Good morning. 
Saturday in Whitewater will see both rain and snow with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 03m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 6.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is both the one thousand four hundred ninety-fifth day and the thirty-sixth day.
On this day in 1941, Hitler declares, before dozens of high-ranking Nazi Party officials, his genocidal plans against European Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery.
Recommended for reading in full —
The New York Times editorial board writes of The Republicans Who Embraced Nihilism:
This isn’t really about Mr. Trump anymore. He lost, and his ruinous tenure will soon be over. This is now about the corruption of a political party whose leaders are guided by the fear of Mr. Trump rather than the love of this country — and who are falling into dangerous habits.
The events of recent weeks have demonstrated the strength and resilience of the election system. A larger share of American adults voted in the 2020 presidential election than in any previous cycle. The votes were counted, sometimes more than once. The results were certified. In the states that have attracted the particular ire of Mr. Trump and his allies, most officials, including most Republican officials, defended the integrity of the results.
But the incendiaries are playing a dangerous game. They are battering public trust and raising doubts about the legitimacy of future elections. Most of it is political theater: Mr. Biden’s decisive victory is difficult to overturn. But a great many voters trust their political leaders, they don’t expect to be lied to, they aren’t in on the grift.
It is also a short walk from rhetorical attacks on the legitimacy of the election to denying the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s administration. Republicans are certainly within their rights to disagree with Mr. Biden and to challenge the decisions made by his administration, but those who refuse to accept his victory are undermining the rule of law. Those who stand silent are complicit.
Matt Bai writes Let’s take a closer look at Trump’s supposedly intimidating 74 million vote total:
In the dark and cavernous mind of President Trump, Joe Biden’s vote count in last month’s election is, on its face, evidence of mail-in fraud. Eighty million votes! How is that even possible?
What Trump doesn’t question, of course, is the significance of his own vote total, which was north of 74 million — higher than that of any president before him. And neither does anyone else.
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To Republicans, the clear message of those 74 million votes is that Trump is simply the most popular Republican in at least a generation.
The problem is: We really have no idea what that 74 million figure means, because we have nothing useful to which we can compare it.
Why? Because this was the first election that featured multiple ways of casting a ballot pretty much everywhere, including early and by-mail voting. As a result (and also because of heightened emotions in the electorate), turnout was the highest it has been in more than a century, clocking in at more than 66 percent.
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It’s likely that we’ll look back in 20 years and say that Trump’s 74 million was actually quite low for an incumbent president in the era of the expanded vote. It’s entirely possible that we won’t see an incumbent president garner fewer than 70 million votes in the next several decades.
How Prince Wrote a Political Anthem That’s Still Relevant Today: