I spent way too much time writing this only for people to move on, but I'm doing it anyway because it's that sort of day.
Firstly we interrupt this newscast with breaking news: former CEO of Godfather's Pizza and GOP Presidential Candidate/one-time-frontrunner (which you may remember for its memetastic qualities), and current Trump surrogate
Herman Cain has died from COVID-19. Those regularly following the news may have heard when he got sick, less than two weeks after attending the Trump Tulsa rally and tweeting a picture of himself and fellow Trump supporters without a mask. Didn't age well. He was hospitalized on the 1st of July, two days after testing positive. Tweets made in his name claimed he'd been getting better or at least on "cruise control". The last update was on monday, which said he was "being treated with oxygen for his lungs” and “He really is getting better, which means it is working,”
For news with less immediately fatal (more of a long term thing really) is the
GDP data. Sitting at
-9.5% for the quarter, it is by far the worst on record. Really! Granted the data only stretches back to 1950, but look at that graph. This seems like Bad News
TM and expect the stock market to slump (which, in all honesty, is probably a very much needed correction, that things been running on pixie dust and good vibes for most of the crisis).
The 19th straight week of +1 million unemployment claims probably won't help brighten the mood. Note that the GDP drop can be read either in terms of quaterly GDP (the more accurate description) or projected annual decline (which is how much it would decline if this continued for a year straight). CNN uses the latter because it has a bigger number: 32.9%. Either way, still pretty awful.
In
totally unrelated news,
Congress flails attempting to keep many of the provisions enacted to save the US economy going. Republicans and Democrats are
deadlocked, with, among other objections, Democrats refusing to accept the Senate proposal for a cut in the $600 dollar per week per person unemployment program down to $200. Among other disagreements are the overall pricetags (Republican bill being $1 trillion vs the Democratic $3 trillion proposal), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's demand for litigation protection for businesses from sick workers/consumers, Democrats wanting direct funding for State/Local areas, etc.
Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin have been leading the efforts to hash out a deal, but as of Wednesday they remained, quote,
"Very far apart" as the benefits are set to expire soon, which would (of course) lead to $0 a week, end to the eviction moratorium, and a lot of other rather unpleasant effects; yet Democratic Congressional Leadership has rejected either a short-term extension or a piecemeal approach. With no deal about to appear, Congress is poised to allow the provisions to lapse.
Complicating the issue is that the
Republican Caucus seems unable to coalesce behind any proposal, with some fiscal "hawks" taking one look at the pricetag and rejecting it out-of-hand, while others push pet projects, or support even further aid; the White House isn't helping, adding on it's own non-starters like tax cuts, new limits on unemployment, further stimulus checks (unrelated: still haven't got mine
), funding for an FBI building meeting bipartisan derision for both its pricetag and alleged links to Trump's Hotels. To quote Lindsey Graham (R-SC) after a meeting on Tuesday: "I think if Mitch can get half the conference, that’d be quite an accomplishment.”, a truly inspiring vote of confidence. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) "I’m not going to vote for a bill in the name of unity when I don’t know what’s in the damn thing," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.): "It’s a mess. I can’t figure out what this bill is about. I don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish with it." Senator Rand Paul simply stormed out of the meeting as he does.
Meanwhile
Trump suggests simply delaying the 2020 election, finally giving the conspiracy theory crowd the White Whale they've been waiting for since, uh...probably since the Federalist/Democratic-Republican presidential elections honestly. Notch up the "It's Happening!" meter.
Edit: Oh, and last but not least: the late Rep. John Lewis's funeral is today. Obama is delivering a eulogy as of posting time. John Lewis wrote an Op-Ed shortly before he died, instructing the NY Times to publish it on the day of his funeral, which they have done. Link
here.