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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.11.21

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 55.  Sunrise is 6:17 AM and sunset 7:33 PM, for 13h 15m 51s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1945, American forces liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Martin Pangelly reports ‘Dumb son of a bitch’: Trump attacks McConnell in Republican donors speech:

Donald Trump devoted part of a speech to Republican donors on Saturday night to insulting the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. According to multiple reports of the $400,000-a-ticket, closed-press event, the former president called the Kentucky senator “a dumb son of a bitch.”

Trump also said Mike Pence, his vice-president, should have had the “courage” to object to the certification of electoral college results at the US Capitol on 6 January. Trump claims his defeat by Joe Biden, by 306-232 in the electoral college and more than 7m votes, was the result of electoral fraud. It was not and the lie was repeatedly thrown out of court.

Earlier, the Associated Press reported that it obtained a Pentagon timeline of events on 6 January, which showed Pence demanding military leadership “clear the Capitol” of rioters sent by Trump.

Trump did nothing and around six hours passed between Pence’s order and the Capitol being cleared. Five people including a police officer died and some in the mob were recorded chanting “hang Mike Pence.” More than 400 face charges.

(Mar-a-Lago: where cannibalism’s the preferred cuisine.)

Andrew Ryan reports For years, the Boston Police kept a secret: the union president was an alleged child molester:

A father and his teenage daughter walked into the Hyde Park police station last August and reported a heinous crime.

The girl said she had been repeatedly molested from age 7 through 12 by former Boston police union president Patrick M. Rose Sr. Five more people soon came forward, accusing Rose of molesting them as children over the span of three decades, including the girl’s own father.

Rose being tagged as a child sexual abuser was news to the city when he was arrested and charged last summer. But it wasn’t news to the Boston Police Department where Rose served for two decades as a patrolman.

A Globe investigation has found that the Boston Police Department in 1995 filed a criminal complaint against him for sexual assault on a 12-year-old, and, even after the complaint was dropped, proceeded with an internal investigation that concluded that he likely committed a crime. Despite that finding, Rose kept his badge, remained on patrol for another 21 years, and rose to power in the union that represents patrol officers.

Today Boston police are fighting to keep secret how the department handled the allegations against Rose, and what, if any, penalty he faced. Over the years, this horrific case has come full circle: The father who brought his daughter in last summer to report abuse by Rose was the boy allegedly abused at age 12 in the 1995 case. The department’s lack of administrative action back then may have left Rose free to offend again and again, from one generation to the next.

Prosecutors now say the boy recanted his story under pressure from Rose, a common phenomenon for young survivors of abuse when faced with demands from their abuser. Though the criminal case against Rose was dropped as a result, a separate police internal affairs investigation went forward and concluded Rose broke the law.

Meet Some of The Last Papyrus Makers In Egypt Keeping A 5,000-Year-Old Craft Alive:

City, Local Government, Politics, School District, Whitewater's Local Politics 2021

Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: The City’s Few Progressives

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This is the fourth in a series on Whitewater’s local politics of 2021. The largest political gathering in Whitewater in 2020 was a rally for racial justice in Whitewater following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. Hundreds attended. It was not, however, an allowedly progressive event – the small local group Whitewater Unites Lives invited anyone, and many (if not most) who attended surely did so without considering themselves progressives. (I’m not affiliated with either group.)

Official reactions to that broad-based rally, and to a separate group of Black Lives Matter protesters, show that Whitewater is not a progressive city. It’s not even a center-left city.

If Whitewater were a progressive city, or even a center-left city, then her city manager would not have been confused and frustrated at the simple observation that (1) ‘Black Lives Matter’ simply means ‘Black Lives Matter [as much],’ (2) would have readily understood that ‘All Lives Matter‘ is a rejection of ‘Black Lives Matter [as much],’ (3) would not have gone to another city and complained about the reasonable expectation to understand these points, and (4) the Whitewater Common Council would have addressed all of this more confidently, responsively, and openly.

The reception for that BLM group, of which two university professors were core members, shows limits of progressive politics – or any significant political changes – in the city. Some of those limits are structural and some are cultural. See Built Against Substantive Change.

(These progressive efforts for change, including presenting several enumerated demands, would not have been my approach, in any event. One does not demand what one cannot lawfully take, and there was no chance of compelling immediate change from Whitewater’s city government or agencies. In the absence of a lawful power to demand, successful efforts are attritional, not immediate. An approach that looks at many parts of an institution at once – from bottom, sides, and top – is less practical than a focus on one part. If one wishes to negotiate with leaders, that’s a lengthy process of discussion. If one opposes leadership, then a long attrition campaign should stay focused on those leaders, without additional goals. Lengthy means lengthy, and long means long.)

And yet, and yet — what part of their free exercise threatened others? Would Dr. Thomas have called down lightning from the sky? (How convenient, then, to fly a kite and key.) Would Dr. McFadden have sent a flock of flying monkeys into the city? (It seems unlikely; having seen Dr. McFadden and her friends march through town, her complexion shows no tint of green.)

About those BLM protesters, marching day after day in the summer, a simple observation: it’s a loss of composure, if not of reason, to have overreacted to them as though they were a danger to this city. If lawful marches and lawful discussions are too hard for Whitewater’s residents and officials, then the deficiency lies with residents and officials rather than these protesters.

Tomorrow: The Campus.

Previously: Unofficial Spring Election Results, The Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater, and The City’s Center-Left.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.10.21

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 52.  Sunrise is 6:19 AM and sunset 7:32 PM, for 13h 13m 02s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 2.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 2019, scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope project announce the first-ever image of a black hole, located in the center of the M87 galaxy.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Daphne Chen, Sarah Volpenhein, and Olivia Cohen report Garbage bags as PPE. Infected staff on duty. Residents found unresponsive. Wisconsin nursing homes during the pandemic:

In one of the most comprehensive looks at nursing home safety during the pandemic, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation has found that 1 in 3 Wisconsin facilities violated coronavirus protocols, including by asking COVID-positive staff to keep working, not screening visitors for symptoms and not isolating infected residents.

Even when inspectors were present, employees at several facilities didn’t always wear face masks. Two homes substituted flannel shirts or plastic aprons for gowns, despite having an ample supply. At least five nursing homes didn’t tell residents or their families about coronavirus cases for days or weeks.

According to the Journal Sentinel review of hundreds of state and federal inspection reports from March 2020 to January 2021, officials cited 133 of Wisconsin’s 360 nursing homes for coronavirus-related violations, with some of them incurring multiple violations.

Two-thirds of the violations occurred in August or later, months into the pandemic, showing that even with more time and better access to masks and testing, some nursing homes still failed to take basic measures to prevent the spread of the virus.

See Database: Look up Wisconsin nursing homes with coronavirus deficiencies. (As of 4.10.21, the database includes a 7.16.20 report for violations at Fairhaven.)

Dan Diamond reports Trump officials celebrated efforts to change CDC reports on coronavirus, emails show:

Trump appointees in the Department of Health and Human Services last year privately touted their efforts to block or alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus to more closely align with President Donald Trump’s more optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators.

The documents provide further insight into how senior Trump officials approached last year’s explosion of coronavirus cases in the United States. Even as career government scientists worked to combat the virus, a cadre of Trump appointees was attempting to blunt the scientists’ messages, edit their findings and equip the president with an alternate set of talking points.

Science adviser Paul Alexander wrote to HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo on Sept. 9, touting two examples of where he said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had bowed to his pressure and changed language in their reports, according to an email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak.

 Leon Yin and Aaron Sankin report Google Blocks Advertisers from Targeting Black Lives Matter YouTube Videos:

Last June, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki made a big promise to help Black YouTubers.

“We’re committed to doing better as a platform to center and amplify Black voices and perspectives,” she wrote in a blog post, announcing a $100 million fund to support them. “At YouTube, we believe Black lives matter and we all need to do more to dismantle systemic racism.”

But an investigation by The Markup found that YouTube parent company Google blocks advertisers from using dozens of social and racial justice terms, including Black Lives Matter, to find YouTube videos and channels upon which to advertise.

At the same time, Google offered advertisers hundreds of millions of choices for YouTube videos and channels related to White supremacist and other hate terms when we began our investigation, including “all lives matter”—a phrase frequently used as a dismissive rejoinder to Black Lives Matter—and “White lives matter.”

St Vincent rocked by explosive eruptions at La Soufrière volcano:

City, Local Government, Politics, School District, Whitewater's Local Politics 2021

Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: The City’s Center-Left

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This is the third in a series on Whitewater’s local politics of 2021. There’s a joke that a Democrat told me at the turn of the century about Democrats in Whitewater: “Do you know who’s the head of the Whitewater Democrats? No? Well, neither do we.”

Those days are long past.

The Great Recession (‘07-‘09), its lingering aftermath, and a divisive statewide politics under Walker led to the rise of a more visible group of Democrats in town. The traditional conservatives in the city were shocked, simply shocked to see that residents were protesting Walker, collecting signatures for a recall, or campaigning more openly than before for Democratic candidates.

Politicking that was normal and ordinary for other cities breached traditional Whitewater’s cultural perimeter fence. About a decade ago, a traditional conservative worried himself about “pickets” protesting on a sidewalk, and sought to reassure others that the protest was under the watch of a strong law enforcement presence. Oh, brother.

Now, a decade on, Democrats in the city are more visible than before.

They will self-define as they wish, but I’ll divide the city’s Democrats into two main types: the center-left and progressives. While these terms vary from person to person, the distinction here is between someone like Biden (center-left) and someone like Sanders (progressive). Some ham-handedly misidentify distinct type after type, and fling terms with disregard (e.g., center-left, progressives, socialists, Marxists, Mauritanians, Lithuanians, whatever…). There are obvious & meaningful distinctions.

It’s the center-left that predominates among Democrats in Whitewater (as they do among Democrats in most places).

They are now, and are likely to to remain, a group that can easily recognize its own, more-numerous members.

Whether they develop as a group that acts confidently for its views, advocating and defending locally, will determine their future in the city. (Conservatives in Whitewater, by contrast, consistently assert and defend their own views. They are outspoken. The traditional conservatives speak by habit, the transactionalists by calculation, and the populists by instinct. For decades conservatives predominated in the city, and saw themselves as the eternal, unalterable default politics of the city.)

While the center-left has grown more numerous, and so more visible, it is notably less assertive than any kind of conservative in town. Perhaps a memory of being less common makes them softer spoken and more deferential. It’s evident that the center-left in many other cities, including nearby ones, is more assertive than the center-left in Whitewater.

The local center-left is chiefly uniform in manner and expression, so that (unlike the conservative populists) the messaging of some would not likely undermine the messaging of others (but there’s an exception to mention later in this series).

They face two big challenges in Whitewater.

First, as some among the center-left now have opportunities for boards and commissions that they did not have before, a tendency for compromise and concession makes them vulnerable to conservative transactionalists’ proposals and deal-making. (While many conservative populists consider deals with the center-left inherently unacceptable, the transactionalists know the value of a temporary deal that makes them look fair-minded while concurrently redistributing public resources to their right-leaning cronies.)

Second, they’ve the tendency of many in Whitewater to ignore local political adversaries in the hope that those adversaries will simply go away. Doubtless, some adversaries will fade away. It’s a mistake, however, to think that all of one’s political adversaries will go away. The traditional conservatives lived behind a cultural perimeter fence of their own construction, convinced they could ignore anyone beyond, and it’s brought them only decline.

Tomorrow: The City’s Few Progressives.

Previously: Unofficial Spring Election Results and The Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.9.21

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see a morning shower with a high of 58.  Sunrise is 6:20 AM and sunset 7:31 PM, for 13h 10m 12s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 6.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

The City of Whitewater will hold a Board of Canvass this afternoon at 2:00 PM.

On this day in 1865, Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the war.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Robert A. Pape writes What an analysis of 377 Americans arrested or charged in the Capitol insurrection tells us:

The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), working with court records, has analyzed the demographics and home county characteristics of the 377 Americans, from 250 counties in 44 states, arrested or charged in the Capitol attack.

Those involved are, by and large, older and more professional than right-wing protesters we have surveyed in the past. They typically have no ties to existing right-wing groups. But like earlier protesters, they are 95 percent White and 85 percent male, and many live near and among Biden supporters in blue and purple counties.

The charges have, so far, been generally in proportion to state and county populations as a whole. Only Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and Montana appear to have sent more protesters to D.C. suspected of crimes than their populations would suggest.

Nor were these insurrectionists typically from deep-red counties. Some 52 percent are from blue counties that Biden comfortably won. But by far the most interesting characteristic common to the insurrectionists’ backgrounds has to do with changes in their local demographics: Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic White population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists who now face charges.

….

When compared with almost 2,900 other counties in the United States, our analysis of the 250 counties where those charged or arrested live reveals that the counties that had the greatest decline in White population had an 18 percent chance of sending an insurrectionist to D.C., while the counties that saw the least decline in the White population had only a 3 percent chance. This finding holds even when controlling for population size, distance to D.C., unemployment rate and urban/rural location. It also would occur by chance less than once in 1,000 times.

Put another way, the people alleged by authorities to have taken the law into their hands on Jan. 6 typically hail from places where non-White populations are growing fastest.

Shane Goldmacher reports G.O.P. Group Warns of ‘Defector’ List if Donors Uncheck Recurring Box:

The political arm of House Republicans is deploying a prechecked box to enroll donors into repeating monthly donations — and using ominous language to warn them of the consequences if they opt out: “If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”

The language appears to be an effort by the National Republican Congressional Committee to increase its volume of recurring donations, which are highly lucrative, while invoking former President Donald J. Trump’s popularity with the conservative base. Those donors who do not proactively uncheck the box will have their credit cards billed or bank accounts deducted for donations every month.

The prechecked box is the same tactic and tool that resulted in a surge of refunds and credit card complaints when used by Mr. Trump’s campaign last year, according to an investigation published by The New York Times over the weekend. The Trump operation made the language inside its prechecked boxes increasingly opaque as the election neared. Consumer advocates and user-interface designers said the prechecked boxes were a “dark pattern” intended to deceive Mr. Trump’s supporters.

  Why The U.S. EV Industry Is Facing A Battery Shortage:

City, Local Government, Politics, School District, Whitewater's Local Politics 2021

Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: The Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater

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This is the second in a series on Whitewater’s local politics of 2021. There are three principal kinds of conservatives in Whitewater. There are more kinds than this, of course, as there are many kinds of cats within the family Felidae; it’s enough for now to focus on the most common species within that family.

Whitewater’s three main conservative types: traditional, transactional, and populist. A description of each follows.

Traditionalists. Mostly local born, conservative socially before ‘cultural conservatism’ was a distinguishing term, short-term in outlook, plain in manners, speech, dress, and spending, with expectations of a social hierarchy in which a few town notables decided for the whole community. It is this group – or at least some of its prominent members – who have advanced boosterism in Whitewater as though it were a secular religion. However defending of orthodoxy they may consider themselves, they’re truly heterodox: their theology mixes with their social outlook so that its hard to tell which matters more to them.

Theirs was – and still is for their remaining numbers – a creed in which one accentuated the positive, ignored unpleasant observations or questions, and made sure that there was a (metaphorically) narrow perimeter fence that kept outsiders and outside discussions to a minimum. Babbitt would read like an instruction manual to them.  There’s a Japanese expression that reminds of this outlook (although it is sometimes mistakenly attributed as Scandinavian): ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.’

They contend that this imposed order is necessary for the common good.

Along with boosterism, this type has another core belief: conflicts of interest principles do not apply to them. They are certain that, although it may be impossible for others, they can perform multiple, conflicting roles without bias or prejudice. It would never occur to them to doubt their own judgment.

This group wanes a bit more each year. They’re no longer the leading conservative force in Whitewater.

The most zealous of the boosters, however, were not locals at all, but new officials who became converts to the traditionalists’ boosterism so that they might have a place at the table. (Sometimes they weren’t even conservatives, but it was a conservative table setting.)

Newcomers were expected to learn how to conform, so that they might truly arrive in that small social circle. What a shame, truly, that these newcoming men and women did not see — or were not reminded by others – that they arrived from the moment they were born.

Transactionalists. A second kind of conservative – transactional ones – began their advance while the traditionalists were still dominant, took some of the traditionalists’ views, discarded others, and mixed the resulting concoction to promote their particular business interests.

There are few of them, but no group of conservatives in Whitewater has been so skillful. They are deal-and-business oriented, so long as the deals and businesses are theirs.

These are not pro-market men (where markets are voluntary private combinations of capital, labor, goods, and services). They are pro-business men, and while the language of markets may be useful for them, the underlying principles mean little.

Unlike the traditionalists, they’ll gladly form relationships, and adopt the styles, of others if doing so redounds to their advantage. When they no longer see an advantage for themselves, they’ll discard those relationships. They are hardy and adaptable.

They contend that the public money they direct into their preferred capital projects is necessary for the common good.

Like the traditionalists, they do not believe conflict of interest principles should apply to their dealings. Unlike the traditionalists, they are far better at manipulating rules and agency actions to their own advantage. They conceal the extent of their maneuverings by co-opting others, who become provisionally useful to the transactionalists’ ambitions.

Populists.  While there have always been populists (of right or left), Whitewater has never been fond of outspoken men and women. Large-scale conservative populism has only flourished in the last ten years, in Whitewater and other places like it. Most of these conservative populists are Trumpists, but not all. In any event, whatever their movement comes to be called, Trumpism will outlast Trump.

They contend that they uphold conservative tradition more truly than the traditionalists and conservative economics more effectively than the transactionalists. They see themselves variously and contradictorily as either facing ruin or assured of success.

Some are new to politics, some have been around. Some are well-read and literate, others not. Unlike conservative traditionalists or transactionalists, who are mostly like other members of their respective groups, the conservative populists vary widely in ability and sophistication.

All the populists share a desire to speak – they’re highly motivated and outspoken – but their varying abilities leave some at risk of confusing or detracting from the messages of others. (When a group is uniform in members’ abilities, some won’t detract from others because they’re all of similar strength.)

The populists are often underestimated. I have been – and am – a critic of these rebranded Trumpists, but have never underestimated them.

These populist conservatives are not deal-makers: they want what they want, on their terms, as soon as they can get it. As the traditionalists fade away, the question among conservatives in Whitewater (and other places) will be whether the deal-makers or the populists dominate right-of-center politics.

Tomorrow: The City’s Center-Left.

Previously: Unofficial Spring Election Results.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.8.21

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 64.  Sunrise is 6:22 AM and sunset 7:30 PM, for 13h 07m 22s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 12.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1820, the Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham report White Evangelical Resistance Is Obstacle in Vaccination Effort:

The opposition is rooted in a mix of religious faith and a longstanding wariness of mainstream science, and it is fueled by broader cultural distrust of institutions and gravitation to online conspiracy theories. The sheer size of the community poses a major problem for the country’s ability to recover from a pandemic that has resulted in the deaths of half a million Americans. And evangelical ideas and instincts have a way of spreading, even internationally.

There are about 41 million white evangelical adults in the U.S. About 45 percent said in late February that they would not get vaccinated against Covid-19, making them among the least likely demographic groups to do so, according to the Pew Research Center.

“If we can’t get a significant number of white evangelicals to come around on this, the pandemic is going to last much longer than it needs to,” said Jamie Aten, founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution in Illinois.

As vaccines become more widely available, and as worrisome virus variants develop, the problem takes on new urgency.

 Tom Hamburger reports NRA chief Wayne LaPierre acknowledges he did not disclose bankruptcy plans or luxury yacht trips to other top officials:

Wayne LaPierre, who positioned the National Rifle Association as an uncompromising lobbying powerhouse over the past three decades, admitted Wednesday that he did not disclose free trips he took on a luxury yacht and acknowledged that some top NRA officials were not informed in advance of his plan to seek bankruptcy protection for the group.

Under questioning on the third day of a federal bankruptcy hearing, LaPierre defended his leadership of the gun rights group and the benefits he and his family received from NRA contractors.

But his testimony undercut arguments by NRA lawyers this week that LaPierre has effectively cleaned up ethical and governance problems since 2018, when the organization was first alerted by New York state officials of possible fiscal mismanagement.

Last year, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) sued the NRA, alleging that LaPierre and three other top officials used the group’s resources for their own personal benefit. She has sought to dissolve the organization.

(No group has done more harm to legitimate Second Amendment rights than LaPierre’s NRA.)

 Shamane Mills reports Feds Paying $1M To Settle Case of VA Patient Who Died from Exposure to Frigid Temperatures:

Vance E. Perry, 57, was released from the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital on Dec. 30, 2017, following treatment for ongoing health problems, including a mental illness known to cause confusion and disorientation. Perry had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was at the hospital for a medication check, according to the family’s attorney.

The Army veteran never made it home. Perry was found dead a day later in a parking garage.

“He couldn’t care for himself. He couldn’t remember anything you told him from one minute to the next. If you told him, ‘Wait here for the cab,’ he wouldn’t remember that you told him that two minutes later,” said attorney Terrence Polich who represented Perry’s family in a lawsuit against the Veterans Affairs Hospital.

SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Nails Landing on Drone Ship at Sea:

City, Local Government, Politics, School District, Whitewater's Local Politics 2021

Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: Unofficial Spring Election Results

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This is the first in a series on Whitewater’s local politics of 2021. One begins with two reminders: I endorsed no one in any local races, and suggested that for some – but not for those watching carefully – the results were likely to be a surprise. (They should not have been a surprise.)

Today’s post will summarize the local election results and offer a few observations; subsequent posts in the series will expand on particular, and notable, local political conditions.

For the Whitewater Unified School District, the district saw three active candidates on the ballot for two seats on the board. Unofficial results from Rock, Jefferson, and Walworth counties: Maryann Zimmerman 1354, Larry Kachel 1322, Tom Ganzer (I) 1075.

In the City of Whitewater, for an at-large council seat, unofficial results show Lisa Dawsey-Smith with 708, Dan Machalik with 328. In the fifth aldermanic district, Greg Majkrzak (I) received 62 votes, with Neil Hicks receiving 60. In the first aldermanic district, Carol McCormick (I) ran unopposed, as did Brienne Brown (I) in the third aldermanic district.

The center-left candidate in the statewide race for schools superintendent, Jill Underly, carried Whitewater over the center-right candidate, Deb Kerr, by 842-379.

A few remarks: 

Voters won’t help an incumbent who won’t help himself. One expects an incumbent to advance his record confidently and defend himself thoroughly against criticism. People aren’t inclined to do for a politician what he won’t do for himself. Advancing and defending are not assurances of re-election, but their absence makes defeat likely. It has been a tumultuous year; passivity is not a winning response to tumult.

Underly’s Performance. Jill Underly performed meaningfully better in Whitewater than Tom Ganser, the incumbent school board candidate. They were ideologically similar candidates with different local receptions. It’s not broad ideology, but particular local circumstances, that account for their different levels of support.

The election invites consideration (among other topics) of the kinds of conservatives in Whitewater, the city’s center-left, the city’s few progressives, managing Whitewater’s common council, the intermixing of city & district politics, demographics, marketing, and majoritarianism in the school district, and the limits of political change in the city or school district.

Tomorrow: The Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.7.21

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of  78.  Sunrise is 6:24 AM and sunset 7:28 PM, for 13h 04m 31s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 19.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1827, John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Michael S. Schmidt, Maggie Haberman, and Nicholas Fandos report Matt Gaetz, Loyal for Years to Trump, Is Said to Have Sought a Blanket Pardon:

Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, was one of President Donald J. Trump’s most vocal allies during his term, publicly pledging loyalty and even signing a letter nominating the president for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the final weeks of Mr. Trump’s term, Mr. Gaetz sought something in return. He privately asked the White House for blanket pre-emptive pardons for himself and unidentified congressional allies for any crimes they may have committed, according to two people told of the discussions.

Around that time, Mr. Gaetz was also publicly calling for broad pardons from Mr. Trump to thwart what he termed the “bloodlust” of their political opponents. But Justice Department investigators had begun questioning Mr. Gaetz’s associates about his conduct, including whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old that violated sex trafficking laws, in an inquiry that grew out of the case of an indicted associate in Florida.

Alexandra Petri writes This should not happen more than once:

There are several details of the Matt Gaetz story that keep sticking in my head, but the one that sticks in it most is the report that the Florida Republican used to wander around and show his colleagues nude photos of people he had slept with. There’s a kind of grim weirdness to the idea of these interactions (which Gaetz denies) — a very “I Read On eHow.com That Men Bond Over Conquests” bewilderment. The callousness and the violation involved are enough of a sock to the gut. But the fact that this was allegedly known about him is what keeps getting to me. The fact that this, or something in this neighborhood of bad, occasioned senior staff from then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) office to have a talk with Gaetz about professional behavior.

….

To me, this is something you do, ideally, zero times. You never experience the impulse to do it, and you lead a pleasant life. You travel. You eat lunchmeat sandwiches. Maybe you do a marathon, or climb something. You lead a blithe existence for many decades, you die in your bed in your mid-nineties surrounded by your cherished relatives, and in all that time, you never walk up to a colleague on the floor of the House of Representatives and out of nowhere present him with a nude photograph of someone you claim to have had sex with.

But if you can’t do it zero times, then ideally it happens only once. It happens only once, because the moment you do it, the person you show it to responds the way a person should respond. You produce your photograph to your colleague, and your colleague looks at you and says, “Never show that to anyone, ever again. Go home and rethink your life. I do not feel closer to you. If anything, I want to have you removed forcibly from my presence by strong gentlemen whose biceps are tattooed with ‘MOM.’The fact that you thought this would make us closer makes me question every decision in my life that has led me to this point. Leave now and never come back.”

How NZ Farmers Shear 25,000 Sheep In 10 Days:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.6.21

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 78.  Sunrise is 6:26 AM and sunset 7:27 PM, for 13h 01m 40s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 28.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1831, many of the Sauk leave Wisconsin and Illinois: “On this date, in the spring of 1831, the Sauk Indians led by Chief Keokuk left their ancestral home near the mouth of the Rock River and moved across the Mississippi River to Iowa to fulfill the terms of a treaty signed in 1804. Many of the tribe, however, believed the treaty to be invalid and the following spring, when the U.S. government failed to provide them with promised supplies, this dissatisfied faction led by Black Hawk returned to their homeland on the Rock River, precipitating the Black Hawk War.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

David Leonhardt writes of Low expectations, good results:

Shortly after President Biden took office, I began asking his aides why their publicly announced goal for Covid-19 vaccine distribution — an average of one million shots a day — was so unambitious. The pace wasn’t much faster than what the Trump administration had achieved in its final days, and it was far short of the rate at which vaccine makers would be delivering doses to the government. Based on that delivery schedule, a reasonable goal seemed to be three million shots a day.

White House officials responded by talking about the logistical challenges in giving so many shots. But they never explicitly denied that three million daily shots was realistic. The response left me suspecting that their true goal was closer to three million than one million, but that they wanted to set a public goal they could comfortably clear.

Whatever you think of the P.R. strategy (and I tend to prefer transparency over artificially low expectations), the administration has now reached three million shots a day. And it deserves credit for getting there so quickly.

Doing so has required a campaign that resembles wartime mobilization in its speed and complexity. It has involved state and local governments as well as the private sector. It has combined existing infrastructure like pharmacies with brand-new mass-vaccination clinics at sports stadiums and amusement parks.

Alyssa Rosenberg asks The only question about QAnon that really matters:

Mulling Q’s identity is in fact the easiest question to ask about the so-called QAnon movement. It’s also the wrong one.

….

For the scores of families who have lost relatives to obsessions with QAnon’s paranoid worldviews, a Q revelation might give them someone to blame. But that doesn’t mean it would provide any real accountability. What are grieving people going to do? Sue someone for spinning a fantasy on an anonymous message board?

Unmasking Q might not even be a point of leverage in arguments with believers. After all, this is a movement that believes many powerful people have been replaced with body doubles, either because they actually died years ago or have been arrested as part of Trump’s crusade against the “deep state.”

In this context, [HBO documentary filmmaker] Hoback’s hope that QAnon followers will stop choosing “to devote their lives to a cause propagated by a cynic, who treats the whole world like it’s a game” seems sweetly naive.

(I’ve enjoyed the HBO documentary Q: Into the Storm, but share Rosenberg’s doubts that those beclouded by conspiracy theories will easily return to reason.)

Tonight’s Sky for April:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.5.21

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 74.  Sunrise is 6:27 AM and sunset 7:26 PM, for 12h 58m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 38.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 7 PM.

On this day in 1792, President Washington exercises, for the first time in American history, the constitutional authority to veto a bill.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Isaac Stanley-Becker reports Inside a stealth ‘persuasion machine’ promising Republican victories in 2022:

A Facebook page shows a child scampering down a school corridor, alerting Ohio families to a scholarship program.

Chatter fills the same page with news ranging from a state anti-corruption bill to the vibrant local real estate market. “It’s a great time to be selling a home in Columbus,” one post celebrates.

Titled Arise Ohio, the Facebook page is the creation of the American Culture Project — a nonprofit whose website says its mission is to “empower Americans with the tools and information necessary to make their voices heard in their local communities, statehouses and beyond.”

Undisclosed on the Facebook page is the nonprofit’s partisan goal. Arise Ohio and similar sites aimed at other politically pivotal states are part of a novel strategy by a little-known, Republican-aligned group to make today’s GOP more palatable to moderate voters ahead of the 2022 midterms by reshaping the “cultural narrative” on hot-button issues.

That goal, laid out in a private fundraising appeal sent last month to a Republican donor and reviewed by The Washington Post, relies on building new online communities that can be tapped at election time, with a focus on winning back Congress in 2022.

“We’ve created a persuasion machine that allows conservatives to reach, engage and move people to action like never before,” the solicitation states. “Now is the time to expand and capitalize on this machine, setting the political playing field in advance of the 2022 election.”

Steve Elbow reports Parents’ hesitancy could impede efforts to vaccinate school kids:

Vaccines could be available for children as early as this summer, but hesitancy among parents could be an obstacle to making schools COVID-free.

Pfizer announced this week that its COVID-19 vaccine is 100% effective in children ages 12 to 15, and the company plans to seek emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for that age group “in the coming weeks.”

The company launched a vaccine trial last week for children between 6 months and 11 years old.

But a survey this week by Indiana University researchers found that more than a quarter of U.S. parents don’t intend to get their kids vaccinated. Opposition is especially pronounced among Republican or Republican-leaning women, 54% of whom said they plan to have their kids skip the vaccine.

UW epidemiologist Ajay Sethi calls the potential eligibility of 12- to 15-year-olds “a very important step to increase immunity to the virus in our community.”

Why Americans Are Eating So Many Snacks: