Comments

1

I bet that's not chocolate syrup.

2

1,

Frangelico.

3

"...can someone remind me what the argument is for not having trained government employees run these things?"

Actually, someone should remind us that simple pre-printed forms on paper can be filled out and reviewed by anyone at each caucus site, and then phoned in to an official, with the written record sealed and sent along for audit and review.

No app required.

5

@4

Last night NPR said they have paper ballots.
I thought this was a caucus. I didn't think caucuses use ballots.
I assume they meant they had results recorded on paper.

I want to know why taxpayers are paying both political parties private elections.

6

Iowa just made the loathsome coporate media come in their pants by giving them “Dems in DISARRAY” bullshit stories for weeks. Way to go, crackers.

And our living nightmare political system grinds on…

7

How about Microsoft Excel?

It’s cheaper than this app, and it’s pretty easy to figure out, even for an oldster.

Also, if they. Insist on being first, from now on they have to refer to this process as the Iowa Cacas.

8

While it is probably just the same rank incompetence that plagues everything the DNC does, you do have to laugh about how it always comes with the worst possible optics.

The dumbass app was made by a company that got contributions from Pete Booty, and of course Pete then goes out and claims victory without any data or numbers, the app developer is on Twitter showing their ass by accidentally tweeting PINs for access, and by all appearances Sanders is getting hosed again.

9

6

Not Iowa; the Iowa Democrat Party.
This was a top to bottom solely a Democrat Party operation.
What a bunch of Morons.

And ACRONYM/Shadow.?
Run and staffed by former Hillary Clinton campaign goons.

Turnout for the Democrat caucuses was lackluster,
seems folks are pretty happy with Our President.

And turnout at the Republican caucuses broke records, even tho The President faced no serious opposition.
They were crowded exited energized Keep America Great rallies.
Easy to see who has the energy and support of Real Americans in 2020.

Impeach THAT, you pathetic fucks.

10

Shadow? Shadow?! Shadow?!!!!!

The Democratic party hired a firm called "Shadow" to create a primary voting app. Motherfuck a motherfuckin' duck we are fuckin' trips-over-own-dick idiots. T it up much?

12

This is the last time Iowa should get to go first. We need out first caucus to be a big population state with a lot of diversity of all kinds. And then f** Iowa can go back to cornhole and deep frying butter full-time.

13

@9

Less than 33,000 people is record turnout for the Iowa republican primary?

14

13,

When the outcome is known before the caucus even begins, why bother voting at all?

15

@12: Agreed. It really is a waste of time and money for candidates, donors, for all this effort on such arbitrary and inconsequential primary and caucus results.

15

@14

There were 1600 caucus locations.
That works out to an average of 20.625 voters per caucus location.

Boogaloo Bob said:
"And turnout at the Republican caucuses broke records, even tho The President faced no serious opposition."

I guess the record it broke was for least attended caucus.

16

@15,

BTW, do you know what the term ‘boogaloo’ refers to on alt-right websites? It’s the catchphrase the Richard Spencer crowd uses for a race war similar to Charlie Manson’s Helter Skelter. ‘Boogaloo Bob’ is neo-nazi.

As for breaking records, you know, Iowa Republicans have pretty much macrameed their asses to the sofa ever since Fox News became a 24 hour channel. I’m surprised they got that many to spectate themselves from the TV long enough to show up to a caucus. Now, up here in WA we have mail in ballots, which is the treason why Matt Shea is in office. It doesn’t take much effort to fill one of those out and walk it over to the mailbox for the postal clerk to pick it up. A caucus though, that’s an all day thing, and you have to leave your house to go to one. That’s a lot to ask of Boogaloo Bob and klan hooded horde. I mean, they’d have to go all day without watching Hannity, for fuck’s sake.

17

Iowa Democrat elections: brought to you by people who enjoy visiting the DMV and Post Office and couldn't organize a fuck on a whore house.

18

17,

See? There’s proof. Davenport Danny can’t off his fat ass long enough to visit a post office or the DMV. He can’t get off the couch unless his wife uses a Hoyer lift.

19

13

It SMASHED previous records.
YUGE turnout.
I read it on the internet.

20

Yeah, this whole thing is both colossally stupid and completely avoidable, but it'll all be forgotten once a few more of these things have played out, actual primaries from more diverse and heavily populated states, in particular.

If the Moron Brigade can overcome a candidate's childish mocking of a disabled reporter at a campaign rally, attacking the Pope online, repeated exposure of sexual predatory braggadocio and about 6 trillion other things, in addition to just being a general embarrassment and spectacle of idiocy and incompetence, we can overcome the mishandling of a relatively meaningless event like this.

21

It was chaos! Chaos I tell you. Sheer bedlam.

Holy shit, nothing of substance happened. That was the problem. The press is in an uproar because they have to wait. Have votes been lost? No. Have people been prevented from voting? No. It is just like when Washington State is late reporting on a close race. The press freaks out, because they want their story NOW. They don't care if it is accurate, or misleading, they just want the fucking results. The various news organizations -- including the New York Times -- should be ashamed of themselves for producing such a ridiculous headline.

22

Why would you go to the post office and stand in line forever because of idiots looking to talk about their diverticulitis for 20 minutes when we have Fedex & UPS pickup?

Last time I was at the DMV downtown was to get the enhanced driver's license. Worth the wait, quite frankly, if it separates the legal residents from the, ahem, illegals. Everything else you can do online thankfully.

23

Shadow was set up by Clinton operatives.

Iowa is going exactly according to Clinton’s plan to set the table for a brokered convention (and her third act).

Shadow started out as Groundbase, a tech developer co-founded by Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis, who worked for the tech team on Clinton’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic nomination.

24

@16

‘Boogaloo Bob’ is neo-nazi.

That's exactly why I call him that.

25

I vote we start calling it The Republic Party, as a nod to our English-challenged "Patriots" in the peanut gallery

26

@23 Well, it didn’t take very long for the Bernie Bros to go full Conspiratorial Bernie Bro, or is that redundant?

27

24,

As for your earlier assertion that I am a dick, in my defense, you are what you eat. At least, I’m no pussy.

28

@26

Conspiracy “theory” or actual conspiracy?

The DNC’s need coming out of Iowa: (1) Deflect Joe Biden’s failure; (2) Detract from Bernie Sander’s success; and (3) cover-up less than enthusiastic voter turnout.

Best possible outcome: Everything collapses, and goes wrong so that the end of the night outcomes could be delayed and undetermined.
That exact scenario just happened.

Coincident?

29

@ You failed to include the Koch brothers and Diebold. Your conthpirathy theory is only half-baked at best.

34

The Dems "don't have the numbers" because they are too embarrassed to show them and, by doing so, causing the fall of the morale among the naive, petulant babies (such as Adam Condom over here) who are too desperate to still believe that they are winning. It is truly Tee-hee-larious! Lololski. :)

35

I think the most likely explanation is that caucuses are antiquated and inaccessible to many people, and the math they use to assign delegates is undemocratic (kind of like the EC). This is the floor, and then any number of things can go wrong built on top. In this case, the most obvious explanation is that the DNC is incompetent.

It's stupid to use for-profit, secretive, brand new apps in a situation in which thousands of newbies of varying levels of experience with technology across a state with varying wifi capacities are carrying out complex tasks they have little training to do- but technocrats constantly make this mistake. It's possible it's just pure fuck up all around, likely even.

But I do not understand why people are acting like it's insane conspiracy theory to suggest that a party's governing body - most of whom have a stated preference against one candidate - might be up to some shenanigans. It's not conspiracy theory to question why they are using an app that at least two of the candidates invested in developing, it's surely a conflict of interests at best.

And regardless of whether or not it was planned this way or just opportunism, it was slimey for Pete to declare himself victorious last night and then double-speak it away this morning as metaphorical.

Finally, yes Pete did work in military intelligence, yes he did consulting work for war profiteers, and yes he did work on the project that compiled the extrajudicial kill list in Afghanistan. Personally I doubt he's actually a CIA asset- I think he probably just did low level military intelligence work as stated on his resume because he's a souless careerist. But it isn't an insane conspiracy theory to wonder if someone who worked in military intelligence has the support of the intelligence community.

All the people calling out others for conspiracy madness are acting as if THIS VERY WEEK we aren't watching the President- who lost the fucking election remember- show himself to be above the law.

It's baffling to be so credulous- as if we don't live in a country in which 2 of our last 3 presidents lost the election, and one of them was literally appointed by the Supreme Court. As if we don't have a government that overthrows governments and interferes in elections all the time around the world, lies constantly about wars & murders, etc. None of this is theory, it's proven clear well-known evidence-based fact.

So I personally go with Occam's Razor and I think the DNC is just fucking incompetent and this is why they need to be taken over if we are ever going to fight the GOP, but I have to ask- all the credulous people dismissing others' questions as "conspiracy theory"- what world do you live in to be so naive? Do you really think politicians are making honest decisions and trying really hard to do what's right but just keep stumbling ah shucks?

37

@16. Also, pretty funny how the Wandering Fart lapped up the hoax that 4-chan perpetrated, and then asked for seconds. God, you people are so fucking stupid. :).

That same idiotic logic that you, morons, use (just because "neo-nazis" say it/own it/do it, means anyone who does is a "neo-nazi"), is the same "guilt by association" that can be applied to anything then. The whole thing was a 4-chan hoax, and you dumfucks are it up with gusto. Now how can anyone vote for the party who is that stupid, is beyond me.

By that stupid logic, I guess all vegetarians and anyone who owns dogs is a "neo-nazi", because Hitler was, and did.... Then again, I am pretty sure all vegetarians are. Lol. :)

39

@35. Trump won fare and square. Electoral College is the fairest system we have. Don't like it? Vote for someone else. Just because you aren't happy with the election results doesn't mean the will of the people was not met. "Russia collusion" is a conspiracy theory, by the way.

40

Blip, it was the DNC that adviced the Iowa State Dems to use the app rather than call in votes. And you know that state parties do not operate entirely independently of the national party. The app itself, looks like it was paid for mostly by the Iowa Dem Party, but the company that made it is affiliated with the national party, CEO is a former Clinton campaign operative, etc.

Again I'm not saying there is a conspiracy here- as I said, I think Dem party officials have repeatedly fucked up just about everything they've tried to do in recent years so it makes sense that they'd fuck this up too.

But it's totally normal, sane, smart and democratic to question the conflict of interests here, for a state party to pay tens of thousands of dollars to a company run by Clinton operatives and invested in by Biden & Buttigieg to hastily build an app on the advice of the DNC.

41

BTW it's the NYTimes reporting all this, not some crazy conspiracy theory lefty Bernie Bro site.

Again, might turn out that some of this is misinformation, but it seems really weird to me that people are criticising others' skepticism when they are simply responding in a sane way to current news reports.

43

This is why nobody likes Tech Boys. It’s like watching Elon Much throw an iron ball into a car window.

Never trust Silicon Valley with anything important.

44

@39 Yes Russian collusion is a conspiracy theory, a stance I have held from the beginning and which can be proven to anyone who bothers to listen to the Parnas tapes. They did was run ads and perhaps faciliate the leak of totally accurate information because they preferred Trump over Clinton- all major powers do this, US does much worse- but it's complete madness and bullshit that Trump is a puppet of Putin or that Russians interfered in the election itself. I don't know why you are bringing this up in response to me in the first place??

As for the EC, yes it's undemocratic and has led us twice to a president who was not elected. This is simple reality, whatever you think of it. As for telling me to vote for someone else, well obviously. I'd not vote for a Republican if you put a gun to my head. Though I probably wouldn't vote for Pete or Tulsi either.

45

Yeah, these are not the people I want deciding my healthcare choices.

47

Of course it's just a garden variety fuck up. But not having the foresight or competence to not just serve up the readymade conspiracy theory on a fucking silver platter with a lightly spritzy raspberry lemonade to wash it down? We almost deserve it.

48

Yeah, these are not the people I want deciding my healthcare choices. Issuing driver's licenses is about as high as their competency level goes.

49

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hjxI0h5Lk8

The weak always strive to be weaker...

50

@35
"All the people calling out others for conspiracy madness are acting as if THIS VERY WEEK we aren't watching the President- who lost the fucking election remember- show himself to be above the law."

Let me help you with this: "who lost the fucking election"

An important outcome of the Connecticut Compromise of 1887 (without which, it's unlikely that the States would have joined as a Republic) is that Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution states: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."

Thus Presidential elections are won or lost on electoral, not popular, votes. The DNC should try to understand this... It might impact how they choose candidates and campaign. By every relevant standard (and there is only one: the electoral college), like it or not, Trump won in 2016. Democrats seem to still be be ignorant of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, which bodes poorly for them in 2020...

"Show himself to be above the law":

Neither of Trump's impeachment charges (Obstruction of Congress & Abuse of Power), nor the case presented by the house management team, outlined any unlawful (illegal) behavior. He hasn't shown himself to be "above the law" if only, and simply, because he was never accused of breaking a law.

51

@31 "and have a dysfunctional caucus that undermines confidence in the Democratic Party of Iowa."

What makes you think the caucus was dysfunctional? The quick and timely reporting of the results has been dysfunctional, but the caucus itself -- the voting process -- has, by all accounts, been fine.

Just because you have to wait a day for your candy doesn't mean that it is bad.

52

@Blip There is no conspiracy theory that they tried to use the app to rig the election by declaring someone a winner who was not. I have not seen a single person claim this. The theory is that they wanted to minimize the media narrative of Bernie winning and Biden tanking- just a quirk delay so that he didn't get to make the big speech and dominate the headlines for the next week. For example, tonight they will release HALF the results and report who is in the lead. Why? Why not wait until they've counted everything? It dominates the headlines until NH, confuses people. All of this is true. The only question is if it is intentional.

Again Occam's Razor, I happen to agree with you that- unless proven otherwise- it was incidental and that Pete's response was slimey and opportunistic but not planned ahead of time.

But I don't see what's so bananas about any of it. Why would it be bananas to say that a country that regularly interefers with and creates misinformation in elections around the world would do the same in our undemocratic system at home? Why is it bananas to consider that a country that has spent decades openly destroying any socialist-adjacent movents, often violently and extrajudicially, would do the same at home?

I just don't understand this credulity and dismissal of things that happen all the time out in the open. I mean, the US helped remove an Australian prime minister who they considered too much of a social democrat, it's not something they reserve for banana republics. We have decades of research on what the intelligence community has done both home and abroad. Misinformation campaigns and fast news cycles are literally tested tried and true models for election interference- all major powers do it, childish to think ours is too benevolent.

54

Anyway nice chatting for a sec. We'll all know soon enough.

55

47,

Anyone who takes on a high profile, high responsibility role has to have contingency plans to handle mistakes that arise. A true leader never outsources responsibility. You can delegate tasks, and they delegated the tallying task to this company with this app. When that company failed to fulfill its obligation, there needed to be a workaround in place that could operate independently of that company and that app to ensure the task was completed in an on time fashion.

Pete Buttigieg’s campaign paid ACRONYM back in July for access to their software. To declare victory in the early morning hours, when the app failed and the results were delayed as a result of, by the campaign that has financial paper trail linking it to that company (and a paper trail that was uncovered by the press so easily, it took less than an hour for it to be reported after he declared victory) shows that a small town mayor is not quite ready for presidential politics.

Your objection is to the idea that many people smell a conspiracy. Well, that sentiment wasn’t born on 4chan in the wee hours of the night. That idea was both out of the 2016 primary. Donna Brazille openly admitted to rigging the debates. Not Trump, not 4chan, not Rush Limbaugh- Donna Brazille. And when you’ve got Mayor Pete paying the company, the company screwing up, and then Mayor Pete declaring victory in the midst of the chaos, yeah, it looks kinda bad.

That’s not garden variety, that’s gone deaf and clueless, so completely unable to foresee how this will look when the headlines are written in the morning papers and playing true to the trope established four years ago. Didn’t anyone in that campaign stop the candidate and say, “You know, Pete, this is gonna look real bad. Just shut up for a few hours until we get some numbers in so it doesn’t look like you rigged it”?

57

@53,

"Caucuses should be illegal." Indeed, and this is both obvious and an inevitable development that's bound to happen. It's bizarre just how long such obvious policies frequently wind up taking to actually implement.

I suppose it's rather wholly unrelated, but we also need to cease the manufacturing of goddamn pennies. Last Week Tonight...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tyszHg96KI

58

@52 Love it how you conveniently ignore @50's evisceration of your argument. I guess ignorance is bliss, indeed.

59

@50 I couldn't care less what he was accused of- it's too boring to me to even follow and pointless too given that 20 GOP senators will never break party even if he murdered someone.

I'm referring to being able to refuse subpoenas and have his party refuse a real trial, no witnesses, etc. Yes this is being above the law.

More importantly, it's the president that is above the law now, not just Trump. The office quite literally has the unconstitutional right to make war, including extrajudicial killings of people on kill lists with no oversight, even if they are American citizens. The president may also lie to start and continue a war, have this proven clearly as was done with Iraq a long time ago and with Aghanistan a few weeks back, and there are no consequences for any of them. Above the law precisely.

60

@Blip, actually everything you named has dominated party conversations and electoral prediction conversations for about six weeks now, I'd assume you'd know this as it was all widely reported in the Times, WaPo, Guardian and on mainstream TV news outlets, weird.

Ah well really I do have to go though fun to come back on and rant a bit. Good night.

61

@37

"Boogaloo" comes from the movie Breakin 2 Electric Boogaloo
It's used to describe the "Second Civil War" buy many people, including a number of folks on the right.

It's not a hoax or a conspiracy theory.

How could it be a conspiracy theory?
The fact that you think it's even could be just goes to show how stupid you are.

63

At 55 I don't object to people smelling a conspiracy theory. What I object to is the brand of fucking up we Democrats seem to be uncontested masters at, that being playing right into the hands of the loonie right et al. We can't seem to trip over our own feet without accidentally sticking the thumb in someone's crotch as we fall, and then we need to argue about how we're not perverts. What I would like is for the Democratic party to tighten shit up enough so that would not happen. Like for a starter, how about not letting the organization that is producing the app be called "Shadow"? I mean really do we want to lose?

64

@62

The app is a total red herring.

They could have easily tabulated the results by hand in this amount of time.

There is a reason they are not releasing the results, and it has absolutely nothing to do with any app.

65

No, it wasn't done months in advance, at least not according to the NYT this morning. Buttigieg's summer payments to the company were not related to this app but rather his own campaign texting. But the app for Iowa was put together in the last two months. Prior to that, Iowa Dem Party had planned to phone in the results.

It's been the main topic of discussion that a B win in Iowa would dominate headlines and lead to a cascade of wins in the next three states, and possibly in South Carolina as well if Biden has a weak performance. This has been a main campaign strategy, openly discussed for months, and since it appeared within recent weeks also that it might actually happen, yes democratic party officials have been meeting to talk about what to do about it. This has all been regularly reported in main news outlets for weeks now, you can search for any of it.

It would be very hard to actually rig an election here that has a paper trail, no one is claiming they attempted that. The claim is that they want to prevent the cascade that will make Bernie the winner in the first four states and then set up to be undefeatable on Super Tuesday. It's a control of the media narrative to withhold the results, let misinformation set in, confuse and dishearten people, let them turn against each other- these are tried and true disinformation tactics. I dont know how anyone who has heard of cointelpro or mccarthyism can be dubious that our agencies do such things.

As for my own point here, I'm not "just asking questions". I'm arguing that, given the information we have, it is perfectly NORMAL SANE AND DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE for people to consider that the DNC is meddling in the coverage of the election and the transparency of the info in order to hinder Bernie's rise.

It so happens that without further evidence, I tend to believe it was all a fuck up. Where we are arguing is that you seem to think a very common place political slimey tactic is hysterical conspiracy theory.

