Read more at Politico.
Trump is headed to Georgia today for a rally supposedly to support incumbent Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, but he’s more likely to use the event to whine about h.is election loss. The New York Times: A Gathering Political Storm Hits Georgia, With Trump on the Way.
ATLANTA — Some of the biggest names in national politics jumped into the fiercely contested runoffs for two Georgia Senate seats on Friday, even as a second recount showed that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had maintained his lead in the state and Republicans braced for a visit by President Trump, who has railed against his loss there with baseless claims of fraud.
With Mr. Trump set to campaign for the two Republican incumbents, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, on Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence and former President Barack Obama held dueling events to underscore the vital stakes in the special elections: If both Republicans are defeated, control of the Senate will shift to Democrats just as Mr. Biden moves into the Oval Office.
Mr. Obama appeared virtually at a turn-out-the-vote event for Jon Ossoff, the Democrat facing Mr. Perdue, and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, Ms. Loeffler’s opponent, and spoke of his frustration in seeing his initiatives blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate when he was in office. “If the Senate is controlled by Republicans who are interested in obstruction and gridlock, rather than progress and helping people, they can block just about anything,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Pence — with Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler by his side — attended a Covid-19 briefing at the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and said later at a rally for the Republican candidates that “we’re going to save the Senate, and then we’re going to save America.”
Yeah, right.
The Senate races are playing out at a hyperpartisan moment in American politics that has led to a civil war among Georgia Republicans divided over whether to support Mr. Trump as he persists with false assertions that the election was stolen from him. In Georgia and elsewhere, the president’s lawyers remain engaged in a failing, last-minute effort to throw the election to Mr. Trump.
Even as he tweeted this week that he wanted “a big David and Kelly WIN,” Mr. Trump called Brian Kemp, the state’s Republican governor, “hapless” for failing to work to overturn the election results, while also criticizing Georgia’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. His sustained assault on Georgia’s voting system prompted an extraordinary rebuke this week from another high-ranking elections official, who warned of violent threats against poll workers and publicly pleaded with the president to cool down his conspiratorial rhetoric.
Meanwhile the coronavirus pandemic is surging everywhere. Here in Massachusetts, the numbers of new cases have climbed to 5,000 or more every day. Deaths are fewer than in the spring, but people are still dying on a daily basis.
The Atlantic: The U.S. Has Passed the Hospital Breaking Point.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, public-health experts have warned of one particular nightmare. It is possible, they said, for the number of coronavirus patients to exceed the capacity of hospitals in a state or city to take care of them. Faced with a surge of severely ill people, doctors and nurses will have to put beds in hallways, spend less time with patients, and become more strict about whom they admit into the hospital at all. The quality of care will fall; Americans who need hospital beds for any other reason—a heart attack, a broken leg—will struggle to find space. Many people will unnecessarily suffer and die….
Yet that worst-case scenario never came to pass at a national level. At the springtime peak, even as northeastern hospitals faced a deluge, 60,000 people were hospitalized nationwide. When the Sun Belt frothed with cases this summer, hospitalizations again reached the 60,000 mark before they started to fall.
A month ago, in early November, hospitalizations passed 60,000—and kept climbing, quickly. On Wednesday, the country tore past a nauseating virus record. For the first time since the pandemic began, more than 100,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States, nearly double the record highs seen during the spring and summer surges.
The pandemic nightmare scenario—the buckling of hospital and health-care systems nationwide—has arrived. Several lines of evidence are now sending us the same message: Hospitals are becoming overwhelmed, causing them to restrict whom they admit and leading more Americans to needlessly die.
The current rise in hospitalizations began in late September, and for weeks now hospitals have faced unprecedented demand for medical care. The number of hospitalized patients has increased nearly every day: Since November 1, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has doubled; since October 1, it has tripled.
Take care, BB. I hope the storm is far less severe than predicted.
It is cold but sunny here. On days like this, I open the curtains wide to let in as much sunlight as possible.
I am reading a good novel: “The Forbidden Garden” by Ellen Herrick. It has mystery, romance, a family curse, and a scary walled garden on an ancestral English estate! What more could you want? Anyway, it’s fun escapism. We all need an escape now, don’t we?
Thanks, Beata. I’ll check out that book.
Thanks for the book review! I’ll go look for the novel.
Meh,the book started off well. Now I’m halfway through and it’s rather boring. Lacks depth. I don’t recommend it unless you want a really light read. The cover is pretty!
I don’t do “light reading” well. I try. I fail.
I don’t mind light reading if it’s well-written, but so many aren’t. I get part-way in and then, like you, get bored.
That would be awesome if Yates gets the nod.
You know how the joke is that cats look at you like they’re wondering if you’re what’s for dinner? The cats in these pictures really look like that!
LOL
Or “Why isn’t my dinner ready an hour ago?”
Stay safe and warm, Ann.
Thanks. I will. It’s snowing now. I looks messy out there.
I’m not far from the subtropics now, but in the high and far off times I remember it being a very nice cozy feeling to be all snug and warm while it snowed outside. So long as you don’t have to put on your snowshoes and go out, it’s great 😆
Or, put on the snowshoes and more warm clothing and go out!
Be careful BB and everyone in the storm’s path…
NYT reporting more than 200,000 are without power in New England tonight. The storm isn’t supposed to end until Sunday night.
BB, check in with us if you can and let us know how you are!
BB, hope you are safe and warm.