Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-seven. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:30 PM, for 15h 13m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 11.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the nine hundred fortieth day.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission is scheduled to meet at 6 PM.
On this day in 1944, the Allies land at Normandy to liberate Western Europe and thereafter force the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.
Recommended for reading in full:
Maria Sacchetti reports Trump administration cancels English classes, soccer, legal aid for unaccompanied child migrants in U.S. shelters:
The Trump administration is canceling English classes, recreational programs and legal aid for unaccompanied minors staying in federal migrant shelters nationwide, saying the immigration influx at the southern border has created critical budget pressures.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement has begun discontinuing the funding stream for activities — including soccer — that have been deemed “not directly necessary for the protection of life and safety, including education services, legal services, and recreation,” said Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Mark Weber.
(The denial of simple services for minor children is a present to Trump’s base, a gift to his most bigoted admirers.)
Paul Farhi reports Lies? The news media is starting to describe Trump’s ‘falsehoods’ that way:
It’s (almost) official: The president of the United States is a liar.
This will not come as a revelation to people who have closely followed President Trump’s public statements and Twitter feed and have long doubted his veracity. It is, instead, a late-dawning recognition by mainstream news organizations, which until fairly recently shied away from branding the president’s many questionable utterances as outright lies.
Nowadays, many in the news media are no longer bothering to grant Trump the benefit of the doubt. In routine news and feature stories, Trump’s dishonesty carries no fig leaf. It is described baldly.
A recent sampling:
– CNN: “The Mueller report: A catalog of 77 Trump team lies and falsehoods.”
– Minneapolis Star Tribune: “President Trump lies to troops about pay raise.”
– Financial Times: “The real reason Donald Trump lies.”
(Trump is a liar – we should say so about him.)
Molly Beck writes Wisconsin will soon become an island surrounded by legal weed:
MADISON – When Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signs into law a bill making way for recreational marijuana use in our neighbor to the south, his signature will put Wisconsin on an island surrounded by legal weed.
Three out of the four states that border Wisconsin — Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota — have now legalized marijuana use and two of them allow residents to purchase and consume cannabis for any reason.
While more and more state legislatures are embracing legal marijuana for medical or recreational reasons — 33 in all — Wisconsin isn’t likely to anytime soon.
Republican lawmakers who control which bills arrive at Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ desk are opposed to legalizing recreational marijuana use and are split on whether the plant should be widely available for medicinal purposes.
The Real Reason Japan is Called the “Land of the Rising Sun”:
Wedge strategies for the 2020 election are becoming clearer. The Republicans are going all-in on racism and anti-abortion, and backing it up with a robust voter suppression/disenfranchisement campaign. The Democrats are running on Trump, corruption and weed.
The R-Team positions seem to be contrary to popular sentiment, but are clearly aimed at getting every one of their voters out to man the ramparts to defend the quintessential whiteness of America and their God-given hegemony over woman’s bodies. That is a tested technique that has dominated Republican political strategies since the 1960’s. It works, at least some of the time. The problem is that if your base is not a majority, and you fire up the opposition enough, you will lose, unless you get Russian and FBI “Help”. If you can’t win with your voters, you have to win by making less opposition voters. That is why we are seeing a full-bore voter suppression, disenfranchisement and blatant Gerrymandering effort underway. It also has a lot to do with the mulish intransigence of Yertle to do anything to protect us from election hacking. Republicans are going to need the Russians in 2020, and they are well aware of that. Republicans like to style themselves as “Patriots”, but put lie to that by every action, lately. Somewhere, Geo. Orwell is nodding his head and saying “I told ya so!”. The gurgling sound you are hearing is the death-rattle of a party doomed by taking positions not supported by the majority, but determined to hang on to power until they have finished looting America. The corruption of the current administration is absolutely breathtaking.
The Democrats are fired up. This election will be a referendum on Trump, and there are very few persuadable voters left. Trump’s approval has been parked at 41% and his disapproval at 53% for the last two years. 53% of voters will not vote for Trump under any circumstances. So, absent any 3rd party Nader/Perot/Stein dilution, it is the Democrat’s game to lose. Trying to persuade Trump voters to turn Democrat is a pointless exercise and a waste of time and effort. The only way to peel off Trumpies is to be more racist and misogynistic than him. That is an insurmountable mountain to climb.
I mused a while ago that the way for the Democrats to sew up this election cycle was to go all-in for weed legalization, and they are doing just that. Dope smoking is the rarest of political issues, being essentially bipartisan. The R-Team politicians are very much on the short side of this issue, and the Democrats smell blood. We see that right here in Wisco-World, where 70+% of the citizens want at least partial legalization and the Governor is ramming it right down Fitz and Vos’ throats. They are locked into their traditional reefer-madness positions, even though they have to know that their kids (and maybe even them) are sparking-up behind the barn. It might just be the silver bullet to counteract Gerrymandering. Evers will be guilty of political malpractice if he doesn’t get a weed advisory referendum on the state-wide ballot for the next general election.
The Republicans are way behind the curve on weed. Legalization, either state-by-state or nationally, is coming, and soon. It is a perfect wedge issue, and the Dems are wise to make the most of it before it times out. Wedge issues get stale pretty quickly. Heard anything about gay marriage or flag-burning lately??
Agreed!
Evers in Wisconsin, and Democrats elsewhere, should run on every (popular) wedge issue they can, limited only by prioritization.
Evers on Twitter has a background image from the Wisconsin capitol that proclaims “the will of the people is the law of the land.” Much of the Democratic strategy in Wisconsin will depend on this sentiment. Not literally, of course, as though we were a direct democracy, but as a philosophy and a practical approach it’s a sound idea.