Overnight Underground News April 20 2020

The Overnight Underground Podcast, here’s the headlines: 

Unemployment jumps again. Trump is tripping. Cali closes the beaches again. Big tech moves to tracks your covid health and the lockdown rips bikini waxes.  These stories & more coming up on today’s Overnight Underground News.  I’m John Ford. 

Unemployment soars again

It’s the one coronavirus statistic that just doesn’t seem to flatten, the unemployment rate. As of today, we are now officially at thirty million unemployed. The unemployment numbers jumped just under four million in the last week. The Dow opened down in the two hundred point range this morning. Like it or not, the lesson many corporations are learning from the Covid economic disaster is that to move on from this nightmare we need more automation and fewer people employed in the most infected and affected  job sectors. 

Trump plans Arizona trip

It seems that President Trump has White House cabin fever and is set to get out of dodge. The great orange one announced he will visit Arizona next week. The New York Post reported earlier in the week that Trump had been getting itchy feet and was looking forward to campaign rallies and weekends at his swanky and kitschy Mara Lago retreat. 

Politico reports that this coincides with the President's first major ad campaign that he hopes will end his slide into possible ineluctability. The spots will tout Trump's handling of the coronavirus emergency and ads will be squarely aimed at Biden. Let’s see over sixty thousand dead, over a million confirmed cases and thirty million out of work. You know, Biden should just run the Trump ads with a laugh track under them. 

Newsom to close beaches, again

California Governor Gavin Newsom is set to order all beaches and state parks closed in his state effective Friday. Newsom blamed lack of social distancing by Californian’s for the new lock-down order. Oh hell, why not just blame stupidity. As the weather heats up in Cali, this order will undoubtedly get a lot of Californians hot under the collar. 

In somewhat unrelated news, teachers in California have called Newsom’s suggestion to reopen schools in July as being quote:  unrealistic. The teachers unions are busy reminding the Governor just who’s in charge of schools in California. In Oakland, the talk has been to delay the school year, not an earlier start to the yearly babysitting service.

Covid didn’t start in your mom's basement

The latest poop on the coronavirus’ origin, is that the damn thing was probably not made in a lab. The AP is reporting that US intelligence agencies have concluded that the new coronavirus was not, quote: “ manmade or genetically modified.” All that being said, the agencies are still looking into whether the pandemic can be traced to contact with infected animals or possibly an accident at a Chinese lab. 

And proof positive that you can find news and statistics to prove just about damn near every side of an issue, come this from that bastion of journalistic integrity, Dnyuz dot com, reporting that senior Trump officials are pushing for spy agencies to track down evidence that will support the theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China was the origin of the virus. The Chinese government has, needless to say, denied  the virus leaked from a lab. The Chinese have pushed their own conspiracy theory that suggests the American military created the coronavirus. So who you gonna’ believe, our lying politicians or theirs? 

Prisons are sick

Well it’s one way to reduce the prison population. The San Francisco Gate is reporting that over seventy percent of federal inmates have the plague. Out of twenty seven hundred tests that were performed system wide, close to two thousand have come back positive for coronavirus. Let’s venture to say it’s probably not a good time to be committing any crimes. 

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Over-70-of-tested-inmates-in-federal-prisons-15235624.php

Pandemic gains tracking

Many Americans are good to go with tech companies tracking their Covid status and every waking and sleeping moment. Privacy rights have taken a big hit since the lockdown, and it seems that many Merican’s are tickled pink with the prospect of losing more of them. According to a new study reported in the Verve, more than half of those surveyed said they would be OK with an app that would let others know they had COVID-19. The survey conducted by the University of Maryland and the Washington Post found that Democrats responding in the survey said they were more willing to give up rights to be tracked by such an app. In completely unrelated news, Apple and Google recently released an initial version of their application programming interface that represents the first phase of tracking coronavirus infections. Coming next, undoubtedly anal probes to enter Wally World. 

Do you miss bush?

Now here’s some sad news. The coronavirus has taken its toll on the bikini waxing. Many women are, as they used to say back in the ‘60s, letting it all hang out. The Sun reports, yea I know, the Sun, that bringing back the bush is all the rage right now.  No, not that bush. 

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/fashion-beauty/full-bush-back-ladies-swerve-21813064