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City, Culture, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.20.26: The Next Generation Should Start in 3, 2, 1…

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see a mixture of clouds and sunshine with a high of 60. Sunrise is 5:27 and sunset is 8:16 for 14 hours 49 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 19.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks and Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1609, Shakespeare’s sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.

One of the problems that small towns have is that they struggle to bring younger people into positions of leadership, not merely in politics but among private community groups. In politics particularly, one can be sympathetic to the dynamic that the WISGOP faces, if not its aims: At annual convention, Wisconsin GOP’s old guard urges party to engage young voters.

(Significantly, the city’s electorate has selected the Whitewater Common Council well in this regard. The city’s councilmembers are an eclectic mix of young and middle-aged, of new and veteran members.)

Political parties and community groups across the state have the same need to bring in new, younger members in positions of responsibility. The problem these groups often face is a self-inflicted one. They place the oldest members in positions of authority, and use new recruits only for dull tasks with little recognition and reward. The rationalization for this hierarchy — that younger members need to learn the fundamentals — often becomes a justification for hoarding recognition and rewards among aged veterans of modest productivity but immense self-regard.

Younger members in these community groups come to realize that they’re not valued new members but instead disposable indentured servants. Since indentured servitude is seldom a personal aspiration, these newcomers quit the group. This leaves the group with indolent older members on the hunt for still more new recruits to dupe persuade into membership.

For successful community groups, the goal should be a few aged members advising and mentoring many more younger members who are given prominence and genuine responsibility. For unsuccessful community groups, it’s the opposite: many aged members hogging prominence and responsibility while relegating new, younger members to scrubbing and scraping.

‘That’s how we’ve always done it’ is the implicit motto of many a failing group.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.

This bacteria could help us understand the origins of life:

This bacterium can survive pretty much anything…but could it have survived an asteroid impact? New research says, ‘maybe.’

City, Culture, Daily Bread, Nativism

Daily Bread for 5.19.26: The End of Familial Legacy as Public Entitlement

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:28 and sunset is 8:15 for 14 hours 47 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 11.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1780, New England’s Dark Day, an unusual darkening of the day sky, is observed over the New England states and parts of Canada:

Most people found the darkness to be baffling and inexplicable. Many applied religious interpretations to the event.

In Connecticut, a member of the Governor’s Council (renamed the Connecticut State Senate in 1818), Abraham Davenport, became most famous for his response to his colleagues’ fears that it was the Day of Judgment:

I am against adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.

Davenport’s approach is worthy, admirable, and inspirational. One continues in one’s good work come what may.

What role is there — what role should there be — for family legacy in public policy? None. None whatever. In private life, one may happily recall the accomplishments of prior generations: how long a family has been in the nation or city, what one’s late relatives did, said, and believed. Private, familial bonds extend from the present backward into the past.

In the public policy of the present, however, a well-ordered free society does not extend privileges among the living to accomplishments that belong only to those who have passed. We are, in the words of a venerable liturgy, responsible only for what we have done or left undone. We have no legitimate claim to an honorable share of the accomplishments of those who came before us.

Those were their accomplishments, not ours. We, ourselves, do not live many lives but one.

And look, and look — a libertarian (as I am) contends for individual rights, of those among us here and now. (From those individual rights, persons may freely choose with whom to associate. In this way, libertarianism rejects an initial position of group rights but acknowledges and defends the right of individuals, as individuals, to choose to associate into groups if they should so desire.)

And so, and so — in this city, few could be happier than I am with the decline of family legacy as a basis of public policy. Family legacy of the past never belonged as a legitimate influence on deliberations among the living. Someone’s distant ancestor may have done many good things; someone’s distant ancestor is no longer a member of this community and its electorate.

It would have been better for our community if past family legacy had ceased simply through its own absurdity to bedevil the debates of the present. Better for all of us if these claims had simply withered on their own.

Instead, it is the rise of an aggressive nativism that has made passive claims to family entitlement so obviously suspect. If it is wrong to claim a superior entitlement today based on bloodline and pedigree merely inherited, then it is wrong to claim a superior entitlement today based on family actions that were, in fact, never one’s own in any way.

Here we are, here one stands: it is incoherent to oppose nativism in support of the free, equal movement of people and families today while simultaneously contending that one’s own family history deserves special public consideration.

There are myriad anecdotes that this libertarian blogger heard about his family’s past on this continent; they mean nothing for public policy. Nothing.

It is a great tragedy of our time that blood and soil nativism (our own version of die Ideologie von Blut und Boden) grips some of our fellow residents.

We should have finished off familial entitlement on its own, before the worse problem of nativism arrived. Perhaps if we had done so today’s nativism would not be so virulent. Too late: that worse problem has now come our way.

And so, and so — claims of familial legacy and nativism in public policy should and must face the same dustbin.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.

Testing the Next Generation of Mars Helicopter Rotor Blades:

NASA is pushing the limits of flight on Mars — by spinning helicopter rotor blades so fast, they’re breaking the sound barrier. During recent tests at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, engineers accelerated the tips of next-generation rotor blades beyond Mach 1 inside a special chamber that simulates the atmospheric conditions of the Red Planet. The faster a Mars helicopter’s rotors spin, the more it can carry and the farther it can fly.

City, Daily Bread, University

Daily Bread for 5.18.26: After Graduation

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with scattered showers and a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:29 and sunset is 8:14 for 14 hours 45 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1944, the Battle of Monte Cassino ends in an Allied victory.

On Saturday, more than eighteen hundred students were graduated from UW-Whitewater. It was a pleasure to attend the afternoon ceremony. That ceremony was a heartfelt mixture of traditional and modern. Quite moving, from beginning to end. (Having attended many graduations over a lifetime, UW-Whitewater’s Saturday ceremony was easily among my favorites, including those in which I was graduated.)

The university has a marketing campaign, sensibly, promoting the success of its graduates in being hired before graduation. This libertarian blogger would never contend against participation in the marketplace, most broadly understood. It is within a broadly conceived marketplace that voluntary and productive relationships are formed. The success of the individual, and from her or him the community, comes through free and voluntary associations with other individuals.

Yet, while the university’s marketing campaign is sound both practically and in principle, there is another vital question to consider.

A second question presents itself to this community: not about the employment of these graduates before graduation, but instead about their lives after graduation.

This question is a Whitewater concern, a community concern. Look around, and one sees that despite ample land this community has not built, has not fostered, has not created for some of these graduates a lifelong role in the city. We’ve been quite good at building temporary (and sometimes dilapidated) private accommodations for those attending UW-Whitewater. A few private men have been enriched through their financial relationship to our public university.

Whitewater is more than a few private men. She is a city not of fifteen, but of fifteen thousand.

This beautiful city would be more so, far more so, if we would offer in the next generation more than we have done over the last two generations. If these graduates are talented (they are), and if these graduates are energetic (they are), then we have every reason to offer today’s graduates a place as lifelong residents.

If we do so, then Whitewater will have achieved the very best marketplace transaction, the most successful marketing and communications: lifelong membership of new graduates in a beautiful community that preserves its beauty and increases its prosperity through the participation of those very graduates.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Claims of Legacy, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.

‘Smile’ spacecraft prepped for launch to study solar wind:

Smile (the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) will “study the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic environment from a unique highly elliptical orbit,” according to European Space Agency.

Daily Bread, Gubernatorial Race 2026, Politics, Populists, Tom Tiffany, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 5.17.26: The WISGOP Knows What Its Base Wants

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:30 and sunset is 8:13 for 14 hours 43 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education outlawing racial segregation in public schools.

Yesterday, the WISGOP held its state convention at the Kalahari in the Wisconsin Dells. Henry Redman reported on the convention by watching a live-stream of the gathering.1 The WISGOP professes an interest in economics, but knows well that cultural issues motivate the party’s diehards:

During a panel discussion of current and former Republican legislators, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said that the state’s residents are “feeling the economy.”

“When you look at what’s going on right now, it is affordability, it truly is,” Kurtz said. “Let’s not sugarcoat that. Everybody, at least in my district, we’re feeling the economy. So that’s where I think we, as Republicans, we have to say what we have done and what we will continue to do.”

But from the convention stage, officials such as Tiffany, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, former Gov. Scott Walker and U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden, railed against alleged election fraud, undocumented immigrants, trained protesters fighting the Trump administration and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. 

“The left never, never talks about the victims of crime from illegal immigrants,” Johnson said. “But they take those two individuals who they trained and encouraged, put themselves into harm’s way, they died, and they turned them into martyrs and use them as an excuse to defund ICE, defund CBP, refuse to fund DHS, and put all of America, or continue to keep America at risk.”

See Henry Redman, At convention, Wisconsin Republicans say midterms could turn state into Minnesota, Wisconsin Examiner, May 17, 2026. See also 2026 WisGOP State Convention, Wis. Eye Pub. Affs. Network (May 16, 2026).

Redman’s headline derives from the WISGOP’s effort to convince Wisconsinites that their state might become…Minnesota. It takes a huge amount of moxie and mendacity to convince ordinary people that Minnesota is a hellscape.

Then, again, Redman reports that the WISGOP has an even harder task:

The warning [about becoming like Minnesota] comes after 15 years in which Republicans have controlled majorities in the state Legislature and hold six of the state’s eight congressional districts while Republicans hold both houses of Congress and the presidency. In his speech, [gubernatorial candidate Tom] Tiffany painted a Wisconsin in decline. 

“This election is about more than politics. It’s about whether Wisconsin is going to continue down this path of decline,” he said.

If, by Tiffany’s account, Wisconsin is continuing on a path of decline despite significant GOP officeholding across the state and nation, one wonders how much worse off we’d be with one more WISGOP officeholder in Tom Tiffany as governor.

And yet, and yet, no matter how much WISGOP Assemblyman Tony Kurtz talks about economic issues, it’s cultural conflict that motivates the movement to which the WISGOP is beholden. One might oppose this approach (as this libertarian blogger does), but the WISGOP has a grasp of its own practicalities — the party might lose with its base, but it will certainly lose without them.

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  1. Redman wrote on Bluesky that he was denied press credentials to the event. The denial accomplished nothing except to show that there is no one as thin-skinned as a party operative denying a press pass to a reporter. ↩︎

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Claims of Legacy, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.

Shark fatally mauls spearfishing diver off Australia’s Rottnest Island:

A shark fatally mauled a diver off an Australian tourist island on Saturday, police said.

Daily Bread, Nature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.16.26: Wisconsin Is Crawlin’ with Lizards and Salamanders (And That’s a Good Thing)

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 5:31 and sunset is 8:12 for 14 hours 41 minutes of daytime. The moon is new today.

On this day in 1888, Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances.

Lizards in the Central Sands Region:

Click image to play video

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Claims of Legacy, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.

Salamanders in the Kettle Moraine State Forest:

Wisconsin is home to seven salamander species, and we found four of them at Kettle Moraine State Forest. From spotted to four-toed, these remarkable amphibians breathe through their skin and depend on Wisconsin’s wild vernal pools to survive.

Daily Bread, Gov. Evers, Politics, Speaker Vos, State Government, Wisconsin, WisDems, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 5.15.26: Fiscal Deals Will Likely Wait Until After November (Because Wisconsin Is Already Looking Ahead)

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 77. Sunrise is 5:32 and sunset is 8:11 for 14 hours 39 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1940,  Richard and Maurice McDonald open the first McDonald’s restaurant.

The state tax and spending bill crafted between three soon-to-be-retired gentlemen (Evers, Vos, LeMahieu) failed in the Wisconsin Senate. The bill was bipartisan in name only. (As for headlines describing the proposal, descriptions of the bill were confused and contradictory. See ‘Bipartisan’ Has Lost Meaning as a Useful Term.)

Why not vote for the deal? Almost everyone who plans to be in office after January expects a better deal under his or her stewardship. Assembly WisDems leader Greta Neubauer is ‘optimistic’ about her party’s trifecta control of state government next year, Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein assumes she’ll be Majority Leader Hesselbein next year, all the WisDems running for governor except one opposed the bill, and WISGOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany opposed it.

They’re not all going to get what they want after November, but almost everyone in opposition to the bill has a better chance of getting their way in January than the men who won’t even be in office in January.

Wisconsin is, to use an expression that many others over-use, moving on.

In state government, what mattered yesterday matters less than what you do today and what you will do tomorrow.

It takes little effort for people to leave the past behind. Times change quickly in a dynamic, innovative, even restless and impatient culture like America’s.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Claims of Legacy, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.

Perseverance rover captures new panorama on Mars:

On April 5, the rover captured 46 images of an area nicknamed “Arbot” that has been turned into the panorama seen here.

Accidents, Cats

Friday Catblogging: Cat Rescued After Eight Days in a Tree

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In Connecticut, a cat named Chleo — spelled that way — was rescued after being stranded in a tree for eight days:

NEW BRITAIN – After eight days of being trapped in a tree near her New Britain home, a cat named Chleo was rescued by a local tree services company and reunited with her family.

“It’s always a good feeling,” said Julian Lopez, owner of JLO Tree Services. “Animals have a special place in my heart, and I can only imagine if it was my cat that got away, I’d want someone to do everything and anything they could … It’s just a good feeling to reunite pets with their families because they are a part of their family.”

[…]

While his company is geared toward tree services, Lopez said they’ve recently gone “very viral” on social media for their pet rescue efforts, which they provide “from the kindness of their hearts.” He said people typically call or tag JLO Tree Service on Facebook to ask for help and his company usually goes to help people the same day of their call.

Lopez said the call about Chleo came in on Tuesday night, and he and his crew arrived on scene around 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday night. 

“As soon as we got there, I could hear the cries up 50 feet in the air,” he said. “Firetrucks tried to come in and do what they could but they were unable to access it … We happened to get contacted by the local news, so they were out there.”

The rescue took place between the apartments on East Street and Recano Road, according to Vanase.

Lopez said his wife had brought cat food and a carrier case for the rescue. 

“I use the food to bring down their nerves,” he said. “Especially if they’ve been there for a number of days, they’ll be hungry … Once I get a safe enough distance where I can get the cat, I’ll use the cat food so they can pick at it, eat it, and I do my best to grab them and bring them into the carrier case.”

See Kaitlin Keane, ‘A good feeling’: New Britain cat rescued after 8 days trapped in a tree, CT Insider, May 14, 2026.

City, Film

Film: Wednesday, May 20, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Sentimental Value

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Wednesday, May 20 at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Sentimental Value @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Family Drama/Norwegian

Rated R (language) 2 hours, 13 minutes (2025).

We begin our annual Wednesday Summer series of foreign/art films with the Oscar and AARP Winner for Best Foreign Film.  An intimate exploration of family, memories, and the reconciliatory power of art. Golden Globe to Stellan Skarsgard: Best Supporting Actor. Also stars Elle Fanning. A riveting, emotional film. Shown in Norwegian dialogue with English subtitles. 

One can find more information about Sentimental Value at the Internet Movie Database.

Budget, Daily Bread, School District, State Government, Wisconsin, WisDems, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 5.14.26: If a ‘Bipartisan’ Bill Gets No WisDems Senate Votes, Was It Ever Bipartisan?

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 68. Sunrise is 5:33 and sunset is 8:10 for 14 hours 37 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 7.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Commission meets at 4 PM, and there will be a Common Council Visioning Session at 5:30 PM.

The Whitewater School Board will hold a governance workshop at 5:30 PM. Among the topics on the board’s agenda is Topic B, “Review spreadsheet with all documents in one place.” That’s quite sensible — one wouldn’t want to review all the documents in different places. Imagine if one had to go from Whitewater to Richmond to Lima Center simply to look at a spreadsheet.

Of these governance topics, absent from discussion is why, by its own policies, the Whitewater School Board offers the district’s residents recordings of its regular meetings only at a leisurely pace: “Recordings of the School Board Meetings will be posted in BoardDocs within a week or two after the meeting is held.” “A week or two” — honest to goodness that’s how it’s written — colloquially translates into “we’ll get to it when we get to it.”

The Artemis II astronauts traveled to the moon and back in less than two weeks.

On this day in 1804, William Clark and 42 men depart from Camp Dubois to join Meriwether Lewis at St. Charles, Missouri, marking the beginning of the Lewis and Clark Expedition‘s historic journey up the Missouri River.

If a ‘bipartisan’ bill gets no WisDems Senate votes, was it ever bipartisan?

The Wisconsin legislature has rejected the compromise tax and spending bill negotiated among Gov. Evers, Speaker Vos, and Senate Majority Leader LeMahieu:

The property tax and school funding package negotiated between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) passed the Assembly Wednesday night in a bipartisan vote, but died in the Senate after three Republicans joined all the Democrats in voting against the measure.

[…]

The late Wednesday night votes followed more than nine hours of deliberation. Although Democrats in both chambers had panned the bill, 10 Assembly Democrats voted yes when the roll call arrived, after an amendment by Republicans that included disaster relief funds for parts of the state damaged during last year’s August floods and expanded a property tax cut for disabled veterans. The final Assembly tally was 61-32.

Despite the amendment, however, the Senate, meeting more than six hours after it was initially scheduled to convene, voted 18-15 against the bill. Republican Sens. Rob Hutton, Steve Nass and Chris Kapenga joined the entire Senate Democratic caucus in opposition.

See Henry Redman, Evers property tax, school funding deal with GOP dies in Senate, Wisconsin Examiner, May 13, 2026.

See also ‘Bipartisan’ Has Lost Meaning as a Useful Term, That ‘Bipartisanship’ Didn’t Last Long — Because It Was Never There, The WisDems’ Bipartisan Delusion, and Seeing Once Again That Wisconsin’s Not a Bipartisan Environment.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Claims of Legacy, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.

Japan unleashes ‘Monster Wolf’ robots to repel record bear attacks:

Amid a record number of lethal bear attacks, Japan has a secret weapon. Meet “Monster Wolf.”

Japan is an advanced society with world-class technology. It’s understandable that they’d build a wolf-like robot. And yet, and yet, after lethal bear attacks, one might suggest a different, older approach. Bears, as it turns out, although formidable, are not bulletproof…

America, City, Daily Bread, Economy, Special Interests, Tariffs, War

Daily Bread for 5.13.26: Inflation Measures Rise Again

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 59. Sunrise is 5:34 and sunset is 8:08 for 14 hours 34 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 15 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, enslaved Southerner Robert Smalls steals the steamboat Planter, spirits it through Confederate lines and hands it to the United States Navy, which quickly commission it as the gunboat USS Planter and later appoints Smalls as captain, thus making him the first Black man to command a United States ship.

In this, our new Golden Age, two key measures of inflation both show significant increases. Of consumer prices (the consumer price index), one reads that

Prices that consumers pay for a wide range of goods and services increased at a faster-than-expected pace in April, as another burst in energy prices raised further concerns about inflation’s impact on the U.S. economy.

The consumer price index rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.6% for the month, putting the one-year pace at 3.8%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. The monthly rate was as forecast, but the annual rate was 0.1 percentage point above the Dow Jones consensus.

See Jeff Cox, Consumer prices rose 3.8% annually in April, the highest since May 2023, CNBC, May 12, 2026.

Of wholesale prices (the producer price index), there’s been a steep increase also:

Wholesale inflation jumps 6% in April on annual basis, biggest increase since 2022.

Wholesale prices in April posted their highest annual increase in more than three years, signaling more nettlesome inflation as pipeline costs intensify.

The producer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% for the month, much higher than the 0.5% Dow Jones consensus forecast and the upwardly revised 0.7% March increase, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. This was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.

On an annual basis, the index was up 6%, the biggest increase since December 2022.

See Jeff Cox, Wholesale inflation jumps 6% in April on annual basis, biggest increase since 2022, CNBC, May 12, 2026.

How perplexing. During the last presidential election, Whitewater’s tiny faction of second-generation landlords placed signs throughout Whitewater promising that it was Mr. Trump himself who would bring lower prices. I’m old enough to remember. 

And so, and so, a man who advocated tariffs his entire adult life, promised to disrupt the labor market across this continent through mass deportations, and exhibited a reflexive belligerence that has brought an attack on Venezuela and a war in Iran was somehow going to bring better economic conditions?

The more one sees and hears from these local gentlemen, the less there is worth seeing or hearing.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Claims of Legacy, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.

Fire crew work to contain massive house fire in New Jersey neighborhood:

Firefighters worked to contain a massive house fire in Norwood, New Jersey, on Tuesday afternoon.
Aerial footage from WABC-TV shows the fire crew dousing the flames with water as large white and black plumes of smoke rise into the sky.

America, City, Daily Bread, Economy, Tariffs, War

Daily Bread for 5.12.26: ‘Bipartisan’ Has Lost Meaning as a Useful Term

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy and windy with scattered showers and a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:35 and sunset is 8:07 for 14 hours 32 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 24 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:15 PM and the Police and Fire Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1551, the National University of San Marcos, the oldest university in the Americas, is founded in Lima, Peru.

This libertarian blogger has argued that ‘bipartisan’ and ‘bipartisanship’ are empty terms in Wisconsin. Clinging to these terms now is like insisting horse-drawn wagons are still a primary means of transportation. See That ‘Bipartisanship’ Didn’t Last Long — Because It Was Never There, The WisDems’ Bipartisan Delusion, and Seeing Once Again That Wisconsin’s Not a Bipartisan Environment. (While there are times when bipartisan still has meaning for a single vote of a single commission, it’s mostly a term without an accurate application.)

Headlines today at the Journal Sentinel show how confused use of the term bipartisan has become:

See Kala Huynh, Wisconsin schools would get $617M boost under bipartisan funding deal, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 12, 2026.

See Jessie Opoien and Molly Beck, Democrats slam Evers’ deal with GOP on school funding, tax relief, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 11, 2026.

Both headlines are reconcilable only if one thinks of this budget deal — involving leaders from two branches of state government — as though it were merely a single vote of a state commission. This is not merely a single vote of a state commission.

If many WisDems legislators — along with some in the WISGOP — oppose this deal, it’s not a bipartisan deal in the ordinary connotation of bipartisan: a deal supported broadly by both parties. (If every Democrat voted for a proposal, and one Republican joined in support, that would be a definition of bipartisan stretched so thin as to be transparent.)

That’s how much the terms bipartisan and bipartisanship have shriveled in our time — from terms that were meant to define consensus between major parties to meaning little more than one member from each party.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Claims of Legacy, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.

South Florida wildfires burn thousands of acres in the Everglades:

A pair of South Florida wildfires that torched thousands of acres in the Everglades over the weekend spread Monday as fire crews worked to contain them. (AP video: Daniel Kozin)

City, Culture, Daily Bread, Politics

Daily Bread for 5.11.26: A Kind of Whitewater Democrat, a Kind of Whitewater Republican

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 60. Sunrise is 5:36 and sunset is 8:06 for 14 hours 30 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 34 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Board meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1973, citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg’s charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times are dismissed.

Even in small-town Whitewater, across many years, there has always been more than one kind of Democrat or Republican. See the series WHITEWATER’S LOCAL POLITICS 2021. (It’s only the unobservant or conceptually confused who think there’s only one of each type.)

Of these several types, two — species within a genus so to speak — come to mind recently.

For Whitewater’s Democrats, there have always been members of Democraticus bipartisanus whitewaterensis: Democrats who will seek purportedly bipartisan deals with leading local Republicans no matter how unfavorable the terms or how compromising to the Democrats’ overall politics. These types are fewer now, but you’ll still see some. They’re men and women who are sure that they can find common ground even on quicksand. Since Scott Walker, the number of local Democrats who think this way gets smaller each year. These remaining creatures have seen their status shift from vulnerable to endangered to critically endangered over the last dozen years.

There’s no common ground left, but they just don’t stop delusionally hoping.

For Republicans, who have seen the rise of MAGA, there’s a tendency among local MAGA devotees to associate with MAGA-spouting special interest men as part of a coalition: Republicanus magaensis subserviens whitewaterensis. These MAGA men spent much of their lives insisting that they’d been ignored by others, including fellow Republicans, and now that they’ve become more numerous the first thing they’ve done has been to take direction from the very Republicans who ignored them for years.

One can see that I’m opposed to MAGA, but it never fails to both perplex and amuse thatthe faction that insists it’s now their time still takes direction from the local men who mucked up the time before our time. All it took was a few shared cultural positions for the special interest men to co-opt MAGA to their own local ends.

In other parts of the nation, these particular species of Democrats or Republicans do not exist: Democrats seldom appease Republicans and MAGA seldom appeases anyone. Elsewhere, these species stand on their own. There’s simply greater clarity of nature and aims elsewhere.

That greater clarity is useful to everyone: communities elsewhere see more early, so to speak, what’s what.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): Claims of Legacy, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.

Two Rovers, Billions of Years of Martian History – NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity Rovers:

NASA has two rovers on Mars – but they’re exploring entirely different eras of the planet’s past. Separated by 2,300 miles, the two rovers are uncovering clues from very different moments in Martian history. Perseverance is on the rim of Jezero Crater, where it’s studying some of the oldest Martian terrain ever explored while searching for signs of ancient microbial life. Meanwhile, Curiosity is climbing Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, where layers of rock reveal how Mars’ climate changed as water dried up from its surface. Together, the missions are helping scientists reconstruct how Mars formed, when and where water existed, and the planet’s history of having the right conditions to support life. Their discoveries are offering a clearer picture of how Mars became the dry and dusty world we know today.