WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Monday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
- A special day, certainly. The first vaccinations, the Electoral College certification of the Biden win, Geraldo Rivera on Fox News saying, “It’s over.” And a few Senate Republicans, certainly not all, finally late in the day acknowledging Biden’s win. An attorney general making it appear he wasn’t fired, and a president going along with it. Scientist Katalin Karikó on CNN saying messenger RNA she helped develop may be in everyone’s freezer someday to treat a wide array of illnesses, not just coronavirus. The tiny band of Republicans and Democrats unveiling their two-part pandemic relief proposal. Senate GOP leader McConnell continuing to ignore it. And the much remarked Bloomberg Opinion piece of Niall Ferguson, raising profound questions about the future of the U.S. and China and their twin mountains of debt. And him ignoring the role of tax cuts.
- And there was Joe Biden, giving a speech that was actually more aggressive than would be expected, laying out all the way President Trump’s effort to hold on to office, a president “who refused to honor our Constitution,” failed.
- Of all that, what will persist more than half a minute of geologic time? As long as there are humans, prone to all kinds of corona viruses, there will be a need for the potion that turns them off. Corona viruses besides COVID-19 are already everywhere in the world. And mRNA is a new way to disable them, an achievement that will live on long after Joe Biden is just another name on those restaurant placemats full of presidents.
- For all those who struggled to recall Churchill’s speech early in World War II, after the second battle of El Alamein in late 1942, pertaining to the vaccinations beginning even as holiday surges feed the increasing coronavirus death toll: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
- Sen. Lindsey Graham during the day said he talked to President-Elect Biden about his nominees, an acknowledgement of what must not be spoken in President Trump’s presence. And then on Fox saying conservatism in American is imperiled by mail-in voting and social media censorship.
- And there was Politico’s Al Isenstadt writing that the massive Trump fundraising effort, under the mantle of supporting the two Republican Senate candidates in Georgia, actually isn’t sending them a cent.
- And then there was Stephen Miller on Fox News: “As we speak, today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we’re going to send those results up to Congress,” he said. “This will ensure that all of our legal remedies remain open. That means that if we win these cases in the courts, that we can direct that the alternate state of electors be certified.” Some constitutional scholars said none of that is possible.
- Upcoming economic statistics includes the New York Fed’s Empire State manufacturing index as 8:30a ET along with the latest report on import prices. The two-day Federal Reserve meeting begins.
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Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com.
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