Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 44. Sunrise is 7:00 AM and sunset 5:17 PM for 10h 17m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.32% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 8 AM, and Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 7 PM.
On this day in 1950, the Stasi, the secret police force of East Germany, is established
Here are a few photos of Marjorie Taylor Greene from last night’s State of the Union address:
There will be some who will cheer her on as a conservative populist heroine. Some, but not enough: she acted, and dressed, like a mobster’s wife. Her antics remain repulsive to key (that is, normal) constituencies the GOP needs to win.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy is reported to have said of Greene that “I will never leave that woman…I will always take care of her.” (McCarthy was speaking politically, not romantically. Candidly, there is no skepticism of McCarthy deep enough, even from this libertarian blogger, that one would assume McCarthy was describing a romantic connection.)
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:01 AM and sunset 5:16 PM for 10h 15m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2013, Mississippi officially certifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was formally ratified by Mississippi in 1995.
However improbable an outcome, Bill Lueders (writing in the subscription-required Bulwark) observes that the Wisconsin Supreme Court primary on 2.21.23 might produce two winners of the same ideology:
Along with 37 other states, Wisconsin has its voters elect justices to its high court; as in 13 other states, its contests for the seats are nonpartisan. The February 21 primary election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide which two of four candidates will advance to the April 4 general election. There are two conservatives, Daniel Kelly and Jennifer Dorow, and two liberals, Janet Protasiewicz and Everett Mitchell, on the ballot. All are serious contenders: It’s possible the vote will split evenly enough that either the two conservatives or the two liberals are the top two vote-getters.
That means the all-important question of the Wisconsin court’s ideological balance could be settled in the primary, when turnout can be as low as a third of the general election vote. This sliver of the electorate could decide whether liberals or conservatives have a majority as the court heads into a critical moment in its history.
Possible, but improbable. It seems more likely that one conservative and one center-left candidate will break through, leaving the April 4th election as a right-left contest. For the primary to be so closely contested between the candidates that one ideological faction wins both seats would be quite the shock.
Lueders hits on a probability, however, when he writes that
If either liberal candidate makes it to the April 4 ballot, he or she will be targeted with a wave of attack ads. For Protasiewicz, these will likely focus on decisions she’s made in a quarter century of being a prosecutor and nearly nine years as a judge. Mitchell, meanwhile, has said some dicey things, like arguing, when he was a University of Wisconsin official and not a judge, that people who shoplift from big-box stores should not be prosecuted. There are also allegations of abuse his ex-wife brought forward during a custody dispute over their daughter in 2010; he denies the allegations, and she says she wants to leave them in the past.
A spring campaign between right and left would be expensive and ferocious. (More ferocious, although not more expensive, than 2022 gubernatorial race.)
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 41. Sunrise is 7:02 AM and sunset 5:15 PM for 10h 12m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Equal Opportunities Commission meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1778, in Paris the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic.
A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked — repeatedly — by elections officials and the courts.
The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden’s win.
The Wisconsin political operatives in the strategy session even praised Democratic turnout efforts in the state’s largest counties and appeared to joke about their efforts to engage Black voters, according to the recording obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The audio centers on Andrew Iverson, who was the head of Trump’s campaign in the state.
“Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need (inaudible) help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson said.
For this crowd, I’m-just-askin’-questions has become I won’t accept what I don’t want to accept.
How odd: all these big tough people who melt at a mask, shriek over a proven vaccine, and squeal over a mail-in ballot.
Truth be told about Andrew Iverson, head of Trump’s 2020 Wisconsin campaign: he knew his constituency, a faction eager for flame-fanning and stunt-pulling.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 5:13 PM for 10h 10m 02s of daytime. The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1907, Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announces the creation of Bakelite, the world’s first synthetic plastic.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 5:12 PM for 10h 07m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1789, George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 5. Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 5:11 PM for 10h 05m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
The American labor market unleashed a burst of hiring in January, producing another wave of robust job growth even as interest rates continue to rise.
Employers added 517,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said on Friday, an increase from 260,000 in December.
The unemployment rate was 3.4 percent, the lowest since 1969.
Even as hiring surged, wage growth slowed slightly to 0.3 percent compared with December.
The hefty hiring figures defied expectations and underscored the challenges facing the Federal Reserve, which is trying to cool the labor market in its effort to tame rapid inflation. By raising interest rates — on Wednesday, Fed officials did so for the eighth time in a year — policymakers hope to force businesses to pull back on their spending, including hiring.
Yet the labor market has remained extraordinarily tight. In addition to the report on Friday, the government released data this week showing that the number of posted jobs per available unemployed worker — a measure that policymakers have been watching closely — rose again in December. And despite a cavalcade of layoffs in the technology sector, the overall number of pink slips has stayed extremely low.
In a big country like America, the national economy is not a single state’s economy, as it is not a single city’s economy. States and cities that repeat the same economic mistakes of the last several years will not enjoy the nation’s level of success. They’ll lag behind.
Worse, of course: states and cities that refuse to admit that they’ve been repeating the same economic mistakes of the last several years.
Bruno, a shelter cat in New Jersey, was returned to the shelter after only a week for being ‘too affectionate.’ Some cats like more contact than others, and Bruno has an affectionate nature than was unsuited to the family that first adopted him.
A cat that was returned to a New Jersey shelter for being “too affectionate” has found a new home – and has helped other cats at the shelter get adopted too.
Bruno the cat first arrived at the Montville Animal Shelter in November, after the child of his previous owners became allergic to him. Two months later, he was adopted by a single mother and young daughter seeking a first pet. But when they brought him home, the shelter’s Lindsay Persico said, he was just a little too close for comfort.
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Persico said that when Bruno returned, he was depressed. So Persico took to Facebook and posted Bruno’s story. The post blew up, with over 200,000 views and hundreds of comments. And the adoption applications started pouring in.
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In fact, an update to the Facebook post said they had to pause applications. People from all over the country called the shelter to inquire.
Bruno was adopted and is now in a new home. But the overwhelming response has helped the shelter’s other cats too.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 26. Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 5:09 PM for 10h 02m 35s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1653, New Amsterdam (later renamed the City of New York) is incorporated.
Punxsutawney Phil awoke this morning, saw his shadow, and so predicted six more weeks of winter.
This is, however one looks at it, good news. For those of us who like winter, we’ve a bit over 40 days more. For those who dislike winter, Phil’s prediction places the end of winter around March 16th, still a few days short of the March equinox on Monday, March 20th.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 24. Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 5:08 PM for 10h 00m 09s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 84.51% of its visible disk illuminated.
Converting less than one-third of the roughly 1 million acres Wisconsin uses to grow corn for ethanol into solar farms would boost the state’s energy production and help reduce carbon emissions, according to a new report from Clean Wisconsin, an environmental advocacy nonprofit.
Clean Wisconsin looked at both the gross energy production and the energy “inputs” required for solar and ethanol production.
It found that 88 percent of the energy generated by solar goes to society and 12 percent is offset by production requirements. For ethanol, only 20 percent of the energy goes to society and 80 percent is offset by production.
“Corn needs to be grown, harvested and processed into ethanol, all of which require energetic inputs. Likewise, solar panels need to be manufactured and installed,” said Paul Mathewson, science program director for Clean Wisconsin. “When accounting for inputs, the net energy production of solar is over 100 times that of corn ethanol.”
Mathewson said growing corn for ethanol also has a negative environmental impact on the state’s waterways because corn requires chemical inputs like pesticides and nitrogen fertilizer.
“Agriculture contributes to about 90 percent of the nitrate contamination problems,” he said. “And corn needs a lot of nitrogen fertilizer to grow at the scale and at the intensity that we grow in Wisconsin.”
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“With just a fraction of what we’re using already to grow corn ethanol for energy, we can produce enough homegrown energy (with) solar panels that would power our state’s clean energy economy,” said Chelsea Chandler, Clean Wisconsin’s climate, energy and air program director. “And we’d be improving our water quality, our air and our soil health at the same time.”
The debate over energy production will not soon end, but it’s useful ponder our options. In the meantime, America is moving toward what we still call alternative energy sources, but they won’t always be alternatives to the dominant fossil-fuel-burning economy.
In the same way, automobiles were once alternatives to horses, yet no one thinks of cars that way now.
