Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-seven. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:41 PM, for 9h 16m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred ninety-second day.
On this day in 1883, the Newhall House Fire claims dozens of lives in Milwaukee:
one of America’s worst hotel fires claimed more than seventy lives when the Newhall House burned at the northwest corner of Broadway and Michigan Streets in Milwaukee. Rescued from the fire were The P.T. Barnum Lilliputian Show performers Tom Thumb and Commodore Nutt. The fire, shown here, was discovered at 4:00 a.m. on the 10th, but sources give the date variously as 1/9/1883 or 1/10/1883. [Sources: The History of Wisconsin, Vol. 3, p.452; WLHBA]
Recommended for reading in full:
Annie Gowen, Jeff Stein, and Sean Sullivan report Already reeling from tariff war, some farmers aren’t receiving government support checks amid shutdown:
The government check hadn’t arrived, and John Boyd was out of seeds.
So he left his family farm here in southern Virginia on Tuesday and went to the local Farm Service Agency office, a last-ditch attempt to see if any essential personnel with the U.S. Agriculture Department were still working. He was hoping they could help, even with the partial federal government shutdown stretching on with no end in sight.
The Trump administration had promised to help farmers like Boyd, those who suffered as a result of the international trade war after Chinese purchases of soybeans — once 60 percent of the market — plummeted to next to nothing. With farmers on the edge of ruin, the U.S. government offered $12 billion in support since September, checks that had become a lifeline.
But with the government shutdown moving into its third week, Boyd was left waiting for his support check to arrive. Other farmers who still must have their crop totals approved by the government to receive aid were left with no way to apply for it.
….
“This shutdown is affecting small people like myself, but if it continues, America is going to feel the impact everywhere — grocery stores, small businesses,” Boyd fumed, angry about the “fiasco” he feels Trump has created. “Right now, I need seed and diesel fuel; I do not need a damn wall. That does not help me in my farming operation.”
Jeff Stein reports Trump farm bailout money will go to Brazilian-owned meatpacking firm, USDA says:
Whitewater’s own US Representative, F. James (Tex) Sensenbrenner, is riding to the rescue, along with Mark Meadows. He has introduced the most tortured acronym of a bill in my long memory.
From his press release:
“Following the President’s address last night, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (WI-05) re-introduced the Build Up Illegal Line Defenses With Assets Lawfully Lifted (BUILD WALL) Act.”
https://www.wispolitics.com/2019/u-s-rep-sensenbrenner-introduces-the-build-wall-act/
“Assets lawfully lifted”??
So…rest easy! F. Jim is going to protect you from all of those other-colored mint pickers storming the town from Turtle Valley.
Thanks for this – I had not known of it. Sensenbrenner is a wasteful and bigoted man.
He is the scion of the Kimberly-Clark empire, although he divested of it some years ago. That made him enough money to be the 38th richest congressman, according to Wikipedia. Yes…that Kimberly-Clark. The same one that got a big wet kiss from Walker and his lege henchmen on the way out the door.
When his fellow congressmen want to piss him off, they call him “Tex”. His grandfather invented Kotex…
Too funny, in a sad way. I put your info on Sensenbrenner’s legislation to use – thanks much: ‘Our Guy’ Isn’t Our Guy.