WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Friday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
- Quote of the week: “You know what’s really uncomfortable and annoying? When you die.” That’s New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, of course. The quote has been played through the day cablewise so it’s well embedded in the newstrack that accompanies our lives. And this fixation on life vs. death is not making much progress. The death toll that feeds on hospitalizations that feed on infections that feed on leaving the mask on the table are inching up, not as steeply as the infections but up nevertheless. When political leaders use their authority to mandate mask wearing, institute curfews like New York’s that went into effect Friday night, there can be angry backlash, particularly in some parts of the country. Should there be mini referendums on virus mitigation, quick votes over a weekend conducted on the Internet? TV campaigns by sports, entertainment, religious notables? Or should we avert our eyes so we don’t see the refrigeration trucks outside the morgues? The new cases confirmed Thursday, which many experts say is always a severe undercount, was 163,000, another in a long line of record totals. Hospitalizations up to 68,000, likewise a record.. About seven thousand deaths a week after week after week.
- President Trump delivered public remarks in the afternoon for the first time since that angry White House appearance two days after the election when he disputed that Joe Biden could become president elect. He mixed the good news about the imminence of vaccine approvals with the often debunked claim that the reason there are so many new virus cases is because of all the U.S, testing. New cases have actually far outstripped the rate of increase of testing which hasn’t actually increased at all lately.There seemed to be two headlines, the first being that there could be vaccine distribution to the general population as soon as April. The second was a glancing acknowledgment that there could be a Biden administration. Saying his administration will never back a national lockdown to fight the virus Trump then came close to acknowledging the future. “Whatever happens in the future – who knows which administration it will be, I guess time will tell,” were the words. He took no questions.
- What’s the point every day of seeing how the Fox News evening anchors play CNN clips to illustrate the devious machinations of the generators of “fake news” and also watching CNN play Fox News clips to return the favor and illustrate how Trump’s supporters deny or distort the reality CNN sees? Because the really real reality is that more than 72 million people voted for Trump and aren’t suddenly disappearing when Biden enters the Oval Office. And more than 75 million voted for Biden and perhaps are happy to have done so. Do the major TV networks news departments still talk to both sides? To some extent. Will Biden be appointing any Trump backers to his Cabinet? Will Trump ever tell his supporters to give Biden a chance? Of course not. So there’s conundrum No. 2. No. 1 is that mask wearing affects how many people live and die and there needs to be an antidote to that numbness, that inurement to what increases unnecessary deaths. And No. 2 is that exacerbating the split between the 72 million and the 75 million erodes the strength of the nation and erodes what’s embodied in “E Pluribus Unum.” What cadre of anchor persons addresses that?
- So on Fox News Friday night Sean Hannity was using his favorite words,”far left,” and “radical,” and “Socialist” and “even lawless” and “scheming.” And guess who, for Hannity, is “weak, frail and cognitively struggling?” And over on CNN Don Lemon was asking how to get Trump supporters to accept the truth. “Trump lost,” he said more than once. Later, on Fox’s Laura Ingraham program, Ric Grenell was a guest. He’s the former acting director of national intelligence widely expected to become acting CIA director if Gina Haspel gets zapped, if the internal White House fight over her potential firing gets resolved to her disadvantage. Biden, he said, “has a bunch of foreign friends, the globalist community.” And “attacks on America First have to stop.” And again on Lemon’s program, another former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, who said, “We don’t exactly have the ‘A’ team” over at the Pentagon, that America’s adversaries could take advantage of the new team being denied intelligence briefings. There are endless opportunities to keep the game going, speaking to the ends of the opinion spectrum, not the middle. As asked before, ultimately, what’s the point? To rhetorically vanquish the other side? Who’s keeping score? Who declares the winner? Who and what loses in the process?
- Back to where the rubber meets the road, or in this case where the Proud Boys (or Bois) meet Freedom Plaza on Saturday. Some of the anticipated thousands expected to show up for a pro-Trump combination “Stop the Steal” rally and “Million MAGA March.” Conspiracy theorists, nationalists, white nationalists, far right provocateurs, talk-show hosts, some members of Congress will be there and also, President Trump tweeted, maybe he’ll stop by. Antifa, more moderate anti-fascists, a group calling itself “Refuse Fascism” and a wide assortment of other counter protesters are assembling either nearby or on Freedom Plaza itself. Here’s where we insert the obligatory, “What could possibly go wrong” phrase. Other than being a festival of misinformation mixed with anarchists and some fundraising by Trump trickster Roger Stone – who invented and registered “Stop the Steal” before anything was “stolen” – should anyone care? Many thousand social media posts every hour show a lot of people do indeed care. Does split-screen America fade away in the years ahead, become more pronounced, or end up in chronic standoffs separated by police or maybe National Guard?
- Moving along from all these bleak scenes, to a semi bleak scene, the Bloomberg story that the Trump administration is rushing to auction off oil-drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before Biden takes over. Yet experts in the field quickly said the effort is doomed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which the oil industry is not tremendously eager any more to commit to spending the billions necessary to develop an area every environmentalist organization, half the House and Senate and a new White House are eager to protect, especially when oil prices are predicted to stay far below previous peaks. Whether you see that as good news or bad news may depend on how you feel about polar bears.
- There was another story Friday that was so thoroughly ignored it could almost be categorized as anti-news. It involves an international initiative directly affecting billions of people’s welfare. But since they are all in 44 poor countries you’re never going to hear about it. Brace yourself, it’s called the Debt Service Suspension Initiative. The short version is that the G-20 countries moved further ahead Friday to ease the debt crunch these countries are facing, made much worse by the pandemic. Senior US Treasury officials held a briefing on the subject, interlaced with expressions of dark suspicion that China – now added to the initiative along with Turkey and India – will “game the system” to avoid a lot of the official and private debt relief burden. China officials say their country may end up doing more debt relief than the U.S. Good luck, poor countries.
- Many Federal Reserve supporters were fearful for the future of their favorite central bank Friday when it became clear supposed iconoclast Judy Shelton will get a Senate vote after all and may be confirmed to join the bank’s board of governors. Others said so what? With Biden’s win she no longer could be made Fed chair by a president who wanted another opportunity to show the elites who’s boss.
- Upcoming economic data includes Sunday night’s Japan GDP report, previewed by Max Sato elsewhere on this macenews.com site. In the U.S. the October retail sales report is at the top of domestic data and Kevin Kastner extensively previews that and all the rest of the week’s data elsewhere on the site, complete with a calendar of every data point.
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- Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com.