Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of eighty-nine. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset is 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred twenty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1815, French dictator and imperialist Napoleon abdicates for the second time. On this day in 1943, future senator Joseph McCarthy “broke his leg during a drunken Marine Corps initiation ceremony, despite a press release and other claims that he was hurt in “military action.” Although nicknamed “Tail Gunner Joe”, McCarthy never was a tail gunner, but instead served at a desk as an intelligence officer. In 1951 he applied for medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded to those who had flown at least 25 combat missions. The Marine Corps has records of only 11 combat flights McCarthy flew on, and those were described as local “milk run” flights. Many of McCarthy’s claims were disputed by political opponents as well as journalists.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Bruce Vielmetti reports that Jury finds ex-cop not guilty in fatal Sherman Park shooting that sparked violent unrest:
Former Milwaukee Police Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown was found not guilty Wednesday in the on-duty fatal shooting of Sylville Smith that set off two days of violent unrest last year in parts of the Sherman Park neighborhood.
The verdict drew an emotional reaction in the courtroom, prompting the judge to clear the jury from the courtroom as deputies escorted members of the gallery outside.
Smith’s father, Patrick Smith, immediately called for calm in the wake of the verdict.
“I want the community to calm down and come together,” he said.
Smith’s sister, Sherelle Smith, also made an emotional appeal while speaking with reporters.
“Don’t give them a reason to take your life,” she said. “Do something different in the community, try as hard as you can to be peaceful and form unity with each other … black or white. Because we all bleed the same, we all hurt the same.”
Earlier Wednesday, Smith’s family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Heaggan-Brown and the City of Milwaukee.
The verdict was just the latest of many acquittals in police shootings around the country, including one in Minnesota last week of the officer who fatally shot Philando Castile. Like that case, it involved suspects with guns, split-second decisions about self-defense and video evidence.
William Wan reports that America’s new tobacco crisis: The rich stopped smoking, the poor didn’t:
MARTINSVILLE, VA. — After decades of lawsuits, public campaigns and painful struggles, Americans have finally done what once seemed impossible: Most of the country has quit smoking, saving millions of lives and leading to massive reductions in cancer.
That is, unless those Americans are poor, uneducated or live in a rural area.
Hidden among the steady declines in recent years is the stark reality that cigarettes are becoming a habit of the poor. The national smoking rate has fallen to historic lows, with just 15?percent of adults still smoking. But the socioeconomic gap has never been bigger.
Among the nation’s less-educated people — those with a high-school-equivalency diploma — the smoking rate remains more than 40?percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today, rural residents are diagnosed with lung cancer at rates 18 to 20 percent above those of city dwellers. By nearly every statistical measure, researchers say, America’s lower class now smokes more and dies more from cigarettes than other Americans.
George Will urges his fellow citizens to Let America plunge toward our fast-unfolding future:
This is a profound truth: The interacting processes that propel the world produce outcomes that no one intends. The fatal conceit — fatal to the fecundity of spontaneous order — is the belief that anyone, or any group of savants, is clever and farsighted enough to forecast the outcomes of complex systems. Who really wants to live in a society where outcomes are “meant,” meaning planned and unsurprising?
….Soon America will be 241. It is too young to flinch from the frictions — and the more than compensating blessings — of a fast-unfolding future.
Amy Siskind describes how Trump is steering us to authoritarianism:
.@realDonaldTrump is steering us to authoritarianism. @Amy_Siskind pic.twitter.com/3ksQNTjIcg
— MoveOn.org (@MoveOn) June 22, 2017
Adam Cole wonders What Would We Lose If We Wiped Out Vampire Bats?: