Good morning. 
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:59 AM and sunset 7:59 PM, for 14h 00m 16s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 42.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the one thousand three hundred seventy-third day.
On this day in 1939, the Wizard of Oz has its world premiere — in Oconomowoc.
Recommended for reading in full —
Rabbi Jack Moline writes Trump says Biden will ‘hurt God,’ but such 2020 posturing really hurts religious Americans:
The pastors and parishioners who accept Trump’s casual relationship with the truth and with the righteous life they preach are coming up on a test. Come November, will they, like the object of their admiration, replace faith with partisanship. Do their allegiances lie with God or with Trump? Now is the time to stand up and say to him, “Mr. President, we accept your choice to play golf on Sunday morning and behave in uncharitable ways toward others, but we cannot accept your denigration of the Bible itself and Almighty God.” The very suggestion that any human being can damage Scripture and wound God is, to the faithful, blasphemous.
Perhaps that was not what Trump was implying when he said Biden “is going to do things that nobody ever would ever think even possible because he’s following the radical left agenda.” But for years, we have watched the president denigrate the faith of his rivals, demonstrate an abysmal knowledge of the Bible and use a photo op in front of a church as an excuse for violence. This latest attack on Biden suggests Trump is not a man of faith, nor is he a man of decency. But what about his supporters?
Michael Gerson reports Trump’s seeming indifference to Russian influence is part of his moral incapacity:
Trump’s deeper incapacity is moral. Rather than judging his own actions against the standards of a creed or ideology, Trump finds his ethical inspiration in the mirror. Those who support him are fundamentally good; those who resist him are stupid, malicious and evil. A general or Cabinet secretary who bows and scrapes is the best at his or her job in human history. Those who contradict him are overrated and “dumb as a rock.” People carrying Confederate battle flags along with Trump signs can’t be all bad. Democrats who politically oppose him and media figures who challenge him are traitors or enemies of the people.
For Trump, egotism even takes precedence over nationalism. In his ambitious revision of political ethics, foreign dictators who support his reelection (and imprison their own opponents) are friends and models. Even if they sow discord and chaos in U.S. democracy. Even if they set out to humiliate the country. Even if they offer bounties for killing U.S. troops.
Amanda Carpenter writes Trump Has a Pen and a Phone:
After riffing on “Sleepy Joe Biden,” hyping unproven allegations of voter fraud, and bragging about his still unbuilt border wall, Trump announced a series of executive orders. He said he would bypass Congress to defer payroll taxes through the end of the year, provide $400-per-week unemployment benefits, suspend payments on some student loans through the end of the year, and stop renters from being evicted from their homes.
Will these orders actually be implemented? Who can say.
They are likely to be challenged in court because only Congress can authorize spending. This is a tenet of Constitutional Conservatism that you may have heard some Republican here or there mention in the times before Trump.