This site has now opened comments on almost all posts, including for anonymous or pseudonymous posters. Comments stay open for a few days after a post’s publication, and then close automatically.
That’s new; for the site’s first four years, there were no generally open comments, with the exception of a weekly post on most Fridays.
It seems reasonable to have a short, simple comments policy, and I have now published one.
A simple question on Super Bowl weekend —
Good morning.
It’s a day of dense fog, with a high of thirty-seven, for Whitewater. In San Diego, it will be a sunny Friday with a high of sixty-seven.
On this day from 1917, an example of mistakes of German foreign policy: “In 1917, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, which had announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.” So much better not to anger the United States.
If you’re still basking in the afterglow of Groundhog Day — and how could one not be? — the Wisconsin Historical Society has a page about the holiday that I missed yesterday, but to which I will readily link today.
Few people are missing the snow (I’m one of those few), but for those wondering, NASA offers answers about snow, snowfall, and (for some of us) the happy days of Snowmageddon 2010.
The Tea Party’s not even warm for Ron Paul, and CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield asks Dick Armey why that’s so. Armey doesn’t speak for every Tea Party group (Banfield’s introduction actually inflates his role within that movement).
Still, why?
Although I don’t think Paul’s libertarian enough, that shouldn’t stop the Tea Parties from favoring him over, say, Newt Gingrich on ideological grounds.
Reason’s Brian Doherty posits that this is because Tea Party supporters are not so libertarian, and that’s partly right.
They’re libertarian on some issues, conservative on others, and simply Republican on other matters. There’s no criticism implied; this assessment is descriptive, only. If they were very libertarian, they’d be libertarians (or even Libertarians).
But there’s a more practical reason, that likely separates Tea Party supporters from libertarians: Republicans and Democrats expect to win elections, and that’s part of the appeal of a major party. If many Tea Party members have traditionally voted for a major party (where both major parties win a good amount of the time), a true third-party position must seem impractical and unappealing.
Libertarians advocate to win, but routinely settle for being a political corrective to larger parties’ actions. I’d guess that Tea Party adherents are more accustomed to winning with a major party than Libertarians have ever been, and naturally like being part of a winning side.
That goal is hard to relinquish.
Thanks for that; I feel so much better about your cuisine now.
Via WISN.
Here’s a recording of Punxsutawney Phil’s 2012 prediction that six more weeks of winter await us.
I know that there are local groundhogs in the forecasting biz, but here at FW only the most reputable, established, and celebrated groundhog will do.
That’s Phil.
Okay, for those who insist on something local, here’s Jimmy the Sun Prairie groundhog calling for an early spring –
Good morning.
It’s a day of dense fog with a high temperature of forty-four for Whitewater.
In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, home of prognosticating groundhog Phil, today will be mostly cloudy and thirty-five.
This morning, Phil saw his shadow, and so predicted 6 more weeks of winter.
The Wisconsin Historical Society remembers a sporting advance from this day in 1905:
Professional Baseball Arrives in Wisconsin
On this date the Wisconsin State League was formed, bringing professional baseball to five Wisconsin cities. The six-team league began play the following summer with franchises in Beloit, Green Bay, La Crosse, Oshkosh, Wausau, and Freeport, Illinois. The league lasted through 1914, although its named was changed to Wisconsin-Illinois in 1908.
Google’s daily puzzle asks about a life-changing decision: “What job did Poor Richard’s first-born son take that effectively ended their relationship?”
There’s been much talk, from generation to generation about the rise of the next global power to supplant America. The Soviet Union (yes, for many, this once seemed certain), Japan, and now China: in each instance, an insistence that America is in decline. (For a post that addresses myths about China, see Overestimating China’s influence: ‘Five myths about China’s power’.)
At the New Republic, Robert Kagan examines and debunks the (persistent) theory of American decline, in a lengthy article entitled, Not Fade Away: The myth of American decline. It’s not that decline is impossible, but that it’s improbable, for the many reasons Kagan offers.
Generations ago, to many, the Great Depression must have seemed not merely a present hardship, but proof of enduring ruin and eclipse. The lingering, near-aftermath of the Great Recession surely seems this way to some, today. Yet, for all our many and serious difficulties, we are a creative, industrious, and productive people.
Kagan’s article is a useful corrective to pessimism.
Writing at the Washington Post, Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna College lists exaggerations and distortions about China.
As with now-discarded theories from the ’80s about Japan’s supposed economic indomitability, there’s been much foolishness about China’s actual prospects.
See, Five myths about China’s power – The Washington Post.
See, also, an online chat on the same topic.
(From the chat, Pei on the biggest myth about China: “The biggest myth about China is that the country has learned to do capitalism better than the West. You hear this from Western business people all the time. The reality is that China has learned to do “raw capitalism” or “crony capitalism” much faster than people can imagine. But I don’t think people in the West could tolerate that kind of capitalism.)
The draft wasn’t popular in 1862, and it wasn’t so critical, as the overwhelming number of Wisconsinites serving to preserve the Union were volunteers.
Still, there were angry residents to be assuaged…
The Wisconsin Historical Society offers a history of recall elections in the Badger State.
It’s an informative summary of all that’s come before all that’s before us now. They’ll need at least another page to describe our present recalls to posterity.
Good morning.
It’s another warm day for Whitewater, with a high temperature of forty. In Reno, there’s a slight chance of rain or snow, then temperatures rising to the fifties later in the day.
In Whitewater, there’s a Landmarks Commission meeting at 5 PM, and a Zoning Rewrite Commission meeting at 5:30 PM.
The Wisconsin Historical Society records that on this date in 1860, “Charles Ingalls and Caroline Quiner were married in Concord, Wisconsin. They were the parents of noted Wisconsinite Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the “Little House” series. [Source: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum].”
For Google’s daily puzzle, something European: “Europe’s largest parliament building displays an item that’s depicted on its country’s coat of arms. What is it?”
Footage — and a live webcam of the cubs’ den, available at Wildlife Research Foundation.
Last week, Palmyra’s Police Commission, on a 2-1 vote, fired Chief Charles Warren. Warren had been police chief of the village’s force for five years. Both the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Jefferson County Daily Union reported on Warren’s dismissal.
The Police Commission action followed an autumn hearing on the complaint of Gary Byers, a village resident and former Milwaukee police detective. The complaint alleging misconduct concerned Warren’s handling of a marijuana case, an accidental overdose case, and a child enticement case.
Warren’s attorney, Paul Bucher, has threatened further action.
A few observations:
Dismissal is rare. Few officers, let alone leaders, are dismissed. (The vogue term is to call police leaders part of the ‘command staff,’ but Palmyra’s very small, and no town in Wisconsin is anything like the Pentagon or a fighting front, in any event.)
Real oversight is rare. Most people, on most police commissions, in most places, mean well. But, few get their positions because they’re actual watchdogs. They get their jobs because they’re supportive, so supportive that they boost rather than scrutinize. Really, a solid chief should be able to get by without maneuvering sycophants onto a police commission, but the weaker the chief, the more important stacking the deck becomes.
In particularly bad situations, chief and commissioners will pat each other on the back, and issue mutually supportive and congratulatory declarations as often as they can. Leaders shouldn’t need these things, and commissioners shouldn’t seek them, but mediocrity invites a treacly neediness for a circle of praise.
Is Warren’s dismissal the proper exercise of oversight? I don’t know. Two of the cases are less serious than the accusations of possible child enticement in the third. I do know that the published accounts to which I have linked describe decisions and actions probably similar to those in dozens of other Wisconsin towns.
(Palmyra, one reads, doesn’t have written procedures for some of the situations described in the complaint against Warren. Palmyra is not alone, among Wisconsin towns & villages, in that regard.)
An officer or chief could be culpable of misconduct even apart from written guidelines; my point is that if Warren should be so, many others have been, too.
Does Warren’s dismissal help or hurt the cause of oversight, generally? By itself, this case is so rare that it will gain attention, but probably make no lasting impression on the state. So few commissions address discipline of officers or leaders that many police commissioners in Wisconsin probably cannot imagine any disciplinary hearing of any kind (let alone one involving possible dismissal).
Commissioners typically play no role in discipline, and learn only about it only in a pro forma way (if they learn at all). Wisconsin law allows commissioners in cities disciplinary authority (Wis. Stat. 62.13(5)); they seldom exercise it.
Commissioners across Wisconsin have probably heard about this case and either see it as proof of a very poor leader or a very loose, ill-controlled commission.
What happens next? It all depends on what Warren, through his attorney, wants. Does the chief want a settlement of some sort, or does he really want a day in court (not as a prospect to force a settlement, but for its own sake)?
There’s more ahead, but how much more depends on how practical the parties are.
