FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread for 9.22.18

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater, the first day of fall, will be mostly sunny with a high of sixty-six.  Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 6:51 PM, for 12h 08m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the six hundred eighty-third day.

On this day in 1862, Lincoln issues a Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation:

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary warning that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state that did not end its rebellion against the Union by January 1, 1863.[7] None of the Confederate states restored themselves to the Union, and Lincoln’s order was signed and took effect on January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation outraged white Southerners (and their sympathizers) who envisioned a race war. It angered some Northern Democrats, energized anti-slavery forces, and undermined elements in Europe that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy.[8] The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both free and slave. It led many slaves to escape from their masters and get to Union lines to obtain their freedom, and to join the Union Army.

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In September 1862, the Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the victory he needed to issue the Emancipation. In the battle, though the Union suffered heavier losses than the Confederates and General McClellan allowed the escape of Robert E. Lee’s retreating troops, Union forces turned back a Confederate invasion of Maryland. On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam occurred, and while living at the Soldier’s Home, Lincoln called his cabinet into session and issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.[62] According to Civil War historian James M. McPherson, Lincoln told Cabinet members that he had made a covenant with God, that if the Union drove the Confederacy out of Maryland, he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation.[63][64] Lincoln had first shown an early draft of the proclamation to Vice President Hannibal Hamlin,[65] an ardent abolitionist, who was more often kept in the dark on presidential decisions. The final proclamation was issued January 1, 1863. Although implicitly granted authority by Congress, Lincoln used his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, “as a necessary war measure” as the basis of the proclamation, rather than the equivalent of a statute enacted by Congress or a constitutional amendment. Some days after issuing the final Proclamation, Lincoln wrote to Major General John McClernand: “After the commencement of hostilities I struggled nearly a year and a half to get along without touching the “institution”; and when finally I conditionally determined to touch it, I gave a hundred days fair notice of my purpose, to all the States and people, within which time they could have turned it wholly aside, by simply again becoming good citizens of the United States. They chose to disregard it, and I made the peremptory proclamation on what appeared to me to be a military necessity. And being made, it must stand.”[66]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Mary Spicuzza and Daniel Bice report Milwaukee health staffer scaled back cleanups of homes with lead-poisoned children, records show:

A top Milwaukee Health Department staffer scaled back efforts to clean up homes with lead-poisoned children living in them, newly released records say.

During the last two years — 2016 and 2017 — the city didn’t clean up a single house with lead-poisoned children living in it, the records also show.

Those were among the findings documented in hundreds of pages of records linked to personnel investigations into two former leaders of the city’s troubled lead poisoning prevention program. The documents were released by the city Friday following Journal Sentinel records requests.

RELATED: Milwaukee health officials privately worried that problems in ‘messed up’ lead program would become public

RELATED: Milwaukee consistently failed to protect lead-poisoned children in homes with paint risks

RELATED: Protecting Milwaukee’s children: What we know about the latest problems with the city’s lead poisoning prevention efforts

The documents blame former health staffers Lisa Lien and Richard Gaeta for creating a toxic work environment full of bullying, intimidation and harassment. Following the personnel investigations, Lien resigned and Gaeta was fired.

Lien, then the city’s home environmental health manager, had previously gotten a 10-day suspension last year. Both Lien and Gaeta were placed on paid administrative leave in March.

Gaeta’s discharge notice accuses him of “insubordination” and “offensive conduct or language.” It also says he was “incompetent or inefficient” in doing his job as Milwaukee’s environmental field supervisor.

Patrick Marley reports Scott Walker top aide talks to London financier about selling Wisconsin roads, rejects idea:

Gov. Scott Walker’s transportation secretary told business officials and others last week he had talked to a London financier about selling off Wisconsin’s highways but had rejected the idea.

Transportation Secretary Dave Ross told a group last week that Walker’s administration was adopting new ways of getting its work done and mentioned in passing his discussion about selling off roads, according to people familiar with the meeting.

He then said he was not pursuing the proposal because Wisconsin has good contractors to maintain the state’s roads.

Philip Bump writes Robert Mueller may have just eliminated one of Trump’s biggest complaints (“Trump likes to complain about the cost of the Mueller probe. It might just have paid for itself”):

It’s not just that the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is, in President Trump’s estimation, a biased partisan “witch hunt.” No, that’s just one small aspect of why Trump is frustrated by Mueller’s work.

There’s Trump’s worry that the probe “endangers our country,” as he told reporters on Air Force One last week. Why? Because it is “hard for us to deal with other countries” because of it.

And then there’s the cost. In June, he took issue with the cost as reported by Mueller’s team.

….

But here’s the thing, pointed out by journalist Marcy Wheeler on her personal site: The Mueller probe may have just paid for itself.

Why? Because part of the plea agreement reached between Mueller and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort includes forfeiture of certain property to the government. While it’s not clear how much value will be extracted from that forfeiture, there’s reason to think that it could more than pay for what Mueller has incurred so far.

Jeremy W. Peters and Sapna Maheshwari report Viral Videos Are Replacing Pricey Political Ads. They’re Cheaper, and They Work:

These are not the stories that candidates usually turn to the camera and open up about in ads.

One talked about her father’s violent temper and how she once watched him throw her mother through a plate glass door. Another recalled watching his brothers struggle to find steady work because of their criminal records. A third spoke of suffering a decade of sexual abuse as a child.

The wave of female, minority and outsider candidates that is breaking cultural barriers and toppling incumbents in the Democratic Party is also sweeping aside a longstanding norm in campaigns: That the public image of politicians — especially women — should be upbeat, uncontroversial and utterly conventional.

For many of these Democrats who were running against better-financed rivals, the breakthrough moment came after they got personal in relatively low-cost videos that went viral, reaching millions of people. Using documentary-style storytelling, which can last for several minutes, candidates have found a successful alternative to the traditional model of raising huge sums of money that get spent on expensive, 30-second television commercials.

The videos are chiefly intended as ads, but they also served a fund-raising purpose. For a fraction of the cost, these videos can help to spread a candidate’s story in a way that is easily shareable and can inspire donations.

See Rare Electric Blue Clouds Observed by NASA Balloon:

On the cusp of our atmosphere live a thin group of seasonal electric blue clouds. Forming fifty miles above the poles in summer, these clouds are known as noctilucent clouds or polar mesospheric clouds — PMCs. A recent NASA long-duration balloon mission observed these clouds over the course of five days at their home in the mesosphere. The resulting photos, which scientists have just begun to analyze, will help us better understand turbulence in the atmosphere, as well as in oceans, lakes, and other planetary atmospheres, and may even improve weather forecasting.

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