"This is math by Milwaukee, as inscrutable to those who would like to emulate it as it is indefatigable regardless of who participates in it."

"The Brewers are so much greater than the sum of their parts, so consistently, that they could make a reasonable observer wonder whether he or she knew anything about baseball math at all. They lead MLB with 68 wins as of Tuesday despite spending about a third as much on their payroll as the sport’s highest spenders. They do not hit for much power, and they let go of big stars year after year, only to find they did not need them much anyway. The Brewers are the best team in baseball. That shouldn’t be possible."

From "Milwaukee has the most wins in the sport despite fielding a largely anonymous roster. 'You don’t know why, and I don’t know why,' its manager says" (WaPo).

"A description of the book in a news release announcing the publication on Wednesday sounded suspiciously like it might have been written by Pynchon himself..."

"... and Penguin confirmed it was his handiwork," it says in "A New Thomas Pynchon Novel Is Coming This Fall/Featuring a Depression-era private eye, 'Shadow Ticket' will be the 87-year-old writer’s first book since 2013" (NYT).

Here's that description:

“Surrounded by history he has no grasp on and can’t see his way around in or out of, the only bright side for Hicks is it’s the dawn of the Big Band Era and as it happens he’s a pretty good dancer. Whether this will be enough to allow him somehow to lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee and the normal world, which may no longer exist, is another question.”

He withholds commas until he doesn't and I presume he's got his reasons.

I like "lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee" and "Milwaukee and the normal world."

"The Democrats are making up stories that I said Milwaukee is a 'horrible city.' This is false, a complete lie..."

"... just like the Laptop from Hell was a lie, Russia … was a lie, and so much more.... It’s called disinformation, and that’s all they know how to do. I picked Milwaukee, I know it well. It should therefore lead to my winning Wisconsin. But the Dems come out with this fake story, just like all of the others. It never ends. Don’t be duped. Who would say such a thing with that important state in the balance?"

Said Trump, on Truth Social, quoted in "Trump to stage Wisconsin rally days after calling Milwaukee a 'horrible city'/Ticket-only event follows unflattering remark about state’s biggest city that will host Republican national convention" (The Guardian).

He also said this on Fox 6 News, which shows that he said something about Milwaukee: "I think it was very clear what I meant. We’re very concerned with crime. I love Milwaukee. But as you know the crime numbers are terrible, and we have to be very careful. But, I was referring to, also, the election."

"Federal Money Is All Over Milwaukee. Biden Hopes Voters Will Notice."

Headline at the NYT.

Across Milwaukee, residents can see evidence of federal money from laws passed under the Biden administration, if they know where to look.... [O]f the more than $1 billion for Milwaukee County in the American Rescue Plan Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act... much is harder to see.... That presents both an opportunity and a challenge to Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign as it seeks to show Americans how federal investments have improved their lives. Doing so is difficult because the laws delegated many spending decisions to state and local officials, obscuring the money’s source....

"The fortunes of the Bucks and Brewers are followed in unpretentious taverns that wouldn’t feel out of place on a rural crossroads, and traditional meat-and-potato eateries are as patronized as the latest farm-to-table restaurant."

From "36 Hours in Milwaukee/Welcome to this small town in big-city clothing, where bobbleheads, ice-cream cocktails and Frank Lloyd Wright are on your weekend itinerary" (NYT).

It gets my attention — any elite media attention to the middle-of-the-country state where I've lived for the last 35 years. These "36 Hours in" articles in the NYT present the place they've chosen to swoop in on to intrigue New Yorkers... not that they'd want to move there.

And yet it makes me imagine that New Yorkers... some New Yorkers... yearn for a life in a smaller city where the unpretentious taverns feel (to a New Yorker) like a place that could exist on a rural crossroads and where the teams could be the Bucks and Brewers. Are there New Yorkers like that?

Actually, I think there are New York City bars like that. I'm reading "Where [in NYC] to Root for Non-New York Baseball Teams":

Some teams have gotten so much unexpected popularity that their New York supporters have even been written up in their hometown paper. Kettle of Fish, at 59 Christopher St., was once home to beat poets like Jack Kerouac. When the place was bought by Milwaukee native Patrick Daley in the 1980s, it became a haven for Packers and Brewers fans, even getting its own writeup in Madison Magazine.

Maybe concentrate on winning the game...

Here's something that went out in the Milwaukee Bucks' Twitter feed last night (as they were losing the third game in a row in the Eastern Conference finals):

🍻 @DavidBakhtiari and @AaronRodgers12 go head-to-head in a beer chugging competition!! #GoPackGo | #FearTheDeer pic.twitter.com/etedPaiJ9G

— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) May 24, 2019

In Wisconsin MVP’s crush beers. @ChristianYelich | #FearTheDeer pic.twitter.com/qTnMl4K3eN

— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) May 24, 2019

Even if they'd won, what kind of example is this? Beer chugging? And it's touted in the Wisconsin State Journal, under the headline "Brew Crew: Watch as Christian Yelich refuses to be upstaged by Aaron Rodgers, David Bakhtiari in beer chugging contest." ESPN has "Brew-haha: Yelich, Rodgers chug at Bucks game."

Milwaukee and socialism.

WI GOP exec director: "No city in America has stronger ties to socialism than Milwaukee ... And with the rise of Bernie Sanders and the embrace of socialism by its newest leaders, the American left has come full circle. It’s only fitting the Democrats would come to Milwaukee.”

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) March 11, 2019

From the Wikipedia article on Milwaukee:

During the first sixty years of the 20th century, Milwaukee was the major city in which the Socialist Party of America earned the highest votes. Milwaukee elected three mayors who ran on the ticket of the Socialist Party: Emil Seidel (1910–1912), Daniel Hoan (1916–1940), and Frank Zeidler (1948–1960). Often referred to as "Sewer Socialists", the Milwaukee Socialists were characterized by their practical approach to government and labor.

From the Wikipedia article, "Sewer Socialism":

With the creation of the Socialist Party of America, this group formed the core of an element that favored democratic socialism over orthodox Marxism, de-emphasizing social theory and revolutionary rhetoric in favor of honest government and efforts to improve public health. The sewer socialists fought to clean up what they saw as "the dirty and polluted legacy of the Industrial Revolution", cleaning up neighborhoods and factories with new sanitation systems, city-owned water and power systems and improved education. This approach is sometimes called "constructive socialism"....

Although the Socialists had many ideas and policies similar to those of the Wisconsin Progressives, tensions still existed between the two groups because of their differing ideologies. Socialist Assemblyman George L. Tews during a 1932 debate on unemployment compensation and how to fund it argued for the socialist bill and against the Progressive substitute, stating that a Progressive was "a Socialist with the brains knocked out"....

In 1961, Progressive editor William Evjue wrote of the Wisconsin Socialist legislators he had known by saying: "They never were approached by the lobbyists, because the lobbyists knew it was not possible to influence these men. They were incorruptible".

Send in the cats!

"Milwaukee lands 2020 Democratic National Convention" (Wisconsin State Journal).

Milwaukee Bucks vice president Alex Lasry — who along with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, helped oversee the city's bid for the convention — hailed the news....

"For the next year and a half, everyone will be talking about the ‘Road to Milwaukee,' putting an emphasis on the importance of Wisconsin and the Midwest for winning the presidency," Lasry said....

Hail the news... and Hail, Wisconsin. You wanted to avoid us, but that worked out so badly for you last time, and now, you come crawling back. In my frozen cold heart, I await your endless mewling, Wisconsin Wisconsin Wisconsin.

The post title can be understood by reading the earlier post, "Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen likens Ilhan Omar (and other colleagues) to cats — saying, 'The cats have to understand who provides the water and kibble and cleans the litter.'"

Just when I'd stopped getting ready to jump,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was Trump
Don't you love farce?
My fault, I fear...
I thought that you'd want what I want
Sorry, my dear!
But where are the cats?
Send in the cats!
Don't bother, they're here....

UPDATE, 5 minutes after posting:

The cat is ready to fight in The North!

I'm glad I didn't get around to blogging about the Shorewood School District reversing its decision to cancel the high school theater production of "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Because now they've reversed the reversal and are back at cancellation.

An email from Shorewood superintendent Bryan Davis said that there would be no public performance of "To Kill A Mockingbird," which was scheduled to be performed at 7 p.m. Wednesday, "due to mental and emotional health of our entire student body related to the production."

There will be a "dress rehearsal" with only the family of the cast and crew in the audience. There will also be a press conference:

"It's going to be an opportunity for us to talk to all press about the context of the play. Also, we're going to have our students from our Youth Rising Up organization, some of those kids that spoke last night (Oct. 16 at the community conversation on race) so they can have their perspective and their voice in the conversation. So we felt that that was important to do," Davis' email said.

"Youth Rising Up" gets priority over Youth Who Worked Hard to Put Together a Play. The play was chosen by the faculty, not the students. The students worked in reliance on the faculty's support. The faculty caved. The learned lines of a classic story will not be heard so that those who've managed to get the performance blocked can once again have "their voice" heard. Why doesn't Youth Rising Up find/write a play that gives their perspective and learn that play and work hard on a production that an audience would show up for? What do they have to say — anything about courage? Because the Shorewood school authorities could use some.

Here's my post from last week reacting to the original cancellation. Excerpt:

Imagine letting students learn all the lines of a play, rehearse their parts, get all nervous and excited about the performance and then just cancelling it on them — cancelling it on them not because of anything they did wrong or anything that was wrong but because other people talked about protesting it. What kind of lesson is the school teaching?! What's the point of working hard and doing something worthwhile that you believe in and build with other people if the authorities won't support you but will take the "safest option" and side with the people who see an opportunity for protest and disruption.

"And the Chicago Cubs have company at the top of the National League Central."

First place mood. #LetsGo pic.twitter.com/4fwwlDgwMO

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) September 30, 2018

Gas station owner watches surveillance video of a thief ransacking his store for an hour — after the police have been called.

In Milwaukee.

[T]he thief headed for the cash register. He didn't succeed in breaking through the bulletproof glass.... He then headed straight for the ATM.

"I was waiting and waiting and I'm looking at my camera on my phone and the guy was still inside in the store, breaking things and damaging things," the owner said. The owner watched the video in real time as he sat in his vehicle across the street. He said he called MPD several times.

"He just had so much confidence that police weren't going to show up or something, and he was just taking his time and kept working on it," the owner said.

Somehow the police managed to arrive after the guy was gone, and the guy made off with nothing.

Horrible police (but excellent ATM machine and bulletproof glass construction).

Only in Milwaukee.

.@orlandoarcia9 takes a big bite out of one to give the #Brewers an 8-4 lead! #ThisIsMyCrew #MILvsMIA pic.twitter.com/2d6CHVV3p5

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) July 1, 2017

"In this city, there’s a lot of killings going on in the street. He was afraid for his life. He was concerned about his safety and surviving."

Said the grandfather of Sylville Smith, the man shot to death by a police officer in Milwaukee last week.

I'm sympathetic to those who feel a need to carry a gun for self-defense. But it doesn't explain pointing the gun at the cop, which is what we're told the body cam shows Smith doing — not unless the grandfather meant to refer to a fear that the police were the danger to his life. Pointing a gun at a police officer is not a good way to try to preserve your life, but a person can make a bad decision, and I don't know what Sylville Smith had heard and come to believe in his short life. I do know the bad information that was spread when he died in the community where he absorbed his idea of reality.

Asking for the black vote.

I noticed a meme yesterday: asking for the black vote.

Rick Perry — as a Trump proxy — was on Jake Tapper's show ("The Lead").

Tapper showed an old clip of Perry saying "For too long, we Republicans have been content to lose the black vote because we found we didn't need it to win. But when we gave up trying to win the support of African-Americans, we lost our moral legitimacy as the party of Lincoln."

Asked if Trump need to pay attention to that "warning," Perry talked about how Trump's policies are actually better for African-Americans, and Tapper said, "But Hillary Clinton, whatever you think of her and her policies, she was in Philadelphia today reaching out directly to many in the African-American community."

When Perry continued with the idea that Trump's policies are better and wondered why African-Americans keep voting for Democrats, Tapper sledgehammered his idea: "Well, I guess the point I was making is because they're showing up and asking for their vote."

Perry seemed a little annoyed at the idea: "Is that all it takes? If just a Democrat shows up and asks for their vote, that is enough?" He proceeded to characterize the showing-up-and-asking idea as "denigrat[ing]" African-Americans, who, in his view, "want to see action."

But who knows? Maybe the key is asking for the vote. Trump did show up — later that day — near the scene of the unrest in Milwaukee. Last night, in West Bend, Wisconsin, Trump said: "I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different future."

I'm just observing notion that there are special words and that those words happen to have been said. But here's an excerpt from the transcript, if you want to see Trump's argument why black people should respond to his request:

"A Chicago-based communist revolutionary group blamed by Milwaukee's police chief for stoking a second day of violence said that some of its members did go there to 'support a revolution'..."

"... but didn't set out to cause trouble." The group called the civil disorder "righteous rebellion."

"This system sees police wantonly murdering people as part of the normal order of things," [said party co-founder Carl Dix]. But he added that people take issue with protests in response to those killings. His group advocates dismantling the police.

The Revolutionary Communist Party was founded in 1975, with a sharp focus on issues affecting black Americans. Dix repeatedly said party members are seeking to "dismantle" police and other government systems. The group is distinct from the Communist Party of the USA....

"If anybody wants to allege that our people were actually committing those acts, they should bring that to us. That wasn't what we went up there to do."

“What are we gonna do now? Everyone playing their part in this city, blaming the white guy or whatever, and we know what they’re doing."

"Like, already I feel like they should have never OK'd guns in Wisconsin. They already know what our black youth was doing anyway. These young kids gotta realize this is all a game with them. Like they’re playing Monopoly. You young kids falling into their world, what they want you to do. Everything you do is programmed. I had to blame myself for a lot of things too because your hero is your dad and I played a very big part in my family’s role model for them. Being on the street, doing things of the street life: Entertaining, drug dealing and pimping and they’re looking at their dad like 'he’s doing all these things.' I got out of jail two months ago, but I’ve been going back and forth in jail and they see those things so I’d like to apologize to my kids because this is the role model they look up to. When they see the wrong role model, this is what you get. They got us killing each other and when they even OK'd them pistols and they OK'd a reason to kill us too. Now somebody got killed reaching for his wallet, but now they can say he got a gun on him and they reached for it. And that’s justifiable. When we allowed them to say guns is good and it’s legal, we can bear arms. This is not the wild, wild west y’all. But when you go down to 25th and center, you see guys with guns hanging out this long, that’s ridiculous, and they’re allowing them to do this and the police know half of them don’t have a license to carry a gun. I don’t know when we’re gonna start moving. I’ve gotta start with my kids and we gotta change our ways, to be better role models. And we gotta change ourselves. We’ve gotta talk to them, put some sense into them. They targeting us, but we know about it so there’s no reason to keep saying it’s their fault. You play a part in it. If you know there’s a reason, don’t give in to the hand, don’t be going around with big guns, don’t be going around shooting each other and letting them shoot y’all cause that’s just what they’re doing and they’re out to destroy us and we’re falling for it."

Said Patrick Smith, Sylville Smith's father.

Sylville Smith is the 23-year-old man shot dead last night in Milwaukee, touching off rioting. The police officer who shot him, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, was also a black man, according to Police Chief Edward Flynn, who has seen the body camera video.

"I mean, there was virtually no time between the officer unhooking his seat belt, turning on his body camera, getting out of the car and immediately he was in a foot chase. That foot chase went maybe a few dozen feet before he encountered this individual in a fenced yard," Flynn said. "The individual was armed. The individual did turn toward the officer with the firearm in his hand. You can't tell when the officer discharges his firearm."...

Flynn said... that based on the video, the officer faced a credible threat. He said Smith did not comply with an officer's command to drop his gun. There is no indication that Smith fired a shot. "It (the gun) was in his (Smith's) hand. He was raising up with it."

NYT front page uses the words "unarmed" and "armed" to describe the man the police shot dead in Milwaukee last night.

Here's the screen grab from the front page of the NYT right now:



I think the correct description is the one in the small print, armed.

Here's the linked article:

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin activated the Wisconsin National Guard on Sunday to assist local law enforcement following a night of violence in Milwaukee that began hours after a police officer fatally shot a fleeing armed man there.

Boldface added.

I guess "unarmed" is the narrative.

UPDATED: The front page has this now:



I'm not saying I get results. I think the update happened because Governor Walker's action changed the most important news for this story.

"If you love your son, if you love your daughter, text them, call them, pull them by their ears, get them home."

Said Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, as rioting breaks out after police shoot and kill a fleeing armed man.

Aldermen Khalif Rainey said that the section of Milwaukee he represents has become "a powder keg" and:

"This entire community has sat back and witnessed how Milwaukee, Wis., has become the worst place to live for African-Americans in the entire country. Now this is a warning cry. Where do we go from here? Where do we go as a community from here? Do we continue – continue with the inequities, the injustice, the unemployment, the under-education, that creates these byproducts that we see this evening? … The black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of living under this oppression. This is their existence. This is their life. This is the life of their children. Now what has happened tonight may have not been right; I’m not justifying that. But no one can deny the fact that there’s problems, racial problems, here in Milwaukee, Wis., that have to be closely, not examined, but rectified. Rectify this immediately. Because if you don’t, this vision of downtown, all of that, you’re one day away. You’re one day away."

I'm sorry to be so crass as to connect this to the presidential election, but Wisconsin is a swing state, and Hillary Clinton is counting on the people of Milwaukee to feel motivated to come out and vote for the Democratic Party candidate, because what else is there but the Democratic Party?

How is that going to happen? Are you going to "pull them by their ears"?!

Tom Barrett is, of course, a Democrat, and he's been mayor of Milwaukee for 12 years.

ADDED: "But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go." — Thomas Jefferson.

"Unlike the pure coherence of [Buckminster] Fuller's idea, for instance, Grieb's shifts in geometric patterning are subtly awkward..."

"... and the interstitial building with its squiggly entry leads to unnecessarily crammed interior spaces, for instance."

That's an awkward sentence about awkwardness — note the double "for instance" — from a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article titled "The singular vision and big ambition of Domes architect Donald Grieb."

The Domes — the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory — "have become an emblem of civic neglect."

There are a lot of domes out there, from the time when domes seemed like The Future, and even the purely coherent domes of Buckminster Fuller are crumbling into incoherence through neglect.

The Future was once a concept, and when it was made real, real people said no, but we may say yes again, if only to preserve the crazy old idea of The Future we had in the past.

The consciousness of the world cannot contain 2 lions.

The Milwaukee lion melts into unreality.