Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 83. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1950, the Korean War begins when North Korea invades South Korea.
Recommended for reading in full —
Scott Bauer reports GOP-drafted contracts cover probe into potential Wisconsin vote ‘illegalities’:
Retired police officers hired by Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos are being paid $3,200 a month to investigate “potential irregularities and/or illegalities” in the 2020 presidential election, contracts obtained by The Associated Press show.
The investigators will be paid $9,600 each over three months to conduct the probe, according to the documents obtained Thursday. Vos, R-Rochester, signed two contracts in recent days and has said he intends to hire a third investigator and an attorney to oversee the probe.
Vos last month announced plans to have officers investigate the election results as part of the Republican response to former President Donald Trump’s narrow loss in Wisconsin. Republicans have also ordered a review by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau and they have passed several bills tightening rules for absentee voting, measures Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is all but certain to veto.
In Wisconsin, local election officials identified just 27 cases of potential voter fraud out of nearly 3.3 million votes cast in the November election that they forwarded to prosecutors. No charges have been brought in any of the cases.
(Vos wants this, as he signed. And yet, and yet, if he did not want this, he would still sign these contracts – it’s what an insatiable horde wants, and he will either feed them or they will feed on him.)
Lindsey Ellefson reports Tucker Carlson Slams Trump-Appointed Joint Chiefs Chair: ‘Not Just a Pig – He’s Stupid’:
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson attacked the highest-ranking officer of the military Thursday night, calling Gen. Mark Milley “stupid” for saying he reads a variety of authors and wants to understand “white rage.”
Carlson scornfully laughed after playing a clip of Milley speaking before a House Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this week and explaining his interest in studying white rage to better understand the deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“He’s not just a pig,” said Carlson of Milley, who was appointed to his role by then-president Donald Trump. “He’s stupid.”
He told his millions of viewers, “Mark Milley is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He didn’t get that job because he’s brilliant or because he’s brave or because the people who know him respect him. He is not and they definitely don’t. Milley got the job because he is obsequious. He knows who to suck up to and he’s more than happy to do it. Feed him a script, and he will read it.”
Fred Wellman, a veteran who serves as executive director of conservative group the Lincoln Project, wrote on Twitter, “Remember when he was angry that kneeling during the anthem disrespected the military? Tucker Carlson is a coward who never served anything other than his own bank account.”
(Best guess on Carlson, like the former conservatives who’ve now become the intellectual defenders of the alt-right: he wants this to satisfy his own appetites and cravings. He’s not chasing rightwing opinion, he’s yielding to his own base desires. He’ll not stop, just as the writers at Taki Mag, VDare, and American Greatness did not stop. They were once conservatives, but they found rightwing extremism more satisfying.)