Good morning. Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 31. Sunrise is 7:05 and sunset is 4:22 for 9 hours 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1782, in Paris, representatives from the United States and Great Britain complete preliminary…
Thursday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:58 and sunset is 7:47, for 13 hours, 49 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 14.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1704, the first regular newspaper in British Colonial America, The Boston News-Letter, begins publishing.
“That whipsawing back and forth, that creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty,” said Steven Deller, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who researches the state’s agricultural and manufacturing economy. “And one thing that the economy hates is uncertainty.”
As it stands, most Chinese imports face tariffs of 145%, while Canada and Mexico face 25% tariffs, along with 10% for most everyone else.
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Wisconsin imported more than $38 billion in goods last year, about half from countries facing the highest Trump tariffs: China, Canada and Mexico.
Machinery and electronic products made up about one-third of Wisconsin’s total import value last year. Pharmaceutical products, some of which Trump has since spared from tariffs, made up 12%.
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Deller calls tariffs a regressive tax because they most affect people with lower income.
“They tend to spend their money more on goods than services,” he said. “They’re more likely to shop at a Walmart or a Dollar General-type store, and a lot of the goods that are sold in those kinds of stores come from international markets.”
No one has mucked up public policy in the city more than these special-interest gentlemen. If across an entire football field, a chihuahua relieved itself in one small spot, that’s exactly where these men would step. ↩︎
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 55. Sunrise is 6:11 and sunset is 7:38, for 13 hours, 28 minutes of daytime. The moon a waning gibbous with 89 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.
Yesterday’s post, Farmers, cited reporting on the effects of a trade war on farmers. Trump is aware of these concerns, and so he used his Truth Social platform to publish his position on a trade war’s effects on agriculture. Below are Trump’s remarks contrasted with real experiences.
Our farmers are GREAT, but because of their GREATNESS, they are always put on the Front Line with our adversaries, such as China, whenever there is a Trade negotiation or, in this case, a Trade War. The same thing happened in my First Term. China was brutal to our Farmers, I these Patriots to just hold on, and a great trade deal was made. I rewarded our farmers with a payment of $28 Billion Dollars, all through the China deal. It was a great transaction for the USA, until Crooked Joe Biden came in and didn’t enforce it. China largely reneged on the deal (although they behaved during the Trump Administration), only buying a portion of what they agreed to buy. They had ZERO respect for the Crooked Biden Administration, and who can blame them for that? Interestingly, they just reneged on the big Boeing deal, saying that they will “not take possession” of fully committed to aircraft. The USA will PROTECT OUR FARMERS!!!
The payments were helpful, Pihl said. But they weren’t a fix for the longer-term damage done by Trump’s first-term tariffs.
“That was just for the one year. What about the market loss that continued through his term and into Biden’s term? I think the amount is incredible,” he said.
Trump claims that China has ‘behaved’ during his administration, but he admits in his post that (a) they’ve hit back at Boeing and (b) China has applied huge retaliatory tariffs across the board.
Meanwhile, here’s how ordinary Chinese are depicting the Trump Admin:
Even ordinary TikTok users on the other side of the world have Trumpism’s number.
One can and should oppose the Chinese government without stumbling into an inflationary trade war.
Meanwhile, where did Trump get all those gaudy gold appliqués with which he’s littered the Oval Office? Trump’s vulgar additions are surprisingly similar to what the Chinese sell on Alibaba:
Is Trump's oval office plastered with Chinese-made, faux gold, polyurethane "French palace" wannabe wall coverings? We don't know for sure, but boy these items we found on Alibaba sure do look similar sherwood.news/power/shop-t…
Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 50. Sunrise is 6:12 and sunset is 7:37, for 13 hours, 25 minutes of daytime. The moon a waning gibbous with 94 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1922, U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal, which leads to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal.
Tariffs are making life more expensive for John Pihl. He’s been farming in Northern Illinois for more than 50 years.
“These tariffs are going to affect everything. It’ll affect our parts — it’s just across the board. Which is going to hurt everything,” he said.
Not only do tariffs affect the cost of farm supplies, but they also raise the risk of retaliation against exports of U.S. crops: a double-whammy for farmers like Pihl.
“It’s a good way to lose your customers,” he said. “And I think we’ll probably lose more on this round too, because I know that Mexico is our biggest importer of corn. But this time, they may figure out that they can get corn from South America just as easily as from the U.S.”
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All told, the first Trump administration spent $28 billion bailing out farmers. This time around, the tariffs are much higher than they were six years ago, and it’s unclear how long they will persist.
NPR asked the White House for details on what relief is under consideration this time, but received no response.
The payments were helpful, Pihl said. But they weren’t a fix for the longer-term damage done by Trump’s first-term tariffs.
“That was just for the one year. What about the market loss that continued through his term and into Biden’s term? I think the amount is incredible,” he said.
But it’s all fake news, right? These consequences for can’t be true, can they? Mr. Trump has a plan, of course he does. (He had a plan before each of his six business bankruptcies, didn’t he?)
Come for the culture war, stay for the inflationary trade war.
Elephants formed an ‘alert circle’ to protect their young after a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in southern California. Video footage from the San Diego zoo safari park showed elephants instinctively circling their young, as soon as they felt the earthquake on 14 April
Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 59. Sunrise is 6:14 and sunset is 7:36, for 13 hours, 22 minutes of daytime. The moon a waning gibbous with 98 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Plan and Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1958, the Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days. This was the first spacecraft to carry a living animal, a female dog named Laika, who likely lived only a few hours.
One of the justifications for tariffs is to bring back manufacturing to states like Wisconsin. It’s ill-considered:
But one of the biggest barriers to bringing manufacturing back, both in Wisconsin and nationally, is a labor shortage.
Over the last decade, [founder of the Florida-based Reshoring Initiative Harry] Moser said employers have told him the U.S. labor market is “weak, both in terms of quantity of people and quality of people.” He said there have been efforts in recent years that have helped some, pointing to high school apprenticeship programs. He says Trump’s goal of bringing manufacturing back hinges on workforce.
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In Wisconsin, a 2023 research report from WMC found the state’s median age was older than the rate nationally, and warned if the population doesn’t grow at a faster rate, workforce shortages would worsen.
“We don’t have enough workers for the jobs that we have, let alone if we want to grow a job (field),” [president of the business lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Kurt] Bauer with WMC said. “This is a significant challenge.”
One hears talk in Whitewater on recruiting for manufacturing before any other priority. It’s more a diversionary tactic than anything else; these gentlemen are simply looking for something, however implausible, to shift the conversion.
Sunday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 66. Sunrise is 6:16 and sunset is 7:35, for 13 hours, 19 minutes of daytime. The moon a waning gibbous with 99.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1960, the United States launches Transit 1-B, the world’s first satellite navigation system.
In Whitewater, and towns across America, the Trump men put up signs reading “TRUMP LOW TAXES, KAMALA HIGH TAXES.” These signs were as ridiculous as they were false: Trump campaigned on tariffsandtariffs are taxes. (Yet the nature of an authoritarian populist movement like theirs is fallacies, fabrications, and as with their claims about COVID or election conspiracies, a refusal to accept contrary evidence.1)
In interviews with Urban Milwaukee, all said the new tariffs will fuel inflation, raising costs for local companies, manufacturers, entrepreneurs and consumers; and that the shock waves created by the policy have the potential to send the U.S. economy into a recession.
“It’s almost unanimous concern, and I have not spoken to any business leader that’s celebrating the tariffs,” said Dale Kooyenga, President and CEO of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, describing the responses he’s heard since the tariffs were announced.
The impact is registering immediately for some businesses, Kooyenga said. Like one local company he spoke with that placed a large product order. The tariff doesn’t apply to the date of purchase, but happens when the goods hit the dock in the U.S. “And so now that their order was so large and the tariff so large,” Kooyenga noted, “it creates significant cash flow issues in a time when interest rates are high.”
The new tariffs will produce a price shock for the local building and trades industry and construction budgets, said Dan Bukiewicz, President of the Milwaukee Building & Trades Council and mayor of the City of Oak Creek. “The reaction is not good,” said Bukiewicz. “From the contractors that perform construction work to small business owners that supply everything from safety vests to gloves, hard hats, safety glasses: [the price of] everything’s going up.”
See Graham Kilmer, Tariffs Will Hurt Business, Workers in Wisconsin (‘Local business, labor and university experts warn that tariffs will lead to a recession’), Urban Milwaukee, April 7, 2025.
All these loud and proud local anti-tax men supported a candidate who has now inflicted worse than anything they’ve ever complained about.
Watch the female lift up during mealtime to show off her two adorable owlets. The nestlings are 3 and 4 days old as of April 10. Brooding is done solely by the female, and she remains a near constant presence at the nest for at least two weeks until the owlets are large enough to spend some time in the box alone.
Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 76. Sunrise is 6:43 and sunset is 7:16, for 12 hours, 33 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
In a post on X, the social media platform he owns, Musk wrote late Thursday that he would “give a talk in Wisconsin” on Sunday night. He did not say where.
“Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” he wrote, though he did not specify how that would be verified.
Musk also wrote that he would present two $1 million checks “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”
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In a statement, the spokesman for Schimel’s opponent, liberal Susan Crawford, said Musk was trying to buy off Schimel and labeled his visit a “last-minute desperate distraction.”
“Wisconsinites don’t want a billionaire like Musk telling them who to vote for, and on Tuesday, voters should reject Musk’s lackey Brad Schimel,” spokesman Derrick Honeyman said.
Trump framed the race that will decide the ideological balance of the state Supreme Court in national terms, saying it would have an “outsized impact on the future of the country.”
“I know you feel it’s local, but it’s not. It’s really much more than local,” Trump said in the 10-minute call. “The whole country’s watching.”
After 14 months and 50,000 miles, Bridget McCutchen from Ashland earned the Guinness World Record as the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe by motorcycle. The northern Wisconsin native traversed 45 countries, developing newfound confidence — and inspiring more women to ride — along the way.
Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 74. Sunrise is 7:08 and sunset is 7:00, for 11 hours, 52 minutes of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1945, the Royal Air Force drops the Grand Slam bomb in action for the first time, on a railway viaduct near Bielefeld, Germany.
There’s national discussion about Sen. Chuck Schumer’s decision to vote in favor of a Republican-supported continuing resolution in the Senate. I’m not a member of the Democratic Party, but as I am a Never Trump libertarian aligned with them on policy toward Trump, Democrats’ frustration with Schumer is understandable to me (although I’ve never thought much of him).
He's a weak man and a fool. This was one of the big arguments by the vote Yes Team: The moment will be more ripe in September. There's a good chance that's right, politically. But by September the federal government will be unrecognizable.
There’s a local angle in all this. A day or two ago, some Democrats were standing along Main Street in Whitewater with signs protesting recent Trump decisions. Some of them seemed about Schumer’s age, but there they were, lawfully expressing their opposition. Good for them.
And yet, and yet, in every town, including Whitewater, there’s at least one Democratic man of Schumer’s age who would behave as Schumer is behaving, capitulating, yielding, or even carrying the message of the very rightwing populists who would gladly bring about that man’s ruin. (These diffident types would have, of course, one self-serving rationalization or another for their servile behavior.)
Marshall’s words apply to such types as these: foolish and weak men.
They are unsuited to the times. The sooner they fade from the scene the better.
Moongazers gathered in Chile, Argentina and Venezuela to observe a total lunar eclipse. The events happen when the moon, Earth and sun align just so. The Earth casts a shadow that can partially or totally blot out the moon
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 60. Sunrise is 7:09 and sunset is 6:59, for 11 hours, 50 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Several times, Crawford accused Schimel of saying different things to broader audiences than to audiences made up of his political allies. She called attention to reporting by the Washington Post that Schimel said Trump was “screwed over” by the Supreme Court in its decisions regarding the 2020 election, and reporting by the Wisconsin Examiner that he had told a group of canvassers he’d be a “support network” for Trump.
“He is not impartial, and he says different things in front of a broad audience like this, where he knows it’s going to be televised, than he’ll say when he’s talking to his political allies,” she said. “He is not trustworthy.”
On the campaign trail, access to abortion has been one of the most prominent issues. The Court is currently considering a lawsuit that would have the state’s 1849 law declared invalid, while another lawsuit is pending in the lower courts asking if the state’s Constitution grants a right to abortion access.
Schimel has said he personally opposes abortion, that both of his daughters are adopted and he believes the 1849 statute is a “valid law.” In the debate he repeated what he’s said during the campaign on the issue — that it should be up to the state’s voters. Wisconsin doesn’t allow voters to influence state law through a referendum process.
Schimel likely knows, if he’s worked up the energy to read the law after his habitually light work schedule, that a voters’ referendum would be advisory,1 and to overturn Wisconsin’s 1849 statutory abortion ban would require a proposed state constitutional amendment2 that the WISGOP legislature would never put before voters.
Look to the sky late Thursday evening to spot a rare blood moon lunar eclipse. The total lunar eclipse will be visible in North America, South America, western parts of Europe and Africa from Thursday, March 13 to Friday, March 14. As the moon passes through the Earth’s innermost shadow, light from the sun passing through the Earth’s atmosphere will be filtered in just the right way to bathe the moon in a reddish, orange hue. Totality – when the moon is completely within the Earth’s inner shadow and turns reddish – will start at 12:26 a.m. EDT and 11:26 p.m. PDT and last about 65 minutes. The phenomenon is visible by the naked eye, but for the best viewing experience, find a dark environment and grab a pair of binoculars or a telescope. According to NASA, another total lunar eclipse won’t be visible in the U.S. until March 2026.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 55. Sunrise is 7:11 and sunset is 6:58, for 11 hours, 47 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee submits his proposal to CERN for an information management system, which subsequently develops into the World Wide Web.
“Conservative Brad Schimel will support President Trump’s agenda!” says the new flyer. “Together, we won the White House. Now it’s time to win the courthouse!”
The campaign literature features a picture of Trump being sworn in as president with his hand upheld and a second photo of Schimel with the Wisconsin Capitol in the background. It then urges voters to elect Schimel to the Supreme Court next month.
America PAC, the Musk super PAC, and a second Musk group, the nonprofit Building America’s Future, have reported spending more than $10 million on TV ads, digital ads, mailers, voter turnout and canvassing.
Brad Schimel, circuit court judge, isn’t running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court; Trump’s dutiful foot soldier is running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 7:13 and sunset is 6:57, for 11 hours, 44 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act into law, allowing American-built war supplies to be shipped to the Allies on loan.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will double his planned tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50% for Canada, escalating a trade war with the United States’ northern neighbor and showing an indifference to recent stock market turmoil and rising recession risks.
Trump said on social media that the increase of the tariffs set to take effect on Wednesday is a response to the price increases that the provincial government of Ontario put on electricity sold to the United States.
“I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD,” Trump posted Tuesday on Truth Social.
After a brutal stock market selloff on Monday and further jitters Tuesday, Trump faces increased pressure to show he has a legitimate plan to grow the economy instead of perhaps pushing it into a recession. But so far the president is doubling down on the tariffs he talked up repeatedly during the 2024 campaign and throwing a once stable economy into utter turmoil as investors expected him to lead with deregulation and tax cuts instead of colossal tax hikes.
Update, 3.12.25: Only hours later on Tuesday, Trump reversed course. (Trump defines decisive down.)
The reporting is sound: tariffs do act as tax hikes, and Trump’s tariffs will be, in effect, colossal tax hikes on consumers and businesses. All America will feel them.
The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost moon lander has begun its work on the moon using its drill, vacuum and electrodes. Blue Ghost has drilled into surface to determine heat flow from interior of Moon. It has deployed four tethered Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) electrodes and an 8-foot mast to study the deep interior of the moon. Also, it’s Lunar PlanetVac collects lunar soil and more using pressurized nitrogen gas.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 66. Sunrise is 7:15 and sunset is 6:55, for 11 hours, 41 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 2017, the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea in response to a major political scandal is unanimously upheld by the country’s Constitutional Court, ending her presidency.
Whitewater is in Wisconsin, and Wisconsin is in America. The economic outlook for America is in decline. Whitewater will not escape national and state trends.
“I hate to predict things like that,” Trump said when pressed about the possibility of a recession during a recorded interview that aired on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”
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The rosy economic outlook that greeted Trump’s return to the White House has dimmed in recent weeks. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.1% in February, boosted by firings in the public sector. And consumer confidence fellby the most in any given month since August 2021.
The conservative populists have no sound grasp of economics, as theirs is a movement of cultural revenge, not economics. Trump’s first term was an economic failure, yet many of them delusionally imagine him as an economic guru.
Truth in advertising: Come for the culture war, stay for the recession.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:21 and sunset is 5:50, for 11 hours, 29 minutes of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter with 49.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Arts Commission meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1967, Joseph Stalin‘s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States. (She later moved to Wisconsin, and passed away in Richland Center.)
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel told a group of canvassers in Waukesha County last weekend that he needs to be elected to provide a “support network” for President Donald Trump and shared complaints about the 2020 election that have been frequently espoused by election deniers.
In a video of the remarks, Schimel is speaking to a group of canvassers associated with Turning Point USA — a right-wing political group that has become increasingly active in Wisconsin’s Republican party.
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“Donald Trump doesn’t do this by himself, there has to be a support network around it,” Schimel said.
Schimel pointed to the issue of special voting deputies in nursing homes as a major problem.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, officials known as special voting deputies who normally go into nursing homes to help residents cast absentee ballots were unable to enter those facilities.
Republicans have claimed that decision allowed people who should have been ineligible to vote because they’d been declared incompetent to cast a ballot. Conspiracy theorists have pointed to affidavits filed by family members of nursing home residents that their relatives were able to vote. Only a judge can declare someone incompetent to vote, however.
The issue led to the Republican sheriff of Racine County to accuse members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) of committing felony election fraud and became a target in former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s widely derided review of the 2020 election.
Schimel also blamed the election commission’s decision to exclude the Green Party’s candidates from the ballot that year for Trump’s loss. WEC voted not to allow the party on the ballot because there were errors with the candidate’s addresses on the paperwork. The party sued to have the decision overturned, but the Supreme Court ruled 4-3 against the party because it was too close to the election.
While conservatives held the majority on the Court at the time, Schimel blamed liberals.
Whitewater in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 45. Sunrise is 6:34 and sunset is 5:41, for 11 hours 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1815, Napoleon escapes from exile on the island of Elba (in the brig Inconstant with about 1,000 men and a flotilla of seven vessels).
Speaker Robin Vos wants Wisconsin, America, and the Whole Wide World to know that he’s now “tight” Trump:
Just a few years after President Donald Trump backed a primary challenger against Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the Rochester Republican says he and the president are “tight.”
As reporter Anya van Wagtendonk catalogs, and Wisconsinites remember, it wasn’t always this way:
The comments from Vos about Trump were hardly a surprise, but they followed years of tension between the two GOP leaders that nearly resulted in Vos losing his job.
Trump regularly criticized Vos for not doing more to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, a step election law experts said was both unconstitutional and impossible. And after the 2022 midterms didn’t go as well for Republicans as they’d hoped, Vos urged the party to move on from Trump.
