Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 6:31 and sunset is 7:09 for 12 hours 38 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1958, Jack Kilby demonstrates the first working integrated circuit while employed at Texas Instruments. (Kilby later won the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit.)
Our time has seen countless conspiracy theories, not least among them the false claims about the result of the 2020 presidential election. On the campaign trail this fall, voters have a chance to meet one of the most committed of the 2020 election denialists, who now concedes — six years later! — that, in fact, Joe Biden did win that presidential election:
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Wisconsin Republican running for governor, moved to reverse Democrat Joe Biden’s win over Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Dec. 10, 2020: Signed a legal brief supporting Texas’ U.S. Supreme Court bid to overturn the results in Wisconsin and three other battleground states that backed Biden.
Jan. 5, 2021: Announced plans to vote against certifying the Electoral College results, claiming hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin votes were cast illegally, and later said he would have voted against certifying Wisconsin’s election results.
Jan. 6, 2021: Voted to object to counting electoral votes in Pennsylvania and Arizona, which supported Biden.
May 18, 2026: Backed an FBI probe of Wisconsin’s 2020 election.
August 2026: Said he didn’t regret voting against certifying the election.
Sept. 4, 2026: Told Wisconsin Watch that Biden won but he still welcomes law enforcement investigations into Wisconsin’s 2020 election.
See Tom Kertscher, Did Tom Tiffany try to overturn the 2020 presidential election result?, Wisconsin Watch, September 10, 2026.
Worry not for Rep. Tiffany, as he has replaced his absurd election denialism with a new absurdity: he somehow believes that Donald Trump might truly make good on a promise to give each American $5,000 if the GOP retains both chambers of Congress. Catherine Rampell of The Bulwark illustrates nicely how unreliable Trump’s promise is:
Here is a partial list of times he’s teased checks from the government since retaking office:
- $5,000 stimulus checks via a “DOGE dividend” (February 2025)
- $2,000 stimulus checks via a “rebate” or tariff “dividend” (July 2025, August 2025, November 2025, December 2025, February 2026)
- Checks of indeterminate value that would redirect money that would have been spent on Affordable Care Act subsidies (November 2025)
- $500 Obamacare “rebate” checks (September 2026)
- $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans win the midterms (yesterday)
See Catherine Rampell, Trump’s $5,000 Midterm Ploy Is Even Dumber Than It Sounds (‘The math is impossible, the inflation risk is real, and the plan would attract an army of scammers’), The Bulwark, September 10, 2026.
When Tiffany tires of his latest confidence in a Trump dividend, he’ll still have flat Earth, QAnon, and chemtrails claims to embrace.
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Forthcoming topics (in no particular order): Development in Downtown Whitewater (Follow-Up), Polling Places in the City (Further Considerations), A New Ethics Ordinance, and Steps for a Public Interest Campaign.
So much better to set aside these silly political fantasies for a creative film about a coyote plaintiff and a corporate defendant. Coyote v. Acme, enjoyable all the way through, is an animated fantasy worth embracing. Bringing Explosive Life to ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ | Anatomy of a Scene: