Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy. Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 4:39 PM, for 10h 02m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 70.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the one thousand four hundred fifty-ninth day.
Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets via audiovisual conferencing at 9:00 AM.
On this day in 1837, legislators choose what is now Burlington, Iowa as a temporary capital of the Wisconsin Territory.
Recommended for reading in full —
David Smith writes Trump may have broken his own record for most dangerous lies in one speech:
It seemed like a desperate last stand from a fearful strongman who can feel power slipping inexorably away.
The US president on Thursday returned to the White House briefing room, scene of past triumphs such as that time he proposed bleach as a cure for coronavirus and that other time he condemned QAnon with the words “They like me”.
Trump offered a downright dangerous and dishonest take on this week’s election that current vote counting trends suggest he will lose. It was possibly an attempt to intimidate and deter TV networks from declaring a winner in the next few hours.
It also risked inciting protests and violence from supporters encouraged to view Joe Biden as an illegitimate president-elect.
Sombre and downbeat, Trump made false claims from a prepared statement ( is that better or worse than ad-libbing lies?)
“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” he said with a straight face. “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. If you count the votes that came in late – we’re looking at them very strongly, a lot of votes came in late.”
It was a bold, dramatic claim with massive implications and absolutely no foundation.
Having often dismissed the significance of Vladmir Putin’s hackers’ meddling four years ago, Trump implied that opinion polls are a more sinister threat.
Jonathan Martin and Katie Glueck report Biden Makes Gains in Key States as Anxious Nation Awaits Winner:
In a brief appearance before reporters in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden said he remained confident that he would ultimately prevail but did not lay claim to the White House.
“Democracy’s sometimes messy,” said Mr. Biden, who remained ahead in Arizona on Thursday night but lost some ground there. “It sometimes requires a little patience as well. But that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years with a system of governance that’s been the envy of the world.”
….
Hours later, in a stunning appearance in the White House briefing room, Mr. Trump lied about the vote-counting underway in several states, conjuring up a conspiracy of “legal” and “illegal” ballots being tabulated and claiming without evidence that states were trying to deny him re-election.
“They’re trying to steal an election, they’re trying to rig an election,” the president said from the White House briefing room. He also baselessly suggested nefarious behavior in Philadelphia and Detroit, cities that he called “two of the most corrupt political places.”
Mr. Trump’s remarks, mostly read off notes, were at times more valedictory than defiant. Far from insisting that he would stay in power, he used much of his appearance to complain about pre-election polls, demonize the news media and try to put the best face on Tuesday’s results, trumpeting his party’s congressional gains. He did not take questions from reporters.
Falcon 9 launches GPS III SV04 and Falcon 9 first stage landing: