WELL, GOOD: President Trump signs bill to help rural carriers replace Huawei gear.
This being Endgaget, no story is complete without an anti-Trump angle: “This comes despite a lack of public evidence of spying.”
The whole point of China having an electronics and communications Communist front corporation is to avoid any public evidence of spying.
NEIL KINNOCK, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Joe Biden Blasts Trump’s Coronavirus Response, Then Plagiarizes Trump’s Plan.
HE STOPPED AT SIX BECAUSE THE MERCY RULE KICKED IN: 6 Recent Examples of Joe Biden’s Cognitive Decline That Should Concern Us All.
CHINA: Wuhan doctor says officials muzzled her for sharing report on WeChat.
Ai Fen, director of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, told Chinese magazine People that she posted an image of a diagnostic report on social network WeChat on December 30, showing that the patient had a pneumonia infection caused by a Sars-like coronavirus.
Ai’s interview suggests local health authorities in Wuhan, the centre of the epidemic, missed an opportunity to issue a warning about an imminent outbreak before the virus spread and infected more than 117,000 people globally and caused over 4,200 deaths.
It was published on Tuesday but later deleted from the magazine’s WeChat account, prompting angry internet users to repost the article on other platforms. The magazine is published by the state-run People’s Publishing House.
It also coincided with President Xi Jinping’s first visit to Wuhan since the crisis began, during which he praised residents for their hard work and sacrifices.
This story comes from the South China Morning Post, where something interesting might be going on. Glenn noted a while ago that the SCMP — which is based in Hong Kong — sounded much more openly pro-Beijing in recent months, something I’d noticed, too. But since this coronavirus outbreak, it’s editorial position seems to be changing back to being more Beijing-skeptical.
BLUE STATE BLUES: Watch Why People Are ‘Fleeing California’ – It Ain’t Pretty.
RELEASE THE KRAKEN: Liberal Groups Call for Jailbreak to Fight Coronavirus.
It’s weird how many responses to different crises turn out to be what various lobby groups were pushing for all along.
PRIVACY: Popular VPN And Ad-Blocking Apps Are Secretly Harvesting User Data. “Since 2015, Sensor Tower has owned at least 20 Android and iOS apps. Four of these — Free and Unlimited VPN, Luna VPN, Mobile Data, and Adblock Focus — were recently available in the Google Play store. Adblock Focus and Luna VPN were in Apple’s App Store. Apple removed Adblock Focus and Google removed Mobile Data after being contacted by BuzzFeed News. The companies said they continue to investigate.”
UNLESS WE ELECT A DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT: It’s ‘Oh Frack Yeah’ for US Oil and Natural Gas.
NOT THE FIRST TIME, NOT THE LAST TIME: Michigan worker: Biden ‘went off the deep end’ in expletive-laden exchange.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Bernie Will Stick Around as Long as He Can Just to Embarrass the Democrats. “The uneasy relationship between Bernie and the party he uses only to run for president is now entering another ugly phase, as far as the Democrats are concerned, anyway.”
They deserve each other.
RAMESH PONNURU: The Left’s Fantasy World Just Exploded.
The idea that Sanders could win was far from crazy, given his dedicated fan base. But the larger story line of socialism’s coming triumph was based on one misreading of political events after another.
In the first place, socialism hadn’t spiked in popularity. In 2010, Gallup found that 36 percent of the public embraced the label. Eight years later — following Sanders’s first run for the presidency, and in the same year Ocasio-Cortez got elected — that number had climbed up all the way to 37 percent.
Left-wing Democrats misunderstood the reason Sanders did so well in 2016. It was because Hillary Clinton was the front-runner. Few Democratic heavyweights were willing to take her on, and he was an idealistic alternative. He did more for socialism than socialism did for him. A poll taken that January found that Sanders’s supporters were less likely than Clinton’s to want a higher minimum wage or bigger government.
Clinton’s defeat that November further fed the myth. Sanders’s supporters instantly concluded that “Bernie would have won.” Many Democrats wondered whether Clinton had erred by not taking a tougher line on Wall Street or offering populist ideas on trade.
Read the whole thing.
CORN, POPPED: CNN’s Van Jones says Democrats have reached a ‘very dangerous moment.’ “You have now an insurgency that’s about to be defeated. What do you do with the people that you defeat?”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Joe Biden Slams Bernie Sanders for “Joining” Donald Trump. “I’m not sure what Biden meant by that, and judging by some of his recent public appearances, Biden might not be entirely sure, either.”
Plus: His own campaign, the DNC, and the press (but I repeat myself) are all circling the wagons to keep their own frontrunner out of the public eye as much as possible.
IT ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT STOP… EVER: Texas Dems announce largest-ever voter drive in 2020 flip effort.
HEADLINES FROM 1986: Amnesty for illegal immigrants won’t win Trump the Latino vote.
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