Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 5:19 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 17m 48s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 13% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the nine hundred sixty-third day.
On this day in 1862, 5th Wisconsin Infantry and Co. G of the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters take part in the Battle of Savage’s Station during the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia.
Recommended for reading in full:
Josh Lederman and Kristen Welker report Trump defends Biden after Democratic debate, says Harris got ‘too much credit’:
Speaking to reporters at a news conference after the G-20 summit in Japan, Trump said that the line of attack by Harris was “so out of the can,” suggesting it was rehearsed ahead of time.
“It wasn’t that outstanding, and I think probably he was hit harder than he should have been hit,” Trump said.
(It’s notable that Trump feels the need to address Harris‘s performance. If she’s the nominee, Trump will find himself facing a tenacious opponent who will overmatch him in every way. My own views on Harris are here.)
Patrick Marley and Molly Beck report Wisconsin’s GOP speaker says he wants to consider legalizing medical marijuana, just after rejecting governor’s plan:
MADISON – Days after rejecting a medical marijuana plan, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Friday he wants to debate the issue this fall even though it would be extremely difficult to pass.
Vos, of Rochester, in recent years has shown support for legalizing medical marijuana, but other Republicans who control the Legislature have expressed deep skepticism toward the idea.
“I’d like to have at least a discussion about medical marijuana,” Vos said Friday when asked about his top priorities for lawmakers when they return to the Capitol in the fall.
He acknowledged that the idea is unlikely to go anywhere even if he finds enough support for it among the five dozen Republicans in his house. That’s because of staunch opposition to the idea from Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau.
(Joe, commenting here, was spot on about this as a political issue.)
Surviving the Worst Skydiving Accident in History:
The professional skydiver Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld was poised to achieve his dreams. He was training with his team for the World Championships—a life goal since he started practicing the sport at age 5, jumping off his bunk bed with a blanket for a parachute.
Then, on April 23, 1992, Brodsky-Chenfeld lived a nightmare. Along with 22 others, he boarded a plane for a routine training jump. Two months later, he awoke from a coma to discover that a horrific plane crash—one of the worst in skydiving history—had crippled his body and claimed the lives of 16 of his skydiving teammates. The doctors told him that he was lucky to be alive, but he would never skydive again.
In Yali Sharon’s short documentary Above All Else, Brodsky-Chenfeld describes his traumatic near-death experience, the inspiring vision he had before waking from his coma, and his miraculous recovery.
RE: Weed
It is interesting that Vos, who has a lot bigger cushion to work with in the assembly, has started to dip his toe into legalization. Fitz, on the other hand, doesn’t have all that much of a majority, but does sport a singularly mulish attitude.
Were I scheming with the D-Team, which I’m not, I would advise making this election a full-on referendum on pot legalization, and not stopping with medical only. That will put the Republicans in the position of capitulating, which won’t happen, or defending to the death policies that 75-80% of the state population, in both R and D areas, have voted against with gusto, when given the chance.
This is the mother of all wedge issues, and has no downside for the D-Team, while having no happy ending for the Republicans. That, of course, assumes that the D-Team has its shit together enuf to exploit this while they can. The fuse is lit on national legalization, and when that inevitably happens, the usefulness of the issue on the state level evaporates.
True enough: this issue will fade when one side – committed to prohibition – collapses nationally. In the meantime, as you say, it’s a wedge issue that can, and should, be seized. If they want a fight that will give them no happy ending, then that’s a fight to bring (happily) to them.