FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Daily Bread, Employment, Free Markets, Populists, Trumpism, Vaccines

Daily Bread for 8.15.21: The ‘Personal Responsibility’ Crowd Wants a Handout

by  •  • 3 Comments

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 81. Sunrise is 6:02 AM and sunset 7:55 PM, for 13h 53m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 48.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1944, Allied forces land in southern France in Operation Dragoon.

Molly Beck reports GOP lawmakers propose making workers who are fired, quit over vaccine mandates eligible for unemployment benefits:

MADISON – Republican lawmakers want to provide unemployment benefits to anyone who quits or is fired over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate — legislation Gov. Tony Evers said he would veto.

The proposal comes as health systems across the state are implementing new requirements for staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in addition to the other vaccines that have been required for years.

Hospitals are bracing for a new surge of COVID-19 infections that has materialized as not enough people are vaccinated to isolate the fast-spreading delta variant and keep it from spreading to those who are unable to get vaccinated, like children.

A number of protests have taken place in the wake of the systems’ new requirements with some health care workers pushing back against them citing the vaccines’ emergency-use approval status.

Republican Reps. Dan Knodl, Rick Gundrum, Rob Brooks and Sen. Duey Stroebel released proposed legislation on Thursday that would create an exemption in Wisconsin’s unemployment rules that would allow anyone who quit over such mandates or was fired over violating them to collect benefits.

“Individual liberty is the bedrock of a free republic and must be respected and protected. The decision of whether or not to get the COVID-19 vaccine is a decision to be made by individuals, not government bureaucrats or employers,” bill authors wrote in a memo to colleagues seeking support.

These WISGOP men talk about individual liberty, but they’re not prepared to accept the consequences of choice in a free society. Instead, these able-bodied, populist men want a government handout from others while exercising free choice.  That’s not liberty; it’s state-subsidized dependency. These populists, Trumpists one and all, talk about personal responsibility but will not accept the consequences of employers’ decisions on workplace protocols.

The answer for employees who do not want to accept employers’ vaccine requirements is to quit and find other jobs, not to ask for state-provided benefits.

One hears so much from these right-wing populists about how their political opponents – those of us in the majority across America – are afraid, motivated by fear, etc. It’s all nonsense. No group that claims to be rational talks so much about fear as the populists. It’s all evident projection with them.

Their declarations of ‘hope over fear’ melt away at the sight of a hypodermic needle. These big, bad Trump men – who claim to be rugged individualists – plead for handouts at others’ expense rather than take a jab.

No, and no again.

Those who will not comply with employers’ lawful workplace mandates are free (as they should be) to quit and find other jobs. They should use their time while unemployed to search through Help Wanted ads for less demanding workplaces.

They are not, and should never be, entitled to unemployment compensation for their vaccine refusal.

See also Jane Jacobs with Useful Advice on Responsibility (for Whitewater, Richmond Township, Delavan, Etc.),  A Private Insurance Response to Vaccine Refusal (Updated), Daily Bread for 8.11.21: Summerfest & Private Business Requirements, and No Shirt, No Shoes? No Service.

SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy become world’s tallest rocket after stacking:

Daily Bread, Fair Maps, Gerrymandering, Liberal Democracy, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.14.21: Deserts

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:01 AM and sunset 7:57 PM, for 13h 55m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 37.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1933, loggers cause a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon, later known as the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn, destroying 240,000 acres of land.

David Daley and Gaby Goldstein write America is full of ‘democracy deserts’. Wisconsin rivals Congo on some metrics:

The United States is becoming a land filled with “democracy deserts”, where gerrymandering and voting restrictions are making voters powerless to make change. And this round of redistricting could make things even worse.

Since 2012, the Electoral Integrity Project at Harvard University has studied the quality of elections worldwide. It has also issued biannual reports that grade US states, on a scale of 1 through 100. In its most recent study of the 2020 elections, the integrity of Wisconsin’s electoral boundaries earned a 23 – worst in the nation, on par with Jordan, Bahrain and the Congo.

….

In Wisconsin, for example, voters handed Democrats every statewide race in 2018 and 203,000 more votes for the state assembly – but the tilted Republican map handed Republicans 63 of the 99 seats nevertheless. Democratic candidates have won more or nearly the same number of votes for Michigan’s state house for the last decade – but never once captured a majority of seats.

There are some measures in which all places are alike; no one committed to a respectable constitutional order would want Wisconsin to be similar to the Congo in commitment to liberal democracy. (Since Trump, it’s been necessary to remind that liberal democracy does not mean left-of-center; it means popular sovereignty that recognizes individual rights (‘recognizing and protecting a sphere beyond the rightful reach of government in which individuals can enjoy independence and privacy’).

Gerrymandering has fated Wisconsin with legislative control by a minority over the state’s majority. This ideologically and ethnically homogenous minority prefers to govern, almost to rule, this way. They favor their own control over any fair arrangement or fair maps.

There’s talk about Wisconsin as a place of deserts, of news or democracy. This talk sometimes assumes that deserts are places without life, empty of anything except sand.

That’s not true, of course. Deserts do harbor creatures; some kinds of life flourish in a desert’s arid sands.

It’s simply that the denizens of the desert are disagreeable or deadly to those of more temperate climes.

The Rise And Fall of Convertible Cars In The U.S.:

Daily Bread, Demographics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.13.21: Wisconsin’s 2020 Census

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 82. Sunrise is 6:00 AM and sunset 7:59 PM, for 13h 58m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 26.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1961, East Germany closes the border between the eastern and western sectors of Berlin to thwart its inhabitants’ attempts to escape to the West, and construction of the Berlin Wall begins. The day is known as Barbed Wire Sunday.

Molly Beck reports Wisconsin grows modestly and more diverse while Milwaukee plummets to 1930s levels, Census data show:

MADISON – Wisconsin has grown more racially diverse over a decade of modest growth, with population gains concentrated around the state’s capital city while its largest city, Milwaukee, fell to its smallest population in nearly a century, new U.S. Census data show.

The state’s population grew 3.6% since 2010 to 5.9 million — lagging the national growth of 7.4% and less than half the rate of its neighbor Minnesota.

The new data also reveal a notable drop — 4% — in the number of children living in Wisconsin, forecasting consequences for the state’s education systems and labor force.

The state is becoming more racially diverse with Hispanic residents growing in population by 33% and now accounting for the largest racial minority group in the state, surpassing the state’s Black population.

More than one-third of Wisconsin’s population growth over the last decade occurred in Dane County, in and around Madison. The county grew by 15% to add more than 73,000 people — the highest county-level increase in the state — with the city of Verona experiencing some of the fastest growth at 32%.

Meanwhile, the state’s largest city has hit its lowest population since 1930. Milwaukee’s population fell to 577,222 — a drop of about 17,000 people since 2010. Milwaukee County also saw a tiny population decrease of less than a percentage point.

These Wisconsin trends are similar to a national trend toward a more multi-racial and multi-ethnic society. See Census data: US is diversifying, white population shrinking (‘No racial or ethnic group dominates for those under age 18, and white people declined in numbers for the first time on record in the overall U.S. population as the Hispanic and Asian populations boomed this past decade, according to the 2020 census data’).Local census data for Whitewater and smaller cities are not yet, to my knowledge, available.

All these data prompt this question: is America great from a given racial composition, or from a constitutional order among citizens of whatever race or ethnicity? For those who see superiority in their race, those men of blut und boden and herrenvolk, these are unfavorable data. For those of us committed to liberal democracy, to a constitutional order of equal justice under law, there can be no favorable or unfavorable demographics on race or ethnicity.

America now finds herself in a continental conflict between these two ways of seeing and being.

This conflict will not soon end.

Kiwi watchers capture bird song in previously silent sites:

The call of New Zealand’s iconic kiwi has been captured in sites that were previously silent five years ago. The recordings come after the threatened bird has begun to return to patches of forest where the population had dropped.

Daily Bread, Sen. Ron Johnson

Daily Bread for 8.12.21: Ron Johnson’s Generous Benefactors

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 91. Sunrise is 5:59 AM and sunset 8:00 PM, for 14h 00m 52s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1981, IBM releases the IBM Personal Computer.

Over at ProPublica, Secret IRS Files Reveal How Much the Ultrawealthy Gained by Shaping Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Tax Cut.” Their exhaustive reporting reveals the zealous role that Sen. Ron Johnson played in getting tax breaks for his campaign donors.

The story helps answer part of the question on Johnson’s motivations (U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson: Ambitious, Compromised, or Crackpot?).  Johnson may be all three, but he’s plainly beholden to a few donors by ideology or ambition. The entire story is recommended in full. Excerpts on Johnson’s role for two big donors appear below: 

Johnson’s demand was simple: In exchange for his vote, the bill must sweeten the tax break for a class of companies that are known as pass-throughs, since profits pass through to their owners. Johnson praised such companies as “engines of innovation.” Behind the scenes, the senator pressed top Treasury Department officials on the issue, emails and the officials’ calendars show.

Within two weeks, Johnson’s ultimatum produced results. Trump personally called the senator to beg for his support, and the bill’s authors fattened the tax cut for these businesses. Johnson flipped to a “yes” and claimed credit for the change. The bill passed.

….

Confidential tax records, however, reveal that Johnson’s last-minute maneuver benefited two families more than almost any others in the country — both worth billions and both among the senator’s biggest donors.

Dick and Liz Uihlein of packaging giant Uline, along with roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, together had contributed around $20 million to groups backing Johnson’s 2016 reelection campaign.

The expanded tax break Johnson muscled through netted them $215 million in deductions in 2018 alone, drastically reducing the income they owed taxes on. At that rate, the cut could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life.

….

Johnson’s intervention in November 2017 was designed to boost the bill’s already generous tax break for pass-through companies. The bill had allowed for business owners to deduct up to 17.4% of their profits. Thanks to Johnson holding out, that figure was ultimately boosted to 20%.

That might seem like a small increase, but even a few extra percentage points can translate into tens of millions of dollars in extra deductions in one year alone for an ultrawealthy family.

The mechanics are complicated but, for the rich, it generally means that a business owner gets to keep an extra 7 cents on every dollar of profit. To understand the windfall, take the case of the Uihlein family.

Dick, the great-grandson of a beer magnate, and his wife, Liz, own and operate packaging giant Uline. The logo of the Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, firm is stamped on the bottom of countless paper bags. Uline produced nearly $1 billion in profits in 2018, according to ProPublica’s analysis of tax records. Dick and Liz Uihlein, who own a majority of the company, reported more than $700 million in income that year. But they were able to slash what they owed the IRS with a $118 million deduction generated by the new tax break.

Liz Uihlein, who serves as president of Uline, has criticized high taxes in her company newsletter. The year before the tax overhaul, the couple gave generously to support Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. That same year, when Johnson faced long odds in his reelection bid against former Sen. Russ Feingold, the Uihleins gave more than $8 million to a series of political committees that blanketed the state with pro-Johnson and anti-Feingold ads. That blitz led the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to dub the Uihleins “the Koch brothers of Wisconsin politics.”

Johnson’s campaign also got a boost from Hendricks, Wisconsin’s richest woman and owner of roofing wholesaler ABC Supply Co. The Beloit-based billionaire has publicly pushed for tax breaks and said she wants to stop the U.S. from becoming “a socialistic ideological nation.”

Hendricks has said Johnson won her over after she grilled him at a brunch meeting six years earlier. She gave about $12 million to a pair of political committees, the Reform America Fund and the Freedom Partners Action Fund, that bought ads attacking Feingold.

In the first year of the pass-through tax break, Hendricks got a $97 million deduction on income of $502 million. By reducing the income she owed taxes on, that deduction saved her around $36 million.

See also Johnson & Fitzgerald: Betrayers of Wisconsin, Ron Johnson Reads Lies about the Capitol Riot, Sen. Ron Johnson: ‘An all-access purveyor of misinformation,’ and Famous Moments in Climatology: Sen. Ron Johnson Shares His Insights.

The smart chain mail fabric that can stiffen on demand:

Daily Bread, Private Property

Daily Bread for 8.11.21: Summerfest & Private Business Requirements

by  •  • 1 Comment

Good morning.

After a stormy Tuesday night, Wednesday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 92. Sunrise is 5:58 AM and sunset 8:01 PM, for 14h 03m 23s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 9.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Joint Review Board meets at 4 PM, and Whitewater Fire Department, Inc. holds a business meeting at 6 PM.

On this day in 1919, the Green Bay Packers are organized over the course of two meetings in the editorial rooms of the Green Bay Press-Gazette (Aug. 11 and 14). Indian Packing Co. of Green Bay sponsored the team in its first two seasons.

One reads from Elizabeth Byer that Summerfest to require proof of vaccination or negative COVID test to enter:

Attendees will be asked to show a valid COVID-19 vaccination card or proof of a negative test upon entry at any gate. An original vaccination card, a printed copy of a vaccination card or a negative test will be accepted. A screen shot or photo on a phone of vaccination proof or negative test will also be accepted. The entire front of the vaccination card must be visible or it will not be accepted.

How effective this rule will be one can’t be sure, but a vaccine or negative test requirement is well within the rights of Summerfest, Inc.

Garrett M. Graff writes along these lines about private business requirements in Only private businesses can end the pandemic now. They just might do it:

Sixteen months ago, when we still referred to the threat as the “novel coronavirus,” private businesses led us into shutdowns — long before a reluctant Trump administration was willing to admit how big and how prolonged a disruption the nation was in for. Last spring, the cascading postponements and cancellations of events like NBA games and the South by Southwest festival shocked people into taking seriously a problem that President Donald Trump was insisting would be minor and brief, and would magically disappear on its own. (“We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away,” he said, one day before Rudy Gobert’s positive test at a Utah Jazz-Oklahoma City Thunder game led to the rapid evaporation of the basketball season.)

Today, a new president elected in part because of his predecessor’s shambolic management of the pandemic finds his actions constrained by the GOP’s dogma of dismissing a health crisis that has killed the equivalent of the entire population of Wyoming or Louisville. And just like last spring, it has fallen to private businesses to take the decisive and unequivocal actions that the federal government appears incapable of.

….

one business after another has stepped forward to say “Enough,” culminating with giants such as Google, Walmart and Disney all recently announcing vaccine mandates for at least some of their employees. Employers — and increasingly frustrated vaccinated Americans — are desperate for a return to the office and resumption of “normal” commerce. But rising case levels from the delta variant are eroding hope that the nation’s soft-sell “carrot” approach to vaccinations will yield much more progress.

The conservative populists, many of whom are opposed to vaccines, don’t like this. They loudly complain about liberalism/progressivism/socialism/communism/Marxism (all as a mishmash) while simultaneously demanding state action to ban immigrants, detain children, start trade wars, or prevent private publishers from choosing which users to allow on private platforms. These Trump-adoring men don’t want a limited and responsible government; they want a government limitlessly responsible only to them.

If the conservative populists don’t like Twitter, for example, they could and should create their own alternative rather than insisting that a private platform is required to endure their terms of service violations perpetually.  (As it turns out, the Trumpists’ efforts to create their own version of Twitter have been going… poorly. See Miller’s Gutter on Gettr.)

Conservatives once understood and defended private property; now an appetitive and impulsive horde rejects widespread private property rights, demanding what it wants when it wants.

No Shirt, No Shoes? No Service.

Rare Chameleon Rediscovered After Being Thought Extinct:

<

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.10.21: Economic Performance

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 91. Sunrise is 5:57 AM and sunset 8:02 PM, for 14h 05m 51s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6:00 PM.

On this day in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution is chartered by the United States Congress after James Smithson donates $500,000.

Justin Fox, using four different measures, writes GDP Growth Under Trump Was the Worst Since Hoover:

Oh, dearie me: is it possible that a man sued time and again for fraud and other serious misconduct might have – let’s just spitball here – exaggerated his administration’s economic performance?

How surprising is that?

Slideshow: Venezuela couple nurses sloths at home shelter:

Daily Bread, Sexual Harassment

Daily Bread for 8.9.21: Willing Enablers

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see scattered thunderstorms with a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:56 AM and sunset 8:04 PM, for 14h 08m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6:00 PM. The Whitewater School Board meets in closed session at 6:45 PM and open session at 7 PM.

On this day in 1944, the United States Forest Service and the Wartime Advertising Council release posters featuring Smokey Bear for the first time.

Luis Ferré-Sadurní reports Cuomo’s Top Aide, Melissa DeRosa, Resigns as He Fights to Survive (‘The governor’s strategist helped lead efforts to retaliate against one of the women who accused him of sexual harassment, the attorney general’s report found’):

ALBANY, N.Y.  — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, said late Sunday that she had resigned, a move that came as the governor fought for political survival after a report from the New York State attorney general concluded he had sexually harassed nearly a dozen women.

Her resignation meant that Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, lost one of his most loyal aides and trusted strategists while facing an imminent threat of impeachment in the State Legislature and calls to step down from a constellation of top officials in his party, including President Biden and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Ms. DeRosa had stood by the governor’s side for years even as his inner circle shrank in size and many of the top staffers who had helped first elect him in 2010 left the administration.

The state attorney general report found that Ms. DeRosa had spearheaded efforts to retaliate against one of the women who had spoken out publicly about her allegation in December.

After becoming a fixture in Mr. Cuomo’s coronavirus briefings during the pandemic, Ms. DeRosa also had come under fire earlier this year for her involvement in the administration’s efforts to obscure the full extent of nursing home deaths, a matter that is under investigation by federal authorities and the State Assembly.

….

The attorney general’s report painted an unflattering portrait of Ms. DeRosa and her role in fostering a toxic workplace and attacking the credibility of Lindsey Boylan, a former economic development official who had accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment in December.

It might seem odd at first look that DeRosa, an influential woman and daughter of a successful lobbyist, would commit herself to the defense of a serial harasser. This is, however, the reason one should look at a person or topic more than once. There are, after all, many successful people who betray or abuse others like themselves. It was not enough for DeRosa merely to climb a ladder: she kicked downward as she climbed upward.

There often are a few willing enablers of the worst, justifying their actions as a defense of professed policy goals, a better society, etc. In corporate scandals, church scandals, and political scandals there are to be found those who argue that they did what they did, and supported whom they supported, for some higher principle, for the ‘good of the institution.’ The individuals injured and left aside are, to these willing enablers, merely collateral – indeed necessary – damage to these enablers.

These aren’t problems only in Albany, New York. Every city and small town has a few officials who are act utilitarians, who justify their injuries to others as vital to one of their goals.

These supposed policy goals for which some officials injure others are really no more than personal accomplishments in self-promotion, self-satisfaction, and self-enrichment.

According to the report of New York Attorney General Letitia James, Melissa DeRosa saw Cuomo’s conduct as a problem for Cuomo, not those he harassed:

While the governor and Ms. DeRosa were traveling in a car, she said she told Mr. Cuomo, “I can’t believe that this happened. I can’t believe you put yourself in a situation where you would be having any version of this conversation.”

The ‘situation’ that matters here, needless to say, is not Cuomo’s; it’s the situation of nearly a dozen people he harmed.

In DeRosa’s case, has she resigned in guilt over her role in supporting Cuomo’s harassment? It doesn’t seem so:

In the wake of the report, Ms. DeRosa determined that Mr. Cuomo no longer had a path to stay in office and that she would no longer be willing to stand up in public as his defender, one of the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss private conversations in the middle of criminal investigations into the governor.

DeRosa’s explanation to others, if reported correctly, shows that her determination to keep defending Cuomo rested significantly on whether he “had a path to stay in office” and describes her willingness “to stand up in public as his defender” as a secondary, contingent consideration.

That’s not a description of someone who finds Cuomo’s conduct fundamentally wrong. It’s a description of someone who finds his conduct inconvenient.

In cities, small towns, everywhere: there are officials like this.

In cities, small towns, everywhere: officials like this merit removal.

Sky glows red over ferry evacuating people from Greek island fire:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.8.21: Nass, Again

by  •  • 3 Comments

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 82. Sunrise is 5:54 AM and sunset 8:05 PM, for 14h 10m 46s of daytime.  The moon is new with none of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1918, the Battle of Amiens begins a string of almost continuous Allied victories with a push through the German front lines (the Hundred Days Offensive).

In Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal, the paper’s editorial board writes that Steve Nass and Co. make it harder to fight COVID.  A portion of the editorial appears immediately below:

Here we go again: State lawmakers are needlessly complicating reasonable health rules that will help keep our schools and economy open.

Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, is insisting that universities seek approval from him and a handful of his skeptical colleagues for masking, vaccine and testing requirements on state campuses.

Never mind that University of Wisconsin System schools have adopted and adjusted similar rules for more than a year now, which helped control COVID-19 among students, staff and surrounding communities.

Never mind that UW System President Tommy Thompson — the former Republican governor who led the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush — is insisting state universities need flexibility to adapt to changing health threats.

Nass and a handful of his fellow GOP lawmakers don’t want to hear any of that. They are bent on micromanaging public health policy at UW schools, which Thompson correctly warns would cripple sensible precautions as students return for fall classes next month.

Nass’ Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules voted 6-4 last week — without a formal meeting or public hearing — to require universities to submit plans for COVID-19 policies within 30 days. This came just as UW-Madison was announcing it will reinstate its indoor mask mandate for students, staff and visitors. UW-Milwaukee previously announced it was bringing back masks inside its buildings. In addition, UW-Milwaukee will require weekly testing for unvaccinated students and employees.

That’s similar to what many state and local governments, health facilities and private businesses are doing to protect against a highly contagious strain of the coronavirus. The delta variant is infecting more than 1,000 people a day in Wisconsin — especially the unvaccinated. It is even sickening some vaccinated people, though not as often or as severely.

Nass’s efforts will make the fight against COVID harder, but then Nass isn’t fighting COVID. He’s fighting, as he has for most of his political career,  a long list of perceived human enemies: moderates, liberals, progressives, socialists, Marxists, Democrats of any kind, Republicans in Name Only, the college-educated, and ‘outspoken’ Black, Latino, or other minorities.

Nass is often listed as representing Whitewater, but his state senate district does not include the City of Whitewater, and he could never win an election in the city proper. When Nass travels into the city, he visits a place where a majority now does – and always will – reject his politics. When Whitewater’s school superintendent annually hosts Nass (among others) at a legislative breakfast, in Nass that administrator is hosting someone who makes his host look obsequious.

His right-wing politics is, like Nass himself, mostly low and dull: cruelty as a form of self-aggrandizement coupled with schadenfreude. Having read or listened to Nass for years, one can affirm that there’s not a word that he has said (or that has been written for him) that is elegant or elevated. His latest maneuver reeks of attention-seeking. As with others of his politics, Nass likely feeds on the outrage he produces in others. (For many of us, it’s not outrage, truly, but contempt that Nass evokes.)

He has been the area’s troll-king, although now a new generation of Trump-only-men has eclipsed him. Nass is not half so outrageous as he is plodding and predictable.

And so, and so, his present condition: a Troll-King in Autumn. 

Officers Tackle Alligator Found on Lawn of Mississippi Home:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.7.21

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see thunderstorms with a high of 82. Sunrise is 5:53 AM and sunset 8:07 PM, for 14h 13m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1944, IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Laurel White reports ‘Audit The Vote’ Rally Draws Thousands to Wisconsin Capitol:

“It is time for this GOP-controlled Legislature to stand up, to exercise their duty under the constitution and not let some other branch trample all over it,” [former Milwaukee sheriff David] Clarke told the rally crowd, which he also led in a chant of “Vos has gotta go!”

Clarke argued Vos and other state leaders are ignoring the will of the people.

“This is about what you want — not these public rulers. I do not care what they think,” he said. “They were sent here to carry out your will, not theirs.”

(These conservative populists – a right-wing horde – want what they want, and for them Assembly Speaker Vos is nothing unless he does everything they want.)

Linda Qu reports No, there is no evidence that migrants are driving the surge in coronavirus cases:

Officials have said that positive test results among migrants have increased in recent weeks. A spokesman for Hidalgo County in Texas, which is in the Rio Grande Valley, where many migrants cross the border, said that the positivity rate for migrants was about 16 percent this week, as of Thursday.

But public health experts said there was no evidence that migrants were driving the surge of coronavirus. The positivity rate for residents of Hidalgo County — excluding migrants — was 17.59 percent this week.

While Texas is experiencing many more cases than a couple of months ago, many of the major outbreaks are occurring in states — such as Missouri and Arkansas — that do not border Mexico, said Dr. Jaquelin P. Dudley, associate director of the LaMontagne Center for Infectious Disease and a professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jonathan Freedland writes Trump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream: 

It seems nothing will shift the conviction of the faithful, not even the latest confirmation that it was Trump, not Biden, who was determined to rob the people of their democratic will: “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me,” Trump told his acting attorney general last December, according to a newly released note taken by the latter’s deputy. Meanwhile, an Arizona state senator has called for election officials to be held in solitary confinement.

The Republican tribe cleave loyally to the other defining feature of 2020 Trumpism: the refusal to believe in the reality of Covid and to do what’s needed to thwart the virus. And so the single greatest predictor of whether an American has been vaccinated or not is whether they voted for Biden or Trump last November. As of last month, 86% of Democrats had received at least one shot; among Republicans it was only 45%.

(See also Man and Movement.)

Shirin Ghaffary writes “People do not trust that Facebook is a healthy ecosystem”:

New York University researcher Laura Edelson is at the center of the latest major Facebook controversy over the misinformation that’s eroding our democracy and encouraging Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy.

Earlier this week, Facebook abruptly shut down the personal Facebook accounts and research tools of Edelson and two of her colleagues at the NYU Ad Observatory, which studies political advertisements and misinformation on the platform.

Facebook says the Ad Observatory was violating people’s privacy by tracking some users’ data without their permission through its Ad Observer browser extension tool. Edelson denies this and said that her team only collected data from people who volunteered to share their information. Facebook’s move drew condemnation from free speech advocates and lawmakers, who accused Facebook of squelching independent research. The FTC criticized Facebook’s decision, saying the company’s initial rationale was “inaccurate.”

And Edelson says Facebook is trying to stifle her work, which has shown that ?Facebook has failed to disclose who pays for some political ads and that Facebook users engage with misinformation more than other kinds of information on the platform. “It doesn’t like what we’re finding, and I think it is taking measures to silence us,” Edelson told Recode in her first in-depth interview since the accounts were suspended.

(Edelson means, of course, that sensible people doubt that Facebook is a healthy ecosystem. Those sensible people are right.)

Hungry Ducks Swarm Farmer in Vietnam:

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, August 10th, 1 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

by  •  •  Comments

This Tuesday, August 10th at 1 PM, there will be a showing of Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Comedy

Rated PG-13

1 hour, 47 minutes (2021)

Two best friends, Barb and Star, leave their small Nebraska hometown for the first time ever, to go on vacation at Vista Del Mar, a glam Florida luxury resort, the likes of which they could never imagine. Soon the duo find themselves involved in romance, adventure, and intrigue. Written by and starring Kristen Wiig (“Bridesmaids”) with  Jamie Dornan and Damon Wayans, Jr. This movie is an absolute hoot!

If vaccinated, no mask is required. Reservations are no longer required. Free popcorn and a beverage re-instituted!

One can find more information about Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar at the Internet Movie Database.

Cats, Medicine, Science/Nature

Friday Catblogging: Cats’ Genomes

by  •  •  Comments

In One More Thing We Have in Common With Cats, Katherine Wu writes about the similarities between feline and human genomes:

Cats, it turns out, harbor genomes that look and behave remarkably like ours. “Other than primates, the cat-human comparison is one of the closest you can get,” with respect to genome organization, Leslie Lyons, an expert in cat genetics at the University of Missouri, told me.

Lyons and Murphy, two of the world’s foremost experts in feline genetics, have been on a longtime mission to build the ranks in their small field of research. In addition to genetic architecture, cats share our homes, our diets, our behaviors, many of our microscopic pests, and some of the chronic diseases—including diabetes and heart problems—that pervade Western life. “If we could start figuring out why those things happen in some cats, but not others,” Lyons told me, maybe humans and felines could share a few more health benefits as well.

….

Because humans and cats are bedeviled by some of the same diseases, identifying their genetic calling cards could be good for us too. Cats can develop, for instance, a neurological disorder that’s similar to Tay-Sachs disease, “a life-ending disease for children,” Emily Graff, a veterinary pathologist and geneticist at Auburn University, told me. But gene therapy seems to work wonders against the condition in cats, and Graff’s colleagues plan to adapt a treatment for its analogues in kids.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.6.21

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:52 AM and sunset 8:08 PM, for 14h 15m 35s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 4.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Fire Department will hold a business meeting @ 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1945, after years of war and refusal to surrender under the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, Japan is devastated yet further when an atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima by the United States.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Devi Shastri reports Support for COVID measures builds as UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stout, UW-La Crosse now ‘expect’ masks:

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, UW-Stout and UW-La Crosse have announced they “expect” employees, students and guests to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status, stopping short of reinstating a requirement as two other UW schools have.

The UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stout guidance is effective Aug. 9. It does not apply to students in Marshfield and Barron County at this time, as county COVID-19 transmission rates there are not at “high” or “substantial” levels as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The UW-La Crosse guidance went into effect immediately.

Wisconsin colleges are re-evaluating masking rules in the wake of new CDC guidance and rising COVID-19 cases across the state.

Last week, UW-Milwaukee was the first major college to return to explicitly requiring masks, followed a few days later by UW-Madison, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Edgewood College — a private school in Madison — and, most recently, Madison Area Technical College.

 Scott Girard reports Wisconsin private schools saw enrollment decline along with public schools:

The Wisconsin Policy Forum highlighted new private school enrollment data from the 2020-21 school year in its latest report, showing that the sector declined along with public schools, albeit at a lower level.

Private school enrollment last year declined 1.5%, while public school enrollment around the state dropped 2.9%. Both sectors saw the largest drops in early grades.

“The figures offer at least a partial counterpoint to speculation about a potential surge in private school enrollment during the pandemic as many public schools continued remote instruction through the fall and winter,” the report states.

For public schools, pre-K and kindergarten enrollment “plunged,” the report notes, while first through eighth grades saw a smaller decline and high school enrollment “actually increased slightly.” Private schools, meanwhile, saw a 15.4% decline in pre-K and 4K enrollment for the year, while K-12 enrollment “essentially held flat.”

Philip Bump writes Hungary turned to authoritarian nationalism. So Tucker Carlson went to Hungary:

Carlson and other polished conservatives, such as Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, argue forcefully for the primacy of American families. They espouse a largely unobjectionable position — that the government should make it easier to have children — but frame it in contrast with the less-ideal or problematic form of population growth that accompanies increased immigration. Vance, a politician, massages this idea a lot. Carlson, a firebrand, does not. To hear Carlson tell it, the country is imperiled by immigration at an existential level, at risk of seeing its essence diluted, and increased procreation by Americans is less a good in and of itself than as a bulwark against change.

He frames this — in the same way that many white nationalists do — as a broad battle between Western civilization and outsider hordes encouraged by a cabal of elites who are eager to see traditional values collapse. Those who engage in the defense of the West are presented by Carlson as heroes of the cause.

In February 2018, for example, he praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for defying the European Union on the issue of immigration.

“At least one politician in Europe is fearlessly raising an alarm about the kind of society European elites want to create, one that is rejected unanimously almost by European citizens,” Carlson said. “In a speech yesterday kicking off his party’s bid for reelection, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned that politicians in Brussels, Berlin and Paris are going to destroy Western civilization with their enthusiasm for mass migration left unchecked.”

Glass Frogs:

See also Perfectly Clear (‘Glass frogs, the tiny, translucent amphibians of Central and South America, are full of surprises’).