plan was discussed in a May 11 conference call with a senior staffer for the Trump reelection campaign organized by CNP Action, an affiliate of the GOP-aligned Council for National Policy. A leaked recording of the hourlong call was provided to The Associated Press by the Center for Media and Democracy, a progressive watchdog group.

….

Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, confirmed to AP that an effort to recruit doctors to publicly support the president is underway, but declined to say when the initiative would be rolled out.

“Anybody who joins one of our coalitions is vetted,” Murtaugh said Monday. “And so quite obviously, all of our coalitions espouse policies and say things that are, of course, exactly simpatico with what the president believes. … The president has been outspoken about the fact that he wants to get the country back open as soon as possible.”

Dana Milbank writes If Trump likes hydroxychloroquine, he’ll love camel urine:

The president has botched the pandemic response, and he is now botching the economic recovery. But he could put his talents to use by serving as a full-time lab animal, a national guinea pig, a cavy-in-chief. He probably won’t find a cure, but Trump, by acting as a one-man FDA, would do something almost as helpful: Distract himself from doing yet more damage to the country.

He’ll quaff a bitterroot tonic from Madagascar called Covid Organics, together with a blend of “purgative” herbal extracts from China said to combat the “noxious dampness” responsible for the pandemic.

And of course, he’ll go through a couple of bottles of his favorite quarterback Tom Brady’s “immunity blend supplement,” out this week, featuring larch tree extract and elderberry. “You’re gonna love it,” Brady says.

You know what else Trump will love? Covering himself in cow dung and drinking cow urine. Some in India believe this to be particularly effective if done while performing a ritual in front of a fire.

However, some in the Middle East believe camel urine to be more effective as an antiviral; Trump will be able to settle this dispute conclusively.

Wikipedia, my main medical source for unproven remedies, also lists cures involving: getting vaccinated against the virus by touching your television; a $400 “spiritual vaccine”; the use of “Namaste” as a greeting; and the application of a cotton ball soaked in violet oil to one’s posterior.

Mt. Saint Helens from space. Before and after eruption – 1973 to 2019:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of sixty-two.  Sunrise is 5:26 AM and sunset 8:16 PM, for 14h 49m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 9.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s common council meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.

 On this day in 1942, after the Battle of the Coral Sea, Task Force 16 heads to Pearl Harbor.

Recommended for reading in full —

Juliet Linderman and Martha Mendoza report Counterfeit Masks Reaching Frontline Health Workers in U.S.:

On a day when COVID-19 cases soared, healthcare supplies were scarce and an anguished doctor warned he was being sent to war without bullets, a cargo plane landed at the Los Angeles International Airport, supposedly loaded with the ammo doctors and nurses were begging for: some of the first N95 medical masks to reach the U.S. in almost six weeks.

Already healthcare workers who lacked the crucial protection had caught COVID-19 after treating patients infected with the highly contagious new coronavirus. That very day an emergency room doctor who earlier texted a friend that he felt unsafe without protective supplies or an N95 mask, died of the infection. It was the first such death reported in the U.S., according to the American College of Emergency Physicians.

….

But the day before they arrived, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a very specific warning: all Shanghai Dasheng N95 masks with ear loops were counterfeit.

Ear loop masks are less expensive to manufacture because the straps are attached with glue to the face covering, while headbands on genuine N95s, also called respirators, must be stitched, stapled or soldered to establish a tighter seal over the nose and mouth.

Jason Wilson reports US lockdown protests may have spread virus widely, cellphone data suggests:

The anonymized location data was captured from opt-in cellphone apps, and data scientists at the firm VoteMap used it to determine the movements of devices present at protests in late April and early May in five states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado and Florida.

They then created visualizations that tracked the movements of those devices up to 48 hours after the conclusion of protests. The visualizations only show movements within states, due to the queries analysts made in creating them. But the data scientist Jeremy Fair, executive-vice president of VoteMap, says that many of the devices that are seen to reach state borders are seen to continue across them in the underlying raw data.

One visualization shows that in Lansing, Michigan, after a 30 April protest in which armed protesters stormed the capitol building and state police were forced to physically block access to Governor Gretchen Whitmer, devices which had been present at the protest site can be seen returning to all parts of the state, from Detroit to remote towns in the state’s north.

One device visible in the data traveled to and from Afton, which is over 180 miles from the capital. Others reached, and some crossed, the Indiana border.

In the 48 hours following a 19 April “Operation Gridlock” protest in Denver, devices reached the borders of neighboring states including Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Utah.

Is it Time for the U.S. to Make the Switch to Mail-In Voting?:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with scattered showers and a high of sixty.  Sunrise is 5:27 AM and sunset 8:15 PM, for 14h 47m 21s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 16.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School District’s distinctions committee meets at 2 PM via audiovisual conferencing. 

 On this day in 1863, the Siege of Vicksburg begins (“seventeen different Wisconsin regiments were involved in the assault that began the next day – “8th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 20th, 23rd, 25th, 27th, 29th and 33rd Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 1st, 6th and 12th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries as well as the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry”).

Recommended for reading in full —

Mike Stobbe and Jason Dearden report Officials release edited coronavirus reopening guidance:

The CDC drafted the reopening guidance more than a month ago and it was initially shelved by the administration, the AP reported last week.

The agency also had prepared even more extensive guidance — about 57 pages of it — that has not been posted.

That longer document, which the AP obtained, would give different organizations specifics about how to reopen while still limiting spread of the virus, including by spacing workers or students 6 feet apart and closing break rooms and cafeterias to limit gatherings. Many of the suggestions already appear on federal websites but they haven’t been presented as reopening advice.

Some health experts and politicians have been pushing for the CDC to release as much guidance as possible to help businesses and organizations decide how to proceed.

