Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 6:31 AM and sunset 7:47 PM, for 12h 52m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 46.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1865, Union forces capture the Confederate capital of Richmond. The 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th, 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry participate in the occupation of Petersburg and Richmond. The brigade containing the 19th Wisconsin Infantry is the first to enter Richmond on the morning of April 3rd. Their regimental flag becomes the first to fly over the captured capital of the Confederacy when Colonel Samuel Vaughn planted it on Richmond City Hall.

Recommended for reading in full —

The Los Angeles Times confronts the truth behind Why Trump lies: “The insult that Donald Trump brings to the equation is an apparent disregard for fact so profound as to suggest that he may not see much practical distinction between lies, if he believes they serve him, and the truth. His approach succeeds because of his preternaturally deft grasp of his audience. Though he is neither terribly articulate nor a seasoned politician, he has a remarkable instinct for discerning which conspiracy theories in which quasi-news source, or which of his own inner musings, will turn into ratings gold. He targets the darkness, anger and insecurity that hide in each of us and harnesses them for his own purposes. If one of his lies doesn’t work — well, then he lies about that.”

Jenna Johnson reports that Trump’s budget would hit rural towns especially hard — but they’re willing to trust him: “The president’s proposed budget would disproportionately harm the rural areas and small towns that were key to his unexpected win. Many red states like Oklahoma — where every single county went for Trump — are more reliant on the federal funds that Trump wants to cut than states that voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Durant has already undergone years of state budget cuts, as Oklahoma has been unable to balance its increasing costs with declines in the oil industry, tax cuts and generous corporate tax credits. That has made federal funds even more vital to the city, especially for programs that serve the poor and working class. “It’s very easy to look at a laundry list of things that exist and say, ‘Cut, cut, cut, cut,’ and say, ‘Well, this is wasteful spending’ without really understanding the true impact,” said Durant City Manager Tim Rundel, who grew up in poverty in northwest Arkansas. “The bottom line is a lot of our citizens depend on those programs.”

[Trump did not carry Whitewater proper (that is, the city), but even if he had, he would have been unworthy of trust, and deserving only of relentless opposition. We’re still early in a long struggle, and for now it seems reasonable that one’s focus should be on Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders.]

Yamiche Alcindor reports that In Ohio County That Backed Trump, Word of Housing Cuts Stirs Fear: “In Warren, Amber Barr, 34, lives in a women’s supportive housing complex and regrets voting for Mr. Trump. She and her 4-year-old daughter, Brooklynn, survive on a $588 disability check and $340 in food stamps every month. Her rent is $99, and she fears that Mr. Trump’s housing cuts are just the beginning. “If I didn’t have these programs, I wouldn’t have any kind of support, I wouldn’t have any kind of direction as to what to do, where to go, and I wouldn’t have any money to help me find resources,” Ms. Barr said, as she began to cry. Housing assistance has helped her focus on getting treatment for hepatitis C, attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and seeing a psychiatrist for anxiety. It also meant escaping the temporary housing she was in for several months after leaving an abusive relationship.”

It’s Opening Day, and Tom Hadricourt reports Brewers manager Craig Counsell ready for another ‘roller coaster’ season: Q: The Brewers are presently balancing the short-term goal of trying to win as many games as you can with the long-term goal of returning to playoff mode as soon as possible in this rebuilding process. Is that difficult to do? A: It will always be our jobs to have both of those goals in our heads and affect our decision-making. That’s how eventually you will sustain winning. You can never have one without the other, and decisions will fall at different ends of that spectrum. (General manager) David (Stearns) has been consistent in saying we’re going to make some decisions that satisfy one more than the other. I think that will be the case even when we’re winning (in the future). Otherwise, you run out of moves in our market. But, once the game starts, the long-term goes out the window. We might make decisions on who we’re allocating playing time to, with a longer focus. But when the game starts, you’re doing everything you can to win that game.”

Filmmaker Sam Forencich sees Oregon’s Invisible Beauty:

Invisible Oregon is a stunning time-lapse film shot entirely with infrared converted cameras, uncovering a landscape that’s out of reach of ordinary human sight.  “Invisible Oregon is a study of light across time and space,” wrote the filmmaker Sam Forencich. “As the sun rises over the state of Oregon, infrared light travels across the earth revealing the subtleties of new growth and the dramatic intersection of sky and earth.” Forencich is a photographer for the National Basketball Association by day, and experiments with different types of filmmaking in his spare time. The sound design for Invisible Oregon was done by his son, Travis Forencich.

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of sixty. Sunrise is 6:33 AM and sunset 7:23 PM, for 12h 50m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 35.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1917, Pres. Wilson asks Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. On this day in 1865, the 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th, 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments participate in the final assault on Petersburg, which brought about the fall of Richmond. (The 5th Wisconsin Infantry was in front at the charge and their flag was the first one planted on the rebel works.)

Recommended for reading in full — 

A Whitewater day care investigated after 2-year-old found wandering by highway:

“WHITEWATER, Wis. – A 2-year-old who was supposed to be at a day care in Whitewater was found alone outdoors by strangers, according to police and the men who found the girl. Department of Children and Families Communications Director Joe Scialfa confirmed that the agency received a complaint against the The Learning Depot child care center related to the Whitewater incident. The Learning Depot is on Highway 59, the same road where Madl said the girl was found. DCF’s childcare rating and complaint-tracking system, YoungStar, had records of multiple violations during licensing visits by state officials in April, May and August of 2015 and April, July and November of 2016. Violations ranged from uncovered garbage cans, inaccurate record keeping to child-tracking procedures. YoungStar records show The Learning Depot was sent a warning letter on Aug. 31, 2016, for a violation in July in which a staff member reported having 11 children in her group, but officials counted 12 and only 10 were signed in. A violation of close supervision was noted on April 4, 2016, which YoungStar described as “Children were not closely supervised when they ran ahead of the teacher when leaving the center and crossing the parking lot to play on the driveway while cars were driving through this same area.” The center was fined $100 for an incident July 11 for an incident in which a 5-year-old was allowed to enter the building unsupervised from the playground to use the bathroom. A message left with The Learning Depot staff Friday was not immediately returned. Scalfa said DCF is investigating the Thursday incident.”

Matt Reed cautions Trump Is President. Now Encrypt Your Email: “This is more than a philosophical concern about the hypothetical violation of privacy rights; it’s a practical one, and not just for groups who have specific fears of federal intrusion — undocumented immigrants, say, who want to communicate with family or lawyers away from the predatory gaze of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or journalists seeking to protect confidential sources. As lawyers and civil libertarians point out, federal criminal law is so vast and complicated that it is easy to unwittingly violate it, and even innocent conversation can later be used to build a criminal case. Encrypting your communication isn’t a matter of hiding criminal activity; it’s a matter of ensuring innocuous activity can’t be deemed suspicious by a zealous prosecutor or intelligence agent. Telling a friend that a party is really going to “blow up” when you arrive is less funny when it’s being entered into evidence against you.”

Nicholas Kristof writes that In Trump Country, Shock at Trump Budget Cuts, but Still Loyalty: ““This program makes sense,” said Banks, who was placed by the program into a job as a receptionist for a senior nutrition program. Banks said she depends on the job to make ends meet, and for an excuse to get out of the house. “If I lose this job,” she said, “I’ll sit home and die.” Yet she said she might still vote for Trump in 2020. And that’s a refrain I heard over and over. Some of the loyalty seemed to be grounded in resentment at Democrats for mocking Trump voters as dumb bigots, some from a belief that budgets are complicated, and some from a sense that it’s too early to abandon their man. They did say that if jobs didn’t reappear, they would turn against him. One recent survey found that only 3 percent of Trump voters would vote differently if the election were today (and most of those would vote for third-party candidates; only 1 percent said they would switch to voting for Hillary Clinton). Elizabeth Hays, 27, said her life changed during her freshman year in high school, when four upperclassmen raped her. Domestic Violence Intervention Services rescued her, she said, by helping her understand that the rape wasn’t her fault. She’s profoundly grateful to the organization — yet she stands by Trump even as she is dismayed that he wants to slash support for a group that helped her when she needed it most. “We have to look at what we spend money on,” she said, adding, “I will stand behind my president.”

[Many Trump supporters will stand by him, and yet his particular ruin will come despite their support. They can’t save Trump. Successful opposition to Trump demands from a focus at the top, not the supporters about whom Trump nerver cared, and will soon enough abandon. Their loyalty to him will not – indeed has not – been reciprocated. See, Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders.]

Susan Svrluga reports that A student says school officials stopped him from handing out copies of the Constitution. Now he’s suing: “Kevin Shaw was handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution to students at Pierce College in Los Angeles when he was stopped by a school official and told that he was only allowed to do so in the “free-speech zone” on campus and would need a permit, the philosophy and political science student says. “These are our rights,” Shaw said this week, after filing a lawsuit in federal court against the college and the Los Angeles Community College District, which requires all campuses to have such zones. “Why should the school be able to set which groups are allowed to speak, and who is allowed their First Amendment rights?”….Shaw’s case launches a national effort by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to combat “free-speech zones” on campuses, which the group has long criticized as unconstitutional. “At the very moment when colleges and universities should be encouraging open debate and the active exchange of ideas, Pierce College instead sends the message to its students that free speech is suspect and should be ever more tightly controlled,” Arthur Willner, an attorney working with FIRE on the case, said in a statement. “This does a disservice to the student body, as well as being contrary to long-established law.”

Great Big Story presents Lines in the Sand: When the Beach Becomes a Canvas —

Lines in the Sand: When the Beach Becomes a Canvas from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

Anyone can write their name in the sand, but Jim Denevan uses the beach to create stunning large-scale art. What started as a hobby over 20 years ago has resulted in worldwide recognition, and he’s created masterworks from Russia to Chile to Australia. At the end of the day, though, Jim’s just happy to find a new beach to make his canvas.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of fifty-nine. Sunrise is 6:34 AM and sunset 7:21 PM, for 12h 47m 14s of daytime, The moon is a waxing crescent with 24.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple Computer on this day in 1976. On this day in 1970, Milwaukee Brewers, Inc., an organization formed by Allan H. “Bud” Selig and Edmund Fitzgerald, acquires the Seattle Pilots franchise.

Recommended for reading in full —

Readers with an Amazon Echo are sure to enjoy the Echo’s new Petlexa service:

 

Opening Day is Monday, and here’s the local fare for Miller Park:

 

The New York Times laments Venezuela’s Descent Into Dictatorship: “A ruling this week by Venezuela’s Supreme Court stripping the nation’s legislative branch of all authority — and vesting that power in the court itself — moves a country already beset by violence and economic scarcity one step closer to outright dictatorship. The decision means essentially that every arm of Venezuela’s government is now under the thumb of President Nicolás Maduro, whose supporters have gone to great lengths to wrest authority from the National Assembly, which has been dominated by a slate of opposition parties since early 2016. The country’s top court, which is packed with Maduro loyalists, had already invalidated every major law passed by Congress. On Wednesday, as part of a decision involving the executive branch’s authority over oil ventures, the court declared that henceforth the judicial branch would execute all powers normally reserved for the legislature.”

Michael Kranish and Renae Merle report that Stephen K. Bannon, architect of anti-globalist policies, got rich as a global capitalist: “Years before Bannon became the architect of an anti-globalist revolution — working as chief strategist under President Trump to weaken free-trade deals, restrict immigration from a number of majority-Muslim nations and slam corporations that move jobs overseas — he made his fortune as the quintessential global capitalist. An examination of Bannon’s career as an investment banker found that the Bannon of the 1980s and 1990s lived what looks like an alternate reality from the fiery populist of today who recently declared that “globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.” With stints at Goldman Sachs and his own firm, Bannon was a creature of corporatism, wealth-building and international finance. His company received crucial financial backing from banks in Japan and France, and one of his key clients was the Saudi prince. It all was managed from the unlikely setting of an office steps away from the elite shopping district of Rodeo Drive.”

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory describes What’s Up for April 2017:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-six. Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 7:20 PM, for 12h 44m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 15.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1889, at 2:25 PM, Gustave Eiffel hoists a large French Tricolour to the top of his completed tower. On this day in 1998, the Brewers play their first game as a National League Team.

Recommended for reading in full —

Danny Westneat writes that UW professor: The information war is real, and we’re losing it: “[University of Washington professor Kate] Starbird argues in a new paper, set to be presented at a computational social-science conference in May, that these “strange clusters” of wild conspiracy talk, when mapped, point to an emerging alternative media ecosystem on the web of surprising power and reach. It features sites such as Infowars.com, hosted by informal President Donald Trump adviser Alex Jones, which has pushed a range of conspiracies, including that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a staged fake. There are dozens of other conspiracy-propagating websites such as beforeitsnews.com, nodisinfo.com and veteranstoday.com. Starbird cataloged 81 of them, linked through a huge community of interest connected by shared followers on Twitter, with many of the tweets replicated by automated bots.”

Aaron Blake describes The White House’s Sally Yates problem: “Sally Yates was President Trump’s acting attorney general for just 10 days before she was fired. But two months later, she continues to give the Trump administration big-time headaches. The Washington Post’s Devlin Barrett and Adam Entous just broke a big story: that the Trump administration fought to prevent Yates from testifying in front of the House Intelligence Committee just before Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) canceled her hearing. Per emails Barrett and Entous obtained, the Justice Department claimed that a large portion of Yates’s testimony was barred from being discussed at a hearing because of presidential communication privilege. That’s troublesome for the White House, because two other administration officials — FBI Director James B. Comey and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers — already have testified publicly before the committee. During their testimony, they declined to discuss certain things pertaining to open investigations. But Comey did confirm that there was an ongoing investigation of possible ties between Russian officials and members of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and transition team.”

Sarah Kendzior explains Why Trump’s ties to Russia would be way worse than Watergate: “If you were the president of the United States, sworn under oath to protect and serve the public, wouldn’t you want foreign interference in your campaign to be investigated – at the very least, to prevent the recurrence of similar actions? Or would you try to impede the investigation, by smearing those who seek it (among them intelligence officials, legislators, and reporters) and by installing officials who either benefit from the Russian relationship (like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson), seem selected in order to obfuscate the Russian relationship (like Attorney General Jeff Sessions), or both? Trump chose to assemble an administration designed to cover up and aid his shady dealings with the Kremlin, leading to an administration so spectacularly corrupt and inept it has no corollary in US history.”

Nicholas Casey and Patricia Torres report that Venezuela Muzzles Legislature, Moving Closer to One-Man Rule: “IQUITOS, Peru — Venezuela took its strongest step yet toward one-man rule under the leftist President Nicolás Maduro as his loyalists on the Supreme Court seized power from the National Assembly in a ruling late Wednesday night. The ruling effectively dissolved the elected legislature, which is led by Mr. Maduro’s opponents, and allows the court to write laws itself, experts said. The move caps a year in which the last vestiges of Venezuela’s democracy have been torn down, critics and regional leaders say, leaving what many now describe as not just an authoritarian regime, but an outright dictatorship. “What we have warned of has finally come to pass,” said Luis Almagro, the head of the Organization of American States, a regional diplomacy group that includes Venezuela and is investigating the country for violating the bloc’s Democratic Charter.”

There’s a Puzzle in Poland: Who Bent the Trees?

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 7:19 PM, for 12h 41m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets today at 11:30 AM.

On this day in 1867, the United States and Russia reach an agreement for the United States’ purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire at a price of $7.2 million dollars.  On this day in 1865, the 6th, 7th and 36th Wisconsin Infantry regiments fight in the Battle at Gravelly Run, which was one of a series of engagements that ultimately drove Confederate forces out of Petersburg.

Recommended for reading in full — 

John Schmid reports that Immigration was, is and will be a source of renewal in Milwaukee: “At the middle of the last century, Alfonso Morales left his home in rural Mexico to work migrant farm jobs in the United States. He eventually reached Milwaukee, learned the construction trades and settled down. Alfonso Jr., the ninth of his 10 children, was the first in the family to go to college. At 46, the son is now a Milwaukee police captain, having worked as a beat cop, detective and district commander. The son also has become an authority on Clarke Square, on the near south side.  Clarke Square has been a port of entry for immigrants since 1795, when a French-speaking Canadian became the first white settler to build the first house in what later became the city of Milwaukee. Morales policed Clarke Square for years and knows every alley, tavern and ethnicity within its 48 square blocks, immediately south of the city’s Menomonee Valley. A history buff, he explains how early European arrivals built sturdy second homes in their cramped backyards, which helped accommodate the next wave of Germans, Poles, Irish and Bohemians. Much of Clarke Square today is populated by people of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent. They are joined by Asians and Central Americans who live alongside long-term residents of European descent. The shadow of a large Lao Buddhist temple falls across National Ave. where taco trucks serve burritos and tortas.”

Scott Malone reports ‘Religious left’ emerging as U.S. political force in Trump era: “Since President Donald Trump’s election, monthly lectures on social justice at the 600-seat Gothic chapel of New York’s Union Theological Seminary have been filled to capacity with crowds three times what they usually draw. In January, the 181-year-old Upper Manhattan graduate school, whose architecture evokes London’s Westminster Abbey, turned away about 1,000 people from a lecture on mass incarceration. In the nine years that Reverend Serene Jones has served as its president, she has never seen such crowds. “The election of Trump has been a clarion call to progressives in the Protestant and Catholic churches in America to move out of a place of primarily professing progressive policies to really taking action,” she said. Although not as powerful as the religious right, which has been credited with helping elect Republican presidents and boasts well-known leaders such as Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, the “religious left” is now slowly coming together as a force in U.S. politics. This disparate group, traditionally seen as lacking clout, has been propelled into political activism by Trump’s policies on immigration, healthcare and social welfare, according to clergy members, activists and academics. A key test will be how well it will be able to translate its mobilization into votes in the 2018 midterm congressional elections.”

Jonathan Z. Larsen reports Why FBI Can’t Tell All on Trump, Russia: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation cannot tell us what we need to know about Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia. Why? Because doing so would jeopardize a long-running, ultra-sensitive operation targeting mobsters tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and to Trump. But the Feds’ stonewalling risks something far more dangerous: Failing to resolve a crisis of trust in America’s president. WhoWhatWhy provides the details of a two-month investigation in this 6,500-word exposé. The FBI apparently knew, directly or indirectly, based upon available facts, that prior to Election Day, Trump and his campaign had personal and business dealings with certain individuals and entities linked to criminal elements — including reputed Russian gangsters — connected to Putin. The same facts suggest that the FBI knew or should have known enough prior to the election to justify informing the public about its ongoing investigation of potentially compromising relationships between Trump, Putin, and Russian mobsters — even if it meant losing or exposing a valued informant.”

Nicole Hemmer observes that “Scientific racism” is on the rise on the right. But it’s been lurking there for years: “For those dissatisfied with The Bell Curve’s explanation of racial differences, another book came along a year later offering an alternative. The problems black Americans faced were not due to their inferior genetics, Dinesh D’Souza argued, but due to their inferior culture. That was the idea at the core of The End of Racism, the 1995 book that D’Souza wrote in an office down the hall from Murray at AEI. The book was a broadside against multiculturalism and cultural relativism. In it, D’Souza argued for the supremacy of Western (white) culture, maintaining that problems of high incarceration rates and poverty were caused not by racist institutions but by a corruption at the heart of black society, which he described as “self-defeating” and “irresponsible.” In language reminiscent of Donald Trump’s diatribes about black neighborhoods, D’Souza described inner cities as places where “the streets are irrigated with alcohol, urine, and blood.” Racism, he argued, is simply rational discrimination, the ability of observes to detect that black culture is worse than white culture. It was not racism but anti-racism that was to blame for African-Americans’ plight, he maintained, arguing that black civil rights activists and white liberal Democrats had a vested interest in keeping “the black underclass” down. Like Murray, D’Souza cloaked his arguments in academic garb: extensive citations, lengthy expositions, detailed history. But like The Bell Curve, The End of Racism was about promoting conservative policy, starting with the premise that the problems black Americans faced were not the result of racism and that no outside intervention — especially not affirmative action — could solve them.”

Watch a rocket test create a beautiful double rainbow:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 7:18 PM, for 12h 38m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1867, legendary pitcher Denton True “Cy” Young is born. On this day in 1865, Union soldiers including Wisconsin regiments, follow retreating Confederates in a series of battles fought March 29 – April 9, 1865 in the Appomattox Campaign.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Campbell Robertson reports that Coal Miners Hope Trump’s Order Will Help. But Few Are Counting on It: “Gary Bentley, who spent a dozen years as a coal miner in eastern Kentucky, is less optimistic. Now working as a mechanic and writing about his years in the mines, he does not see a big turnaround coming. Blaming environment regulations is an old tradition, he said, one encouraged by the coal industry’s lobbyists. But it ignores too many hard facts, he said, like the increase in mechanization and the abundance of cheap natural gas. “It’s not going to make a comeback,” Mr. Bentley said of coal mining in central Appalachia. “But you get a certain amount of desperation, where you’re willing to believe stuff even though you know in your gut it’s not true.” As much of coal country happily welcomed the news out of Washington, Mr. Bentley pointed to an announcement closer to home: This month the municipal utility of Owensboro, Ky., said its power plant, after 117 years, was going to phase out the burning of coal altogether.”

Niraj Chokshi and Manny Fernandez report that Ex-Congressman From Texas Charged With Stealing Charitable Donations: “A former United States representative from Texas and one of his aides were indicted on Tuesday on charges that they stole hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for charity, some of which was used to illegally finance his campaigns. The former representative, Steve Stockman, 60, and the former director of special projects in his congressional office, Jason Posey, 46, were charged in a 28-count indictment related to the alleged yearslong fraud scheme. The charges included mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission and money laundering, the Justice Department said in a statement. Mr. Stockman, a Republican, solicited $1.25 million in charitable donations from May 2010 to October 2014 that was later used for other purposes, the Justice Department said.Dane Ball, who represents Mr. Stockman along with his colleagues at the law firm Smyser Kaplan & Veselka, said the former congressman plans to plead not guilty. “Similar to what Steve said outside the courthouse after his arrest, he’s innocent and we are reviewing the indictment now,” Mr. Ball said on Tuesday night.”

Alaura Weaver describes From Russia, With Lies: Soviet-Style Disinformation And The Culture War That Helped Spread It: “And when there’s an outright conspiracy like the Russian disinformation campaign staring them in the face, because the mainstream media is reporting it, they are skeptical. Communist disinformation tactics would never have taken root if it weren’t for the fertile soil of division within American culture. And as we can see from the birth of the culture wars throughout the mid-twentieth century up to present day, the more intolerant we are of each other’s ideas, the more open we are to suspicion about the motivations and actions of the bearers of those ideas. What will it take to remove the stain of dezinformatsiya from our democracy? History shows that the strongest defense against a campaign of mistruths is an aggressive press who are willing to dive deep into the sources of information before they report on it. Let the work begin.”

Dr. John Schindler defines The 9 Russian Words That Explain KremlinGate: “As the Trump administration’s Russia problem shows no sign of going away, protesting presidential tweets notwithstanding, it’s time to think about it properly. Understanding what the Kremlin’s up to helps to see the big picture. This means learning a bit of spy lingo. Espionage, like everything else, has its own culture—including special verbiage—which varies from country to country. Russia’s espionage culture is unique and in key ways markedly different from how Western countries approach the spy-game. It’s a product of the Soviet secret police, that brutal and cunning force, and it’s no accident that Vladimir Putin’s spies proudly call themselves Chekists today to commemorate them—just as they did in the days of the KGB. “There are no ‘former’ Chekists,” as the KGB veteran Putin has stated, and this attitude permeates his Kremlin.
The threat to our democracy posed by Moscow’s spy-games won’t recede on its own. As Rick Ledgett, NSA’s straight-talking deputy director, stated last week, “This is a challenge to the foundations of our democracy.” He went on: “How do we counter that?” adding, “What do we do as a nation to make it stop?” This first thing we must do is gain a reality-based understanding of the SpyWar we’re in with Moscow. So, let’s walk through a few of the most important Russian espionage terms to shed some light on what’s really going on between Washington and the Kremlin.”

On Binging with Babish, it’s Cubanos from Chef:

Good morning.

Whitewater’s Tuesday will be increasingly sunny with a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 7:17 PM, for 12h 35m 38s of daytime. The moon is new, with .2% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the {tooltip}one hundred fortieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania has a partial nuclear meltdown in reactor number 2: “It was the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history.^[2] The incident was rated a five on the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale: Accident With Wider Consequences.^[3][4]” On this day in 1954, a “Joe Must Go” a bipartisan grassroots campaign to recall Sen. Joe McCarthy from the Senate, begins in earnest with an organizational meeting in Sauk City. The campaign failed, but not before garnering 335,000 signatures.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Max Ehrenfreund sees The looming split between Trump and Ryan: “President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan both want to rewrite the tax code, but their proposals differ on how much tax relief to give the middle class. Trump wants a tax cut across the board, according to the plan he published during the campaign. He has proposed relief for the wealthy especially, but also for less affluent households. The plan that Ryan (R-Wis.) and his colleagues in the House have put forward would not substantially reduce taxes for the middle class, and many households would pay more. Trump’s plan arguably reflects his unique style of conservative populism. The proposal would be extremely costly for the government, and the president’s past comments suggest he would be willing to put the federal government deeper into debt to fund breaks for the middle class. Ryan’s plan would instead simplify and streamline the tax code in accordance with conservative orthodoxy, eliminating the goodies for households with modest incomes that Trump would preserve or expand. In all, taxpayers with roughly average incomes could expect a tax cut of around $1,100 a year under Trump’s plan, compared to just $60 under Ryan’s plan once the proposals were fully implemented. Now, after even a united Trump-Ryan effort on health care failed to win over enough Republicans to get through the House, their hopes of passing a tax plan depend on getting on the same page quickly.”

Jeet Heer writes about The Death of Paul Ryan, Policy Genius: “Ryan’s sparkly reputation rested partly, of course, on the soft bigotry of low expectations (better than you would expect a Republican to be!), but also on appearance. Ryan looks like a thoughtful man. He can furrow his brow in simulation of abstract reasoning. Not everyone was fooled. Paul Krugman called him a “flimflam man,” pointing out that the numbers Ryan touted in his imaginary budget didn’t add up, with the proposed tax cuts creating much bigger deficits than Ryan acknowledges. The AHCA fiasco vindicates Krugman’s harsh judgment. The “reform” was hated not just by Democrats but by actual Republican policy wonks—people who were critical of Obamacare, but saw the AHCA as doing nothing to make it better. In a devastating critique in Forbes, Avik Roy, one of the foremost conservative experts in the field, got to the heart of Ryan’s plan. “Expanding subsidies for high earners, and cutting health coverage off from the working poor: It sounds like a left-wing caricature of mustache-twirling, top-hatted Republican fat cats.” Roy, the president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, is a genuine conservative wonk with a real concern for the impact of policy. Paul Ryan is a pretend wonk who throws around numbers to impress the likes of Mitt Romney and Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the Republican Party only uses real wonks like Roy when they want to criticize Democrats. When policy gets made, it falls to Ryan. Perhaps the only positive outcome of the current turmoil is that it might, at long last, destroy Ryan’s reputation for policy expertise.”

Julia Ioffe considers What Russia’s Latest Protests Mean for Putin: “First and foremost, it was a tremendous show of power by Navalny, who has declared that he is running for president of Russia in 2018. He is a long shot at best, and the Kremlin may not even allow him on the ballot. Yet he showed he has real political power and that tens of thousands of people across the country see him as a legitimate leader, despite the Kremlin’s assiduous work to marginalize him by keeping him off government-controlled television—still Russians’ main source of news—and inventing a half-dozen criminal cases against him. Second, it indicated that despite the government’s total control of television and creeping control of the web, technology and social media are still powerful tools. By Sunday, the Medvedev expose had been viewed nearly 12 million times. By comparison, 52 million people voted in September’s parliamentary elections. It doesn’t mean that all those viewers believed it or agreed with its anti-Kremlin message, but it means they at least saw it, even though it wasn’t shown on state TV. It also means that Navalny, with his YouTube channel, which was doing a live broadcast during the protests, can reach past Kremlin TV and influence people even in the heart of Putin country.”

Laura Schulte reports that the Hodag [has been] added to ‘Fantastic Beasts’ roster: “RHINELANDER – Those on the hunt for magic creatures in central Wisconsin won’t have to travel far to spot one. The legendary Hodag has officially been deemed a “fantastic beast” by J.K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” series. Rowling added the beast to her book “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” on March 14. The book was originally released in 2001, as one of Harry Potter’s textbooks, written by fictional author Newt Scamander, according to Rowling’s site, www.pottermore.com. The small book was also the basis for the movie of the same name, released in 2016. In the book, Rowling describes the Hodag as “horned, with red, glowing eyes and long fangs, and the size of a large dog. The Hodag’s magic resides largely in its horns which, when powdered, make a man immune to the effects of alcohol and able to go without sleep for seven days and seven nights.” The passage also notes the Hodag is found in a “protected area around Wisconsin.”

Robert Lustig reveals foods with loads of hidden sugar: