February 5, 2020
This seals his fate in the fall.
Buh-bye, idiot!
Doug Jones tweeted this out on Wednesday morning.
Alabama will be a pick up for Republicans in the fall.
By Danielle Ryan
It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but Americans can be excused for their distrust of the system after what happened in 2016 – and the facts that have been dug up on the group behind the failed Iowa app won’t do much to quell their suspicions.
The firm in question, rather ironically, is called Shadow Inc. — and, according to Federal Election Commission filings, it was paid thousands of dollars by Pete Buttigieg’s campaign for “software rights and subscriptions” in July 2019.
Fast-forward to February 2020, and the app has failed to deliver any reliable results in Iowa, Buttigieg has prematurely declared himself the winner — and #MayorCheat is trending on Twitter.
Adding to the suspicions surrounding the Iowa debacle is the fact that the company’s CEO, CTO and COO, among others, all previously worked for Hillary Clinton‘s presidential campaign, according to their LinkedIn profiles. For supporters of Sanders, convinced the DNC is attempting to rig the primary process against him for a second time, the conspiracy theory writes itself.
Shadow Inc was launched in 2019 by ACRONYM, a digital non-profit founded by one Tara McGowan, who happens to be a huge fan of Buttigieg, tweeting her excitement over his candidacy back in January 2019.
Despite declaring that it“launched” Shadow last year, ACRONYM has suddenly tried to distance itself from the company in the midst of the Iowa debacle. Yet, only a couple of weeks before the caucus disaster, McGowan herself was tweeting proudly about what ACRONYM was “building” together with Shadow. McGowan, by the way, is married to a top Buttigieg advisor.
Raising even more questions, there are rumors that Clinton’s former 2016 campaign manager, Robby Mook, was indirectly involved with the Shadow app. While Mook himself says he doesn’t “know anything” about it and there is no indication that he was involved in its actual development, investigative journalist Lee Fang tweeted that it was Mook’s security company, Defending Digital Democracy, which “vetted” the Iowa caucus app for “integrity.” The New York Times also reported that Mook’s company was involved in testing the app.
It’s not like Sanders supporters haven’t been burned by this sort of thing before. It is now widely accepted that the DNC was secretly working to thwart Sanders’ campaign in 2016, in an effort to ensure establishment favorite Hillary Clinton would face off against Trump. It is perfectly plausible to assume the party apparatus might try to do the same again in 2020, albeit with different tactics.
The utter contempt for Sanders among the establishment ranks of the DNC should not be underestimated. Despite the fact that Sanders ultimately supported Clinton in 2016, Clinton herself initially refused to say she would back Sanders if he became the party’s nominee in 2020 — and declared that “nobody likes” the Democratic socialist, who consistently ranks as the most popular politician in the country, but whose socialist-style politics are anathema to corporate centrists.
The Iowa drama is reminiscent of the controversy surrounding the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC in 2016. The determination that Moscow hacked the organization to harm Clinton’s campaign was made almost instantly by Crowdstrike, a private Democratic party contractor with links to an arms manufacturer-funded think tank. You couldn’t even make it up.
For progressive Democrats expecting a Sanders win in Iowa (that prediction based on recent polls in which he enjoyed significant leads), this all looks like blatant, bare-faced corruption. Or, as journalist Kyle Kulinski put it: “This is either record breaking incompetence or it’s an attempt to game the results. Those are the only two options.”
As of the time of writing, it has been 14 hours since the Iowa polls closed, there are still no official results available and Shadow Inc has assured everyone that it sincerely regrets the delay. While Buttigieg has declared victory based on limited data covering only his own campaign, Sanders’ camp has released data covering all candidates, indicating that he won the night.
With such a mess made of the Iowa caucus, and suspicions swirling about Shadow’s mysterious app, whether Sanders won or he didn’t, the DNC has once again ignited a rage in his supporters that it may come to regret.
Progressive Democrats were expecting yesterday’s caucus to potentially get messy, but “Shady app crashes and Pete Buttigieg declares victory before the result” probably wasn’t on anyone’s Iowa bingo card.
By Pam Key – 2/4/2020
Maxwell said, “The Iowa caucus is essentially the perfect example of systemic racism. Ninety-one percent of the voters in Iowa are white. The reason why you see a drop in turnout, I’m just speculating here, it could be perhaps that white children are not in the cages. So when you are talking about the tangible pain that black and brown people are feeling, they feel a sense of urgency because their kids are being put in cages, right? So if you have 91% white electorate, that sense of urgency may not be reflected in the turnout numbers. I’m not saying that’s the reason for this. It could be a factor.”
It was only a matter of time before someone celebrated Rush Limbaugh’s lung cancer diagnosis. While the longtime conservative talk radio host received a flood of support and well wishes after revealing his health status this week, he’s not exactly the most popular guy on the left.
“Ask yourself this simple question: is the world a better place or a worse place with Rush Limbaugh in it?” tweeted former CNN host Reza Aslan in response to Limbaugh’s diagnosis.
One only needs to glance at Aslan’s Twitter account or recall that he somehow managed to be dropped by CNN for anti-Trump tweets calling the US president a “piece of s**t” to know the question is rhetorical.
And if Aslan’s question weren’t enough, he later doubled down multiple times in response to Twitter users by calling Limbaugh “despicable” and “racist.”
Aslan’s take on Limbaugh’s death has not exactly gotten the best response.
Ricochet editor in chief Jon Gabriel questioned whether Aslan is even human.
“This horrible, hateful, miserable man @rezaaslan is currently employed by a network in Hollywood as an executive producer on a sitcom for your consumption. Leftists reward each other for wishing death on those who disagree,” outspoken conservative and ‘Justified’ actor Nick Searcy tweeted.
Aslan currently produces and hosts ‘Rough Draft with Reza Aslan,’ a show on the streaming service Topic. He previously hosted ‘Believer’ for CNN and helped producer the comedy ‘The Secret Life of Muslims.’
Blaze TV host Lauren Chen called Aslan’s original Limbaugh tweet his “grossest take yet,” and recalled another controversial moment where Aslan called Nick Sandmann’s face “punchable.” Sandmann just recently received a settlement from CNN for defamation, after they released an edited video of him appearing to instigate a confrontation with a Native America elder, an edited video Aslan reacted to.
The criticism has not bothered Aslan, who later answered his own question and declared about Limbaugh: “There is absolutely no question the world is better without him in it.”
FEBRUARY 3, 2020
Though no deaths have been reported overnight, Chinese officials warned yesterday that many more cases and deaths would be confirmed on Sunday/Monday.
In the meantime, Chinese markets finally faced their inevitable reckoning. Despite the best efforts of the PBOC and the government, the Chinese market bloodbath was about as bad as expected.
Matt Bracken joins The Alex Jones Show to analyze the state of the world amid a potential pandemic.
But over in the US, investors ignored the latest news out of China and have seemingly bought into the WHO’s optimistic message and China’s accusations about an ‘alarmist’ Washington.
This is surprising, since anybody who has been paying close attention to the situation in China should know that this is far from the truth.
Late last night, while most of America was watching the Superbowl, the New York Times published a scathing story recounting what it’s like on the ground in Wuhan right now. The truth is that all of the warnings of alleged ‘conspiracy theorist’ have more or less turned out to be correct. Supply shortages are still making it impossible for China to diagnose every case of the virus.
Ms. An, 67, needed an official diagnosis from a hospital to qualify for treatment, but the one she and her son raced to last week had no space, even to test her. The next hospital they were referred to here in Wuhan, the city of 11 million people at the center of the outbreak, was full, too, they said. They finally got an intravenous drip for Ms. An’s fever, but that was all.
Since then, Ms. An has quarantined herself at home. She and her son eat separately, wear masks at home and are constantly disinfecting their apartment. Ms. An’s health is declining rapidly, and even keeping water down is a struggle.
“I can’t let my mom die at home,” said her son, He Jun. “Every day I want to cry, but when I cry there are no tears. There is no hope.”
Chilling stuff. And once again, doctors and health-care workers are leveraging their newfound immunity to shed a light on the government’s brutality.
Last month, the government put Wuhan in a virtual lockdown, sealing off the city and banning most public transportation and private cars from its streets in a desperate effort to contain the outbreak. Now, many residents say it is nearly impossible to get the health care they need to treat – or even diagnose – the coronavirus.
Expressing exasperation, doctors say there is a shortage of testing kits and other medical supplies, and it is not clear why more are not available. The ban on transportation means some residents have to walk for hours to get to hospitals – if they are well enough to make the journey. Layers of bureaucracy stand between residents and help. And the long lines outside hospitals for testing and treatment suggest that the outbreak is spreading far beyond the official count of cases.
For many sickened residents, their best hope is the new coronavirus hospital that has just been finished (a second hospital is also being built).
Those who do make it to the hospital say they are squeezed together for hours in waiting rooms, where infections are easily spread. But the shortages have meant that many are ultimately turned away and sent home to self-quarantine, potentially compounding the outbreak by exposing their families.
Many doctors and residents are putting their hopes on the two new coronavirus hospitals that China has been racing to build in Wuhan in just a matter of days. One of them spans about eight acres, has 1,000 beds and is scheduled to open on Monday. The government says 1,400 military medical workers will be deployed to work there, potentially helping with the shortage of health professionals on hand to combat the outbreak.
Ironically, the hospital, which was supposed to open on Monday, is still undergoing ‘finishing touches’, and when masses of sick patients showed up at the gates on Monday morning, construction workers were forced to turn them away.
More than a week into the quarantine/lockdown, millions of residents fear the virus has spread much further than the government realizes.
On Sunday, city officials announced plans to set up quarantine stations around Wuhan for people with symptoms of pneumonia and close contacts among coronavirus patients. But just over a week into the lockdown, many residents believe the virus has already spread much further than the official numbers suggest.
“The situation that we’ve seen is much worse than what has been officially reported,” Long Jian, 32, said outside a hospital where his elderly father was being treated. Mr. Long said his father had to go to six hospitals and wait seven days before he could even be tested for the coronavirus.
But after Monday’s market shellacking, we suspect Beijing will be diverting more resources away from meeting critical shortages of medical supplies to focus instead on arresting shortsellers and locking up ‘fearmongers’, like the doctors who were arrested by local authorities in December for trying to warn the public about the outbreak.
Notice the bars on the hospital-room windows…this hospital is a prison with beds, as we’ve pointed out.
Following reports OPEC is weighing another supply cut to ‘rebalance’ the global oil market and warnings from economists that the outbreak could wipe more than a percentage point off Chinese GDP growth, officials in Beijing have reportedly changed their economic growth forecasts for 2020 to below 5%, what would be the lowest rate of growth since the beginning of China’s modern era of state-directed capitalism.
To help the economy cope, Beijing is reportedly considering more stimulus measures to try and bolster growth.
Of course, the fallout won’t be limited to China, and in a report published Monday, WSJ explores how the outbreak is already disrupting global supply chains and placing “additional strain” on an increasingly fragile economic expansion.
As we’ve pointed out, the outbreak has stoked racism against Chinese around the world.
If you’re looking for a quick refresher on the outbreak, here’s a short video from SCMP.
On a slightly more positive tip, Chinese state media posted this video about an infected woman who gave birth to a healthy baby in the middle of the crisis.
And here’s a video of a drone being used to take the temperature of a terrified civilian trapped by decree inside their apartment.
Finally, RT points out that the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak has already eclipsed the death toll from SARS, as the virus has spread to nearly two dozen countries and territories. The pandemic will eventually “circle the globe,” according to scientists from the NYT.
Given the fear of the virus ravaging densely populated areas, the people of Hong Kong have succeeded in pressing the city’s government to tighten travel restrictions, joining the US, Vietnam, Japan, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and many others.
Hong Kong has shut crossings to the mainland. But even this is likely too little, too late, as the first cases have already been diagnosed in the city.
Members of the G-7 will hold an emergency call on Monday to discuss strategies for containing the outbreak.
Get ready for another week of virus-induced craziness as this doesn’t look ready to disappear from the headlines any time soon.
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