Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS
Big Lie, Conflicts of Interest, Daily Bread, Elections, Gableman, Kleefisch, YMBFKM
Daily Bread for 12.16.21: Michael ❤ Rebecca
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning. 
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny, with strong winds subsiding, and a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:22 PM for 9h 02m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1773, members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.
Patrick Marley reports Gableman touts Kleefisch’s run for governor, asks for support in keeping his election review going:
Michael Gableman talked up his review of the 2020 election at a Republican event over the weekend, telling the crowd he wouldn’t back down from Democrats and tipping his hand about his preferences in GOP primaries.
The former state Supreme Court justice at times has tried to portray himself as impartial and at others sought to stir up the Republican base. He’s on deck to speak at another Republican event later this month.
During an appearance Sunday in Beloit, Gableman appeared alongside former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and touted her bid for governor. That could put him in an awkward position if Marine veteran Kevin Nicholson decides to run for governor because Gableman serves on the advisory board for Nicholson’s political organization, the No Better Friend Corp.
The report doesn’t say whether Gableman offered Kleefisch a box of chocolates, but there’s time until Valentine’s Day (1 month, 29 days, to be precise). Harry & David (‘your destination for a gourmet gift delivery that is sure to delight’) accepts all major credit cards.
Tornadoes and high winds slam central U.S.:
Iowa and Minnesota saw their first December tornadoes while high winds slammed Colorado, with some gusts reaching 107mph, on Dec. 15.
Daily Bread, Economy, Government Spending, Hypocrisy, Never Trump, Republicans, Trumpism
Daily Bread for 12.15.21: Trumpism Has No Coherent Economic Policy
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 64. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 02m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 88.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Technology Park Board meets at 8 AM.
On this day in 1903, Italian American food cart vendor Italo Marchiony receives a U.S. patent for inventing a machine that makes ice cream cones.
Alan Rappeport reports Republicans Who Assailed Biden’s Stimulus Bill Are Embracing the Money (‘Republican governors who criticized the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill as wasteful are championing state projects funded by the money’):
WASHINGTON — At her annual budget address this month, Gov. Kristi Noem, Republican of South Dakota, blamed President Biden’s economic policies for rising prices, derided the “giant handout” of federal stimulus funds and suggested that she had considered refusing the money over ideological objections.
But like many Republican officials, Ms. Noem has found it hard to say no to her state’s share of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief aid that Democrats passed along party lines in March.
Ms. Noem explained to fellow legislators how critical those federal funds were to South Dakota and outlined how she would use some of the nearly $1 billion slated for her state to invest in local water projects, make housing more affordable and build new day care centers. For those questioning her choice to take the money, Ms. Noem, who has opposed Covid restrictions including shutdowns and mask mandates, said any pandemic-relief funds she rejected would have just gone to other states.
“It would be spent somewhere other than South Dakota,” Ms. Noem said. “The debt would still be incurred by the country, and our people would still suffer the consequences of that spending.” No state has declined the relief money, and if they had it would go back to the Treasury Department, not to other states.
Republican leaders across the country have been engaged in a similarly awkward dance over the past few months as they accept — and often champion — money from the $350 billion bucket of state and local aid included in the stimulus bill, which passed Congress without a single Republican vote. In some states, like Ohio and Arizona, Republican governors are spending the funds while attempting to undercut the law that allowed the money to flow. Other governors are faulting Congress for not giving their state enough money.
And, like their counterparts in Congress, many Republicans have blasted Mr. Biden’s stimulus bill for fueling inflation, even as they take the funds, and criticized Democrats for pushing for additional government spending plans.
Of course, they’ll criticize and then take the money — Trumpism has no firm economic position except the enrichment of the Trump family subsumed under the general principle that hypocrisy is a virtue.
Look around small towns where Trumpists talk about fiscal prudence, and you’ll see that they (and others) waste money on artificial turf, etc., at the first opportunity. They’re fiscally prudent until they want something for themselves, all the while they’ll accuse others of their own, repeated actions.
They don’t have a coherent economic position — they have a collection of aching emotional needs that have to be satisfied. Explain their position coherently from moment to the next? Nah, why bother? They believe that explanations are for weaklings, suckers, socialists, communists, anarchists, anthropologists, meteorologists… whomever.
There are many sound reasons to oppose Trumpism, recognizing that alternatives to it bring their own, (far) lesser risks. One can believe that the Democrats are spending too much, as I do, and yet support resolutely their broad-based coalition against Trumpism’s autocratic nativism. Never Trump, after all, means Never Trump; never Trumpism means never Trumpism.
The Trumpists’ thorough-going hypocrisy is, in fact, another reason to oppose them.
Conspiracy Theories, Daily Bread, Elections, Mendacity, WISGOP
Daily Bread for 12.14.21: State Sen. Kathy Bernier Speaks Honestly
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 03m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 81.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 9 AM, and the Fire Department holds a business meeting at 6 PM.
On this day in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner delivers the “Significance of the Frontier in American History” address at the forty-first annual meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
Patrick Marley reports Key Wisconsin Republican says her colleagues are making baseless attacks and need to wrap up election review:
Republicans and Democrats alike Monday ripped into Wisconsin’s partisan review of the 2020 election, saying it was a baseless exercise that would needlessly damage faith in democracy.
State Sen. Kathy Bernier, a Republican from Lake Hallie who leads the Senate Elections Committee, said the review by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is firing up people who don’t understand elections.
“Mr. Gableman is coming to my county and I will attend that meeting along with my concealed carry permit, to be perfectly honest, because (the election review) keeps jazzing up the people who think they know what they’re talking about, and they don’t,” Bernier said.
Bernier, who oversaw elections for 12 years as Chippewa County clerk, said Republicans are reacting to political pressure from former President Donald Trump. Their constant complaints about the election could ultimately hurt Republicans if they don’t believe results can be trusted, she said.
“And so I think my advice would be to have Mr. Gableman wrap up sooner rather than later, because the longer we keep this up, the more harm … we’re going to do for Republicans,” she said.
In response, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester issued a statement saying it was Democrats who were preventing Gableman from completing his work sooner. He did not note that much of Monday’s criticism came from Republicans and offered no timeline for when Gableman would finish his review.
….
Bernier made her comments during a panel discussion in the state Capitol. She was joined by Ben Ginsberg, who spent nearly four decades representing Republicans in election disputes, and Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Ginsberg agreed with Bernier’s assessment, saying attacks on the election will hurt Republicans in the long run because their voters will be less likely to cast ballots if they think elections are rigged.
“We are here today because Wisconsin has found itself really in the middle of a harmful and disturbing national trend that involves the intimidation of election officials — the people who are supposed to call balls and strikes in our elections,” Ginsberg said.
Joe Biden beat Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin. Recounts and court rulings have confirmed his victory. A legislative audit and a study by a conservative group turned up no evidence that would question the results.
The low-impulse-control base of the WISGOP is sure respond with… low-impulse-control behavior. (They usually start off with heads shaking, arms raised, bleating ‘what, what, what’ and decline in composure from there on out. While public health depends on widespread vaccinations, the easiest way to improve public civility would be to offer not free vaccinations, but free tranquilizers, in Trump-supporting communities.)
City, Coronavirus, Daily Bread, Ignorance, Positivity, Public Health, School District, Willful Ignorance, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 12.13.21: ‘Most’
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 03m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 73.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 12 PM, and her Planning Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1962, NASA launches Relay 1, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.
Madeline Fox reports Most Wisconsin school districts joined state COVID-19 testing program, but parents say testing still comes with challenges:
For Christina Newman and her 6-year-old son Forrest, early December now means an unwelcome tradition — he was quarantined for a possible COVID-19 exposure last week, just like he was this time last year.
To get him back in school, he had to be asymptomatic and get a negative test in a health care setting — not an at-home rapid self-test, like the BinaxNOW tests that come in two-packs at local pharmacies — on day six or seven of his quarantine.
Like most children and adults, he’s no fan of the nasal swab tests. But Newman and her husband developed a strategy to make it easier.
“We pretty much discovered at home that if you either let him hold the swab, or you hold it with him and like coax him into sticking it up his nostrils, you can get him to do it, and he does a pretty good job,” she said. “He almost needs to have that autonomy to do it, because he doesn’t struggle as much.”
Newman was one of the parents who responded to WPR’s WHYsconsin asking how parents and caretakers are handling testing their children for COVID-19.
Forrest just got his second vaccine dose, which will cut down drastically on the amount of time he has to quarantine after a possible exposure — a welcome relief for Newman, whose family room has a giant blanket fort taking up the floor space and whose work can be frequently interrupted during the times Forrest has to stay home.
….
Greg DeMuri is a pediatric epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has also been advising the Madison Metropolitan School District on its testing program. He said it took some time to get the program up and running, but it’s starting to work well.
“It is very, very useful,” he said. “They are seeing cases there, and detecting cases, and they’re able to keep (sick) kids out of school because of it, so it’s a big asset to the schools and to the community.”
And so, and so — why would most, but not all, schools be part of this program of testing?
And look, and look — if there’s no reliable testing regimen, then there’s no reliable data on school spread, and if there’s no reliable data on school spread, then a superintendent here or there can simply (although incredibly) declare ‘there is no school spread.’
If a superintendent will wish away a pandemic, then what other risks or problems will he or she wish away?
That’s a question that should, and will, linger long after the pandemic.
Music
Monday Music: Eddie Higgins Trio, Christmas Songs
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 12.12.21: Following Wisconsin’s Shambolic Elections Inquiry
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny and windy, with a high of 42. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 04m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 65.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1941, Adolf Hitler declares the imminent extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery. Goebbels made the following entry in his diary for 12 December:
Bezüglich der Judenfrage ist der Führer entschlossen, reinen Tisch zu machen. Er hat den Juden prophezeit, daß, wenn sie noch einmal einen Weltkrieg herbeiführen würden, sie dabei ihre Vernichtung erleben würden. Das ist keine Phrase gewesen. Der Weltkrieg ist da, die Vernichtung des Judentums muß die notwendige Folge sein.
Regarding the Jewish question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that, if they yet again brought about a world war, they would experience their own annihilation. That was not just a phrase. The world war is here, the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence
Hilter, himself, brought about the world war, and so in Goebbels’s diary one reads a lie of causation followed by a plan of genocide.
UW-Madison political science professor and Elections Research Center director Barry Burden discusses the status and findings of probes into how the 2020 presidential vote was conducted in Wisconsin:
It is a bit of a three ring circus. We are more than a year from the presidential election and still there are probes, investigations and audits underway in one form or another. All of them seem to be essentially open-ended with no clear goals, unclear who was involved, what deadlines are set for producing some kind of report or conclusion. So my fear is that they are unfortunately doing the opposite of what the proponents say they are doing. Instead of building confidence in the election system, they are continuing to raise suspicions, make allegations and leave questions on the table that are likely to lower public trust in elections.
Bad Ideas, Books, Confidence Schemes, Conflicts of Interest, Corporate Welfare, Daily Bread, Development, Foxconn, Mendacity, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, Trump, WEDC
Daily Bread for 12.11.21: A Christmas Gift For, and About, Scheming Development Men
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will see snow this morning, of little accumulation, on an otherwise cloudy day with a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 04m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 55.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1901, Morris Pratt incorporates his school for spititualism in Whitewater:
Whitewater became known as the “mecca of modern spiritualism.” Pratt built his institute in 1888, which was initially used as a meeting place for public seances. Pratt decided to turn his institution into an educational school for spiritualists, focusing on science, literature, morality, and communication, as well as spiritualistic instruction. The institute was closed for a few years during the Depression, and then in 1977 relocated to Waukesha, where it remains one of the few institutes in the world that is dedicated to the study of spiritualism.
Lawrence Tabak’s Foxconned (‘Imaginary Jobs, Bulldozed Homes, and the Sacking of Local Government’):
Powerful and resonant, Foxconned is both the definitive autopsy of the Foxconn fiasco and a dire warning to communities and states nationwide.
When Wisconsin governor Scott Walker stood shoulder to shoulder with President Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan at the White House in July 2017, they painted a glorious picture of his state’s future. Foxconn, the enormous China-based electronics firm, was promising to bring TV manufacturing back to the United States with a $10 billion investment and 13,000 well-paying jobs. They actually were making America great again, they crowed.
Two years later, the project was in shambles. Ten thousand construction workers were supposed to have been building what Trump had promised would be “the eighth wonder of the world.” Instead, land had been seized, homes had been destroyed, and hundreds of millions of municipal dollars had been committed for just a few hundred jobs—nowhere near enough for Foxconn to earn the incentives Walker had shoveled at them. In Foxconned, journalist Lawrence Tabak details the full story of this utter collapse, which was disturbingly inevitable.
As Tabak shows, everything about Foxconn was a disaster. But worse, he reveals how the economic incentive infrastructure across the country is broken, leading to waste, cronyism, and the steady transfer of tax revenue to corporations. Tabak details every kind of financial chicanery, from eminent domain abuse to good old-fashioned looting—all to benefit a coterie of consultants, politicians, and contractors. With compassion and care, he also reports the distressing stories of the many individuals whose lives were upended by Foxconn.
Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers, Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition, Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, Foxconn Roundup, Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere, Foxconn: Evidence of Bad Policy Judgment, Foxconn: Behind Those Headlines, Foxconn: On Shaky Ground, Literally, Foxconn: Heckuva Supply Chain They Have There…, Foxconn: Still Empty, and the Chairman of the Board Needs a Nap, Foxconn: Cleanup on Aisle 4, Foxconn: The Closer One Gets, The Worse It Is, Foxconn Confirm Gov. Evers’s Claim of a Renegotiation Discussion, America’s Best Know Better, Despite Denials, Foxconn’s Empty Buildings Are Still Empty, Right on Schedule – A Foxconn Delay, Foxconn: Reality as a (Predictable) Disappointment, Town Residents Claim Trump’s Foxconn Factory Deal Failed Them, Foxconn: Independent Study Confirms Project is Beyond Repair, It Shouldn’t, Foxconn: Wrecking Ordinary Lives for Nothing, Hey, Wisconsin, How About an Airport-Coffee Robot?, Be Patient, UW-Madison: Only $99,300,000.00 to Go!, Foxconn: First In, Now Out, Foxconn on the Same Day: Yes…um, just kidding, we mean no, Foxconn: ‘Innovation Centers’ Gone in a Puff of Smoke, Foxconn: Worse Than Nothing, Foxconn: State of Wisconsin Demands Accountability, Foreign Corporation Stalls, Foxconn Notices the Noticeable, Journal Sentinel’s Rick Romell Reports the Obvious about Foxconn Project, Foxconn’s ‘Innovation’ Centers: Still Empty a Year Later, Foxconn & UW-Madison: Two Years and Less Than One Percent Later…, Accountability Comes Calling at Foxconn, Highlight’s from The Verge’s Foxconn Assessment, After Years of Promises, Foxconn Will Think of Something…by July, Foxconn’s Venture Capital Fund, New, More Realistic Deal Means 90% Reduction in Goals, Seth Meyers on One of Trump’s (and Walker’s) Biggest Scams, the Foxconn Deal, Adding the Amounts Spent for Foxconn (So Far), Perhaps – Perhaps – a Few Lessons Learned, and Foxconn Slips Away in the Night.
Daily Bread, Elections, Law
Daily Bread for 12.10.21: That Was Yesterday, This is Today
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with afternoon rain and a high of 41. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 05m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 44.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize in any field.
On 12.8, Patrick Marley reported that A bipartisan commission allows Wisconsin election grants, once again rejecting challenges brought by Republicans:
Wisconsin elections officials from both parties threw out a challenge Wednesday to private grants that helped cities run their elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A day later, on 12.9, two of the three Republicans on the commission crept away from bipartisanship. Marley reports Republicans sided with Democrats in an election challenge. A day later, they changed course:
On Thursday, Republican Commissioners Dean Knudson and Bob Spindell struck a new stance and said they wanted a hearing after all.
“I don’t agree with the decision letters that this was just fine,” Spindell said of the rulings that the grants were acceptable.
He said he had not seen the emails from Jacobs and DeWitt’s attorneys that they had sent him regarding hearings before the decisions were issued. He said he didn’t know why he wasn’t aware of them.
“I pay attention to my emails and I certainly pay attention if anything were to come from Ann,” he said. “I’m going to go back and take a look. It’s possible that I missed them.”
Knudson said he received the email from DeWitt’s attorneys but thought it might be spam because the state’s email system appended a warning to it that said it was sent from someone outside the commission. Jacobs’ follow-up email did not include such a warning.
“Frankly I did not recognize it and treated it as spam at the time,” Knudson said by email Thursday. “I will seek changes in procedure to help avoid a repeat of my mistake in future similar cases.”
Even if these Republicans did ignore emails, they wouldn’t be able to ignore calls from threatening fanatics motivated Republicans reminding them of what might happen if they didn’t change course, pronto.
City, Film
Film: Tuesday, December 14th, 1 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Mixed Nuts
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Tuesday, December 14th at 1 PM, there will be a showing of Mixed Nuts @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Comedy/Drama/Holiday
1 hour, 37 minutes
Rated PG-13 (1994)
Unusual events occur on Christmas Eve at a crisis hotline in Venice, CA. Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle”) wrote and directed this Yuletide comedy starring Steve Martin, Madeline Kahn, Rob Reiner, Rita Wilson and Jon Stewart.
One can find more information about Mixed Nuts at the Internet Movie Database.
Enjoy.
Cats
Friday Catblogging: The Mountain Lions Kittens of Ventura County
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Daily Bread, Elections, Law
Daily Bread for 12.9.21: Election Commission Upholds Election Grants
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 06m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 33.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Involvement & Cable TV Commission meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1868, the first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
Patrick Marley reports A bipartisan commission allows Wisconsin election grants, once again rejecting challenges brought by Republicans:
Wisconsin elections officials from both parties threw out a challenge Wednesday to private grants that helped cities run their elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The series of rulings by the state Elections Commission is the latest instance of authorities rejecting claims that the grants were illegal. Over the last year, three courts dismissed lawsuits over the grants.
In the latest development, the commissioners tossed out a new set of challenges over the grants that were filed this spring.
“The Commission finds that the Complaint does not raise probable cause to believe that a violation of law or abuse of discretion has occurred. All claims are hereby dismissed,” attorneys working for the commission wrote in a letter they sent Wednesday to the lawyer who spearheaded the challenges.
At issue is $8.8 million in grants the Center for Tech and Civic Life gave to Wisconsin’s five largest cities — Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha. No one has challenged smaller grants the center gave to about 200 other Wisconsin municipalities.
….
DeWitt’s lawyers concluded there was no reason to believe there was wrongdoing and sent their findings to the six commissioners.
If two or more commissioners asked, the commission would have had to hold a hearing and take a vote on what to do. No commissioner asked for a hearing. Under commission rules, that means it has adopted the attorneys’ conclusions.
The commission consists of three Democrats and three Republicans. They have clashed on some high-profile issues but have surprised observers by sticking together on some politically fraught matters.
There are sure to be appeals to circuit courts in counties where the grants were made. The intensity of conservative populists’ opposition to programs that don’t assure the outcomes they want will motivate them to keep fighting against ballot access for all.
Drone footage reveals damage from Indonesia’s Mount Semeru volcano eruption:
Daily Bread, Elections, Law
Daily Bread for 12.8.21: Pandemic? What Pandemic? Whitewater’s Already Wished It Away…
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 31. Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 07m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 23.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1660, a woman (either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare’s play Othello.
Diane Bezucha reports ‘We are full. Period’: Wisconsin hospital leaders say they are at a crisis point with new COVID-19 surge:
Wisconsin hospital leaders are sounding the alarm as the state endures another COVID-19 surge. The seven-day average of new infections is over 3,500 — the highest it’s been in a year.
During a roundtable discussion hosted by Wisconsin Health News on Tuesday, hospital leaders said they have reached a crisis point.
“We are full. Period,” said Eric Conley, CEO of Milwaukee’s Froedtert Hospital. “It’s really impacting, impeding care for those patients who are not COVID that need the care getting in because getting to our beds is just very, very hard.”
According to the Wisconsin Hospital Association COVID-19 dashboard, there were 1,630 people in the state hospitalized for COVID-19 as of Tuesday afternoon— an increase of 212 over the past week. More than 400 of those patients are in intensive care units, which are in short supply.
“Unfortunately, it’s not looking good and I don’t think it’s looking good for anybody across the state or even across state lines. Our ICUs are pretty much full,” said Dr. Imran Andrabi, CEO of ThedaCare.
As of Tuesday, hospitals in the Fox Valley and North Central Wisconsin regions reported having only one or two intensive care unit beds available. Hospitals in the northwestern and western part of the state reported having zero ICU beds available. And in southeastern Wisconsin, the number of available beds was cut in half overnight — from 30 on Monday to 15 on Tuesday.
“The hardest part of this is that the delta surge is accelerating while we’re still thinking about what other variants might exist and how they’re going to impact our organization,” said Sue Turney, CEO of Marshfield Clinic Health System.
At Froedtert, Conley said COVID-19 patients make up about 13 percent of occupied beds, but that number is as high as 40 percent in some hospitals.
Every leader at Tuesday’s panel said the vast majority of new COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated — from 74 percent at Marshfield Clinic to 88 percent at Froedtert.
I’ve been a critic of amateur epidemiology, where untrained people try to predict the course of the pandemic. See On COVID-19 Skeptics and COVID-19: Skepticism and Rhetoric
It’s not a prediction, however, when doctors and hospital leaders report that their hospitals are filling with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients.
It’s simply a fact.
Photos of smiling residents won’t make this pandemic disappear. Indeed, even a hundred exclamation points won’t improve the health of our fellow residents.
Although I’ve no training in epidemiology or virology, I’ll demonstrate:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sure enough, the pandemic is still here…
In Whitewater, the local public school district can spill onto social media as many happy posts as it wants, and yet not a single student will be healthier or safer. Vaccination clinics in our schools would protect. Facebook, by contrast, hasn’t yet protected anyone from hangnail, let alone a virus. See Boosterism’s Cousin, Toxic Positivity and Toxic Positivity Is Worse than Annoying as Public Policy.
Vaccination is positive; ‘positivity’ is an evasion.
Daily Bread, Nature, Planning, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 12.7.21: Bad Plans and Bad Planners Behind Wisconsin’s Wolf Hunt
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 21. Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 07m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy carries out a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Danielle Kaeding reports Wisconsin’s fall wolf hunt is on hold. Several lawsuits could affect whether it moves forward:
Wisconsin’s wolf hunt has been on hold since a Dane County judge issued a temporary injunction in October stopping the season that was set to begin Nov. 6.
The order came after a coalition of wildlife advocacy and animal protection groups filed a lawsuit arguing, in part, that the hunt is illegal because it relies on outdated regulations and a management plan that hasn’t been updated since 2007.
But that lawsuit is only one of several efforts to stop the hunt from happening.
Six Wisconsin tribes have also sued in federal court. They argue their treaty rights are being violated under state wolf management, pointing to February’s court-ordered hunt. State-licensed hunters killed 218 wolves in less than three days, harvesting the tribes’ share and exceeding the overall 200-wolf quota.
And another lawsuit filed by national wildlife and environmental groups seeks to restore protections for wolves nationwide.
Hunting advocates say the state should act quickly to ensure a hunt can happen before the end of the season in February.
Consider also that By Creating a ‘Landscape of Fear,’ Wolves Reduce Car Collisions With Deer:
Research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences highlights an underappreciated benefit of wild wolf populations: the large predators frighten deer away from dangerous roadways, saving money and lives in the process.
According to the analysis 22 years of data, a county’s deer-vehicle collisions fall by about 24 percent after wolves take up residence there, Christina Larson reports for the Associated Press. Nearly 20,000 Wisconsin residents collide with deer each year, which leads to about 477 injuries and eight deaths annually. There are 29 counties in Wisconsin that have wolves.
“Some lives are saved, some injuries are prevented, and a huge amount of damage and time are saved by having wolves present,” says Wesleyan University natural resource economist Jennifer Raynor to Ed Yong at the Atlantic.
Wisconsin’s last wolf hunt is an example of government planning gone wrong. The solution to bad planning isn’t more planning by the same planners. At the least, It’s remedial education for bad planners or new planners after those responsible for errors are removed from their positions.
Wisconsin shouldn’t be so tolerant of government error.