FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread, Economy, Putin, Ukraine

Daily Bread for 2.28.22: Free Markets Bring Prosperity and Peace, but Putin Chooses War and Poverty

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 44.  Sunrise is 6:30 AM and sunset 5:43 PM for 11h 13m 31s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 6.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Whitewater School Board goes into closed session at 6 PM, and returns to open session at 7 PM.

On this day in 1997, GRB 970228, a highly luminous flash of gamma rays, strikes the Earth for 80 seconds, providing early evidence that gamma-ray bursts occur well beyond the Milky Way.

The tragedy in Ukraine is that Russian soldiers are killing and displacing innocent people. The blame lies solely with the Russian regime: they chose this war, this killing, and this destruction.

Sympathy lies with those deserving sympathy, so to speak.

And yet, in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, ordinary Russians have enjoyed a standard of living that they could not have imagined under the Soviets. Putin brings death and destruction to Ukraine, but also poverty to his own people, all in the name of Slavic brotherhood. (Putin’s brotherhood is no better than the relationship of Cain to Abel.)

Anton Troianovski reports The ruble crashes, the stock market closes and Russia’s economy staggers under sanctions:

MOSCOW — The ruble cratered, the stock market froze and the public rushed to withdraw cash on Monday as Western sanctions kicked in and Russia awoke to uncertainty and fear over the rapidly spreading repercussions of President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

As the day began, Russia’s currency lost as much as a quarter of its value within hours. Scrambling to stem the decline, the Russian Central Bank more than doubled its key interest rate, banned foreigners from selling Russian securities and ordered exporters to convert into rubles most of their foreign-currency revenues. It closed the Moscow stock exchange for the day because of the “developing situation.”

“The economic reality has, of course, changed,” the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters, announcing that Mr. Putin had called an emergency meeting with his top finance officials.

….

And with dozens of countries closing their airspace to Russian planes, major foreign investors pulling out and the West placing debilitating restrictions on Russia’s biggest banks, it was becoming clear that Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was ushering in a period of international isolation for Russia unseen since the Cold War.

“So, has Russia become Venezuela or is it still Iran?” the morning-show host on the liberal-leaning Echo of Moscow radio station asked an economist on Monday.

“We’ll go through the Iran phase,” Yevgeny S. Gontmakher of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics responded, referring to sanctions placed on Iran because of its plans for uranium enrichment, “but what happens after that is hard to say.”

Russia now experiences ‘the Iran phase’ because it has violated international law murderously.  What many ordinary Russians accumulated since the fall of communism will now be lost; they have their rulers to blame.

These ordinary Russians might have enjoyed lives like those of Italians, Spaniards, or Germans, in peaceful commerce with Europe and the world beyond.

Not now.

Putin, of course, has already stolen billions from his people. Now they’ll lose even what he left for them.

See what Putin stole from his people in PUTIN’S PALACE (full length with subtitles in English):

Daily Bread, Fellow Traveler, Fifth Columnist, Foreign Affairs, Putin, Sen. Ron Johnson, Ukraine, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.27.22: Ronald Harold, Donald John, and Vladimir Vladimirovich

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 37.  Sunrise is 6:32 AM and sunset 5:42 PM for 11h 10m 39s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 11.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1904, Wisconsin’s second state capitol burns:

On this date fire destroyed the second State Capitol building in Madison. On the evening of the 26th, the generator was turned off for the night. The only lights visible were two gas jets serving the night watchman. At approximately 2 a.m., night watchman Nat Crampton smelled smoke and followed the odor to a recently varnished ceiling, already in flames. A second watchman arrived to assist, but there was no water pressure with which to operate a hose. The fire department encountered a similar situation upon arrival. Governor Robert M. La Follette telegraphed fire departments in Janesville and Milwaukee for assistance. La Follette was at the capitol, directing efforts to douse the fire and entering the burning building to retrieve valuable papers. The fire was completely extinguished by 10 p.m. the next day. Losses were estimated to be close to $1 million.

Mark Jacob, former editor at the Chicago Tribune & Chicago Sun-Times, offers a reminder about Ronald Harold Johnson:

People gather around the world to show solidarity with Ukraine:

Daily Bread, Foreign Affairs, Putin, Ukraine

Daily Bread for 2.26.22: Ukrainian Civilians Defend Their Country from Putin’s Army

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 33.  Sunrise is 6:33 AM and sunset 5:41 PM for 11h 07m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 21.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1815, Napoleon escapes from Elba.



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Here in America, Bob Sampson states the stark truth about our own country’s disordered domestic situation: “All those politicians who send out Christmas cards with their children holding guns would be the first to flee from a real combat situation.”

Searching for supernovas:

Business, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment, Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.23.22: Ron Johnson’s Lazy Job on Jobs

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 22.  Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 5:37 PM for 10h 59m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 54% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Park Board meets at 5:30 PM, and the city’s Community Involvement Commission meets at 6:30 PM.

 This day in 1455 is traditionally assigned as the date of publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed with movable type.

 Kristin Brey asks What’s going on with Ron Johnson and jobs?:

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Johnson once fancied himself something of a libertarian (he understood little of libertarianism then, to be sure), and perhaps he thinks that he’s returning to his imagined, prior position.

Too late: years of crackpottery on issue after issue, and silence in the face of ludicrous Wisconsin fiscal policy (Foxconn) leaves Johnson with less credibility than someone on a park bench going on about the time machine he’s invented.

Johnson analyzes this issue poorly; the proper assessment is whether additional jobs truly produced would be worth any public money spent. I’d be inclined to say not, absent a strong showing otherwise. Johnson, however, undertakes no balancing at all — he simply thinks the mere existence of workers in other jobs (any jobs) means no cost-benefit assessment is necessary. That’s intellectually lazy — one should hear out advocates of public support and then consider the quality of their analysis.  (I’m a free market man, but I’d still patiently consider the quality of analysis in a proposal.) That’s where Foxconn fell flat — it reeked of flimsiness and grandiosity from the get-go (and it was flimsy and grandiose, after all).

Brey’s probably right on her third point, tellingly: follow Johnson’s big donor money to see who works him like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

Trump needs money (but of course he does):

America, City, Culture, Daily Bread, Nativism, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.22.22: The Answer to the Nativists in Whitewater Comes from… Kenya

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be icy with a high of 31.  Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 5:36 PM for 10h 56m 26s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 64.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1922, ice storms wreak havoc in Wisconsin:

Unprecedented freezing rain and snow assaulted the Midwest February 21-23, 1922. In Wisconsin the central and southern parts of the state were most severely affected, with the counties between Lake Winnebago and Lake Michigan south to Racine being hardest hit. Ice coated trees and power lines, bringing them down and cutting off electricity, telephone and telegraph services. Cities were isolated, roads were impassible, rivers rose, streets and basements flooded, and train service stopped or slowed. Near Little Chute a passenger train went off the rails, injuring several crew members. Appleton housed 150 stranded traveling salesmen, near Plymouth a sheet of river ice 35 feet long and nearly three feet thick washed onto the riverbank, while in Sheboygan police rescued a flock of chickens and ducks from their flooded coop and a sick woman from her flooded home. Icy streets caused numerous automobile accidents, but the only reported deaths were a team of horses in Appleton that was electrocuted by a fallen power line.

 In this beautiful city there are some who wrongly advance a nativist vision for Whitewater, for Wisconsin, and for America.  This ilk espouses an American version of a Blood and Soil policy (Blut und Boden) for this country. There has never been, and never will be, a person among this faction who is not wrong in principle and disgusting in action.

An answer to this faction can be found in the remarks of Kenya’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Martin Kimani:

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Fly around SpaceX Starship during destacking in drone footage:

City, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.21.22: At Last, a Hero for the Whitewater’s Development Men

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 40.  Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 5:35 PM for 10h 53m 36s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 75.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1808, without a previous declaration of war, Russian troops cross the border to Sweden at Abborfors in eastern Finland, thus beginning the Finnish War, in which Sweden will lose the eastern half of the country (i.e., Finland) to Russia. 

  There are three types of conservatives in Whitewater: traditional ones (who faved faded as a group into inconsequence), transactional conservatives (development men — dealmaking types), and the conservative populists (MAGA men).  As the traditional conservatives now count for little in Whitewater, the question for the rightwing is whether local conservativism will be dominated by little Mitch McConnells or little Donald Trumps.

While Trump inspires the MAGA types, the transactional conservatives have no similar hero (as McConnell inspires no one).

The transactionalists need wait no longer: Golfer Phil Mickelson is the man for whom they’ve been waiting. In an interview from late last year (only now gaining widespread publicity), Mickleson declares his desire to make a deal with the Saudis for a golf league of their own.

Alan Shipnuck writes

Mickelson told me [Shipnuck] he had enlisted three other “top players” he declined to name and that they paid for attorneys to write the SGL’s [Super Golf League’s] operating agreement, codifying that the players would have control of all the details. He didn’t pretend to be excited about hitching his fortunes to Saudi Arabia, admitting the SGL was nothing more than what he called “sportswashing” by a brutally repressive regime. “They’re scary motherfuckers to get involved with,” he said. “We know they killed [Washington Post reporter and U.S. resident Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.

In Mickelson’s view, influencing the PGA, and making bank if you can, is worth it all.

(It’s worth noting, contra the development men, that Adam Smith wrote both Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments, and meant both to be understood together; indeed, they are properly read as one teaching. See An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, edited with an Introduction, Notes, Marginal Summary and an Enlarged Index by Edwin Cannan (London: Methuen, 1904). 2 vols. and Smith, Adam. Theory of Moral Sentiments and Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1869). Alex Murray & Son, 1869.)

Ah, but forget about all those old books for a moment — rejoice that these gentlemen now have their hero.

Biker narrowly avoids being hit by train in northern India:

Daily Bread, Drink, Regulations

Daily Bread for 2.20.22: Keeping Kombucha Under the Limit

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 53.  Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 5:33 PM for 10h 50m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 81% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Massachusetts’s mandatory smallpox vaccination program in Jacobson v. Massachusetts.

Why Kombucha Makers Spend Millions to Make the Drink Less Boozy:

Daily Bread, Law, Litigation, Trump

Daily Bread for 2.19.22: Will Trump Plead the Fifth?

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 21.  Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 5:32 PM for 10h 48m 01s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1807, former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr is arrested for treason in Wakefield, Alabama and confined to Fort Stoddert.

So, will Donald John Trump plead the Fifth?:

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Key point from former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Litman, beginning @ 2:10: Exercising the Fifth Amendment in this New York civil action would allow for an adverse inference against Trump (as exercising those rights in a criminal case would not).

Ironically, Trump’s longstanding, but erroneous, insistence that exercising Fifth Amendment rights in criminal cases imputes guilt (“the Mob takes the Fifth“) would be, well, closer to the mark in his own New York civil case.

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, February 22nd, 1 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Roma

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Tuesday, February 22nd at 1 PM, there will be a showing of Roma @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Drama

Rated R (language/nudity)

2 hours, 15 minutes (2018)

Spanish/Mexican language with English subtitles.

A year in the life of a middle class family and their maid, in Mexico City in the early 1970’s. A slice-of-life film that you won’t soon forget. Filmed in black & white. Three Awards, 2019: Best Foreign Film, Best Cinematography, Best Director.

One can find more information about Roma at the Internet Movie Database.

Enjoy.

Conspiracy Theories, Crackpots, Daily Bread, Speaker Vos, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 2.17.22: Vos Primly Lectures Fanatics on the Dangers of Fanaticism

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 23.  Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 5:29 PM for 10h 42m 28s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 99% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1965, the Ranger 8 probe launches on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the manned Apollo missions. Mare Tranquillitatis or the “Sea of Tranquility” would become the site chosen for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

Molly Beck and Patrick Marley report Robin Vos says local Republicans are ‘incorrect’ to blame him over handling of 2020 election review:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says the Republicans in the grassroots of the party who are furious with his handling of a 2020 election review are wrong to blame him.

The anger should instead of be directed at Democrats, Vos said in his first public comments responding to a growing chorus of Republicans at the local party level calling for his resignation after he disciplined a member of his caucus over false election claims.

“In each political party, there are people who are unhappy with the direction because they’re frustrated with the state of our country. I, too, am frustrated,” Vos said Tuesday hours after more than 200 people gathered in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol, in part, to call for Vos’ resignation.

“They have filed lawsuits, they have done everything they can to try to stand in the way of getting at the truth,” he said about Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul suing to block subpoenas that are part of Assembly Republicans’ review of the 2020 election.

“So those people are incorrect in having their frustration be at the legislative Republicans, they should focus on the Democrats who are spending taxpayer dollars to be able to stop our effort to get to the truth.”

Terry Brand, chairman of the Republican Party of Langlade County, said Vos is gaslighting.

“He says we’re unhappy about the direction because we’re frustrated with the state and country. No. We’re frustrated with Vos because he hasn’t provided consistent leadership in finding the truth of what happened in the 2020 election,” Brand said. “He’s redirecting our frustration — we’re directing it directly at him.”

This small, scared man blames the fanatics he, himself, for years incited. Vos sits, drenched in his own sweat, and soaked in his own urine, as their hunting party comes for him.

See also Vos, Now on the Trumpists’ Menu, Deserves No Sympathy.

Aggressive Elephant Attacks Tourist Vehicle in Sri Lanka: