Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 5:35 PM for 10h 53m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 75.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1808, without a previous declaration of war, Russian troops cross the border to Sweden at Abborfors in eastern Finland, thus beginning the Finnish War, in which Sweden will lose the eastern half of the country (i.e., Finland) to Russia.
There are three types of conservatives in Whitewater: traditional ones (who faved faded as a group into inconsequence), transactional conservatives (development men — dealmaking types), and the conservative populists (MAGA men). As the traditional conservatives now count for little in Whitewater, the question for the rightwing is whether local conservativism will be dominated by little Mitch McConnells or little Donald Trumps.
While Trump inspires the MAGA types, the transactional conservatives have no similar hero (as McConnell inspires no one).
The transactionalists need wait no longer: Golfer Phil Mickelson is the man for whom they’ve been waiting. In an interview from late last year (only now gaining widespread publicity), Mickleson declares his desire to make a deal with the Saudis for a golf league of their own.
Alan Shipnuck writes
Mickelson told me [Shipnuck] he had enlisted three other “top players” he declined to name and that they paid for attorneys to write the SGL’s [Super Golf League’s] operating agreement, codifying that the players would have control of all the details. He didn’t pretend to be excited about hitching his fortunes to Saudi Arabia, admitting the SGL was nothing more than what he called “sportswashing” by a brutally repressive regime. “They’re scary motherfuckers to get involved with,” he said. “We know they killed [Washington Post reporter and U.S. resident Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.
In Mickelson’s view, influencing the PGA, and making bank if you can, is worth it all.
(It’s worth noting, contra the development men, that Adam Smith wrote both Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments, and meant both to be understood together; indeed, they are properly read as one teaching. See An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, edited with an Introduction, Notes, Marginal Summary and an Enlarged Index by Edwin Cannan (London: Methuen, 1904). 2 vols. and Smith, Adam. Theory of Moral Sentiments and Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1869). Alex Murray & Son, 1869.)
Ah, but forget about all those old books for a moment — rejoice that these gentlemen now have their hero.