Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny, with a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 5:58 AM and sunset 8:00 PM, for 14h 01m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1939, the Wizard of Oz has its world premiere, in Oconomowoc:
According to the fan site, thewizardofoz.info [now http://thewizardofoz.info/wiki/Oz_FAQ], “The first publicized showing of the final, edited film was at the Strand Theatre in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin on August 12, 1939. No one is sure exactly why a small town in the Midwest received that honor.” It showed the next day in Sheboygan, Appleton and Rhinelander, according to local newspapers. “The official premiere was at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on August 15, attended by most of the cast and crew and a number of Hollywood celebrities.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Monica Davey reports Wisconsin Faces a Political Crossroads Tuesday. Which Way Will It Go?:
Mr. Walker is still Wisconsin’s governor, still harboring national ambitions, and Wisconsin Democrats and Republicans have only grown more divided over Mr. Trump and the state’s place in national politics. Those dynamics are now on display as Wisconsin prepares for a major primary election on Tuesday: Mr. Walker’s bid for a third term is at stake; Wisconsin Democrats’ desire to deal blows to Trump Republicanism is intense; Republicans are deeply concerned about their future hold on state government; and the very identity of the state, which swings between progressivism and conservatism, feels up for grabs.
“This just wasn’t what Wisconsin was, not what it used to be,” said Sally Mather, 69, a retired social worker, who sat in the back room of a cafe in this village of 1,700 last week.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro reports For Wisconsin’s Dairy Farmers, Tariffs Could Reshape The Race For The Senate:
It’s here where Clark and her family begin work each day at 5:30 a.m., doing chores and milking cows. But times are tough. Milk prices have already fallen 4 percent this year, continuing a steady decline since 2014, according to data from the Labor Department. Meanwhile, net farm income, a broad measure of profits, is forecast to drop this year to its lowest level since 2006, according to the Department of Agriculture.
“It hits my bottom line,” Clark says about falling milk prices. “The last two years have been most challenging.”
Even tougher times might be ahead, she worries. Wisconsin is the number two dairy supplier in the country. In an industry where margins can be razor thin, farmers like Clark have come to rely on selling their milk products abroad, specifically Mexico, which is one of the biggest importers of U.S. dairy.
David A. Graham asks Why Can’t Trump Just Condemn Nazis? (“In marking the one-year anniversary of a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, the president again fails to differentiate between bigots and those who oppose them”):
Trump’s tweet Saturday shows that his vision of what happened hasn’t gotten any clearer with the passage of a year. He’s still unable to name Nazis, white supremacists, and white nationalists for what they are, and unable to differentiate between those groups and those that oppose them.
The condemnation of “all types of racism” is, on its face, a positive, but it can also be read as a coded reference to the idea that there is a anti-white racist movement seeking “genocide” of white people. White supremacists will certainly read it that way.
The condemnation of “all … acts of violence,” apologizes for the instigators in Charlottesville under the guise of reasonability. There’s no debating that violence is bad. There’s also no question who was responsible for touching off the violence in Charlottesville: the group of white supremacists and Nazis who marched on the town, many carrying weapons, to shout racist slogans and defend statutes that commemorate a traitorous rebellion that sought to preserve the enslavement of black people. One person, Heather Heyer, died when one of the ralliers drove a car into a crowd. Others were beaten.
(Trump knows precisely what he’s doing; he’s appealing to white nativists. His ‘base’ knows precisely what they’re supporting; they’re supporting white nativism.)
Cleve R. Wootson Jr. reports ‘Not the enemy of the people’: 70 news organizations will blast Trump’s attack on the media:
Now, the editorial board of the Boston Globe is proposing that newspapers across the nation express their disdain for the president’s rhetoric on Aug. 16 with the best weapon they have: their collective voice.
The rally calls for the opinion writers that staff newspaper editorial boards to produce independent opinion pieces about Trump’s attacks on the media. So far, according to the Associated Press, 70 news organizations have agreed — from large metropolitan daily newspapers such as the Miami Herald and Denver Post to small weekly newspapers with four-digit circulation numbers.
The Globe’s appeal is limited to newspaper opinion writers, who operate independently from news reporters and editors. As The Post’s policy explains, the separation is intended to serve the reader, “who is entitled to the facts in the news columns and to opinions on the editorial and ‘op-ed’ pages.”
(Trump’s hardcore supporters scream ‘fake news’ and ‘enemy of the people’ whenever they’re too shiftless or too stupefied to think and express themselves clearly.)
How Japan Keeps Millions of Residents Safe From Floods: