Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 27. Sunrise is 6:41 and sunset is 5:36, for 10 hours, 55 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 31 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1946, the “Long Telegram,” proposing how the United States should deal with the Soviet Union, arrives from the US embassy in Moscow.
Inside the Town Where a Dog is Mayor:
What Canadian Cat Fitz Sees on a Walk:
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 25. Sunrise is 6:42 and sunset is 5:34, for 10 hours, 52 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 42 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1975, former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison.
Not long ago, reporting had Musk dropping six figures on Brad Schimel. It’s seven figures now:
Elon Musk’s super PAC just dropped $1 million on increasing voter turnout for conservative Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, according to state election records.
America PAC, an unregistered committee, is spending $1 million on canvassing and field operations to aid Schimel in his race against liberal Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford. The winner of the April 1 election will decide the ideological bent of the high court.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and Space X, has provided most of the funding for America PAC, which focuses on turning out low-propensity and first-time voters. The super PAC was active in Wisconsin before the November general election, helping President Donald Trump narrowly win the state.
See Daniel Bice, Elon Musk super PAC drops $1 million into voter turnout for Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 20, 2025.
From backyard garden to high-tech strawberry farm:
Tuesday, February 25th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Blitz @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
History/Drama/Action
Rated PG-13
2 hours (2024)
The dramatic and hair raising stories of a group of Londoners during the German blitzkrieg bombing campaign of the British capital during World War II. Starring Saorise Ronan, Harris Dickinson.
One can find more information about Blitz at the Internet Movie Database.
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 21. Sunrise is 6:44 and sunset is 5:33, for 10 hours, 49 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 51.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1933, Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party’s upcoming election campaign.
At the Wisconsin Examiner, reporter Baylor Spears writes of Assembly bills that passed along partisan lines. See Baylor Spears, Assembly passes bills to regulate test scores, school spending, cell phone policies, Wisconsin Examiner, February 20, 2025. Wisconsin does not have, and is not likely soon to get, a bipartisan spirit. We are a divided state, with divided cities, towns, and villages. Those places are divided between each other, and within themselves.
Spears writes:
Wisconsin Republicans in the state Assembly passed a package of education bills Wednesday to implement new standards for standardized test scores, school funding allocations, responding to curriculum inspection requests and for keeping cell phones out of schools.
Spears also quotes the remarks of Rep. Joan Fitzgerald (D-Fort Atkinson):
Rep. Joan Fitzgerald (D-Fort Atkinson) said she was voting against the bill [AB 6, requiring in part that school boards assure that 70% of operating money would be spent on direct classroom expenditures] — — and others on the calendar — because they appeared to be written without “meaningful input” from teachers, administrators, superintendents, parents, students or community members.
“I’m here to let you know that if you want support in the educational community for any education bill, you should do your homework,” Fitzgerald said, “including having conversations with the public and reaching across the aisle.”
Fitzgerald said Franklin’s bill would take away local control from school districts and school boards and criticized the bill for including “vague” wording and “undefined terms,” saying the bills are unserious.
The men who profited by gerrymandering for over a decade will not reach willingly across the Assembly aisle until their portion of the chamber is smaller. Then, and only then, will they be interested in deal-making.
Until then, the Wisconsin Legislature has more a wall than an aisle.
See also That ‘Bipartisanship’ Didn’t Last Long — Because It Was Never There (12.18.24) and The WisDems’ Bipartisan Delusion (1.23.25).
Rescuers save man buried alive in Vail Pass, Colorado avalanche:
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 13. Sunrise is 6:45 and sunset is 5:32, for 10 hours, 46 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1878, Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.
Selected area election results (unofficial) among three candidates in the race for Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction:
| Underly | Kinser | Wright | |
| City of Whitewater | 335 | 223 | 183 |
| Town of Richmond | 61 | 129 | 122 |
| Town of Whitewater | 48 | 64 | 34 |
Obvious limitations: these are (1) unofficial results, (2) from selected areas, (3) in a primary, (4) on a cold day in February.
The statewide figures, with almost all precincts reporting, are Underly @ 38% of the vote and Kinser @ 34.5% of the vote, with Wright @ 27.5% of the vote.
Underly and Kinser will advance to the April General Election.
It’s winter in Montreal, too:
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 8. Sunrise is 6:47 and sunset is 5:30, for 10 hours, 44 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 69.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1930, Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.
Not content with the federal government, Musk again sets his gaze on Wisconsin:
A political action committee backed by billionaire Elon Musk has scheduled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of TV ads in Wisconsin this week with the state Supreme Court election fast approaching.
The ads are expected to aid conservative Brad Schimel who is running against liberal Susan Crawford in a race that will determine the ideological balance of the court.
The ads from the Musk-backed Building America’s Future will start running on stations around Wisconsin Thursday and will continue through early March.
Available contracts posted by the Federal Communications Commission show more than $400,000 worth of ads will run in the Madison, Eau Claire, Wausauand Green Bay areas. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports more than $255,000 more will also be running in and around Milwaukee.
The FCC data doesn’t identify the content of Building America’s ads. However, the ads are expected to aid Schimel, the state’s former Republican attorney general.
See Rich Kremer, Group tied to Elon Musk investing in Wisconsin ahead of Supreme Court race, Wisconsin Public Radio, February 17, 2025.
Musk’s Tesla, by the way, is now suing the Wisconsin Department of Transportation in state court, Outagamie County, over that department’s decision against Tesla’s request to open dealerships in Wisconsin.
You never know, but just perhaps that’s litigation, should it one day reach Wisconsin’s highest court, that might be of interest to a Musk-backed Justice Schimel.
See also Musk Attacks Two Wisconsin Lutheran Groups (from 2.6.25) and World’s Richest Man Weighs In On Wisconsin Supreme Court Race (from 1.24.25).
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 7. Sunrise is 6:48 and sunset is 5:29, for 10 hours, 41 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 78.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 4 PM, the Police and Fire Commission meets at 6 PM, and the Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1801, a tie in the Electoral College between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President and Burr Vice President by the House of Representatives.
Even today, $4,300,000,000 is a lot of money:
As Gov. Tony Evers puts the finishing touches on his next state budget proposal, projections show Wisconsin is expected to see a surplus of around $4.3 billion.
It sets the stage for a familiar battle, with the Democratic governor calling for investments in priorities like education and child care and leaders of the Republican-controlled state Legislature calling for tax cuts.
The $4.3 billion projection comes from an analysis by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, which suggests state tax revenues will be nearly $895 million higher than expected throughout the next two-year budget cycle. The report credits that to a national economy that grew faster than expected in 2024 and modest increases in state sales tax revenue.While the surplus is large, it’s not exactly new. Two years ago, Evers and lawmakers began the budget cycle with a projected $7 billion surplus. And even after they passed a new budget that increased spending and cut some taxes, the state ended last fiscal year with $4.6 billion in the bank.
See Rich Kremer, Wisconsin surplus projected at nearly $4.3B as Evers prepares next state budget, Wisconsin Public Radio, February 14, 2025.
There’s been no grand deal for the surplus these last few years, and regrettably the past is the best predictor of what’s to come.
‘Aqua tweezers’ manipulate particles with water waves:
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 23. Sunrise is 6:50 and sunset is 5:28, for 10 hours, 38 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 85.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1960, the U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.
In 2021, this libertarian blogger posted (as part of a longer series) on the kinds of conservatives in Whitewater. See Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: The Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater, April 8, 2021. At that time, there were three conservative types of note: traditionalists (old-school types) transactionalists (deal-making types), and populists (what’s now called Trumpism or MAGA).
There was a question at the time:
The populists are often underestimated. I have been – and am – a critic of these rebranded Trumpists, but have never underestimated them.
These populist conservatives are not deal-makers: they want what they want, on their terms, as soon as they can get it. As the traditionalists fade away, the question among conservatives in Whitewater (and other places) will be whether the deal-makers or the populists dominate right-of-center politics.
There’s a sure answer now, four years later: only the conservative populists matter politically. There’s one movement, one way, one outlook.
A conservative might imagine himself as something else (a traditionalist or a deal-maker), and might be something else, but only in his house or in his head.
Conservatives in Whitewater’s public square are all populists.
Father describes moment humpback whale briefly swallowed his son:
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset is 5:26, for 10 hours, 35 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1989, the Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops have left Afghanistan.
Winter requires the right gear:
Preparing NASA’s CADRE Moon Rovers for Launch:
Good morning.
Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 25, and snow likely this evening. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset is 5:25, for 10 hours, 33 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray.
Robert Yoon writes of the spring primary in AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Wisconsin’s spring primary between incumbent Jill Underly and challengers Brittany Kinser and Jeff Wright:
Kinser leads the field in campaign fundraising thanks to a flurry of contributions in January from big-dollar Republican donors. She had raised $316,000 through Feb. 3, compared with $123,000 for Wright and $121,000 for Underly.
In 2021, Underly narrowly topped the seven-candidate primary field with 27% of the vote. Six candidates were aligned with Democrats, but none emerged as the clear alternative to Underly among Democratic voters. That helped the sole Republican-backed candidate that year, Deborah Kerr, to nab the second spot on the general election ballot with 26% of the vote. Underly went on to win the general election that year with 58% of the vote in a one-on-one contest with Kerr.
This year, three candidates are competing for two spots, and the primary has become several contests stuffed into a single race: one between Underly and Wright among Democratic-leaning voters, another with Kinser trying to consolidate enough support among Republican-leaning voters to outperform one or both of her rivals, and another with all three candidates competing for independent and crossover voters to tip the scales in their favor.
With only two candidates this year to potentially split the support of Democratic-leaning voters, Kinser would likely need to far outperform Kerr’s 26% in the 2021 primary to earn a spot on the April ballot, assuming a competitive contest between Underly and Wright.
See Robert Yoon, AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Wisconsin’s spring primary, Associated Press, February 14, 2025.
If the split between Democratic-leaning voters and Republican-leaning voters in this race is like 2021, then, yes, Kinser would likely need to outperform Kerr’s 2021 vote share.
It would be surprising, however, if the balance between ideologies is like that of 2021. At least, it would be surprising to me. If the conservative1 candidate cannot place comfortably in one of the two spots in this race, then conservatives wasted a campaign on a weak candidate or weak messaging. This environment, Spring 2025, is as much of a high-water level as the conservative populists in Wisconsin may ever have.
I’d guess Kinser will exceed 26 percent easily, and find herself in the Spring General Election against Underly.
We’ll know Tuesday night, and likely early Tuesday night.
______
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 15. Sunrise is 6:54 and sunset is 5:24, for 10 hours, 30 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Involvement and Cable TV Commission meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1960, with the success of a nuclear test codenamed “Gerboise Bleue,” France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.
Brittany Kinser is far ahead in fundraising:
Wauwatosa education consultant Brittany Kinser has signficantly outraised both of her Democratic opponents, according to the latest campaign finance reports. Her half-million dollar haul ($508,000) so far this year is nearly four times as much as state Superintendent Jill Underly raised ($132,000) and about 13 times as much as Sauk Prairie School District Superintendent Jeff Wright ($38,000).
Kinser calls herself a moderate but is backed by conservatives for her pro-school choice positions. Underly, the incumbent, is backed by the Democratic Party, though Wright has chipped away at some of her base. ….
Both state parties are pumping their preferred candidate’s campaigns with cash at an unprecedented level for a state superintendent election at this stage of the race, shattering any assumption about it being a nonpartisan election.
The Republican Party of Wisconsin contributed $200,000 to Kinser’s campaign so far, nearly 10 times the amount it gave in the entire 2021 race. The state Democratic Party gave Underly about $106,000 this month. The party gave her about $208,000 in the entire 2021 race. Wright has neither party’s financial support.
And there’s still a month and a half to go before the April 1 election.
Kinser has more than doubled the superintendent fundraising record set by then-Superintendent Tony Evers in 2017 for this stage of the race. In Gov. Evers’ entire 2017 superintendent race, he raised about $517,000. Kinser has raised nearly the same amount in just the first month of this race.
See Kelly Meyerhofer, In Wisconsin school superintendent race, one candidate is far ahead in fundraising, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 13, 2025.
Inflation increased in January, posing obstacle for tariff plans:
