Author: BlackMask Financial

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Billionaire investor Chris Sacca mocks ‘Robinhood bros’ for being reckless: ‘Stonks never go down!’

  • Venture capitalist Chris Sacca dismissed amateur traders’ huge gains in 2020 as the product of lucky timing in a recent tweet.
  • “To everyone who got into trading stocks this year, I have a little hard truth for you: You’re not actually that good at it,” the billionaire founder of Lowercase Capital and former “Shark Tank” star said.
  • Sacca mockingly praised day traders in a follow-up tweet after weathering backlash for his comments.
  • “To the angry Robinhood bros who got into trading stocks this year: I was wrong. You’re amazing,” he said. “Stocks never go down!”
  • Sacca has repeatedly underscored the risks of trading stocks and other assets such as Bitcoin, especially with borrowed money.

Newbie traders who scored massive windfalls in 2020 simply got lucky, billionaire investor Chris Sacca said in a recent tweet.”To everyone who got into trading stocks this year, I have a little hard truth for you: You’re not actually that good at it,” the former “Shark Tank” star and founder of venture-capital firm Lowercase Capital said. “You just caught a wild bull market. Take some money off the table.” Sacca’s comments were met with swift backlash. Dave Portnoy, the Barstool Sports founder who became the face of a new generation of day traders earlier this year, told Fox Business that he doesn’t know who Sacca is, but the investor “sounds like a sore loser and an idiot.” The Lowercase chief – an early investor in Twitter, Uber, and Instagram – responded to the criticism with a sarcastic tweet ridiculing Robinhood users, one of the most popular trading apps.

“To the angry Robinhood bros who got into trading stocks this year: I was wrong. You’re amazing. This has nothing to do with the market. It’s all you and your mad skillz. Don’t take profits off the table. Double down, on margin. Borrow everything you can. Stonks never go down!”

In internet slang, stonks is a deliberate misspelling of stocks. Sacca – who made his fortune in the early 2000s then lost a huge chunk of it when the dot-com bubble burst – has repeatedly cautioned amateurs about trading risks, particularly with borrowed money. “What percent of retail ownership of crypto is supported by leverage? What about stocks? I am beyond worried about the debt lessons that a generation of app traders weren’t around to learn a cycle ago,” Sacca replied to a December 26 tweet by Bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz underscoring the risks of excessive leverage. “Don’t borrow to trade stocks/BTC,” Sacca tweeted a few hours later. Sacca has issued similar warnings in the past. “I’m here to tell you that trading millions of dollars you don’t have is a thrilling way to ruin your health and financial future. Fun!” he tweeted in November 2019. “Investing is a great way to make money. Trading is a great way to lose it. Do yourself a favor and hide your “Stocks” app forever,” Sacca tweeted. Nick Note: The revenge of the boomers. Millennials forget we invented EVERYTHING they are using. From the internet, Computer and desk  top version. We invented the smart phone and jet engine. Shit we even invented blonds. A bag full of apps on a smart phone which is little more than a party line conference call. We invented Skype, fiber optics, satellite. Name me one millennial technology? The biggest stock market wipeout in history is right around the corner. And we should not let them move back in the basement trying to hide form their creditors and the repo man game boy in hand!

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Head to head: The Oxford and Pfizer coronavirus vaccines compared

A classic head to head – Pfizer versus Oxford – efficacy. the two vaccines have not yet been tested head to head, so it’s impossible to say which is best.

But it is true, of course, that the Pfizer vaccine boasts an efficacy of 95 per cent, compared to something around the 70 per cent mark from Oxford. Immunity also appears to kick in a bit quicker with the Pfizer jab at 14 days, compared to 22 for Oxford’s shot. 

In theory, at least, Pfizer’s RNA technology (although never used before in a mass vaccination programme) is also “cleaner” in the sense that the RNA code snippet it uses to deliver immunity vanishes from the body soon after doing its job. But such comparisons are largely academic. The trial data for both vaccines is robust but limited and the real numbers on efficacy will only emerge a few years down the line once tens of millions of doses have been administered.  Much more important is that both vaccines, based on the trial data available, appear highly effective at protecting against severe disease. In all the trials run to date, no one vaccinated has been hospitalised or died of Covid-19. Experts are not yet certain if either prevent against transmission.

Vaccines secured by the government and current state of development
Vaccines secured by the government and current state of development

Both jabs also appear to be safe. Like many vaccines, they cause some short term discomfort in roughly one in 10 people and vomiting and fever in about one in 100. But more serious vaccine-specific adverse effects have not been reported.  It remains possible issues may emerge in the months to come but tens of thousands of people have now been given the Oxford vaccine with no ill effects and millions have received the Pfizer immunisation.  “The MHRA will have carefully scrutinised the evidence on this Covid-19 vaccine to ensure that it is both safe and effective,” said Prof Arne Akbar, president of the British Society for Immunology. “Although development of this vaccine has occurred quickly, all the same rigorous safety standards and checks have still been carried out.” The most obvious and certain differences between the two jabs are practical ones concerning logistics and cost. Just as with cars, different vaccines are better suited to some tasks than others, and on this measure the Oxford shot shines bright – a Fiat Punto, compared to Pfizer’s Porsche. While the Pfizer jab must be “deep frozen” and used within five days of leaving the dry-ice containers it is shipped in, the Oxford jab can be kept in a fridge, between 2 and 8C for up to six months.  This will be a huge relief to those orchestrating the biggest vaccination effort in history, both in Britain and overseas. “We have concerns over the logistical challenges the Pfizer vaccine has left us with. It’s been hugely difficult to manage – the deep freeze conditions, the rapid timeframe it needs to be used in,” said Dr Richard Vautrey, chair of the BMA’s GPs’ committee.   “It’s been a mammoth task for practices… We hope the AstraZeneca vaccine will remove many of these problems because it can be stored in a standard fridge and there are going to be more doses available.”    And then there are the costs. The UK government won’t say what it is paying for the Pfizer vaccine, citing commercial confidentiality, but leaked figures show the EU is paying over £10 per dose. The Oxford shot, in contrast, comes in at around £1.60 and the company has pledged to continue to provide it at cost until the summer. In low and middle-income countries, it will continue to be sold at cost in perpetuity – perhaps the single best prospect of bringing the pandemic to an end globally. Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, said: “The Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine is extremely attractive in that it is inexpensive, scalable, and can be stored at 2-8 degrees Celsius.  “These attributes will enable its use worldwide, including in low-income and middle-income countries, alongside other safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines, and the large supplies that will become available in 2021 mean that this vaccine could be a gamechanger in terms of our efforts to end the acute phase of the pandemic.” And what of mutations? It’s unlikely the new variant of the virus it will have much, if any, impact on either vaccine and we will only find out as the jabs are administered, say experts. Over time – a year or more – all Covid vaccines may need to be tweaked like the annual flu jab to keep up with “viral drift”, they add.

Nick Note: Go for the Porsche!

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Hundreds of senior citizens in Florida, camped out overnight

BERLIN (Reuters) – BioNTech is working flat out with partner Pfizer to boost production of their COVID-19 vaccine, its founders said, warning there would be gaps in supply until other vaccines were rolled out. The German biotech startup has led the vaccine race but its shot has been slow to arrive in the European Union because of relatively late approval from the bloc’s health regulator and the small size of the order placed by Brussels. The delays in rolling out the home-grown vaccine have caused consternation in Germany, where some regions had to halt vaccinations within days of starting an inoculation drive.

“At the moment it doesn’t look good – a hole is appearing because there’s a lack of other approved vaccines and we have to fill the gap with our own vaccine,” BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told news weekly Spiegel.

Sahin founded BioNTech with his wife, Oezlem Tuereci, who is the company’s chief medical officer. Both faulted the EU’s decision to spread orders in the expectation that more vaccines would be approved quickly. The United States ordered 600 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer shot in July, while the EU waited until November to place an order half that size.

“At some point it became clear that it would not be possible to deliver so quickly,” Tuereci told Spiegel. “By then it was already too late to place follow-on orders.”

BioNTech hopes to launch a new production line in Marburg, Germany, ahead of schedule in February, with the potential to produce 250 million doses in the first half of 2021, said Sahin. Talks are also under way with contract manufacturers and there should be greater clarity by the end of January.  Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Twitter that German authorities would do everything possible to enable a swift start in Marburg.

The federal government, which has backed BioNTech with 375 million euros ($458 million) in funding, has resisted calls from opposition leaders to speed production of its vaccine by issuing compulsory licences to other drugmakers. Another vaccine from Moderna is expected to be cleared by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Jan. 6. Spahn has also urged the EMA to quickly approve the Oxford University-AstraZeneca shot cleared by Britain. The EU timeline for that treatment remains uncertain. That vaccine was approved by India’s drug regulator on Friday for emergency use, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Sahin said the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, which uses messenger RNA to instruct the human immune system to fight the coronavirus, should be able to cope with a new, more contagious variant first detected in Britain.

“We are testing whether our vaccine can also neutralise this variant and will soon know more,” he said.

Asked about coping with a strong mutation, he said it would be possible to tweak the vaccine as required within six weeks – though such new treatments might require additional regulatory approvals.

Sahin also said BioNTech would make its vaccine, which requires storage at about minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 Fahrenheit), easier to handle, adding that a next-generation vaccine could be ready by late summer. Nick Note; In view of the mutant strain the Phizer vaccine  is a   good choice. If the coronavirus has mutated beyond the vaccine reach it will take less  then 4 weeks to develop a booster shot.  if not this mutation i am sure one in the future. Distribution is the issue. Reality is we  are in a tough spot and  it looks to me like yearly vaccines like the flue shot. The real wake up call is the fact we are going into lockdowns again and this will not be over in April, or even this time next year!

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Photos show hundreds of senior citizens camping out overnight in Florida to get the COVID-19 vaccine

  • Hundreds of senior citizens in Lee County, Florida, camped out overnight this week in hopes of getting their first doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
  • Photos show long lines of people sitting in chairs and wearing layers of clothing to keep warm as they waited overnight.
  • The county announced on Sunday that vaccines would be available on a first-come, first-serve basis to people over the age of 65 and healthcare workers.
  • Each vaccine site had reached capacity before even opening each day this week, local outlets WZVN-TV and News-Press reported.

The long lines occurred in Lee County, where health officials sent out a press release on Sunday saying doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the county would be available on a first-come, first-serve basis to high-risk healthcare workers and people 65 years old and over. In the hours and days that followed, hundreds of elderly people – some of whom were in their 90s – lined up outside several vaccination sites across the county, WZVN-TV and News-Press, a local Florida newspaper, reported. Many of them spent nights outside, in temperatures that dropped as low as 47 degrees Fahrenheit. Vaccine sites hit capacity in the early morning hours of Monday, but people returned to line up for vaccines in the following days. The sites hit capacity on Tuesday and Wednesday, too.

Photos from the scene show people sitting in chairs and covered in blankets as they waited outside for hours hoping to get the vaccine: Nick Note: 300 million people need to be vaccinated. And they would have you believe they can get this done by spring. Try 2 years and add into the equation it will take a yearly booster shot.

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The Democrats are suddenly leading in Georgia and the GOP should be worried

On 5 January, or maybe days later if the presidential election is any indication, voters in the state of Georgia will decide who controls the US Senate. Two crucial seats are at stake in next month’s runoffs after none of the senate hopefuls managed to win at least 50 per cent of the vote in November. Democrat Jon Ossoff faces off against incumbent Republican David Perdue, and Democrat Raphael Warnock against incumbent appointed Senator Kelly Loeffler. Georgia had been reliable GOP terrain for decades until Joe Biden turned the state blue in the presidential election, beating Donald Trump by 11,770 votes out of about five million ballots cast. Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the vote was rigged. By inserting himself into a race that he just lost and essentially telling GOP voters that their vote doesn’t matter given that the results are “rigged,” he has thrown a monkey wrench into the race. The GOP senate candidates in November had more votes than their Democratic challengers. But with some calling for Trump backers to not vote at all in order to “prove” the conspiracy that voting machines are programmed for the Democrats, what happens now is anyone’s guess. Currently, the races are viewed as tossups. Unlike the presidential election,  state polls are released relatively infrequently and the sample of polls is much smaller.  There aren’t even recent approval ratings that often serve as a proxy for vote share. The approval of Georgia voters of both incumbents is in serious question given continued reports that both Perdue and Loeffler used insider information regarding the pandemic to profit from stock investments. FiveThirtyEight, which weights the polls for accuracy and adjusts them for perceived bias, has a slightly bigger lead for both democratic challengers, with Ossoff leading by a point and Warnock by two. According to FiveThirtyEight, polls have flipped five points in Ossoff’s favor since Election Day and three points in favor of Warnock, increasing the chances for the Democrats. Betting markets give the GOP a 67 per cent chance to maintain control. Note that a split verdict by voters will allow the Republicans to maintain control of the chamber by a 51-49 margin. But we’ve learned with the irrational betting in the run-up to the presidential election and its aftermath that the mostly white, male betting market is decidedly pro-GOP more than pro-money, and tends to bet with its heart. While the general expectation with the candidates campaigning together on both sides is that both elections will break the same way, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver says the odds of a split verdict are higher given the expected narrow margins. More than 2.3 million Georgians already voted a week out, a number that is viewed as very positive for Democrats, whose voters historically sit out non-presidential elections to a greater degree than their Republican counterparts. Over 100,000 voters who didn’t vote in the presidential election requested ballots for the runoffs. A greater percentage of all early voters are black. So the GOP will have to make up more ground on election day in the runoffs than they needed to in the presidential election when they were unable to close the gap. Furthermore, about 23,000 teenagers throughout Georgia have become eligible to vote since November, when young voters in November accounted for 21 per cent of the Georgia vote (compared with 17 per cent nationally and 16 per cent in 2016); and they broke dramatically for Joe Biden.

Biden’s ability to get Senate approval for his administration appointments to cabinet posts and into the courts, as well as for his entire legislative agenda hinges on the outcome. A loss in either race allows current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to block anything he wants.

According to the Washington Post, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris “will both travel to Georgia in the closing days before its pair of Senate runoff elections.” And Trump announced on Twitter that he will hold a rally in Georgia on Monday, though the GOP fears he will continue to air his grievances about his election loss rather than focus on Perdue and Loeffler. Nick Note: This is more bad news for the sleeping Republicans and stock market mindless bulls

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McConnell: Senate won’t split 3 issues Trump wants

 McConnell links $2,000 stimulus checks to Trump’s social media, election demand
Payments to Americans are on the way but they will be $600 rather than $2,000 as President Donald Trump and many congressional Democrats would have preferred. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the quickest path to increasing those payments to $2,000. CNBC’s Eamon Javers reports. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/2NGeIvi Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday blocked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s attempt to unanimously pass a bill to increase direct payments in the year-end coronavirus relief package to $2,000. The Kentucky Republican later Tuesday introduced a bill that would boost the size of the checks to $2,000 from $600, repeal Section 230 legal liability protections for internet platforms and create a commission to study election issues. The bill would meet all of President Donald Trump’s recent demands, which are unrelated, but would not get Democratic support and become law. Through the bill, Republicans would both avoid the act of actually passing $2,000 payments but allow GOP senators running for reelection in Georgia’s Jan. 5 runoffs to express support for Trump’s priorities. In a statement Tuesday, Schumer said if McConnell “tries loading up” the bill “with unrelated, partisan provisions that will do absolutely nothing to help struggling families across the country,” larger direct payments would not become law. “Any move like this by Sen. McConnell would be a blatant attempt to deprive Americans of a $2,000 survival check,” he said. McConnell faces pressure to act after the House — with nearly all Democrats and a few dozen Republicans on board — voted Monday to increase the cash deposits to $2,000 from $600. Senate Republicans wary of spending more on pandemic aid are looking for a way to both meet the demands of a president who called the year-end coronavirus relief and funding bill a disgrace and hold on to their majority during races overshadowed by the crisis. McConnell brought the chamber back this week with one major goal: overriding Trump’s veto of the annual National Defense Authorization Act. He has not yet committed to bringing the $2,000 payment bill up for a vote, and it is unclear now how one would take shape. Nick Note:Their will be no cookie. No more happy check money. And the most devastating wave of the plague is about to hit. And with less then 2 million people who have gotten 2 shots out of 350 million. Well i will leave it  to you to connect the dots.
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New strain of COVID could overwhelm hospitals – CDC

  • CDC officials said Wednesday that the new strain of Covid-19 that was discovered in the U.K. could further stress hospitals that are already overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.
  • The CDC’s Dr. Henry Walke said the new variant appears to spread “more easily and quickly than other strains,” but it does not appear to cause more severe disease or increased risk of death.
  • He added that considering how widely the variant has spread in the U.K., the arrival of the variant in the U.S. “was expected.” Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that a new strain of Covid-19 now circulating in the U.S. could further stress hospitals that are already overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. Colorado health officials announced Tuesday that they detected the first known case of the new and more infectious strain of the virus that was first discovered in the United Kingdom. A second separate new strain first identified in South Africa may also already be circulating in the U.S. as well, CDC officials said. “Because the variants spread more rapidly, they could lead to more cases and put even more strain on our already heavily burdened health-care systems,” Dr. Henry Walke, the agency’s Covid incident manager, said on a conference call with reporters Walke said the available data indicate that the new variant spreads “more easily and quickly than other strains,” but it does not appear to cause more severe disease or increased risk of death. He noted that the individual in Colorado who was infected with the new strain of the virus did not have a travel history, which “suggests this variant has been transmitted from person to person in the United States.” He added that considering how widely the variant has spread in the U.K., the arrival of the variant in the U.S. “was expected.” “Viruses constantly change through mutation and we expect to see new variants emerge over time,” he said. “Many mutations lead to variants that don’t change how the virus infects people. Sometime, however, variants emerge that can spread more easily, like these.”

He added that “experts believe our current vaccines will be effective against” both of the new strains. Scientists are still studying how the new strain responds to Covid-19 treatments like monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma.  Dr. Greg Armstrong, the director of the CDC’s Office of Advanced Molecular Detection, said the assertion that the vaccines will be effective against the new variant is based on “experience with similar previous mutations.” He added that immunity induced through previous infection from a different strain is also probably effective against these new strains. National and state laboratories around the country are conducting testing to determine whether other variants are present in the U.S. and how widely the variant that was discovered in the U.K. is spreading. He said the CDC is ramping up the national surveillance program so that they’ll be receiving 750 samples per week for sequencing. He added that the agency is contracting with seven academic centers around the country to sequence samples and search for new variants locally. Those centers, he said, are in Boston, Massachusetts New Haven, Connecticut, Athens, Georgia, Nashville, Tennessee, Madison, Wisconsin, and the Scripps Institute in San Diego, California. “There are a lot of laboratories that have this capacity around the U.S.,” he said of testing for the new variant. “A lot of them are looking for this variant right now.” Nick Note: This new super strain is a big deal. The global economy is sucking shut again. I am concerned.

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U.S. detects first case of COVID-19 variant as Biden offers gloomy vaccine outlook

WILMINGTON, Del./DENVER, Dec 29 (Reuters) – The first known U.S. case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant discovered in Britain was detected in Colorado on Tuesday as President-elect Joe Biden warned it could take years for most Americans to be vaccinated against COVID-19 at current distribution rates. Biden’s prediction of a grim winter appeared aimed at lowering public expectations that the pandemic would be over soon after he takes office on Jan. 20, while putting Congress on notice that wants to significantly increase spending to expedite vaccine distribution, expand COVID testing and help reopen shuttered schools. Biden, a Democrat, said about 2 million people have received the initial dose of one of two nearly approved two-doze vaccines, well short of the 20 million that outgoing Republican President Donald Trump had promised by year’s end. “The effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should,” Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware. At the current rate, “it’s going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people.”

Shortly after Biden’s remarks, Colorado Governor Jared Polis said his state had discovered the nation’s first known case of the highly infectious coronavirus variant B.1.1.7, which was originally documented in the United Kingdom. Scientists there believe the variant is more contagious than other previously identified strains of the SAR-CoV-2 variant but no more severe in the symptoms it causes.

It has also been detected in several European countries, as well as in Canada, Australia, India, South Korea and Japan, among others. Polis said in a statement the infected patient was a man in his 20s with no recent travel history who is currently in isolation in Elbert County, a semi-rural area on the outskirts of the greater Denver metropolitan area. “Public health officials are doing a thorough investigation” and the individual has “no close contacts identified so far,” Polis said, adding that the state had notified the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Colorado State Laboratory scientists confirmed the UK variant after noticing that a diagnostic test sample was missing a key gene signal, prompting them to sequence the patient’s viral genome.

This revealed eight mutations specific to the spike protein gene associated with the British variant, Polis said in his statement.

The Denver-based online news outlet Coloradopolitics.com, citing Elbert County’s public health director, later reported that a second suspected case of the variant was under examination there. Although experts believe the newly approved COVID vaccines will be effective against the British variant, the emergence of a more highly transmissible strain of the virus makes a swift rollout of immunizations all the more critical. Trump defended his administration’s record after Biden concluded his remarks. “It is up to the States to distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the Federal Government. We have not only developed the vaccines, including putting up money to move the process along quickly, but gotten them to the states,” he said on Twitter. Nick Note: This mutant strain is far more infectious. And the viral load is fast and overwhelming. This is changing my thinking.

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Free Bread for the Masses… Why Work?

Efforts to increase stimulus payments to $2,000 were blocked in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, while Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put forth a new bill. Sen. Bernie Sanders was one of those making the case for higher stimulus payments. Nick Note: This is  lefty free bread for the masses…….

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McConnell blocks Democrats’ attempts to boost relief checks to $2,000

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday blocked two Democratic attempts to approve a bill that would provide $2,000 tax rebate payments to Americans instead of the $600 lawmakers approved just last week. McConnell first objected to a unanimous consent request from Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer that the chamber immediately pass the bill. He then objected to Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders’ request that the Senate approve the bill after it votes to override President Donald Trump’s veto of the annual defense policy bill. Sanders then objected to McConnell’s attempts to set up a veto override vote on the defense bill Wednesday, likely delaying that vote until Jan. 1 at the earliest.

The impasse about when and how the Senate would bring up a bill to increase the direct payments will likely become intertwined with addressing election security and overhauling a 1996 law that provides some legal protections to social media companies and other websites for the content posted on their platforms. That provision is often referred to as Section 230.

Trump listed all three as issues he wants lawmakers to address when he signed the $1.4 trillion omnibus and coronavirus relief package into law on Sunday. And McConnell introduced a bill later Tuesday to package all three elements together, infuriating Schumer who said the move was “a blatant attempt to deprive Americans of a $2,000 survival check.” McConnell’s bill release came after Trump published a series of tweets calling party leaders “weak and tired” and saying overriding his veto was “a disgraceful act of cowardice.” “Negotiate a better Bill, or get better leaders, NOW! Senate should not approve NDAA until fixed!!!” he wrote, using the acronym for the National Defense Authorization Act.

The McConnell bill would increase direct payments to $2,000; repeal Section 230; and establish an 18-member bipartisan advisory committee to “study the integrity and administration of the general election for Federal office held in November 2020 and make recommendations to Congress to improve the security, integrity, and administration of Federal elections.”

During his floor remarks, McConnell didn’t clarify exactly how the Senate will deal with the bill, but he did say “this week the Senate will begin a process to bring these three priorities into focus.”

Schumer and Democrats rebuked McConnell for not allowing a quick vote on a bill the House passed with bipartisan support in a 275-134 vote Monday.

“I don’t want to hear it that it costs too much to help working families get a check when they’re struggling to keep their jobs … pay their rent, feed their families and live a halfway normal and decent life,” Schumer said. Sanders doubled down, saying, “Hunger in America is at the highest level that it has been for decades, with moms and dads struggling to feed their kids and working families lining up mile after mile to get emergency food packages.” Several Republicans support the Senate approving $2,000 stimulus payments, especially after Trump posted several tweets demanding the bill’s approval. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., signaled to reporters Tuesday she’s open to approving the bill but indicated that she’s opposed to rolling all three issues together into one package. “I don’t like everything rolled in together. I think you end up with bad policy,” Fischer said. “And I realize that in many cases you have to throw a lot of stuff in to get the votes, but we need to assume the responsibilities we’ve been given and really start to prioritize what the needs are of the people of this country.” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who was pushing for the pandemic aid package to include $1,600 direct payments, took to Twitter to urge GOP leaders to quickly pass the bill that would provide $2,000 payments.

[Perdue, Loeffler call for $2,000 checks]

“Working Americans have borne the brunt of this pandemic. They’ve been hammered, through no fault of their own. They deserve $2000 in #covid relief — a fraction of what the banks & big business got. Let’s vote now,” Hawley wrote. Nick Note: This is going nowhere. And soon that reality will set in. If they continue fiddlefucking around the Republicans will lose the Senate in the Georgia run off elections