And secondly, I'm supposed to wake up in a few hours and yet haven't slept and I keep trying to exit the conversatino that I don't have time for, so there's probably some bullheadedness on my part that motivates the arguing with you, but it's certainly not "just asking questions".

67

@65
"It so happens that without further evidence, I tend to believe it was all a fuck up. Where we are arguing is that you seem to think a very common place political slimey tactic is hysterical conspiracy theory."

Exactly

68

@64: I wonder why in this day and age, the data isn't going to redundant datasets in the cloud anyway so it's not dependent on client apps.

I was looking forward to removing one of the heads from the raindrop.

70

63,

I think that’s true of both parties, the difference is, the voters are more sensitive to it when we fuck up. Had Trump run as a Democrat, he wouldn’t have even made it to the general election. That whole pussy grabbing segment would have been it for him. And remember, at one point he was a registered Democrat and took positions that reflected the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Ten years ago, he said on TV that a woman’s right to choose was absolute and not up for negotiation.

Their side is good at convincing people to stay focused on the end goal and ignore everything that could distract them. Our side is terrible at it. That’s both good and bad, I guess. The bad news is, we lose a hell of a lot. The good news is, sometimes the people who win from our side make lasting changes that improve things for decades after they’re gone. They got us beat in terms of selling their ideas. We’ve got them beat in terms of good ideas that last.

71

@59
I wholeheartedly agree the Executive branch has become way too powerful. The Legislative has essentially ceded much of its powers to the Executive by spending much of the last century creating bureaucracies (reporting to the Executive) to write the rules that it is too lazy, or too dysfunctional, to write itself.

If Trump had refused to comply with court orders to respond to subpoenas (he did not), I would agree with you on that point too. But when Congress believes that its power to subpoena should not be subject to Judicial appeal, then its Congress that believes its above the law.

72

@68 "I was looking forward to removing one of the heads from the raindrop"

That's why this screw up might be a good thing, normally the day after Iowa some candidates will give up. As a US citizen and voter I want as many choices as possible.

Iowans want to vet national candidates like it's a drunken line-dance competition. Election Hoe-down.

Get rid of this and the fucking Iowa State fair straw poll, it's just kitsch and bloody embarrassing.

73

71,

Oddly, we agree on something. I agree that the Executive a branch is way too powerful, and the Legislature has ceded too many of its Constitutional responsibilities.

In fact, the ever increasing Executive power grab is a good argument for abolishing the Executive altogether, and having an executive council modeled on the Swiss constitution is a better idea. Power should be devolved as far as possible.

74

It seems to me unscientific to have a default bias towards the official narrative as well, especially given evidence of historical events.

In my own opinion, it's most likely that it was a fuck up and that the DNC are opportunistic slimeballs using the fuck up to control the media narrative for a few days so as to pad the landing for Biden's crash. I honestly have no opinion on whether Pete or Bernie got first place- I hope it's Bernie, but it would not surprise me if it's Pete. If it's Pete, then the conspiracy theory makes no sense any way, not even just on the surface, which is more evidence I think that it was just a fuck up. If it is Bernie, then I think it's also likely that DNC is using the fuck up to diffuse the news of his win in order to control the narrative for a bit going into NH, but that still doesn't mean the fuck up was deliberate.

However I think the idea that the fuck up was planned is not too crazy, at least if what the Times reports this morning is true. The Iowa Dem Party was going to use phone-in and changed at the behest of the DNC recently, then used a secret app affiliated with DNC establishment (namely the Clintons). These are facts, and so I don't think it's a great leap to say that they deliberately planned to control the release of information ahead of time. It's just that there is no evidence for this intention so I fall back on the first (scientifically?). Moreover, the DNC and the media both like to foment dissent among progressives by painting Bernie supporters as hysterical people who cry "rigged!"- and they need that handle now that the white guy Bernie Bro smear has been proven so untrue- he has the most racially diverse base of support and more women than men.

The third part of the conspiracy theory, that Pete is a CIA asset, well... He certainly has worked in military intelligence so really it's a moot point to me. Whether or not he's an actual asset or just affiliated with them seems nit picking. The bigger question in regards to the conspiracy theory is if his entire intelligence-community-affiliated political career and involvement in this app are all to thwart the elderly social democrat from winning office, and I agree that this is a resounding "no". At this point we are dipping our toes in conspiracy theory hysteria, though I do understand how people end up there. I mean, watching what happened with those trucks set on fire in Colombia, watching the Epstein stuff, watching no one bat an eye at the Panama, Paradise & Afghanistan Papers, seeing liberals descend into madness over Putin & then ignoring Trump's mob conversation in the Parnas tape - it's bound to drive us all insane. And you start to think, well why not. After all Kim Philby got away with it for decades, helped set up the CIA. I just read a book about the Bay of Pigs & Operation Northwoods- I mean at a certain point your take away has to become skepticism of the official narrative as default, right?

76

@72: That's a good point.

77

@61. Doesn't mean it is a "neo- nazi" dog whistle. We all know how you are trying to spin it. Don't play dumb.

78

Well again, I think the problem we have is in defining "wild speculation".

Like here are some facts:
Pete has campaigned as a folksy mayor, but that’s a sliver of his career. He was a naval intelligence officer when he was in the military, and he worked in Afghanistan on their terror cell investigative unit which helped compile the kill list to recommend who the president should extrajudicially assassinate with drones. He worked for the Cohen Group which is a group of politicians, state department & defense department formers who facilitate the movement of capital around the US empire- it’s one of those revolving doors between the government and private industry. And he is on the board of directors (and founding member I believe) of the Truman National Security Project which is basically a think tank that includes intelligence community (including CIA) members mostly advocating for an Obama Doctrine type foreign policy.

The conclusion: Pete is a soulless calculating careerist, obsessed with power, as are many ambitious elitists climbing the military-industrial ladder. 

But I don’t think it’s “wild speculation” to consider that he could have a continuing relationship with the agencies he’s recently worked for. I just think you can't claim either way without evidence. Either way, it has jack shit to do with the app or the current election.

As for responsibility, yeah I'm not on CNN. I'm just posting out frustrated insomnia.

81

WASHINGTON — Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price apologized for the Monday night debacle that led to a 20-hour delay in reporting results from the Iowa caucuses and said his party released results from 62 percent of precincts on Tuesday.

In the partial results:

Pete Buttigieg: 26.9 percent of the state delegates

Bernie Sanders: 25.1 percent

Elizabeth Warren: 18.3 percent

Joe Biden: 15.6 percent

Amy Klobuchar: 12.6 percent

Andrew Yang: 1.1 percent

Tom Steyer: 0.3 percent.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/iowa-caucus-updates-02-04?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

82

Why is the Stranger reporting on Gritty?

84

@70 totally with you there.

@75 "Scientists are conditioned to be skeptical ...."

Ideally yes, effectively not even close, at least at the softer end of the spectrum (psychology being the terminus) that Popper
differentiated from the hard sciences (physics being the most solid followed closely by chemistry). You sound like a good scientist - thanks for that.

85

@79 more facts, or just a conspiracy ideation cognitive bias (more facts are a better choice).

86

Boodyjudge gambled most of his war chest on Iowa; a fair-to-middling outcome would've put his campaign at risk.

And Bernie SHONE.
Or at least his speech did -- as much of it as my computer'd allow -- same with his response to the state of the union speech trumpy gave -- but, this time with a half dozen large American Flags behind him in sober, somber terms, looking Presidential* and pointed out trump's ignoring of the coming Climate Catastrophe (hey Haters, go tell the Aussies or the SoCalis to piss off, with all that global warming nonsense -- right to their faces); nor did trump bother mentioning the fact that 87,000,000 un- and under-insured Americans cannot easily access Healthcare, in spite of us paying TWICE what other countries spend; and that 500,000 go Bankrupt every fucking Year, because they or one of their Family got sick.

Oh and Student Debt? Bernie says that if hair Furor can give the Wealthy a Trillion Dollar Tax Cut, then HE can sure as Fuck eliminate student debt, with a Transaction Tax on Wall Street.

I Love they way he puts it...

*be nice to see a Decent human being back in the Oval Office, surely


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.