As a kid, who didn’t dream of being invincible and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…? Well, wishes do come true for 14-year-old Billy Batson, after meeting the mystical wizard Shazam. With one magic word, Billy is transformed into an adult superhero: Captain Sparklefingers! Err, Thundercrack…? (Due to copyright laws, he can’t be called the original, Captain Marvel.)
Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered morning showers with a daytime high of eighty-one. Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:26 PM, for 14h 50m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 81.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1861, the First Battle of Bull Run is the first major battle of the Civil War and a Confederate victory.
Trump’s rallies offer a strong sense of community for fans. That’s critical to the people chanting for Omar’s removal, said David Neiwert, author of Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.
Neiwert defines eliminationism as a community-based mentality that promotes “purity” by demonizing its opponents and demanding they be purged from society.
“What they’re doing is participating in a community of hate. This is actually key to a lot of its power and its attraction. It’s almost ritualized,” he told The Daily Beast. “This is how hate crimes work. Hate crimes are always message crimes directed at targets who are seen as corrupting influences and bad for the community. Hate-crime perpetrators see themselves as defending their communities while doing it. There’s always a communal aspect to this. It’s very much the mob.”
….
Christian Picciolini, a former white supremacist who now helps extremists leave hate groups, said his method involves talking and identifying sources of grief and trauma that might underlay hate.
“I listen for those potholes that detoured their life’s journey and then try to fill (repair) them,” he told The Daily Beast via email.
Lalich cited the case of Derek Black, the son of a prominent white nationalist, as an example of how deradicalization can sometimes works.
“What seems to have worked is really just engaging in dialogue, individual by individual,” she said. Black renounced white supremacy after going to college and meeting people of differing viewpoints.
But some of Trump’s most die-hard fans might be removed from dissenting opinions, [assistant professor at New York University specializing in radicalization Mary Beth] Altier said.
“Establishing alternative social bonds and networks where they can interact with people with other views” could help, she said, but “we’re not seeing that on social media. We’re seeing more polarization in society on both sides.”
(A few remarks:
These hard-core Trumpists may now be so unacculturated or alienated that they no longer live comfortably within the American democratic tradition. Indeed, some do not know the meaning of the term liberal democracy. Trump, himself, ignorantly thinks it’s a partisan term rather than a constitutional and philosophical one.
Addressing every bigoted Trumpist would be a waste of valuable effort.
The establishment of a Third Reconstruction will provide a sound foundation for individual rights, and slowly acculturate Trumpists or their descendants back into a normal American political order. )
“It was a feeling that went throughout the world, almost like an electric bolt,” one woman remembers of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The lunar landing, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on July 20, is collectively remembered in the film by a handful of the 530 million people who watched the event live on national television in 1969. Among the personal accounts is that of Clark Neily, an orbital-rendezvous training instructor who worked on the Apollo 11 mission himself. Neily recalls the intensity of the moment when, among the NASA staff, the launch seemed inevitable: “There was this dead silence while everyone considered the fact that we had no more technical excuses not to attempt to land [on the moon] for the next mission, Apollo 11.”
Saturday in Whitewater will bring scattered thundershowers with a daytime high of eighty-nine. Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:27 PM, for 14h 52m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
A president’s murder. A civil rights leader’s assassination. A seemingly endless war.
This was framework facing America in the months up to the moon landing.
That’s why a former vice president for NBC News said that to understand what the moon landing meant to the American spirit, you have to put that night into context.
Bill Wheatley, a former executive producer for “NBC Nightly News,” said that the nation had just endured a decade of war; we buried the president who envisioned the moon landing just six years earlier.
….
“All of the networks had space units,” Wheatley said. Live coverage meant radio and TV anchors had to prepare for anything. “Anchors studied up very considerably before every launch in the ’60s. There were manuals and they contained any manner of information.”
He said the networks had compiled such manuals for live political convention coverage going back to the 1950s.
“The manuals included the history of the space program, the mechanics of the mission, the background of the astronauts, bios of the leadership of NASA … There were chapters on telemetry.”
King said the networks each developed a collection of space reporters who became household names. NBC had Jay Barbree and Roy Neal, among others, he said. “Walter Cronkite was the standard-bearer for CBS because he was a huge proponent of space coverage. He went through some space training to show people what it was like.”
Radio networks also employed space teams.
“TV was not as portable as it has become,” [CBS correspondent Peter] King said. “The ’60s was the age of the radio. It was all AM radio in those days. When a million people lined the beaches to watch the Apollo 11 liftoff, they didn’t have portable, battery-powered TVs. They listened to Reid Collins from CBS, Russ Ward for NBC, Mort Crim for ABC Radio.”
BBC America’s “Moon Landing Live,” which premieres Saturday night, is an attempt, somewhat, to rectify that. In addition to replaying live news coverage, as Walter Cronkite and other anchormen collectively hold their breath during tense periods of radio silence between the astronauts and Mission Control, the documentary compiles footage from around the world as people fretted, prayed, marveled and just watched.
People attending a soul music festival in Harlem are asked what they think of the Apollo mission. One man praises it but admits, “I don’t identify to it — as far as science goes and everyone involved in it.” A German news crew asks passing women which of the three Apollo astronauts they’d most like to go dancing with. (“Mit Armstrong, danke,” one lady giggles.) “I’ve not got appropriate words,” a Tokyo businessman tells an interviewer on the street. “The only thing I can say is, ‘Banzai!’ for Apollo 11.”
Friday in Whitewater will bring morning thundershowers with a daytime high of ninety-three. Sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset 8:28 PM, for 14h 54m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers announced Thursday the launch of a search for the next secretary and CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.
Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker appointed three people to the post — Paul Jadin, Reed Hall and the current secretary, Mark Hogan.
“A 72-county approach to economic development is critical to creating middle-class jobs and growing the economy,” Evers said in a statement explaining why he decided to conduct a search.
The public-private agency, also known as WEDC, has been dogged by a series of scathing audits, media reports about questionable loans and accusations of mismanagement. The agency oversees the state’s efforts to incentivize job creation, awarding tax credits, grants, loans and bonds to businesses. It was created in 2011 after Walker and lawmakers dissolved the state Commerce Department.
Hall, former head of the Marshfield Clinic, was named interim WEDC CEO in 2012 and a national search was conducted. But Walker appointed Hall over 120 applicants and three finalists, even though Hall did not apply for the position. Hall left in 2015 as personnel turnover and media reports of mismanagement continued to rock the agency.
When Hogan, a retired banking executive, was appointed, Democrats criticized Walker for selecting someone who had donated to his campaign and for not disclosing the selection process or candidates with the WEDC board.
This is the story of how a racist suggestion — that four congresswomen of color “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” — became an angry rallying cry in three short days.
On Sunday morning, President Trump awoke and, surprising just about his entire political orbit, targeted four Democrats — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) — in a trio of tweets.
Never mind that three of the four women were born in the United States and the fourth, Omar, is a Somali refugee who became a naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of 17. The ensuing controversy unspooled as if from muscle memory — with all Trump’s world a stage, and all the men and women within it merely players.
Across Wisconsin, newspapers have not distinguished themselves since the Great Recession. Most have descended into a cautious, center-right boosterism. They acted on their publishers’ own politics, and on the politics their elderly (but dwindling) readership. Doing so has only exacerbated their problems.
The time to break from this was before – or even during – that recession: a break from a failed ideology, and from a down-market position, to something attractive for another generation of readers.
The best position for an American publication is one of curiosity, inquiry, and a willingness to confront political authority.
A new online venture, the Wisconsin Examiner, began publishing on 7.16.19. They’re writing from the center-left, and here’s how they describe their publication:
The Wisconsin Examiner is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site offering a fresh perspective on politics and policy in our state.
As the largest news bureau covering state government, the Examiner will offer investigative reporting and daily coverage dedicated to the public interest.
In Wisconsin’s great progressive tradition, we aim to hold the powerful accountable to the people, follow the money, and dig out the truth. Although we give you the inside scoop, we are not a publication for “insiders.” Instead, we cover stories and voices that too often go unheard.
We don’t accept advertising or sell subscriptions. Instead, we rely on the generous support of foundations and people like you, who care about Wisconsin and believe an informed public is crucial to a healthy democracy.
We take our inspiration from the motto emblazoned on a ceiling in our state Capitol: “The Will of the People Is the Law of the Land.”
The Examiner is part of The Newsroom, a network of state government news sites supported by the Hopewell Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity. We retain full editorial independence.
(Wisconsin readers will recognize Ruth Conniff, Melanie Conklin, Erik Gunn, and Isiah Holmes.)
Before the recent recession (while Democrat Jim Doyle was still Wisconsin’s governor), it looked as though right-leaning websites might play an inquisitive role like this in Wisconsin. As soon as Republican Scott Walker became governor, however, any claim they made of speaking truth to power faded.
One wishes the best for the Wisconsin Examiner.
In the Whitewater area, nearby newspapers (Janesville Gazette, Daily Jefferson County Union, and whatever is left of the Whitewater Register) have played a role as uncritical boosters of government projects and right-leaning business groups. (Websites like Whitewater’s Banner were imitations of this style, which when commencing in 2006 must have seemed less like a style than simply the Natural Order of Things.) Not one of these publications has a long-term demographic future along its present course.
Blogging, by the way, is especially fitting for these times. (I’d say that’s true for most times). Occasionally, people ask if I’d write something else for someone else. (The suggestions often surprise.) It’s kind, and although I might write something else, there’s no chance that I’d trade away being one’s own publisher.
And yet, being one’s own small publisher, one hopes also for others’ success, if it should rest on speaking truth to power.
Thursday in Whitewater will see thundershowers with a high of ninety. Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:29 PM, for 14h 55m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 5:30 PM, and the Police & Fire Commission also meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1865, four Wisconsin regiments (3rd and 18th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 1st and 6th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries) muster out.
A top official in Wisconsin’s minimum-security prison system in recent weeks posted a string of Facebook memes that compared Muslim children to garbage, equated flying the LGBTQ rainbow flag with hoisting the Confederate flag and laughed off accusations of racism.
In one, Deputy Warden Richard “Sam” Schneiter posted a photo of two full black garbage bags next to a Muslim woman and child in black burqas that covered their faces and bodies. “I saw her standing there and told her she had three beautiful children,” text pasted onto the photo says.
Another post contrasted the rainbow flag with the Confederate flag and included the words, “If they have the right to fly theirs, we Deserve the Right to Fly Ours.”
In an interview Wednesday, Schneiter said he posted the images to bring attention to messages that zip through the internet — including ones he disagrees with.
(That’s some defense: One is supposed to believe that the bigoted posts Schneiter published uncritically were simply talking points. No, and no again.)
On Wednesday night in North Carolina, Donald Trump agitated rally-goers with inflammatory rhetoric about Representative Ilhan Omar, a naturalized American born in Somalia, until his supporters began chanting “send her back”––as if a legal immigrant who became a U.S. citizen can or should be denied equal treatment under the law and extra-constitutionally deported by the president.
Burning a copy of the U.S. Constitution would show no more contempt for it than the crowd’s bigoted, nativist reverie about tyrannically deposing an elected member of Congress. No opinion expressed by the congresswoman, no matter how wrongheaded, could excuse the un-American mob.
The crowd’s authoritarian outburst and the purposefully divisive, irresponsible presidential rhetoric that prompted it portends an ugly Trump campaign for reelection. Like “lock her up,” the chant that Trump rally-goers directed at Hillary Clinton in 2016, “send her back” is poised to travel the country with the president.
Already, the civic poison of the chant has been televised and celebrated on social media by Trump supporters.
I live, and write, from Whitewater, Wisconsin. This small city has many charms, but it is neither an island nor a kingdom. Indeed, it is better off being – and knowing that it is – a small town in a great republic, a small part of a virtuous continental society.
Far from making Whitewater smaller, America makes Whitewater incomparably greater than she could ever be on her own.
I was away from the city last Friday, when Whitewater was one placeamong many that held Lights for Liberty gatherings to protest the inhumane treatment of migrants.
And yet, although far from the city, on the other side of this continent, a similar protest welcomed all, including a family from Whitewater. What we were unable to attend in a small Midwestern town was available in a large coastal city.
There is nowhere I would prefer to live than Whitewater. However enjoyable a trip, however agreeable it is to make new friends (especially when united in a grand cause), seeing Whitewater again is always the happiest part of one’s travels.
Our present national crisis requires a national response, and places a myopic hyper-localism in its proper – lower – place.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-nine. Sunrise is 5:32 AM and sunset 8:29 PM, for 14h 57m 29s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
President Donald Trump uttered a rapid series of false claims, at least 13 in all, during his Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. He made another claim for which there is no public evidence, and he offered positive words about an ally’s accusation for which there is no public evidence.
President Trump’s latest racist remarks, like many of his comments before them, can and will be used against him in court.
And if his losing record on immigration cases is any guide, they will be used effectively.
In conjunction with other factors, they could help persuade judges to block policies he claims are crucial to his agenda, particularly on immigration, on the grounds of racial or ethnic animus.
That’s been the pattern ever since Trump took office.
His words — about Mexican immigrants as “criminals, drug dealers” and “rapists,” Nigerians going back “to their huts,” Haitians all having AIDS, or of too many migrants from “shithole countries” — have helped stall much of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
It hasn’t been any particular comment that has made the difference in court but rather the accumulation of them.
Lizzie Daly was diving Saturday off the coast of Cornwall in Britain when she saw something large in the distance and did a double take. Daly had seen a barrel jellyfish before but nothing of this size.
Daly, a biologist and broadcaster, swam up to the peach-colored creature gliding through the water, as cameraman Dan Abbott captured the encounter.
“We weren’t expecting anything,” Daly said. “It was an absolute delight to get that experience.”
Abbott and Daly were diving as part of Wild Ocean Week, a fundraising campaign for the Marine Conservation Society of the United Kingdom created by Daly, that was meant to document various marine species off the coast.
“My first reaction was that I’ve never seen a jellyfish that size in my life,” Abbott said. Then, he was focused on staying out of its way and attempting to capture a video of the “beautiful, majestic, slow-moving, graceful animal.”
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 5:31 AM and sunset 8:30 PM, for 14h 59m 04s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Board meets at 6:00 PM, and Common Council at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1945, the United States detonates the first atomic bomb in a test in the Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico.
The Know-Nothings wanted German and Irish immigrants to get out because they were allegedly subversive and diseased people who were stealing American jobs. White preachers and politicians of the 1820s urged freed blacks to move to West Africa, supposedly for their own good.
From that drive to encourage blacks to go back where they came from to waves of nativist attacks on Catholics, Jews, Asians and Hispanics in nearly every generation that followed, “go home” rhetoric is as American as immigration itself.
President Trump’s raw assertion of nativist language, in attacks Sunday and Monday on four Democratic congresswomen — all of them U.S. citizens, three of them native-born — is consistent not only with his long history of attacks on people he perceives as the other, but also with the nation’s oscillating attitudes toward immigration.
Just one prominent Wisconsin Republican lawmaker has said anything about the president’s suggestion to Democratic congresswomen who are not white to go back to “crime infested places from which they came.”
In a state that has held the distinctions of being the worst for black children to live and having the most segregated areas in America, its most powerful lawmakers said little when the leader of their party used a notorious racist trope intended to make Americans who aren’t white feel like outsiders.
When Donald Trump assailed Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals during his 2015 presidential campaign launch, companies including Macy’s and NBC rushed to cut their business ties with him.
When a tape surfaced in 2016 of Trump boasting about grabbing women’s genitals, top Republican officials briefly pulled their endorsements, disinvited him from events and even sought to remove him from the ticket.
But on Monday, a day after he posted tweets promoting the racist trope that four minority congresswomen should “go back” to their countries of ancestry, the president waltzed onto the South Lawn of the White House with the confidence of a man fully supported by his party and by much of the corporate world that had once kept him at arm’s length.
