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Biden wins Georgia recount as Trump setbacks mount

 https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55006188

 On Thursday, Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, said the hand audit of ballots had not altered Mr Biden's victory in the state.

"Georgia's historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state's new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results," Mr Raffensberger said in a statement.

Trump told ally he's trying to get back at Democrats for questioning legitimacy of his own election

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/19/politics/trump-democrats-election/index.html

 President Donald Trump told an ally that he knows he lost, but that he is delaying the transition process and is aggressively trying to sow doubt about the election results in order to get back at Democrats for questioning the legitimacy of his own election in 2016, especially with the Russia investigation, a source familiar with the President's thinking told CNN on Thursday.

The President's refusal to concede, as CNN has previously reported, stems in part from his perceived grievance that Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama undermined his own presidency by saying Russia interfered in the 2016 election and could have impacted the outcome, people around him have said.

  

The President, this source said, "doesn't see" how bad the aftermath of all of this could be for the country, and for democracy itself. As usual, he's focused on himself -- not Covid-19, nor the transition.

Mitt Romney says consequences of lame duck period are 'potentially more severe' than delayed transition

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/19/politics/mitt-romney-lame-duck-transition-consequences/index.html

 Republican Sen. Mitt Romney is warning that the consequences of actions taken by President Donald Trump during the lame duck period of his term are "potentially more severe" than those caused by the delayed presidential transition.

"The consequences of what's happening during this lame duck period, I think, are potentially more severe than the consequences associated with a late transition process," Romney, who represents Utah, told CNN's David Axelrod on an episode of "The Axe Files" podcast released Thursday.

Romney cited the Trump administration's plan to remove more troops from the Middle East as one lame duck move that could cause more damage than Trump's refusal to formally begin the transition process, saying he's spoken with foreigners who are "alarmed" by Trump's plan and wonder if they can still "trust" America.

Georgia to release recount results; Biden, Harris to speak with governors

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/19/election-2020-updates-georgia-release-recount-results/3775154001/

 Election officials in Georgia say they are on track to finish their weeklong hand recount of the presidential race, with results released by noon Thursday.

Georgia audit on track to finish Wednesday and affirm Biden win, official says

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/17/politics/georgia-recount/index.html

 Georgia is on a "good schedule right now" to finish an audit of the presidential election by Wednesday and thus certify its results by Friday, a top state voting official says, and the vast majority of counties are reporting results that are "spot dead on" to the initial tallies or finding only minor discrepancies.

 

 

Trump continues to claim he won the election. He did not.

 https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/election-2020-misinformation/index.html

President Donald Trump's campaign and Fox News host Tucker Carlson alleged last week that a vote cast by a Georgia woman named Deborah Jean Christiansen was fraudulent. 

The allegation was false -- like two other voter fraud claims the Trump campaign and Carlson leveled against legal Georgia voters last week. 

The campaign and Carlson said this vote was a fraud because Deborah Jean Christiansen died last year. In fact, the vote was legally cast by a living woman who also happens to be named Deborah Jean Christiansen, born in the same year and month but on a different day. 

Christiansen answered the door when CNN showed up on Tuesday evening.

Ari Melber: Trump's 'Dumpster Fire' Legal Strategy Flailing Under Giuliani

'Confusion and chaos': Republicans denounce Trump's latest purge

 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/18/republicans-denounce-trump-krebs-cybersecurity-437716

 President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening fired Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, after he spent days actively debunking the president’s baseless voter fraud claims. And in a rare turn in the Trump era, Senate Republicans across the spectrum — from Trump allies to critics of the president — criticized the decision.

Ethics experts and Trump critics call for Senate investigation into Graham's probe into presidential election

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/18/politics/lindsey-graham-ethics-experts-senate-investigation/index.html

 Three top ethics experts and prominent critics of President Donald Trump on Wednesday formally requested the Senate Ethics Committee investigate whether Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina violated the chamber's rules in his probe over how mail-in voting was conducted in the 2020 presidential election.

 Graham has not looked into states that Trump won. Asked why not, Graham said Wednesday "because they're not in question. I mean, we're looking at states where there's a contest. I'm not looking at states that he lost. I'm looking at states where there's a challenge."

The end of the Trump White House is *exactly* as bad as we thought it would be

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/18/politics/donald-trump-chris-krebs-fired/index.html

 The end of Donald Trump's time in the White House was always going to be ugly. Just how ugly is now coming into clearer focus.

The removal of Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, on Tuesday night is the newest abomination of how a government and a president should work. While it's impossible to say it's the worst or most damaging thing Trump has done while in office -- they all run together after a while -- what can be said is that what the President did on Tuesday night runs directly counter to the healthy functioning of a democracy.

Why? Because Krebs was fired for telling the truth.

New Pfizer Results: Coronavirus Vaccine Is Safe and 95% Effective

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/health/pfizer-covid-vaccine.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

The drug maker Pfizer said on Wednesday that its coronavirus vaccine was 95 percent effective and had no serious side effects — the first set of complete results from a late-stage vaccine trial as Covid-19 cases skyrocket around the globe.

The data showed that the vaccine prevented mild and severe forms of Covid-19, the company said. And it was 94 percent effective in older adults, who are more vulnerable to developing severe Covid-19 and who do not respond strongly to some types of vaccines.

Pfizer, which developed the vaccine with its partner BioNTech, said the companies planned to apply to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization “within days,” raising hopes that a working vaccine could soon become a reality.

If the F.D.A. authorizes the two-dose vaccine, Pfizer has said that it could have up to 50 million doses available by the end of the year, and up to 1.3 billion by the end of next year.

 However, only about half of its supply will go to the United States this year, or enough for about 12.5 million people — a sliver of the American population of 330 million. Americans will receive the vaccine for free, under a $1.95 billion deal the federal government reached with Pfizer for 100 million doses.

Georgia election audit finds 3,039 more uncounted ballots in 2 counties

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/georgia-election-audit-uncounted-ballots-two-counties

 Unless additional uncounted ballots are found during the audit, it does not appear that the audit will result in a change in the state's election result as President-elect Joe Biden had been leading by approximately 14,000 votes. Sterling said the updated count in Fayette County trimmed the lead to just under 13,000.

If the audit were to end up with Trump winning the state, he would still only have 248 electoral votes, with Biden remaining at 290. 

Trump lashes out in new bid to tarnish an election he lost

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/18/politics/donald-trump-transition/index.html

 Trump wrote that he terminated Chris Krebs, a senior Department of Homeland Security official, for contradicting his own baseless allegations of irregularities. The President, his campaign and political allies have made multiple efforts, which started well before the election, to falsely argue that he was cheated out of a second term. His effort appears motivated by a desire to explain away his clear defeat by the former vice president but is also part of a pattern of behavior designed to discredit Biden's presidency and to enshrine national divides that he consciously widened as a tool of power.

 In other apparent attempts to cast doubt on the integrity of the election -- unprecedented in modern history -- Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham was embroiled in a controversy after calling election officials in Nevada, Arizona and Georgia -- three key states won by Biden -- to question them on procedures for mail-in ballots, which generally favored Biden. And two Republicans broke with tradition in Michigan, another state where the Democratic nominee triumphed, in temporarily blocking the certification of the election in Wayne County, where Biden beat the President. Michigan's Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, later told CNN's Chris Cuomo that the officials relented and agreed to certify the vote.

 The latest maneuvers by Trump and his allies came as more of the President's long-shot legal challenges and threadbare cases alleging election fraud were exposed in the courts.

The President's latest Hail Mary attempt to overturn the election result in one of the multiple states won by Biden came unstuck, this time in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Michigan's Wayne County certifies election results in reversal of earlier decision

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/michigan-wayne-county-certifies-election-results-in-reversal-of-earlier-decision

 Election officials in Michigan’s largest county voted to certify election results on Tuesday night, ending a short-lived deadlock that could have delayed the state from confirming a victory for President-elect Joe Biden.

Lindsey Graham just crossed another line in defending Trump

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/17/politics/lindsey-graham-2020-election-georgia-trump/index.html?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial

 Graham, even as he was defending his call to Raffensperger, revealed to reporters that he had also reached out to election officials in two other states where the vote count between Trump and President-elect Joe Biden was quite close -- and where the President has insisted, with zero proof, that there were shenanigans involved in the ballot counting.

Trump fires director of Homeland Security agency who had rejected President's election conspiracy theories

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/17/politics/chris-krebs-fired-by-trump/index.html

 Trump announced on Twitter he was firing Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and directly tied it to Krebs' statement that said there "is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

Malbim’s Novel Interpretation of Shir Ha-Shirim

 https://www.etzion.org.il/en/shiur-07-malbim%E2%80%99s-novel-interpretation-shir-ha-shirim

 Malbim begins with two starting assumptions. First, not only is Shlomo the author of the book, but the events described in Shir Ha-Shirim are intended as a metaphor for his own life experiences. Second, the phrase “Shir Ha-Shirim” should be understood not as “the greatest of songs” (as numerous midrashim and Rashi maintain), but as “the song comprised of numerous songs” (following Radak and others). It is for this reason that Malbim entitles his commentary “Shirei Ha-Nefesh,” the “Songs of the Soul,” not “Shir Ha-Nefesh,” the “Song of the Soul.” Accordingly, Malbim sees Shir Ha-Shirim as a self-revealing description of Shlomo’s religious struggle, conveyed through the drama of a compelling love story.

Georgia official says Graham asked him about tossing ballots

 https://apnews.com/article/georgia-official-graham-tossing-ballots-281416294b5c54c6535f8ffaab4322a2

  Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham asked him whether he had the power to reject certain absentee ballots, a question he interpreted as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes.

Raffensperger made the comments to The Washington Post, saying he’s faced rising pressure from fellow Republicans who want to see Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow lead in the state reversed. Nearly 5 million votes were cast in the presidential election in Georgia, and Biden was leading President Donald Trump by about 14,000 votes.

Trump Is ‘Single Largest Driver’ Of Covid-19 Misinformation, Cornell Study Finds

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/10/01/trump-is-single-largest-driver-of-covid-19-misinformation-cornell-study-finds/?sh=629017a86d70

 Misinformation about the coronavirus is a pressing threat to public health, and according to researchers at Cornell University who analyzed over 38 million articles about the pandemic published in English-language media around the world, “the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid,” as mentions of Donald Trump “comprised 37.9% of the overall misinformation conversation.”

SE Cupp on disinformation: I am scared

As Lawyers Flee, Trump's Floundering Legal Quest Falls To Familiar Hands

'Dunces': Trump Losing And Admitting Defeat In 2020 Cases As Giuliani Implodes

Rudy Giuliani's conspiracy theories could be dangerous to democracy, experts say

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/17/politics/rudy-giuliani-national-security-democracy/index.html

In the two weeks since Election Day, Giuliani has become a super-spreader of election disinformation. His eyebrow-raising claims -- from Republican observers being barred from vote counts, to mysterious batches of ballots appearing in the middle of the night, to an election technology company using Venezuelan software to swing results -- have been steadily debunked in courtrooms and by federal officials who have declared there is zero evidence of widespread irregularities. 

But experts say Giuliani's avalanche of falsehoods -- along with the President's -- could still have a long-lasting impact, sowing distrust in America's electoral system that will be difficult to unwind. That would play into the agenda of US adversaries, a half-dozen national security and elections officials told CNN. 

Donald J. Trump: The Greatest President in History of All Time | The Daily Social Distancing Show

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Biden: More people may die if Trump doesn't coordinate transition

 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/291398

 President-elect Joe Biden on Monday warned that President Donald Trump's unwillingness to accept the outcome of the 2020 election could hamper his incoming administration's ability to rapidly distribute a coronavirus vaccine.

Trump aims to undermine Biden's legitimacy even as legal challenges fizzle

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/16/politics/trump-election-challenge-biden-legitimacy/index.html

 

Dan Eberhart, an Arizona-based energy executive and a Republican donor, said he's been invited to the Trump campaign's daily surrogate calls, during which campaign officials seek to explain the recount and legal strategy and "keep hope alive." But he listens in only every other day or so.

Trump's reluctance to concede, Eberhart said, was becoming tiresome. "I'm kind of over it," he said. "I view the Trump world as a melting ice cube at the moment."