“They want to be able to tell their own employees the guidance of the federal government,” Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University, said at a congressional hearing Wednesday. “They want to be able to tell their customers, ‘We’ve done everything that’s been asked of us.’”

Evelyn N. Farkas writes Russia is interfering in our elections again. And Trump supporters are emulating Russian tactics:

U.S. national security experts warned years ago that Russia would meddle in our 2020 elections. The reality is worse: President Trump’s supporters are mirroring Russian tactics.

In 2017, I was attacked by the far right as well as Russian actors after speaking publicly as President Obama’s deputy assistant defense secretary for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia; today, the campaign against me appears to be domestic, albeit aided by Russian trolls. The political stakes are higher for all Americans this year, not just me. The tactics behind these attacks reveal a frightening development for American democracy.

In President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, disinformation and intimidation tactics are commonly used to silence domestic opposition. (So is murder.) False allegations, followed by contradictory, also false, narratives are the norm in Russian media and political discourse. Misinformation is so prevalent that many Russians are largely indifferent to what is actually true. In Trump’s America, similar tactics are taking hold. What began as a disconcerting nexus between Russia and the reactionary right in this and other countries has become part of the American right-wing repertoire.

Healthcare workers turn their backs on Belgium’s prime minister:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of fifty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:28 AM and sunset 8:13 PM, for 14h 45m 25s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 23.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1673, Louis Jolliet, Father Jacques Marquette, and five French voyageurs depart from the mission of St. Ignace, at the head of Lake Michigan, to reconnoiter the Mississippi River.

Recommended for reading in full —

Margaret Sullivan writes Facebook has a huge truth problem. A high-priced ‘oversight board’ won’t fix it:

Facebook last week announced the formation of a 20-member “oversight board.” The panel will rule on difficult content issues, such as whether specific Facebook or Instagram posts constitute hate speech. Some of its rulings will be binding; other will be considered “guidance.”

….

If gold-plated résumés were the answer, we’d be all set. But as one of the top technology critics in the country, Recode co-founder Kara Swisher, put it recently, they’ve been charged with the impossible — “trying to push back the ocean with one hand.”

To this, I’d add some other concerns. Anyone who has ever served on a committee, especially a large one or one populated with big egos, knows that it’s not an ideal way to get things done.

With rare exceptions, the committee format is unwieldy and inefficient, long on lofty discussions, short on definitive action. And certainly not a proven way to cut through a vast amount of information, take on the thorniest of problems and make hugely important decisions on issues that constantly arise in real time.

….

What’s more, the members’ paid participation may actually end up muting their voices at a time when they could be serving as some of Facebook’s most influential critics.

“They are now effectively within the Facebook corporate tent,” Emily Bell, director of Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, told Columbia Journalism Review. That “buys up potential dissent or criticism.”

Greg Sargent writes The 2016 nightmare is already repeating itself:

The latest developments in the Michael Flynn case should prompt us to revisit one of the most glaring failures in political journalism, one that lends credibility to baseless narratives pushed for purely instrumental purposes, perversely rewarding bad-faith actors in the process.

News accounts constantly claim with no basis that new information “boosts” or “lends ammunition” to a particular political attack, or “raises new questions” about its target. These journalistic conventions are so all-pervasive that we barely notice them.

But they’re extremely pernicious, and they need to stop. They both reflect and grotesquely amplify a tendency that badly misleads readers. That happened widely in 2016, to President Trump’s great benefit. It’s now happening again.

….

When critics say Clinton was unfairly placed on an equivalent plane to Trump in this regard, journalists defensively point out that Democrats must be scrutinized, too. But this misses the objection, which centers not on a demand for light scrutiny of Democrats, but on a criticism of presentation and proportionality, and the ways in which getting that lopsidedly wrong misinforms in a larger and more intangible sense.

Building the World’s Largest Open-Air Museum:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of sixty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:29 AM and sunset 8:12 PM, for 14h 43m 27s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 31.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1913, Woody Herman (American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, singer, and big band leader) is born.

Recommended for reading in full —

Inae Oh writes McConnell Admits He Was Wrong to Say Obama Left Trump Without Pandemic Plan (‘The former administration left behind a 69-page document’):

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday conceded that he had been “wrong” to claim, as he did during an appearance on the Trump campaign’s YouTube channel earlier this week, that the Obama administration had failed to leave guidance on preparing for a pandemic.

“I was wrong,” the top Senate Republican told Fox News. “They did leave behind a plan. So I clearly made a mistake in that regard.”

McConnell, however, refused to make a judgment on whether President Trump had failed to follow the playbook. “I don’t have any observation about that because I don’t know enough about the details of that to comment on it in any detail.”

But McConnell’s claim of ignorance didn’t stop him from making his false allegation on Monday.

Michelle Hackman and Alison Sider report TSA Preparing to Check Passenger Temperatures at Airports Amid Coronavirus Concerns (‘Travelers would have temperatures checked at about a dozen airports under plans that are still under discussion’):

U.S. officials are preparing to begin checking passengers’ temperatures at roughly a dozen airports as soon as next week, as the coronavirus pandemic has heightened anxieties about travel, according to people familiar with the matter.

Details of the plan are still being completed and are subject to change, the people said. It couldn’t be determined which airports will initially have the new scanning procedures. A senior Trump administration official said the initial rollout is expected to cost less than $20 million, and that passengers won’t be charged an additional fee.

Airlines have been pushing for the Transportation Security Administration to start taking passengers’ temperatures as part of a multifaceted effort to keep potentially sick people from boarding planes and to make passengers feel more comfortable taking trips again. Demand for air travel has dropped more than 90% amid transport restrictions and stay-at-home orders.

Woody Herman, Camel Walk: