Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:41 AM and sunset 8:20 PM, for 14h 39m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 25.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee votes 27–11 to recommend its first article of impeachment against Pres. Nixon (for obstruction of justice).
This doesn’t mean he’s a spy, but neither is it a flip accusation. Russia attacked our country in 2016. It is attacking us today. Its attacks will intensify in 2020. Yet each time we try to raise our defenses to repel the attack, McConnell, the Senate majority leader, blocks us from defending ourselves.
Let’s call this what it is: unpatriotic. The Kentucky Republican is, arguably more than any other American, doing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding.
Robert Mueller sat before Congress this week warning that the Russia threat “deserves the attention of every American.” He said “the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in our election is among the most serious” challenges to American democracy he has ever seen. “They are doing it as we sit here, and they expect to do it during the next campaign,” he warned, adding that “much more needs to be done in order to protect against these intrusions, not just by the Russians but others as well.”
The next day, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the minority leader, asked for the Senate to pass the Securing America’s Federal Elections Act, already passed by the House, that would direct $600 million in election assistance to states and require backup paper ballots.
McConnell himself responded this time, reading from a statement, his chin melting into his chest, his trademark thin smile on his lips. “It’s just a highly partisan bill from the same folks who spent two years hyping up a conspiracy theory about President Trump and Russia,” he said. “Therefore, I object.” McConnell also objected to another attempt by Blumenthal to pass his bill.
Pleaded Schumer: “I would suggest to my friend the majority leader: If he doesn’t like this bill, let’s put another bill on the floor and debate it.”
But McConnell has blocked all such attempts….
(To be a Russian agent would place someone in Russia’s employ; to be an asset, as McConnell is, is to be useful and valuable to Russia’s interests even without a direct connection to a foreign intelligence service. McConnell fits the definition of a Russian asset.)
In life – at least life in a well-ordered, free society – the highest matters are not political. They are familial, cultural, social – involving greater pursuits than contending over the role of the state. Under this view, one contends over politics (as libertarians do) not because it is too important but because it must not become too important.
In our time, sadly, politics has already become too important, carrying with it the risk that America will lose her republic, and that a bigoted & autocratic nativism will impose a continent-wide herrenvolk.
One would prefer to fight a small fire and not an inferno; it’s an inferno we now face.
Politics right now is the biggest story in American history since the Civil War. It’s corruption, treason, cyberwar, racial hatreds, women and POC finding a voice and real power for the first time in decades.
And the DC press corps is completely fucking up the assignment.
If by politics one means a mostly domestic matter, then Moore is right, and right about our time for some of the same reasons the Civil War so obviously mattered: questions of race and rights, in a choice between cruel oppression & humane liberty.
Although she’s writing about the national press, the obligation to face these threats reaches to every corner of the country.
Someday – soon one hopes, but likely not for years – politics will again thankfully matter less. The business of watching over it will then safely be left to fewer people. A better politics is a bounded politics; a bounded politics is the chance for a boundless & vibrant culture.
Hyper-localism has always been a narrow idea; it’s more like a mortal sin of omission now.
Friday in Whitewater will see a morning shower with a daytime high of eighty-three. Sunrise is 5:40 AM and sunset 8:21 PM, for 14h 41m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 35.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
The image almost resembles the official seal of the president, but a closer examination reveals alterations that seem to poke fun at the president’s golfing penchant and accusations that he has ties to Russia. Neither the White House nor Turning Point knew who created it. On Thursday morning, however, the conservative group announced it had fired the member of its video team who it says was responsible for displaying the fake seal.
“We did let the individual go,” a Turning Point spokesman told The Washington Post. “I don’t think it was malicious intent, but nevertheless.”
The spokesman called the mistake “unacceptable” and said it was the result of a rushed online search to find a second image of the presidential seal to display behind Trump.
The eagle has two heads instead of one — a symbol historically tied to empire and dominance. It closely resembles the bird on the Russian coat of arms and also appears on the flags of Serbia, Albania and Montenegro. Its left talons, rather than clasping 13 arrows, appear to clutch a set of golf clubs.
