Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 7:19 PM, for 12h 41m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred forty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets today at 11:30 AM.
On this day in 1867, the United States and Russia reach an agreement for the United States’ purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire at a price of $7.2 million dollars. On this day in 1865, the 6th, 7th and 36th Wisconsin Infantry regiments fight in the Battle at Gravelly Run, which was one of a series of engagements that ultimately drove Confederate forces out of Petersburg.
Recommended for reading in full —
John Schmid reports that Immigration was, is and will be a source of renewal in Milwaukee: “At the middle of the last century, Alfonso Morales left his home in rural Mexico to work migrant farm jobs in the United States. He eventually reached Milwaukee, learned the construction trades and settled down. Alfonso Jr., the ninth of his 10 children, was the first in the family to go to college. At 46, the son is now a Milwaukee police captain, having worked as a beat cop, detective and district commander. The son also has become an authority on Clarke Square, on the near south side. Clarke Square has been a port of entry for immigrants since 1795, when a French-speaking Canadian became the first white settler to build the first house in what later became the city of Milwaukee. Morales policed Clarke Square for years and knows every alley, tavern and ethnicity within its 48 square blocks, immediately south of the city’s Menomonee Valley. A history buff, he explains how early European arrivals built sturdy second homes in their cramped backyards, which helped accommodate the next wave of Germans, Poles, Irish and Bohemians. Much of Clarke Square today is populated by people of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent. They are joined by Asians and Central Americans who live alongside long-term residents of European descent. The shadow of a large Lao Buddhist temple falls across National Ave. where taco trucks serve burritos and tortas.”
Scott Malone reports ‘Religious left’ emerging as U.S. political force in Trump era: “Since President Donald Trump’s election, monthly lectures on social justice at the 600-seat Gothic chapel of New York’s Union Theological Seminary have been filled to capacity with crowds three times what they usually draw. In January, the 181-year-old Upper Manhattan graduate school, whose architecture evokes London’s Westminster Abbey, turned away about 1,000 people from a lecture on mass incarceration. In the nine years that Reverend Serene Jones has served as its president, she has never seen such crowds. “The election of Trump has been a clarion call to progressives in the Protestant and Catholic churches in America to move out of a place of primarily professing progressive policies to really taking action,” she said. Although not as powerful as the religious right, which has been credited with helping elect Republican presidents and boasts well-known leaders such as Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, the “religious left” is now slowly coming together as a force in U.S. politics. This disparate group, traditionally seen as lacking clout, has been propelled into political activism by Trump’s policies on immigration, healthcare and social welfare, according to clergy members, activists and academics. A key test will be how well it will be able to translate its mobilization into votes in the 2018 midterm congressional elections.”
Jonathan Z. Larsen reports Why FBI Can’t Tell All on Trump, Russia: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation cannot tell us what we need to know about Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia. Why? Because doing so would jeopardize a long-running, ultra-sensitive operation targeting mobsters tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and to Trump. But the Feds’ stonewalling risks something far more dangerous: Failing to resolve a crisis of trust in America’s president. WhoWhatWhy provides the details of a two-month investigation in this 6,500-word exposé. The FBI apparently knew, directly or indirectly, based upon available facts, that prior to Election Day, Trump and his campaign had personal and business dealings with certain individuals and entities linked to criminal elements — including reputed Russian gangsters — connected to Putin. The same facts suggest that the FBI knew or should have known enough prior to the election to justify informing the public about its ongoing investigation of potentially compromising relationships between Trump, Putin, and Russian mobsters — even if it meant losing or exposing a valued informant.”
Nicole Hemmer observes that “Scientific racism” is on the rise on the right. But it’s been lurking there for years: “For those dissatisfied with The Bell Curve’s explanation of racial differences, another book came along a year later offering an alternative. The problems black Americans faced were not due to their inferior genetics, Dinesh D’Souza argued, but due to their inferior culture. That was the idea at the core of The End of Racism, the 1995 book that D’Souza wrote in an office down the hall from Murray at AEI. The book was a broadside against multiculturalism and cultural relativism. In it, D’Souza argued for the supremacy of Western (white) culture, maintaining that problems of high incarceration rates and poverty were caused not by racist institutions but by a corruption at the heart of black society, which he described as “self-defeating” and “irresponsible.” In language reminiscent of Donald Trump’s diatribes about black neighborhoods, D’Souza described inner cities as places where “the streets are irrigated with alcohol, urine, and blood.” Racism, he argued, is simply rational discrimination, the ability of observes to detect that black culture is worse than white culture. It was not racism but anti-racism that was to blame for African-Americans’ plight, he maintained, arguing that black civil rights activists and white liberal Democrats had a vested interest in keeping “the black underclass” down. Like Murray, D’Souza cloaked his arguments in academic garb: extensive citations, lengthy expositions, detailed history. But like The Bell Curve, The End of Racism was about promoting conservative policy, starting with the premise that the problems black Americans faced were not the result of racism and that no outside intervention — especially not affirmative action — could solve them.”
Watch a rocket test create a beautiful double rainbow: