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This evening's music features doo wop group The Falcons. Enjoy!

"Most of wars or military coups or invasions are done in the name of democracy against democracy."

-- Eduardo Galeano

News and Opinion

Sirota is barking - but is it the right tree?

Trump Is Staging A Coup — Why Are Dems Not Sounding The Alarm?

The recent HBO film 537 Votes about the Florida 2000 election mess offers one overarching message: Democrats’ refusal to sound a clear alarm about the slow-motion heist in process ultimately let the election be stolen. In that debacle, Democrats seemed to think things would break their way with well-honed arguments inside the cloistered confines of the legal system — they never understood how public-facing politics can play a role in what ultimately ended up being a pivotal political brawl outside the courtroom.

Twenty years later, the lesson of that debacle isn’t being heeded. Donald Trump and his cronies are quite clearly waging a public-facing campaign designed to create the conditions for the Electoral College process to pull off a coup. This is a full-scale emergency — and yet the Democratic strategy seems to be to try to pretend it isn’t happening, in hopes that norms win out, even though nothing at all is normal.

In the week since the election, Trump’s and his Republican allies have waged a public campaign to call the election results into question — not just in the courtroom, but in the public’s mind. Their lawsuits and Attorney General William Barr’s recent memo are designed as much to win rulings and initiate prosecutions as they are to generate headlines. Their tweets asserting fraud, and their high-profile promises of financial reward for evidence of fraud are all designed to do the same thing. Most ominously of all, Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona are already insinuating the results may be fraudulent, even though they haven’t produced any evidence of widespread fraud.

Why is public perception so important? Because as Ohio State University law professor Edward Foley shows in a frighteningly prescient 2019 article, legislatures could use the public perception of fraud to try to invoke their constitutional power to ignore their states’ popular votes, reject certified election results and appoint slates of Trump electors. ... This is quite obviously what the GOP is aiming for — and they’ve basically said it out loud. Indeed, Trump’s son has promoted the idea of legislatures overturning the election, and so has Trump’s staunch ally, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Meanwhile, a Republican lawmaker involved in Wisconsin’s new election fraud investigation suggested his state’s popular vote could be ignored.

This is why we’ve seen Republican officials and policies continue pretending that Trump didn’t lose the election, and presuming that there will be a second Trump term. This isn’t merely infantile behavior or an immature temper tantrum — it is part of a cutthroat plan. They are trying to normalize the idea that regardless of how Americans actually voted, a second Trump term is inevitable because state legislatures and Congress will ultimately hand him the Electoral College.

Dahlia Lithwick: Trump’s Ridiculous Coup Attempt Will Fail, But It Will Hurt Democracy in Long Run

70% of Republicans say election wasn't 'free and fair' despite no evidence of fraud

According to a new survey, 70% of Republicans do not believe the presidential election was “free and fair”, even though multiple news outlets have called it for Joe Biden.

There has been a dramatic decline in Republican voters’ faith in the system. Before the election, in the same Politico/Morning Consult poll, 35% of Republicans thought the vote would not be free and fair.

More Democrats voiced trust in the election, 90% saying they thought the results were “free and fair”, up 52% from the pre-election poll.

Among Republicans who thought the election wasn’t fair, 78% thought mail-in ballots spurred extensive voter fraud, while 72% believed ballot tampering occurred.

Donald Trump and his supporters continue to allege such problems, without offering any substantiating evidence whatsoever. ...

Among Republican voters surveyed by Politico and Morning Consult, 84% said the election helped Biden. Before election day, 18% of Republicans said they thought results would be unreliable. Now, that number has surged to 64%. Among Democrats, 86% said they trusted the results.

Republicans are basically saying black votes are illegal, next they’ll say they’re only worth 3/5ths of a vote

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) November 10, 2020

Analysis: Trump will 'fight all the way' in bid to retain power

Pompeo makes baseless claims about ‘smooth transition to second Trump administration’

The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo has predicted “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration” on a day when US allies offered their congratulations to the president-elect, Joe Biden. Pompeo made his remarks to reporters at the state department on Tuesday, and gave a slight smile after referring to a “second Trump administration” – leaving it unclear whether he was joking.

He did not refer to the fact that Biden has been projected as the winner, and held a lead of 4.7m nationwide in the vote count so far, while being ahead in the four critical battleground states. Instead, Pompeo focused on the various legal challenges being pursued by the Trump administration, none of which so far have been found to have any merit.

“We’re ready,” Pompeo went on. “The world is watching what’s taking place. We’re gonna count all the votes. When the process is complete, there’ll be electors selected. There’s a process – the constitution lays it out pretty clearly. The world should have every confidence that the transition necessary to make sure that the state department is functional today, successful today and successful with a president who’s in office on January 20 a minute after noon, will also be successful.”

The state department is not currently communicating with the Biden team and all government agencies have been told to proceed with their budgets as if Trump had been re-elected, to the outrage of Democrats.

.@SecPompeo: "There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration."

Full video here: https://t.co/6Rou91HQxv pic.twitter.com/MU9Gp2QWnq

— CSPAN (@cspan) November 10, 2020

DoJ officials condemn Barr's approval of voter fraud inquiries without evidence

Current and former US Department of Justice (DoJ) officials have reacted with anger and dismay to the latest move in support of Donald Trump by William Barr, the attorney general who has stoked further discord around the president’s refusal to concede electoral defeat by approving federal investigations into voter fraud, despite little evidence of any wrongdoing.

Barr’s two-page memo, delivered to the 93 US attorneys across the country on Monday, was immediately condemned by senior figures inside and outside the DoJ.

In the most dramatic response, the top DoJ official in charge of voter fraud investigations, Richard Pilger, resigned from his post, telling colleagues he did so because of the “ramifications” of Barr’s move. In a statement, Pilger pointed out that for the past 40 years the justice department had abided by a clear policy of non-intervention in elections, with criminal investigations only carried out after contests were certified and completed.

Barr’s memo tears up that rule by giving federal prosecutors the go-ahead to investigate what he called “apparently-credible allegations of irregularities”. His action was specifically aimed at closely fought presidential contests in swing states with prolonged vote counts caused by the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.

Krystal and Saagar: Here’s EVERYTHING We Know About Trump Election Fraud Allegations

Trump's vote fraud claims go viral on social media despite curbs

False or misleading claims of electoral fraud are going viral on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, even as the platforms continue to implement special measures aimed at reducing the spread of misinformation around the US presidential election.

Major social media platforms are nominally cracking down on misinformation, prominently displaying election results or appending warning labels to posts by Donald Trump that seek to undermine the validity of the vote.

According to social analytics platforms such as NewsWhip and CrowdTangle, however, claims about voting irregularities have become among the most-shared content on Facebook.

The top three posts are all from Donald Trump, according to CrowdTangle: one alleges “Fake Votes” in Nevada, where Trump trails Joe Biden by 36,000 votes; another claims Georgia, where Trump trails by 13,000 votes pending a recount, will be a “big presidential win”; and a third says “a very large number of ballots” will be affected by “threshold identification”, the meaning of which is unclear.

The top news stories on Facebook are also dominated by rightwing claims of “irregularities” and “fraud”, CrowdTangle data showed. Three of the top 10 posts are links from Trump to the far-right news site Breitbart, covering attorney general Bill Barr’s inquiry into “voting irregularities” and inquiries in Michigan and Georgia; a fourth is to rightwing site Newsmax, calling Pennsylvania’s situation a “constitutional travesty”.

I mean, I’m sure it’s nothing, just a coincidence, that on Friday the head of the US nuclear weapons agency resigned, and then today the defense chief of the US was fired by Trump. It’s not like Trump was trying to get them to do something they were refusing to do, right? Phew. pic.twitter.com/CeoW1Fcelr

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) November 9, 2020

Peru's new president accused of coup after ousting of predecessor

The head of Peru’s Congress has been sworn as president after his predecessor was controversially ousted in a congressional vote late on Monday, prompting accusations of a coup. The removal of the popular president Martín Vizcarra comes as Peru is reeling from one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, which has left its economy in recession and caused mass unemployment.

After a night of furious protests and clashes with police, hundreds of demonstrators gathered again on Tuesday morning in downtown Lima to protest against the swearing-in of Manuel Merino, widely viewed as a key figure in orchestrating Vizcarra’s impeachment. A previous attempt in September failed to get enough votes.

Riot police with shields and wielding batons beat back demonstrators marching on the Congress building who waved Peruvian flags and placards reading “Merino is not my president”. In total 105 out of Peru’s 130 lawmakers voted to remove Vizcarra on Monday. Vizcarra has previously said that no fewer than 68 of the members of congress seeking his impeachment were themselves subject to ongoing legal processes.

Many public figures and legal experts have said described Vizcarra’s ousting – on the grounds of “permanent moral incapacity” – as illegitimate. George Forsyth, the leading presidential candidate, tweeted it was a “coup in disguise”. Leftwing presidential candidate Veronika Mendoza called for Peruvians to take to the streets to defend democracy.

Analysts concurred that the removal was orchestrated by opposition leaders who bitterly opposed the president’s anti-graft reforms and his overhaul of higher education which affected their business interests.

Too clever by half?

Jair Bolsonaro claims 'victory' after suspension of Chinese vaccine trial

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has sparked outrage by gloating over the suspension of clinical trials of the Chinese coronavirus vaccine after a volunteer’s death. “Another victory for Jair Bolsonaro,” read a comment posted by the official Facebook account of Brazil’s far-right leader on Monday night after the country’s health regulator, Anvisa, announced it had halted testing of the CoronaVac jab.

Anvisa said the trial of the vaccine – which is being developed by the Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech – had been suspended as a result of a “adverse, serious event” involving a participant in Brazil.

But many Bolsonaro critics see a possible political motivation behind the move, and the head of the Brazilian research centre coordinating the trial claimed the volunteer’s death was not related to the vaccine. The broadcaster TV Cultura reported on Tuesday that the “event” was suicide, saying it had seen the coroner’s report showing the trial volunteer had taken their own life.

The CoronaVac is being developed in partnership with the São Paulo-based research centre Butantan and has been championed by São Paulo’s state governor, João Doria, who is one of Bolsonaro’s biggest political foes. That rivalry has placed the CoronaVac at the centre of a growing political brawl with Doria, who many believe will challenge Bolsonaro for the presidency in 2022, who promised to implement a compulsory vaccination scheme in his state while the president opposed such a move.

Seventh straight day of 100,000 new US Covid cases amid increased warnings

The coronavirus pandemic continues to surge in the US, after the country recorded a seventh consecutive day of more than 100,000 new cases and one of the public health advisers recruited by president-elect Joe Biden to advise his transition team warned that those case numbers could double in the coming weeks under the leadership of Donald Trump.

Monday saw the US surpass 10m total cases – the highest number in the world, by far – and reach a death toll of 238,256. There were 111,433 new cases on Monday and 590 new deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Hospitalisations were also rising, with more than 59,000 nationwide, reported the Covid Tracking Project, which saw the biggest single-day increase since 10 July. It found South Dakota had the highest hospitalisation rates in the US and said Illinois had reported more than 10,000 cases for four days straight.

Biden has already warned the US is “facing a very dark winter” and that even with Pfizer’s announcement that it has a vaccine it believes is 90% effective, 200,000 more lives could be lost in the US in the next few months.

California counties return to restrictive Covid rules amid hospitalization surge

Multiple counties in California will move back into more restrictive Covid-19 rules amid a surge in hospitalizations, with health officials warning the latest numbers paint a troubling picture as the state heads into winter. The number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus in California has risen by 32% over the past two weeks, and intensive-care admissions have risen by 30%, Dr Mark Ghaly, the state’s health and human services secretary, told reporters on Monday.

As a result, Ghaly announced that three counties that are home to about 5.5 million people – San Diego, Sacramento and Stanislaus - must reverse their reopening plans and go back to the most restrictive category of regulations under which indoor dining in restaurants is not allowed and gyms and religious institutions are not permitted to hold indoor activities.

More counties will probably be required to roll back reopening in coming weeks, he said. “We anticipate if things stay the way they are … over half of California counties will have moved into a more restrictive tier” by next week, Ghaly said. ...

Los Angeles county is home to 10 million people, roughly one-quarter of California’s population, and was seeing 750 cases per day in September. Last week, several days saw case counts above 2,000.

Amid SCOTUS Fight over ACA, Advocates Say Medicare for All Remains Best Way to Expand Healthcare

Conservative US supreme court justices suggest Obamacare will be upheld

Two conservative supreme court justices have suggested the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could be upheld, as oral arguments began in a suit backed by the Trump administration which threatens the healthcare of millions amid a global pandemic.

At risk in the case is the healthcare coverage of at least 20 million Americans and a number of popular protections that have shifted expectations regarding costs and how the US health system operates. The ACA, passed in 2010 and popularly known as Obamacare, allows people to access preventive health services such as vaccinations at no cost. It also caps insurer profits.

In a two-hour teleconference on Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts indicated in questioning that the law could be upheld even if the court deems one part of it unconstitutional – a crucial question in the case. ...

In two previous challenges to the ACA, the supreme court has left it largely intact. But the court now has a 6-3 conservative majority and this is the first major case brought before a court with three justices appointed by Donald Trump.

Wisconsin man charged with providing assault rifle to Kenosha shooter Rittenhouse

The person who purchased and provided 17-year-old militia member Kyle Rittenhouse with the AR-15-style assault rifle that he used to shoot and kill two protesters at an anti-police violence protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin on August 25, has been charged with two felonies. Dominick Black, 19, allegedly bought a Smith & Wesson M&P rifle in his own name while he was with Rittenhouse at an Ace Home Center in Ladysmith, Wisconsin last summer. Rittenhouse gave Black money for the purpose of buying the weapon because he was not old enough to do so himself. ... Black was arrested and charged with two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to someone under 18, causing death. ...

The criminal complaint against Black says that the weapon was being stored in his stepfather’s house and he gave it Rittenhouse there when the two met up prior to volunteering “to go out after curfew” as members of an armed militia engaged in protecting an auto dealership. When the owner of the dealership was asked by authorities about the armed volunteers, he said he did not ask Rittenhouse to protect his property.

After Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz during a series of altercations recorded on smartphone video cameras, he fled the scene and, according to court documents, Black drove him back home to Antioch. Later that night, Rittenhouse turned himself in at the police station in Antioch, accompanied by his mother.

Additionally, the police interviewed Black’s stepfather who told them that when he learned that the weapon had been purchased for Kyle, he “refused to have the rifle housed anywhere other than his locked safe at his home in Wisconsin.” The stepfather also said he took the rifle out of the safe on August 24 when the protests began in Kenosha following the police shooting of Blake. Black’s stepfather told the police, “he and Kyle had been hired to perform security in Kenosha for a private business” and, he told police, he didn’t realize the AR-15 was missing from his house on August 26.

The arrest of Black is significant because it explodes one of the right-wing narratives circulated immediately after the arrest of Rittenhouse that the teenager was not a vigilante but a do-gooder who went to Kenosha by himself with a first aid kit to help protect people from “rioters” who were destroying the city. The cooperation of Black and Rittenhouse in procurement of weapons establishes that the events leading up to the shootings were part of an organized effort in Kenosha. In fact, one of the videos published after the shootings on August 25, shows a group of armed vigilantes—including Rittenhouse—being welcomed in a friendly manner on the streets and offered bottles of water by law enforcement in Kenosha.

Once Trump’s out of office, we’ll be told that holding the child-snatchers accountable is “too divisive."

Fuck that.

If we let the perpetrators move on with their lives like nothing happened IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.

There’s a reason Nazis were put on trial. https://t.co/D4ERVmVVBH

— Never Again Action (@NeverAgainActn) November 9, 2020

Lawyers Can't Reunite 666 Seized Migrant Children With Parents—121 More Than Previously Believed

Last month, the world was shocked and outraged to learn that lawyers tasked with locating relatives of child migrants seized by U.S. immigration agents under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy were unable to locate the parents of 545 children. Now it turns out that the actual number of children and infants separated from their parents is significantly higher than previously thought, according to an email obtained by NBC News.

In the email, Steven Herzog, the lawyer leading the effort to locate the children's relatives and reunite the families, says that 666 children—about 20% of whom were under the age of 5 when they were ripped away from their parents—remain separated. Herzog attibutes the initial undercount to the fact that the government did not provide phone number contacts for 129 of the minors.

"We would appreciate the government providing any available updated contact information, or other information that may be helpful in establishing contact for all 666 of these parents," Herzog wrote to Justice Department attorneys representing the Trump administration.

Last month, the House Judiciary Committee released a scathing report revealing the administration knew it would not be able to reunite migrant families when planning the "zero tolerance" separation policy, but implemented it anyway. The Democratic-led committee spent 21 months investigating the planning and execution of the administration's policy, which resulted in the seizure of more than 2,500 migrant children—including some with physical and mental disabilities—from their parents, the majority of whom are believed to have been deported from the U.S.

Both parents and children—who were often told by U.S. officials that they would never see each other again—have suffered tremendous emotional and psychological trauma that Physicians for Human Rights has called "torture" and "state-sanctioned child abuse." The federal government often separated families who presented themselves at U.S. ports of entry and legally requested asylum after fleeing violence or persecution in their home countries, much of it resulting from U.S. policies and actions.

Some of the children have been given to U.S. families, who are sometimes able to petition for permanent custody of them, and some of the children may indeed never see their parents again.

BIDEN's Cabinet Looking WORSE Than Expected!

Briahna Joy Gray: Pelosi, Moderate Dems IGNORE Their Own Unpopularity

Democrats Need a Winning Message in Georgia. Bernie Sanders Says Fight for $15 Minimum Wage

For Democrats to win both runoff races planned for January 5 in Georgia and secure a Senate majority, they're going to need a winning campaign message.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) shared a suggestion on social media: "If Democrats take back the Senate," he said on Monday afternoon, "we will increase the minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to a living wage of at least $15 an hour."

Sanders' tweet implied that vocally fighting for a higher minimum wage could be the key to victory for candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in Georgia, where 47% of workers make less than $15 an hour and 71% of voters support increasing the federal minimum wage.

47% of workers in Georgia make less than $15 an hour and 71% of voters in Georgia support increasing the federal minimum wage.

If Democrats take back the Senate, we will increase the minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to a living wage of at least $15 an hour.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 9, 2020

As Common Dreams reported last week, voters in Florida—despite casting roughly 370,000 more ballots for outgoing President Donald Trump than President-elect Joe Biden—approved a ballot measure to establish a $15 minimum wage with support from nearly two-thirds of the state's electorate.

After Floridians passed a minimum wage increase by a margin of 61% to 39% while Biden lost the state by capturing only 47.8% of the vote compared to Trump's 51.2%, progressives criticized the Democratic Party for what some characterized as an inadequate embrace of progressive positions, ineffective communication, or both.

After all, critics noted, it is Biden, not Trump, who actually supports the $15 minimum wage policy that will give nearly 2.5 million low-income workers in Florida a much-needed raise. ...

Sanders is suggesting that many of the same Atlanta residents and other people around the state in young and nonwhite demographic categories who voted overwhelmingly for Biden are probably more likely to support Ossoff and Warnock in January 2021 if the candidates' campaigns make it clear that low-income workers in Georgia stand to benefit from a Democratic Senate majority.

We must govern with integrity and accountability. Laquan McDonald’s life mattered. https://t.co/wDlIVe5zPl

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 9, 2020

“A Tremendous Jump for Progressive Forces”: Puerto Rico Election Signals End of Two-Party Dominance

CodePink Defends Georgia Senate Candidate Raphael Warnock After GOP Opponent's 'Anti-Semitism' Smear

The antiwar group CodePink on Tuesday jumped into the fray over allegations of anti-Semitism leveled by Georgia Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler against her Democratic runoff opponent, Rev. Raphael Warnock.

On Monday, Loeffler accused Warnock of "a long history of anti-Semitism," including embracing "the anti-Zionist [Black Lives Matter] organization" and believing that "Israel is an 'oppressive regime' for fighting back against terrorism."

Noting that it is "an organization with a number of Jewish leaders" CodePink said in a statement Tuesday that it "strongly condemns these false accusations of anti-Semitism" against Warnock. The group added that it "finds it ironic that the senator making false accusations... against Rev. Warnock is herself a supporter of incoming [Republican] Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has made blatant Islamophobic and anti-Semitic statements and supports the conspiracy group QAnon."

Using Jews as a tool to attack progressives and people of color is a form of antisemitism.

If you actually cared about Jews, you’d ask why they voted against Trump 3:1. Most Jews understand Trump is inciting hatred and violence against people who aren’t white Christians.

— Max Berger (@maxberger) November 10, 2020

Addressing the issue of whether the Israeli government perpetrates apartheid, CodePink wrote that its "military occupation of the West Bank is composed of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians, checkpoints, and a military court system that subjects two different groups of people to two separate sets of laws."

"Anyone who has traveled to the West Bank city of Hebron, as Rev. Warnock did with the National Council of Churches, is immediately confronted by the visceral and appalling reality that Israel is imposing a system of apartheid on the Palestinian people," the group asserted.

Let's get a few things straight:
Denouncing Israeli occupation is NOT anti-Semitic
Advocating for human rights is NOT anti-Semitic
Calling anti-Zionists anti-Semitic does NOT justify Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine

— CODEPINK (@codepink) November 10, 2020

Last week, Israeli and Jewish-American media published reports that Warnock signed a letter accusing Israel of perpetrating apartheid following a 2019 faith group trip to the Holy Land. Warnock and the delegation visited both Israel and the Palestinian territories it illegally occupies and colonizes with Jewish-only settlements. 

The delegation, which included historically black denominations of the National Council of Churches (NCC) in the U.S. and and leaders of various denominations of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), wrote that it "came as representatives of African American communities; as descendants of those who survived slavery, Jim Crow, and who work now to dismantle the new Jim Crow of mass incarceration and militarization of police in our communities; and we came as representatives of the South African people who lived through the indignity of over 300 years of dehumanizing dispossession, colonialism, segregation, and apartheid."

"We came as people with a shared history of racial segregation, victims of injustice, people who have been dehumanized and marginalized," the group wrote. "We came as people who stand against racism, against anti-Semitism, against Islamophobia."

In Israel, the group visited the Yad Veshem World Holocaust Remembrance Center, "heard the Jewish perspective that proposes a continuum from the biblical lands of Israel taken from the Canaanites, and the present-day political State of Israel," and "shared a Bible study with a Jewish Rabbi and came to more deeply appreciate the hundreds of years of rabbinical scholarship that provide fresh insights for us into the scriptures and their bearing on the current issues in the Israeli religious communities."

The delegation, as its letter detailed, also "visited Palestinian communities and homes where people are not allowed to have freedom of movement or self-determination," toured a Palestinian refugee camp where they "met and heard stories of men, women, and children who have themselves or family members been victims of state-sanctioned violence in the form of detention, interrogation, teargassed, beatings, forced confessions, and death," and "met with families who are fighting to keep their homes from being taken for Jewish settlements and developments."

The faith leaders said they "saw the patterns that seem to have been borrowed and perfected [by the Israeli government] from other previous oppressive regimes" including "ever-present physical walls... reminiscent of the Berlin Wall," as well as "roads built through occupied Palestinian villages, on which Palestinians are not permitted to drive" and "the heavy militarization of the West Bank, reminiscent of the military occupation of Namibia by apartheid South Africa"

At no point does the letter directly accuse Israel of apartheid. However, other prominent South African and American leaders have made such allegations, including anti-apartheid activist and Nobel peace laureate Rev. Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter, who in 2006 said that Israel "perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa." ...

Warnock, who last week came in first with 32% of the vote in the first round of Georgia's special U.S. Senate election, will face Loeffler in a January 5, 2021 runoff election that may prove decisive in determining who controls the Senate.

Krystal Ball: Don't Let Establishment Gaslight You Into Thinking Biden Is Powerless

First murder hornet nest found to have 200 queens capable of spawning new nests

When scientists in Washington state destroyed the first nest of so-called murder hornets found in the US, they discovered about 500 live specimens in various stages of development, officials said Tuesday.

Among them were nearly 200 queens that had the potential to start their own nests, said Sven-Erik Spichiger, an entomologist leading the fight to kill the hornets. “We got there just in the nick of time,” he said.

Still, that didn’t end the threat from the giant insects that can deliver painful, though rarely deadly, stings to people and wipe out entire hives of honeybees. Scientists think other nests already exist and say it’s impossible to know if any queens escaped before the first nest was destroyed.

Asian giant hornets, an invasive pest not native to the US, are the world’s largest hornet at 2in (5 cm) long, and a predator of other insects, including the honeybees that pollinate many of the crops in Washington’s multi-billion-dollar agriculture industry.

What a Republican Senate really means for the climate

Climate advocates rejoicing at Joe Biden’s presidential victory are also quietly absorbing the blow of Republicans possibly keeping control of the US Senate – which would kneecap significant efforts to fight globe-heating pollution. If Joe Biden is president and Congress is still divided, there will probably still be large-scale spending on green infrastructure, like renewable power, electric vehicles and transit. But any hopes for climate requirements for businesses, like a clean energy standard, would feel much farther off.

Publicly, environmental groups have claimed success, saying this election was the most focused on climate of any in history and that Biden’s plan is solid. Privately, they know that much hinges on the two undecided Senate seats in Georgia, which will decide whether Republicans or Democrats have a majority. ...

If Biden could convince Congress to spend $1.7tn on a green recovery, that would reduce US emissions in the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes, avoiding a temperature rise of 0.1C by 2100, according to the Climate Action Tracker. That may seem small, but it could significantly lessen the harms of the climate crisis and also encourage pollution reductions in other nations. Already the world is more than 1C hotter than before industrialization. International agreements aim to keep that to 1.5C to 2C.

Outside of Congress, Biden could pursue climate progress with agency regulations – stopping new oil and gas drilling on public lands, tightening air pollution rules that will also help with climate change and backing out of Donald Trump’s fight with California over standards for cars.

But those measures are likely to be challenged by industry and could ultimately make their way to a final decision by the conservative supreme court, which Trump and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, were able to lock in weeks before the election. Plus, the new president could for some time have his hands full just reversing Trump’s cuts to environmental protection.

Devastating 2020 Atlantic hurricane season breaks all records

The annual record for the number of major storms forming in the Atlantic has been shattered, with Subtropical Storm Theta becoming the 29th named event in a hyperactive hurricane season.

The US National Hurricane Center said the development of Theta, currently churning through the heart of the Atlantic, had broken a record that stood since 2005, when there were 28 named storms.

Yet another named storm could be in the works, with meteorologists tracking one through the Caribbean.

There have been so many big storms in 2020 that meteorologists exhausted their English-language list of names and had to turn to the Greek alphabet, rapidly burning through Alpha to Eta. In September, there were five storms lined up in the Atlantic at once.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

NYPD runs amok during post-Election Day protests

Labour ‘Anti-Semitism’ Report Exposes Real ‘Political Interference’

The Good Scenario For America’s Future

As Trump Ignores Election Results and Plans 'Flood' of Sanctions, Biden Signals Possible Shift in US Relations With Iran

Senate Republicans unveil $1.4T spending bill, with $696B for defense

Quick Comments on the Biden-Harris Covid Plan: Not Much Sizzle and No Steak

'Biden Must Not Appoint a Single Corporate Lobbyist, Lawyer, or Executive' to Top Posts, Say Progressives. 'Not One.'

Who Is Michèle Flournoy, Biden’s Rumored Pick for Pentagon Chief?

When Centrists Lose, Corporate Media Blame the Left

Caitlin Johnstone: Americans Didn’t Vote Against Trump, They Voted Against More Media Psychological Abuse

JPMorgan Chase Is Under a New Federal Investigation, One Month After Getting Slapped with Its 4th and 5th Criminal Felony Count

Turkey Withdraws From Outposts in Northern Syria

Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire greeted with anger and disbelief in Armenia

Russia Achieves Ceasefire In Nagorno-Karabakh

Zoom lied to users about end-to-end encryption for years, FTC says

IEA: Renewables on Track to Be Largest Source of Global Electricity in Five Years

New research sheds light on Alexander Hamilton's ties to slavery

Two million-year-old skull of human cousin found by Australian team in South African cave

Juan González: Mainstream Media Has Missed the Real Story About Latinx Voter Turnout

Jimmy Dore: GROSS Kamala Harris Iconography Posted By Michael Moore!

Rising: Can Dems Pull Off TWO Upsets In Georgia To Take Senate Control?

Rising: Biden Team RIPPED For Lack Of Press Access, Transparency

Krystal and Saagar: SCOTUS Set To TOSS Trump's Bid To End Obamacare

A Little Night Music

The Falcons - The Teacher

The Falcons - I Found A Love

The Falcons - Sent Up

The Falcons - Lonely Nights/Has It Happened To You Yet

Falcons - Oh Baby / Fine Fine Girl

Falcons - This Heart Of Mine

The Falcons - Please Don't Leave Me Dear/Romanita/You're In Love

The Falcons - You Must Know That I Love You/That's What I Aim To Do

The Falcons - My Only Love/Now That It's Over