FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread, History, Holiday

Daily Bread for 11.27.25: Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1863

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Good morning.

Thanksgiving in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 32. Sunrise is 7:01 and sunset is 4:23 for 9 hours 21 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 43.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1924, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is held in New York City.

President Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation from October 3, 1863 is enduringly beautiful:

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans. mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October, A. D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

Butterfly Nebula captured by Gemini South to celebrate observatory’s 25th anniversary:

Congress, Courts, Daily Bread, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.26.25: Wisconsin Supreme Court Appoints Redistricting Panels

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 39. Sunrise is 7:00 and sunset is 4:23 for 9 hours 23 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 33 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1941, the Hull note is given to the Japanese ambassador, demanding that Japan withdraw from China and French Indochina, in return for which the United States would lift economic sanctions. On the same day, Japan’s 1st Air Fleet departs Hitokappu Bay for Hawaii.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 4-3 vote, has appointed two judicial panels to consider challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional maps:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has appointed judicial panels to hear two lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional districts, a move that could lead to the Republican-leaning map being redrawn ahead of the 2026 midterms.

In two orders issued Tuesday, justices established separate three-judge panels to hear the cases, implementing a process that was created by Republicans 14 years ago.

Under that procedure, the lawsuits against the maps will proceed in Dane County Circuit Court, where they’ll be presided over by panels of judges from multiple counties.

It’s a process that’s never been used, and until Tuesday’s orders, it was unclear whether justices would turn to it here. While the court has a 4-3 liberal majority, it has declined to hear other challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional map.

Plaintiffs in these cases, however, argued the court had no choice [but] to set those wheels in motion once their lawsuits were filed, and the court’s liberal majority agreed. Each complaint, justices wrote, constituted an “action to challenge the apportionment of a congressional or state legislative district” under the law. 

“This court is required to appoint a three-judge panel,” the court’s majority wrote.

Two of the court’s conservatives — Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley — dissented, accusing their liberal colleagues of working to deliver partisan, political advantage to Democrats.

See Shawn Johnson, Wisconsin congressional map lawsuits move forward as state Supreme Court appoints panels, Wisconsin Public Radio, November 26, 2025.

See also Bothfeld v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, 2025 WI 53, No. 2025XX1438 (Wis. Nov. 25, 2025) (order) and Wis. Business Leaders for Democracy v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, 2025 WI 52, No. 2025XX1330 (Wis. Nov. 25, 2025) (order).

BothfeldDownload
Wisconsin Business LeadersDownload

There’s one unfortunate discovery by Mark Joseph Stern in Justice Ziegler’s dissent in Bothfeld, where Ziegler cites Moore v. Harper, 600 U.S. 1 (2023):

Does this quote actually appear in Moore v. Harper? Did Moore say that state courts’ role in congressional redistricting is “exceedingly limited”? I don’t think it did!…To the contrary: In Moore v. Harper, the majority acknowledged that state courts may play a legitimate, meaningful role in congressional redistricting. Ziegler seems to have made up a quote that (a) doesn’t appear in the opinion and (b) contradicts its holding.

Stern is right: the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Moore v. Harper, 600 U.S. 1 (2023), never uses the expression “exceedingly limited.” The Court applies no such concept, expressly or implicitly. There is no circumstance in which a Wisconsin court’s opinion — or any party’s brief or other pleading — should cite that expression as though it’s part of Moore.

Nanocosmos shows nature’s invisible art:

In ‘Nanocosmos: Journeys in Electron Space’, Michael Benson uses a scanning electron microscope to photograph an awe-inspiring tiny world.

America, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment

Daily Bread for 11.25.25: Private Job Losses Increase

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 51. Sunrise is 6:59 and sunset is 4:24 for 9 hours 25 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 24.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM.

Restein, Edmund P., 1837-1891 , lithographer; Restein, Ludwig, b. ca. 1838. “Evacuation Day” and Washington’s Triumphal Entry in New York City, Nov. 25th, 1783 Public Domain, Link.

On this day in 1783, the last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

These payroll reports don’t seem like the ‘new golden age‘ Mr. Trump promised us:

The U.S. labor market is showing further signs of weakening as the pace of layoffs has picked up over the past four weeks, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Tuesday.

Private companies lost an average of 13,500 jobs a week over the past four weeks, ADP said as part of a running update it has been providing. That’s an acceleration from the 2,500 jobs a week lost in the last update a week ago.

With the government shutdown still impacting data releases, alternative data like ADP’s has been filling in the blanks on the economic picture. 

Government agencies such as the Bureaus of Labor Statistics and Economic Analysis have released revised schedules, but critical reports such as the monthly nonfarm payrolls count won’t come out until December.

See Jeff Cox, Private payroll losses accelerated in the past four weeks, ADP reports, CNBC, November 25, 2025.

More than 100 homes damaged by tornado near Houston:

More than 100 homes have been damaged after a tornado touched down in a residential area outside Houston, authorities in Texas said Monday. No injuries were reported.

America, City, Culture, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.24.25: It’s Different Everywhere Now (Whitewater, Too)

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 50. Sunrise is 6:58 and sunset is 4:24 for 9 hours 26 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is killed by Jack Ruby on live television. Robert H. Jackson takes a photograph of the shooting that will win the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in Photography.

A New York Times story, focusing on the men corresponding with Jeffrey Epstein, captures the changes to New York — and one can infer reasonably many other places — in the decade or so since some of those emails were written. Without question, the paramount moral question in the Epstein emails is what they might show about nonconsensual sexual conduct (minors cannot consent, and adults cannot morally be subject to contact without consent). Reporter Shawn McCreesh also notices, however, the truth that the social scene in which Epstein lived has withered:

The emails are like a portal back to a lost Manhattan power scene. Mr. Epstein’s inbox was larded with boldface names — many of them now faded or forgotten — that once meant everything to status-obsessed New Yorkers. It was the world that Donald Trump came out of, and the one that Mr. Epstein had so effectively beguiled after having grown up in a middle-class household in Coney Island.

As the emails stretch through the years, they show how that protected realm vanished into the mists of time, pulled under by the rising forces of the internet and the #MeToo movement. Mr. Epstein and some of his male correspondents seem to squirm as they notice society changing around them…

The emails show how the clubby nature of the old media suited Mr. Epstein. R. Couri Hay, a well-connected press agent, was another of Mr. Epstein’s correspondents. In 2011, Mr. Hay sent an email to warn that Tina Brown (the former editor of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, who was in charge of Newsweek and The Daily Beast at the time) had assigned a story on Mr. Epstein to the writer Alexandra Wolfe (whose father was Tom Wolfe).

“This is for Newsweek, the magazine that is on the stands, not the website,” Mr. Hay explained.

See Shawn McCreesh, Epstein Emails Reveal a Bygone Elite (‘The disgraced financier’s recently released documents are steeped in a clubby world that is all but gone’), New York Times, November 17, 2025.

These observations apply, in their own way, to small towns as much as Manhattan — newspapers have collapsed, the present generation looks for information elsewhere, and the older generation of dissolute social climbers and schemers now looks simultaneously repulsive and pathetic. These are people who lived as though they were appetitive primates, hooting, grabbing, and signaling to others.

A person of sound morality and outlook would not compromise his or her views to associate with that ilk. Empty, needy men climbing and grasping — and injuring any and all along the way — are rightly objects of contempt and derision.

They should be remembered for any misconduct proved against them. Their world has faded in significant measure, and everyone is better off for it.

A theme here at FREE WHITEWATER: these are ideological times, regardless of one’s ideology. Men and women should climb ladders for reasons beyond being noticed. There’s good work to be done, and bad work to be opposed. A life well lived is more than preening, more than headlines, more than press releases. See Hyper-Local Politics is Finished (It’s Just That Not Everyone Sees it Yet) (“Anyone who ever said – and so many men in this city have said – that the goal of local politics was merely to place adults in the room underestimated the possibilities for politics and over-estimated his own importance”).

No one in this city hopes more than this libertarian blogger that the next generation does better than the last. This consolation reassures: the next generation cannot possibly do worse.

