Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 22. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 5:37 PM for 10h 59m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 54% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Park Board meets at 5:30 PM, and the city’s Community Involvement Commission meets at 6:30 PM.
This day in 1455 is traditionally assigned as the date of publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed with movable type.
Johnson once fancied himself something of a libertarian (he understood little of libertarianism then, to be sure), and perhaps he thinks that he’s returning to his imagined, prior position.
Too late: years of crackpottery on issue after issue, and silence in the face of ludicrous Wisconsin fiscal policy (Foxconn) leaves Johnson with less credibility than someone on a park bench going on about the time machine he’s invented.
Johnson analyzes this issue poorly; the proper assessment is whether additional jobs truly produced would be worth any public money spent. I’d be inclined to say not, absent a strong showing otherwise. Johnson, however, undertakes no balancing at all — he simply thinks the mere existence of workers in other jobs (any jobs) means no cost-benefit assessment is necessary. That’s intellectually lazy — one should hear out advocates of public support and then consider the quality of their analysis. (I’m a free market man, but I’d still patiently consider the quality of analysis in a proposal.) That’s where Foxconn fell flat — it reeked of flimsiness and grandiosity from the get-go (and it was flimsy and grandiose, after all).
Brey’s probably right on her third point, tellingly: follow Johnson’s big donor money to see who works him like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be icy with a high of 31. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 5:36 PM for 10h 56m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 64.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Unprecedented freezing rain and snow assaulted the Midwest February 21-23, 1922. In Wisconsin the central and southern parts of the state were most severely affected, with the counties between Lake Winnebago and Lake Michigan south to Racine being hardest hit. Ice coated trees and power lines, bringing them down and cutting off electricity, telephone and telegraph services. Cities were isolated, roads were impassible, rivers rose, streets and basements flooded, and train service stopped or slowed. Near Little Chute a passenger train went off the rails, injuring several crew members. Appleton housed 150 stranded traveling salesmen, near Plymouth a sheet of river ice 35 feet long and nearly three feet thick washed onto the riverbank, while in Sheboygan police rescued a flock of chickens and ducks from their flooded coop and a sick woman from her flooded home. Icy streets caused numerous automobile accidents, but the only reported deaths were a team of horses in Appleton that was electrocuted by a fallen power line.
In this beautiful city there are some who wrongly advance a nativist vision for Whitewater, for Wisconsin, and for America. This ilk espouses an American version of a Blood and Soil policy (Blut und Boden) for this country. There has never been, and never will be, a person among this faction who is not wrong in principle and disgusting in action.
An answer to this faction can be found in the remarks of Kenya’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Martin Kimani:
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 5:35 PM for 10h 53m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 75.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1808, without a previous declaration of war, Russian troops cross the border to Sweden at Abborfors in eastern Finland, thus beginning the Finnish War, in which Sweden will lose the eastern half of the country (i.e., Finland) to Russia.
There are three types of conservatives in Whitewater: traditional ones (who faved faded as a group into inconsequence), transactional conservatives (development men — dealmaking types), and the conservative populists (MAGA men). As the traditional conservatives now count for little in Whitewater, the question for the rightwing is whether local conservativism will be dominated by little Mitch McConnells or little Donald Trumps.
While Trump inspires the MAGA types, the transactional conservatives have no similar hero (as McConnell inspires no one).
The transactionalists need wait no longer: Golfer Phil Mickelson is the man for whom they’ve been waiting. In an interview from late last year (only now gaining widespread publicity), Mickleson declares his desire to make a deal with the Saudis for a golf league of their own.
Mickelson told me [Shipnuck] he had enlisted three other “top players” he declined to name and that they paid for attorneys to write the SGL’s [Super Golf League’s] operating agreement, codifying that the players would have control of all the details. He didn’t pretend to be excited about hitching his fortunes to Saudi Arabia, admitting the SGL was nothing more than what he called “sportswashing” by a brutally repressive regime. “They’re scary motherfuckers to get involved with,” he said. “We know they killed [Washington Post reporter and U.S. resident Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.
In Mickelson’s view, influencing the PGA, and making bank if you can, is worth it all.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 5:33 PM for 10h 50m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 81% of its visible disk illuminated.
Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 21. Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 5:32 PM for 10h 48m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1807, former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr is arrested for treason in Wakefield, Alabama and confined to Fort Stoddert.
Key point from former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Litman, beginning @ 2:10: Exercising the Fifth Amendment in this New York civil action would allow for an adverse inference against Trump (as exercising those rights in a criminal case would not).
Ironically, Trump’s longstanding, but erroneous, insistence that exercising Fifth Amendment rights in criminal cases imputes guilt (“the Mob takes the Fifth“) would be, well, closer to the mark in his own New York civil case.
Tuesday, February 22nd at 1 PM, there will be a showing of Roma @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Drama
Rated R (language/nudity)
2 hours, 15 minutes (2018)
Spanish/Mexican language with English subtitles.
A year in the life of a middle class family and their maid, in Mexico City in the early 1970’s. A slice-of-life film that you won’t soon forget. Filmed in black & white. Three Awards, 2019: Best Foreign Film, Best Cinematography, Best Director.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 23. Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 5:29 PM for 10h 42m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1965, the Ranger 8 probe launches on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the manned Apollo missions. Mare Tranquillitatis or the “Sea of Tranquility” would become the site chosen for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says the Republicans in the grassroots of the party who are furious with his handling of a 2020 election review are wrong to blame him.
“In each political party, there are people who are unhappy with the direction because they’re frustrated with the state of our country. I, too, am frustrated,” Vos said Tuesday hours after more than 200 people gathered in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol, in part, to call for Vos’ resignation.
“They have filed lawsuits, they have done everything they can to try to stand in the way of getting at the truth,” he said about Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul suing to block subpoenas that are part of Assembly Republicans’ review of the 2020 election.
“So those people are incorrect in having their frustration be at the legislative Republicans, they should focus on the Democrats who are spending taxpayer dollars to be able to stop our effort to get to the truth.”
Terry Brand, chairman of the Republican Party of Langlade County, said Vos is gaslighting.
“He says we’re unhappy about the direction because we’re frustrated with the state and country. No. We’re frustrated with Vos because he hasn’t provided consistent leadership in finding the truth of what happened in the 2020 election,” Brand said. “He’s redirecting our frustration — we’re directing it directly at him.”
This small, scared man blames the fanatics he, himself, for years incited. Vos sits, drenched in his own sweat, and soaked in his own urine, as their hunting party comes for him.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 48. Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 5:28 PM for 10h 39m 43s of daytime. The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.
It may be, very soon, that Russian dictator Vadimir Putin murders thousands of innocent Ukranians in a war. Pehaps he will relent in his revanchist aims, but he has not relented in Syria, the Donbas, or with his own people murdered at home or abroad.
And yet, and yet, even if there should be no war, a plain truth about Putin bears repeating:
always remember: the fear of not provoking Putin provokes Putin.
America’s insurrectionists and seditionists, the diehard MAGA men, are like this, too: they torment the vulnerable, and draw encouragement from the diffidence their torment induces in others.
It’s no wonder that so many of these fellow travelers admire Putin: they and he think alike.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 35. Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 5:27 PM for 10h 36m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 6:15 PM, and Common Council at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1862, Confederates commanded by Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd attack General Ulysses S. Grant’s Union forces besieging Fort Donelson in Tennessee. Unable to break the fort’s encirclement, the Confederates surrender the following day.
Writing in the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie contends that America is not headed for a second civil war, because the Trumpists lack the single-minded focus that animinated pro-slavery secessionists. I’ve no forecast to make about a second American civil war, but Bouie is spot-on about what motivated 19th century secessionists. It wasn’t “states’ rights,” it was their perverse and immormal desire as slavers to own other human beings:
The Civil War we fought in the 19th century was not sparked by division qua division.
White Americans had been divided over slavery for 50 years before the crisis that led to war in 1861. The Missouri crisis of 1820, the nullification crisis of 1832, the conflict over the 1846 war with Mexico and the Compromise of 1850 all reflect the degree to which American politics rested on a sectional divide over the future of the slave system.
What made the 1850s different was the extent to which that division threatened the political economy of slavery. At the start of the decade, the historian Matthew Karp writes in “This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy,” “slaveholding power and slaveholding confidence seemed at their zenith,” the result of “spiking global demand for cotton” and the “dependence of the entire industrial world on a commodity that only American slaves could produce with profit.”
But with power came backlash. “Over the course of the decade,” Karp notes, “slavery was prohibited in the Pacific states, came under attack in Kansas and appeared unable to attach itself to any of the great open spaces of the new Southwest.” The growth of an avowedly antislavery public in the North wasn’t just a challenge to the political influence of the slaveholding South; it also threatened to undermine the slave economy itself and thus the economic basis for Southern power.
Yes, a thousand times over: the Confederates fought so that some of them could own other people. All the rest they said and did to destroy the constitutional order was in the service of their singular, wicked goal. See also What This Cruel War Was Over.
The Trumpists, by contrast, would overturn the constitutional order for a thousand sundry reasons and grievances. They complain about everything: that they’re not respected (and whine incessantly that no one should criticize them while they freely criticize others), they assert that they are fearless (although they can’t stopping talking about fear), that they deserve more influence as native born (although they lack knowledge of our country’s history and are often without rudimentary written and spoken language skills that immigrants easily acquire), that they are hardworking (although areas of America where conservative populists predominate are less productive than the rest of the country), that they possess common sense (although they commit logical fallacy after fallacy), that they’ve done their own research (but cannot read a text properly, and don’t bother to consider what words in statutes or treatises truly mean), and that they are reasonable (yet they throw tantrums in airports, at public meetings, always bleating ‘what, what, what?’ with heads shaking and arms raised), that they insist on democracy while promoting autocracy, and contend that they are merely advancing a point of view (while threatening violence against people and institutions).
Like the Know Nothings, Confederates, Copperheads, Klan, and Bund before them, they are a blight scattered in towns, cities, and states across this continent.
Small towns like Whitewater will never see prosperity as long as residents and newcomers are saddled with Trumpist politics. Wherever this ilk has control of a community, they bring dystopia. When they fade into the dustbin of our history – and they will — America, Wisconsin, and Whitewater will be better for it.
But Bouie’s point — that the Trumpists lack the singular focus and concentration of the Confederates — is sound. Whether this lack of focus is a disadvantage for them, and an advantage for those of us committed to a better way of life, is yet uncertain.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 15. Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 5:24 PM for 10h 31m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 91.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1689, William and Mary are proclaimed co-rulers of England.
MADISON – Robin Vos is facing calls to step off the tight rope he has been on for more than a year navigating a Republican base that wants much more scrutiny from him of the 2020 election and the reality of President Donald Trump’s loss.
And now, two of the three top Republican campaigns for governor are entirely focused on ousting Vos.
“He may have done some good things, but I think the damage he’s done to the party since November 3 of 2020 is unforgivable,” Terry Brand, chairman of the Langlade County Republican Party, said in an interview.
“Anywhere from discontent to furious are the emotions I’ve experienced with people from around the state, from around northern Wisconsin, and so forth.”
A spokeswoman for Vos did not respond to requests for comment or for an interview.
Vos deserves not the slightest sympathy. He presides over a party that is ignorant, emotional, mendacious, bigoted, and autocratic. Now the Trumpists have come to feast on Vos, who foolishly thought that he could feed them while advancing only himself. These malevolent nativists are too insatiable to settle for biting the hand that fed them; nothing less than the very marrow will settle their stomachs.
For those who have sought to preserve the constitutional order, Vos is an obstacle and opponent. For those who have sought to preserve the constitutional order, the Trumpists are obstacles and opponents. When the latter devour the former (and they will), principled men and women will have that many fewer adversaries.
Undeserving though they are, one can yet — sincerely — offer the Trumpists a culinary recommendation before their meal: a little hollandaise makes everything tastier.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 16. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 5:23 PM for 10h 28m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 86.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln is born in a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky.
KEWASKUM – State Rep. Timothy Ramthun entered the race for governor Saturday, ensuring 2022 will be all about 2020.
The Campbellsport Republican brought election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell to a high school auditorium to make his pitch to voters, an argument that relies on the impossible and illegal endeavor of revoking Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes for President Joe Biden.
His campaign was born out of ostracization, Ramthun told a packed high school auditorium — a last resort after his Republican colleagues in the Wisconsin State Capitol rebuffed his repeated calls to overturn the last presidential election.
“I need to exhaust all options to address the November 2020 election,” Ramthun said from a lectern festooned with the green, yellow and white logo of Kewaskum High School, where Ramthun played basketball about four decades ago.
“Right person. Right role. Right time. It’s Tim time.”
Ramthun enters the Republican primary for governor as the second campaign focused on ousting Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, whose decision to remove a full-time staff member from Ramthun’s legislative office over false election claims engendered statewide support for the Fond du Lac County lawmaker and his staffer who received a standing ovation on Saturday.
Supporters flashed signs that read “Decertify Now!!” on one side and “Toss Vos” on the other.
Lindell kicked off the three-hour rally, telling the hundreds of supporters from across Wisconsin that Ramthun could shift Wisconsin’s electoral votes to former President Donald Trump more than a year after the 2020 election.
“He will be the best governor Wisconsin ever had,” Lindell said. Ramthun declined to be interviewed before the rally.
Ramthun has, and will, disgrace himself and this state: an embarrassment as citizen, as legislator, and now as candidate.