Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 45. Sunrise is 6:31 AM and sunset 7:24 PM for 12h 52m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1865, Union forces capture the Confederate capital of Richmond.
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The Russian army has pulled out in a hurry from areas it occupied to the west of Kyiv. The BBC has gained access to places abandoned by Russian forces, shortly after their retreat, and has found evidence of atrocities, that could amount to war crimes.
One shocking incident took place on the E-40 highway, just west of the capital, with the shooting dead of civilians attempting to flee.
The BBC has also gained access to the nearby town of Irpin, which was heavily fought over but has now been abandoned by Russian forces.
Clive Myrie presents BBC News at Ten reporting by Jeremy Bowen, west of Kyiv, and Orla Guerin in Irpin.
WARNING: The video does contain some distressing images.
After Chechnya, after Syria, and after Crimea and the Donbas, what did Americans think Putin was?
There are small-town residents across America who’ve shared their sentiments, presented as ‘plain speaking,’ ‘blunt talk,’ etc. Plainly spoken in reply: they are as repulsive as they are ignorant.
Those wishing to lecture persuasively on American values should show an understanding of those values.
Saturday in Whitewater will see a bit of snow and rain with a high of 39. Sunrise is 6:33 AM and sunset 7:22 PM for 12h 49m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1917, President Wilson asks Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.
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During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in a region where journalists are targeted and fleeing the country, we have come to rely on social media to understand what’s happening on the ground in real time. Meanwhile, old videos have been posted on TikTok to look like they’re from the current conflict. Photos have been staged to mimic attacks on civilians. And the Russian government is spreading lies about who’s to blame for the war. So The Recount asked Shaydanay Urbani, who teaches journalists and NGOs how to identify misleading information, how to be smarter news consumers amidst an onslaught of misinformation and disinformation.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 44. Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 7:21 PM for 12h 46m 37s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1924, Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years imprisonment for his participation in the “Beer Hall Putsch” but spends only nine months in jail.
Tommy Thompson met Thursday with former President Donald Trump as he ponders another run for governor.
The get-together came three weeks after former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch had her own meeting with Trump as she pursues a bid for governor.
Thompson in February said he planned to decide whether to run by the end of April — about three months before the Aug. 9 Republican primary.
People familiar with Thompson’s plans said he was joined at the Mar-a-Lago meeting Thursday by Reince Priebus, the Kenosha native who served as Trump’s first chief of staff, and Diane Hendricks, the longtime Republican donor and billionaire chairwoman of Beloit-based ABC Supply Co.
Thursday in Whitewater will see snow with a high of 36. Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 7:20 PM for 12h 43m 44s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1889, the Eiffel Tower officially opens.
While Speaker of the Assembly Vos has spent many months tumbling and fumbling to keep up with rightwing lies about Wisconsin’s elections, there is a one (and perhaps only one) consistent trick Vos has employed throughout his career. He learned it long before Trumpism gripped his party, indeed long before Trump announced his candidacy.
Vos has always known the power of self-serving audacity: taking what he wants, when he wants, defining it as he wants, in defiance of law or tradition.
Although he’s now a shell of his self-promoting self, Vos hasn’t lost his touch for doing what he wants (and sticking others for the costs).
A judge found Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in contempt of court Wednesday for failing to release documents related to a Republican-run review of the 2020 election.
Dane County Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn determined the Rochester Republican and the Assembly as a whole adopted “a collective and abject disregard for the court’s order” from four months ago to turn over documents sought by the liberal group American Oversight under the state’s open records law.
She ordered Vos and the Assembly to turn over records within 14 days and to each pay $1,000 per day if they fail to do that. They will also have to pay some of American Oversight’s legal bills.
Taxpayers will likely be the ones to pay those costs. Vos has approved spending up to $676,000 in taxpayer funds on the election review, but the review and its related legal expenses could exceed that amount.
Well, yes on both counts: Vos should be held in contempt, and he will stick taxpayers for any costs of his defiance.
That’s Vos’s one hasn’t-failed-yet trick: to defy and deny, while leaving others to pick up the tab.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see rain with a high of 58. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 7:19 PM for 12h 40m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1867, the United States purchases Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, or about 2-cent/acre.
One needn’t have studied geography to know that Whitewater is part of Wisconsin, and Wisconsin is a part of America. This truth is in our postal address: Whitewater, Wisconsin. There is, as it turns out, no Kingdom of Whitewater (but to be candid the town does have a few would-be court jesters). Whitewater is so much a part of these larger jurisdictions that officeholders take an oath to uphold federal and state law, and will rise for a Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of principal public meetings. They position themselves in the direction of an American flag when they recite this pledge.
These words are meant to mean more to those professing them than an avenue to take office.
(The American flag, by the way, is the one with “thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton (referred to specifically as the “union”) bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows, where rows of six stars (top and bottom) alternate with rows of five stars. The 50 stars on the flag represent the 50 U.S. states, and the 13 stripes represent the thirteen British colonies that declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and became the first states in the U.S.” It’s lawful — as it should be — to display variations, but I’ve never felt the need to display any version other than the genuine article.)
In America, that place of which Whitewater is a part, there is an ongoing reckoning with those who advanced election lies, and those who cheered or actively supported insurrection and sedition against the United States.
One cannot honestly move on, etc., if one does honestly acknowledge where one has been. Truth and reconciliation begins with truth, after all. (The Confederates wanted America to move on, so to speak, and our forefathers obliged them too readily, denying future generations both truth and reconciliation.)
PBS Frontline’s Plot to Overturn the Election describes the fundamental truth of violence against the constitutional order.
Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon showers with a high of 36. Sunrise is 6:40 AM and sunset 7:18 PM for 12h 37m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 8.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Involvement & Cable TV Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1974, NASA’s Mariner 10 becomes the first space probe to fly by Mercury.
The decline in college enrollment across Wisconsin involves Whitewater, too, but in ways unique to this town. (The Whitewater Common Council meeting of 3.15.22 saw public comment about commercial assessments that reveals the concerns local landlords have over declining residency enrollment at UW-Whitewater. Seevideo of that meeting, relevant discussion from 5:10 to 31:05.)
In 2016, or even 2006 (before the Great Recession), too many local officials and business people thought that what they saw as the good times would never end. And yet, and yet, despite hardship after hardship (a Great Recession, opioid epidemic, economic stagnation, repeated incidents of sexual harassment, a pandemic, and another recession) they persisted in the same tired boosterism and grandiosity.
Consider how competitive market forces in a dynamic country work: they lead to new ideas, new technologies, and new alternatives. There’s nothing and no one in the city more powerful than the inexorable power of market change. Slowly it has moved, down every street, past every column and lintel, attriting and rebuilding as the consequence of myriad transactions among millions across this continent.
It is has been hubris to think otherwise.
There’s no one reason that residency enrollment (students who live here being those who profit local landlords and merchants) at UW-Whitewater is declining. There are instead several reasons, where the weight of any given reason is hard to ascribe: a demographic decline in traditional college-age applicants, an improving state economy, hesitancy during a pandemic, in-person alternatives at other UW System schools, online offerings at UW-Whitewater and other schools near or far, on-campus housing options, a low-income Whitewater economy that offers limited job prospects for graduates, and (disappointing but candid to mention) the socio-economic challenges of life in a low-income community.
Local landlords understand their business well, indeed almost too well. They notice every small event and change locally, but they present a limited understanding of how prospective students (or others outside the city) would evaluate among many alternatives. It’s not for lack of intellect, but rather lack of perspective: they struggle to place the city in a broader context.
It’s not enough to see the world from Whitewater — a sound understanding requires also that one see Whitewater from the perspective of the world.
It doesn’t matter how much local men describe Whitewater through press releases and marketing campaigns if people beyond the city discount those claims as unconvincing or outright false. (There have been so many marketing campaigns over the last decade that if only a few of them had worked Whitewater would be Olympus by now. Meanwhile, after years of these few steering policy on boards and commissions,Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boomto uplift the whole community.)
People outside the city are sharper and more discerning than our bankers, landlords, and marketing men realize: Wisconsin is a big place, and America is a bigger place, and students and consumers know they they have many choices.
Local landlords know that Whitewater has more students as a percentage of the town than other communities. They struggle to see, however, than only by leaning into a unique Whitewater difference can the community seize on her comparative advantage.
Whitewater’s comparative difference is a local university. That difference isn’t a matter simply of rental units — it’s at bottom a cultural difference.
Dozens of communities nearby are red, non-college communities. Those places will always be more red, and more non-college, than Whitewater. No one needs to move to Whitewater for a red, non-college experience — there are better places elsewhere for that.
These men want to make money, but a college town won’t make as much money if it doesn’t express a college culture.
Few in this city have been more critical over these years — and justifiably so — of our university’s administration than I have been. UW-Whitewater’s students and faculty have deserved better.
It’s notable, however, that some of men who depend on our public university for their personal gain show no understanding or respect for the cultural differences that allow a university to flourish. They want their money and their culture and their politics, but in a competitive marketplace they’re finding what they want matters less than what prospective students and tenants want.
People who want a positive college atmosphere have many places to look, and people who want a bright red, non-college town have better places to look.
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 36. Sunrise is 6:42 AM and sunset 7:17 PM for 12h 35m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 16.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, Downtown Whitewater, Inc. meets at 6 PM, and the Whitewater School Board meets at 6 PM in closed session & 7 PM in open session.
On this day in 1862, in the Battle of Glorieta Pass, Union forces stop the Confederate invasion of the New Mexico Territory. (The battle began on March 26.)
As a whole, enrollment at the state’s 13 two-year branch campuses has fallen by nearly 57 percent, or around 7,400 students, since 2010. Some universities, like UW-River Falls, UW-Stevens Point and UW-Milwaukee, have seen enrollment decline between around 21 percent and 26 percent in that time, but the sharpest declines were at branch institutions
UW System chief data analyst Ben Passmore said it’s a huge challenge, in part because two-year campuses are access points for students who may not go to college otherwise.
“It seems pretty clear that the attractiveness of that kind of associate route, certainly to follow that all the way through the associate’s degree and transfer, declined over the last decade,” Passmore said. “I don’t have a great theory as to why.”
The percentage of Wisconsin high school students enrolling directly into college is also falling. The drop is most notable among young men, but the overall trend has big implications for individuals and institutions already facing significant, long-term enrollment declines.
After a recent peak of 70,717 high school graduates in 2008, the number fell 9.3 percent — or 6,584 individuals — by 2017 according to UW System data.
Kremer’s story cites those who link these changes, in part, to Wisconsin’s economy:
At the same time fewer Wisconsin high school graduates are choosing college, many businesses are raising wages and offering signing bonuses in an attempt to find workers. A Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce survey released in February found 88 percent of employers were struggling to hire.
Enrollments at two-year technical and community colleges follow economic conditions. When unemployment is high, like it was in the wake of the Great Recession, two-year enrollments tend to surge.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Wisconsin in 2020, unemployment spiked to 10.4 percent.
“And everybody had very high expectations, all this talk about how it’s going to be a windfall for us,” Wisconsin Technical College System President Morna Foy told WPR. “It’s going to be years of huge enrollment growth. And that didn’t happen.”
When students see college, whether of two-year or four-year programs, as a route simply to employment, then college enrollment will necessarily follow economic trends. People are, after all, disinclined to do what they think doesn’t matter. If, by contrast, a college education appears as more than a means to an end, if it seems a worthy pursuit in and of itself, then even good employment prospects will not be enough to tempt prospective students away from a college education.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 33. Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 7:15 PM for 12h 32m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 24.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1915, Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine for the second time, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
Most people in Whitewater are welcoming, and newcomers receive a supportive reception. Sadly, the city’s reputation as an unfriendly place comes not from most residents, but only those few who occupy notable positions in the community. For that tiny number, there is an expectation that newcomers should, as was once said of children, be seen but not heard. And so, and so, a few who dominate public and private institutions cling to these positions even when far more talented newcomers arrive.
(A word about this, that should be obvious to longtime readers of FREE WHITEWATER: it’s an understatement to say that I have never aspired to the roles of these few: a serious and settled person charts his or her own course. There are a thousand possible roles within a community, and striving for a place among development men, these ‘Greater Whitewater’ types, would be to seek a decidedly lesser position in the community. In this way, describing them as ‘notables’ or ‘town squires’ was always a term of derision, not aspiration. Honest to goodness, Whitewater’s ordinary residents are far more talented than a few local landlords, bankers, and public relations men.)
There is, however, yet ample room for truly accomplished people in Whitewater, and a column from Catherine Rampell, Drain Putin’s Brains, reminds us where we might find them:
I don’t mean attacking the Russian people. I mean welcoming them here, particularly if they have significant economic and national security value to Russia.
We should start by expediting the most compelling humanitarian cases in the region. In Russia, these include dissidents and journalists risking their necks to challenge Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war. But we should also actively court those who might be less political: the technical, creative, high-skilled workers upon whom Russia’s economic (and military) fortunes depend.
Already, Russian talent is rushing for the exits, in what might represent the seventh great wave of Russian emigration over the past century.
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“Lots of people are not ideological; they just want an opportunity for a good life,” says Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on immigration and trade. “They see that as extremely difficult to do in Russia right now.”
Russian self-exiles are mostly flooding into nearby countries such as Turkey, Armenia and Georgia, but we could smooth their pathway to the United States. Congress already has one blueprint: In early February, the House passed the America Competes Act, which would, among other things, increase immigration of entrepreneurs and PhD scientists from around the world (not just Russia). Alternatively, Congress could tailor a measure toward Russian STEM talent, or the Biden administration could make Russians more broadly eligible for refugee status. (We did something similar for people fleeing the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.)
Sharp and creative émigrés would enrich our community, and we’ve room for many. Their opportunities — and ours by consequence — would be unfettered if only the community would step past a small number of tired locals.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 34. Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset 7:14 PM for 12h 29m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 35.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1945, the Battle of Iwo Jima ends as the island is officially secured by American forces.
Oklahoma still has tornadoes, of course. But the statistical center has moved. Other research since then has found similar shifts.
Mean number of days per year with a tornado registering EF1 strength or greater within 25 miles, 1986-2015.NOAA Storm Prediction Center.
We found a notable decrease in both the total number of tornadoes and days with tornadoes in the traditional Tornado Alley in the central plains. At the same time, we found an increase in tornado numbers in what’s been dubbed Dixie Alley, extending from Mississippi through Tennessee and Kentucky into southern Indiana.
In the Great Plains, drier air in the western boundary of traditional Tornado Alley probably has something to do with the fact that tornadoes are a declining risk in Oklahoma while wildfire risk is growing.
Research by other scientists suggests that the dry line between the wetter Eastern U.S. and the drier Western U.S., historically around the 100th meridian, has shifted eastward by about 140 miles since the late 1800s. The dry line can be a boundary for convection – the rising of warm air and sinking of colder air that can fuel storms.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with scattered afternoon rain or snow showers and a high of 42. Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 7:13 PM for 12h 26m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 47% of its visible disk illuminated.
Attorney James Bopp has represented Gableman in a couple cases that challenged the former justice’s authority as the special counsel for the state Assembly’s investigation of the 2020 election, which President Joe Biden won. Bopp is well-known nationally as a longtime lawyer for conservative causes.
He was invited to testify Thursday before the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections alongside Catherine Engelbrecht, “True The Vote” founder and president. Bopp has served for years as the group’s lawyer. Like Gableman, Bopp has repeatedly cast doubt on the way the 2020 election was run.
But when asked Thursday whether he believed decertification should be an option, Bopp rejected the idea.
“It serves zero legal purpose, and in my opinion, useful purpose, to be talking about doing some, like, decertification that is pointless,” Bopp said.
Bopp argued that “recertification” would have been an option in Wisconsin prior to Jan. 6, 2021, the day when Congress met to count electoral votes and a group of former President Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. That option, he argued, had since passed.
“It’s over,” Bopp said. “You can’t go back. There is no mechanism, no provision, no anything that would have any practical legal effect.”
To be honest, Gableman deserves more than mere residency in Village of Zero Legal Purpose. He has a fair claim to merit the mayoralty of that unfortunate community.
It’s Oscars Month and the Seniors in the Park Bijou Theatre will be showing three of the Nominated Films. The Academy Awards ceremony is Sunday evening, March 27th.
Tuesday, March 29th at 1 PM, there will be a showing of The Eyes of Tammy Faye @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Biography/Drama/Romance
Rated PG-13
2 hours, 6 minutes (2021)
The rise, fall and comeback of Televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, PTL, CBN and the 700 Club. (Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain; Best Actress nomination). Also nominated for Best Makeup & Hairstyling.
