SANDERS 2020 is seriously dangerous <3

[JackRiddler]

.

Something very fucking shady going on, but in the way it's gone I do not see this damaging Sanders at all, but on the contrary providing confirmation that DNC, its contractors, its vote counts, its rules and pronouncements, and its favored candidates cannot be trusted or even taken seriously.

Imagine if this had been announced as a Sanders landslide and then we ran into serious vote fixing a few weeks hence, perhaps at a point with many votes happening simultaneously and no way for anyone to track all the reports of suspect activity and mishandling.

This provides a much simpler narrative. Two weeks of urgent stories screaming KILL BERNIE from all the leading whores of the corporate media and the Democratic establishment, followed by this spectacle (which was foretold and expected by many), makes for a very simple story that most people will know is true: any outcome without Sanders on top is bullshit.

Plus: Absolutely no doubt Biden's support was pathetic, and "second place" belongs to a charisma-free ratfucking little shit with a) no credible political path to winning and b) self-evident spook background.

Okay, following article is from Washington Examiner, a pub highly unreliable in interpretation, emphasis, and spin. But I have not seen them make shit up, and these claims are easily confirmed. According to it,

- Mook claims he has nothing to do with Iowa app development. (!) So says Mook's own Twitter.

- Article claims Buttigieg campaign are clients of the company that developed the app for Iowa and Nevada, which is known as Shadow, Inc. (!!!). Paid $58K to this company, according to FEC filings.

- My addition: Buttigieg campaign of course acted on the day before the vote to axe publication of the "gold standard" poll showing Sanders well ahead of all others. Setting the table.

- Buttigieg released victory announcement on Twitter at midnight, still at least 12+ hours before any official count will be publicized.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... cus-delays

Buttigieg campaign paid firm that developed voting app blamed for Iowa caucus delays
by Spencer Neale
| February 04, 2020 02:17 AM

Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg's campaign contributed money to the technological firm whose voting app that contributed to reporting delays in the Iowa caucuses.

Federal Election Commission filings reveal that Buttigieg's campaign gave tens of thousands of dollars to Shadow on July 23, 2019 for "software rights and subscriptions."

Shadow, a technology company that has an investor in the Democratic digital nonprofit organization ACRONYM, was also paid $60,000 over two installments by the Iowa Democratic Party to build an app to help make caucus voting easier and faster for precinct volunteers. Filings also reveal that the Nevada Democratic Party paid Shadow $58,000 for "website development."


Screen Shot 2020-02-04 at 1.50.01 AM.png (FEC)

The Iowa Democratic Party scrambled Monday night after precincts experienced trouble downloading and uploading results to the voting app. By 1 a.m. ET Tuesday morning, no results had been released as volunteers attempted to call in the numbers by phone.

Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, claimed victory before any numbers had been released, publishing a tweet that said he was "going on to New Hampshire victorious."

https://twitter.com/PeteButtigieg/statu ... 3040625665

Iowa, you have shocked the nation.

By all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious. #IowaCaucuses
12:24 AM · Feb 4, 2020·Twitter Web App
2.1K Retweets 15.3K Likes

Robby Mook, the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton's 2016 team, denied involvement in the voting app after Twitter users suggested he was behind the app's development. Mook, who reportedly did have a role in preparing a video to alert campaigns of misinformation or hacking, instructed people to contact Iowa Democrats for more information on the botched results.

https://twitter.com/RobbyMook/status/12 ... 8790395904

Sorry, folks. I did NOT have anythjng to do with building the Iowa caucus app. I dont know anything about it, had no role in it, and dont own a company that makes mobile appa. Please contact
@iowademocrats
with questions about it.
11:49 PM · Feb 3, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
1.8K Retweets 7K Likes

The Iowa Democratic Party said it expects to release the caucus results sometime Tuesday.

PLUS, Sanders campaign ran their own reporting app, anticipating exactly that this kind of thing can happen. (Their suspicion that they need such a thing is a VERY PROMISING sign, I have to say!)



Oof, everyone copy these.

It may not be a joke at all to think of Ex Mayor Pete as the US-American Guaido.

.

[Grizzly]

It was the Russians, the Russians!

[Harvey]

Your reasoning makes perfect sense.

Something else which occurs to me, it makes sense to rig the very first caucus as transparently and ham-fistedly as possible precisely because it will serve to demoralise many Bernie voters. (The political equivalent of capitalism, it works but rapidly destroys the conditions for its own existence.)

I've personally seen industrial quantities of social media sock puppets for every niche, they're actually quite hard to avoid but often difficult to recognise as such without some effort. Over the last four or five years some of these, ostensibly progressive, slowly resolved into a distinctive 'message group' which boils down to '...don't bother to vote, you can't win.' True enough to resonate despite being very obviously self fulfilling advice.

[JackRiddler]

Your reasoning makes perfect sense.

Something else which occurs to me, it makes sense to rig the very first caucus as transparently and ham-fistedly as possible precisely because it will serve to demoralise many Bernie voters. (The political equivalent of capitalism, it works but rapidly destroys the conditions for its own existence.)

I was thinking this as a possibility. Whether it works this way is very much about the response. The time for caution in the service of bogus credibility has passed. We shall see.

My problem with multi-multi-level chess scenarios like this is that it really ascribes way too much ability to these people. It is essential to remember that cognitively they are JUST LIKE US.

.

[kelley]

their resources strongly differentiate them from us

but in terms of agency? it is important to always remember an ability to act is irrefutable

[Harvey]

Your reasoning makes perfect sense.

Something else which occurs to me, it makes sense to rig the very first caucus as transparently and ham-fistedly as possible precisely because it will serve to demoralise many Bernie voters. (The political equivalent of capitalism, it works but rapidly destroys the conditions for its own existence.)

I was thinking this as a possibility. Whether it works this way is very much about the response. The time for caution in the service of bogus credibility has passed. We shall see.

My problem with multi-multi-level chess scenarios like this is that it really ascribes way too much ability to these people. It is essential to remember that cognitively they are JUST LIKE US.

.

As Kelley pointed out, they aren't just like us. The resources we have never stretch to encompass our ideas because we're too busy scraping a living. For them, every thought, whim and inspiration becomes a well funded reality the moment they will it so.

[JackRiddler]

All I meant is, they are not smarter or dumber than we are.

[Cordelia]

Excerpted from a blog written three years ago, just after the last potus election. In the interim, doubt the bubble has burst.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

The D.C. "Bubble" Is Real

Mrs. Matthews Goes to Washington...
(And Discovers the D.C. "Bubble" Is Real)
words and photos by Cindy A. Matthews

It's been pointed out how our office holders in Washington D.C. live in a "bubble" and have little idea (or is it interest?) of what is happening outside of the bubble. They exist inside the small and cozy world of politics, busily wheeling and dealing with their peers. The struggles of ordinary Americans couldn't be further from their minds. To live "inside the beltway" is to ignore the rest of the country, its needs and desires. This disconnect with the voters could very well lead to dire consequences, as recent presidential election results demonstrate.
...

But is there anything we can do to break the "bubble" that keeps our elected officials separate from the rest of us unwashed masses once and for all? It's a question that haunts me.

Everyone--and I do mean everyone--we met in D.C. was extremely polite and professional. Their manners, clothing, hairstyles, culture, the hallways... You name it and it's polite and professional. It is a cozy, little world where a representative or senator from a far distant state, homesick and lonely, has only his/her professional colleagues for companions in town. They hang out with their "co-workers" a lot after hours, you could say. (Congressional office suites are not separated by state or party affiliation, but by seniority and wherever they can squeeze you in. Literally. We met one staffer on the top floor that used to be used for storage until recent times. Their office suite is a renovated storage closet!)

Believe it or not, I didn't notice any animosities between staffers or representatives of the two establishment parties. It's all "one big happy family" in the Congressional offices in Washington D.C. They really do get along and treat each other with outward respect--no matter how tough they try to portray themselves standing against the opposition. This polite milieu is clearly evident and extends to all visitors. I shook hands with Republicans who want to get rid of the A.C.A.--something that's been keeping me alive these past few years--and I felt nothing but respect and admiration for these kind and genteel individuals, even knowing their voting records.

It's a very nice feeling when everyone gets along and stays busy, but this is where the bubble or the inside-the-beltway mentality does its most damage, in my opinion. There's no need for our elected representatives to be accountable to us because they're accountable to their buddies on the Hill who they see daily and get along with so well. Yeah, that must be it. Why be worried or bothered about what people hundreds or thousands of miles away are thinking when your whole social world fits inside the tiny District of Columbia and its environs? (Surveys show that seven of the richest counties in the U.S. encircle our nation's capital. Rich and comfortable. What's not to love? Why ever go home and deal with those noisy constituents?)

Just as we voters need to make our physical presence known to our policy makers, they in turn need to get out of their gilded Congressional offices and see more of us in the flesh. They need to see the reality we deal with on a daily basis. Senator Bernie Sanders stated he didn't know half as much about the suffering of his fellow Americans until he started touring some of the poorest and hardest-hit-in-the-recession areas of the country during his presidential campaign--and he is humble enough to admit it.

Think, what if we could make that mind-opening experience of touring the country's economically hardest hit places mandatory for all elected officials? The bubble would burst and never reform. One would hope the wake-up call would change their hearts at least.

***
Speaking of Bernie Sanders... Here's a funny story about my futile attempts to meet him in person.

Continued...http://bernie2016.blogspot.com/2017/02/ ... -real.html

[RocketMan]

Regarding the recent talk about Bernie's not so commendable actions in the past, it just occurred to me that despite the watered down nature of his socialism there is one definite advantage.

It should become clear to many more people now that the US (and by implication much of the global ruling class) cannot abide or tolerate even a mild, perhaps somewhat cowed social democrat anymore, not even the slight POSSIBILITY of such a person gaining office. That is a feat only Bernie could have managed at this point in history.

[Grizzly]

DNC Takes Over Counting Remaining Iowa Votes [Jimmy Dore, Feb 4, 2020]

The fix was in in 2017 when the court ruled that the DNC had no obligation to provide a fair election process.

https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/[url][/url]

Also,
[/url]
https://twitter.com/kendallkarson/status/1224810617355362306



https://twitter.com/RantsByDesign/status/1224828786807640064

[stickdog99]

https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chom ... movements/

[Harvey]

All I meant is, they are not smarter or dumber than we are.

I know. I also meant something else. Cognitively they're different from us because they know they have the power to make people dance, yes of course with their money and power, but more so because their stories make money and power work in the first place they being responsible for almost nothing. That makes them cognitively different.

Whether it works this way is very much about the response.

Never a truer word spoken.

[kelley]

jack

harvey

well said

i'd also suggest that a meatspace metric like 'smarter or dumber' perhaps means less in an age of algorithms and finance

which are reflections of said terms

neoliberalism laid the foundation for these conditions but the regime is in transition and that's what's at stake here

and is most obviously seen as every election cycle intensifies in the year leading up to votes being cast

[Grizzly]

----



Bernie voter: "People in my family will die without these policies."

commenter From another place on the web

It do be like that.

My dad was a computer programmer. He did not have health insurance due to the cost. In his early 60's, his game plan was to just tough it out until he qualified for medicare. He got sick. It seemed just like a bad flu, and he was terrified of the cost of expensive tests at the hospital for what would amount to nothing, so he refused to go. It turned out he got bit by a mosquito and contracted West Nile Virus in Orange County California.

His fever got really bad and he collapsed onto the floor, unable to get up. He argued with my mom when she urged him to let her call an ambulance. If he wasn't going to drive to the hospital and get expensive tests, he sure as heck wasn't going to pay for an expensive ambulance. He refused until he passed out.

Against my dad's wishes, my mom called 911. It turns out that by the time he got to the hospital, he had spent too long at a very high fever. Permanent brain damage was guaranteed to have occurred. He never regained consciousness.

After over a week in the hospital, my mom told the hospital she didn't have money to keep up treatment. She wanted to either work out a deal on payment or find some kind of alternative way for him to recover. Then she was informed that actually he had been brain dead since the first day in the hospital. He would never wake up. Not just a coma mind you, he was already dead but his body was being kept alive. The plug was pulled and his body passed. Due to the costs involved, my mom had to sell her house in southern California.

If my dad had made it to medicare before that mosquitto bit him, I think he'd still be alive and enjoying retirement. When I hear the "how you going to pay for that?' question in debates, I want to grab a billionaire that stands against M4A and say, "Your greed killed my father. How are you going to pay for that?"

[Grizzly]

https://preview.redd.it/jzffw2wvpwf41.jpg?width=609&auto=webp&s=05f080e9960a18a2bd26165de10134d3e715097a