A GameStop store in Alhambra, California on January 27, 2021 (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
A remarkable series of events culminated in at least one major Wall Street hedge fund on the verge of insolvency and widespread anxiety and even panic from the titans of the financial system. It was all initiated on a sub-group of Reddit known for its heterodox interest in stock markets, video games, and vaguely populist politics.
Purposely targeting the stock of a company that had long been written off by Wall Street and which short sellers had decided to ravage — the video game retailer GameStop — these small investors, many apparently working class or debt-ridden, banded together to drive up the stock price of that company into the stratosphere, abruptly leaving the hedge fund short-sellers with billions of dollars in losses.
Front page of the r/wallstreetbets sub-Reddit
Although it may be more complex than this once all the facts are all known, this is being treated — by those excited by it and those aghast — as a type of populist uprising, a David v. Goliath tale in which ordinary people united to brilliantly beat Wall Street at its own game, thereby transferring plutocratic wealth back to the public. Oligarchs and their media spokespeople spent all day on CNBC and other pro-Wall-Street outlets expressing outrage and demanding government intervention to protect them from what they regard as this grave injustice.
And the sub-Reddit has now been banned by at least one platform, on the highly suspicious ground that it was due to “hate speech” and not the use of this group to sabotage Wall Street billionaires (what a remarkable coincidence of timing that this sub-Reddit’s “hate speech” suddenly crossed a line exactly as hedge fund managers were demanding their heads; the page continues, however, to appear on Reddit itself).
In the video below, I discuss what happened and what the implications are. One note about the video: though I do discuss the amorphous and trans-ideological politics driving both the Reddit uprising and the reaction to it, that topic in particular merits much more consideration. Liberal journalists and pundits love to mock the idea that “economic anxiety” drives anything remotely adjacent to right-wing populism — the primary drivers are racism and other types of bigotry, they insist in unison — yet all one has to do is spend any non-trivial amount of time in that sub-Reddit to see genuine and significant levels of rational economic anger often quite untethered, even hostile, to left-liberal cultural pieties and political niceties. Given their recent noble success, everyone now wants to claim these Redditors as their own, but their politics, like many people’s, defy the clean left-right dichotomy on which the professional media and punditry classes depend, the only prism through which they can understand the world.
This is one of the most interesting and potentially significant events — not just financially but culturally and politically — to happen in some time, and I try here to explain the key components and highlight some of the most consequential implications [note that this video was filmed late last night before the banning of the sub-Reddit by Discord on obviously specious grounds and, far worse, the corrupted banning this morning by major trading platforms, including RobinHood, of any attempts to buy GameStop and other targeted stocks while still allowing them to be sold: the ultimate expression of what should be illegal market manipulation to protect hedge funds]:
By Staff Writer | The National Pulse
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April 13, 2021
On Day 74, Joe and Jill Biden released a brief Easter message—but Hunter Biden had much more to say. Biden’s Easter Message On Vaccine “Moral Obligation.” President Joe Biden and…
By Elizabeth Rosner | The New York Post
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April 13, 2021
A New Jersey man is in the hospital with COVID-19 — just five weeks after being vaccinated. Francisco Cosme, 52, was ecstatic when he booked an appointment for the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the Javits Center on March 6. After Cosme was vaccinated, he continued to wear a mask and follow social distancing…
By Madeline Kenney | Chicago Sun Times
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April 13, 2021
Karen Jozefowicz receives her first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at Wrigley Field, which opened as a mass vaccination site earlier this month. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Illinois is seeing a troubling upward trend in its coronavirus data as the state continues to vaccinate residents at a record pace.
Illinois is seeing a troubling upward trend in coronavirus cases as the state continues to vaccinate residents at a record pace.
State health officials on Sunday announced 2,942 new and probable COVID-19 cases and an additional 16 virus-related deaths.
The new cases were detected among 69,600 tests processed by the Illinois Department of Public Health in the last day. That keeps the statewide seven-day positivity rate at a 10-week high of 4.2%.
Illinois is averaging about 3,204 new cases each day this month, up sharply from the first 11 days of last month when the state recorded a daily average of 1,610.
The state has also seen an uptick in coronavirus hospitalizations over the last month. As of Saturday night, 1,834 beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients — a 23% increase from last week. Of those, 409 were in intensive care units and 173 were on ventilators, officials said.
The rise in cases comes as Illinois is vaccinating more people than ever.
The state injected 131,285 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine Saturday, marking the fifth consecutive day Illinois has inoculated more than 130,000 in a single day. Over the last week, Illinois has reported three record-setting vaccination days, including Friday when the state administered an all-time high of 175,681 shots.
The seven-day rolling average of vaccines administered daily is 126,827 doses.
In total, the state has doled out nearly 7.2 million coronavirus vaccines since mid-December. However, only 2.85 million Illinoisans have been fully vaccinated, meaning two weeks removed from their final dose, according to the IDPH website. That’s just over 22% of the state’s population — well under the 80% needed for herd immunity.
Illinois is expanding eligibility for the vaccine this week. All residents 16 or older will be eligible for inoculation, starting Monday, though that excludes Chicago providers who won’t expand eligibility to all adults until April 19.
Over 2,500 people said “Absolutely not!” when asked whether they support “vaccine passports” in the latest unscientific poll at SharylAttkisson.com. That represents 97% of those who responded to the poll. Two percent (2%) of the respondents answered “not much”, to the question about “vaccine passports”, representing the next most popular answer. And less than 1% […]
Biden regime medical advisor Anthony Fauci proclaimed on Monday that it was “still not okay” for people who have received a Covid vaccine to visit bars, restaurants, or other indoor businesses, dashing the hopes of many who had hoped getting the shot would enable them to return to normal life.
“No, it’s still not okay for the simple reason that the level of infection, the dynamics of infection, in the community are still really disturbingly high,” Fauci pontificated during an appearance on MSNBC.
“Like, just yesterday, there were close to eighty thousand new infections, and we’ve been hanging around sixty, seventy, seventy-five thousand, so, if you’re not vaccinated, please get vaccinated as soon as the vaccine becomes available to you, and if you are vaccinated please remember that you still have to be careful and not get involved in crowded situations, particularly indoors where people are not wearing masks,” Fauci continued.
Fauci is at it again. “It’s still not ok for vaccinated Americans to eat and drink indoors.” pic.twitter.com/yWHTnRN18f
Navy veteran and U.S. House candidate Jarome Bell slammed Fauci’s remarks on Monday, tweeting “This Fauci clown keeps moving the goalposts for the precise reason that he wants you inured to following random, senseless orders. Real patriots ought not tolerate this idiocy. Fauci was a bad actor under Trump, and remains so under Biden. Reject him and his nonsense.”
This Fauci clown keeps moving the goalposts for the precise reason that he wants you inured to following random, senseless orders.
Real patriots ought not tolerate this idiocy.
Fauci was a bad actor under Trump, and remains so under Biden.
President Donald Trump excoriated Fauci as a “king of flip-flops” who “said he was an athlete in college but couldn’t throw a baseball even close to home plate” in a scalding statement last month.
Hawaii Gov. David Ige (D) on Friday approved a “vaccine passport” program for inter-island travel that could begin as early as May and expand to out-of-state travel by the summer, …
By Noah Weiland | The New York Times
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April 13, 2021
The remarks rebuff efforts by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to secure an extra supply of vaccine doses as Michigan is seeing a worst-in-the-nation surge of coronavirus infections.
By Brodigan | Louder With Crowder
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April 13, 2021
Sen. Rand Paul doesn’t like Anthony Fauci. Sen. Paul isn’t alone. While some view their love of Fauci as a personality trait, I’d venture to guess many of you reading this have grown tired of the media’s favorite useless bureaucrat. But Rand Paul has a certain panache to how hard he hates Fauci. “Hate” may be too strong a word. I doubt Rand “Hitler-hates” Fauci. But he really, really, really doesn’t like him.
Fauci was in front of cable news cameras again, saying his usual Fauci things about what we’re not allowed to do. Yes, even while vaccinated. The vaccine we were told would get us back to normal. Rand was not impressed.
Fauci continues to ignore 100 years of vaccine science.
His only real theme is “do what I say” even when it makes no sense.
If you’ve recovered or been vaccinated – go about your life. Eat, drink, work, open the schools.
Fauci continues to ignore 100 years of vaccine science.
His only real theme is “do what I say” even when it makes no sense.
If you’ve recovered or been vaccinated – go about your life. Eat, drink, work, open the schools.
Enough with the petty tyrants!
And furthermore:
I agree with Sen. Paul’s sentiment. Both about Fauci and going about your life. My only thing is, who are the people who haven’t been going about their lives this whole time? Yeah, with adjustments. I own like ten different masks. But I eat. I drink. I work. Kids, where I live, are in school. I find it comical that there are real people living among us who turn to Fauci to see what they are and aren’t allowed to do. At first, I thought it couldn’t be true. Then I started to see more people double masking out in the wild, and it felt like I saw Santa Claus playing a pickup game with Bigfoot in the park. “Wow, you people really do exist.”
I get why Fauci keeps lecturing what we can’t do. He likes being on television. I get why the media keeps asking him on. If not, they’d be forced to report promoting lockdowns for the past year since “15 Day to Flatten the Curve” may have been a dunderheaded thing to do. But if you’re someone who is STILL living your life based on what Fauci says you are allowed to do, stop.
Photo by Liz Flores, Star Tribune – Registered nurse Sherry Donnahoo filled syringes with the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to be used at the vaccination site at the Masjid Al Tawba Mosque.
The total is the highest since early January and includes 161 people who needed intensive care due to breathing problems or other complications of their COVID-19 cases. The state reported the latest hospital figures on Monday along with two more COVID-19 deaths and 1,994 newly diagnosed infections with the novel coronavirus that causes the respiratory disease.
Those additions bring Minnesota’s totals in the pandemic to 6,959 COVID-19 deaths and 544,046 known infections.
More than half of population in Hennepin County has received COVID-19 vaccine, statewide rate rises to 47%.
By Tom Schuba | Chicago Sun Times
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April 13, 2021
Rush University Medical Center staff collect swab samples last fall. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
The state’s seven-day test positivity rate jumped to 4.4% and continued an incremental upward trend that could lead officials to again place stronger restrictions on businesses. The statewide positivity rate had dipped to 2.1% on March 13.
Officials on Monday announced that Illinois’ coronavirus test positivity rate has reached its highest point since late January, when a previous surge in cases was tapering off.
The seven-day positivity rate — a crucial figure for measuring the virus’ spread — jumped to 4.4% and continued an incremental upward trend that could lead officials to again place stronger restrictions on businesses. The statewide positivity rate had dipped to 2.1% on March 13.
The Illinois Department of Health also announced 2,433 new cases of COVID-19 diagnosed from 53,115 tests. Eighteen additional deaths were also reported.
Nearly 2,000 people diagnosed with the virus were hospitalized Sunday, according to the agency’s data. That’s the highest number of statewide hospitalizations since Feb. 10.
Meanwhile, the number of inoculations administered Sunday dove to 64,772 after five straight six-figure vaccination days, state health officials reported. So far, more than 7.2 million vaccine doses have gone into arms.
By Brianna Kraemer | Just The News
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April 13, 2021
The Pentagon is attempting to develop a coronavirus vaccine that would protect recipients from all variants and add implantable microchip technology that can detect the virus in the body.
Retired Col. Matt Hepburn, an Army infectious disease physician leading the Pentagon’s ‘s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s pandemic response, introduced the technology and hopes it also will combat future pandemics.
“It’s like a check-engine light,” Retired Colonel Matt Hepburn, leader of the project told “60 Minutes” in an interview.
By Aerowenn Hunter | Children's Health Defense Fund
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April 13, 2021
The Defender is experiencing censorship on many social channels. Be sure to stay in touch with the news that matters by subscribing to our top news of the day. It’s free.
It’s been a bumpy ride for Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) COVID vaccine rollout.
At the beginning of the month, the vaccine maker had to throw out 15 million doses of its vaccine after they were contaminated with AstraZeneca vaccine ingredients at an unapproved manufacturing plant. The setback contributed to last week’s announcement that the company won’t be able to deliver on its promise of 24 million additional doses of its one-shot vaccine by the end of April.
Those weren’t the only negative headlines. Last week, J&J vaccine sites in four states had to shut down after reports of adverse reactions. There also were multiple reports of COVID breakthrough cases in people who received the vaccine, marketed under its subsidiary, Janssen.
J&J is on notice regarding investigations by European and U.S. regulators for reports of blood clots in individuals who received the vaccine.
And today, the company faced more backlash from investors after its CEO was awarded a 17% pay raise while billions are being paid out for the company’s role in the nation’s opioid epidemic.
Here’s a breakdown of the five reasons J&J is having a very bad month:
1. Vaccination sites shut down in four states after more than 45 people suffer adverse reactions.
A vaccination site in Colorado, three sites in North Carolina, one in Georgia and one in Iowa shut down last week after more than 45 people suffered adverse reactions to the J&J shot.
Centura Health, which helped run the community vaccination center at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, said in a statement that 11 patients who received the vaccine experienced reactions. Two people were transferred to the hospital after medical staff determined they required additional observation. Centura officials did not specify what reactions were observed or their severity.
Health officials in Wake County, North Carolina, paused COVID vaccinations on Thursday after 18 people at the PNC Arena experienced adverse reactions and four were transferred to area hospitals. A few hours later, UNC Health’s Friday Center and Hillsborough Campus vaccination sites also stopped administering J&J’s vaccine.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed the vaccine lot used at the PNC Arena and UNC sites and recommended J&J vaccinations continue.
Georgia was the third state to temporarily pause vaccinations after the Georgia Department of Public Health said eight people suffered adverse reactions at the Cumming Fairground site Wednesday. The CDC said it analyzed the vaccine lots and found no concerns.
The Pottawattamie County Health Department in Iowa paused operations April 7 after three of 35 people who received J&J’s COVID vaccine experienced adverse reactions. The site consulted with the CDC and determined the shot was safe.
Operations resumed on Thursday but the county now requires people to stay for 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes after their appointment to be monitored, KCCI News reported.
2. Reports of COVID in people fully vaccinated with J&J’s vaccine continue to mount.
A New Jersey man is in the hospital fighting for his life after being fully vaccinated against COVID, reported ABC7 NY. A woman reported she and her husband got J&J’s vaccine on March 6, but tested positive for COVID on April 1. The husband is hospitalized in critical condition and is also being treated for pneumonia.
According to the CDC, J&J’s vaccine was 66.3% effective in clinical trials, with people having the most protection two weeks after receiving the shot. Clinical trial data also indicated the vaccine was highly effective at preventing hospitalization in those who did get sick, according to the company.
Chief Health and Science Officer for the American Medical Association, Dr. Mira Irons, said on March 26 J&J’s COVID vaccine has “100% efficacy against hospitalization and death from the virus.”
Irons noted that White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, among other top experts said “it’s really important to focus on the severe end of the spectrum, preventing hospitalization and death.”
A Brooklyn woman, Ashley Allen, managed to avoid catching COVID during 2020, but was diagnosed with the disease three weeks after being vaccinated with J&J’s vaccine. Even after getting the one-shot vaccine, Allen said she continued to take precautions against the virus — masking up and washing her hands frequently.
“I definitely was very confused by it,” Allen said Monday, thinking perhaps it was a false positive.
As The Defender reported March 31, an increasing number of “breakthrough cases” of COVID in fully vaccinated people (including people vaccinated with Pfizer, Moderna and J&J vaccines) have been reported in Washington, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, New York, California and Minnesota. The cases included some people who required hospitalization, including at least three who died.
3. U.S. and European regulators are reviewing cases of blood clots in people who received J&J’s vaccine.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating rare blood clots in people who received the J&J vaccine, Fierce Pharma reported today.
The news came after Europe’s drug regulator said Friday it is reviewing reports of blood clots in people who received J&J’s COVID vaccine, Reuters reported.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said three serious cases of clotting and low platelets occurred in the U.S. during the rollout of J&J’s vaccine, and one person died from a clotting disorder reported during a clinical trial.
On April 7, the EMA confirmed a “possible link” between AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine and blood clots. Like AstraZeneca, J&J uses a modified adenovirus vector as opposed to the mRNA technology used in the Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID vaccines.
J&J said it was aware of the reports of rare blood clots in individuals given its COVID vaccine and was working with regulators to assess the data and provide relevant information. The company also noted there was no causal relationship between these “rare events and the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine,” in a statement to Reuters.
4. J&J vaccine output dropped by 85% after 15 million doses were contaminated with AstraZeneca ingredients.
ABC News reported the U.S. will experience an 85% drop in availability of J&J’s COVID vaccine, and is unlikely to see a steady output from the vaccine maker until the company resolves production issues at a facility in Baltimore, Maryland, according to federal officials and data.
As The Defender reported April 1, 15 million doses of J&J’s COVID vaccine failed quality control after workers at a plant run by Emergent BioSolutions — a manufacturing partner with J&J and AstraZeneca, whose vaccine has yet to be authorized for use in the U.S — were contaminated with AstraZeneca ingredients.
The mix-up forced regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines and prompted an investigation by the FDA.
AstraZeneca and J&J’s COVID vaccines employ the same technology which uses a version of a virus — known as a vector — that is transmitted into cells to make a protein that then stimulates the immune system to produce antibodies. However, J&J’s and AstraZeneca’s vectors are biologically different and not interchangeable.
Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Associated Press showed Emergent has been cited repeatedly by the FDA for problems such as poorly trained employees, cracked vials and mold around one of its facilities
According to The Washington Post, the Biden administration put J&J in control of manufacturing at the Emergent BioSolutions after the incident. Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator, told reporters on Friday J&J is still working to address issues with Emergent Biosolutions, but expects the plant to be certified by the FDA.
5. Critics take shots at J&J over CEO’s $30 million pay package while the company pays out billions for its role in the opioid epidemic.
Proxy adviser Glass Lewis recommended investors reject the nearly $30 million pay package for J&J Chief Executive Officer Alex Gorsky, arguing the healthcare company is shielding its top executives from the legal cost of poor business decisions, Reuters reported.
J&J is attracting investor scrutiny because it excluded from its calculation of stock awards to its top executives costs related to lawsuits, including $4 billion tied to J&J’s role in the nation’s opioid epidemic and damages related to asbestos in its talc baby powder that caused cancer.
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) joined rival advisory firm Lewis in recommending that J&J investors vote to reject Gorsky’s compensation deal. ISS said J&J’s corporate governance was poor, giving it a 7 rating on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is the worst. On compensation, ISS gave J&J a rating of 9, reported CBS News.
“In our opinion, the adjustments related to well-documented legal actions essentially shield executives’ compensation from the detrimental impact of their decisions for the company,” Lewis said.
Gorsky became CEO in 2012, and was at the helm of J&J during the opioid crisis which according to the CDC, claimed nearly 450,000 lives in the U.S. between 1999 and 2018. In 2019, 50,000 people died in the U.S. from opioid related overdoses, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“I think [Gorsky’s] pay was excessive,” said Rosanna Landis Weaver, who analyzes executive compensation at As You Sow, a nonprofit that promotes shareholder advocacy on inequality, the environment and other issues.
“You have to treat one-off events whether they are positive or negative in the same way,” she said. “He’s going to want credit for the extraordinarily good things that happen, like developing a COVID-19 vaccine, but that means he should also get a penalty for the extraordinarily bad things that happen as well.”
The Biden regime is running PSA’s on television programs like Deadliest Catch, NASCAR, and Country Music TV in an effort to target unconvinced conservative white Americans who refuse to receive experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccinations, according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
“We’ve run PSAs on the Deadliest Catch, we’re engaged with NASCAR and Country Music TV,” said Psaki. “We’re looking for a range of creative ways to get directly connected to White conservative communities.”
The Biden administration is reportedly launching a $250 million advertisement campaign to convince hesitant Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The White House is also reportedly investing in a community corps program, which involves using organizations like churches to push pro-vaccination narratives to the public, as many Americans don’t trust the assurances of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris amid reports of horrifying reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We won’t always be the best messengers, but we’re still trying to meet people where they are, but also empower local organizations,” Psaki explained.
Jen Psaki on plan to reach white conservatives on getting the vaccine: “We’ve run PSAs on the Deadliest Catch, we’re engaged with NASCAR and Country Music TV”
In February, it was reported that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) had partnered with the Discovery Channel to “encourage the importance of mitigation measures to slow the spread of the virus, including wearing face masks.”
“We have one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet — but right now, it’s dangerous everywhere,” Hansen continues, holding up his own mask. “So when medical experts say to wear your mask to fight the pandemic, wear your mask.”
Credit: Discovery Channel
Globalist former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama urged Americans to take the experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in creepy videos released by the Ad Council.
Former Wall Street power players and celebrities appeared in a another strange video telling US businesses to get the “WELL Health-Safety Seal” from the International Well Building Institute, a company with massive ties to Communist China.
“The video itself has raised eyebrows, but what is most concerning could be the IWBI leadership’s questionable connections to China and the Communist Party. In 2016, Scialla and Ya met with Ming Li, the Chairman of Chinese real estate company, Sino-Ocean Land, who later would join the Delos Advisory Board “to provide strategic advice and recommendations to help guide the growth of healthy building in China,” according to Business Wire.”
Ya Xue, China Director of Delos; Paul Scialla, Delos Founder and CEO; Ming Li, Chairman of Sino-Ocean Land; and Mahesh Ramanujam, Chief Operating Officer, U.S. Green Building Council and President, Green Business Certification Inc. (Photo: Business Wire)
While one quarter of the United States says they would refuse to take the COVID-10 vaccine, it was reported that over 40% of the US population rejects the idea of controversial vaccine passports, which Americans would be required to present in order to prove their vaccine status “before they will be allowed to engage in commerce in a ‘return to normalcy’ that looks nothing like the past,” as National File reported.
The Biden regime and it’s influenced corporations continue to tout the experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccines as “safe and effective.” However, the administration’s decision to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on targeted COVID-19 vaccine advertisements is raising questions concerning influence that the federal government has on corporate America, and why the two entities are moving in lockstep to convince Americans to get vaccinated despite officials like Dr. Fauci saying vaccinated Americans still can’t return to normal life.
By Betsy McCaughey | The New York Post
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April 13, 2021
In the race to save lives from the novel coronavirus, the United States and Britain are winning. A stunning 47 percent of UK residents and 36 percent of US residents have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Compare that with the European Union, where only 15 percent of the population has gotten at least one jab. America…
The Epoch Times’ Hong Kong print shop was attacked last night, a young black man died after he was shot by police in a suburb of Minneapolis, and Arizona’s governor just signed a bill into law that bans donations for election processes.
The problem with most national news stations is the censor. Newsmax was gaining steam until an anchor walked out on an interview with Mike Lindell. Although not as courageous at informing the public as smaller independent stations, Newsmax still allows the American public to hear facts that are a bit too inconvenient for some establishment figures.
‘Time For This Guy To Go’: MSNBC Panel Flames Andrew Cuomo Over $4 Million Book Deal Amid Nursing Home ‘Coverup’ in the Daily Caller, by Brandon Gillespie.
By Post Editorial Board | The New York Post
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April 11, 2021
State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli needs to formally ask Attorney General Tish James to open an investigation into Gov. Cuomo’s disastrous handling of nursing homes — and do it yesterday. Aside from Cuomo himself, only DiNapoli has the authority to make such a referral to the AG, and so enable a state investigation with subpoena power….
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar | The Denver Post
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April 11, 2021
WASHINGTON — With the memory of the pandemic’s toll in nursing homes still raw, the COVID-19 relief law is offering states a generous funding boost for home- and community-based care as an alternative to institutionalizing disabled people. The coronavirus pandemic starkly exposed the vulnerability of nursing home residents. Only about 1% of the U.S. population lives in long-term care facilities, but they accounted for about one-third of COVID-19 deaths as of early March, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
By Brandon Gillespie | The Daily Caller
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April 11, 2021
‘There’s over 12,000 senior deaths, that’s half of the Covid deaths in Pennsylvania’ White House press secretary Jen Psaki was pressured by a reporter over Rachel Levine’s connection to the Pennsylvania nursing home scandal at Monday’s White House press briefing.
When asked about Levine, President Joe Biden’s nominee for Assistant Health Secretary, Psaki denied the Pennslyvania scandal was comparable to nursing homes in New York, as the reporter suggested. Psaki also avoided discussing Levine’s connection to the nursing home deaths.
By Kevin Sheehan, Aaron Feis | The New York Post
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April 11, 2021
Gov. Andrew Cuomo must be held accountable for his administration’s botched handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes and adult-care centers, state Assemblyman Ron Kim said Sunday — at a Brooklyn memorial for the more than 15,000 facility residents believed to have died from the virus. Addressing dozens of mourners who came out to the emotional…
A Staten Island nursing home administrator told Fox News in an exclusive interview that he and executives at other facilities were “petrified” by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s infamous March 2020 order that COVID-positive patients be placed in long-term care facilities rather than hospitals. However, Michael Kraus told Fox News correspondent Aishah Hasnie that his concerns were “shot down” by state officials…
By Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | BizPac Review
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April 11, 2021
Celebrities were in love with and fawned over New York Governor Andrew Cuomo during the early days of the pandemic but now are strangely silent as he faces dual scandals between mandating infected patients back into nursing homes and numerous sexual misconduct allegations. In 2020, comedian Chelsea Handler claimed she was “pretty hot for” Cuomo. […]
Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is “not a nice person” who “doesn’t have any friends,” according to the former lieutenant governor of New York.
Former New York Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch discussed the governor’s fall from grace in an interview with the New York Times after the majority of the New York Democratic congressional delegation called for Cuomo’s resignation.
“The problem with Cuomo is no one has ever liked him,” Ravitch told the publication. “He’s not a nice person and he doesn’t have any real friends.”
“If you don’t have a base of support and you get into trouble,” he added, “you’re dead meat.”
Cuomo faces two separate investigations: one by the attorney general’s office into allegations of workplace sexual misconduct, and another from the Department of Justice into his role in undercounting nursing home deaths in New York.
The governor, who has denied that he ever inappropriately touched anyone, said Friday that no one wants the reviews to conclude “more quickly and more thoroughly” than he does.
“As I said previously, I have never done anything like this,” Cuomo said in a Thursday statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation after a sixth accuser said that he groped her at the Governor’s Mansion. “The details of this report are gut-wrenching. I am not going to speak to the specifics of this or any other allegation given the ongoing review, but I am confident in the result of the Attorney General’s report.”
New York State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi also told the Times that she has not “met a person yet in New York politics who has a good relationship with Andrew Cuomo.”
“And I’m not saying ‘close relationship,’ I’m saying ‘good relationship.’ Even people who are close to him I cannot say in good faith have a good relationship with him,” Biaggi, who is an outspoken Cuomo critic, added.
Cuomo has refused to resign, calling for New Yorkers to wait for the results of the investigations into his conduct.
“New Yorkers know me,” Cuomo said.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
– – –
Mary Margaret Olohan is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Gov Andrew Cuomo” by NY MTA CC2.0 and “Richard Ravtich is by Matt Ryan CC3.0
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
By mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!) | Democracy Now
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April 11, 2021
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is refusing to step down despite growing calls for his resignation after multiple accusations of sexual harassment and misconduct, as well as his cover-up of thousands of COVID-19 nursing home deaths. Alessandra Biaggi, a New York state senator representing parts of the Bronx and Westchester, says it’s long past time for Cuomo to go and that the many scandals surrounding the governor reveal a consistent pattern. “The governor has not only abused his position of power, but he has used it in a way that is political and as a way to have the executive branch essentially protect himself and not the people of New York,” says Biaggi.
By Isabel van Brugen | The Epoch Times
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April 11, 2021
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday accused Governor Andrew Cuomo of being “in the way” of saving lives by defying calls to resign over his handling of the state’s CCP virus response and the mounting sexual harassment allegations against him. Cuomo, 63, has been accused of harassment by at least seven women, some of whom are former aides. He has also been under fire for withholding COVID-19 death data from state lawmakers and the public. “He should resign right now because he’s holding up our effort to fight COVID,” de Blasio, a Democrat told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “He’s literally in the way of us saving lives right now.” In January, New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, published a report that found that the state under-counted nursing home deaths by as much as 50 percent, while The New York Post later reported that one of …
By Steve Cuozzo | The New York Post
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April 11, 2021
If Gov. Cuomo is impeached, resigns, or clings to office with reduced powers, let the record show:
He was undone by allegations of a nonconsensual kiss, a grope and old-man innuendo rather than for causing up to 15,000 possibly preventable nursing-home deaths and then covering up the blunder.
Lest anyone forget, Cuomo’s Health Commissioner, Howard Zucker, on March 25, 2020, ordered the state’s 619 nursing homes to take in hospitalized COVID-19 patients “requiring acute care.” It was supposedly based on federal rules, but they included no such requirement.
A Michigan county prosecutor on Thursday laid out his effort to review Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s policies on COVID health-safety policies on nursing homes, in response to a high number of deaths in such facilities over roughly the past year.
An estimated 5,537 people have died in long-term care facilities in the state since the pandemic started about a year ago, which is about 35% of all COVID-related deaths in Michigan over that time period.
Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido said he’s effectively reviving a roughly 68-year-old review board, formed to protect children, to look into Whitmer’s policies.
By Joshua Philipp | The Epoch Times
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April 11, 2021
In video interview, award-winning Democrat filmmaker Singh Gujral talks about illegal immigration, its source, and reverberations. “I don’t believe that just because you’re a Democrat, you can’t love this country more than your party. I absolutely love the United States more than I at this point love my party,” the filmmaker said.
By Tim Conova | Twitter @Tim_Canova
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April 10, 2021
Caught On Video: Concerned citizen sees ballots being transported in private vehicles & transferred to rented truck on Election night. This violates all chain of custody requirements for paper ballots. Were the ballots destroyed & replaced by set of fake ballots? Investigate now!
By Guy Benson | USA Today | Townhall
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April 10, 2021
FLORIDA ( Nov 16, 2018 11:45 AM) . . .But an email obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida shows that Florida Democrats were organizing a broader statewide effort beyond those counties to give voters the altered forms to fix improper absentee ballots after the Nov. 5 deadline. Democratic party leaders provided staffers with copies of a form, known as a “cure affidavit,” that had been modified to include an inaccurate Nov. 8 deadline. One Palm Beach Democratic activist said in an interview the idea was to have voters fix and submit as many absentee ballots as possible with the altered forms in hopes of later including them in vote totals if a judge ruled such ballots were allowed.
By Frances Robles and Patricia Mazzei | New York Times
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April 10, 2021
FLORIDA (Nov. 11, 2018) . . . But some number of irregularities do appear to have occurred.
On Sunday, one candidate filed an affidavit in court from a fired poll worker who claimed to have witnessed elections employees filling out ballots days before the 2016 election. It was unclear whether what the worker witnessed was wrongdoing, or a routine process in which staffers fill out fresh blank ballots to replace those that come in too bent, torn or otherwise defective to be read by machine. The affidavit was intended to prove that similar problems could be at work in the current election.
In Broward County, 22 rejected ballots were mixed in with about 180 valid ones and were counted. In Palm Beach County, damaged ballots that were duplicated by hand, as required under state law, were handled without independent observers having a good vantage point to witness the process. Staff members had made rulings themselves on questionable ballots that were supposed to be judged by a three-person panel.
In Miami-Dade County, 266 mailed ballots passing through a sorting facility where bombs targeting Democratic politicians had been found were apparently delayed — they arrived on Saturday, after the deadline, and were not counted.
A number of absentee ballots that arrived on time were not all counted by election night — which is legal. But a candidate who saw his lead for agriculture commissioner diminish overnight filed a motion in court asking a judge to order the county elections supervisor not to count mail-in ballots that arrived late. There was no indication that the supervisor had been doing so.
Although experts say that no credible allegations of fraud have surfaced, the number of problems identified in Broward County and the county’s history of botched elections have prompted a number of prominent Republicans to call for the ouster of the elections supervisor, Ms. Snipes, who is a Democrat elected to the post.
“I was calling on the governor to fire her for months,” said Tim Canova, who ran against Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Broward County Democrat.
The outcome of his primary race against Ms. Wasserman Schultz in 2016 wound up in court, where it was revealed that Ms. Snipes could not perform a recount because the ballots had been destroyed.
By MATT DIXON and MARC CAPUTO | Politico
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April 10, 2021
TALLAHASSEE (11/16/2018 03:19 PM EST) — After getting crushed in the 2018 midterms, the Florida Democratic Party is now playing defense after staffers sent altered state election documents to voters, a move state officials have asked federal prosecutors to investigate.
The issue arose after state party staff sent voters forms that are intended to fix vote-by-mail ballots that had been initially rejected. Those forms, which are official state documents, were sent with altered dates, leading the Florida Department of State to turn over the paperwork to several U.S. attorneys and request an inquiry into the “irregularities.”
After saying earlier in the week that the state officials were trying “divert attention” away from the Department of State, which is part of Gov. Rick Scott’s administration, the Democrats on Friday took a different approach: They lawyered up.
By Dinesh D’Souza | The Epoch Times
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April 9, 2021
Commentary: Recently, Facebook took down Lara Trump’s interview with former President Donald Trump, warning that Trump’s content was banned on the platform. In doing this, Facebook made a new escalation in its censorship project. First, Facebook took the position Trump could not post because his claims of election fraud, leading up to the events of Jan. 6, posed a clear and present danger to the peaceful transfer of power. Second, Facebook said Trump could not post at all, in a sense implying that even his future posts might pose a similar danger. Now Facebook has taken it a step further by taking the position that even interviews with Trump conducted by others cannot be posted. Trump, let’s remember, is still the leading figure in the Republican Party, the most prominent voice of opposition, and a potential candidate in the 2024 presidential race. And Facebook and other media platforms even seem …
There is great media focus on the Republican-dominated legislatures determined to unfairly reduce, restrict, or eliminate likely Democratic Party voters — just look at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game dust-up over proposed Georgia voting laws. Since those voters are often minorities, the suppression efforts are both unethical and racist. The antiseptic view of the phenomena, however, is that those GOP legislatures would rewrite election laws to benefit the Black and Brown population if they were reliable Republican voters.
The political party in power suppresses the opposition, regardless of whether they are Republicans or Democrats. Denying representation can be shamelessly overt or subtly disguised. The more dominant a party is, the more opportunity there is to manipulate voter participation and election outcomes. As more elected offices are won, the dominant party is emboldened to further suppress the opposition and increase their hold on power.
When Democrats are in a majority, they are just as eager to squelch fair voting and representation that doesn’t comport with their agenda. Gerrymandering (delineating voting districts to facilitate preferred outcomes) is one example where Democrats and Republicans are equally enthusiastic. The majority party draws electoral boundaries to their advantage.
The public relations advantage for Democrat suppression is that their manipulation of voting districts is less likely to correlate with racial bias. Here in Colorado, our divide is more commonly urban vs. rural viewpoints in local elections. Urban voting districts with a high proportion of Democrat voters exercise undue influence over their rural neighbors because Colorado counties with populations of less than 70,000 are required to employ At-Large voting for county commissioner elections. The practice allows one voting block to win all elected seats, not just their proportionate share.
This is a practice that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg described as a preeminent second-generation way to deny equal opportunity to minority voters and candidates (Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General – 2013). At-Large voting is banned in all federal elections, but Colorado Democrats have fought off every appeal to do the same for our local elections because it works in their favor.
