Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-nine.  Sunrise is 5:44 AM and sunset 8:18 PM, for 14h 34m 19s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous, with 97.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1958, Pres. Eisenhower establishes NASA:

On July 29, 1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing NASA. When it began operations on October 1, 1958, NASA absorbed the 43-year-old NACA intact; its 8,000 employees, an annual budget of US$100 million, three major research laboratories (Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory) and two small test facilities.[20] A NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959.[21] Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA. A significant contributor to NASA’s entry into the Space Race with the Soviet Union was the technology from the German rocket program led by Wernher von Braun, who was now working for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), which in turn incorporated the technology of American scientist Robert Goddard’s earlier works.[22] Earlier research efforts within the US Air Force[20] and many of ARPA’s early space programs were also transferred to NASA.[23] In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a contractor facility operated by the California Institute of Technology.[20]

Recommended for reading in full — 

  This is the Cost of President Trump’s ‘America first’ policy:

This is the cost of President Trump’s ‘America first’ policy from CNBC.

(Trump’s America First is America Poorer.)

  Prof. Walter E. Block writes Trump’s Fake Fix for a Bad Economic Policy (“Using tax dollars to bail out farmers hurt by President Trump’s tariffs is not the way to strengthen the economy”):

What is driving the president’s apparent eagerness to impose tariffs is a simple and wrongheaded idea that plays to a large part of his base: A trade war will spur job growth in America. He is trying to use tariffs to give a leg up to American industries against countries that manufacture the same products that we do — whether steel, aluminum or cars — but more efficiently. And who could be against that if it creates more jobs?

In reality, however, creating jobs alone does not make for a strong economy. What we really want is to increase production. And to achieve that, we need to allocate labor as efficiently as possible. One way to do that is to ensure that if other countries can make certain goods more efficiently than we can, we trade with them for these items, rather than manufacture them ourselves. The result is cheaper goods, which is to our advantage.

But tariffs do nothing to improve this efficient allocation of labor. They also do not increase or decrease employment. They just shift jobs around, and almost always in a manner that hurts the economy.

As an illustration, assume Mr. Trump is the governor of New York. He is devoted to making the Empire State “great again.” Right now, both New Yorkers and Iowans raise pigs — but Iowa produces far more than New York. So Governor Trump sets up a protective tariff against the importation of Iowa-raised pork. Will this make New York great again?

Hardly. There is a very good reason the Empire State does not produce a huge amount of this product: economic efficiency, the true path toward economic greatness. Of course, pork product jobs will increase in New York thanks to the Trump tariffs. But this is the way to ruin the state’s economy.

  Rachel Siegel and Hamza Shaban report Top American brands say the trade war is now eating into their profits:

Rebecca Lindland, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book, said the pressure of tariffs has been weighing on automakers for so long that manufacturers wonder whether this is their new reality. But the industry is not nimble. Carmakers operate on a massive scale, with multiyear commitments to assembly plants and suppliers. According to Lindland, swiftly navigating the whims of the Trump administration won’t be easy.

“Trump will sometimes talk about pain in the short term and gains in the long term,” she said. “But the short term is years, and that pain could lead to very bad consequences, because you’re undermining profitability.”

Higher prices may also trigger challenges for consumers. Most car owners max out the amount of money they can borrow to buy a vehicle, Lindland said. But more expensive cars may lead to extended repayment periods, meaning people will owe more on their vehicles than what they are worth, for longer periods of time. In turn, this may delay or prevent new car purchases, she said.

  Prof. Steven Pearlstein writes The junk debt that tanked the economy? It’s back in a big way.

Like most people, you probably assume that the level of lending done by banks at any moment is largely driven by how much demand there is from borrowers. But in the world of modern finance, that’s only part of the story. For just as important is the level of demand from investors — pension funds, hedge funds, mutual funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies — to buy the loans that banks make. Indeed, there are times when there’s so much demand for loans from investors and the profit from selling them is so lucrative that bankers are only too happy to go out and make bigger and riskier loans than they would if they were keeping them on their own books.

….

It is through such alchemy that the wizards of structured finance are able to take a package of $400 million of loans rated at BBB- or below (junk) and generate $240 million worth of AAA-rated securities, along with $160 million of lower-rated instruments — a tranche to satisfy every risk appetite.

Although financial regulators have taken passing notice of the increased volume and declining quality of corporate credit, they haven’t done much to discourage it — just the opposite, in fact.

Earlier this year, after complaints from banks and dealmakers reached sympathetic ears in the Trump administration, the newly installed chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Comptroller of the Currency Office declared that previous “guidance” against lending to companies whose debt exceeded six times their annual cash flow should not be taken as a hard and fast rule.

  Behold Ethiopia’s Chapel in the Sky:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-seven.  Sunrise is 5:43 AM and sunset 8:19 PM, for 14h 36m 26s of daytime.  The moon is nearly full today, with 99.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1868, Secretary of State William Seward issues an official proclamation declaring the 14th Amendment ratified.

Recommended for reading in full — 

  Jennifer Rubin observes The Trump-Russia investigation looks like a mob case:

It also could be “one tile in the larger mosaic” of the alleged conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, Cramer noted, given the discussion of sanctions at the Trump Tower meeting and Russia’s subsequent efforts to undermine the Clinton campaign through hacks and disinformation. “Did the meeting overlap somehow with the Russian hacking? These could have been separate events within the same criminal conspiracy,” Cramer said. Just one day before the Trump Tower meeting, Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, set up a website called DCLeaks with the purpose of disseminating Democrats’ stolen emails, according to court documents filed by Mueller earlier this month. Mueller  revealed in those same court filings that Russian hackers began trying to access Clinton staffers’ emails just hours after Trump asked them to. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said in public remarks in July 2016, referring to emails Clinton had deleted from her private server that she’d said were private in nature. It is also worth remembering that, two months before the Trump Tower meeting occurred, a Russia-linked national offered a junior campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, dirt on Clinton from Russia in the form of thousands of stolen emails.

Cohen’s apparent willingness to share information with prosecutors raises questions about what else he could tell them with regard to Trump’s coordination with Russian nationals. Though Cohen has vehemently denied it, the dossier compiled by the former British-intelligence officer Christopher Steele outlining the campaign’s alleged ties to Russia says that Cohen was dispatched to Prague at the tail end of the campaign to pay off Russian hackers in an attempt to keep them quiet. The dossier also alleges a conspiracy between Trump and Russia was managed by Manafort, using the campaign foreign-policy adviser Carter Page as an intermediary. Cohen told me months ago, and has said publicly, that he believes the dossier is a farce. But Mueller is still examining its claims, a person familiar with the investigation told me on the condition of anonymity, making any corroborating information Cohen may have about a possible larger conspiracy incredibly valuable.

Kelly Weill writes American Racists Look for Allies in Russia (“Pro-Trump hate groups are praising Russia and its ‘macho’ leader after the president’s summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki”):

While President Donald Trump pals around with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the U.S.’s racist right is making open overtures to Russian white supremacists.

One day after Trump’s disastrous summit with Putin last week, the League of the South, a neo-Confederate hate group, announced that it would launch a Russian-language site. The southern secessionist group’s crush on Russia is the latest appeal by U.S. white supremacists to Russia and Putin—an alliance that has strengthened during the Trump presidency.

“Russia is our friend,” a group of torch-waving racists chanted during an October rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. “The South will rise again.”

  Eliot A. Cohen, in Pulling Security Clearances Is Just the Start, makes a key point about the time after Trumpism:

And what afterwards? Sooner or later there will be a Democratic administration, or one composed of Trump’s opponents in some conservative configuration that opposes the Republican Party. Can the norms be restored then? That is the real issue. Trump is a 72-year-old wrecker: He will be gone at most in six years, and probably a lot sooner. But will his angry successors act in comity and consideration to their predecessors in this administration? For that matter, should they?

The latter question is the hardest one. For sure, career civil servants and military officers of all kinds should face no retaliation for doing what professionals do—observing their oaths and doing their duty conscientiously. And some political appointees (Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis being the shining example) are real heroes for doing their best to contain the worst instincts of the scoundrel president. But what about the run-of-the-mill political appointees?

On the one hand, no one wants a partisanship that takes no prisoners when parties exchange office. But this is not a normal time, and, unfortunately, the Republican Party is no longer a normal party, but is in the compliant and spineless possession of a political buccaneer. It may not be entirely improper to teach the lesson that if you sign up with an administration so utterly lacking in decency, so contemptuous of historical norms of bipartisanship in national security, so lacking in consideration for critics and defeated opponents, you are not going to be treated with the respect normally accorded to senior members of the loyal opposition. The men and women in the shadows, who for the sake of a corner office and an official car and a high title have held their tongues and dishonored their principles, might want to think about that when Sanders tells her next lie.

(It won’t, indeed can’t, be business as usual after Trump goes. Operatives and officials who brought Trumpism to power, and who during its grip will have enriched themselves, either openly or tacitly, cannot expect that afterward those in opposition will let ‘bygones be bygones.’ Not at all – scraping this ilk from the political scene will be a necessary job for years to come. The original Reconstruction did too little in this regard; we in our time will not make a similar mistake.)

  Someone really wants to go for a walk (and someone else doesn’t):

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-four.  Sunrise is 5:42 AM and sunset 8:20 PM, for 14h 38m 31s of daytime.  The moon is full today, with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1974, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee votes in favor of its first article of impeachment against Richard Nixon:

the Committee voted 27–11 to recommend the first article of impeachment against the president: obstruction of justice.[90][91] The Committee then recommended the second article, abuse of power, on July 29, 1974.[92] The next day, on July 30, 1974, the Committee recommended the third article: contempt of Congress.[94]

Article I alleged in part:

On June 17, 1972, and prior thereto, agents of the Committee for the Re-election of the President committed unlawful entry of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, District of Columbia, for the purpose of securing political intelligence. Subsequent thereto, Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.[95]

Article II alleged in part that Nixon:

repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies.[95]

Article III alleged in part that Nixon:

failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives on April 11, 1974, May 15, 1974, May 30, 1974, and June 24, 1974, and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas.[95]

Recommended for reading in full — 

  Matthew DeFour reports National groups have already booked $9.5 million in ads for governor’s race:

The Democratic Governors Association plans to boost its eventual Wisconsin nominee with $3.8 million in TV advertising in the fall election, and is pointing to the now $5.7 million ad buy from the Republican Governors Association as a sign Gov. Scott Walker is in trouble.

The DGA earlier this year announced a $20 million buy in four states in the final five weeks of the election, but didn’t specify how much would be purchased in Wisconsin. The RGA ad buy for the last nine weeks of the election is up from the $5.1 million the organization announced in April. Last week the organization reserved $924,000 in TV ad time.

DGA spokesman Jared Leopold provided the updated figures Thursday for both organizations based on information collected from TV stations, which must report the information to the Federal Communications Commission. An RGA spokesman didn’t respond Thursday to a request for comment and the Walker campaign declined to comment.

  A story from May by Katelyn Ferral, Former DOT head is Scott Walker’s chief critic on transportation, reminds that local issues will shape this race, no matter how much national spending there is:

In 2014, Mark Gottlieb began to realize Gov. Scott Walker was moving away from a goal he thought they shared: fixing the state’s transportation funding problem and its deteriorating roads.

It was one year after a commission, chaired by Gottlieb, then-secretary of Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation, released an 176-page report, affirming what at least two other commissions led by both Republicans and Democrats over the last decade had found: Wisconsin’s highway system and local roads were rapidly deteriorating and there was not enough money to fix or maintain them.

It’s the issue that ground state government to a halt last summer, delaying the budget for months. How to address the state’s aging highways continues to divide Republicans statewide.

Andrew Desiderio and Kevin Poulsen report Russian Hackers’ New Target: a Vulnerable Democratic Senator:

The Russian intelligence agency behind the 2016 election cyberattacks targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill as she began her 2018 re-election campaign in earnest, a Daily Beast forensic analysis reveals. That makes the Missouri Democrat the first identified target of the Kremlin’s 2018 election interference.

McCaskill, who has been highly critical of Russia over the years, is widely considered to be among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats facing re-election this year as Republicans hope to hold their slim majority in the Senate. In 2016, President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by almost 20 points in the senator’s home state of Missouri.

There’s no evidence to suggest that this attempt to lure McCaskill staffers was successful. The precise purpose of the approach was also unclear. Asked about the hack attempt by Russia’s GRU intelligence agency, McCaskill told The Daily Beast on Thursday that she wasn’t yet prepared to discuss it.

  Jennifer Rubin observes Trump’s Russia problem is getting worse and worse:

President Trump has relied on repeated lies (e.g., a spy was on his campaign), catchphrases (“no collusion”) and media attacks in an attempt to defuse the Russia investigation. It’s not working, and one can conclude a good deal of the reason has to do with his own obsequious performance alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

The latest Quinnipiac poll reports:

American voters believe 51 – 35 percent “that the Russian government has compromising information about President Trump.” … The Helsinki summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin was a failure for the U.S., voters say 52 – 27 percent. The summit was a success for Russia, voters say 73 – 8 percent. Trump was not acting in the best interest of the U.S., voters say 54 – 41 percent. … A total of 68 percent of American voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about President Trump’s relationship with Russia, while 32 percent are “not so concerned” or “not concerned at all.”

It is very telling that voters overwhelmingly trust our intelligence community over Trump (63 percent to 25 percent) and think he is too friendly with Russia (55 percent vs. 37 percent who say he’s about right — and only 1 percent thinking he is not friendly enough!). The public is very much supportive of our allies (88 percent) and NATO specifically (78 percent). Fifty-five percent of voters have figured out Russia is an adversary, and only 5 percent think it’s an ally. (Thirty-seven percent say neither.) In addition, 66 percent don’t believe Trump’s excuse that he misspoke about Russian interference, 60 percent think it was a bad idea for Trump to meet alone with Putin, and 54 percent think he is weak on Russia.

  One can find Incredible Art on a Pencil Tip:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see variable cloudiness with a high of seventy-five.  Sunrise is 5:41 AM and sunset 8:21 PM, for 14h 40m 33s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1775, the Second Continental Congress creates a postal service:

Overthrowing the London-oriented imperial postal service in 1774–1775, printers enlisted merchants and the new political leadership, and created a new postal system.[13] The United States Post Office (USPO) was created on July 26, 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress.[1] Benjamin Franklin headed it briefly.

Recommended for reading in full — 

  Tory Newmyer writes Trump declares premature victory with European Union deal:

President Trump’s announcement on trade with the European Union completes a cycle now familiar in his presidency. The commander in chief flogs an issue repeatedly as a crisis-level threat while pursuing a fix that often creates more harm than it solves — then beats a partial retreat that he frames as a victory.

….

But Trump’s commitment to that cease-fire remains provisional. “He did not take that option entirely off the table,” The Washington Post’s Damian Paletta and Jeanne Whalen write, “preserving leverage in case the talks falter.” Indeed, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, in Wednesday night interview on Fox Business Network, affirmed that “the investigation on autos will continue. It’s just we won’t impose any auto tariffs, as long as the negotiations are progressing properly.”

The other details of what he hashed out with Juncker are similarly sketchy.

The president made no specific commitment to lift the steel and aluminum tariffs he imposed back in June, nor did Juncker pledge to withdraw the retaliatory measures from the E.U. targeting American motorcycles, blue jeans and bourbon, among other products. Rather, both sides agreed to keep talking, though with no timetable.

(Emphasis in original.)

Rick Barrett reports Farmers say Trump’s $12 billion in farm aid won’t cover their losses from trade war:

Farmers urged Trump to settle the trade disputes with China, Mexico, Canada and the European Union and get the commerce flowing again.

“Whatever short-term relief farmers might feel, the aid does nothing to repair damage the trade war is doing to long-standing relationships with our global trading partnerships,” Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative, based in Green Bay, said in a statement.

….

Brody Stapel, a dairy farmer from Cedar Grove, and board president of Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative, says $12 billion wouldn’t go far when stretched over millions of acres of U.S. crops and other commodities.

“Our concern is the longer this trade war lasts, the more it will hurt long term,” Stapel said.

  CREW [the Committee for Responsibility and Ethics in Washinghton] issued a Statement on an Emoluments Decision:

Washington— Following a federal judge’s decision to allow the Emoluments case to proceed, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics Washington (CREW) Executive Director Noah Bookbinder released the following statement:“This is a historic day for the Constitution. We are honored and proud to represent the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia alongside Attorneys General Brian Frosh and Karl Racine as a federal court considers evidence of presidential violations of the Emoluments Clauses for the first time.

Americans need to know that their president is acting in their interest and not in the interest of his private businesses. President Trump has refused again and again to separate himself from his business empire to avoid pervasive conflicts of interest and constitutional violations. A court has now decided that the Emoluments Clauses, put in place by the framers of the Constitution to protect against corruption, are broad and can be enforced in court. We look forward to working with Maryland and the District of Columbia to prove their case and stop these insidious violations.”

Read the decision here.

  Kimberley Richards writes Trump’s latest speech compared to ‘1984’: ‘What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening’:

The US president addressed supporters at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City on 24 July, requesting them to not listen to what they read or saw in the news.

“Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” Mr Trump said as the crowd erupted in boos. He later added: “Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening…”

ThinkProgress made comparisons between Mr Trump’s speech in Kansas and a line from the late Mr Orwell’s novel that read: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

NASA ScienceCasts describes An Intersection of Art and Science on the International Space Station:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 5:40 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 14h 42m 33s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1999, the first Brewer is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame:

On this date Robin Yount became the first player inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in a Brewer’s jersey. Yount entered the major leagues at the age of 18 and spent his entire career with the Milwaukee Brewers as number 19 at short stop and center field. His awards are numerous, including being selected as an all-star three times as well as American league MVP twice.

Recommended for reading in full — 

  Rick Barrett reports Trump’s trade war sweeps across Wisconsin, raising prices and putting jobs at risk:

President Donald Trump’s trade war is sweeping across Wisconsin — with manufacturers, farmers and soon the rest of us bracing for the impact.

Dairy products, cars, motorcycles, appliances, electronics and sporting goods are just a few things subject to new tariffs, or threats of tariffs, in trade disputes that have engulfed the U.S., Canada, Mexico, China and the European Union.

More: Harley-Davidson profit falls as company warns of damage from Trump’s trade war

In Milwaukee, Mike Darrow, president of the Russ Darrow Group of automotive dealerships, says sales of cars and trucks could hit a wall if Trump follows through on a threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles and parts.

It would raise the price of a typical new car sold in the U.S. by $4,400, according to the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.

  Jeff Daniels reports China could bring more pain to US soybean farmers if Trump escalates the trade war:

If China were to add another round of duties on soybeans, it could add pressure on the Trump administration due to the economic importance of soy exports to China. However, the White House may have helped prepare for more pain in the American agriculture sector by rolling out a $12 billion emergency plan for U.S. farmers on Tuesday.

“Nobody is going to win in this trade war,” said Bret Davis, an Ohio soybean farmer and a member of the American Soybean Association’s governing committee. “We just hope instead of a tariff that we come to an agreement and make it better for our side and their side.”

Still, there is precedent for China slapping “double whammy” tariffs months apart on the same U.S. agricultural products. For example, China imposed two rounds of tariffs on pork, nuts and fresh fruit. In the case of pork, after the additional tariff went into effect July 6, “the other white meat” is now subject to an import tax that exceeds 70 percent.

  John Fritze and Deirdre Shesgreen report Trump offers help to farmers hit by escalating China trade war:

WASHINGTON – As President Donald Trump embarks on a multistate tour through parts of the country hit heavily by trade battles, his administration said Tuesday it will direct $12 billion to farmers whose harvests have been hurt by tariffs.

But the idea faced immediate criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Responding to farm groups and the Republican discontent, administration officials said they have been working since April on a short-term plan to shore up slipping prices for soybeans, pork and other crops hit with retaliatory tariffs from China.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue described the programs as “a firm statement that other nations cannot bully our agricultural producers to force the United States to cave in.”

But the idea drew sharp and immediate criticism from some Republicans on Capitol Hill, who described it as “welfare” for one sector of the economy affected by the tit-for-tat raising of trade barriers that has been ushered in by Trump.

“This trade war is cutting the legs out from under farmers,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb. “The best relief for the president’s trade war would be ending the trade war.”

(Tariffs are taxes, and now on top of more de facto taxes from his trade war, Trump wants more spending that will require higher taxes to pay for the spending outright or as interest on additional deficit spending.)

 Rich Kremer reports Wisconsin Ag Groups Mixed On $12B Trump Aid For Farmers Caught In Tariff Battles (“Industry Leaders, Members Of Congress Criticize Move As Government Handouts”):

But in Wisconsin, farm and agricultural trade groups wondered how long it will take for that new trade policy to be hammered out and whether $12 billion would be enough to help every impacted farmer.

Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board Executive Director Robert Karls said it’s a frustrating situation for farmers who would rather see a fair and level playing field rather than a situation where they’re dependent on a government aid program. He said soybeans have already lost more than $2 a bushel in value over the last 45 days, which will eventually impact everyone.

These sanctioned tariffs, these retaliation tariffs are truly, truly damaging and everybody is going to feel it“These sanctioned tariffs, these retaliation tariffs are truly, truly damaging and everybody is going to feel it,” said Karls. “People, locally, are going to feel it when they buy their groceries. It’s going to impact their households. There’s just no doubt.”

(Even the agricultural industries Trump aims to support know that his support is a bad idea.)

Watch as a Huge Whale Breaches Inches From Kayaker:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 14h 48m 19s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1911, American explorer Hiram Bingham discovers Machu Picchu:

Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was constructed as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often mistakenly referred to as the “Lost City of the Incas” (a title more accurately applied to Vilcabamba), it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization. The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was not known to the Spanish during the colonial period and remained unknown to the outside world until American historian Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911.

Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of how they originally appeared.[14] By 1976, thirty percent of Machu Picchu had been restored[14] and restoration continues.[15]

Recommended for reading in full — 

  Salvador Rizzo, Glenn Kessler, and Meg Kelly write Over four days, false claims dominated Trump’s Twitter feed:

President Trump tweeted a series of false or misleading claims over four days, ranging from the Russia investigation to NATO funding to North Korea to the price of soybeans.

From July 20 to July 23, accurate statements on the president’s Twitter feed were swamped by faulty claims. We rounded up 14 tweets worth fact-checking. Let’s dive in.

“Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of ‘Justice’ and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!” (July 22)

Trump posted a series of misleading tweets about the FBI’s court application requesting wiretap surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, often citing statements made by supporters that were factually wrong or politically biased.

(Trump uses his Twitter feed, in part, to tell his hardcore followers what they want to hear, knowing that they’ll not care about the truth of his claims.)

  Greg Sargent reports As Trump’s latest lies implode, one party tries to smuggle out the truth:

This morning, the New York Times’s Charlie Savage has a great piece on the White House’s decision over the weekend to release documents revealing the FBI’s application to a FISA court to run secret surveillance on former Trump campaign official Carter Page. The bottom line: The documents lay waste to much of the narrative about the FBI investigation pushed by Trump — and GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the House Intelligence Committee chairman who enshrined that story line in his much-discussed memo — while largely confirming that Democratic efforts to correct that narrative have been offered accurately and in good faith.

The Trump/Nunes narrative rests heavily on the idea that the FBI probe into the Trump campaign was illegitimate, because it was triggered by the “Steele Dossier.” The Nunes memo in January charged that to spy on the Trump campaign, the FBI failed to disclose that former British spy Christopher Steele’s research had originally been funded for political purposes (which Trump and his allies maintain shows the probe had tainted origins). In his rebuttal memo at the time, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California — Nunes’s counterpart — disputed this, noting that the FBI’s application for the warrant did, in fact, disclose that Steele was hired by “politically motivated persons” to “discredit” the Trump campaign.

The newly released documents — in particular, the FBI’s FISA applications — show that Nunes was engaged in disingenuous parsing designed to deceive and that Schiff was telling the truth. The application contained a whole page detailing the FBI’s conclusion that Steele had been hired to do “research” to “discredit” the Trump campaign, and that the FBI deemed Steele credible anyway, having relied on his information in the past. As Savage puts it, the new release offers a “page-length explanation” that confirms what Democrats contended “at the time” about the research’s “politically motivated origins.”

(Sergeant’s right that Trump’s and Nunes’s lies here are soundly refuted; those two are, however, playing to a diehard audience that doesn’t care if they lie.)

  Matthew Yglesias observes Donald Trump is actually a very unpopular president (“Yes, his base likes him, but his overall numbers are terrible”):

A useful corrective to these niche polls [showing Trump doing well with Republicans] showing Trump’s appeal to select segments of the electorate is to use FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker to compare his overall popularity to that of other presidents.

As you can see, at this point in their presidencies, every president going back 60 years — Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, and Dwight Eisenhower —was more popular than Trump is.

….

And it seems plausible to attribute those numbers to the all-base, all-the-time refusal to do anything on either a symbolic or a policy level to try to reassure people who aren’t in his base that their worst fears about him are mistaken. Trump’s strength with his base, meanwhile, isn’t a mitigating factor — it’s part of the overall problem. In a divided country, he makes no effort to serve as a unifying figure.

(Republicans who talk to each other, watch Fox, and assume that their neighborhoods reflect the national mood have made the same mistake that liberals did in, let’s say, 1984: they have shielded themselves from the weaknesses of their own candidate.)

Krishnadev Calamur writes The French President Had a More American Response to Putin Than Trump Did:

Compare Trump’s remarks on Monday with similar news conferences Putin held with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both Western peers of Trump. Those countries have deeply entrenched economic relations with Russia—and are reliant on Moscow for their energy needs. Their news conferences were held in May in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran, an agreement to which Russia, France, and Germany are also party (along with China, the U.K., and the EU). The French and German leaders sharply criticized Moscow when policies diverged—as they do on several fronts.

“I am well aware of Russia’s indispensable role in solving some international issues, but I believe that Russia, for its part, should also respect our interests, the interests of our sovereignty as well as the interests of our partners,” Macron said on May 24. Standing beside Putin, he cited “deep differences” between the two countries on the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons (Syria and Russia deny that such weapons were used, in the face of evidence to the contrary) but added: “I believe that we should coordinate our efforts to create a mechanism for determining responsibility in the event of fresh cases of chemical weapons being used by this or that side.”

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Macron also spoke about Russia’s alleged cyberattacks across Europe.“This is a real problem today,” he said. “It is fueling some of the issues on human rights that exist in our society because cyberattacks have their economic and security aspects.” It wasn’t the first time Macron had called out Putin this way. In a news conference with Putin soon after his election, Macron singled out Sputnik and RT, the state-funded Russian media organizations, as “being agencies of influence and propaganda, lying propaganda—no more, no less.”

Here’s How Movie Theaters Are Ruining Your Movie Experience:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-two.  Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 14h 48m 19s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Whitewater School Board will meet at Central Office at 7 PM.

On this day in 1903, the Ford Motor Company sells its first car, a Ford Model A.  (Ford later used that same model name in 1927 to designate to a significantly more advanced vehicle.)

Recommended for reading in full — 

  Charlie Savage explains How a Trump Decision Revealed a G.O.P. Memo’s Shaky Foundation:

WASHINGTON — When President Trump declassified a memo by House Republicans in February that portrayed the surveillance of a former campaign adviser as scandalous, his motivation was clear: to give congressional allies and conservative commentators another avenue to paint the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian election interference as tainted from the start.

But this past weekend, Mr. Trump’s unprecedented decision, which he made over the objections of law enforcement and intelligence officials, had a consequence that revealed his gambit’s shaky foundation. The government released the court documents in which the F.B.I. made its case for conducting the surveillance — records that plainly demonstrated that key elements of Republicans’ claims about the bureau’s actions were misleading or false.

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Mr. Trump’s portrayal, which came as the administration is trying to repair the damage from his widely criticized meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, revived the claims put forward in February by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. But in respect after respect, the newly disclosed documents instead corroborated rebuttals by Democrats on the panel who had seen the top-secret materials and accused Republicans of mischaracterizing them to protect the president.

