Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-two. Sunrise is 5:46 AM and sunset 8:15 PM, for 14h 29m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 58,9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred sixty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1930, The Shadow, the narrator of the Detective Story Hour, first goes on the air: “The narrator was initially voiced by James LaCurto,[6] who was replaced after four months by prolific character actor Frank Readick Jnr. The episodes were drawn from the Detective Story Magazine issued by Street and Smith, “the nation’s oldest and largest publisher of pulp magazines.” Although the latter company had hoped the radio broadcasts would boost the declining sales of Detective Story Magazine, the result was quite different. Listeners found the sinister announcer much more compelling than the unrelated stories. They soon began asking newsdealers for copies of “that Shadow detective magazine,” even though it did not exist.”

On this day in 1967, Lake Geneva bans go-go girls (“the Lake Geneva city government passed an ordinance banning go-go girls, dancers in bikinis, and swimsuit-clad waitresses from working in establishments that served alcohol”).

Recommended for reading in full —

The Washington Post editorial board observes that Russian propaganda has flooded U.S. airwaves. How about some reciprocity?:

The asymmetry is a problem. Mr. Putin’s government, intent on undermining liberal democracies by casting doubt on the very notion of truth, and sowing division and doubt about basic Western institutions, has become increasingly adept at weaponizing information. U.S. intelligence agencies have called attention to Moscow’s fake news campaign, as have U.S. allies in Europe.

Yet in the realm of U.S.-Russian international news, reciprocity seems absent from Mr. Trump’s radar. A 24/7 Russian-language television venture produced by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, called Current Time, has been up and running for several months, producing high-quality news, but is available only online.

The asymmetry is a problem. Mr. Putin’s government, intent on undermining liberal democracies by casting doubt on the very notion of truth, and sowing division and doubt about basic Western institutions, has become increasingly adept at weaponizing information. U.S. intelligence agencies have called attention to Moscow’s fake news campaign, as have U.S. allies in Europe.

Mattathais Schwartz reports that Internal Documents Show How the Nation’s Top Spy Is Instructed to Talk About Trump:

ProPublica has obtained internal talking points, apparently written by one of Coats’ aides, anticipating questions that [NBC’s Lester] Holt was likely to ask. They offer a window into the euphemisms and evasions necessary to handle a pressing issue for Coats: how to lead the intelligence community at a time when the president has insulted it on Twitter and denigrated its work while questions about Russian influence consume ever more time and attention in Washington. Sixteen of the 26 questions addressed by the talking points concerned internal White House politics, the Russia investigation, or the president himself. One question put the challenges facing Coats this way: “How can you work as DNI for a president that undermines your work?”

DNI spokesman Brian Hale told ProPublica that the 17-page document was a small, unclassified part of “a thick binder” of preparation documents for Coats’ interview. The other pieces, according to Hale, “had substantive material on Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea.” The talking points document, he said, “was designed to address the questions we anticipated being asked because of the news cycle.”

….In the talking points, Coats was advised to say that he and the president have “a trusted relationship,” framing any disagreements as constructive ones. “We may not always agree,” the document stated. “We must maintain an open dialogue … the relationship portrayed in the media between the president and the intelligence community is a far cry from what I have personally experienced and witnessed … there is a healthy dialogue and a good back and forth discussion.”

David Sanger writes that Putin’s Bet on a Trump Presidency Backfires Spectacularly:

President Vladimir V. Putin bet that Donald J. Trump, who had spoken fondly of Russia and its authoritarian leader for years, would treat his nation as Mr. Putin has longed to have it treated by the West. That is, as the superpower it once was, or at least a major force to be reckoned with, from Syria to Europe, and boasting a military revived after two decades of neglect.

That bet has now backfired, spectacularly. If the sanctions overwhelmingly passed by Congress last week sent any message to Moscow, it was that Mr. Trump’s hands are now tied in dealing with Moscow, probably for years to come.

Just weeks after the two leaders spent hours in seemingly friendly conversation in Hamburg, Germany, the prospect of the kinds of deals Mr. Trump once mused about in interviews seems more distant than ever. Congress is not ready to forgive the annexation of Crimea, nor allow extensive reinvestment in Russian energy. The new sanctions were passed by a coalition of Democrats who blame Mr. Putin for contributing to Hillary Clinton’s defeat and Republicans fearful that their president misunderstands who he is dealing with in Moscow.

Fred Hiatt asks readers to Behold the Trump boomerang effect:

Once you start looking, you find the boomerang at work in many surprising places. Trump’s flirting with a ban on Muslim immigration encouraged federal judges to encroach on executive power over visa policy. Firing FBI Director James B. Comey entrenched the Russia investigation far more deeply. Withdrawing from the Paris climate treaty spurred states from California to Virginia to toughen their policies on global warming. Threatening the research budget may have strengthened the National Institutes of Health’s hand in Washington. And so on.

The boomerang effect is no panacea. Trump can still do grave damage at home and abroad in the next 3½ years. If he undermined Obamacare, millions of people would suffer before we got to single-payer. Nationalist governments ensconced in parts of Eastern Europe could still draw strength from Trump. The absence of U.S. leadership in the world leaves ample ground for others to cause trouble.

But Trump’s policies are turning against him, and not only because his execution has been so ham-handed. The key factor is that so many of his policies run so counter to the grain of cherished values and ideals.

Tech Insider explains Why most planes are white:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-one. Sunrise is 5:45 AM and sunset 8:17 PM, for 14h 31m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 48.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred sixty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1619, the first European-style legislative assembly in the Americas “convened for a six-day meeting at the church on Jamestown Island, Virginia. A council chosen by the Virginia Company as advisers to the governor, the Virginia Governor’s Council, met as a sort of “upper house,” while 22 locally elected representatives met as the House of Burgesses. Together, the House of Burgesses and the Council would be the Virginia General Assembly.”

Recommended for reading in full —

April Glaser observes that The New Wisconsin Foxconn Plant Will Probably Be Staffed By Robots—if It Ever Gets Built:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:44 AM and sunset is 8:18 PM, for 14h 33m 48s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 39.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred sixty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1588, the English defeat the Spanish Armada in the Battle of Gravelines. On this day in 1863, the 13th Wisconsin Infantry fights in a skirmish at Fort Donelson, Tennessee.

Recommended for reading in full —

Annie Lowrey assesses the economics of the Wisconsin’s latest corporate handout in Foxconned:

….tax incentives tend to sap state coffers without necessarily generating good jobs or creating positive spillovers in the regional economy—both things that would boost a state’s tax revenues and thus help justify the investment. “Incentives are still far too broadly provided to many firms that do not pay high wages, do not provide many jobs, and are unlikely to have research spin-offs,” argues Timothy J. Bartik of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a labor-market research organization, in a major analysis of such state and local tax breaks. “Too many incentives excessively sacrifice the long-term tax base of state and local economies. Too many incentives are refundable and without real budget limits. States devote relatively few resources to incentives that are services, such as customized job training.”

Plus, states rarely seem to consider whether the money they lavish on corporations might be better spent elsewhere—on public goods like bridges, say, or educational initiatives for their workforces. “If offering more tax incentives requires spending less on public education, congestion-relieving infrastructure projects, workforce development, police and fire protection, or high technology initiatives at public universities, the overall impact on a state’s economy could actually be negative,” argues the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit research group. “While the long-term economic benefits of education and infrastructure investments may not be as flashy as incentive-backed ribbon-cutting ceremonies, these investments are even more fundamental to any successful economy.”

All of these things might be true of the Foxconn deal—and one way or another, 3,000 or 13,000 jobs does not a manufacturing renaissance make. If it even happens: Foxconn made a splashy and lavishly praised promise to build a new high-tech factory in central Pennsylvania a few years ago. It never followed through.

Molly Beck reports that a pending Bill significantly rolls back environmental rules for Foxconn:

Despite $3 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies, technology giant Foxconn would be given wide latitude to bypass state environmental regulations in building and operating its 1,000-acre electronics manufacturing plant in southeastern Wisconsin under a proposal from Gov. Scott Walker.

Walker unveiled the sprawling bill Friday as he called lawmakers to convene a special legislative session to pass the measure aimed at speeding up construction of Foxconn’s planned liquid-crystal display panel factory.

The bill lawmakers will consider as early as Tuesday allows the company to move or change the course of streams, build man-made bodies of water that connect with natural waterways and discharge materials in state wetlands without authorization from the state Department of Natural Resources. It exempts the company from being subject to an environmental impact statement.

Richard Engel reports that the Russian Kaspersky Lab faces new scrutiny, suspicion:

Much of Thursday’s hearing was spent getting at the bigger question: Why is the Russian president so fixated on the Magnitsky Act?

There are two reasons, according to Browder:

The first is purely financial. Browder believes Putin is the richest man in the world, with an assortment of assets worth what Browder estimates to be $200 billion at his disposal, but those assets are “held all over the world” including in America. When the accounts of Putin’s intermediaries are frozen because of the law, that is in effect, freezing some of Putin’s cash flow as well.

The second is that the banking sanctions imposed by the law devalue Putin’s promises, and so decrease his power. Putin gets his intermediaries to “arrest, kidnap, torture and kill” by promising absolute impunity, Browder said. But the law’s sanctions create a tangible consequence. Not only do the sanctions affect violators vis-a-vis their U.S. dealings, but, internationally, other banks abide by a sanctions list put out by the Treasury Department that includes those found to have violated the Magnitsky Act, Browder explained to lawmakers. “As a result, you basically become a financial pariah,” he said.

“This is a war of ideology between rule of law and criminality,” Browder also told the senators. “And if we allow all the corrupt money to come here, then it’s going to corrupt us until we end up like them.”

BBC Earth shows how Whales, Sharks, Dolphins and Sea Lions snack on sardines:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:43 AM and sunset 8:19 PM, for 14h 35m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 29.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred sixty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1914, the First World War begins: “Over nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a result of the war (including the victims of a number of genocides), a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents’ technological and industrial sophistication, and the tactical stalemate caused by gruelling trench warfare. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved and to the Second World War twenty-one years later.”

On this day in 1934, two are killed and dozens injured in a Kohler riot: “On this day, the “model industrial village” of Kohler became an armed camp of National Guard cavalrymen after deadly strike-related rioting. The July 27th violence, which killed two Sheboygan men and injured 40 others, prompted the summoning of 250 Guardsmen to join the 200 special deputy village marshals already present. After striking workers became agitated and began to destroy company property, deputies turned to tear gas, rifles, and shotguns to quell the stone-throwing crowd, resulting in the deaths and injuries. Owner Walter Kohler blamed Communists and outside agitators for the violence, while union leaders blamed Kohler exclusively. Workers at the Kohler plant were demanding better hours, higher wages, and recognition of the American Federation of Labor as their collective bargaining agent. Not settled until 1941, the strike marked the beginning of what was to become a prolonged struggle between the Kohler Company and organized labor in Wisconsin; a second Kohler strike lasted from 1954 to 1965.”

Recommended for reading in full —

James Hohlman writes that Trump’s hardball tactics backfire as ‘skinny repeal’ goes down:

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump’s attacks on Republican senators are finally catching up with him, and Lisa Murkowski will not be bullied….

Trump, who won Alaska by 15 points, ripped the state’s senior senator on Twitter Wednesday after she opposed a key procedural motion to open debate on health care….

Later that day, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called Murkowski and the state’s other Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, to threaten that the Trump administration may change its position on several issues that affect the state to punish Murkowski, such as blocking energy exploration and plans to allow the construction of new roads. “The message was pretty clear,” Sullivan told the Alaska Dispatch News….

This demonstrated the degree to which Zinke’s ham-handed phone call was political malpractice. The secretary, or whoever at the White House ordered him to make the calls, clearly doesn’t understand the awesome power that comes with being the chairman of a Senate committee. Only an amateur would threaten the person who has oversight over his agency! If she wants, Murkowski can make Zinke’s life so unbelievably miserable. He has no idea. (The Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.)

Thomas Kaplan offers 5 Takeaways From the Failed Senate Effort to Repeal Obamacare:

The process matters.
Republicans grumbled about the secretive manner in which the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, put together his repeal bill. There were no public hearings or formal bill-drafting sessions, and Republicans used a fast-track procedure meant for budget matters as they tried to enact complex health policy and avoid a filibuster….

The final hours of the repeal effort seemed worse than ever: Republican leaders unveiled their bill and then expected their members to vote for it hours later, and in the middle of the night, no less….

President Trump was no help.

Without the election of Mr. Trump last year, putting a Republican in the White House, the repeal effort would have been an academic exercise, ending in a certain veto. But Mr. Trump did not prove persuasive in recent days.

In public, he did not show much fluency in the basics of health policy, let alone the ability to persuade Republicans on complicated issues like the growth rate of Medicaid payments. And he did himself no favors by changing his demands about exactly what he wanted the Senate to do….

David A. Graham asks How Long Can This Go On?:

No one can be surprised by the antipathy between top Trump advisers—for months, the press has been full of reports about skirmishes between various, rotating cliques—but such fights have not been not discussed this openly. This was true even in the early days of the Clinton White House, the previous gold standard for early-term dysfunction. Though staffers were frequently stabbing each other in the back, including undercutting the then-chief of staff (sound familiar?), they were not calling up The New Yorker to speak about it on the record. (They were also living in a pre-internet era, though that would change by the second term, when Drudge Report first revealed the Monica Lewinsky scandal.)

But Scaramucci put it best on CNN Thursday morning: “The fish stinks from the head down.” President Trump has set the tone for making these fights public with his own bizarre, cruel treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In two newspaper interviews and in a series of tweets, Trump has lambasted Sessions—one of his earliest and most loyal supporters—as weak and ineffective, and has complained about his decision to recuse himself from investigations of Trump’s relations with Russia, calling it “unfair” to the president. Not since the Andrew Johnson administration has a president so viciously attacked one of his own Cabinet members.

(I’d answer Graham by saying that this will go on as long as Trump and his ilk hold power – they are manifestly unfit and their inadequacies are irremediable.)

Danielle Paquette calculates that Foxconn deal to build massive factory in Wisconsin could cost the state $230,700 per worker:

On the table is up to $3 billion in state tax breaks. The state legislature could approve the economic incentive package as early as August.

These payouts, Wisconsin officials said, come with lofty expectations. As long as Foxconn keeps hiring  U.S. workers at the new flat-screen manufacturing facility, Wisconsin would cut the company $200 million to $250 million a year for up to 15 years.

That works out to a rough cost to the state of about $230,700 per worker, assuming the factory goes on to generate 13,000 jobs.

(I’ll compile a post for next week with Wisconsin press coverage of the proposal, most of it positively gushing and credulous. It’s worth keeping in mind Foxconn’s sketchy pst promises: How Foxconn’s broken pledges in Pennsylvania cast doubt on Trump’s jobs plan.)

One reads with much sadness that June Foray, the voice of so many memorable animated characters, has passed away at the age of ninety-nine. Hers was a life well-lived, bringing happiness to so many people:

June Foray, the famed “first lady of voice actors” whose repertoire of characters include Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Pottsylvanian spy Natasha Fatale, Tweety Bird’s owner Granny and a sinister talking doll, has died. She was 99.

Foray, who worked alongside such animated legends as Mel Blanc, Chuck Jones, Stan Freberg and Jay Ward during her unseen yet spectacular eight-decade career, died Wednesday according to close friend Dave Nimitz who posted a notice of her passing on Facebook.…

When asked in a 2000 interview with the Archive of American Television to name her favorite cartoon character, she said: “I love the [Rocky and] Bullwinkle show because it’s so mordantly witty. … But I love everything I do with all of the parts that I do because there’s a little bit of me in all of them.

“We all have anger and jealousy and love and hope in our natures. We try to communicate that vocally with just sketches that you see on the screen and make it come alive and make it human.”

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of eighty-one. Sunrise is 5:42 AM and sunset 8:20 PM, for 14h 38m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 20.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred sixtieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

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

On this day in 1940, Warner Bros. releases the Merrie Melodies short A Wild Hare, in which Bugs Bunny has his first starring role:

A Wild Hare is considered by most film historians to be the first “official” Bugs Bunny cartoon.^[1][2] The title is a play on “wild hair”, the first of many puns between “hare” and “hair” that would appear in Bugs Bunny titles. The pun is carried further by a bar of I’m Just Wild About Harry playing in the underscore of the opening credits. Various directors at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio had been experimenting with cartoons focused on a hunter pursuing a rabbit since 1938, with varied approaches to the characters of both rabbit and hunter.^[3]

As well as being the first true Bugs Bunny cartoon, A Wild Hare is remembered for settling on the classic voice and appearance of the hunter, Elmer Fudd.^[2] Although the animators continued to experiment with Elmer’s design for a few more years, his look here proved the basis for his finalized design.^[4] The design and character of Bugs Bunny would continue to be refined over the subsequent years, but the general appearance, voice, and personality of the character were established in this cartoon. The animator of this cartoon, Virgil Ross, gave his first-person account of the creation of the character’s name and personality in an interview published in Animato! Magazine, #19.^[5]

Bugs is unnamed in this film, but would be named for the first time in his next short, Elmer’s Pet Rabbit, directed by Chuck Jones. The opening lines of both characters—”Be vewy, vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits” for Elmer, and “Eh, what’s up Doc?” for Bugs Bunny—would become catchphrases throughout their subsequent films.

Recommended for reading in full —

Todd Frankel reports on How Foxconn’s broken pledges in Pennsylvania cast doubt on Trump’s jobs plan:

In 2013, Foxconn’s chairman sent a jolt through this state capital when he said his company — best known for making Apple iPhones in China — would invest $30 million and hire 500 workers for a new high-tech factory in central Pennsylvania.

Locals were giddy. Foxconn had a small office here, but this seemed like the start of an entire new industry. Pennsylvania’s governor boasted about the deal. The Brookings Institution think tank hailed Foxconn’s decision as a sign of U.S. manufacturing’s strength.

But the factory was never built. The jobs never came. “It just seemed to fade to black” after the announcement, recalled a local official. It was the start of a mystery, created by a chief executive known to promise projects all over the world that never quite pan out. Yet few people seem to notice. Foxconn and others continue to get credit for deals that never take place. In December, Pennsylvania’s economic development staff was still touting the $30 million factory that never was.

Paul Waldman observes that Trump and Republicans treat their voters like morons:

….as The Post reports, Trump addressed a big crowd of his voters yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio:

Here in the heart of the industrial Midwest, Trump promised to refill lost manufacturing jobs in factories or to “rip ’em down and build brand-new ones.”

“That’s what’s going to happen,” Trump said at a campaign rally in a packed hockey arena that holds 7,000 people … Trump said: “They’re all coming back. They’re all coming back. They’re coming back. Don’t move. Don’t sell your house.”

In fairness, many people in the area, even Republicans, understand that’s a complete crock. Those jobs aren’t coming back, and the region’s future won’t be built on factories that employ huge numbers of people who can move into high-wage, high-benefit jobs with little preparation. Yet they still show up at his rallies and cheer while he lies right in their faces.

Andy Kroll and Russ Choma contend that Trump Has Turned America’s Reputation for Fighting Corruption Into a Joke:

Jessica Tillipman was recently leading an anti-­corruption training in Washington, DC, to a roomful of visiting bureaucrats from Latin America when something odd happened. As she described various measures the United States has in place to guard against self-dealing and conflicts of interest by government officials, she heard snickering.

In the past, she recalls, foreign guests “would look on kind of in awe” as she described the federal government’s elaborate system for preventing graft and corruption. That has all changed since the election of Donald Trump. Now, her international colleagues are quick to point out that the United States can’t even get its own president to abide by the nation’s ethical standards. “It was almost a bit of a joke,” Tillipman, an expert on government ethics and an assistant dean at the George Washing­ton University Law School, says of the recent training. “To have countries with their own distinct corruption issues laughing at our current issues—it’s embarrassing.”

David Leonhardt believes that G.O.P. Support for Trump Is Starting to Crack:

None of this is meant to suggest that congressional Republicans have been profiles in courage. They haven’t been. They have mostly stood by as Trump has lied compulsively, denigrated the rule of law and tried to shred the modern safety net. But they have put up just enough resistance to keep him from doing far more damage than he otherwise would have.

In the months ahead, unfortunately, that level of resistance is unlikely to be sufficient. Trump has made clear that he isn’t finished trying to take health insurance away from millions of people or trying to hide the truth about his Russia ties. “The constitutional crisis won’t be if Trump fires Mueller,” as the A.C.L.U.’s Kate Oh put it. “The constitutional crisis is if Congress takes no real action in response.”

(Perhaps Leonhardt is right about declining support but I’d contend it’s neither soon enough nor decisive enough.)

Tech Insider shows how You can take a seat anywhere with this wearable chair:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:41 AM and sunset is 8:21 PM, for 14h 40m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 12.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1865, after successful service in defense of the Union, the 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments muster out: “The 37th had spent its 14-month-long term of service in and around Washington D.C. It participated in the Siege of Petersburg and the Appomattox Campaign in pursuit of General Lee’s army. It lost 247 men during service. The 38th served in the same campaigns as the 37th but was also on duty at Arsenal, Washington, during trial and execution of President Lincoln’s assassins. It lost 113 men during service.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Patrick Marley,Rick Romell and Lee Bergquist report that a Wisconsin Foxconn deal could include $1 billion to $3 billion in taxpayer-backed incentives:

MADISON – A plan to bring a massive Foxconn Technology Group plant to Wisconsin could cost $1 billion to $3 billion in local, state and federal incentives over coming years — a stunning sum for a project that backers say could transform the state’s economy.

Foxconn’s plans are to be announced Wednesday at the White House, with a follow-up event Thursday at the Milwaukee Art Museum, according to one source. Tuesday night, the White House listed a 5 p.m. Wednesday “jobs announcement” in the East Room on President Donald Trump’s schedule.

An incentive package that reaches into the billions would be unlike anything Wisconsin has offered in the past and would require approval from state lawmakers. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) has said he hoped to get bipartisan support for the package.

Sandhya Somashekhar and David A. Fahrenthold report that Trump’s speech to Boy Scouts irks some in ‘nonpartisan’ organization:

Lavinia Falck had spent six days at the National Scout Jamboree in West Virginia, getting to know teenagers from around the world. Then, she and her friends gathered on the grass to hear from a special guest: the president of the United States.

“By the way, just a question, did President Obama ever come to a Jamboree?” President Trump said during a rambling speech Monday in which he used harsh language, recounted election-night victories and New York cocktail parties, and attacked his political opponents.

“Everyone around me was booing,” said Falck, 17, a member of the co-ed Venture Scout program run by the Boy Scouts. She remembered looking at her new friends and wishing she’d been allowed to stay at her bunk, noting that the booing for Obama was particularly upsetting because attendees had been directed not to jeer Trump. “Scouts are supposed to be courteous and friendly and all these things, and it was really un-Scoutlike for everyone around me to boo.”

(Trump’s a crude, ignorant man, so a speech like this should have been no surprise. It’s all he has.)

Steve Vladeck describes The Three Sessions Succession Scenarios:

President Trump took to Twitter this morning [Tuesday] ostensibly to defend his “beleaguered” Attorney General, even though at least some of that beleaguerment is, thanks to last week’s New York Times interview (and, potentially other behind-the-scenes machinations), his own doing. If, as a result, Jeff Sessions’s days as Attorney General are indeed numbered, it might be worth gaming out the three very different scenarios for his succession atop the Justice Department—given their obvious potential implications for the ongoing investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III [Vladeck offers detail for each]….

Scenario I: The DOJ Succession Statute and Executive Order….

Scenario II: The Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998….

Scenario III: The Recess Appointment Elephant in the Room….

Peter Beinart considers Why Trump Might Fire Robert Mueller:

Partly, it’s simple rage. Mueller threatens Trump. And when Trump sees someone as a threat, he tries to discredit and destroy them—conventional norms of propriety, decency and legality be damned.

But there’s another, more calculated, reason. Trump and his advisors may genuinely believe that firing Mueller is a smart move. And if you put morality aside, and see the question in nakedly political terms, they may be right.

The chances that Mueller will uncover something damning seem very high. Trump has already admitted to firing former FBI Director James Comey over the Russia investigation. Donald Trump Jr. has already admitted to welcoming the opportunity to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from people he believed were representatives of the Russian government. Even if Mueller doesn’t accuse anyone of a crime, he’s likely to paint a brutal picture. And that’s just on the question of election collusion and obstruction of justice. If Mueller uses Russia to segue into Trump’s business dealings, who knows what he might find. An all-star team of legal and financial sleuths, with unlimited time and money, and the ability to subpoena documents and people, have been let loose on the affairs of a man whose own autobiographer called him a “sociopath.” No wonder Trump is scared.

What would One Year of Flying the Airbus A320 Around Europe look like? It would look like this —

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:40 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 14h 42m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1999, the first Brewer is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame: “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. [Source: Milwaukee Brewers]”

Recommended for reading in full —

Ed Pilkington observes that Jared Kushner’s explanations on Russia reveal a man wholly unsuited to his job:

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who has been drawn into the billowing inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, told congressional investigators on Monday that he hoped his appearance before them would clear his name and “put these matters to rest”.

But in his presentation to members of the Senate intelligence committee, the 36-year-old husband of Ivanka Trump might have dug himself deeper into a hole by leaning so heavily on personal ignorance as the core of his defense. By doing so he raised a slew of new questions about how the US president could have entrusted someone with such little foreign policy ballast with a powerful international portfolio.

In an 11-page statement released before his closed-door Senate appearance, Kushner essentially argued that he could not have been involved in underhand relations with the Russian government because he was so poorly versed in Russian affairs. Over the 3,700 words of the statement, he mentions that he could not remember the name of the Russian ambassador to Washington not once, but three times.

The Washington Post editorial board supports Congress’s drastic — but necessary — rebuke to Trump:

Congress at last looks ready to pass its first significant piece of legislation of the Trump administration — and it will be a major rebuke to the president. A sanctions bill covering Russia that the House is expected to take up Tuesday essentially would place President Trump’s policy toward the regime of Vladi­mir Putin in receivership, preventing him from lifting sanctions without congressional agreement. It’s a drastic but necessary response to the inexplicable affinity Mr. Trump has evinced toward the Kremlin, as well as to the continuing questions about Russia’s support for his presidential campaign.

The need for congressional action was underlined again on Sunday, when Mr. Trump’s new communications chief, Anthony Scaramucci, quoted the president as saying about Russia’s interference in the election, “Maybe they did it, maybe they didn’t do it.” For the U.S. intelligence community, there is no such doubt: Moscow did intervene with the intent to help Mr. Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, on the orders of Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept those conclusions, and the possibility that he might reverse sanctions imposed on Russia for that interference and for its military invasion of Ukraine, has generated an extraordinary consensus in an otherwise polarized Congress.

Karen DeYoung reports that Cooperation with Russia becomes central to Trump strategy in Syria:

Some lawmakers and White House officials have expressed concern that the strategy is shortsighted, gives the long-term advantage in Syria to Russia, Iran and Assad, and ultimately leaves the door open for a vanquished Islamic State to reestablish itself.

Critics also say that neither Russia nor Iran can be trusted to adhere to any deal, and that the result will be a continuation of the civil war whose negotiated end the administration has also set as a goal.

U.S.-Russia negotiations are continuing even as Congress moves this week toward imposing additional sanctions on Russia and Iran. Elements of the strategy were presented in members-only briefings last week to the House and the Senate by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph F. Dunford Jr. and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Conservative Conor Friedersdorf argues The Case for Impeaching Trump If He Fires Robert Mueller:

Surveyed on the Russia probe, a solid majority of Americans said they believe that Robert Mueller will conduct an impartial investigation. Sixty-four percent said “Donald Trump is more concerned about protecting his administration from being investigated” than “protecting the U.S. from Russian interference.” Most important of all, when asked, “Do you think Donald Trump should try to stop the Special Counsel’s investigation if he wants to, or shouldn’t he?” 81 percent of Americans said he should not stop it.

The will of the people does not get clearer than that.

And that poll was conducted before revelations that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort––the president’s son, son-in-law, and then-campaign manager––attended a meeting in Trump Tower with Kremlin-connected Russians after being explicitly told they would receive dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.

NPR’s Skunk Bear asks What Are Those ‘Talking’ Apes Really Saying?: