Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 13. Sunrise is 7:16, and sunset is 4:21, for 9 hours, 4 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
CNBC offers a summary of national inflation numbers for November:
Consumers saw inflation pick up slightly in November as price increases in categories including groceries, gasoline and new cars outweighed a deceleration in others such as shelter during the month.
The consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, rose 2.7% last month relative to November 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. The annual rate was up from 2.6% in October.
Homes, roads and buildings were covered in ash in the aftermath of the Kanlaon volcano eruption in the Central Philippine province of Negros Occidental, drone footage released by the Philippine Red Cross on December 10 showed.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 28. Sunrise is 7:16, and sunset is 4:20, for 9 hours, 5 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 81.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1972, Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and final Apollo mission to land on the Moon.
Wisconsin prosecutors filed 10 additional felony charges Tuesday against two attorneys and an aide to President-elect Donald Trump who advised Trump in 2020 as part of a plan to submit paperwork falsely claiming that the Republican had won the battleground state that year.
Jim Troupis, who was Trump’s attorney in Wisconsin, Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who advised the campaign, and Mike Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day operations in 2020, all initially faced a single felony forgery charge in Wisconsin. Those charges were filed in June.
But on Tuesday, two days before the three are scheduled for their initial court appearances, the Wisconsin Department of Justice filed 10 additional felony charges against each of them. The charges are for using forgery in an attempt to defraud each of the 10 Republican electors who cast their ballots for Trump that year.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 32. Sunrise is 7:15, and sunset is 4:20, for 9 hours, 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 72.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:00 PM.
On this day in 1864, during his March to the Sea, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union Army troops reach the outer Confederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a decision of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (based in Chicago):
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take a Wisconsin case that could have made it easier for parents to fight schools’ efforts to support transgender and nonbinary students.
Three of the court’s six conservatives — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh — said they would have taken the appeal.
A group of Eau Claire parents argued challenges to gender identity support policies are being dismissed by judges across the country before they can be fully litigated because parents can’t show they’ve been affected.
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The Eau Claire Area School District of Wisconsin, which is defending its guidelines for ensuring a supportive environment for transgender students, countered that the parents are trying to create a new standard for lawsuits that would allow parents to preemptively challenge any school policy even if it doesn’t apply to them.
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The template Gender Support Plan prepared by the Eau Claire Area School District in 2022 recognizes that parents may not always be involved in a plan’s creation for a student. School personnel are supposed to check with a student before discussing their transgender status with a parent. But the support plan will be released to parents who request it.
A three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in May that none of the parents challenging the policy “has experienced an actual or imminent injury.”
Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 49. Sunrise is 7:14, and sunset is 4:20, for 9 hours, 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 61.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board meets at 5:30 PM to review a community referendum survey.
On this day in 1775, British troops and Loyalists, misinformed about Patriot militia strength, lose the Battle of Great Bridge, ending British rule in Virginia.
The economy added 227,000 jobs in November, making for a strong jobs report despite a slight increase in the unemployment rate. Although the labor market has cooled this year, the Trump administration stands to inherit a fairly healthy labor market, with decent job growth across many sectors.
The number of jobs was bolstered by the return of striking workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Employment in transportation equipment manufacturing rose by 32,000 jobs. Boeing machinists who went on strike in September seeking higher pay and better retirement benefits reached a deal in November.
The agency also revised up the number of jobs added in the October and September reports by 56,000 jobs combined.
Although the unemployment rate ticked up from 4.1% to 4.2%, the economy is looking strong, particularly when you look at gross domestic product, said Louise Sheiner, with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.
“It’s been remarkably strong. If you look at what the Congressional Budget Office projected the level of real GDP before the pandemic, it’s higher now. We’ve just had a really strong economy,” said Sheiner, who focuses on fiscal policy.
There are three reasons to mark the present state of the national economy: (1) a simple affirmation of the truth, (2) a reminder that the national economy has been good before when local special-interest types failed to capitalize on it (notably 2014 to 2017 and 2019 to early 2020) in Whitewater, and (3) a reminder that these old-guard types expect deference today despite serial failures for many years.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 50. Sunrise is 7:13, and sunset is 4:20, for 9 hours, 7 minutes of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter with 50.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Jill Underly, Wisconsin’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, faces a challenge from the left in her race for re-election:
Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Jill Underly, who is running for her second term in office with the backing of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, faces a challenge from Sauk Prairie School District Superintendent Jeff Wright, a Democrat who says he wants to improve DPI’s communication.
Elections for the state superintendent are technically nonpartisan. Candidates run on the same ballot in the February primary, and the top two advance. The primary is Feb. 18, 2025 and the general election is April 1. No other candidates have entered the race so far.
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Prior to winning her first term in 2021, Underly served as the superintendent of Pecatonica School District, a rural district in southwestern Wisconsin. She has also previously worked as a principal, a teacher and a state consultant to Title I schools in Milwaukee and across the state.
Wright, who launched his campaign about a month after Underly, has served as the superintendent of Sauk Prairie School District since 2019 and was named Administrator of the Year in 2024 by the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance. He also previously served as a principal in Chicago. He hasn’t held public office before, but has run unsuccessful campaigns in 2016 and in 2018 for the state Assembly.
Wright said in an October interview with the Examiner that he probably aligns closely with the current superintendent on many issues, but he thinks there is currently a “disconnect” between DPI and schools.
“They’re not bringing the people together from the teachers’ union, the administrators’ associations and other groups to have an active conversation about what concrete steps are we taking right now to get this work done,” Wright said. “Schools want to know what’s happening at the DPI. We don’t want to be surprised by changes. We want to be in conversation so that it’s very clear that we’re working on the same team.”
Underly has the backing of the state’s Democratic Party, and Wright has the backing of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) Political Action Committee and Kirk Bangstad’s Minocqua Brewing Company SuperPAC.
I’m not a Democrat (rather a Never Trump libertarian who supported Harris-Walz), but it’s hard for me to see how these political action committees can overcome the organizational strength of a major political party. There’s as yet no announced Republican candidate in the race, but there is sure to be at least one (for an office that is, nominally, non-partisan).
Admittedly, any campaign, against almost any incumbent, is likely to make headway with the contention that the public has a lack of information (or in the case of the DPI, technical information that’s been made readily comprehensible to most residents). No one ever went broke, so to speak, by arguing that government statistics were opaque. Still: an outsider’s climb against an organizationally-backed candidate is uphill.
Saturday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 45. Sunrise is 7:12, and sunset is 4:20, for 9 hours, 8 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 39.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
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.
Across Austria’s alpine villages, December 5th marks the arrival of Saint Nikolaus—a merry visitor who delivers gifts to well-behaved children. But Saint Nick doesn’t come to town alone. The dreaded Krampus is by his side. For centuries, groups of men across the region have dressed as Krampus during the Christmas season. The fearsome figure appears as a horned, half-goat, half-demon who punishes children who misbehave
I wish the people of Austria (and closer to home) only the best, but this tradition will always be strange to me.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:11, and sunset is 4:20, for 9 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 28.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Christmas at Cravath events tonight include a parade at 6 PM. The parade will begin in our downtown and end at the Cravath Lakefront. There is also a holiday market tonight from 5 to 8 PM at the Cravath Lakefront Community Center.
On this day in 1884, the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is completed.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 27. Sunrise is 7:10, and sunset is 4:20, for 9 hours, 10 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 19.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1879, the Humane Society of Wisconsin is organized in Milwaukee: “Inspired by Henry Bergh, a New York City philanthropist, and his Humane Movement, the state Humane Society was formed to protect both animals and children. However, with the formation of child protection laws in the early 1900s, the Humane Society of Wisconsin began to focus primarily on animal protection.”
Yesterday’s post was meant to be a video of the Royal Society Publishing Photo Competition 2024. That video was only on YouTube briefly, as the Society later removed it. Instead, I went back a year and updated with the 2023 winners (equally beautiful) from Facebook. Today, because persistence can be a good trait1, here are the 2024 winners as posted on Facebook:
In Whitewater, as change is slow and some are obstinate, persistence is also a useful trait of criticism: one returns to a topic again and again, sometimes across years. No force is so powerful and decisive as attrition. ↩︎
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:09, and sunset is 4:21, for 9 hours, 11 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 12 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1943, President Roosevelt closes down the Works Progress Administration, because of the high levels of wartime employment in the United States.
Update, Wednesday morning — The 2024 winners are down on YouTube right now, so we’ll go with the 2023 winners — Something of a palate cleanser today — the Royal Society Publishing Photo Competition 2023:
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 30. Sunrise is 7:08, and sunset is 4:21, for 9 hours, 13 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
We live in time when past judicial decisions are discarded, at the federal and state level. It should not surprise, although it still does, that prior legislation and prior court rulings to it are again set aside. And so, as one would have expected since July, Act 10 has been ruled unconstitutional:
Judge Jacob Frost ruled that Act 10, passed by the state Legislature’s Republican majority in 2011 and signed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in his first year in office, was unconstitutional in making some public safety workers exempt from the law’s limits on unions but excluding other workers with similar jobs from those protections.
The ruling essentially confirmed Frost’s ruling on July 3, 2024, when he rejected motions by the state Legislature’s Republican leaders to dismiss the 2023 lawsuit challenging Act 10.
In that ruling, Frost declared that state Capitol Police, University of Wisconsin Police, and state conservation wardens were “treated unequally with no rational basis for that difference” because they were not included in the exemption that Act 10 had created for other law enforcement and public safety employees.
For that reason, the law’s categories of general and public safety employees, and its public safety employee exemption, were unconstitutional, Frost wrote then.
Frost reiterated that ruling Monday. “Act 10 as written by the Legislature specifically and narrowly defines ‘public safety employee,’” Frost wrote. “It is that definition which is unconstitutional.”
In addition, the judge rejected the suggestion that Act 10 could remain in effect without the law’s public safety employee carve-out, and that either the courts or the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission could resolve a constitutionally acceptable definition in the future.
“The Legislature cites no precedent for this bold argument that I should simply strike the unlawful definition but leave it to an agency and the courts to later define as they see fit,” Frost wrote. “Interpreting ‘public safety employee’ after striking the legislated definition would be an exercise in the absurd.”
This video captured the California Highway Patrol rescuing a man trapped on the side of a cliff above Baker Beach in San Francisco. The man was hoisted safely to the beach below.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 28. Sunrise is 7:07, and sunset is 4:21, for 9 hours, 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission meets at 6:30 PM.
Wisconsin’s agriculture industry has grown over the last five years. But new data shows farming and food’s contribution to the state’s economy has gotten smaller.
The study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that agricultural production and food processing contributed $116.3 billion in revenues to the state’s economy in 2022.
That’s nearly 11 percent higher than the same report from 2017, growth that’s been celebrated by Gov. Tony Evers’ administration and the ag industry.
The study also found that farming and food processing made up 14.3 percent of the state’s total revenues, which is 2 percentage points less than in 2017.
Steve Deller, UW-Madison professor of agricultural and applied economics and co-author of the report, said that’s because the state’s overall economy is growing.
“The size of the pie is getting bigger,” Deller said. “Agriculture’s slice of that pie is also getting a little bit bigger, but it’s not growing at the same pace as the state’s economy is growing.”
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 25. Sunrise is 7:06, and sunset is 4:21, for 9 hours, 15 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with 0.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
TOKYO (AP) — A frog holding a taro-leaf umbrella. A parade of frolicking animals. An Ukiyo-e style Mount Fuji. Giant waves. A Japanese artist who goes by the name Lito carves these delicate designs on fallen leaves, giving life back to them.
The world of Lito’s delicate art, which he began in 2020 and posts on social media almost daily, has won fans from around the world. The leaf art has also given him solace after earlier struggles with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and a purpose in life — the joy of making people happy with his art.
He enjoys working at night. From a pile of leaves treated with a wrinkle-free chemical, he picks one and places it on a cutting board.
Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 24. Sunrise is 7:05, and sunset is 4:22, for 9 hours, 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 0.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1939, the Soviet Red Army crosses the Finnish border in several places and bombs Helsinki and other Finnish cities, starting the Winter War.
For physicists, there’s been one answer that has worked for nearly one hundred years – take two particles and smash them together as hard as you can. But the current generation of massive colliders like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, haven’t produced the flood of new particles some scientists were expecting. So attention is turning to a new type of experiment, using a particle that has never been collided before; muons.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 26. Sunrise is 7:04, and sunset is 4:22, for 9 hours, 18 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1961, Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbits the Earth twice and splashes down off the coast of Puerto Rico.