  Rosalind S. Helderman reports Russian billionaire with U.S. investments backed alleged agent Maria Butina, according to a person familiar with her Senate testimony:

Maria Butina, the Russian woman charged in federal court last week with acting as an unregistered agent of her government, received financial support from Konstantin Nikolaev, a Russian billionaire with investments in U.S. energy and technology companies, according to a person familiar with testimony she gave Senate investigators.

Butina told the Senate Intelligence Committee in April that Nikolaev provided funding for a gun rights group she represented, according to the person. A spokesman for Nikolaev confirmed that he was in contact with her as she was launching the gun rights group in Russia between 2012 and 2014. He declined to confirm whether Nikolaev gave her financial support.

Nikolaev’s fortune has been built largely through port and railroad investments in Russia. He also sits on the board of American Ethane, a Houston ethane company that was showcased by President Trump at an event in China last year, and is an investor in a Silicon Valley start-up.

  Conservative Michael Gerson writes Trump is smashing the hopes of oppressed people everywhere:

So let us take an account of what is being smashed by Donald Trump. In viewing our European allies as a “foe” intent on exploitation, Trump is smashing an alliance that has encouraged peaceful relations within Europe and jointly resisted terrorism and Russian aggression. By questioning NATO’s Article 5 and the principle of collective security, he is smashing a system that has turned a continent prone to war and genocide into a flawed but functioning community of free nations. By ignoring and denying the moral power of American ideals and expressing a deeply un-American dictator envy, Trump is smashing our sense of national mission along with the hopes of oppressed people everywhere.

And for what? For a form of extreme nationalism that serves someone else’s nation? For a definition of strength that trades away the tremendous advantage of our defining ideals? This is a work of demolition without the inconvenience of new architecture. Yet among his Republican supporters, none dare call it idiocy.

Vladimir Kara-Murza explains What’s really behind Putin’s obsession with the Magnitsky Act:

It was then that Browder turned from investment to full-time advocacy, traveling the world to persuade one Western parliament after another to pass a measure that was as groundbreaking as it would appear obvious: a law, commemoratively named the Magnitsky Act, that bars individuals (from Russia and elsewhere) who are complicit in human rights abuses and corruption from traveling to the West, owning assets in the West and using the financial system of the West. Boris Nemtsov, then Russia’s opposition leader (who played a key role in convincing Congress to pass the law in 2012), called the Magnitsky Act “the most pro-Russian law in the history of any foreign Parliament.”

It was the smartest approach to sanctions. It avoided the mistake of targeting Russian citizens at large for the actions of a small corrupt clique in the Kremlin and placed responsibility directly where it is due. It was also the most effective approach. The people who are in charge of Russia today like to pose as patriots, but in reality, they care little about the country. They view it merely as a looting ground, where they can amass personal fortunes at the expense of Russian taxpayers and then transfer those fortunes to the West. In one of his anti-corruption reports, Nemtsov detailed the unexplained riches attained by Putin’s personal friends such as Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers, noting that they are likely “no more that the nominal owners … and the real ultimate beneficiary is Putin himself.” Similar suspicions were voiced after the publication of the 2016 Panama Papers, which showed a $2 billion offshore trail leading to another close Putin friend, cellist Sergei Roldugin. Some of the funds in his accounts were linked with money from the tax fraud scheme uncovered by Magnitsky.

Volumes of research, hours of expert testimony and countless policy recommendations have been dedicated to finding effective Western approaches to Putin’s regime. The clearest and the most convincing answer was provided, time and again, by the Putin regime itself. It was the Magnitsky Act that Putin tasked his foreign ministry with trying to stop; it was the Magnitsky Act that was openly tied to the ban on child adoptions; it was the Magnitsky Act that was the subject of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting attended by a Kremlin-linked lawyer; it is advocating for the Magnitsky Act that may soon land any Russian citizen in prison. It was the Magnitsky Act that Putin named as the biggest threat to his regime as he stood by Trump’s side in Helsinki.

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Vladimir Putin has left no doubt: The biggest threat to his regime is the Magnitsky Act, which stops its beneficiaries from doing what has long become their raison d’être — stealing in Russia and spending in the West. It is time for more Western nations to adopt this law — and for the six countries that already have it to implement it with vigor and resolve.

Simon Whistler describes The North’s Air Force During the American Civil War: