This Tuesday, January 29th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of The Wife @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building:
The Wife (Drama)
Tuesday, January 29, 12:30 pm
Rated R (Language; sexual content); 1hour, 40 min. (2018)
With her husband about to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm, the loyal wife (Glenn Close) questions her decision to have always taken a back seat to her husband’s grand ambition. Behind any great man, there’s always a greater woman…
Glenn Close has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role and has already won a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.
One can find more information about The Wife at the Internet Movie Database.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of nine. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 5:00 PM, for 9h 46m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 64.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
His poll numbers were plummeting. His FBI director was decrying the dysfunction. The nation’s air travel was in chaos. Federal workers were lining up at food banks. Economic growth was at risk of flatlining, and even some Republican senators were in open revolt.
So on Friday, the 35th day of a government shutdown that he said he was proud to instigate, President Trump finally folded. After vowing for weeks that he would keep the government closed unless he secured billions in funding for his promised border wall, Trump agreed to reopen it.
He got $0 instead.
Trump’s capitulation to Democrats marked a humiliating low point in a polarizing presidency and sparked an immediate backlash among some conservative allies, who cast him as a wimp.
….
“He was the prisoner of his own impulse and it turned into a catastrophe for him,” said David Axelrod, who was a White House adviser to President Barack Obama. “The House of Representatives has power and authority — and now a speaker who knows how to use it — so that has to become part of his calculation or he’ll get embarrassed again.”
(If Axelrod should be right – and it seems so – then a disordered man like Trump, in the grip of his impulses, will get embarrassed again. Such a man will learn nothing from past mistakes.)
A law firm hired by Republican state lawmakers to help defend them in a redistricting lawsuit can collect up to an $840,000 fee, but taxpayers could end up paying even more, according to a newly released contract.
The lawsuit is part of an ongoing court battle over Wisconsin’s legislative district maps passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2011. Before the latest contract, taxpayers had already paid some $2.5 million to outside law firms to draft and defend the maps in court.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, initially refused to release the latest contract to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in late December, citing an attorney-client privilege exemption in the state’s open records law.
Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council president Bill Lueders said at the time that he believed the denial of the newspaper’s request was illegal.
(Vos relented and released this contract, but claims a right to withhold other similar contracts in the future.)
Update, Friday afternoon: Trump folds under pressure agrees to a three-week re-opening of the federal gov’t. Of his Rose Garden address this afternoon (one that I watched in full), Jennifer Rubin observes “[m]aybe this is part of an insanity defense for the Russia probe.”
One reads that under the shutdown, interstate commerce now slows:
Significant flight delays were rippling across the Northeast on Friday because of a shortage of air traffic controllers as a result of the government shutdown, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The agency said it was slowing traffic in and out of the airports because of staffing problems at facilities in Washington and Jacksonville, Fla.
The delays were cascading along the Eastern Seaboard, reaching as far north as Boston. But La Guardia was the only airport closed off to arriving flights from other cities because it was so crowded with planes taking off and landing on a weekday morning.
Perhaps, just perhaps, a businessman known for self-promotion, serial bankruptcies, and junk products wasn’t the person to oversee the executive branch of the federal government.
Rep. Justin Amash, who is as close to a libertarian as any Republican in Congress, offered this observation about Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Secretary of Commerce:
It’s amazing that Wilbur Ross was nominated and confirmed to be secretary of anything. He’s shown over many years that he doesn’t understand basic economics, and to describe him as out of touch would be an understatement.
In Ross’s case (so severe he looks as though he’s sleeping most of the time), he hasn’t even shown the garden-variety ability of other pro-government conservatives to speak in the language of cronyism (development tools, partnerships, multipliers, job creators, tax incentives, etc.). Most of these development types can speak that way, as though they had a common lexicon designed for men to use public resources for their own private gain.
Honest to goodness, even a WEDC man (and they’re all seemingly from the same nest of vulgar, scheming self-promoters) could do better than Ross.
Indeed, there’s nothing sadder on the local scene in places like Whitewater when one hears ‘development professionals’ looking aspirationally to the WEDC as a model: it’s like a gnat dreaming of being a housefly.
To claim that cats aren’t social is simply a way to claim your ignorance about this particular animal.
Which is the topic of a new study, conducted by researchers at Oregon State University and published in the journal Behavioral Processes. In the first experiment, a total of 46 cats were studied, 23 at a shelter and the other half in their own homes. A stranger sat in the middle of the room, ignoring the cat for two minutes before spending the next two showering them with attention. The second study followed the same protocol, though with their guardians, not strangers.
Regardless of whether it was guardian or stranger, cats are more social when humans pay attention to them. As lead author of the study, Kristyn R. Vitale, says:
“In both groups, we found [cats] spent significantly more time with people who were paying attention to them than people who were ignoring them.”
Friday in Whitewater will see occasional afternoon snow showers and a high of nine. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:59 PM, for 9h 44m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1932, Janesville continues its prohibition on Sunday dancing (“the Janesville council deadlocked, 3-3, on an ordinance that would have permitted public dancing on Sundays”).
Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump, was charged as part of the special counsel investigation over his communications with WikiLeaks, the organization behind the release of thousands of stolen Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign, in an indictment unsealed Friday.
Mr. Stone was charged with seven counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering, according to the special counsel’s office.
F.B.I. agents arrested Mr. Stone before dawn on Friday at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and he was expected to appear in a federal courthouse there later in the morning. F.B.I. agents were also seen carting hard drives and other evidence from Mr. Stone’s apartment in Harlem.
The indictment is the first in months by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination with Trump campaign associates. Citing details in emails and other forms of communications, the indictment suggests Mr. Trump’s campaign knew about additional stolen emails before they were released and asked Mr. Stone to find out about them.
Jared Kushner’s application for a top secret clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence on him — but their supervisor overruled the recommendation and approved the clearance, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The official, Carl Kline, is a former Pentagon employee who was installed as director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President in May 2017. Kushner’s was one of at least 30 cases in which Kline overruled career security experts and approved a top secret clearance for incoming Trump officials despite unfavorable information, the two sources said. They said the number of rejections that were overruled was unprecedented — it had happened only once in the three years preceding Kline’s arrival.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said the Trump White House attracted many people with untraditional backgrounds who had complicated financial and personal histories, some of which raised red flags.
Kushner’s FBI background check identified questions about his family’s business, his foreign contacts, his foreign travel and meetings he had during the campaign, the sources said, declining to be more specific.
Kevin Hassett, the Trump administration’s top economist, acknowledged yesterday the economy may not grow at all in the first quarter if the shutdown lasts that long. And White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is eyeing an even longer impasse. He has tasked agency heads with assessing which of their programs will be jeopardized if the situation continues into April.
“Mulvaney wants the list no later than Friday … and it’s the firmest evidence to date that the White House is preparing for a lengthy funding lapse that could have snowballing consequences for the economy and government services,” my colleagues Damian Paletta and Juliet Eilperin report.
“The request is the first known inquiry from a top White House official seeking information about the spreading impact of the shutdown, which has entered its fifth week and is the longest in U.S. history. So far, top White House officials have been particularly focused on lengthening wait times at airport security, but not the sprawling interruption of programs elsewhere in the government.”
One reads that Whitewater’s police force has received accreditation from an association for meeting a checklist of items related to policing. Former chiefs Coan and Otterbacher were big on accreditation, especially Coan.
And yet, and yet, even if there were no accreditation agency, what would anyone have done differently? Has anyone – past or present – needed a photo opportunity, a press release, and a laminated plaque from an association merely to complete a checklist of items?
Past chiefs touted accreditation, and still Whitewater has a town-gown divide, a divide along ethnic lines, economic stagnation, and too few newcomers (because it’s unrealistic to expect new prospects to step into a community of unresolved issues).
What’s been done for these many years has been ineffectual; what’s most needed has not been done.
Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross doesn’t understand why hungry employees don’t take out bridge loans for food:
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says he does not understand why federal employees who are furloughed or have been working without pay during the partial government shutdown would need assistance from food banks.
Several credit unions serving workers at federal departments and agencies have been offering stopgap loans, as they have during previous shutdowns. But it’s not clear how those loans would even be sufficient as the shutdown enters its second month.
“I know they are, and I don’t really quite understand why,” Ross said when asked on CNBC about workers getting food from places like shelters. “Because, as I mentioned before, the obligations that they would undertake, say borrowing from a bank or a credit union are in effect federally guaranteed.”
Honest to goodness, there are unconscious people who have a better awareness of their environments.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of twenty-three. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:58 PM, for 9h 41m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 84.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday rescinded her invitation to President Trump to deliver the State of the Union in the House next week — denying him a national platform for the annual speech in an extraordinary standoff between the two most powerful figures in the nation.
Late Wednesday, the president signaled a retreat from the standoff, announcing on Twitter that he will wait till the shutdown is over to deliver the address to Congress.
(David Frum, in 2017, was right about Trump: “Regular reminder that Donald Trump’s core competency is not dealmaking with powerful counter-parties. It is duping gullible victims.” Trump thought that he could force his way into a State of the Union address – Pelosi properly asserted an independent legislative authority to bring the House into session.)
Back in the day, small rural airports had textile windsocks, simple and empty things that indicated which way the wind was blowing. The ubiquitous Sen. Lindsey O. Graham has become a political windsock, and as such, he — more than the sturdy, substantial elephant — is emblematic of his party today.
When in 1994, Graham, a South Carolina Republican, first ran for Congress, he promised to be “one less vote for an agenda that makes you want to throw up.” A quarter-century later, Graham himself is a gastrointestinal challenge.
….
Seven times, Graham has taken the oath of congressional office, “solemnly” swearing to “support and defend the Constitution” and to “bear true faith and allegiance” to it, “without any mental reservation.” Graham, who is just 1 percent of one-half of one of the three branches of one of the nation’s many governments, is, however, significant as a symptom. When the Trump presidency is just a fragrant memory, the political landscape will still be cluttered with some of this president’s simple and empty epigones, the make-believe legislators who did not loudly and articulately recoil from the mere suggestion of using a declared emergency to set aside the separation of powers.
Catherine Rampell, writing about the national GOP, accurately describes their economic policy under Trump in The GOP has become the Soviet party. This has been a building national problem for years, but a building local problem for about as long: a clique of slogan-rich but insight-poor local conservatives have wrecked economies like Whitewater’s economy with a steady diet of government intervention on behalf of ineffectual pet projects. Over the last decade or so, local officials (including Kachel, Knight, Stewart, Allen, and Telfer) have hawked ineffectual government plans for favored businesses or next-big-thing capital spending while Whitewater’s economy has declined. SeeReported Family Poverty in Whitewater Increased Over the Last Decade.
Indeed, they have something to show for their efforts: Whitewater is poorer than she was ten years ago. For more about the local economy, see categories here at FREE WHITEWATER on Poverty and the CDA (Community Development Authority).
Here’s Rampell, describing aptly a national trend that’s a local one, too:
On the macroeconomic front, leadership may be touting “deregulation” but in many ways is moving toward a more centrally planned economy, which includes the shielding of pet industries from the whims of the market or technological change.
That means propping up coal plants, which fracking has made less competitive. And slapping tariffs across thousands of foreign products, to subsidize struggling domestic competitors or sometimes to protect “national security.” And granting more price supports for farmers.
….
Just as government has inserted itself into more markets, though, it has abruptly stopped functioning, holding up the processing of those farmer subsidies or tariff exemptions. It’s the old Soviet model in a nutshell: promising much, interfering a lot, failing to deliver.
….
Needless to say, “picking winners and losers” was once a thing Republicans abhorred, a practice embraced only by failed socialist states; today the Republican standard-bearer picks winners and losers even within the government itself. The government may be officially shuttered, but President Trump decided to do an end run around the constitutionally mandated, democratic appropriations process. He is picking and choosing which government functions are allowed to function: yes to his offshore drilling plan and tax refunds; no to the Smithsonian museums.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see morning snowfall with a high of nineteen. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:56 PM, for 9h 39m 48s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board is scheduled to meet at 5:30 PM.
Nearly 6-in-10 voters — 57 percent — disapprove of Trump’s job performance, compared to the 40 percent that approve. In addition, 54 percent of voters blame Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill for the government shutdown. Only 35 percent blame congressional Democrats.
….
According to the poll, 57 percent believe it’s likely that Russia “has compromising information“ on Trump, compared to 31 percent who don’t think it’s likely.
BUDAPEST — They make a show of putting their own countries first and breezily dismiss concerns about international law or human rights. They seek to bend the rules to their will, excoriating “the deep state” for getting in their way. And when they are challenged by the press or other critics, they have a two-word rejoinder: fake news.
In countries around the globe — from Brazil to the Philippines, and in many less prominent places in between — a generation of leaders who resemble President Trump in both style and substance is rising, consolidating power and growing bolder in its willingness to flout democratic principles and norms.
The strongman style of leadership is not new, of course, and it is not always obvious who is inspiring whom. Trump himself climbed to power amid a surge of nativist and nationalist politics worldwide, and his chief campaign guru, Stephen K. Bannon, borrowed themes and phrases from European populists to rally the make-America-great-again faithful.
The only detail the interpreter reportedly shared with the officials—including Fiona Hill, the senior Russia adviser at the National Security Council, and John Heffern, then the acting assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at State—was that Trump told Putin, “I believe you,” when the Russian president denied interfering in the 2016 presidential election. The Hamburg meeting is just one of five off-record meetings between the two leaders that Democrats are eager to probe. Another is Helsinki, where Trump famously dismissed the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the election and affirmed, again, that he saw no reason to believe Putin wasn’t telling him the truth. Several U.S. officials told the Post that they were never able to get a substantive readout of the two leaders’ private conversation.
If Whitewater wants – as some profess – to be free of a ‘same ten people’ problem (where a tiny few remain in office seemingly forever), then the solution is no harder than electing representatives other than from a tiny group of the same ten people.
How funny, then, that one finds from among the members of city’s Community Involvement and Cable TV Commission a member who seems to have confused community involvement with individual involvement, and individual involvement with decades-long tenure.
SeeThree running for two spots on Whitewater School Board (“Jim Stewart, who in two stints has about 24 years of experience on the board, is running again for his seat. After about a 10-year absence when he spent time on the Whitewater City Council, Stewart ran three years ago for the school board seat he now occupies”).
