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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Sir Mack Rice

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b musician Sir Mack Rice
. Enjoy!

^{Sir Mack Rice - Love Sickness}

“His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools—the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans—and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, ‘You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.’”

-- Terry Pratchett

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News and Opinion

Trump’s election attacks sow distrust and pose US security threat, experts warn

Donald Trump’s attacks on the credibility of Joe Biden’s election win through meritless lawsuits could undermine Americans’ trust in voting and could pose an immediate threat to the security and safety of the country, experts have warned.

Trump’s campaign has unleashed a stream of lawsuits in states key to Biden’s electoral college win, none of which are expected to affect the outcome of the election. The US attorney general, William Barr, has authorized the Department of Justice to investigate voting irregularities, in a highly unorthodox move, and Republican state representatives in Pennsylvania are calling for an audit of the election, though they have no evidence of fraud.

University of Southern California (USC) law professor Franita Tolson said she was concerned that these actions, which would not change the trajectory of the election, were meant to call into question the legitimacy of the result. “What does that do to our democracy as we play out this process? What does it do to the belief in the system when 70 million people think the election was stolen,” Tolson said, referring to the popular vote total for Trump. “To me that’s the danger of this narrative, that’s the danger of this litigation.” ...

“Legal people can say this litigation has no merit, but what do everyday Americans think?” Tolson said. “And they may actually think the president is being treated poorly and he won this election and the system is trying to take it from him.”

'Stolen election' rhetoric: more dangerous than you might think

Kathleen Belew is worried. ... An expert on white power terrorists, she fears Donald Trump's refusal to accept the election results may be inciting violence. The false charge that the presidential election was “stolen” will likely become a rallying cry for the Trump base.

That's politics.

Belew’s concern is that for the militant white power extremists, this could also be invitation for drastic action and mass murder like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. A few months ago, the FBI apprehended a paramilitary group that planned to violently overthrow the Governor of Michigan, put her on trial and probably execute her. As the votes were being counted in competitive states, armed Trump supporters showed up to protest.

The Trump loss, specifically his phony claim that he was robbed, will infuriate these fringe figures: “If these white power advocates double down on the idea this was a rigged election, history tells us there will be major spikes in violence, deliberate attacks,” Belew says. ...

Belew points out that "mass violence and waves of militia activity are not new to America." What is new, she notes, are high officials “emboldening them” and “supporters in public office as part of our political landscape.” It's not just Trump giving aid and comfort to the fringe white nationalists; several newly-elected House members are supporters of QAnon, a racist conspiracy sect. A West Point study concluded QAnon “represents a militant and anti-establishment ideology rooted in an apocalyptic desire to destroy the existing corrupt world.” It warns of “an increasing frequency of criminal or violent acts by QAnon supporters.”

US election: Officials say absolutely no evidence of voter fraud

ELECTION 2020: Payback For Russiagate

Republicans must know that Joe Biden received more votes, in too many states, and by too wide a margin, for the 2020 election results to be overturned. Nevertheless, many Republican leaders are still backing Donald Trump’s claim that Biden’s election was not legitimate. After the Democrats played the fabulist Russiagate card to undermine Trump’s legitimacy, they should not be surprised by Republican efforts to undermine Biden’s. This is U.S. politics in a downward spiral.

The same way Trump laid the groundwork during the campaign by questioning the validity of mail-in voting (which goes back to the American Revolution), Hillary Clinton laid the groundwork during the 2016 campaign to undermine Trump by recklessly branding him a “Putin puppet.” That blossomed into four years of full-blown Russiagate, which was meant to question the validity of Trump’s election, undermine his legitimacy and hamper his ability to act as president.

Now the Republicans are questioning the validity of Biden’s election, undermining his legitimacy and hampering his ability to act as president-elect, and later as president. This is tit-for-tat for the Russiagate gambit. Put bluntly, this is what the Democrats get for starting all this. ...

All this is destabilizing the country and further delegitimizing the two major parties. It has set the stage for Trump to stir up the violent element of his supporters leading to clashes beyond what we have already seen in the streets.

'Loud Noises, Mean Stares, A Big Man'—But No Fraud: Trump Campaign Presents 238 Pages of Ridiculous GOP Poll Watcher Affidavits

Political observers reacted with amusement as well as alarm late Wednesday after the Trump campaign presented a federal judge in Michigan with what it called "shocking" evidence of rampant so-called voter fraud—and what turned out to be a collection largely of poll watchers' affidavits describing unpleasant encounters at ballot-counting centers on Election Day and in the days after.

As part of its lawsuit asking a federal court to block the state of Michigan from certifying its election results—in which President-elect Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 148,000 votes—the campaign produced 238 pages of the affidavits which described poll watchers' experiences of being stared at, disturbed by loud noises at the polls, and in some cases simply not understanding ballot counting procedures. 

Washington Post reporter David Farenthold summed up the affidavits as detailing "loud noises, mean stares, and a big man"—but no election fraud.

A number of poll watchers reported feeling "intimidated" while observing voting and the tallying of ballots at the TCF Center in Detroit, the majority-Black city where Biden won 94% of the vote and Trump won only 5%. One affidavit described a group of union members coming across as intimidating to a poll watcher, while another woman said a "man of intimidating size" walked too closely to her and that she observed poll watchers wearing Black Lives Matter gear.

"A generous way of stating it is that a lot of these Republican challengers seemed pretty uncomfortable around Black people," HuffPost reporter Ryan J. Reilly tweeted.

One observer complained that a public address system in the ballot counting center emitted loud messages from time to time, disrupting his concentration, while another found reason to suspect fraud after observing an unspecified, large number of ballots from military service members which cast votes for Biden.

"I had always been told that military personnel tended to be more conservative, so this stuck out to me as the day went on," the poll watcher wrote.

304/ One of the 234 affidavits the Trump team dropped in Detroit is a poll watcher saying it was suspicious that Joe Biden got votes from the military. This really is the whole thing right here. Just disbelief that Trump could lose. pic.twitter.com/OOsUP3jtWJ

— Isaac Saul (@Ike_Saul) November 11, 2020

"This really is the whole thing right here," tweeted Isaac Saul, author of politics newsletter Tangle. "Just disbelief that Trump could lose."

Polls taken in the run-up to the election found Trump's popularity declining steadily among members of the military. Two months before Election Day, The Atlantic published an article describing comments the president made in which he called Americans who died in wars "losers" and "suckers."

The president's numerous legal challenges to the election results have largely failed so far, with Trump lawyers forced to admit in a Pennsylvania court Tuesday that although the campaign wanted a judge to stop the Montgomery County Board of Elections to stop the counting of mail-in ballots, they could not argue that 592 ballots they were disputing were actually fraudulent.

Trump law firm withdraws from Pennsylvania case challenging election

A major law firm withdrew overnight from a Trump campaign case in Pennsylvania seeking to have mail-in ballots thrown out, in the latest blow to the president’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election result in court.

The Ohio-based Porter Wright Morris & Arthur firm, which brought a suit on Monday alleging that the use of mail-in ballots had created “an illegal two-tiered voting system” in the state, abruptly withdrew from that case in a memo to the court.

Trump lawyers withdraw lawsuit in Arizona

An update from Tom McCarthy, who wrote earlier on Friday about the Trump law firm withdrawing from a Pennsylvania case challenging the election.

Tom writes:

Separately, lawyers for the Trump campaign have withdrawn a lawsuit in Arizona, conceding that the case would not move enough votes to change the election result in the state. “Since the close of yesterday’s hearing, the tabulation of votes statewide has rendered unnecessary a judicial ruling as to the presidential electors,” Trump lawyer Kory Langhofer told an Arizona state court, in news first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

As Trump rejects US election, Biden signals continued regime change abroad

Brazil: congresswoman and friend of slain politician Marielle Franco flees following death threats

A Brazilian congresswoman who was friends with the slain politician Marielle Franco has fled Rio de Janeiro after an alleged plot to kill her was uncovered.

Talíria Petrone, a black feminist activist who is one of the new faces of the Brazilian left, said she had gone into hiding after claims members of Rio’s paramilitary underworld wanted her dead.

“It’s outrageous. My family is caught up in this. I’ve got a five-month-old daughter. It’s frightening to be forced to abandon the area that elected me carrying my daughter in my arms,” Petrone told the Guardian.

“Politically, it’s unacceptable that my freedom be curtailed like this. It’s one of the clearest demonstrations of how Brazilian democracy is in bad shape,” she added.

Petrone was a close friend and colleague of Franco, a favela-born campaigner and city councillor who was shot dead in March 2018 for reasons that remain murky. Two former policemen are awaiting trial for that murder, which shocked the world and cast light on the increasingly powerful paramilitary gangs allegedly responsible.

Pandemic Profit, The Great Vaccine Race | George Galloway

November on track to be worst month of pandemic so far in US as cases surge

November is on track to be the worst month of the pandemic so far in the US as new cases and hospitalisations continue to surge to record highs.

There were 143,231 new cases and 2,005 deaths in the US on Wednesday, according to figures recorded by Johns Hopkins University. It marked the ninth consecutive day of cases topping 100,000 and a new record for daily cases.

It comes after the country recorded more than a million cases in the first 10 days of November.

Total cases in the US have now reached over 10.3m and 241,910 people have died, the highest totals in the world.

Health experts have in part put the increase down to incoming cold weather driving people indoors and frustration with public health precautions such as masks.

Billionaire Trump donors contract Covid-19 after downplaying risks

Two of Donald Trump’s billionaire donors have contracted Covid-19 months after downplaying the risk of the disease to their employees. Richard and Liz Uihlein, conservative megadonors who own the Uline packaging company based in Wisconsin and are two of the Republican party’s most significant financial backers, told employees on Wednesday that they had contracted the disease after being “around people with Covid”.

Liz Uihlein, 75, said in the message to employees: “After these long months, I thought we’d never get it. Well, Trump got it,” she said. ...

It is not clear where the Uihleins might have been infected.

A spokesman for the family said the pair had not attended a White House election night party last week for the president’s financial donors. At least five individuals were infected at the event, including Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff. Brian Jack, the White House political director, and Healy Baumgardner, a former White House aide, have also reportedly tested positive following attendance at the party.

The spokesman said Liz Uihlein had been exposed to the virus “through a personal friend”. ...

The Uihleins have an estimated net worth of about $4bn. ... Richard Uihlein is listed by the Center for Responsive Politics, the campaign watchdog group, as the fifth largest private donor to outside spending groups in the 2020 election cycle, having donated about $62m to conservative anti-tax and anti-labor groups like the Club for Growth.

California becomes second state in US to surpass 1m Covid-19 cases

California has crossed a bleak threshold in its battle against the coronavirus, as the state became the second in the US to surpass 1m cases of Covid-19 on Thursday. Following a period in which new infections dipped and sectors began to cautiously reopen, the state of nearly 40 million residents has recently joined the rest of the country in a surge that was predicted to come with the flu season.

With 1,000,631 total cases as of Thursday, California has seen nearly 7,000 cases in the past 24 hours, with a seven-day test positivity rate of 5%. Hospitalizations have increased by nearly a third in the past 14 days, with intensive care hospitalizations going up by 29.6%. The state is averaging 44 deaths a day; in total more than 18,000 people have died from the virus.

Just one month ago, the state was reporting daily numbers below 3,000 and a positivity rate of 2.5%. “Obviously, it’s sobering, these numbers,” said Gavin Newsom, California’s governor.

Texas passed 1m confirmed cases of the coronavirus earlier this week.

North Dakota reaches 100 percent hospital capacity, tells health care workers to continue working if infected with COVID-19

The Governor of North Dakota, Republican Doug Burgum, announced during a news conference on Monday that hospitals have reached 100 percent capacity across the state due to the rapid spike in cases of COVID-19. North Dakota has become the epicenter of the outbreaks occurring in the Midwest, with daily cases breaching 1,000 last week and active cases reaching 11,719 on November 10. Over 1.5 percent of the entire state population is currently infected with the virus. ...

The rapid rise in cases across the state has put the health care system on the brink of collapse. As of November 10, there are 383 patients hospitalized for COVID-19, with 48 of them in the intensive care unit. With 20 percent of all hospital beds filled by coronavirus patients, North Dakota hospitals are filled to capacity and face a shortage of staff.

In a desperate bid to avoid staff shortages amidst the crisis, the North Dakota government has issued an order that allows nurses who have tested positive for the virus to continue working if they exhibit an asymptomatic condition. This decision came at the request of hospital administrators, who are terrified by the prospect of losing staff during a dire health emergency which is growing worse by the day.

The extreme decision is recommended by the Strategies to Mitigate Healthcare Personnel Staffing Shortages update on July 17, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Allowing sick nurses to work is considered a “crisis capacity strategy” for workers who are “well enough and willing,” and is considered a last-ditch effort to maintain adequate staffing, highlighting the severity of the situation in North Dakota.

Seasonal rhythms within immune systems may explain infection rates

Clocks and calendars within our immune systems could render us more susceptible to infection and injury at certain times of day or months of the year, a new study suggests. A better understanding of these rhythms could have implications for the prevention and treatment of diseases like Covid-19. It could also help explain why certain illnesses, like flu, tend to strike in winter, while the symptoms of other diseases, like multiple sclerosis, often worsen in summer.

Although recent studies have hinted that there may be seasonal or daily “circadian” rhythms in our immune function, this hadn’t been confirmed in large numbers of people until now.

“It has been clear for centuries that people are more susceptible to certain diseases in winter, but we still don’t really understand the role our bodies play in that,” said Dr Cathy Wyse, a postdoctoral researcher at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, who led the new research. To investigate, Wyse and colleagues turned to blood collected from some 329,261 participants in the UK Biobank study – which has followed the health of about half a million Britons for more than a decade – to see if the time of day or season when these samples were collected had any bearing on the immune cells they contained.

They found clear fluctuations in the numbers of white blood cells and markers of inflammation in the blood, suggesting that our immune function may be stronger or weaker, depending on what time of day or season it is. “It supports the idea that there might be endogenous clocks and calendars in the immune system,” said Wyse, whose research was published as a preprint and has not yet been peer reviewed. Importantly, these variations were not related to environmental or lifestyle factors, or vitamin D levels: “This suggests such changes in our immune systems are due to our body clocks – the innate mechanisms that enable us to keep track of time,” said Dr Rachel Edgar at Imperial College London, who studies how viruses may exploit circadian rhythms to aid their spread.

Indeed, the daily fluctuations observed in this study mirror patterns Edgar previously documented in mice, with white blood cells congregating in the lymph nodes at the start of the mice’s active period and moving into the blood as the mice progressed towards their rest phase. What happens in those lymph nodes is key to our immune response to vaccines and viruses like Sars CoV-2: “In mice, the time of day that they are challenged [with a virus] has profound consequences for the immune response days later,” said Edgar.

‘It’s going to be a hard winter’: restaurant workers struggle as US Covid cases rise

As coronavirus cases surge across the US workers in the restaurant industry have faced mass layoffs, extended furloughs, and those who have returned to work are adapting to a new work environment that includes trying to manage the behavior of diners who are abrasive toward coronavirus safety protocols, increased workloads, cuts to wages and constant worry about contracting coronavirus.

A recent study published in Nature found highly visited “points of interest” – notably restaurants – are responsible for the transmission of a large majority of new infections. And with winter upon us, and diners likely to move indoors again, the situation is set to get worse. ...

During the first six weeks of the coronavirus pandemic in the US, 5.9 million workers in the restaurant industry lost their jobs, as bars and restaurants shut down or reduced staff in transitioning to focus on take-out orders. The industry was the hardest hit by the pandemic in regards to unemployment.

Restaurants started to reopen in May 2020 and outdoor dining spaces were expanded around the US, helping the industry regain some job losses, but there remains a job deficit of 2.3m in the restaurant industry since before the pandemic. According to estimates by the National Restaurant Association, nearly 100,000 restaurants and bars have closed permanently or long-term during the pandemic.

The West Proves Its Incapacity With Covid

This isn’t a complicated problem. You do a lockdown at the start, then ease when cases are essentially extinguished. You build up track and trace, you put in support for businesses and for people who have to isolate. You test a lot, you track and trace contacts and you make people quarantine (fuck your rights. If you are have the goddamn plague, you quarantine.) If there is a local breakout during the second phase you track and trace.

You check temperatures and symptoms at the border and make travelers quarantine for 10 days, in a hotel room you provide. During lockdown and restriction phases everyone wears masks when indoors anywhere but their own homes.

This is not a matter that is open to question: countries which ran this playbook got Covid under control. They’re having safe pool parties in China now.

Moreover, the sheer stupidity of the idea that lockdowns hurt the economy is beyond embarassing. The plague hurts economies. Getting it under control is what saves economies. During lockdowns it is simple to deal with: cancel rent and mortgages for people and businesses and have the central bank make the lenders whole for the duration. Central banks routinely print trillions to bail out rich people, they can be used for this. Meanwhile, give people enough money to afford their other bills, like food. ...

Again: the East and a few western outliers handled this, and the rest of the West did not. This is a combination of sheer incompetence, psychopathic leadership, and incentives. The rich get tested every day, can work from home, and get the very best care AND their wealth has skyrocketed during the pandemic even as they assume control of a larger percentage of the economy (because of small businesses going under.) If you’re rich, the pandemic has been a godsend: it’s made you far richer, given you more power, and disempowered your workers, since there are nowhere near enough jobs. Our societies in the West are simply not functional. We cannot manage the most basic of government functions (as the inability count votes in America just demonstrated.) Our leaders are buffoons, psychopaths or both (usually both, and this includes leaders people spew over like Angela Merkel.)

FED Chair WARNS Of Catastrophic Damage To Economy

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Los Angeles progressives swept the election

Voters in Los Angeles have approved new limits to police power, elected a prosecutor who promised to reopen police shooting cases and mandated that 10% of the local budget be spent on prevention programs rather than incarceration. The slate of progressive victories in Los Angeles, which counts 10m residents and is home to the largest jail system in the United States, show the potential impact of local wins for criminal justice reform, as well as the growing electoral influence of Black Lives Matter.

“So many people got involved and wanted to vote,” said Leah Garcia, an East Los Angeles resident whose 18-year-old son Paul Rea was shot to death by a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy in 2019. “A lot of the families I talk to – we’re tired of living in fear.”

Los Angeles elected a new district attorney, George Gascón, who has pledged not to keep people in prison when they are up for parole, not transfer teens to adult court, not pursue the death penalty and won’t use “gang enhancements”, which have long been used in racially discriminatory ways. Though Gascón faced protests in his former job as San Francisco district attorney for refusing to prosecute officers in several high-profile police killing cases, he vowed during the campaign in LA to reopen some police shooting cases, and has said that incarcerating people for low-level offenses during the coronavirus pandemic is “unconscionable”.

Law enforcement unions had contributed millions of dollars in political spending to backing Gascón’s opponent, the incumbent prosecutor Jackie Lacey. For the past three years, Lacey had refused to meet with Black Lives Matter activists protesting against what they say are more than 600 police killings and in-custody deaths of prisoners since she took office in 2013 and Lacey’s refusal to prosecute the officers responsible. ...

In other key Los Angeles races, too, progressive candidates beat contenders backed by donations from police and sheriff’s unions. Even in races where both candidates said they supported cutting the police department funding and endorsed the idea of having unarmed crisis specialists to respond to some emergency calls, rather than armed police, law enforcement donations became a key campaign issue.

CNN PROJECTION: President-elect Joe Biden wins Georgia, flipping the traditionally red state, and Donald Trump wins North Carolina.

This brings the final electoral vote tally to 306 for Biden and 232 for Trump https://t.co/1uKLl0jyo2 #CNNElection pic.twitter.com/lCY1FHAzhZ

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) November 13, 2020

Can Trump Pardon Himself? Jane Mayer on Trump's Desperate Bid to Stay in Power & Avoid Prosecution

Lee and Pocan Urge Biden to Appoint Pentagon Chief Without Defense Contractor Ties

Joining the diverse chorus of voices calling on President-elect Joe Biden to fulfill his broad promise to "build back better," a pair of House Democrats is urging him to refrain from picking a former defense contractor to lead the Pentagon.

Writing as co-chairs of the recently launched Defense Spending Reduction Caucus, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) sent a letter to Biden congratulating him on a victory that President Donald Trump still refuses to accept.

Lee and Pocan also highlighted Trump's history of appointing Cabinet members with problematic ties to private industries, particularly with secretaries of defense, and encouraged Biden to take a different approach.

"Appointing a secretary of defense without ties to defense contractors would be a tremendous step in the public's interest, and would help restore confidence lost due to the Trump administration's corruption," Lee said in a statement.

In the letter, dated November 10 but posted on Twitter by Pocan Thursday, the lawmakers write:

The most recent secretary of defense, Mark Esper, who was fired by Donald Trump yesterday, was employed as a lobbyist for Raytheon prior to being appointed secretary of defense. His predecessor, Patrick Shanahan, was a 30-year Boeing executive before President Trump nominated him to become secretary of defense. And Jim Mattis, President Trump's first secretary of defense, served on the board of General Dynamics for four years before being noticed by the president. Additionally, nearly half of all senior Defense Department officials are connected to military contractors.

"Despite President Trump's boast that he would 'drain the swamp' and hire only 'the best people,' he has continuously failed to do so," they add. "We strongly encourage you to reject the mistaken nominations of the Trump era."

"Biden World" BLAMES Progressives for Their Losses!

Pete Buttigieg REWARDED For Fulfilling Mission During Primary!

Down-Ballot Disasters

Signs are emerging that Donald Trump is trying to steal an Electoral College victory through state legislatures. The U.S. Constitution empowers those legislatures to “appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct” their presidential electors. Biden’s victory hinges on five states he appears to have won, but whose legislatures remain fully controlled by Republicans after Democrats failed to win them back in 2018.

The whole affair is a reminder of the importance of state races — and Democrats failing to prioritize them.

That failure not only imperils the presidential election results this year, but could also spell disaster in state and congressional elections over the next decade. Legislatures will begin redrawing federal and state legislative district maps after this year’s census — and Republicans’ continued dominance of legislatures gives them more power to draw those maps in ways that maximize their representation in the narrowly divided U.S. House. ...

Democrats lost at least half a dozen House seats and they won’t control the Senate unless they manage to win two long-shot run-offs in Georgia. By far the biggest blow, however, was in state legislatures, which Joe Biden had pledged to help win back as part of his electability argument in the Democratic primary.

Given the census, Democrats needed to recapture as many state legislative chambers as possible in order to blunt Republican redistricting efforts. ... Republicans are sure to once again dominate the redistricting process including in key states like Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia — and they will have particularly wide latitude to do so given that in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act provision requiring states with histories of racial segregation to submit redistricting plans to the Department of Justice for preclearance.

How Some Lincoln Project Ads Pushed Voters To TRUMP

The Real Story About “Never Trump” Republicans

Republican operatives and their allies now frantically seeking credibility in the post-Donald Trump world have spent the week criticizing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and suggesting that their television ads were responsible for defeating the president in the election. One conservative pundit even attacked The Daily Poster and asserted that so-called “Never Trump” Republicans delivered Trump’s defeat, even though Trump won more GOP votes in 2020 than in 2016.

It’s a fun clickbait fairy tale designed to marginalize progressives and make sure nothing fundamentally changes — but there’s a big problem with the narrative: Ad test data reviewed by The Daily Poster show that many of the Never Trump Republican groups’ ads were ineffective, and few of them stood out as particularly persuasive compared to spots from other groups that aren’t being cast by the media as a decisive force in the election.

In fact, the data suggest some of the GOP groups’ messages may have inadvertently boosted support for Trump, making it harder for Democrats to win the presidential election.

GOP operatives at the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT) raised at least $77 million this election cycle, much of it from cable news-watching liberals, for anti-Trump televsion ads, YouTube videos and expensive stunts like billboards in Times Square and outside Mar-a-Lago. That enormous cash haul is more than was raised by the Democratic Party’s unsuccessful national campaign to win state legislatures in advance of congressional redistricting.

During the election, online panels of viewers using the Civis Analytics platform judged ads by candidates and prominent third-party groups on a month-by-month basis. That data, compiled by Open Labs, was shared widely among Democratic-aligned third party groups to evaluate the effectiveness of the spots. ... In the document’s review of 65 Democratic-aligned ads on air as of election day, the Lincoln Project’s two tested ads ranked 52nd and 53rd for persuading voters to support Biden. Even worse, two Lincoln Project and RVAT ads designed to generate support for Biden ended up convincing more panelists to support Trump’s reelection.

Andrew Yang: A Warning For Democrats Obsessed With The Suburbs

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US allies welcome Biden presidency as major chance to tackle climate crisis

The leaders of America’s closest allies have eagerly welcomed the incoming presidency of Joe Biden as a crucial opportunity to face down the unfolding climate crisis, following four years of dislocation under Donald Trump.

In congratulatory tweets sent in the wake of Biden’s election win, both Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, put climate change at the top of a list of issues they are keen to work on with the US president-elect once he assumes power in January.

Johnson, who held a 25-minute conversation with Biden on Tuesday, has said the election provides the “real prospect of American global leadership in tackling climate change” after a tumultuous period in which Trump removed the US from the Paris climate agreement and set about dismantling every major domestic policy aimed at reducing planet-heating emissions.

Macron, who also held a short call with Biden, has previously clashed with Trump over the climate crisis and directly warned the US Congress that there “is no planet B” if environmental calamity strikes. Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, told a conference hosted by the Financial Times that he looks forward to tackling climate change with the US again, acknowledging that Trump’s time as president had been “unpredictable”.

Biden has vowed to rejoin the Paris deal, a prospect greeted with a sigh of relief among America’s traditional allies and providing a welcome boost to key UN climate talks to be held in Scotland next year. Todd Stern, who was the lead US negotiator in Paris, has said the difference between Trump and Biden on climate will be like “night and day”. Biden will attempt to prod other countries to cut emissions more deeply by using US diplomatic clout, the lure of financial assistance for adaptation and by boosting investment in clean energy technology. Domestic progress will be trickier, with control of the senate likely to remain with Republicans unmoved by the need for sweeping climate action.

Humans May Have Passed the 'Point of No Return' in Climate Crisis, Says Study—But That Doesn't Mean All Hope Is Lost

Humanity may have passed the "point of no return" in the climate crisis—even if everyone on the planet stopped emitting all greenhouse gases at this very moment, according to a study published Thursday.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed British publication Scientific Journals, alarmingly asserts that "the world is already past a point of no return for global warming" and that the only way to halt the catastrophic damage caused by greenhouse emissions is to extract "enormous amounts of carbon dioxide... from the atmosphere."

The crisis "simply will not stop from cutting manmade greenhouse gases," Jørgen Randers, one of the study's two lead authors, told Future Human. Humanity, stressed Randers, "should accelerate its effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions... and start developing the technologies for large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere." 

What exactly does a "point of no return" mean for Earth and its inhabitants? The researchers describe "a threshold which, once surpassed, fundamentally changes the dynamics of the climate system," including "by triggering irreversible processes like melting of the permafrost, drying of the rainforests, or acidification of surface waters."

The researchers used a computer model called ESCIMO to simulate outcomes from various levels of CO2 reductions until the year 2500. They concluded that even an immediate reduction to zero greenhouse emissions would still result in a 3°C rise in global temperatures by 2500.

Using a more realistic simulation model in which carbon emissions peak in the 2030s and then decline to zero by the turn of the next century, the researchers still found that the planet would warm by the same 3°C, while sea levels would be 10 feet higher than they were in 1850.

Furthermore, the study found that the accelerated melting of Arctic ice and carbon trapped in melting permafrost may increase the amount of water vapor, methane, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Recent research predicts that global heating will cause the planet's average temperature to increase by between 2.6°C and 3.9°C over the next few centuries. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2017 forecast worldwide sea levels to rise by between one and 8.2 feet—depending on the location—by the end of this century. 

There is hope, said Randers, in carbon sequestraiton—sucking carbon from the atmosphere and returning it underground—but "it is a very big job."

"[It's the] equivalent to the work involved in putting all the manmade CO2 into the atmosphere, which has taken us 100 to 200 years of industrial activity," said Randers.

"Getting it out again will be the same type of effort," he said.

Indigenous and Climate Leaders Outraged Over Minnesota Permits for Line 3 Pipeline

Environmental and Indigenous leaders on Thursday responded with alarm after Minnesota regulators approved key permits for Enbridge Energy's planned Line 3 Pipeline replacement, and called on Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to block any construction for the Canadian company's long-delayed multibillion-dollar project.

"Gov. Walz has apparently decided that if Washington won't lead on climate, Minnesota won't either," said Andy Pearson, MN350's Midwest tar sands coordinator, in a statement about the permits. "Make no mistake. "This decision is a sharp escalation against water protectors and climate science."

The Associated Press reported that "the approvals from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Department of Natural Resources clear the way for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to issue the remaining federal permits, which is expected to happen fairly quickly. The MPCA could then approve a final construction storm water permit that's meant to protect surface waters from pollutant runoff."

As Leo Golden, vice president of Line 3 execution, called it "a big day for Line 3 in Minnesota" and said that "these authorizations and approvals are an important step towards construction," Pearson and other critics of the crude oil project reiterated their opposition, citing both treaty rights and climate science.

"Line 3 is facing multiple court challenges by Native nations, grassroots groups, and the Minnesota Department of Commerce," Pearson noted. "This decision means that Enbridge may launch construction while the overall need and legality of the pipeline are being fought in court, including by a state agency."

"There is a good chance that courts will find the pipeline was approved illegally," he said. "It's just common sense, then, to demand that the state immediately halt Enbridge's progress toward construction while those important legal challenges play out."

In February 2019, Walz said publicly that projects like Line 3 "don't just need a building permit to go forward, they also need a social permit." At the time, the governor was praised for "working for the people first not a foreign pipeline company" by deciding to renew a challenge launched by his predecessor against the project.

"It's clear now that Gov. Walz's wish for Line 3 to have 'a social permit' was all talk and no action," Pearson declared. "This is a deeply unpopular pipeline that is a disaster for our climate, and it will be fought every step of the way. The climate justice movement will still stop the pipeline, but the governor has made that unnecessarily harder."

The permits come less than a week after major news outlets called the presidential contest for President-elect Joe Biden. Though he has faced calls from campaigners to go even further, Biden has still put forth climate action plans that dramatically contrast with the pro-corporate polluter agenda of President Donald Trump.

"President Trump spent four years angling to protect the profits of Big Oil rather than protecting our planet," said Pearson. "Minnesota loudly rejected that kind of destructive leadership. The governor had all the legal tools he needed to stop this environmentally catastrophic pipeline. Why would he instead give Trump a parting gift like this in the last days of his term?"

'We won': Indigenous group in Canada scoops up billion dollar seafood firm

For generations, Indigenous peoples in Canada have watched, often in frustration, as commercial industries profit from the land and waters their ancestors once harvested. This week, however, excitement replaced irritation as a group of First Nations announced plans to scoop up one of the largest seafood companies in North America. Early this week, leaders of the Membertou and Miawpukek First Nations, both of which are Mi’kmaq communities, reached an agreement to buy Nova Scotia-based Clearwater Seafoods in a deal worth C$1bn (£580m). Heralded as the “single largest investment in the seafood industry by any Indigenous group in Canada”, the landmark deal comes at a critical moment for Indigenous communities in the region, as tensions remain high over their treatied fishing rights.

“For 13,000 years, the Mi’kmaq have sustainably fished the waters of Atlantic Canada, and today, on this truly transformational day, we are owners of a global leader in the fishery,” Chief Terrence Paul of the Membertou wrote in a letter to community members, announcing the purchase. “For so many years, our communities were not welcome to participate in big industry. Today, on our own terms we are 50% commercial owners.” ...

The purchase comes at a critical moment for the Mi’kmaq people, who have been at the centre of a tense and at times violent battle over their right to harvest lobster. In early September, members of the Sipekne’katik First Nation in Nova Scotia launched their own self-regulated inshore lobster fishery as an exercise of their treaty rights, setting traps during a period in which the season is closed. Commercial fisherman in the area responded aggressively, harassing the Indigenous boats, cutting their traps and destroying their catch. In late October, a lobster pound rented by the Sipekne’katik was set on fire.

At issue for both sides is the interpretation of a 1999 supreme court ruling, which came after a Mi’kmaq activist, Donald Marshall Jr, was barred from harvesting eel out of season, despite claiming a treaty right to fish. The country’s highest court determined Indigenous peoples had a right to fish their ancestral waters in the pursuit of a “moderate livelihood”. But the court also issued a clarifying decision, which determined that the federal government has the authority to regulate fisheries in the public interest and for conservation. For two decades, the federal government has failed to clearly define the scope of a “moderate livelihood” fishery and how it would apply to Indigenous peoples.

“We need to sit down with First Nations and do what we should’ve done 250 years ago. We need to review fishery plans and implement them together,” fisheries minister Bernadette Jordan told reporters in October, calling the violence “disgusting”.

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Also of Interest

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

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Jimmy Dore: Biden's Cabinet Of WAR!

Rising: Biden Considers HILLARY For His Administration

Rising: Trump May IMMEDIATELY Declare For 2024 When Election Called For Biden

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A Little Night Music

Sir Mack Rice - Mustang Sally

Sir Mack Rice - Coal Man

Sir Mack Rice - Daddy's Home To Stay

Sir Mack Rice - Baby I'm Coming Home

Sir Mack Rice - I Gotta Have My Baby's Love

Sir Mack Rice - You Can't Lose

Sir Mack Rice - Mini Skirt Minnie

Sir Mack Rice - Nobody Wins Till The Game Is Over

Sir Mack Rice - Bump Meat

Mack Rice - Respect Yourself (demo version)

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