Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be rainy  with a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:55 PM, for 9h 38m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 25.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Whitewater School Board meets tonight in closed session beginning at 6:15 PM, and then open session at 7 PM.

On this day in 1964, the World’s Largest Block of Cheese [at the time] is made in Wisconsin: “The block of cheddar was produced from 170,000 quarts of milk by the Wisconsin Cheese Foundation specifically for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It weighed 34,665 pounds (17.4 tons). The cheese was consumed in 1965 at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association at Eau Claire. A replica is displayed in Neilsville in the specially designed “Cheesemobile“, a semi-tractor trailer in which the original cheese toured. [Source: American Profile, December 16, 2001]”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey write of Stephen Miller: Immigration agitator and White House survivor:

Miller’s driving obsession is immigration, an area where he has long pushed hard-line positions going back to his days as a combative conservative activist at Duke University. In Washington, as an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), he was instrumental in helping to kill a bipartisan effort in 2013 for a broad immigration deal. He and Sessions helped galvanize House conservatives to block the bill passed by the Senate, including distributing a handbook of talking points aimed at undercutting the compromise.

Now working in the White House, Miller — who is known for his natty attire, long-winded conversations and distinctive heavy-lidded appearance on television — has told colleagues that his “consuming focus is to make what I know the president wants in an immigration deal a legislative reality,” a senior White House official said. He has few hobbies outside of work, and his spacious second-floor West Wing office is sparsely decorated, with a stack of “Make America Great Again” hats and invitations to inauguration events framed on the wall.

The official said Miller chats frequently with the president about immigration, both formally and informally, during scheduled meetings, on board Air Force One, after bill signings in the Oval Office and during rides in the presidential motorcade. He prizes loyalty to Trump above all else and speaks often of the president with reverence, a stark contrast with some eye-rolling aides.

➤ Jill Filipovic ponders Donald Trump and His Work Wives:

There are so many bombshells in Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury,” that smaller anecdotes are going largely unremarked upon, even if they offer disturbing insight into the presidential psyche. One of them is Mr. Trump’s penchant for hiring women into often vaguely defined but closely held roles.

“Women, according to Trump, were simply more loyal and trustworthy than men,” Mr. Wolff writes. “Men might be more forceful and competent, but they were also more likely to have their own agendas. Women, by their nature, or Trump’s version of their nature, were more likely to focus their purpose on a man. A man like Trump.” Mr. Trump, the author continued, “needed special — extra-special — handling. Women, he explained to one friend with something like self-awareness, generally got this more precisely than men. In particular, women who self-selected themselves as tolerant of or oblivious to or amused by or steeled against his casual misogyny and constant sexual subtext — which was somehow, incongruously and often jarringly, matched with paternal regard — got this.”

The term “emotional labor” gets vastly overused, but this is a textbook example. The women who work for Mr. Trump aren’t just required to perform their professional tasks; they also have to coddle and care for a volatile patriarch.

➤ Zoya Teirstein cautions Don’t Let Anyone Fool You: There ARE Environmental Conservatives:

Todd Tanner has a pretty sweet offer for his fellow Montanans: a new shotgun in exchange for science-based evidence that he’s wrong about climate change.

The conservationist uses the challenge in an attempt to raise awareness about our warming planet. A lot of people where Tanner lives in Bigfork, Montana, would probably like to take him up on his offer: The state has one of the highest rates of outdoor recreationists in the country, and Tanner is no exception. He was planning on going hunting after we finished our interview. “You wouldn’t know it,” he said over the phone, “but I’m literally walking around in a pair of wool pants.”

Tanner is sure he’ll never have to hand over that new shotgun, though he says he would love to find out that anthropogenic climate change isn’t real. “If someone shows me the error of my ways they can have their choice,” he said. “They can have any rifle, shotgun, pistol, or rod I own, and I’ll walk away feeling like I got the better end of the bargain.”

Since 2011, Tanner has harnessed his prominent position in Montana’s hunting and fishing communities to get people engaged. After wildfires incinerated forests and droughts desiccated rivers in Big Sky Country this year, agitated sportsmen and women have become easier to find. Tanner’s nonprofit, Conservation Hawks, is part of a coalition of grassroots organizations trying to pull conservatives into the conversation about rising temperatures.

➤ Sen. Ben Cardin writes Never before has a president ignored such a clear national security threat:

For the better part of 20 years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has engaged in a relentless assault against democratic institutions abroad, universal values and the rule of law. He has carried out these attacks with an asymmetric arsenal: cyberattacks; disinformation; support for fringe political groups; the weaponization of energy resources, organized crime and corruption; and even military aggression.

Putin has used such techniques because he has operated from a position of weakness, hobbled by a faltering economy, a substandard military and few followers on the world stage. And his attacks have grown in intensity and complexity over the past few years, driven by a desire to also repress democratic aspirations among his own citizens. While our European partners have taken steps to better defend themselves, the United States has done little to protect its institutions.

Despite the efforts of some in national security leadership, as well as dedicated career public servants across the executive branch, one person is preventing a strong, government-wide response that holds Russia accountable for its destabilizing activities: the president of the United States. Never before has the White House so clearly ignored a national security threat.

…

The Russian president’s rap sheet of meddling in Europe is long and sordid. Some of the most egregious examples include:

– A coup attempt in Montenegro to storm the nation’s parliament and capture or kill the prime minister ahead of that nation’s attempt to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

– Russian media propaganda, especially Internet trolls and bots, which were discovered in the public debate ahead of recent major referendums such as “Brexit” in Britain and the Catalonia independence movement in Spain, as well as national elections in France and Germany. Indications are that Italy may well be next.

– The murder of a number of Russian opposition figures and critics across Europe.

– The violation of international law by invading Russia’s neighbors, such as Georgia and Ukraine.

(See also Putin’s Asymmetric  Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security.)

➤ So, here’s How Lucid Dreaming Works:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be occasionally foggy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:54 PM, for 9h 36m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1976, the British-French Concorde supersonic passenger jet begins regular service. On this day in 1935, five Janesville, Wisconsin juveniles are arrested “for a string of burglaries, including the thefts of cigarettes, whisky and blankets. While in the police station, one of the boys tried to crack the safe in the chief’s office.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Craig Timberg, Rosalind S. Helderman, Andrew Roth and Carol D. Leonnig report In the crowd at Trump’s inauguration, members of Russia’s elite anticipated a thaw between Moscow and Washington:

In the days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, a wealthy Russian pharmaceutical executive named Alexey Repik arrived in Washington, expressing excitement about the new administration.

He posted a photo on Facebook of a clutch of inauguration credentials arranged next to a white “Make America Great Again” hat, writing in Russian: “I believe that President Donald Trump will open a new page in American history.”

Throughout his trip, Repik had prime access. He wrote on Facebook that he got close enough to the president-elect at a pre-inaugural event to “check the handshake strength of Donald Trump.” He and his wife, Polina Repik, witnessed Trump’s swearing-in from ticketed seats in front of the U.S. Capitol. And he posed for a photo shoulder-to-shoulder with Mike Pompeo, the president’s nominee to head the CIA, although Repik later said he was not aware of Pompeo’s intended role at the time.

The attendance of members of Russia’s elite at Trump’s inauguration was evidence of the high anticipation in Moscow for a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations following a campaign in which Trump stunned U.S. foreign-policy experts by repeatedly praising Russian President Vladi­mir Putin.

➤ Jennifer Rubin, looking at Russian influence over Trump, notes Russians under every rock:

There are the Kremlin-connected campaign aides — Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos. On a single campaign. There are the Trump team members who repeatedly failed to “recall” Russia contacts — Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Jared Kushner. There is the money trail that ran through and around Trump properties, described in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson; the trail tangles up the Bayrock Group (with which the mysterious Felix Sater was associated) and the Russian oligarchs who purchased Trump properties (pp. 36-41).

What Simpson calls “a well-established pattern of surreptitious contacts that occurred [in 2016] that supports the broad allegation of some sort of an undisclosed political or financial relationship between The Trump Organization and people in Russia” (p. 54)  is what, in part, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his top-flight team of financial-crime attorneys are investigating. Mueller is trying to determine whether these were all random, innocent and coincidental (though the only campaign in history we know to have had any) or whether they establish a cooperative relationship between the official Trump campaign and the “active measures” campaign in Russia to help elect Trump (as the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting — attended by Natalia Veselnitskaya, Kaveladze and Rinat Akhmetshin, among others — to relay “dirt” on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton would suggest).

The nagging question remains, however, why Trump would so vehemently deny any business dealings with Russia and why so many people would go to such lengths to disguise their assorted Russian contacts. What was it they were trying so hard to keep hidden?

➤ Katie Rogers and Kenneth P. Vogel report Congressman Combating Harassment Settled His Own Misconduct Case:

WASHINGTON — Representative Patrick Meehan, a Pennsylvania Republican who has taken a leading role in fighting sexual harassment in Congress, used thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to settle his own misconduct complaint after a former aide accused him last year of making unwanted romantic overtures to her, according to several people familiar with the settlement.

A married father of three, Mr. Meehan, 62, had long expressed interest in the personal life of the aide, who was decades younger and had regarded the congressman as a father figure, according to three people who worked with the office and four others with whom she discussed her tenure there.

But after the woman became involved in a serious relationship with someone outside the office last year, Mr. Meehan professed his romantic desires for her — first in person, and then in a handwritten letter — and he grew hostile when she did not reciprocate, the people familiar with her time in the office said.

Life in the office became untenable, so she initiated the complaint process, started working from home and ultimately left the job. She later reached a confidential agreement with Mr. Meehan’s office that included a settlement for an undisclosed amount to be paid from Mr. Meehan’s congressional office fund.

(The alleged conduct would be wrong, and the undisputed use of Congressional funds to settle the matter is wrong.)

➤ From August, Tara Isabella Burton interviews Former 700 Club producer: “I knew where the line was. But that didn’t stop us.”:

In the 1980s, TV producer Terry Heaton was at the helm of one of the most influential media properties of the decade. As executive producer for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN)’s Pat Robertson — one of the world’s most famous televangelists — Heaton spent the 1980s and early ’90s transforming the network’s flagship show, The 700 Club, into a pioneer of conservative opinion journalism.

But decades after The 700 Club’s massive success paved the way for an alliance between the Christian right and GOP party politics, Heaton has more mixed feelings about his role in the “culture wars.” In his new book The Gospel of the Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP, Heaton reflects on his years working alongside Robertson, and how the advertising strategies he brought to CBN helped transform and politicize a generation of Christians. Heaton presents Robertson and his team as well-meaning idealists whose desire to use the power of the media to bring people to Jesus morphed into a need to hold on to power for its own sake.

…

“First of all, regarding Pat and his relationship with Donald Trump — I think that’s very, very scary. As smart as Pat Robertson is, and as good as he is at marketing, he is also highly susceptible to his own hype. In that way, Trump plays him like a piano. If you watch his most recent interview, some of the things that Trump says to Pat are really way out there in terms of manipulating Pat. He builds him up like a salesman would, and Pat is susceptible to that, I think. But he wouldn’t be susceptible if Trump didn’t speak the language that Pat wants.

There is such fear on the right about the Supreme Court. I remember one show that we were taping in which Pat prayed that God would kill the Supreme Court justices. We had to stop the tape and advise him that he couldn’t say that on TV. But that’s the way he felt. Trump really sings Pat’s tune when it comes to the Supreme Court, also on the issue of religious liberty. When Trump starts talking about how Christianity is going to be “great again,” people like Pat sit up at listen. And they’ll support him whenever necessary — even if it means blowing up North Korea!

We’re a divided people. That’s why I wonder if it’s a good thing that Donald Trump’s president — at least we’re getting it all out on the table. In my mind, that’s the only righteous reason to put a guy like Trump in the White House. We’ll go through some stuff — but I hope on the other side, it’ll be better than it is today.

(One needn’t believe that it’s a good thing Trump’s president, but yet believe getting it all out on the table is necessary. In any event, Robertson represents only a part of a much larger religious community.)

➤ It’s The Most Shocking Animal in the Kingdom:

It’s a remote control. It’s a tracking device. It can deliver shocks of up to 600 volts. You think the electric eel is shocking? You haven’t seen anything yet.

In this episode of Animalism hosted by The Atlantic science writer Ed Yong, we investigate the subtle and sinister ways of the electric eel.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:53 PM, for 9h 34m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1942, senior government officials of the Third Reich meet at the Wannsee Conference to assure administrative compliance with a policy of deportation and genocide of Jews within the borders of the Nazi state. On this day in 1865, the 25th Wisconsin Infantry reconnoiters the Salkehatchie River in South Carolina prior to battles in the first week of February in defense of the Union.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jennifer Rubin writes Republicans are fooling themselves if they think they have a shutdown leg up [Updated]:

In a vote he surely knew would fail, McConnell (R-Ky.) could not get a simple majority, let alone 60 votes to proceed on the House continuing resolution. While McConnell has not cast his vote, he will likely be compelled for procedural reasons to vote no (to bring up the bill later), thereby leaving the vote at 50-48. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is battling brain cancer, did not vote.

There are several aspects worth noting at this late hour. First, although Schumer lost five Democrats (who voted to proceed), McConnell remarkably lost four votes, making it that much harder to pin the shutdown on Democrats. The degree to which the hard-line anti-immigration crowd has divided the GOP is remarkable. Second, to put on my former labor lawyer hat, McConnell’s lack of urgency today was stunning. This situation is akin to a labor contract negotiation leading up to a strike deadline. Not to have a single joint meeting with Democrats and the president or exchange any proposals in the final day represents a stunning level of irresponsibility. Republicans control both houses and the White House; not to make every effort to initiate talks and find a solution suggests they no longer know how to cut deals. Finally, having a self-described dealmaker in the Oval Office was worthless, since the dealmaker is totally incapable of mastering policy details, expressing a policy preference (and sticking with it for more than an hour) and moving both sides to conclusion. This is what comes from electing someone entirely in over his head. It did not help that Trump reportedly whined to staff about missing his party at Mar-a-Lago. His reputation as a man-child remains intact.

The shutdown awaits, but the weekend provides time to find a solution before the start of business on Monday. Let’s hope saner and more experienced heads prevail.

➤ Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has released its report on Profiting from the Presidency: A Year’s Worth of President Trump’s Conflicts of Interest:

During President Trump’s first year in office, CREW worked to monitor, log, and categorize every instance in which government and special interests interacted with the president’s private businesses. The results were posted on the interactive timeline Trump Inc.: A Chronicle of Presidential Conflicts. Ultimately, CREW recorded more than 500 timeline entries related to potential conflicts of interest. While it would be almost impossible to adequately summarize the full collection, we can offer three broad takeaways from this effort:

FIRST, President Trump and other government officials have routinely visited Trump properties and promoted them throughout the past year, signaling to those seeking to influence the government that the president’s commercial properties are important new centers of power and influence.

-President Trump spent a full third of the first year of his administration—122 days—visiting his commercial properties.

-Seventy executive branch officials, more than 30 members of Congress, and over a dozen state officials visited Trump Organization properties during the first year of the Trump administration.

-President Trump and his White House staff promoted the Trump brand by mentioning or referring to one of the president’s private businesses on at least 35 different occasions during the president’s first year in office.

SECOND, far from this signaled access to power being an empty promise, those who patronize President Trump’s businesses have, in fact, gained access to the president and his inner circle. Indeed, it appears that at least some of those guests are trying to use that access to exert influence.

THIRD, the promotion of the president’s businesses as centers of power and influence appears to be paying off: During President Trump’s first year in office, a variety of industry groups, foreign governments, and political committees patronized his businesses.

-There have been more than 40 instances of special interest groups holding events at Trump properties since January 20, 2017.

-Eleven foreign governments have paid Trump-owned entities during the president’s first year in office, and at least six foreign government officials have made appearances at Trump Organization properties.

-Political groups spent more than $1.2 million at Trump properties during the president’s first year in office. Prior to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, annual spending by political committees at Trump properties had never exceeded $100,000 in any given year going back to at least 2002.

(See also the CREW timeline of Trump’s conflicts of interest.)

➤ Judd Legum observes The unrepentant racism of Tucker Carlson Tonight (“A primetime Fox News show embraces white identity politics”):

On Thursday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox News’ highest rated program, the host and his guest, right-wing pundit Mark Steyn, were unrepentant in their embrace of anti-Hispanic racism.

Steyn ominously noted to an audience of about 3 million people that the “majority of grade school students in Arizona are Hispanic.” According to Steyn, this means that “Arizona’s future is as an Hispanic society.” This, Steyn says, is very bad.

“That means, in effect, the border has moved north,” according to Steyn. In other words, Steyn believes that Hispanics are not real Americans.

Carlson replies that this cultural transformation is “bewildering” for “people grew up here,” apparently unaware that millions of Americans are Hispanic and grew up here. “I don’t think you have to be motivated by hate to say maybe I should have some say in how my country evolves,” Carlson argues.

In short, Carlson believes that it is legitimate for white people to want to exclude Hispanics from the the United States to preserve the country’s white identity.

The irony of Steyn’s racist commentary on what it means to be an American is that Steyn is not an American. He is Canadian. There are 56.6 million Americans who are Hispanic. All of them are 100 percent more American than Mark Steyn.

➤ Jon Lovett contends Tucker Carlson’s political evolution reveals where our politics now stands:

Tucker Carlson’s transition from conservative seriousish writer to blustery CNN guy to Daily Caller troll to race-baiting Fox News host is like ice core data on what led to this moment in our politics.

— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) January 19, 2018

(Lovett’s spot on about this – anyone reviewing consistently the white supremacist publications of the alt right would see that Carlson – more than any other mainstream television personality – receives their admiration and support. By comparison, these publications scarcely care about someone like Hannity. It’s Carlson who excites them, who offers them the malevolent hope of a breakthrough in the middle of Fox’s primetime schedule. No one signals to them like Carlson does. Why, by the way, would anyone review consistently the white supremacist publications of the alt right? One does so not merely because they are the enemies of a democratic society, but because they are the enemies of a democratic society who aim to seize this day, Trump’s time, to become a mainstream movement.)

➤ Explore Portugal’s Castle of Many Colors:

Perched atop Portugal’s Sintra Mountains sits Pena National Palace, an eclectic attraction built in the late 18th century. The castle’s vibrant colors and unusual architecture were the brainchild of King Ferdinand II, who built the palace to serve as a summer home for the Portuguese royal family. Today, it holds the distinction of being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, attracting visitors from around the world.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:51 PM, for 9h 32m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1939, Ernest Hausen (1877 – 1955) of Ft. Atkinson sets the world’s record for chicken plucking.  On this date in 1976, Federal District Judge John Reynolds ruled that the Milwaukee Public Schools were illegally segregated in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment rights of the students, and ordered the Milwaukee Board of School Directors to take immediate steps to desegregate the public schools.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Peter Stone and Greg Gordon report FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump:

WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.

FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

It’s unclear how long the Torshin inquiry has been ongoing, but the news comes as Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sweeping investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including whether the Kremlin colluded with Trump’s campaign, has been heating up.

All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because Mueller’s investigation is confidential and mostly involves classified information.

A spokesman for Mueller’s office declined comment.

➤ Sarah Kendzior contends Trump’s racism is more than rhetoric – it forms policy and ruins lives:

Having failed to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his bigotry, Americans are now stuck with him as President – and the priority should not be policing his profanity, but protecting the rights of non-white and non-Christian Americans. Some callously call his racist remarks a “distraction,” ignoring that his racism underlies actual policy such as the DACA repeal and the Muslim travel ban. Mr. Trump’s racism is not mere rhetoric; backed by a GOP that abides it, his racism ruins lives.

His racism is dangerous not only for immigrants and foreigners but for any American who is not white. For decades, he has described U.S. cities with substantial black and Latino populations – in particular, Chicago – in the same derogatory language he used on Thursday. Mr. Trump sees not only non-white immigrants but also non-white, native-born U.S. citizens as people who do not belong in his America. In his mind, being American is synonymous with being white. This view came through most clearly in his years-long crusade against president Barack Obama, whom Mr. Trump insisted must be a foreigner – admitting only in 2016 that Mr. Obama was an American. But one can also witness it in his attacks on other non-white citizens he deemed either illegitimate, such as Mexican-American Judge Gonzalo Curiel, or unpatriotic, such as the numerous black celebrities he berates.

After his comments spurred an outcry on Thursday [1.11.18], CNN reported that White House staffers were pleased, as the xenophobic attacks would resonate with Mr. Trump’s base. While this is likely true and is disturbing in its own right, the broader implications are also concerning. Mr. Trump is the most unpopular president in U.S. history, with a 67-per-cent disapproval rating, and his base is small and shrinking. Only 26 per cent of Americans voted for him, and the number who remain hard-core supporters is likely much lower than that.

Mr. Trump’s base may be overwhelmingly white, but by 2020 non-whites will be the majority of America’s children. Given this shifting demographic, one would normally expect a president and his party to tone down racist rhetoric in a midterm election year and instead try to expand the voter base. That Mr. Trump remains blatantly racist shows not only personal mendacity but a lack of concern for the will of the public – a nonchalance best explained by the numerous suppression mechanisms the GOP has designed to disenfranchise voters.

Mr. Trump and his backers have abandoned the idea that America is for everyone – a fundamental precept of the United States. Though this ideal has never been fully upheld in practice, it has never been so vigorously opposed, both in rhetoric and policy, by a president. Mr. Trump’s racism is not new, but this anti-American presidency is.

➤ Frank Bruni observes Donald Trump Will Soil You. Ask Lindsey Graham:

That’s the story of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Its moral couldn’t be clearer. There’s no honor or wisdom in cozying up to Donald Trump — just a heap of manure.

Maybe more than any other figure on Capitol Hill, Graham personifies his party’s spastic, incoherent response to Trump across time and its humiliating, fatally misguided surrender.

He denounced Trump before he befriended and defended him. He graduated from the unpleasant experience of being Trump’s punching bag to the unprincipled one of being his enabler. Like the majority of his Republican colleagues in Congress, he reckoned that he could somehow get more than he was giving up, which included his dignity. He reckoned wrong.

Right now, we’re supposed to … what? Thank Graham for his candor, because he effectively confirmed that in a meeting about immigration in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump made those vulgar comments, and because Graham stood up to the president at the time, telling him that America was an idea, not a race?

Or should we instead note how far Graham had previously traveled to prop this same president up? It was Graham who recently joined Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican, in undercutting the credibility of federal inquiries into Trump’s ties with Russia by recommending that the Justice Department investigate Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote that famous dossier.

➤ David Frum writes of An Exit From Trumpocracy:

Where technologies were invented and where styles were set, where diseases cured and innovations launched, where songs were composed and patents registered—there the GOP was weakest. Donald Trump won vast swathes of the nation’s landmass. Hillary Clinton won the counties that produced 64 percent of the nation’s wealth. Even in Trump states, Clinton won the knowledge centers, places like the Research Triangle of North Carolina.

The Trump presidency only accelerated the divorce of political power from cultural power. Business leaders quit Trump’s advisory boards lest his racist outbursts sully their brands. Companies like Facebook and Microsoft denounced his immigration policies. Popular singers refused invitations to his White House; great athletes boycotted his events. By the summer of 2017, Trump’s approval among those under thirty had dipped to 20 percent.

And this was before Trump’s corruption and collusion scandals begin to bite.

Whatever Trump’s personal fate, his Republican Party seems headed for electoral trouble—or worse. Yet it will require much more than Republican congressional defeats in 2018 to halt Trumpocracy. Indeed, such defeats may well perversely strengthen President Trump. Congressional defeats will weaken alternative power centers within the Republican Party. If they lose the House or the Senate or many governorships—or some combination of those defeats—then Republicans may feel all the more compelled to defend their president. The party faithful may interpret any internal criticism of Trump as a treasonable surrender to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. As the next presidential race nears, it will become ever more imperative to rally around Trump. The more isolated Trump becomes within the American political system as a whole, the more he will dominate whatever remains of the conservative portion of that system. He will devour his party from within.

➤ One can look Behind the Scenes at the Natural History Museum:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-three. Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:50 PM, for 9h 30m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 7 AM.

On this day in 1911, aviator Eugene Burton Ely is the first to successfully land an airplane on a ship:

Ely landed his Curtiss pusher airplane on a platform on the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Francisco Bay.^{[nb 2]}

Ely flew from the Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, California and landed on the Pennsylvania, which was the first successful shipboard landing of an aircraft.^[16][17]This flight was also the first ever using a tailhook system, designed and built by circus performer and aviator Hugh Robinson.^[7] Ely told a reporter: “It was easy enough. I think the trick could be successfully turned nine times out of ten.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Mark Sommerhauser reports Memo: Foxconn cost to public nearing $4.5 billion:

A newly released memo projects the public cost for a planned Foxconn manufacturing project near Racine could near $4.5 billion — nearly 50 percent more than the $3 billion cost initially cited by the project’s chief proponent at the state Capitol, Gov. Scott Walker.

The figures were compiled by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau in a memo requested — and released Tuesday — by Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh. The individual cost figures are not new but had not previously been compiled in a single document.

They reflect costs to state government, mostly through tax credits for Foxconn over a 15-year period. They also include costs to local governments near the proposed site of the Foxconn campus, in eastern Racine County.

The breakdown of public costs from the project, according to the memo, is as follows:

State tax credits, $2.85 billion

Local government incentives, $764 million

U.S. Interstate 94 North-South project, $408 million

Utility costs, $140 million

State sales tax exemption, $139 million

Road improvements, $134 million

Worker training, $20 million

Local government grants, $15 million

➤ Denise Clifton reports Putin’s Trolls Are Targeting Trump’s GOP Critics—Especially John McCain (“Kremlin-linked accounts keep going after the ailing Arizona senator, as well as Mitt Romney, Bob Corker, and others”):

When John McCain checked into Walter Reed Medical Center in December as he continued his battle against cancer, Russian trolls seized the moment to spread a conspiracy theory that the veteran Republican senator was using his health as a pretense to dodge a rising “scandal” concerning the so-called Trump-Russia dossier. Far-right stories attacking McCain – a frequent critic of President Trump – were among the top 10 shared by Kremlin-backed Twitter accounts in the days after McCain was hospitalized, as well as later in the month after he returned to Arizona, according to recent analysis by the cybersecurity project Hamilton 68.

While the vast majority of the attacks from the 600 Twitter accounts tracked in real time by the Hamilton 68 dashboard are aimed at Democrats, the trolls also turn their sights on Republicans who sometimes stand up to Trump. Repeat targets have included Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. National security adviser H.R. McMaster has also been a target. But no Republican has faced more persistent wrath from the Russian-linked accounts than McCain, says Bret Schafer, an analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a group of national-security experts behind the dashboard working to expose Kremlin meddling in US politics. And those attacks on McCain have intensified in recent weeks.

…

Schafer says that the trolls tend to spread disinformation from far-right American sites rather than content from explicitly Russian ones. “GatewayPundit.com and TruePundit.com—sites to the right of Breitbart—those are our frequent flyers,” he says. “The Russians are latching onto hyperpartisan content.”

(Trump gives Putin no reason to stop, so Putin won’t.)

➤ Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier report Investigators Are Scrutinizing Newly Uncovered Payments By The Russian Embassy (“US authorities are poring over hundreds of newly uncovered payments from Russian diplomatic accounts. Among them are transactions by former ambassador Sergey Kislyak 10 days after the 2016 presidential election and a blocked $150,000 cash withdrawal five days after the inauguration.”):

The transactions reveal:

One of the people at the center of the investigation, the former Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak, received $120,000 ten days after the election of Donald Trump. Bankers flagged it to the US government as suspicious in part because the transaction, marked payroll, didn’t fit prior pay patterns.

Five days after Trump’s inauguration, someone attempted to withdraw $150,000 cash from the embassy’s account — but the embassy’s bank blocked it. Bank employees reported the attempted transaction to the US government because it was abnormal activity for that account.

From March 8 to April 7, 2014, bankers flagged nearly 30 checks for a total of about $370,000 to embassy employees, who cashed the checks as soon as they received them, making it virtually impossible to trace where the money went. Bank officials noted that the employees had not received similar payments in the past, and that the transactions surrounded the date of a critical referendum on whether parts of Crimea should secede from Ukraine and join Russia — one of Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy concerns and a flash point with the West.

Over five years, the Russian Cultural Centre — an arm of the government that sponsors classes and performances and is based in Washington, DC — sent $325,000 in checks that banking officials flagged as suspicious. The amounts were not consistent with normal payroll checks and some transactions fell below the $10,000 threshold that triggers a notice to the US government.

The Russian Embassy in Washington, DC, sent more than $2.4 million to small home-improvement companies controlled by a Russian immigrant living not far from there. Between 2013 and March 2017, that contractor’s various companies received about 600 such payments, earmarked for construction jobs at Russian diplomatic compounds. Bankers told the Treasury they did not think those transactions were related to the election but red-flagged them because the businesses seemed too small to have carried out major work on the embassy and because the money was cashed quickly or wired to other accounts.

➤ Lachlan Markay and Spencer Ackerman report Team Trump Cooks Terror Stats for Bogus Immigration Argument (“The administration insists the ‘foreign born’ are responsible for most of the terror threat the U.S. faces. That’s true—if you ignore hundreds of plots, attacks, and recent trends”):

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday released a report highlighting foreign-born individuals convicted of terrorism charges here in the United States (PDF). Backed by the Department of Homeland Security, DOJ entirely omitted data on domestic terrorism incidents. And what statistics the government did produce are completely contradicted by counter-terrorism experts. The administration is trying to argue that terrorism on American soil is largely carried out by the “foreign-born”; the experts insist that it’s the other way around—that U.S. citizens have been the majority of the offenders since 9/11.

“If you’re looking at international terrorism, you’re going to see people with a more international background—that’s just common sense,” said William Braniff, the executive director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland.

“Whenever you’re trying to answer an analytical question, the way you frame the question directly contributes to what data you include in this analysis, and in this case, they exclude a lot of data that would present a different picture.”

What’s more, the report’s release appears to have been timed—though the White House called the timing “purely coincidental”—to tie national security to ongoing administration efforts to end two U.S. visa programs as a condition of congressional immigration negotiations.

➤ What about That Time the British Developed a Flying Jeep?

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will partly cloudy with a high of twenty-three. Sunrise is 7:2o AM and sunset 4:49 PM, for 9h 28m 33s of daytime. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Planning  Commission Housing Sub-Committee meets at 5 PM, and her Parks & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1781, the Americans under under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan defeat British forces under Sir Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina.  On this day in 1900, one hundred Wisconsin women working in a cotton mill go on strike: “100 female employees of the Monterey mill, affiliated with the Janesville Cotton Mills, went on strike for higher wages. According to local sources, a committee of four “good-looking young ladies” was appointed to negotiate with management. Doing piece work, the women earned only $40 a month. The company said the women “don’t know how good they’ve got it…because they are paid more than at other local cotton mills and as well as some men with families.” The women argued their monthly pay only averaged $20. Within three days, all the women were hired to work by tobacco warehouses. The Monterey mill was one of three Janesville cotton mills in operation at the turn of the century. ”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Todd Richmond reports Democrat wins special election in northwestern Wisconsin:

Patty Schachtner defeated Republican state Rep. Adam Jarchow for an open state Senate seat Tuesday in an upset victory for struggling Wisconsin Democrats, signaling voter anger toward President Donald Trump that could cost the GOP more legislative seats in the fall elections.

Jarchow tweeted his concession to Schachtner late Tuesday evening, with returns nearly complete across five counties and Schachtner leading by more than 1,600 votes. Schachtner, the St. Croix County medical examiner and a Somerset school board member, had entered the race in northwestern Wisconsin’s traditionally conservative 10th Senate District as the clear underdog.

The district has trended conservative for years. Republican Sheila Harsdorf held the Senate seat for 16 years before she resigned in November to become Gov. Scott Walker’s agriculture secretary and every county in the district voted for Trump in 2016. Jarchow is in the middle of his third term representing the area in the Assembly and had built a formidable base.

But Democrats banked that anti-Trump backlash could even the playing field. Republicans sensed it, too. Conservative groups Americans for Prosperity and the Republican State Leadership Committee both ran ads supporting Jarchow, and Republican state Sen. Leah Vukmir, who is running for U.S. Senate, traveled to the district to campaign for him.
It wasn’t enough.

➤ Paul Waldman asks The Trump presidency: On track to becoming the most corrupt in U.S. history?

What distinguishes Trump from all his predecessors is the fact that he barely conceals his intentions. After a lifetime spent not only manipulating the economic, legal, and political systems to increase his wealth but publicly bragging about his ability to do so, there was little doubt that he’s continue in the same vein as president. He refused to divest himself from his businesses, then held a press conference standing next to piles of what were almost certainly stacks of blank paper inside blank folders which he claimed were the “documents” he had to sign to affect the transfer of those businesses to his sons.

But as the director of revenue management for the Trump Hotel in Washington wrote to an acquaintance in an email obtained by the Daily Beast, “DJT is supposed to be out of the business and passed on to his sons, but he’s definitely still involved.” This too surprises no one.

That’s not to mention that the Republican tax bill could barely have been designed better to maximize the benefits to Trump himself, particularly the dramatic cut in taxes on pass-through companies, which will be worth many millions of dollars to the president, since the Trump Organization is essentially a collection of hundreds of pass-throughs. Of course, we don’t know exactly how much he’ll gain, because unlike every president and presidential candidate in decades, Trump continues to refuse to release his tax returns. This despite the fact that there is no president in history whose finances are in more urgent need of public examination.

➤ Bess Levin writes Report: Trump Has Done a Great Job Profiting Off the Presidency (“Particularly from foreign government and lobbyists”):

According to a new report compiled by Public Citizen, a liberal-leaning watchdog organization based in Washington, over the past year 64 “politicians, interest groups, corporations and entities affiliated with foreign governments” have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at Trump-branded properties. Among them were Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his delegation, who stayed at Trump’s D.C. hotel during a September 2017 trip to Washington; a company tied to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which paid the hotel $270,000 for rooms, catering, and parking while lobbying to overturn a law that allows terrorism victims to sue foreign governments; the Kuwait Embassy, which held a National Day celebration last February at the Trump International Hotel; and the government-linked Turkey-U. S. Business Council and the American Turkish Council, which held a conference at the hotel in May and plan to do so again this year.

And that’s not counting the conference at Trump National Doral thrown by top execs whose companies are members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a private prison company’s leadership conference at the same property, and a holiday party for the William Koch-owned Oxbow Carbon LLC at Mar-a-Lago.

While we would never suggest that any of these individuals or groups were attempting to curry favor with the president by spending lavishly at his properties, experts believe such a thing is quite possible. “The motive varies from event to event, but a number of these seem clearly for the purposes of ingratiating with the president,” Public Citizen president Robert Weissman told The Wall Street Journal. Although Trump relinquished the day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization to Eric and Don Jr., he retained his financial interest in the family business through a trust that he can draw money from at any time, whether it’s for new Brioni suits or to fund his legal defense in the Russia probe. And though the Trump Organization claimed it would send any profits earned from foreign government payments by guests at its hotels to the Treasury, it declined to tell the Journal how that money is tracked, saying last month that it “expects to have information to share at the end of February.”

➤ Chris Strohm and Greg Farrell report GOP Access to FBI Files Rattles Agents Caught in Political Fight:

The Justice Department’s decision to give congressional Republicans access to documents about FBI investigations risks exposing sensitive sources or material and poses a critical early test for bureau Director Christopher Wray, current and former U.S. law enforcement officials say

Some officials view the department as capitulating to a small group of Republicans who are intent on helping President Donald Trump undermine the integrity of the FBI and, by extension, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump or any of his associates helped Russia interfere in the 2016 election.

It’s the latest setback for a law enforcement agency that has long held itself out as doggedly independent and above partisan politics, only to be besieged over the last two years by questions about its handling of politically sensitive investigations into Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Trump.

One agent said he’s now concerned that forms identifying FBI informants would be handed over to Congress. If that happened, he said, it would cause him to think carefully about whether to withhold sensitive information from future reports.

Another agent said recent statements about the bureau by Trump and congressional Republicans have made it more difficult for him to get informants to open up.

➤ No one would think that FREE WHITEWATER is a site about modeling, but then Not Your Average Brazilian Model isn’t merely a video about modeling:

“When we tell people we’re from the favela, they automatically think of danger, violence, mess, or worthlessness,” says Caio Guimaraes, a model featured in Geoff Levy’s short film, Rio’s Different Face of Fashion. “Of course, there are bad things, but there are a lot of great things, too. It’s a magical world.”

Jacarezinho, one of the largest favelas in Rio de Janeiro, is home to a modeling agency that aims to challenge stereotypes and galvanize the community. Levy’s vibrant and kinetic documentary profiles Jacaré Moda’s rising models. More than just an economic opportunity—Guimaraes had less than a dollar to his name before he began attending casting calls—fashion, for these underserved youth, is a chance to bolster self-esteem, cultivate creativity, and achieve a purpose. It is a portal to self-actualization.

Many of the young models embrace their community’s resourceful ethos. “I improvise with all I have,” says model Natalia Sant’Anna. “Even if it’s disposable, it can be used—and used well. In the favela, you see things and you think, ‘Wow, look what they came up with.’ This is creativity.”

“Working as a model is an affirmation of my identity,” says Camila Reis, another model in the film. “Growing up, I always thought, ‘ Why am I not represented in media that tries to connect with the masses?’ We now have the opportunity to tell our story our way—through the eyes of the people who live in the favela.”

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see morning clouds and afternoon sunshine, with a high of twenty-three. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:48 PM, for 9h 26m 46s of daytime. It’s a new moon today, with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5 PM, and Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1920, the Prohibition takes effect in America. On this day in 1864, the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry occupies Kimbrough’s Crossroads in Tennessee.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ed Kilgore writes of William Barber II and the MLK Legacy of Church-Based Activism:

Recapturing the language of morality from conservatives remains one of Barber’s chief preoccupations. It is often jarring to progressives accustomed to a less fraught rhetoric of gradual social and economic progress to hear someone describe contemporary conservatives as deeply immoral people who are motivated by greed and who are making a mockery of their professed religious convictions. But while the Moral Movement was fully underway before Donald Trump executed his takeover of the GOP and the conservative movement, it now seems even more appropriate to describe the right as seized by a frenzy of immoral greed when it’s headed by the great narcissist and business pirate whose campaign was fueled by cultural resentments and hatred of “losers.” But Barber won’t let Republicans hide behind Trump:

“Trump is a symptom of a deeper moral malady. And if he was gone tomorrow or impeached tomorrow, the senators and the House of Representatives and Ryan and McConnell and Graham and all them would still be there. And what we have found, Amy, when we look at them, no matter how crazy they call him or names they call him or anger they get with him, it’s all a front, because at the end of the day, they might disagree with his antics, but they support his agenda.”

Even as Democrats fight to thwart Trump and his party in the 2018 midterms, the Poor People’s Campaign will be seeking to set a higher standard for what comes after Trump and how voters measure both parties. Barber calls the organization that will be running that campaign Repairers of the Breach, which aims at nothing less than “to redeem the heart and soul of our country.” That means convincing people used to thinking of “morality” as about enforcing sexual codes and keeping women under control to instead think first about how Americans treat the poor and oppressed. It’s hardly the first such effort, as we will recall during commemorations of Martin Luther King’s life and legacy. But it’s a psychological tonic for all those who read sacred texts and long for prophetic voices seeking justice for the afflicted rather than comfort for the powerful.

➤ Russ Choma reports  For Sale by President Trump: A Leaky, Polluted Warehouse Caught Up in a Lawsuit:

Anyone in the market for a polluted South Carolina warehouse that’s mired in a messy lawsuit? Did we mention it has a leaky roof?

President Donald Trump’s company, known for its glitzy real estate developments, is trying to find a buyer for just such a property, located in a North Charleston industrial park. The 157,000-square-foot warehouse is a vestige of one of Donald Trump Jr.’s biggest business blunders, a deal his father had to bail him out of four years ago and one that is still creating headaches for the Trump Organization.

In 2010, Trump Jr. and a few business partners launched a concrete company, Titan Atlas Manufacturing, and purchased the warehouse, once owned by Lockheed Martin, as the headquarters for their new venture. The company went bust after four years, leaving Trump Jr. holding a $3.65 million Deutsche Bank loan, secured by the warehouse. That was when the elder Trump stepped in, creating a new company, DB Pace Acquisition, which he used to buy the loan from the German bank (which was also Donald Trump’s biggest lender). Trump then foreclosed on the loan, taking the building into his own possession and out of the hands of his son’s failed concrete business. On his most recent personal financial disclosure, Trump listed DB Pace Acquisition as worth between $1 million and $5 million.

➤ Marcus Kolga reports Countering the growing threat of Russian disinformation in Canada (“The Russian government is paying off Canada’s largest media companies to expose unsuspecting television subscribers to regime-sponsored disinformation in what amounts to a surreal 24 hour propaganda informercial”):

As the number of reports about Kremlin election meddling and disinformation campaigns around the world continue to build, a disturbing Canadian report claims that the Putin regime has been paying millions of dollars annually to Canada’s largest cable providers to force feed Russian state propaganda into 6 million Canadian households since 2009.

The scheme represents a highly unusual reversal of the typical flow of money in the television distribution industry, where channel and content providers usually get paid by cable and satellite TV providers whose subscribers pay for content. The Russian government is paying off Canada’s largest media companies to expose unsuspecting television subscribers to regime-sponsored disinformation in what amounts to a surreal 24 hour propaganda informercial.

Russia Today, or RT as it’s known today, has been churning out pro-Putin propaganda, conspiracy theories and outright disinformation to support and advance the Russian regime’s foreign policy objectives since 2005.

➤ Michelle Cottle contends it’s The Perfect Pairing of Subject and Chronicler (“Disdain for playing by the rules, delight in shocking their audiences, and hunger for the approval of the elites they mock—there’s a lot that Michael Wolff and Donald Trump share in common”):

Love him or hate him, Michael Wolff, author of the dishy new Trump tell-all, Fire and Fury, is a good sport.

Thirteen years ago, after Wolff won his second National Magazine Award, I wrote a profile of him that was not especially flattering. In addition to deeming Wolff a mediocre political commentator, the piece noted that his journalistic m.o. was … unorthodox. He burned sources, busted embargoes, was less-than-meticulous about details, and had a penchant for gilding his actual reporting with colorful bits of what he imagined had happened in certain situations. He didn’t try to pass fiction off as fact so much as he wove both together in a swirl of style, substance, and snark. (Wolff has always been more about painting entertaining, impressionistic portraits than about sweating the nitty-gritty.) His flagrant disdain for journalistic conventions is a key reason Wolff has long been controversial among, and even loathed by, much of the Fourth Estate.

With the release of Fire and Fury—the gist of which is that even those in Trumpworld consider Trump unfit for office—Wolff is getting hammered by the president’s protectors. They aim to discredit his book by discrediting Wolff himself, and one of their pet tools has been my 2004 profile, which Trump supporters both inside and outside the White House have been peddling to reporters and political types. I have written many critical pieces. None has been half so fiercely weaponized—which is saying a lot, since I mostly cover politicians.

Despite all this, when I reached Wolff via email Saturday evening to ask how he was weathering the madness, he was nice as pie. He had just listened to a CNN podcast I had done about him and kindly observed that I had a “nice voice.” Nor was he crabby about any of my past or current critiques. “As my presumptive biographer, you get it about 55 percent right,” he quipped. “That’s not so bad.”

(A good friend kindly gave me a copy of Fire and Fury, and I’m enjoying the readable account.)

➤ Students And Researchers Built A Pavilion Out Of Carbon Fiber Using Robots:

This pavilion was built by robots and drones. Researchers and students from the University of Stuttgart are studying the use of carbon fiber and glass in construction. Typical fabrication doesn’t allow for too much creativity. The lightweight composites are strong, which allow for some impressive shapes. The structure is also based on nature. It mimics the silk hammocks spun by moth larvae which shows in its bent, winding structure. Robots created the smooth fiber weaving process, and drones were also used to cover more ground. The resulting pavilion is 39 feet long, weighs 2,200 pounds, and 112 miles of woven glass and carbon fiber were used. Who knew nature could inspire such stunning architecture?