Tuesday, September 28th at 1 PM, there will be a showing of A Quiet Place: Part 2 @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Drama/Thriller/Sci-Fi
1 hour, 37 minutes
Rated PG-13 (2020)
After the death of her husband (John Krasinski), Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) finds herself on her own, with two young teens, a defenseless newborn son, and nowhere to hide. Forced to venture into the unknown, the family realizes that the creatures that hunt by sound are not the only threats lurking beyond.
Written and directed by John Krasinski, Emily Blunt’s real-life husband.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 68. Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 6:49 PM for 12h 04m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1889, Nintendo Koppai (Later Nintendo Company, Limited) is founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda.
Yesterday’s Daily Bread at FREE WHITEWATER (‘New Political Maps for Wisconsin by March?‘) highlighted Riley Vetterkind’s reporting that a Federal court indicates it wants Wisconsin’s new political maps in place by March (‘A federal judicial panel on Tuesday indicated it wants Wisconsin’s new political maps in place by March 1, calling for the completion of a potential redistricting trial by the end of January as lawmakers work to draw the new decennial legislative and congressional district boundaries’).
The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to take a case over the state’s redistricting practices on Wednesday, a day after a federal court scheduled a January trial on the same issue.
The state’s high court agreed to take the case on a 4-3 vote, with conservatives in the majority and liberals in dissent. Conservatives asked the justices to take the case last month as Democrats and voting rights groups filed their own lawsuits in federal court.
….
The majority’s order accepting the case was brief. In a concurring opinion, Rebecca Bradley argued state courts are the ones that should hear redistricting challenges, even though federal courts have taken them up in recent decades.
“It is primarily the duty of this court, not any federal court, to resolve such redistricting disputes,” Bradley wrote.
States are required to draw new maps every 10 years to make sure districts are of equal population based on data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. How the lines are drawn can give one political party an advantage over the other.
….
In the redistricting lawsuit, [Eric] O’Keefe [a board member of Empower Wisconsin, a conservative group that has been running ads against Evers] and the others contend any maps the court approves should have as few changes as possible. That would likely keep in place many of the advantages Republicans have under the maps that were drawn in 2011.
Yesterday’s commentary at FREE WHITEWATER: “The WISGOP will do all it can to get this case dismissed from federal court, thereafter to seek recourse in state court.”
The WISGOP (and it’s the WISGOP that matters in a redistricting battle, not O’Keefe) is halfway to what it wants: the case now is in state court, and the conservatives need only see the dismissal of the federal consolidated actions to have the forum of their choice.
Wednesday was a good day for Wisconsin’s conservatives, if for no one else.
Wednesday sees the beginning of Fall in Whitewater with mostly sunny skies and a high of 65. Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 6:50 PM for 12h 07m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1862, Pres. Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, to take effect January 1, 1863.
A federal judicial panel on Tuesday indicated it wants Wisconsin’s new political maps in place by March 1, calling for the completion of a potential redistricting trial by the end of January as lawmakers work to draw the new decennial legislative and congressional district boundaries.
U.S. District Judge James Peterson and two other federal judges on a panel signaled they think maps should be in place by March 1 in order for candidates to begin circulating nomination papers by April 15. The new maps would then be used for legislative and congressional candidates in an August 2022 primary election.
The judicial panel called for the attorneys representing the parties in the case — chiefly the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers, who together are responsible for passing new political maps, along with Democratic voters, activist groups and GOP congressmen — to come up with a schedule to complete a trial by the end of January in order to have maps in place by March 1.
March 15 is the statutory deadline for the Wisconsin Elections Commission to notify county clerks of which offices will be voted on in the November 2022 election and where information on district boundaries can be found.
The trial, however, likely wouldn’t need to occur if the GOP-controlled Legislature and governor pass a set of legislative and congressional maps before then. Peterson, however, noted that is unlikely.
“If history is any guide, to put it mildly, there’s at least a substantial likelihood that divided government in the state of Wisconsin will have trouble, as it has in the past, drawing its own maps,” Peterson said.
Peterson told the parties in the case that a trial needs to be finished by the end of January in order for the court to render a decision by March 1, though the panel said it would entertain motions arguing that the deadline could be extended later.
….
At Tuesday’s hearing, an attorney for the Republican-controlled Legislature gave little indication of when it would pass a set of maps to send to the governor. He said GOP lawmakers are considering appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the redistricting case.
Evers has created his own People’s Maps Commission, which expects to produce a set of alternative maps by mid-October for the Legislature’s and court’s consideration.
The WISGOP will do all it can to get this case dismissed from federal court, thereafter to seek recourse in state court.
Tuesday in Whitewater will see scattered showers this morning on an otherwise cloudy day with a high of 69. Sunrise is 6:42 AM and sunset 6:52 PM for 12h 10m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
MADISON – Former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman said Monday he is willing to compel election clerks to turn over documents and provide testimony as part of Assembly Republicans’ review of the 2020 election outcome.
Gableman, an attorney who is overseeing the review as a special counsel, released a six-minute video on Monday defending the review by saying he was not seeking to challenge the election’s result and outlined some details of the review, which includes subpoenaing election clerks who do not comply with his requests.
“The purpose of this investigation is to determine what was supposed to happen in our elections and what did happen, to see what went well as well as to see what might have gone badly,” Gableman said.
“We will request from those officials and others with potential knowledge of unlawful actions and will compel them if necessary to produce documents and testimony.”
Gabelman twists traditional legal presumptions backwards: he demands others produce documents on the expansive theory that those others may have “potential knowledge of unlawful actions.” He offers no evidence of any unlawful actions. Under Gableman’s formulation, others are asked to prove their innocence of supposed unlawful actions about which Gableman need show no evidence whatever.
A reading like Gableman’s would allow state investigations of public or private parties to prove they have not somehow violated the law, without even a government showing that they might have done so.
Speaker Vos is certain to sign any subpoenas Gableman drafts, lest Vos incur Trump’s election wrath. (Vos felt no worry about ignoring Nass’s request for a challenge to UW System protocols, but Nass is forgettable when compared against Trump.)
It’s an inquisition that Gableman wants, and Vos will give him one.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with scattered afternoon thundershowers and a high of 81. Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 6:54 PM for 12h 13m 07s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Equal Opportunities Commission meets at 5 PM, and her Library Board at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1982, players in the National Football League begin a 57-day strike.
Equine ivermectin comes in small tubes and syringes and helps eliminate “many types of worms,” often for less than $10. And lately it’s been hard to find.
Amid the recent clamor for the deworming agent — commonly used on horses, livestock and sometimes dogs and cats — as an unproven covid-19 treatment for humans, people who need to treat their horses with the substance have been faced with empty shelves and the fear that they could be mistaken for the people who are using the drug on themselves.
A syringe of ivermectin paste sold online by QC Supply, a Nebraska-based livestock supply distributor, works on pinworms, hairworms, largemouth stomach worms and more. Each syringe can treat a horse weighing up to 1,250 pounds. But the dewormer is out of stock.
Still, the product remains on the site with the warning: “For Oral Use In Horses Only.”
On the website for Fleet Farm, a livestock supply chain in the Midwest, Horse Health Equine Ivermectin Paste sells for $6.99 but is not available for online orders. It carries a prominent warning telling consumers that “these products are not safe or approved for human use.”
….
In Las Vegas, V&V Tack and Feed enacted a new requirement for customers trying to buy ivermectin, according to local media reports. The store posted a sign that the drug would be sold only to horse owners. “MUST SHOW A PIC OF YOU AND YOUR HORSE,” the sign read.
A country with the finest vaccines in the world finds many of its people instead taking medicine for horses.
This is a notable failure of education. We — all of us — have taught poorly.
America’s schools — and their leaders — cannot expect to be taken seriously or treated deferentially when they have so negligently taught an entire generation, including ignorant men and women scouring stores for horse paste.
To believe in education is to believe in more than celebrating good ideas; to believe in education requires also a commitment to refuting bad ideas.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 89. Sunrise is 6:40 AM and sunset 6:56 PM for 12h 16m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1982, Scott Fahlman posts the first documented emoticons 🙂 and 🙁 on the Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board system:
Fahlman was not the first to suggest the concept of the emoticon – a similar concept for a marker appeared in an article of Reader’s Digest in May 1967, although that idea was never put into practice.
“I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile – some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket.”
Fahlman is credited with originating the first smileyemoticon, which he thought would help people on a message board at Carnegie Mellon to distinguish serious posts from jokes. He proposed the use of :-) and :-( for this purpose, and the symbols caught on. The original message from which these symbols originated was posted on 19 September 1982. The message was recovered by Jeff Baird on 10 September 2002 and read:
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use
:-(
Many of the tragedies and sins associated with failure in the war in Afghanistan could equally apply if the words “in Afghanistan” were swapped out with “on drugs”: that it raged for decades; was immeasurably bloody; was carried out with no clear exit strategy; had the support of an American public that was blinded by politically charged debates and that scarcely appreciated its costs; and is managed by political leaders who overwhelmingly want it to end, but do not want to own the responsibility for doing so.
While President Richard Nixon first laid a marker on drugs by calling for major narcotics legislation in 1969, the rhetoric of the modern drug war as we know it began with a speech he gave in 1971. There, he declared that the federal government would treat addiction as “public enemy No. 1,” and that “in order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive.”
….
Moreover, nothing today screams about the racial underpinnings of the country’s approach to drugs more than the fact that today’s opioid crisis (one that has victimized Whites), is thought of as exactly that — a crisis. Today’s White users are vulnerable victims to be nurtured; Black users often remain enemy combatants to be dispatched.
….
In addition, baked at least partly into the American psyche is the notion that police are not guardians of the communities they serve, but rather warriors engaged in ongoing combat (think about it: police often are called “troops” or “forces” and trained at military-style boot camps, and military veterans represent about 20 percent of police forces despite making up just 6 percent of the general population). Humans most often go to war with people they view as unlike themselves; likewise, police officers may see themselves as guardians of people like themselves. For generations, America’s entire notion of what policing is has largely overvalued police officers’ roles as warriors and undervalued their role as protectors. That must evolve. While defunding police may not make communities safer, shifting the very paradigm that police only exist as extensions of the country’s military apparatus will.
The rise of conservative populism makes an end to the drug war unlikely in places where populists hold political sway. Populists see those beyond their movement as ‘illegitimate,’ and so will hungrily support a conflict like this against others.
Rural counties like Walworth County, Wisconsin will fight the drug war, and waste money year after year, even if most of America moves on.
Leaving Afghanistan will prove easier than ending the drug war.
Today, black rhinos are anesthetized and hung from helicopters by their feet, skimming the savanna as they’re flown to new locations to help repopulate the species. Mountain goats are blindfolded and secured in dangling slings, choppered to new ranges to prevent destruction of fragile alpine environments from overgrazing. Fish are routinely dropped from fixed-wing aircraft to restock lakes. Still, in 1948, and even now, the idea of translocating beavers by dropping boxes of them out of a plane with parachutes was unusual.
But Idaho’s wildlife managers at the time were at a loss. People were migrating from the state’s cities to rural areas in the southwest part of the state in search of fresh air and nature. Many of those regions were already populated, however—by beavers. Soon, the new residents were complaining about the old ones, whose habit of felling trees and building dams sometimes flooded yards and damaged sprinkler systems, orchards, and culverts.
The Fish and Game Department recognized the animals’ value as important ecosystem engineers. Beavers establish and maintain wetlands, improve water quality, reduce erosion, and create habitat for game, fish, waterfowl, and plants. They also help stabilize the water supply for humans. Rather than exterminate them, the department decided to move them—all 76 of them.
[Idaho Fish and Game employee Elmo] Heter set to work, focusing on how he could safely, quickly, and affordably transport beavers from the McCall and Payette Lake region of southwestern Idaho to the Chamberlain Basin, in central Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountain Range, now called the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Area.
Eventually, he hit upon a singular idea: tying boxes of beavers to parachutes left over from World War II, then tossing them out of a small plane.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 6:57 PM for 12h 18m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1977, Voyager I takes the first distant photograph [7.25 million miles] of the Earth and the Moon together.
Student vaccination rates at Wisconsin’s public universities range widely from 91% at UW-Madison to 38% at UW-Parkside, according to figures released Friday.
The data offers the first complete picture of COVID-19 vaccination rates across the University of Wisconsin System, which has encouraged but not required students and employees to get the shot. The approach differs from at least half a dozen private universities and colleges in the state that are requiring vaccination.
The System’s stance against vaccine mandates has frustrated some faculty members, many of whom worry about returning in person to teach in mostly aging buildings that they describe as poorly ventilated. They believe a mandate would provide a much safer learning environment.
COVID-19 mitigation measures in place at System campuses include an indoor mask mandate and, at most campuses, required weekly testing for unvaccinated individuals.
The percentage of fully vaccinated students as of Wednesday are:
UW-Madison: 91%
UW-La Crosse: 75%
UW-Milwaukee: 74%
UW-Eau Claire: 69%
UW-Whitewater: 64%
UW-Oshkosh: 61%
UW-Stout: 58%
UW-Green Bay: 55%
UW-River Falls: 55%
UW-Superior: 50%
UW-Platteville: 47%
UW-Stevens Point: 46%
UW-Parkside: 38%
The distance and difference between the most-vaccinated and least-vaccinated campuses is notable (and disconcerting).
Megapod of Humpback Whales Filmed Off Australia Coast:
A megapod of humpback whales was filmed off the Sapphire Coast of Australia last week. According to Simon Miller, skipper and owner of Sapphire Coastal Adventures, they typically see 20 whales during this time of year feeding, but this time there were 100+ whales. Miller said he had never seen that many whales in his 19 years of operation.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 84. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 6:59 PM for 12h 21m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 86.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
This day in 1787, the Framers at the Constitutional Convention sign their final draft of the United States Constitution in Philadelphia.
Some, but not all, of the 2020 Census data for Whitewater are now available. Other census data will be released later, and so available information for Whitewater remains a combination of the latest census and American Community Survey data (either as one-year or five-year-estimate data).
The biggest play at the University of Miami-Appalachian State University football game Saturday night happened in the stands, where spectators banded together to save a feline fan. Video from Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens showed the cat dangling from an upper deck, where it apparently clung by its claws to some type of fabric on the railing. At least one person reached down to help, but the cat plummeted to the seats below. Thankfully, the careening kitty was caught by fans who held a U.S. flag as a makeshift rescue tarp. The flag belonged to season ticket holder Craig Cromer and his wife, Kimberly, NBC Miami reported. Cromer, a University of Miami facilities manager, told the station that he and his wife untied the flag from the railing when they saw the cat clinging above them.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 81. Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 7:01 PM for 12h 24m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 77.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
MADISON — The attorney heading a partisan review of Wisconsin’s presidential election has been consulting with a losing U.S. Senate candidate who appeared in a conspiracy theory-fueled film, falsely claimed a million ballots were destroyed in Massachusetts and recently linked his election doubts to a science-fiction novel.
Shiva Ayyadurai since he lost a 2020 primary for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts has been spreading untrue claims about elections — suggesting last month without credible evidence that more than 4% of Donald Trump’s votes were shaved off his totals. Now, he’s talking to former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman for Gableman’s review of the presidential election.
Ayyadurai’s exact role is not clear.
“They’re indicating they’re going to bring in Dr. Shiva as well to help on the forensic audit,” Reince Priebus, Trump’s first chief of staff, said last month on former Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s podcast.
Ayyadurai and Gableman “have had a lot of conversations,” according to Harry Wait, president of the conservative watchdog group Honest Open Transparent Government. Wait said he speaks to Gableman frequently, including last week.
Biden beat Trump in Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes, or 0.6 percentage points. Recounts in Milwaukee and Dane counties confirmed his victory, as did a string of court decisions.
Assembly Republicans have said they need more review of the election and have tasked Gableman with digging into the issue at taxpayer expense. Gableman, who claimed without evidence last year that Wisconsin bureaucrats stole votes, is supposed to wrap up his review as soon as next month.
There is an insatiability to populist desires: they want what they want, and they will ignore or break tradition, reason, or law to get it. Their first and fundamental position is that
all other contenders for power are fundamentally illegitimate. This is never just a disagreement about policies or even about values, which after all in a democracy is completely normal, ideally maybe even somewhat productive. No, populists always immediately make it personal and they make it entirely moral. This tendency to simply dismiss everybody else from the get-go as corrupt, as not working for the people, that’s always the pattern.
The ineluctable consequence of their belief that all others are legitimate is the populists’ insistence that If You Didn’t Vote for Trump, Your Vote Is Fraudulent.Conspiracy theories about the election stem from this insistence.
They are for conservative populism over liberal democracy, and would rather destroy the constitutional order than live within it.
There are countless officials, including local ones in Whitewater, who will not acknowledge these truths about the populists and their intentions. They’ll say nothing, or prattle about smaller matters, in the hope that the populist threat will pass, or that through silence now they’ll find a comfortable place in a new order should the populists prevail.
There is not even one such official who isn’t a disappointment.
On Wednesday, September 15 at 8:02 p.m. EDT, 00:02 UTC on September 16, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 successfully launched the Inspiration4 mission – the world’s first all-civilian human spaceflight to orbit – from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Approximately three days after liftoff, Dragon and the crew of Inspiration4 will splash down at one of several possible landing sites off the Florida coast.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 7:03 PM for 12h 27m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 68.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.
This day in 1940 sees the climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Luftwaffe launches its largest and most concentrated attack of the entire campaign.
I’m so pleased to inform you that we are making substantial progress towards our university vaccination goals. As of this morning, 64% of students and 83% of employees are fully vaccinated. These are verified records, courtesy of all of you who have submitted your information to the COVID-19 Hotline.
Our ability to maintain in-person classes and activities — a vibrant university experience — is dependent upon a safe and healthy campus community. If you have not yet done so, I strongly encourage you to get vaccinated if you are able, and to report it to UW-Whitewater as soon as possible.
UW System has announced that COVID-19-vaccinated students who attend universities that achieve at least 70% vaccination rates by Oct. 15 will be eligible to win one of 70 scholarships valued at $7,000 each.
We’ve already awarded $18,000 to our Warhawk students in the weekly $500 drawings, which will continue into October. My deepest appreciation goes out to the generous donors who provided funding to the UW-Whitewater Foundation in support of this campaign.
In addition, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services is giving a $100 Visa Gift Card to any Wisconsin resident ages 12 and older who receives their first COVID-19 vaccine from a Wisconsin vaccination provider from Aug. 20 through Sept. 19.
Warhawk family, we’re navigating the pandemic together, and I’m proud of the progress we’ve made to this point. Let’s finish the month strong.
Thank you,
Jim Henderson, Ph.D.
Interim Chancellor
There is more work to do to meet the UW System goal, and UW-Whitewater deserves support and encouragement to do so. Embracing a culture of good public health would both physically protect and culturally uplift the campus.
Whitewater, sadly, is no easy environment in which to advance a vaccination effort, even with the finest vaccines and the most advanced medical science in all the world. A small band in the city, as malicious as it is ignorant, spreads lies, even perversely publishing icons with hypodermic needles in the shape of Nazi swastikas.
These lumpen few are a blight on the community, and proof of how spotty has been our city’s and county’s educational accomplishments. We have done too little, and praised ourselves too much for it.
UW-Whitewater will help itself, and all the city, by looking within and achieving still higher vaccination rates.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 78. Sunrise is 6:34 AM and sunset 7:05 PM for 12h 30m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1994, the Major League Baseball season is canceled because of a strike.
“We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within,” Bush said. “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them.”
From there, Bush voiced his dismay at the stark polarization and rigid partisanship of modern American politics. “A malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument, and every argument into a clash of cultures,” he said. “So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together.”
Bush spoke as if he were just an observer, a concerned elder statesman who fears for the future of his country. But that’s nonsense. Bush was an active participant in the politics he now bemoans.
Bouie is critical of Bush’s policies, and sees those policies as responsible for many of our current divisions. By Bouie’s reading, Bush is no bystander to our present maladies.
It is worth noting, however, that here in the rural Midwest, even acknowledging as Bush did that there are domestic threats to the constitutional order is controversial.
It should not be a controversial claim. The current form of the presidential oath of office expressly contemplates dangers to the American Republic both ‘foreign and domestic’:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
To say as much draws right-wing populist fury, as they suspect that it is about them that concerns over domestic threats often originate.
They’d draw less concern from others if they did not lie about election results, support violent insurrections against the government, or threaten the use of force in public meetings.
But they do all of these, and so they merit the concern of others.