One Post reader noted a website that sells merchandise featuring what appears to be the same fake seal. In those images, the words on the parody eagle’s banner say “45 es un títere,” which in Spanish translates to “45 is a puppet.” On the official presidential seal, the eagle’s mouth holds a banner with the U.S. motto, “E pluribus unum” — out of many, one. The fake seal on the shop’s merchandise shows the eagle clutching cash in its right talons.
The Whitewater School Board met on Monday, 7.22.19, and from the agenda there was a brief discussion about the learning that is fundamental to any educational program (about which I wrote yesterday). SeeSchool Board, 7.22.19: One Worthy Question.
Today, a few other points to consider:
1. It’s a mature board: most members have been on for years (the board’s two principal officers among them), and having watched years of school board meetings, it’s reasonable to conclude that past is prologue.
2. Whitewater’s middle school principal (Tanya Wojciechowicz) recently resigned, with notice after July 1st, and so under district policy owed $1,000 in breach of her contract. The discussion made clear that she notified the district only on 7.10, conceded that she was in breach of contract, and that she owed a breach penalty.
3. One board member (Stewart, who’s been in public office for something like half his life) contended that it was community knowledge that she would resign, that she had been a six-year employee, and so on the basis of her tenure she should not have to pay a contract penalty (despite her admission that she was in breach and owed the money).
4. Under that principal’s leadership, the middle school has been a troubled program for years, to which both the board president and vice president later alluded during the 7.22.19 meeting, however euphemistically. For my own references to these problems, seeThe Canary in the School District’s Coal Mine and Changes at Whitewater Middle School.
5. It’s unsurprising that an aged, local career politician would insist (without any other justification) that tenure alone entitled an administrator who knowingly broke her contract to receive a waiver from established policy
Tenure, apart from any claim to success or achievement, is empty of value beyond merely getting up in the morning and clocking in.
6. As these board members (at least some of them) know that there have been problems at the middle school, and (at least some of them) shouldknow that the principal of a school is accountable for the school’s performance, a vote to waive the contract penalty isn’t simply a vote for tenure alone — it’s a vote for tenure in spite of repeated problems on that principal’s watch during her tenure.
How many teachers, who resigned after the official deadline, and had not a single question about their performance, had to pay their contract penalties? If even one received less consideration than this administrator, then this board has decided wrongly and unfairly.
7. A majority (Stewart, Judd, Davis, Ganser) voted to waive the breach penalty; three voted to uphold the district policy on notification and enforce the penalty (Kienbaum, Linos, Ryan).
8. If a majority of this board thinks that a principal leaving a troubled school deserves an exception from her contract’s provisions even as she departs, then it’s worth considering and explaining in detail the troubles of the school she’s left behind.
The board majority opens the door to a public accounting that they, themselves, have failed to make.
9. Nothing says Old Whitewater better than the selective enforcement of policies based on little more than personal likes and dislikes. A board member (Stewart) asks to waive a contract penalty and rely on common knowledge and not written notice, but demands adherence to written policy in how the vote should be conducted (by Robert’s Rules).
Hobbes understood motivated reasoning even before the term motivated reasoning was coined: “the Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.”
10. The district rushed to hire its now-former middle school principal in the same month that her predecessor left, but one board member feels that this hiring process isn’t going fast enough, while it never seems to occur to him that the rushed process last time contributed to the hiring of this most recent, inadequate principal.
11. The district had a process underway for selecting a new middle school principal, but one member wrote up his own ideas (placing himself, among others, into the interviewing process). And yet, and yet, although he argued for inclusion as the basis of his proposal, that very proposal recommends concealing the names of the final candidates from public notice until the last possible moment.
Open when it’s convenient, closed when it’s convenient, all depending on the who’s invited to the dessert cart.
12. Perhaps strangest of all is a board member’s offer – with no sense of irony or embarrassment – of prospective interview questions (and answers!) that he found on the Internet.
If a local district cannot craft its own questions (as fortunately some employees in the district were already doing), then it cannot do much, and should be doing even less of what it is doing.
A properly educated high-school student – let alone a properly educated man or woman – does not crib term papers or interview questions from websites.
Honest to goodness.
13. One should take this board member seriously, but not deferentially. Lesser standards are a serious matter; they do not, however, not merit high regard.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-three. Sunrise is 5:39 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 14h 43m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 45.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
In Congressional hearings yesterday, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff described – and ably summarized – Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report:
Time for a Mueller report reality check: Only a small segment of America’s most powerful have read it.
President Donald Trump can’t give a straight answer about the subject. More than a dozen members of Congress readily admitted to POLITICO that they too have skipped around rather than studying every one of the special counsel report’s 448 pages. And despite the report technically ranking as a best-seller, only a tiny fraction of the American public has actually cracked the cover and really dived in.
“What’s the point?” said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who like many other lawmakers recently interviewed in the Capitol acknowledged they hadn’t completed their own comprehensive read.
The result, say lawmakers, historians and cultural critics, is a giant literacy gap in the country when it comes to the most authoritative examination into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump obstructed that investigation. And closing that gap could determine whether Democrats feel they have public backing to launch impeachment proceedings against the president. That’s why numerous Democrats, activists and pro-impeachment advocates say it’s up to them to teach Americans what the Mueller report says, even if there’s already considerable public fatigue with the issue.
The education campaign runs the gamut, from celebrities staging a dramatic Broadway reading of Mueller’s most juicy findings on obstruction of justice, to House Democrats pulling Robert Mueller back from retirement next week to publicly testify, hoping that live television cameras can illuminate what the dense government report cannot.
….
“It’s tedious,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has a copy of Mueller’s work in a large stack of things she turns to for her daily reading. She said she started right away on the report’s first volume detailing the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians while on a trip to Vietnam, and as of late June she was still plugging along. “In fairness, I haven’t picked it up in at least two weeks.”
“I’ve got a lot on my reading list,” Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said as he explained why he’s avoided one of the most highly anticipated reports in recent American history.
(The report is available online. Someone should remind these officials that sloth is a sin.)
Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 16 items, of varying importance.
In a two-hour, open-session discussion of over a dozen items, with topics great and small (and at least one board member as interested in wheedling or badgering himself into future meetings as any deeper question), there was one truly worthy topic, beyond all others, posed as a question.
Whitewater High School Principal Mike Lovenberg, while discussing academic performance measured through class work and standardized tests, and the occasional gaps between the two measurements, asked the most important educational question of the evening:
How do you make students want to do well?
In any community — but especially in rural communities like Whitewater’s that are beset with low incomes,poverty, and dim-witted cronyism, of few reliable policies but too many pain pills, of students’ emotional and physical challenges — after a meeting’s administrative fuss, came this truly educational question. (It was clear from the discussion that Lovenberg’s question involved inspiring students rather than compelling them, of course.)
A few board members, and to my recollection only a few board members, spoke in response to this question, offering possible explanations for the gap between some academic metrics and others (such as test fatigue or test anxiety).
These are plausible causes; they likely account for some of these gaps.
And yet, and yet: is it not clear that some of these gaps arise from the socio-economic condition of this community? And look, and look: is it not obvious that many have been injured by deteriorating economic and social conditions while some of us have been free from the pain of socio-economic decline?
How students learn in these conditions, because many are in these conditions, is a fundamental question. Even other questions that seem important are inferior to this fundamental one.
A newspaper’s intern and editor (Gazette: intern Pierce, editor Schwartz) may think that the headline from the meeting is the possible dissolution of the nearby Palmyra-Eagle School District, but that’s a superficial selection for a superficial readership.
It’s rural socio-economic conditions that have afflicted Palmyra-Eagle, conditions that afflict the whole area, and under which Whitewater will have to advance learning no matter how few or how many students come this district’s way.
Officials fretting about absorbing part of another district have an even greater matter than this, already before this district, to which not one has a sufficient solution.
Officials and others concerned (as I am) about the hiring of a new middle school principal have an even greater matter than this, already before us, to which not one of us has a sufficient solution.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-two. Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:23 PM, for 14h 44m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 54.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Seed Capital Screening Committee (yes, really) meets at 4:30 PM.
On this day in 1969, Apollo 11’s astronauts splashdown after an eight-day journey and successful landing on the moon.
But the outlook for manufacturing — which accounts for an estimated 16% of the state’s workforce, compared with 8.5% nationally — is less upbeat.
“Slower growth is ahead,” said Mike Halloran, an analyst with Baird who follows companies such as Gardner Denver Holdings, an industrial company based in Milwaukee.
Economic growth has slowed in China. Europe could slip into a downturn. Japan’s economy remains sluggish. And the tariffs imposed on imports from China have added to the uncertainty about the economic outlook.
That’s increased the caution of the companies that cut, stamp and forge the tools and dies, components and equipment that underpin industry.
The Institute for Supply Management’s survey of purchasing managers, a widely followed index commonly known as the PMI, showed that the manufacturing sector expanded in June, with the economy growing for the 122nd consecutive month.
But the rate of growth slowed for the third straight month, and the index was at its lowest level since October 2016. The New Orders Index showed no growth.
“There is a lot of caution around ordering,” said Richard Eastman, a senior research analyst who covers industrial technology for Baird.
Separately, the Conference Board Leading Economic Index released last week for June had the largest decline in three years. And though the stock market has hit record highs, the bond market is betting on weak growth at best.
In political media, as in love, there aren’t many chances to correct a serious wrong.
But the news media will get just that on Wednesday when Robert S. Mueller III testifies before Congress, months after his long-awaited report on Donald Trump and possible Russian collusion to swing the 2016 election was competed.
Recall how gullible — and therefore misleading to the public — the news media was in March when Attorney General William Barr characterized the unreleased report in a four-page letter.
Coverage of that letter set in place an inaccurate narrative that has been almost impossible to dislodge.
Many news organizations, including some of the most prominent, took what Barr said at face value or mischaracterized the report’s findings.
They essentially transmitted to the public — especially in all-important headlines and cable-news bulletins — what President Trump desperately wanted as the takeaway: No collusion; no obstruction.
For the first time, a database maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration that tracks the path of every single pain pill sold in the United States — by manufacturers and distributors to pharmacies in every town and city — has been made public.
The Washington Post sifted through nearly 380 million transactions from 2006 through 2012 that are detailed in the DEA’s database and analyzed shipments of oxycodone and hydrocodone pills, which account for three-quarters of the total opioid pill shipments to pharmacies. The Post is making this data available at the county and state levels in order to help the public understand the impact of years of prescription pill shipments on their communities.
The Atlantic has a story, from Faith Hill (not the singer, obviously), about how gatherings of atheists in Secular Churches Rethink Their Sales Pitch (‘They Tried to Start a Church Without God. For a While, It Worked).
These groups are learning – like all civic groups – that it’s hard to sustain membership. There’s nothing novel in that truth – keeping members is hard for most organizations, of whatever kind.
Hill might want to consider American history more thoroughly, however. She writes about these recent gatherings as though they’re new; in truth, there has been a long-standing secular movement in many communities, but by a different name.
It’s called boosterism, a secular religion of sorts, that’s played a significant role in many communities, but without any meaningful insights of either religion or secular thinking. The insistence that one must describe a town positively and promote it incessantly is as griping to its adherents as any religion or any skepticism.
A thoughtful believer or thoughtful skeptic would avoid a fanatical accentuation of the positive, but then boosterism isn’t thoughtful. It’s a clique’s mentality in the absence of thought.
(This isn’t meant to be a tight analogy, surely, but instead a loose one. The places Hill describes are different from networks of boosters, yet it’s true that in most communities marketing-as-faith among town officials & notables is more common than any other secularism – including an intellectual one – has ever been.)
This came to mind last night, while attending a community meeting (about which there’s time to write later). It’s a bracing and regrettable sight – truly – to see what looks like an incurvatus in se consume a person.
And when it does, the only one who has no possibility of seeing as much is the one so consumed.
Tuesday in Whitewater will see occasional thundershowers with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 14h 46m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 65.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
The University of Wisconsin System reached a $325,000 settlement with a former student who says UW-Oshkosh violated her rights and acted “with deliberate indifference” to the sexual harassment she faced from one of her professors.
The former student, A.R. in court documents, sued in October, claiming the university violated her Title IX rights when it failed to take action against former art professor Michael Beitz.
Though Beitz and A.R.’s relationship began as consensual in 2012, issues arose when the student began trying to distance herself one year later.
She told the court and, years earlier, university investigators that Beitz began sexually and emotionally abusing her, coercing sex and pushing her to take the morning after pill, and vandalizing one of her art pieces and harassing her.
UW System spokesman Mark Pitsch told the Journal Sentinel that the resolution is “in the best interest of taxpayers and the university.”
A.R.’s Monona-based attorney, Mary Kennelly, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. According to court documents, a separate settlement with Beitz is in progress.
(Note well: although an injured party may settle a case, no monetary settlement can compensate adequately for injures endured. The law relies on monetary settlements as an imperfect remedy for wrongs beyond a perfect human redress.)
If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifa through her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.”
Other smears target billionaire financier George Soros, a longtime Kremlin bête noire. In one segment, Rouz amplified a thoroughly debunked claim that Soros collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, when the Jewish philanthropist was 14 years old. Another Rouz story accused Soros of secretly funding migrant caravans.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-six. Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 14h 48m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Unified School Board meets tonight in closed session at 6 PM, with an open session scheduled to begin at 7 PM.
On this day in 1864, Wisconsinites defending the Union (1st, 12th, 16th, 17th, 22nd, 25th, 26th, 31st Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th Wisconsin Light Artillery) engage Confederates during the Battle of Atlanta.
See alsoThe Cruelty Is the Point (‘President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear’).
(It is necessary, if opposition to Trumpism is to prevail, to steel oneself to this truth. Those believing – pretending – otherwise will only meet with disappointment at best, and unprepared injury at worst.)
In the summer of 2016, Russian intelligence agents secretly planted a fake report claiming that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was gunned down by a squad of assassins working for Hillary Clinton, giving rise to a notorious conspiracy theory that captivated conservative activists and was later promoted from inside President Trump’s White House, a Yahoo News investigation has found.
Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, first circulated a phony “bulletin” — disguised to read as a real intelligence report —about the alleged murder of the former DNC staffer on July 13, 2016, according to the U.S. federal prosecutor who was in charge of the Rich case. That was just three days after Rich, 27, was killed in what police believed was a botched robbery while walking home to his group house in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., about 30 blocks north of the Capitol.
The purported details in the SVR account seemed improbable on their face: that Rich, a data director in the DNC’s voter protection division, was on his way to alert the FBI to corrupt dealings by Clinton when he was slain in the early hours of a Sunday morning by the former secretary of state’s hit squad.
Yet in a graphic example of how fake news infects the internet, those precise details popped up the same day on an obscure website, whatdoesitmean.com, that is a frequent vehicle for Russian propaganda. The website’s article, which attributed its claims to “Russian intelligence,” was the first known instance of Rich’s murder being publicly linked to a political conspiracy.
….
The previously unreported role of Russian intelligence in creating and fostering one of the most insidious conspiracy theories to arise out of the 2016 election is disclosed in “Yahoo News presents: Conspiracyland,” a six-part series by the news organization’s podcast “Skullduggery” that debuts this week on the third anniversary of Rich’s murder.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:41 AM and sunset 8:20 PM, for 14h 39m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 25.7% of its visible disk illuminated.