"Just when it seemed some of the most disheartening trends in the US economy were finally beginning to reverse, COVID arrived to entrench them.

"The pandemic has been a neutron bomb targeted at the prospects of lower-income working people.

"They had finally begun to benefit from the recovery from the Great Recession when the virus ravaged industries that disproportionately employ them. Wars and depressions often reduce economic inequality. Not the pandemic. The Washington Post has called the resulting economic damage 'the most unequal recession in modern US history.' ...

"It has cut a swathe through small business. It has slammed workers who can't retreat to home offices to do their work via Zoom calls. In short, it has taken all the tendencies of our knowledge economy that benefit the better-educated and disadvantage non-college-educated workers and made them more pronounced, amid a public-health crisis that has also hit the most vulnerable the hardest. ...

"Policy makers need to realize that when they promulgate lockdown restrictions, they are usually asking the people with the least economic margin for error to sacrifice the most. Congress needs to pass a new stimulus bill, to cushion the blow of a natural disaster that has immiserated many millions of people through no fault of their own.

"And the incoming Biden administration ideally would realize that fashionable causes like climate change need to take a backseat to the pursuit of full economic recovery. The economic pain isn't the worst that the pandemic has wrought, but it can't be ignored."

Read entire article here.

"Most recent polling of the races in Georgia suggest that both will be fairly close, though given how inaccurate much of the polling of the November general election turned out to be, it's worth considering these new surveys with some caution.

"This past week, a poll from PoliticalIQ found that a plurality of Georgia voters would prefer the GOP to maintain control of the Senate and serve as a check on the incoming Democratic White House and the Democratic House of Representatives. Another poll, from SurveyUSA, showed the two Democratic candidates leading their GOP opponents, but it surveyed a wide variety of Georgia residents, including several hundred who did not classify themselves as likely voters.

"Just a few days ago, Trafalgar Group -- a polling company that attempts to weight what founder Robert Cahaly terms 'shy, pro-Trump' voters -- released a survey of more than 1,000 likely voters in Georgia that found Loeffler leading Warnock by 5 percent and Ossoff leading Perdue by just 1 percent."

"Many elected officials have told Americans for months to stay home and forego everything from religious gatherings and team sports to holiday dinners and even funerals to stem the spread of the coronavirus. And yet we keep seeing news reports about officials flouting their own rules with a nice dinner out or a trip.

"The rules just don't seem to apply to America's political class. Their refusal to abide by their own guidance is sowing chaos, uncertainty and resentment during a historic national crisis. ...

"Any successful plan for ending this pandemic will require Americans to trust their government officials. For that to happen, leaders at all levels of government need to start practicing what they preach, even if it means curtailing their social lives, canceling a vacation, or disappointing their mothers."

Read entire article here.

"A record-setting 18 (at least) new women are joining the GOP ranks in Congress next year, with one more leading a race in New York that hasn't been called yet.

"Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, told Just the News that a record 94 GOP women ran for Congress this cycle, which helped lead to this new milestone under the leadership of Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.).

"The new crop of Republican women includes a daughter of Greek and Cuban immigrants, two Asian-Americans, a Ukrainian immigrant, and the first female graduate of the Citadel, a prominent military college in Charleston, S.C."

Read entire article here.

"Joe Biden needed this like he needs another hole in his head. Come to think of it, that's pretty much what Bill Barr has given him.

"The Attorney General revealed Tuesday that he appointed federal prosecutor John Durham as a special counsel to allow him to continue investigating how the Obama-Biden administration weaponized the FBI and Justice Department to spy on the Trump campaign during and after the 2016 election.

"The appointment, made in secret on October 19, two weeks before the election, does not absolutely protect the investigation once Biden moves into the White House. But it means the probe cannot be swept under the rug because ending it would require the new administration to publicly remove Durham, which would smack of a coverup and cause a uproar in public and in congress.

"The prospect that justice might be done for the dirtiest trick ever played in American politics helps restore a modicum of confidence in Washington. Thank you, Bill Barr."

Read entire article here.

"In case you missed it over the Thanksgiving weekend, the country's public health establishment admitted it has tortured your children for eight months for no apparent reason.

"Sixty million American children have been languishing in their rooms since spring, sitting in front of screens, learning nothing, isolated from human contact, in many cases driven to mental illness -- and there was no reason for any of that. The experts were wrong. They had no idea what they were doing. But the most amazing part is that they knew they were wrong when they did it, but they kept lying about it, even as American children began to kill themselves.

"On Sunday, New York City officials all but admitted this when they announced the reopening of elementary schools fewer than two weeks after they were closed. From a medical standpoint, nothing has changed. New York didn't get an early shipment of the Pfizer vaccine. There wasn't some groundbreaking new research paper that revolutionized our understanding of the coronavirus. Parents had simply had enough and they forced Mayor Bill de Blasio to admit the obvious: This virus is not a threat to children.

"As de Blasio put it, in that weird euphemistic way that dumb people speak, 'We know that the health realities for the youngest kids are the most favorable.'

"Well, yes, we do know that. We've known it for a long time. We knew it when de Blasio shut down New York schools. And Dr. Anthony Fauci knew it, too, though he didn't say anything about it until this past Sunday:

FAUCI: Close the bars and keep the schools open, is what we really say. Obviously, you don't have one size fits all. But as I said in the past ... the default position should be to try as best as possible, within reason, to keep the children in school or to get them back to school. If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all, not like one would have suspected.

"Why is this just now occurring to Tony Fauci? Isn't his entire job to 'look at the data'? Yes, it is, and yet somehow he never thought to do that. Over the summer, when the data look the same as they do right now, Fauci explained that he couldn't really say if kids should be allowed to go to school. It was 'complicated.' Except it wasn't complicated, neither then nor now."

Read entire article here.

"Georgia is emerging as an early proving ground for the 2024 presidential race, with a handful of potential Republican hopefuls flocking to the state to test their political coattails in its two Senate runoffs.

"Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who just landed the chairmanship at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is among the prospective 2024 contenders who have visited Georgia in recent weeks. So are Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Vice President Pence.

"The flurry of visits by national political players isn't unexpected. Republicans are poised to enter 2021 with a 50-48 advantage in the Senate, meaning that the balance of power in the upper chamber now rests on the outcome of the two Georgia runoffs.

"The high stakes give potential 2024 Republicans a chance to show off their leadership chops and political influence at a time when the party is still coming to terms with President Trump's loss to President-elect Joe Biden in the November election.

"'Georgia is kind of a twofer right now,' one GOP operative said. 'It's easy enough to give the excuse that you're just there trying to protect the Senate majority, but you're still getting your name and your face out there for if and when you decide to pull the trigger on a campaign.'"

Wishing you and yours a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

"Nearly nine out of every 10 U.S. voters believe that government authorities should purge voter rolls of outdated voter information prior to elections, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen.

"In a broad survey of opinions about election procedures, 88% of voters agreed that government officials should be required to remove from public files the names of voters who have moved or died since the last election.

"A further three-quarters of voters, meanwhile, believe that ballots should be received by Election Day at the latest rather than by a post-Election Day deadline. More than eight out of 10 voters agreed that bipartisan observers should be permitted to observe ballot counting procedures 'for every step' of the process."

"Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) revealed on Monday afternoon that she will step down as Democrats' highest-ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The California Democrat faced an abundance of scrutiny from progressive lawmakers and activists for her civil behavior toward Justice Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearings in October. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and others indicated that Sen. Feinstein is not combative enough to handle the position on the committee."

Read entire article here.