Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:23 PM for 9h 01m 43s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8% of its visible disk illuminated (the moon’s peak visible illumination was at 11:35 PM last night).
On this day in 1776, Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in The Pennsylvania Journal entitled “The American Crisis.”
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:22 PM for 9h 01m 49s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1865, Secretary of State William Seward proclaims the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery throughout the United States.
One of the investigators reexamining the 2020 election results in Wisconsin on behalf of the GOP-led state legislature is the president of a group that unsuccessfully sued to overturn the vote.
Another worked as a deputy in the White House Presidential Personnel Office, which was known for weeding out people perceived as disloyal to President Donald Trump.
A third is an Arkansas lawyer who represented Trump’s campaign during last year’s Wisconsin recount, a process that confirmed President Biden won the key swing state by roughly 20,700 votes.
All are being paid with Wisconsin taxpayer money as part of a legislative-backed investigation into the 2020 results headed by a former state Supreme Court justice that has picked up steam in recent weeks. The inquiry, the latest gambit by Republicans to reexamine the 2020 election nationally, makes little pretense of neutrality and is being led by figures who have shown allegiance to Trump or embraced false claims of fraud.
The former president personally lobbied state lawmakers to pursue the Wisconsin investigation and spurred on other ballot reviews around the country, leaning on legislators to revisit the vote more than a year after Americans went to the polls.
In Wisconsin, a state that is likely to see some of the nation’s most competitive races in 2022 for governor and U.S. Senate, there are now multiple efforts underway to scrutinize how the last election was run, including a recommendation by a county sheriff to prosecute and jail state election officials.
“What we’re seeing in Wisconsin is a whole bunch of little brush fires, each one of which could be dismissed as minor, unconcerning or maybe even absurdly comical,” said Jeffrey Mandell, an expert in Wisconsin election law and attorney for the Democratic mayor of Green Bay, who is fighting a subpoena from the legislative inquiry. “My concern is there are enough brush fires that they could feed into each other and form a real conflagration.”
The danger, he said, is that the same players could challenge the outcome of a closely contested midterm election — potentially with control of the U.S. Senate in the balance — and that the institutions designed to certify the results will have been dismantled or disempowered.
“It would be a crisis,” Mandell said. “People haven’t been paying attention because there are bigger fires elsewhere. But there aren’t more fires anywhere.”
Wisconsin has had a contentious politics for years. We have years more ahead.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM for 9h 02m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1903, the Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
On its flag, Missouri quotes Voltaire: Salus populi suprema lex esto, which, roughly translated, means let the welfare of the people be the highest law.
Those two tenets of what it means to be a Missourian are sort of in conflict these days, as the state competes with other red states to demonstrate how conservative they are, even if it kills people.
Incumbent Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a U.S. Senate hopeful, is using his office (as Josh Hawley did before him) to climb up the political ladder. But what Schmitt is doing will almost certainly result in people dying:
As part of compliance with Schmitt’s letter, the local public health agencies in the above counties will stop “case investigation, contact tracing, quarantine orders, and public announcements of current cases/deaths, etc.”
Which means that we may well see case numbers in Missouri dropping—not because fewer people are infected with COVID, but because Eric Schmitt’s political ambitions are causing local governments to stop counting COVID infections as a way of bowing to his MAGA bona fides.
This abject refusal to acknowledge reality would be pathetic, if it weren’t so dangerous.
(Emphasis added.)
Missouri: where data are unlawful. The corrupt concept: if there’s no record of a problem, then there’s no problem.
(Another avenue for deceit would be to impair the accurate collection of data, so that any information still presented would be a mere shadow of the truth.)
Lies of omission are still lies.
Once a politician, appointed official, or institution adopts a practice of concealment, there’s no way back. One self-serving lie begs for companions…
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny, with strong winds subsiding, and a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:22 PM for 9h 02m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1773, members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.
Michael Gableman talked up his review of the 2020 election at a Republican event over the weekend, telling the crowd he wouldn’t back down from Democrats and tipping his hand about his preferences in GOP primaries.
The former state Supreme Court justice at times has tried to portray himself as impartial and at others sought to stir up the Republican base. He’s on deck to speak at another Republican event later this month.
During an appearance Sunday in Beloit, Gableman appeared alongside former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and touted her bid for governor. That could put him in an awkward position if Marine veteran Kevin Nicholson decides to run for governor because Gableman serves on the advisory board for Nicholson’s political organization, the No Better Friend Corp.
The report doesn’t say whether Gableman offered Kleefisch a box of chocolates, but there’s time until Valentine’s Day (1 month, 29 days, to be precise). Harry & David (‘your destination for a gourmet gift delivery that is sure to delight’) accepts all major credit cards.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 64. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 02m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 88.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
WASHINGTON — At her annual budget address this month, Gov. Kristi Noem, Republican of South Dakota, blamed President Biden’s economic policies for rising prices, derided the “giant handout” of federal stimulus funds and suggested that she had considered refusing the money over ideological objections.
But like many Republican officials, Ms. Noem has found it hard to say no to her state’s share of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief aid that Democrats passed along party lines in March.
Ms. Noem explained to fellow legislators how critical those federal funds were to South Dakota and outlined how she would use some of the nearly $1 billion slated for her state to invest in local water projects, make housing more affordable and build new day care centers. For those questioning her choice to take the money, Ms. Noem, who has opposed Covid restrictions including shutdowns and mask mandates, said any pandemic-relief funds she rejected would have just gone to other states.
“It would be spent somewhere other than South Dakota,” Ms. Noem said. “The debt would still be incurred by the country, and our people would still suffer the consequences of that spending.” No state has declined the relief money, and if they had it would go back to the Treasury Department, not to other states.
Republican leaders across the country have been engaged in a similarly awkward dance over the past few months as they accept — and often champion — money from the $350 billion bucket of state and local aid included in the stimulus bill, which passed Congress without a single Republican vote. In some states, like Ohio and Arizona, Republican governors are spending the funds while attempting to undercut the law that allowed the money to flow. Other governors are faulting Congress for not giving their state enough money.
And, like their counterparts in Congress, many Republicans have blasted Mr. Biden’s stimulus bill for fueling inflation, even as they take the funds, and criticized Democrats for pushing for additional government spending plans.
Of course, they’ll criticize and then take the money — Trumpism has no firm economic position except the enrichment of the Trump family subsumed under the general principle that hypocrisy is a virtue.
Look around small towns where Trumpists talk about fiscal prudence, and you’ll see that they (and others) waste money on artificial turf, etc., at the first opportunity. They’re fiscally prudent until they want something for themselves, all the while they’ll accuse others of their own, repeated actions.
They don’t have a coherent economic position — they have a collection of aching emotional needs that have to be satisfied. Explain their position coherently from moment to the next? Nah, why bother? They believe that explanations are for weaklings, suckers, socialists, communists, anarchists, anthropologists, meteorologists… whomever.
There are many sound reasons to oppose Trumpism, recognizing that alternatives to it bring their own, (far) lesser risks. One can believe that the Democrats are spending too much, as I do, and yet support resolutely their broad-based coalition against Trumpism’s autocratic nativism. Never Trump, after all, means Never Trump; never Trumpism means never Trumpism.
The Trumpists’ thorough-going hypocrisy is, in fact, another reason to oppose them.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 03m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 81.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 9 AM, and the Fire Department holds a business meeting at 6 PM.
On this day in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turnerdelivers the “Significance of the Frontier in American History” address at the forty-first annual meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
Republicans and Democrats alike Monday ripped into Wisconsin’s partisan review of the 2020 election, saying it was a baseless exercise that would needlessly damage faith in democracy.
State Sen. Kathy Bernier, a Republican from Lake Hallie who leads the Senate Elections Committee, said the review by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is firing up people who don’t understand elections.
“Mr. Gableman is coming to my county and I will attend that meeting along with my concealed carry permit, to be perfectly honest, because (the election review) keeps jazzing up the people who think they know what they’re talking about, and they don’t,” Bernier said.
Bernier, who oversaw elections for 12 years as Chippewa County clerk, said Republicans are reacting to political pressure from former President Donald Trump. Their constant complaints about the election could ultimately hurt Republicans if they don’t believe results can be trusted, she said.
“And so I think my advice would be to have Mr. Gableman wrap up sooner rather than later, because the longer we keep this up, the more harm … we’re going to do for Republicans,” she said.
In response, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester issued a statement saying it was Democrats who were preventing Gableman from completing his work sooner. He did not note that much of Monday’s criticism came from Republicans and offered no timeline for when Gableman would finish his review.
….
Bernier made her comments during a panel discussion in the state Capitol. She was joined by Ben Ginsberg, who spent nearly four decades representing Republicans in election disputes, and Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Ginsberg agreed with Bernier’s assessment, saying attacks on the election will hurt Republicans in the long run because their voters will be less likely to cast ballots if they think elections are rigged.
“We are here today because Wisconsin has found itself really in the middle of a harmful and disturbing national trend that involves the intimidation of election officials — the people who are supposed to call balls and strikes in our elections,” Ginsberg said.
Joe Biden beat Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin. Recounts and court rulings have confirmed his victory. A legislative audit and a study by a conservative group turned up no evidence that would question the results.
The low-impulse-control base of the WISGOP is sure respond with… low-impulse-control behavior. (They usually start off with heads shaking, arms raised, bleating ‘what, what, what’ and decline in composure from there on out. While public health depends on widespread vaccinations, the easiest way to improve public civility would be to offer not free vaccinations, but free tranquilizers, in Trump-supporting communities.)
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 03m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 73.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 12 PM, and her Planning Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1962, NASA launches Relay 1, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.
For Christina Newman and her 6-year-old son Forrest, early December now means an unwelcome tradition — he was quarantined for a possible COVID-19 exposure last week, just like he was this time last year.
To get him back in school, he had to be asymptomatic and get a negative test in a health care setting — not an at-home rapid self-test, like the BinaxNOW tests that come in two-packs at local pharmacies — on day six or seven of his quarantine.
Like most children and adults, he’s no fan of the nasal swab tests. But Newman and her husband developed a strategy to make it easier.
“We pretty much discovered at home that if you either let him hold the swab, or you hold it with him and like coax him into sticking it up his nostrils, you can get him to do it, and he does a pretty good job,” she said. “He almost needs to have that autonomy to do it, because he doesn’t struggle as much.”
Newman was one of the parents who responded to WPR’s WHYsconsin asking how parents and caretakers are handling testing their children for COVID-19.
Forrest just got his second vaccine dose, which will cut down drastically on the amount of time he has to quarantine after a possible exposure — a welcome relief for Newman, whose family room has a giant blanket fort taking up the floor space and whose work can be frequently interrupted during the times Forrest has to stay home.
….
Greg DeMuri is a pediatric epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has also been advising the Madison Metropolitan School District on its testing program. He said it took some time to get the program up and running, but it’s starting to work well.
“It is very, very useful,” he said. “They are seeing cases there, and detecting cases, and they’re able to keep (sick) kids out of school because of it, so it’s a big asset to the schools and to the community.”
And so, and so — why would most, but not all, schools be part of this program of testing?
And look, and look — if there’s no reliable testing regimen, then there’s no reliable data on school spread, and if there’s no reliable data on school spread, then a superintendent here or there can simply (although incredibly) declare ‘there is no school spread.’
If a superintendent will wish away a pandemic, then what other risks or problems will he or she wish away?
That’s a question that should, and will, linger long after the pandemic.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny and windy, with a high of 42. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 04m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 65.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1941, Adolf Hitler declares the imminent extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery. Goebbels made the following entry in his diary for 12 December:
Bezüglich der Judenfrage ist der Führer entschlossen, reinen Tisch zu machen. Er hat den Juden prophezeit, daß, wenn sie noch einmal einen Weltkrieg herbeiführen würden, sie dabei ihre Vernichtung erleben würden. Das ist keine Phrase gewesen. Der Weltkrieg ist da, die Vernichtung des Judentums muß die notwendige Folge sein.
Regarding the Jewish question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that, if they yet again brought about a world war, they would experience their own annihilation. That was not just a phrase. The world war is here, the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence
Hilter, himself, brought about the world war, and so in Goebbels’s diary one reads a lie of causation followed by a plan of genocide.
It is a bit of a three ring circus. We are more than a year from the presidential election and still there are probes, investigations and audits underway in one form or another. All of them seem to be essentially open-ended with no clear goals, unclear who was involved, what deadlines are set for producing some kind of report or conclusion. So my fear is that they are unfortunately doing the opposite of what the proponents say they are doing. Instead of building confidence in the election system, they are continuing to raise suspicions, make allegations and leave questions on the table that are likely to lower public trust in elections.
Saturday in Whitewater will see snow this morning, of little accumulation, on an otherwise cloudy day with a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 04m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 55.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater became known as the “mecca of modern spiritualism.” Pratt built his institute in 1888, which was initially used as a meeting place for public seances. Pratt decided to turn his institution into an educational school for spiritualists, focusing on science, literature, morality, and communication, as well as spiritualistic instruction. The institute was closed for a few years during the Depression, and then in 1977 relocated to Waukesha, where it remains one of the few institutes in the world that is dedicated to the study of spiritualism.
Lawrence Tabak’s Foxconned (‘Imaginary Jobs, Bulldozed Homes, and the Sacking of Local Government’):
Powerful and resonant, Foxconned is both the definitive autopsy of the Foxconn fiasco and a dire warning to communities and states nationwide.
When Wisconsin governor Scott Walker stood shoulder to shoulder with President Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan at the White House in July 2017, they painted a glorious picture of his state’s future. Foxconn, the enormous China-based electronics firm, was promising to bring TV manufacturing back to the United States with a $10 billion investment and 13,000 well-paying jobs. They actually were making America great again, they crowed.
Two years later, the project was in shambles. Ten thousand construction workers were supposed to have been building what Trump had promised would be “the eighth wonder of the world.” Instead, land had been seized, homes had been destroyed, and hundreds of millions of municipal dollars had been committed for just a few hundred jobs—nowhere near enough for Foxconn to earn the incentives Walker had shoveled at them. In Foxconned, journalist Lawrence Tabak details the full story of this utter collapse, which was disturbingly inevitable.
As Tabak shows, everything about Foxconn was a disaster. But worse, he reveals how the economic incentive infrastructure across the country is broken, leading to waste, cronyism, and the steady transfer of tax revenue to corporations. Tabak details every kind of financial chicanery, from eminent domain abuse to good old-fashioned looting—all to benefit a coterie of consultants, politicians, and contractors. With compassion and care, he also reports the distressing stories of the many individuals whose lives were upended by Foxconn.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with afternoon rain and a high of 41. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 05m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 44.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize in any field.
Wisconsin elections officials from both parties threw out a challenge Wednesday to private grants that helped cities run their elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Thursday, Republican Commissioners Dean Knudson and Bob Spindell struck a new stance and said they wanted a hearing after all.
“I don’t agree with the decision letters that this was just fine,” Spindell said of the rulings that the grants were acceptable.
He said he had not seen the emails from Jacobs and DeWitt’s attorneys that they had sent him regarding hearings before the decisions were issued. He said he didn’t know why he wasn’t aware of them.
“I pay attention to my emails and I certainly pay attention if anything were to come from Ann,” he said. “I’m going to go back and take a look. It’s possible that I missed them.”
Knudson said he received the email from DeWitt’s attorneys but thought it might be spam because the state’s email system appended a warning to it that said it was sent from someone outside the commission. Jacobs’ follow-up email did not include such a warning.
“Frankly I did not recognize it and treated it as spam at the time,” Knudson said by email Thursday. “I will seek changes in procedure to help avoid a repeat of my mistake in future similar cases.”
Even if these Republicans did ignore emails, they wouldn’t be able to ignore calls from threatening fanatics motivated Republicans reminding them of what might happen if they didn’t change course, pronto.
Tuesday, December 14th at 1 PM, there will be a showing of Mixed Nuts @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Comedy/Drama/Holiday
1 hour, 37 minutes
Rated PG-13 (1994)
Unusual events occur on Christmas Eve at a crisis hotline in Venice, CA. Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle”) wrote and directed this Yuletide comedy starring Steve Martin, Madeline Kahn, Rob Reiner, Rita Wilson and Jon Stewart.
