Election fraud disputes - Moderate vs. Liberal Democrats - Covid-19 ICU utilization

[In lawsuits in 5 states alleging election irregularities], even Trump’s campaign and allies do not allege widespread fraud or an election-changing conspiracy. Instead, GOP groups have largely focused on smaller-bore complaints in an effort to delay the counting of ballots or claims that would affect a small fraction of votes, at best.
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As absentee ballots helped Biden overtake Trump in Pennsylvania last week, Republicans sought to stop Philadelphia officials from counting them. Their argument: GOP observers had been barred from the rooms where the votes were being counted. The problem: That wasn’t true. Trump had “a nonzero number of people in the room,” one of his attorneys conceded in federal court Thursday evening.
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In Michigan, Biden trailed on election night — but then, as in other Midwestern states, surged back to overtake Trump as thousands of absentee ballots were counted. In two lawsuits, Republicans alleged that there was impropriety in those ballot counts. [They lost both] for the same reason: Republicans could not provide evidence of wrongdoing.

[House Majority Whip James Clyburn] said on CNN's "State of the Union" that he'd spoken with the late Rep. John Lewis about the phrase this summer, the two concluding "that it had the possibilities of doing to the Black Lives Matter movement and current movements across the country what 'Burn, baby, burn' did to us back in 1960." ["Burn, baby, burn," became a popular song and chant during the 1965 Watts Riots, and later again during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968].
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The anger among House Democrats came to a boil during a private caucus call on Thursday where some members insisted that calls to "defund the police" and attacks tying Democrats to "socialism" cost several members their seats in Congress. Progressive Democrats have pushed back on the characterization, claiming that such attacks are inevitable or more easily blunted with stricter and bolder messaging.
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Polling at the height of the protests this summer found only an average of 31% of respondents supported "defunding the police." Most Americans agree, however, that policing in the United States requires serious changes, according to a July Gallup poll. That same poll found 47% support reducing police department budgets and shifting the money to social programs versus 28% who oppose.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas was quick to put forward a brief outline of a new transatlantic agenda. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg congratulated the incoming administration, tweeting, “I know Joe Biden as a strong supporter of our Alliance & look forward to working closely with him."
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“I hope we will see a change in America's destructive policies and a return to international law and obligations and respect for our nation,” [Iran’s Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri said]. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, considered a staunch Trump ally, said on Saturday that it was withholding formal recognition of the incoming Biden administration until “official results” were in. He finally tweeted a statement shortly after midnight on November 8, to Biden.
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Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose government interfered on Trump’s behalf in the 2016 election and again in 2020, according to the FBI and CIA, has yet to issue a statement on the president’s defeat. Brazil’s populist strongman President Jair Bolsonaro has also remained noncommittal, which could portend poorly for Bolsonaro’s partnership with the United States on some trade and climate issues.

Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak said on Sunday he was resigning for health reasons, the second surprise departure of a top economic policymaker in two days after the central bank chief was ousted. The upheaval follows a 30% slide in the lira to record lows this year amid the coronavirus pandemic as investors worried about falling forex reserves and the central bank’s ability to tackle double-digit inflation.
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Albayrak’s resignation, announced in an Instagram statement confirmed by an official, came a day after father-in-law President Tayyip Erdogan replaced the central bank governor with a former minister whose policies are seen to be at odds with Albayrak. The departure of Turkey’s top two economic policymakers boosted the lira, and set the stage for a sharp rate rise, analysts said.
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Albayrak, 42, was appointed energy minister in 2015 and shifted to finance after Erdogan was re-elected with sweeping new executive powers in 2018. During his tenure at finance, Turkey’s economy was hit by two bad slumps, double-digit inflation and high unemployment.

On Thursday, NBC News reported 120,048 new cases, surpassing the previous record high from the day before. And the number of daily deaths reported topped 1,000 several days last week. "There isn't much we can do to prevent what we think is going to be about 2,200 deaths a day by Jan. 1," said Dr. Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist and an affiliate assistant professor at UW Medicine in Seattle.
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Forty-three states are reporting rising cases, including Colorado, where Gov. Jared Polis said Friday on the "TODAY" show that Covid-19-related hospitalizations in the state were the "highest they've ever been." Dr. Ken Lyn-Kew, a critical care pulmonologist at National Jewish Health [in Denver] said the increasing Covid-19 admissions were coming at a time when many doctors, nurses and other hospital staff are exhausted.
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Also troubling is that the U.S. is entering flu season, which could potentially lead to what experts have called a "twindemic" — surging cases of both Covid-19 and the flu, which could overwhelm hospitals. While it remains to be seen whether the country is in for a severe flu season, public health experts are urging people get a flu shot if they haven't already.