Good morning.

 Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of sixty-seven.  Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 6:42 PM, for 11h 53m 43s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, the 29th Wisconsin Infantry musters in: “The 29th Wisconsin Infantry mustered in. It would go on to participate in the battles of Port Gibson, Champion Hill, the Sieges of Vicksburg and Jackson, the Red River Campaign, the siege of Spanish Fort and the capture of Fort Blakely, Alabama.”

Recommended for reading in full —  New techniques of Russian propaganda, Rand Paul fails to lessen Russian sanctions, suspected Russian assassin was a military agent, not a ‘tourist,’ the new Federal Reserve chairman sees risks of tariffs, and video of Hindu bagpipers in New Jersey —

Kevin Roose reports Is a New Russian Meddling Tactic Hiding in Plain Sight?:

To an untrained eye, USAReally might look like any other fledgling news organization vying for attention in a crowded media landscape. Its website publishes a steady stream of stories on hot-button political issues like race, immigration and income inequality. It has reader polls, a video section and a daily podcast.

But this is no ordinary media start-up. USAReally is based in Moscow and has received funding from the Federal News Agency, a Russian media conglomerate with ties to the Internet Research Agency, the “troll farm” whose employees were indicted by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

Caught flat-footed by the influence campaigns of 2016, intelligence agencies and tech companies in the United States have spent months looking for hidden Russian footprints ahead of the midterm elections.

USAReally’s website, which began publishing in May, does not advertise its Russian roots. But in many ways, it is operating in plain sight.

Andrew Desiderio reports Rand Paul’s Push to Lift Some Russia Sanctions Fizzles (“‘It was soundly defeated for obvious reasons,’ Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) told The Daily Beast”):

Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) push to lift U.S. sanctions on Russian lawmakers failed on Wednesday, with his colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee questioning the motives behind the proposal.

An aide said Paul was the only lawmaker to vote for his amendment, which would scrap U.S. sanctions on members of the Russian Federal Assembly if Moscow agrees to lift its sanctions on American lawmakers. The 20 other senators on the foreign relations panel voted against it. The Daily Beast first reported that Paul would be introducing the amendment.

The Kentucky lawmaker’s push to normalize U.S.-Russia relations comes a month after he traveled to Moscow and met with Russian lawmakers. During that trip, he invited members of Russia’s legislature to visit the U.S. But many of them are subject to U.S. sanctions and are therefore unable to travel to the United States.

(Hard to overstate what a despicable fellow traveler Rand Paul has become. See also Appeasement Isn’t Peace.)

The Committee to Investigate Russia writes Skripal Poison Suspect is GRU Colonel:

Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, the two Russian men suspected of poisoning former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in England on March 4th, went on RT earlier this month to claim they were in the fitness industry and tourists in Salisbury on holiday the weekend in question.

In fact, Boshirov is really Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a Russian military intelligence (GRU) officer.

Online investigative outlet Bellingcat and The Insider uncovered the truth:

The suspect using the cover identity of “Ruslan Boshirov” is in fact Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a highly decorated GRU officer bestowed with Russia’s highest state award, Hero of the Russian Federation. Following Bellingcat’s own identification, multiple sources familiar with the person and/or the investigation have confirmed the suspect’s identity.

This finding eliminates any remaining doubt that the two suspects in the Novichok poisonings were in fact Russian officers operating on a clandestine government mission.

While civilians in Russia can generally own more than one passport, no civilian – or even an intelligence service officer on a personal trip – can cross the state border under a fake identity. The discovery also highlights the extent of the effort – and public diplomacy risk – Russia has taken to protect the identities of the officers. President Putin publicly vouched that “Boshirov” and “Petrov” are civilians. As it is established practice that the awards Hero of the Russian Federation are handed out by the Russian president personally, it is highly likely that Vladimir Putin would have been familiar with the identity of Colonel Chepiga, given that only a handful of officers receive this award each year.

(…)

Bellingcat has contacted confidentially a former Russian military officer of similar rank as Colonel Chepiga, in order to receive a reaction to what we found. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed surprise that at least one of the operatives engaged in the operation in Salisbury had the rank of colonel. Even more surprising was the suspects’ prior award of the highest military recognition.

In our source’s words, an operation of this sort would have typically required a lower-ranked, “field operative” with a military rank of “no higher than captain.” The source further surmised that to send a highly decorated colonel back to a field job would be highly extraordinary, and would imply that “the job was ordered at the highest level.”

The Telegraph:

The true identity of his accomplice Alexander Petrov remains unclear, but The Telegraph has established that he was travelling under his real first name and had only changed his surname to an alias.

Counter-terrorism police and the security services are understood to know his real name.

Skripal Suspect Boshirov Identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga (Bellingcat)

Skripal ‘hitman’ unmasked as GRU colonel awarded Russia’s highest military honour by Vladimir Putin

Tory Newmyer writes Trump and his Fed chair present conflicting views on trade:

[Federal Reserve Chairman] Powell — measured to the point of hedging on several key fronts, businesslike and brief in his answers — pointed to a fundamentally strong economy as justifying the central bank’s decision to hike interest rates by a quarter-point for the third time this year while penciling in a fourth for December. Yet he warned of a “rising chorus of concerns from businesses all over the country about disruption of supply chains, materials cost increases,” from the administration’s trade confrontations.

“If this, perhaps inadvertently, goes to a place where we have widespread tariffs that remain in place for a long time, a more protectionist world, that’s going to be bad for the United States economy,” Powell said. (Watch the whole news conference here.)

(Emphasis in original.)

Meet The Hindu Bagpipers of New Jersey:

Good morning.

 Wednesday in Whitewater will see a mixture of clouds and sun with a high of sixty-three.  Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 6:44 PM, for 11h 56m 36s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1960, the first Kennedy-Nixon debate takes place.

Recommended for reading in full — Evers considers tax cuts for needy families, Walker’s former transportation secretary escalates criticism, members of the U.N. laugh at Trump, Russian propagandists try new tricks, and video of a bear catching fish underwater —

Ximena Conde reports Evers Says He’ll Prioritize Tax Cut For Wisconsin’s Neediest Families:

Tony Evers, the state superintendent of public schools and Democratic gubernatorial candidate, says he wants to help more than 860,000 of Wisconsin’s neediest families with a tax break. But how he would fund those cuts is a fluid process.

Speaking at a Milwaukee Rotary Club event Tuesday, Evers cited an August United Way of Wisconsin report that found almost 40 percent of Wisconsin families struggled to pay for basic needs like transportation and child care.

Evers said giving these families a tax cut would boost the state’s economy more evenly. Funding these cuts, he said, is a matter of priorities.

“You go to the budget, you get the best you can and you try to do it without any taxes and it happens,” Evers said. “It happens every single time.”

Evers maintains the state can find savings in parts of government, including the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the state’s job creation agency, which Evers has vowed to eliminate and replace.

Mark Sommerhauser reports Scott Walker dismisses former transportation chief’s heightened criticism of his roads stance:

In a Tuesday interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, Mark Gottlieb, a Republican who led the state Department of Transportation from 2011 to 2017, also said Walker is “fear-mongering” by claiming his campaign opponent, Democrat Tony Evers, could raise the gas tax by as much as a dollar per gallon.

Those comments came shortly before Walker appeared at a Milton Interstate rest stop Tuesday, touting his expedited plans for part of the Interstate 39-90 project in Dane and Rock counties.

How to pay for roads and bridges has been a longstanding political flashpoint for Walker. Gottlieb’s latest remarks are an indicator the issue will not abate as the general election nears.

David Nakamura reports ‘People actually laughed at a president’: At U.N. speech, Trump suffers the fate he always feared:

President Trump has long argued that the United States has been taken advantage of by other nations — a “laughing stock to the entire World,” he said on Twitter in 2014 — and his political rise was based on the premise that he had the strength and resolve to change that.

But at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump got a comeuppance on the world’s biggest stage. Delivering a speech that aimed to establish U.S. “sovereignty” over the whims and needs of other nations, the president’s triumphant moment was marred in the first minute when he was met by laughter — at his expense.

The embarrassing exchange came when Trump boasted that his administration had accomplished more over two years than “almost any administration” in American history, eliciting audible guffaws in the cavernous chamber hall.

 Ben Collins reports On Reddit, Russian propagandists try new tricks:

The ongoing cat-and-mouse game between Russia-linked propagandists and tech companies now includes a simple tactic the Russians are using to sidestep social media bans — changing web addresses.

Reddit users last week were able to trace links posted to a pro-Trump community back to a Russian propaganda website that shares web infrastructure with the Kremlin’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). The links appeared to have been custom-made to appeal to a particular community, /r/The_Donald, which is known to be the most fervent and active in support of the president.

The address-changing effort highlights how propagandists continue to push disinformation on digital media platforms, employing new strategies to hide their origins as companies begin to crack down on foreign influence campaigns.

Cosimo Mortola, an analyst who tracks Russian disinformation for security firm FireEye, said that propaganda operations that started years ago have learned new tricks.

“We’ve been tracking the IRA for several years and there’s no doubt that they’re getting more sophisticated,” Mortola said.

Amazing Footage Shows Bears Catching Fish Underwater:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon thundershowers with a high of seventy-six.  Sunrise is 6:46 AM and sunset 6:45 PM, for 11h 59m 29s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council and Finance Committee will hold a joint meeting at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1959, Little Rock High School in Little Rock, Arkansas is integrated under federal order: “Under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, nine black students enter all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Three weeks earlier, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had surrounded the school with National Guard troops to prevent its federal court-ordered racial integration. After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent 1,000 army paratroopers to Little Rock to enforce the court order.”

Recommended for reading in full — Brad Schimel’s assault prosecutions, recovery from racism, Rosenstein and the Mueller investigation, and former Burnett County D.A. investigated for dating requests of women who were defendants in his cases —   

Patrick Marley reports Brad Schimel did not seek jail time for 17-year-olds who assaulted younger teens in early 2000s:

Attorney General Brad Schimel did not recommend jail time in a pair of cases where 17-year-olds sexually assaulted younger victims when he was a county prosecutor in the early 2000s, court records show.

As an assistant district attorney in Waukesha County in 2003, Schimel prosecuted Dustin Yoss for attacking two 15-year-olds. In one incident, Yoss was alleged to have held down a girl and pulled down his pants before she escaped.

In another, Yoss allegedly badgered a different 15-year-old to have sex with him and offered her $500 to do so. She repeatedly refused but eventually relented. Afterward, he allegedly badgered her to have sex a second time until she agreed. During that second time, she told him to stop but he wouldn’t stop, according to the criminal complaint.

Schimel charged Yoss with five felonies and four misdemeanors. In 2004, he reached a deal in which Yoss pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault of a child. The other charges were dismissed, though some of them could be considered for sentencing purposes.

….

“Both victims consider their decisions they made that night to be very bad judgment to put themselves in the bedroom alone with Mr. Yoss,” Schimel told the judge.

As to the victim who eventually agreed to have sex, Schimel told the judge, “She said no, no, no, no, but then eventually gave in and then let the defendant do it out of fear. That’s a little tougher call to — or a lot tougher call to make the force allegation, and she knows that.”

In an interview, Terry Gross shows How A Rising Star Of White Nationalism Broke Free From The Movement:

As the son of a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Derek Black was once the heir apparent of the white nationalist movement.

Growing up, he made speeches, hosted a radio show and started the website KidsStormfront — which acted as a companion to Stormfront, the white nationalist website his father, Don Black, created.

“The fundamental belief that drove my dad, drove my parents and my family, over decades, was that race was the defining feature of humanity … and that people were only happy if they could live in a society that was only this one biologically defined racial group,” Black says.

It was only after he began attending New College of Florida that Black began to question his own point of view. Previously, he had been home-schooled, but suddenly he was was exposed to people who didn’t share his views, including a few Jewish students who became friends.

Black’s new friends invited him over for Shabbat dinner week after week. Gradually, he began to rethink his views. After much soul-searching, a 22-year-old Black wrote an article, published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2013, renouncing white nationalism.

Derek Black’s “awakening” is the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eli Saslow’s new book, Rising Out Of Hatred. Saslow also interviewed Black’s father and other leaders in the white nationalist movement.

Paul Waldman contends Even if he fires Rosenstein, it’s too late to protect Trump from Mueller:

But we have to remember that if one way or another Trump can find someone to fire Mueller, it would be a political crisis even more dramatic than most of the ones he has already created. Every newspaper and TV news program would be talking about impeachment. If his aides have succeeded in convincing him not to fire Sessions, they may well be able to convince him not to order Mueller’s firing.

And it’s probably too late anyway. If this were all happening a year ago when the Mueller investigation was still getting off the ground, firing the special counsel might have done the trick. But at this point, Mueller and his team have done an enormous amount of work — and gotten guilty pleas and cooperation from five of Trump’s former aides (though his personal attorney Michael Cohen is cooperating not with Mueller at the moment but with the U.S. attorney in New York). Mueller may not be quite done, but he is surely close.

 And given how meticulous they’ve been, it would be a shock if Mueller and his team haven’t prepared for the eventuality of being shut down. Perhaps they’ve kept a running, frequently updated report outlining everything they’ve found, a report that would one way or another find its way to the public. I’m guessing that if Democrats take over the House in November as everyone expects, they’ll use their power to subpoena documents and witnesses to do everything they can to bring the information assembled by the Mueller team to light.

John K. Wilson reports State Investigating Ex-Burnett County DA Over Date Requests (“Prosecutor Asked Out Multiple Women Who Had Cases In His County”):

The Wisconsin Department of Justice is investigating a retired county prosecutor over date requests he allegedly made to women who had cases in his county.

KMSP-TV reports former Burnett County District Attorney William Norine reached out through Facebook to at least six women who were defendants in criminal cases.

One woman whose two children were in protective custody told the station Norine asked her out through Facebook Messenger. She says she had to respond because she didn’t want to jeopardize her freedom or her children “by ticking him off.”

How Analyzing Plant Data Helps Vertical Farmers Have Control Over Plants:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be increasingly cloudy with a high of seventy-five.  Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset 6:47 PM, for 12h 02m 22s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets today at 10:00 AM.

On this day in 1864, the 41st Wisconsin Infantry musters out: “The 41st Wisconsin Infantry mustered out after serving on garrison duty, railroad guard and picket duty at Memphis and in that vicinity for 90 days.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Jane Mayer reports  How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump (“A meticulous analysis of online activity during the 2016 campaign makes a powerful case that targeted cyberattacks by hackers and trolls were decisive”):

Politicians may be too timid to explore the subject, but a new book from, of all places, Oxford University Press promises to be incendiary. “Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President—What We Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know,” by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, dares to ask—and even attempts to answer—whether Russian meddling had a decisive impact in 2016. Jamieson offers a forensic analysis of the available evidence and concludes that Russia very likely delivered Trump’s victory.

The book, which is coming out less than two months before the midterm elections, at a moment when polls suggest that some sixty per cent of voters disapprove of Trump, may well reignite the question of Trump’s electoral legitimacy. The President’s supporters will likely characterize the study as an act of partisan warfare. But in person Jamieson, who wears her gray hair in a pixie cut and favors silk scarves and matronly tweeds, looks more likely to suspend a troublemaker than to be one. She is seventy-one, and has spent forty years studying political speeches, ads, and debates. Since 1993, she has directed the Annenberg Public Policy Center, at Penn, and in 2003 she co-founded FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan watchdog group. She is widely respected by political experts in both parties, though her predominantly male peers have occasionally mocked her scholarly intensity, calling her the Drill Sergeant. As Steven Livingston, a professor of political communication at George Washington University, puts it, “She is the epitome of a humorless, no-nonsense social scientist driven by the numbers. She doesn’t bullshit. She calls it straight.”

Indeed, when I met recently with Jamieson, in a book-lined conference room at the Annenberg Center, in Philadelphia, and asked her point-blank if she thought that Trump would be President without the aid of Russians, she didn’t equivocate. “No,” she said, her face unsmiling. Clearly cognizant of the gravity of her statement, she clarified, “If everything else is a constant? No, I do not.”

David Leonhardt contends The Supreme Court Is Coming Apart (“It’s not just the Kavanaugh mess. Over the long term, the court risks a crisis of legitimacy”):

There are two fundamental problems. The first is that the court has become an intensely partisan institution that pretends otherwise.

The founders envisioned the justices as legal sages, free from the political scrum. They receive lifetime appointments to protect their independence. The justices themselves cherish this image. John Roberts, the chief justice, has famously equated himself with an umpire who merely calls balls and strikes. The comparison is meant to suggest that justices don’t have their own opinions: They just follow the law.

But this is laughable. In almost every major decision last term — and many others over the past decade — the justices divided neatly along partisan lines. The five justices chosen by a Republican president voted one way, and the four chosen by a Democrat voted the other. If the justices are umpires, it sure is strange that Republican and Democratic umpires use vastly different strike zones.

….

The second major threat to the court comes from the radicalness of Republican-appointed justices.

It’s true that the Democratic-appointed justices are more reliably liberal than in the past. There are no more conservatives like Byron White (a John Kennedy appointee) or Felix Frankfurter (a Franklin Roosevelt appointee). But the court’s Democrats still range from moderate to progressive. Stephen Breyer is only somewhat to the left of White and well to the right of Sonia Sotomayor, academic analysis shows. Merrick Garland, Obama’s jilted nominee, was also a moderate.

There are no more Republican moderates. With Anthony Kennedy gone, every Republican justice is on the far end of the spectrum — among the most conservative since World War II. Kavanaugh would almost certainly join them, as would any other Trump nominee.

Adrian Higgins reports Scientists thought they had created the perfect tree. But it became a nightmare:

The U.S. Agriculture Department scientists who gave us the Bradford pear thought they were improving our world. Instead, they left an environmental time bomb that has now exploded.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, the callery pear was the urban planner’s gift from above. A seedling selection named Bradford was cloned by the gazillion to become the ubiquitous street tree of America’s postwar suburban expansion.

The Bradford pear seemed to leap from an architect’s idealized rendering. But in this case, reality outshone the artist’s vision. It was upright and symmetric in silhouette. It exploded with white flowers when we most needed it, in early spring. Its glossy green leaves shimmered coolly in the summer heat, and in the fall, its foliage turned crimson, maroon and orange — a perfect New England study in autumnal color almost everywhere it grew. And it grew everywhere. It flourished in poor soil, wet or dry, acidic or alkaline. It shrugged off pests and diseases, it didn’t drop messy fruit like mulberries or crab apples. Millions of Bradford pears would be planted from California to Massachusetts and would come to signal the dream and aspirations of postwar suburbia. Like the cookie-cutter suburbs themselves, the Bradford pear would embody that quintessentially American idea of the goodness of mass-produced uniformity.

But like a comic book supervillain who had started off good, the Bradford pear crossed over to something darker. It turned from thornless to spiky, limber to brittle, chaste to promiscuous, tame to feral. Most of all, it became invasive. It is now an ecological marauder destined to continue its spread for decades, long after those suburban tract houses have faded away. Generations yet to be born will come to know this tree and learn to hate it.

Dan Friedman writes Giuliani Has Been Told to Stop Advocating for Foreign Interests but Just Did It Anyway:

“I don’t know when we’re going to overthrow them,” Giuliani told the audience. “It could be in a few days, months, a couple of years. But it’s going to happen.”

Giuliani also said that sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration after the United States pulled out of a deal in which Iran agreed not to develop nuclear weapons “are working” by damaging Iran’s economy. “These are the conditions that lead to successful revolution,” he said.

This statement conflicts with official US policy. The State Department says the United States does not support regime change in Iran and announced last week that Giuliani “does not speak for the U.S. government on foreign policy.” During an appearance on CNN Sunday, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley also responded to the suggestion by the president’s lawyer. “The United States is not looking to do a regime change in Iran,” Haley said.

Giuliani was paid through his “firm” to deliver the speech, he told The Daily Beast last week. He declined to disclose his fee. Giuliani does not reveal all his clients, but he has recently worked for foreign entities including the government of Qatar, a member of Ukrainian political party that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort admitted he illegally lobbied for, and Turkish officials prosecuted in the United States for circumventing prior US sanctions on Iran.

What’s Actually In a Camel’s Hump?:

Anura Wijewikrama fishes two hours each morning and two hours each evening. And like his grandfather and father before him, he does so on handmade stilts driven into the sand. He is one of the few still carrying on the practice, which is exclusively found in the stunning waters off Sri Lanka. What started as a World War II-era reaction to food and boat shortages is now done to keep tradition alive, with stilt fishermen like Anura taking on other jobs to make ends meet.

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-one.  Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 6:49 PM, for 12h 05m 16s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

The sixth-annual Discover Whitewater Series, a local half marathon, 5K, and kids’ run, takes place today.

On this day in 1779, Captain John Paul Jones is victorious over the British:

Shortly after 7 p.m. the Battle of Flamborough Head began. Serapis engaged Bonhomme Richard, and soon afterwards, Alliance fired, from a considerable distance, at Countess. Quickly recognizing that he could not win a battle of big guns, and with the wind dying, Jones made every effort to lock Richard and Serapis together (his famous, albeit possibly apocryphal, quotation “I have not yet begun to fight!” was uttered in reply to a demand to surrender in this phase of the battle), finally succeeding after about an hour, following which his deck guns and his Marine marksmen in the rigging began clearing the British decks.

….

[British] Captain Pearson of Serapis accepted that prolonging the battle could achieve nothing, so he surrendered. Most of Bonhomme Richard‘s crew immediately transferred to other vessels, and after a day and a half of frantic repair efforts, it was decided that the ship could not be saved, so it was allowed to sink, and Jones took command of Serapis for the trip to neutral (but American-sympathizing) Holland.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Rick Barrett reports New tariffs threaten Wisconsin’s Trek Bicycle, soybean farmers as trade war with China heats up.

From bicycles to beans, Wisconsin and much of the nation are caught in the crossfires of President Donald Trump’s trade war.

Starting Monday, the Trump administration will begin taxing $200 billion more in Chinese goods. The tariffs will start at 10 percent and rise to 25 percent in 2019.

The product list is huge, and it includes goods from some of Wisconsin’s most well-known companies, such as Waterloo-based Trek Bicycle Corp.

If Trump delivers on the 25 percent tariff, Trek says it would pay an additional $30 million in tariffs each year on bikes imported from China.

(If Trek pays, then consumers will almost surely pay in higher costs.)

Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold report The Planners Of The Trump Tower Meeting Moved Millions, And Mueller Is Now Investigating:

On June 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. received one of the most striking emails of the presidential campaign, offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”

Trump Jr. responded 17 minutes later: “if it’s what you say I love it.”

That email led to a meeting at Trump Tower that has become a central focus of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

But the very day that email was sent, another exchange was taking place behind the scenes.

Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.

That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.

Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.

Joshua Brustein and Nate Lanxon report How Electric Scooters Are Reshaping Cities:

One of the biggest stories in technology this year is the exploding popularity of Bird, Lime, Skip, Spin and Scoot. They’re all electric scooter-rental services, and their vehicles are suddenly buzzing along city streets and sidewalks around the world. These startups allow riders to locate and unlock scooters with an app. When they reach their destination, they just walk away. Some drivers and pedestrians see the scooters as dangerous contrivances that must be stopped, while some urban planners consider them, along with bikes, the future of city transport.

1. What accounts for the rise of scooters?

Cars often aren’t the quickest way to travel in dense, urban areas. Many cities looked to bicycle-sharing services and bike lanes as a better option for shorter trips and as a way to reduce carbon emissions. Electric scooters, which can cost less than $2 per ride, are an offshoot of that. Investors looking for the next Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc., the app-based car-hailing services, are adding to scooter-mania by pouring money into companies like Bird and Lime, touching off a city-by-city race to become the premier scooter brand. Not to be left behind, even Uber and Lyft are launching competing scooter businesses.

2. How prevalent are scooters?

Bird, started by a former executive of Lyft and Uber, operates scooter services in about 40 U.S. cities, while Lime is in 23. Bird kicked off the trend in late 2017 with its launch in Santa Monica, California, and suddenly it seemed scooters were everywhere. Scores of unattended vehicles on city sidewalks have resulted in pushback from people complaining of urban chaos, and some cities have started to cap the number of scooters they’ll allow. But in most U.S. cities with sharing services, the number of scooters barely exceeds 1,000. By comparison, 45,000 Uber and Lyft drivers worked in San Francisco in 2017, according to the city’s attorney.

(It’s more accurate to say scooters could reshape cities than to say they are doing so, but there’s a definite potential to them.)

 Alex Finley, John Sipher, and Asha Rangappa write Putin Had a Win-Win Strategy for Life Post-2016; Trump, Not So Much:

Given Putin’s overall objective of sowing discord in the U.S. by driving an even deeper wedge in our already existent social and cultural divisions, the outcome of the election would have mattered little to him. A Clinton presidency could have still provided an environment that was ripe for exploitation. In fact, it might have been even easier to exploit, and Trump would have been a perfect post-election tool. Putin never wanted to use Trump because he respects or loves the man. Putin wanted to use Trump because Trump causes chaos.

It wouldn’t have taken a lot of foresight to have noticed a few years ago that Trump would make a great disruptor. While Trump has always been an outspoken provocateur, his potential for disruption became abundantly clear during the Obama administration. Even before Trump traveled to Russia to put on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, he began questioning the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. It’s worth noting that Trump’s “birther” conspiracy echoed the Russian playbook in other elections – for example, the fake social media conspiracies that questioned the “authenticity” of Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko (who happens to be the longtime political rival of Paul Manafort’s previous top Ukrainian client: Victor Yanukovych) in 2014. The similarity in tactics might be coincidence, but Trump’s embrace of “birtherism” – and the traction it gained in mainstream American politics – demonstrated to Putin that Trump was willing to promote fringe conspiracies and polarize political discussion.

For Russia’s part, having Trump as a “useful idiot on the sidelines” might have been a better role for them in many ways than his actually being president. No one would have questioned his repeating Russian propaganda word for word – while it might have been provocative, he would have had no oath or public trust he was expected to uphold. Russia also wouldn’t need to worry that the foreign policy establishment might get to him or even change his mind on questions of U.S. policy toward Russia. And there would be no Mueller investigation (although presumably the FBI would still be investigating), which is as much a thorn in Putin’s side as it is in Trump’s, since it has galvanized Congress to pass more sanctions against his oligarch friends.

Meet The Last of the Stilt Fishers in Sri Lanka:

Anura Wijewikrama fishes two hours each morning and two hours each evening. And like his grandfather and father before him, he does so on handmade stilts driven into the sand. He is one of the few still carrying on the practice, which is exclusively found in the stunning waters off Sri Lanka. What started started as a World War II-era reaction to food and boat shortages is now done to keep tradition alive, with stilt fishermen like Anura taking on other jobs to make ends meet.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater, the first day of fall, will be mostly sunny with a high of sixty-six.  Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 6:51 PM, for 12h 08m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, Lincoln issues a Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation:

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary warning that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state that did not end its rebellion against the Union by January 1, 1863.[7] None of the Confederate states restored themselves to the Union, and Lincoln’s order was signed and took effect on January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation outraged white Southerners (and their sympathizers) who envisioned a race war. It angered some Northern Democrats, energized anti-slavery forces, and undermined elements in Europe that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy.[8] The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both free and slave. It led many slaves to escape from their masters and get to Union lines to obtain their freedom, and to join the Union Army.

….

In September 1862, the Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the victory he needed to issue the Emancipation. In the battle, though the Union suffered heavier losses than the Confederates and General McClellan allowed the escape of Robert E. Lee’s retreating troops, Union forces turned back a Confederate invasion of Maryland. On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam occurred, and while living at the Soldier’s Home, Lincoln called his cabinet into session and issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.[62] According to Civil War historian James M. McPherson, Lincoln told Cabinet members that he had made a covenant with God, that if the Union drove the Confederacy out of Maryland, he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation.[63][64] Lincoln had first shown an early draft of the proclamation to Vice President Hannibal Hamlin,[65] an ardent abolitionist, who was more often kept in the dark on presidential decisions. The final proclamation was issued January 1, 1863. Although implicitly granted authority by Congress, Lincoln used his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, “as a necessary war measure” as the basis of the proclamation, rather than the equivalent of a statute enacted by Congress or a constitutional amendment. Some days after issuing the final Proclamation, Lincoln wrote to Major General John McClernand: “After the commencement of hostilities I struggled nearly a year and a half to get along without touching the “institution”; and when finally I conditionally determined to touch it, I gave a hundred days fair notice of my purpose, to all the States and people, within which time they could have turned it wholly aside, by simply again becoming good citizens of the United States. They chose to disregard it, and I made the peremptory proclamation on what appeared to me to be a military necessity. And being made, it must stand.”[66]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Mary Spicuzza and Daniel Bice report Milwaukee health staffer scaled back cleanups of homes with lead-poisoned children, records show:

A top Milwaukee Health Department staffer scaled back efforts to clean up homes with lead-poisoned children living in them, newly released records say.

During the last two years — 2016 and 2017 — the city didn’t clean up a single house with lead-poisoned children living in it, the records also show.

Those were among the findings documented in hundreds of pages of records linked to personnel investigations into two former leaders of the city’s troubled lead poisoning prevention program. The documents were released by the city Friday following Journal Sentinel records requests.

RELATED: Milwaukee health officials privately worried that problems in ‘messed up’ lead program would become public

RELATED: Milwaukee consistently failed to protect lead-poisoned children in homes with paint risks

RELATED: Protecting Milwaukee’s children: What we know about the latest problems with the city’s lead poisoning prevention efforts

The documents blame former health staffers Lisa Lien and Richard Gaeta for creating a toxic work environment full of bullying, intimidation and harassment. Following the personnel investigations, Lien resigned and Gaeta was fired.

Lien, then the city’s home environmental health manager, had previously gotten a 10-day suspension last year. Both Lien and Gaeta were placed on paid administrative leave in March.

Gaeta’s discharge notice accuses him of “insubordination” and “offensive conduct or language.” It also says he was “incompetent or inefficient” in doing his job as Milwaukee’s environmental field supervisor.

Patrick Marley reports Scott Walker top aide talks to London financier about selling Wisconsin roads, rejects idea:

Gov. Scott Walker’s transportation secretary told business officials and others last week he had talked to a London financier about selling off Wisconsin’s highways but had rejected the idea.

Transportation Secretary Dave Ross told a group last week that Walker’s administration was adopting new ways of getting its work done and mentioned in passing his discussion about selling off roads, according to people familiar with the meeting.

He then said he was not pursuing the proposal because Wisconsin has good contractors to maintain the state’s roads.

Philip Bump writes Robert Mueller may have just eliminated one of Trump’s biggest complaints (“Trump likes to complain about the cost of the Mueller probe. It might just have paid for itself”):

It’s not just that the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is, in President Trump’s estimation, a biased partisan “witch hunt.” No, that’s just one small aspect of why Trump is frustrated by Mueller’s work.

There’s Trump’s worry that the probe “endangers our country,” as he told reporters on Air Force One last week. Why? Because it is “hard for us to deal with other countries” because of it.

And then there’s the cost. In June, he took issue with the cost as reported by Mueller’s team.

….

But here’s the thing, pointed out by journalist Marcy Wheeler on her personal site: The Mueller probe may have just paid for itself.

Why? Because part of the plea agreement reached between Mueller and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort includes forfeiture of certain property to the government. While it’s not clear how much value will be extracted from that forfeiture, there’s reason to think that it could more than pay for what Mueller has incurred so far.

Jeremy W. Peters and Sapna Maheshwari report Viral Videos Are Replacing Pricey Political Ads. They’re Cheaper, and They Work:

These are not the stories that candidates usually turn to the camera and open up about in ads.

One talked about her father’s violent temper and how she once watched him throw her mother through a plate glass door. Another recalled watching his brothers struggle to find steady work because of their criminal records. A third spoke of suffering a decade of sexual abuse as a child.

The wave of female, minority and outsider candidates that is breaking cultural barriers and toppling incumbents in the Democratic Party is also sweeping aside a longstanding norm in campaigns: That the public image of politicians — especially women — should be upbeat, uncontroversial and utterly conventional.

For many of these Democrats who were running against better-financed rivals, the breakthrough moment came after they got personal in relatively low-cost videos that went viral, reaching millions of people. Using documentary-style storytelling, which can last for several minutes, candidates have found a successful alternative to the traditional model of raising huge sums of money that get spent on expensive, 30-second television commercials.

The videos are chiefly intended as ads, but they also served a fund-raising purpose. For a fraction of the cost, these videos can help to spread a candidate’s story in a way that is easily shareable and can inspire donations.

See Rare Electric Blue Clouds Observed by NASA Balloon:

On the cusp of our atmosphere live a thin group of seasonal electric blue clouds. Forming fifty miles above the poles in summer, these clouds are known as noctilucent clouds or polar mesospheric clouds — PMCs. A recent NASA long-duration balloon mission observed these clouds over the course of five days at their home in the mesosphere. The resulting photos, which scientists have just begun to analyze, will help us better understand turbulence in the atmosphere, as well as in oceans, lakes, and other planetary atmospheres, and may even improve weather forecasting.