Ethiopia’s Hayli Gubbi volcano erupts for first time in recorded history, sending ash plume sky high:

The long-dormant mountain in the Afar region began to send ash sky high on Sunday.

Daily Bread, Economy, Mendacity

Daily Bread for 11.23.25: Misleading (Yet Again) on Ordinary Conditions

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:57 and sunset is 4:25 for 9 hours 28 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 9.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1924, Edwin Hubble‘s discovery, that the Andromeda “nebula” is actually another island galaxy far outside our own Milky Way, is first published in the New York Times:

This was first hypothesized as early as 1755 when Immanuel Kant’s General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens appeared. Hubble’s hypothesis was opposed by many in the astronomy establishment of the time, in particular by Harvard University–based Harlow Shapley. Despite the opposition, Hubble, then a thirty-five-year-old scientist, had his findings first published in The New York Times on November 23, 1924, then presented them to other astronomers at the January 1, 1925, meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Hubble’s results for the Andromeda galaxy were not formally published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal until 1929.

Trump misleads even on a simple claim about Thanksgiving prices:

“Walmart just announced that the cost of their standard Thanksgiving meal is reduced by 25 percent this year from last year”

— in a [Trump] speech at an investment forum on Wednesday

This is misleading. While it is true that Walmart announced that this year’s Thanksgiving meal — its annual basket of items for a holiday spread — would cost 25 percent less than last year’s, the contents of this year’s basket were considerably different.

Walmart, which began offering the basket in 2022, said in a news release last year that its Thanksgiving meal then included 29 items, which totaled about $55. This year’s basket included 22 items, totaling just under $40 — a decrease of about 25 percent.

The baskets also included different items, different brands and different sizes. For example, the 2024 basket included a frozen turkey weighing between 10 and 16 pounds at a cost of $0.88 per pound, while the 2025 basket includes a 13.5-pound turkey at a cost of $0.97 per pound. The 2025 basket does not include nine of the 2024 items, but added four new items. And among items in both years’ baskets, fried onions and mushroom soup came in smaller amounts this year.

See Linda Qiu, Fact-Checking Trump’s Latest Claims on Affordability (‘The president has made misleading statements about the cost of a Thanksgiving meal, breakfast and gasoline and about prices in general’), New York Times, November 23, 2025.

Misleading? Yes, to the marrow.

‘Stadium effect’ captured in eye of Hurricane Melissa:

A rare look into the eye of a category 5 storm has been captured by a US Air Force plane flying through Hurricane Melissa.

Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.22.25: 0.001353%

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 47. Sunrise is 6:56 and sunset is 4:26 for 9 hours 30 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1963, President Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor Connally is seriously wounded by Lee Harvey Oswald, who also kills Dallas Police officer J. D. Tippit after fleeing the scene. Vice President Johnson is sworn in as the 36th President of the United States afterwards.

When the populists feel that they might lose an election, or when in fact they have lost an election, they’re quick to cry fraud. The possible, credible allegations of fraud in Wisconsin elections are far fewer. The 2024 November election shows how rare those credible allegations — ones referred by election clerks — are:

Wisconsin election clerks referred 46 instances of suspected fraud and voting irregularities to prosecutors related to the November 2024 presidential election, a report released this week showed, representing a tiny fraction of the more than 3.4 million ballots cast.

See Scott Bauer, ‘Wisconsin clerks refer 46 cases of suspected fraud, irregularities in 2024 presidential election, Associated Press, November 21, 2025.

What percentage is this?

It is 0.001353%.

The percentage chance of sighting a leprechaun on Election Day would be higher.

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft soars in first flight highlights:

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft conducted its historic first-ever flight on Oct. 28, 2025. See the flight highlights here.

City, Daily Bread, Economy, Local Government, Tariffs

Daily Bread for 11.21.25: Shoppers Scale Back

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 6:54 and sunset is 4:26 for 9 hours 32 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1969, the first permanent ARPANET link is established between UCLA and SRI.

In Whitewater, one sometimes hears at the Common Council lectern from one or another of yesteryear’s men, having positioned themselves as concerned about taxes, and complaining about this local action or that. How odd to read, then, that the very party they likely supported, and the candidates they likely supported, are responsible for America’s multiple challenges with affordability:

Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s and TJX — the parent company of TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods — all described a cautious consumer, with tariffs, political tensions, still-high interest rates, an uncertain job market and the rising cost of essentials bogging down their outlook on the economy. But they continue to spend as the holiday season approaches — stretching their budget to afford groceries and essentials and willing to splurge if the deal is right and the product is new and on-trend. 

Analysts also had a caveat: The future could get murkier after the holidays as more tariff-induced price increases will likely be passed on to consumers. 

Consumers are “stable on the necessities but hesitant on big spending,” said Bryan Hayes, an analyst at Zacks Investment Research. “This cautionary theme of spending will certainly linger into early next year and likely midway through.”

(Emphasis added.)

See Jaclyn Peiser, ‘Anxious’ shoppers keep scaling back and hunting for deals, retailers say, Washington Post, November 21, 2025.

An entitled perspective is not an enlightened one. As it turns out, an inherited collection of student rentals is a poor substitute for sound reading and good judgment.

Wisconsin Life | Keeping a Swedish candle tradition alive:

Inspired by his Swedish family and a passion for making things, Alan Anderson makes a batch of traditional “grenljus” each year in his Baraboo home. The meditative process connects him to ancestors who made three-pronged candles for winter survival and religious celebrations — and reminds us of the value of carrying on folk art traditions.

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, November 25th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, What’s Cooking

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Tuesday, November 25th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of What’s Cooking @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Comedy/ Drama/ Romance Rated PG-13 (language)

1 hours, 49 minutes (2000)

Several families of different ethnicity gather together for Thanksgiving dinner, with much humor, drama, and love. Starring Joan Chen, Juliana Margulies, Mercedes Ruehl, Alfre Woodard, and Dennis Haysbert.

One can find more information about What’s Cooking at the Internet Movie Database.

City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Nature

Daily Bread for 11.20.25: Whitewater’s Lakes

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 49. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset is 4:27 for 9 hours 34 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with 0.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1820, an 80-ton sperm whale attacks and sinks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America. (Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick was, in part, inspired by the incident.)

Whitewater has made progress on the condition of her two lakes, Cravath and Trippe. (The video above, from part of the November 18th meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, describes that progress.)

Toward the end of the last city administration, and one of the reasons it became the last city administration, there was community ire about the state of Cravath and Trippe Lakes following a botched drainage effort. There was more than one heated meeting at which residents complained about the sorry condition of our two lakes.

While the drainage effort was botched, the controversy illustrated four aspects of Whitewater’s community response: (1) a few longtime residents were for many years concerned about our lakes, (2) the drainage effort was not properly supervised, (3) many other longtime residents who ignored the lakes for years suddenly saw it as a crisis, and (4) there was a reflex among those longtime residents who ignored the lakes for years to blame the WI DNR or any other outside group they could. Residents who lived here for many years saw the lakes deteriorate over more than a decade. We did too little for too long. (My own limited writing about the lakes was too little to count as anything like vigilance.)

Our lakes, our responsibility.

Then came a few complaints that the current local government needed to fix the lakes — pronto — when we had, as a community, ignored them for many years.

As it has turned out, that local government and the dedicated residents who have helped them in this effort have done better than most would have expected in improving the condition of the lakes. (This includes treatments for the lakes better crafted than the prior slapdash scheme around the time of drainage.)

Not finished, but a work in progress. Not pristine, but better. (But then, pristine isn’t a steady natural state.)

Better is welcome.

NASA unveils close-up images of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas:

NASA unveiled close-up pictures on Wednesday of the interstellar comet that’s making a quick one-and-done tour of the solar system.

Daily Bread, Health, Legislation, Legislature, Speaker Vos, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 11.19.25: Robin Vos Was Never a Reliable Vote for Fundamental Principles

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 44. Sunrise is 6:52 and sunset is 4:28 for 9 hours 36 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 0.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks and Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1863, President Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

ProPublica has just published a story on Robin Vos’s betrayal of his own professed pro-life position:

The most powerful Republican in Wisconsin stepped up to a lectern that was affixed with a sign reading, “Pro-Women Pro-Babies Pro-Life Rally.”

“One of the reasons that I ran for office was to protect the lives of unborn children,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the cheering crowd gathered in the ornate rotunda of the state Capitol. They were there on a June day in 2019 to watch him sign four anti-abortion bills and to demand that the state’s Democratic governor sign them. (The governor did not.)

“Legislative Republicans are committed to protecting the preborn because we know life is the most basic human right,” Vos promised. “We will continue to do everything we can to protect the unborn, to protect innocent lives”…

Many anti-abortion Republicans have supported new state laws and policies to extend Medicaid coverage to women for a year after giving birth, up from 60 days. The promise of free health care for a longer span can help convince women in financial crises to proceed with their pregnancies, rather than choose abortion, proponents say. And many health experts have identified the year after childbirth as a precarious time for mothers who can suffer from a host of complications, both physical and mental.

Legislation to extend government-provided health care coverage for up to one year for low-income new moms has been passed in 48 other states — red, blue and purple. Not in Arkansas, where enough officials have balked. And not in Wisconsin, where the limit remains two months. And that’s only because of Vos.

The Wisconsin Senate passed legislation earlier this year that would increase Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months. In the state Assembly, 30 Republicans have co-sponsored the legislation, and there is more than enough bipartisan support to pass the bill in that chamber.

But Vos, who has been speaker for nearly 13 years and whose campaign funding decisions are considered key to victory in elections, controls the Assembly. And, according to insiders at the state Capitol, he hasn’t allowed a vote on the Senate bill or the Assembly version, burying it deep in a committee that barely meets: Regulatory Licensing Reform.

With a majority of his own Assembly caucus supporting the legislation, the emptiness of Vos’s pro-life position is stark:

“If we can’t get something like this done, then I don’t know what I’m doing in the Legislature,” Republican Rep. Patrick Snyder, the bill’s author and an ardent abortion foe, said in February in a Senate hearing.

How does Vos explain his position? He won’t:

Reached by phone, Vos declined to discuss the issue with ProPublica and referred questions to his spokesperson, who then did not respond to calls or emails.

See Megan O’Matz, He Vowed to “Protect the Unborn.” Now He’s Blocking a Bill to Expand Medicaid for Wisconsin’s New Moms (‘Splitting with anti-abortion members of his own party, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has refused to join 48 other states in ensuring that vulnerable women have access to potentially lifesaving care for up to a year after giving birth’), ProPublica, November 17, 2025.

The legislation is a specific, limited, easily managed advance for children’s health.

Big title, big office, yet not big enough to answer a simple question.

Well, yes — that’s Robin Vos in full.

Microsoft Windows Turns 40 — leaving to others whether that’s good or bad:

Microsoft Windows marks 40 years since its launch on November 20, 1985, evolving through 11 versions to become a cornerstone of modern computing.

Daily Bread, Elections, Politics, Populists, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 11.18.25: An Example of Selective WISGOP Theology

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 47. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset is 4:28 for 9 hours 38 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 5 PM and the Whitewater Common Council at 6 PM.

On this day in 1872, Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women are arrested for voting illegally in the United States presidential election of 1872.

There’s a telling passage in Andrew Shur’s recent story on WISGOP infighting over Wisconsin election reforms:

A Republican lawmaker’s plan to regulate drop boxes and give Wisconsin’s clerks more time to process absentee ballots ran into obstacles last week, including skepticism from fellow Republicans and a rival GOP bill to ban drop boxes entirely. 

The cool reception for Rep. Scott Krug’s ideas, especially to let clerks process ballots on the Monday before an election, underscores the GOP’s persistent internal divide over election policy in Wisconsin, with advocates of reforms long sought by election officials of both parties running into distrust fueled by conspiracy theories and misinformation. Last week, the resistance appeared strong enough to stall or complicate efforts by Republicans who aim to address clerks’ needs and craft workable policy that can gain Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ support.

That split was on full display at a Nov. 4 hearing of the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, chaired by Rep. Dave Maxey, R-New Berlin…

Krug, a former committee chair who championed the draft bill to regulate drop boxes, argued that his colleagues should adopt a “reality-based” mindset with their approach to drop boxes. Liberals, he said, control the governor’s office, making it all but certain that GOP Rep. Lindee Brill’s bill to ban drop boxes would get vetoed by Evers. 

To that, Brill responded: “I am a believer in God and a follower of Jesus Christ, so do I think there’s a chance that (Evers) would change his mind and sign this into law? Sure. But I’m taking this on because our Republican president believes this is the direction we should be heading.”

See Andrew Shur, Wisconsin election reforms sought by clerks are stalled by GOP infighting, Wisconsin Watch, November 14, 2025.

Under Rep. Lindee Brill’s assessment, Tony Evers might change his mind (implicitly through divine inspiration), whereas there’s no corresponding possibility that Donald Trump might change his mind. The implication is either that Trump already occupies God’s position on absentee voting or that Trump’s understanding of voting equals—or exceeds—God’s. In any event, the asymmetry is striking.

It feels strange to have to write this, but one cannot sensibly discern God’s position on absentee voting. The safest — and soundest — theological conclusion is that God, as understood by major religious traditions, has no position on absentee voting.

Brill’s entitled to her view, and while it’s not theologically sound, it’s telling: hers is politics first and a theology second. Extreme populism leads to the place where Brill’s thinking now holds sway — where religious concepts are subordinated to a political project.

See also Of David French, Traditions, and Examples.

In another part of the word, during a different kind of search, a Guardian journalist is chased by bloodhounds in a fox hunting alternative:

Guardian journalist Matthew Weaver filmed himself being chased by a pack of bloodhounds as part of a day spent ‘clean boot hunting’. Under government plans to outlaw trail hunting, the only way to legally hunt with hounds in England and Wales could soon be to chase people rather than animals or their scents. It involves bloodhounds and horse riders pursuing not foxes but cross-country runners.

Confidence Schemes, Daily Bread, Economy, Housing

Daily Bread for 11.17.25: Schemes Are a Paltry Substitute for Supply

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 47. Sunrise is 6:49 and sunset is 4:29 for 9 hours 40 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 6.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 4 PM, the Police and Fire Commission at 6 PM, and the Library Board at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1558, Queen Mary I of England dies and is succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I.

About those fifty-year mortgages that the federal administration proposed:

Trump got his fifty-year-mortgage idea from the MAGA loyalist Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who reportedly pitched it as a way to offer home buyers lower monthly payments. But Pulte seems to have neglected to tell the President a couple of pertinent facts. Since mortgage holders pay off most of the interest on a loan before they start eating into the principal in a meaningful way, it could take someone who took out a fifty-year mortgage decades to build up much equity. And, because of the longer duration of the loan, they would carry higher interest rates than shorter-term loans. Analysts at UBS Securities calculated that, under Trump’s scheme, a typical borrower with a mortgage of four hundred and twenty thousand dollars would save a hundred and nineteen dollars a month, but they would make payments for an extra twenty years and end up paying twice as much interest.

After widespread blowback to the idea, Trump’s enthusiasm for it appeared to wane, and Politico reported that White House officials were furious with Pulte for selling the President “a bill of goods.” Pulte, too, seemed to pull back. He said the Administration was considering another option, “portable mortgages” that would allow homeowners to transfer their loan for one property to another. The idea here would be to break the current logjam in which many people are reluctant to move because they’d have to take out a new mortgage at a higher rate. But Pulte provided no details about how the loan transfers would work, or whether banks would even agree to them.

See John Cassidy, Donald Trump Can’t Dodge the Costly K-Shaped Economy, The New Yorker, November 17, 2025.

The federal mortgage plan (so predatory it’s probably dead forever) gives homeowners something, but in return it takes more. It’s simply a new version of an old deception: “The Closer You Look, The Less You See.”

Schemes are a paltry a substitute for supply, as schemers aren’t worthy suppliers.

Sheep pass through Nuremberg to winter pastures in Germany: