A dark money operation funded by billionaires is behind the app that delayed Iowa’s voting results, Max Blumenthal reports.
Seth Karman.
By Max Blumenthal
The Grayzone
At the time of publication, 12 hours after voting in the Democratic Party’s Iowa caucuses ended, the results have not been announced. The delay in reporting is the result of a failed app developed by a company appropriately named Shadow Inc.
This firm was staffed by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaign veterans and created by a Democratic dark-money nonprofit backed by hedge fund billionaires including Seth Klarman. A prolific funder of pro-settler Israel lobby organizations, Klarman has also contributed directly to Pete Buttigieg’s campaign.
The delay in the vote reporting denied a victory speech to Sen. Bernie Sanders, the presumptive winner of the opening contest in the Democratic presidential primary. Though not one exit poll indicated that Buttigieg would have won, the former mayor South Bend, Indiana, took to Twitter to confidently proclaim himself the victor.
Iowa, you have shocked the nation.
By all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious. #IowaCaucuses
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) February 4, 2020
The bizarre scenario was made possible by a mysterious voting app whose origins had been kept secret by Democratic National Committee officials. For hours, it was unclear who created the failed technology, or how it wound up in the hands of Iowa party officials.
Though a dark money Democratic operation turned out to be the source of the disastrous app, suspicion initially centered on former Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and his Russiagate-related elections integrity initiative.
Leveraging Russia Hysteria
While Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price refused to say who was behind the failed app, he told NPR that he “worked with the national party’s cybersecurity team and Harvard University’s Defending Digital Democracy project….” Price did not offer details on his collaboration with the Harvard group, however.
The New York Times reported that this same outfit had teamed up with Iowa Democrats to run a “drill of worst-case scenarios” and possible foreign threats, but was also vague on details.
Robby Mook, the former campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, was the co-founder of Defending Digital Democracy. His initiative arose out of the national freakout over Russian meddling that he and his former boss helped stir when they blamed their loss on Russian interference. Mook’s new outfit pledged to “protect from hackers and propaganda attacks.”
He founded the organization with help from Matt Rhoades, a former campaign manager for Republican Mitt Romney whose public relations company was sued by a Silicon Valley investor after it branded him “an agent of the Russian government” and “a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Rhoades’s firm had been contracted by a business rival to destroy the investor’s reputation.
As outrage grew over the delay in Iowa caucus results, Mook publicly denied any role in designing the notorious app.
You know it’s bad when… https://t.co/oNDQnVPxjR
— Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) February 4, 2020
Hours later, journalist Lee Fang reported that a previously unknown tech outfit called Shadow Inc. had contracted with the Iowa Democratic Party to create the failed technology. The firm was comprised of former staffers for Obama, Clinton and the tech industry, and had been paid for services by the Buttigieg campaign.
FEC filings show the Iowa Democratic party and Buttigieg campaign paid Shadow Inc.
The Path to Mayor Pete’s Wine Cave
Shadow Inc. was launched by a major Democratic dark money nonprofit called Acronym, which also gave birth to a $7.7 million Super PAC known as Pacronym.
According to Sludge, Pacronym’s largest donor is Seth Klarman. A billionaire hedge funder, Klarman also happens to be a top donor to Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar.
Though he has attracted some attention for his role in the campaign, Klarman’s prolific funding of the pro-settler Israel lobby and Islamophobic initiatives has gone almost entirely unmentioned.
Seth Klarman is the founder of the Boston-based Baupost Group hedge fund and a longtime donor to corporate Republican candidates. After Donald Trump called for forgiving Puerto Rico’s debt, Klarman — the owner of $911 million of the island’s bonds — flipped and began funding Trump’s opponents.
The billionaire’s crusade against Trump ultimately led him to Mayor Pete’s wine cave.
By the end of 2019, Klarman had donated $5,600 to Buttigieg and pumped money into the campaigns of Senators Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris as well.
The billionaire’s support for centrist candidates appears to be driven not only by his own financial interests, but by his deep and abiding ideological commitment to Israel and its expansionist project.
As I reported for Mondoweiss, Klarman has been a top funder for major Israel lobby outfits, including those that support the expansion of illegal settlements and Islamophobic initiatives.
Klarman was the principal funder of The Israel Project, the recently disbanded Israeli government-linked propaganda organization that lobbied against the Iran nuclear deal and backed the Israeli settlement enterprise.
Klarman has heaped hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and the American Jewish Committee. And he funded The David Project, which was established to suppress Palestine solidarity organizing on campuses across the U.S. and battled to block the establishment of a Muslim community center in Boston.
Through his support for the Friends of Ir David Inc, Klarman directly involved himself in the Israeli settlement enterprise, assisting the U.S.-based tax exempt arm of the organization that oversaw a wave of Palestinian expulsions in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.
Other pro-Israel groups reaping the benefits of Klarman’s generosity include Birthright Israel, the AIPAC-founded Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative think tank that helped devise Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of economic warfare on Iran.
Klarman is the owner of the Times of Israel, an Israeli media outlet that once published a call for Palestinian genocide. (The op-ed was removed following public backlash).
In recent weeks, Buttigieg has sought to distinguish himself from Sanders on the issue of Israel-Palestine. During a testy exchange this January with a self-proclaimed Jewish supporter of Palestinian human rights, the South Bend mayor backtracked on a previous pledge to withhold military aid to Israel if it annexed parts of the West Bank.
NEW: The day after Trump unveiled his plan green-lighting Israeli annexation and Netanyahu’s announcement of a cabinet vote on annexation this Tuesday, @PeteButtigieg backtracked on his repeated promise that the "U.S. will not foot the bill for annexation." #StopFundingOccupation pic.twitter.com/dldyRnI5lo
— IfNotNow? (@IfNotNowOrg) January 30, 2020
Another recipient of Klarman’s funding, Amy Klobuchar, has taken a strongly pro-Israel line, vowing to support Trump’s relocation of the U.S.embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Battling Bernie with Hedge Fund Money & Sexism Claims
Like Klarman, Donald Sussman is a hedge funder who has channeled his fortune into Pacronym. He has given $1 million to the Super PAC and was also top donor to Clinton in 2016.
Sussman’s Paloma Partners operates through a series of offshore shell companies, and received tens of millions of dollars in the 2009 federal bailout of the banking industry.
His daughter, Democratic operative Emily Tisch Sussman, declared on MSNBC in September that “if you still support Sanders over Warren, it’s kind of showing your sexism.”
MSNBC pundit says if you support Bernie Sanders over Elizabeth Warren it’s “showing your sexism.” pic.twitter.com/fghFIqOF6C
— Ibrahim (@ibrahimpols) September 27, 2019
As Democratic elites like the Sussmans braced for a Bernie Sanders triumph in Iowa, a mysterious piece of technology spun out by a group they supported delayed the vote results, preventing Sanders from delivering a victory speech. And the politician many of them supported, Pete Buttigieg, exploited the moment to declare himself the winner. In such a strange scenario, conspiracy theories write themselves.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling “Republican Gomorrah,” “Goliath,” “The Fifty One Day War” and “The Management of Savagery.” He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including “Killing Gaza” and “Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie.” Blumenthal founded the Grayzone Project in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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How much confusion is it possible to create from counting votes in an election in a small state? It is worrisome, to say the least, that we on Friday, four days after the event, still don’t have the final numbers. How difficult can it be? Worse still, we don’t know exactly what happened. How could Buttigieg, polling at ~15-20%, according to latest polls, suddenly be ahead in most districts? Biden’s under performing was not a big surprise, at least not to me, but did all the votes that Biden didn’t get go to Buttigieg? Did the way the caucuses were managed, somehow direct a great number of people towards Buttigieg? Is there still a discrepancy between the official results and Bernie Sanders’ internal counts? According to many reports from the caucuses, many questionable things happened that all tended to disfavor Bernie Sanders, and most of them cannot simply be blamed on an app. Still 1% of the results are missing, presumably from Bernie Sanders strongholds. It seems that counting votes to Bernie Sanders must be extremely exhausting to DNC staffers.
In a public statement Shadow Inc stated that they “contracted with the the Iowa Democratic Party to build a caucus reporting mobile app” , so why don’t they have an expenditure/disbursement in the FEC filings?
See this link for the statement from Shadow Inc. See: ktiv.com/2020/02/04/nevada-democratic-party-abandons-app-used-in-iowa-caucuses/
When you do a search on the FEC web site with IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY (C00035600) as the spender and Shadow Inc. as the the RECIPIENT NAME OR ID you get a NOTHING.
See: fec.gov/data/disbursements/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00035600&recipient_name=Shadow+Inc&two_year_transaction_period=2020
Thank you for providing the link to the FEC web site. I spent some time on the site asking a bunch of different questions.
1) What other presidential candidates paid Shadow Inc.?
GILLIBRAND 2020 paid a total of $37,400.00
PETE FOR AMERICA, INC. $42,500.00
BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT $ 1,225.00
fec.gov/data/disbursements/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00035600&committee_id=C00197996&committee_id=C00411330&committee_id=C00431916&committee_id=C00693234&committee_id=C00694018&committee_id=C00697441&committee_id=C00703975&recipient_name=Shadow+Inc&two_year_transaction_period=2020
However, when you look at who has spent money with Shadow Inc you won’t see the Iowa Democratic Party spent anything with Shadow Inc. So how did the Iowa Democratic Party get the software? Who paid for it? How much was paid? Was it given to them? If there is no money to track you can not follow the money. So how did the Iowa Democratic Party end up with the software? You can see that NEVADA STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY paid Shadow Inc $58,000.00, but it seems the software just landed in lap of the Iowa Democratic Party.
Patriot: It time to go to the tool shed and get the shovels and axes yet?
Billionaire: Oh Nooooo the markets are doing too well!
Trumpster Dumpster squatter: Oh Dog how I love this guy who is going to end up starving us all to death!
Ole Bob; Ole Bob here, it’s time for dirty pool and judo in the trenches.
It appears the entire power structure in the US is scared beyond all reason of a Bernie Sanders win — we voters are going to have to fight tooth-and-nail to guarantee our votes are counted and recorded correctly!
While I don’t have any real problem with Buttigieg he just seems a little too much like Obama, and after 8 years of “Yes we can!” “But we’re not going to.” I want someone who isn’t two-faced, and Buttigieg ain’t it!
Generally speaking, is it ever possible for anything to be done with honesty and integrity in the US? Dishonesty flows through many an American vein…and so many proud of it.
America is proving again & again it’s just a BANANA REPUBLIC!
Max Blumenthal is one of the best investigative journalists in the world!
Thank you Max and CN for this illuminating background information.
Such a JOKE!
It seems that the Israel lobby is the one that will play the role of the “Russian interference” in this election. I don’t mean to condone their actions, but pointing the attention on a single crook is a way to hide the failure of the whole system.
Before accepting to use an app in such a sensitive context the party should have setup an independent group in charge of inspecting the code and conducting a thorough testing. Shadow Inc. couldn’t do all this damage without complicity at every level in the party and I suspect that if the democrats don’t carry out immediately a major cleanup of the high ranks in the party the whole primaries will end up even more tainted that the ones that awarded the nomination to Clinton.
Is there any connection between the the delay of the caucus results and the The Des Moines Register and CNN decision not to release their poll of Monday’s Iowa caucuses after a potential error was brought to their attention by the campaign of Pete Buttigieg?
Buttigieg received the media spotlight 1 day prior, which may have given him an advantage going into the caucus. Coincidence?
Yesterday and today (62 and 74% counted) Buttigieg had a constant 6-7% lead, but Bernie said his strongholds had not been counted. Supposedly the national DNC came in to “help” count? Now 85% of the vote is in (from Bernie’s strongholds?) and Mayor Pete’s lead has jumped to about 10%. A 3% jump may not seem like much, but when it occurs in only 10% of the counted votes, Buttigieg would have had to receive 30% more votes than Bernie. Coincidence? Bad optics at a minimum, given the DNC’s predilection for corruption, very suspicious.
No coincidence. The DNC, via the Iowa Dems, via Mayor Cheat, are doing everything they can to steal this election away from the people’s choice. It WOULD have looked a little strange to have had the Des Moines Register poll showing Bernie Sanders the obvious leader a day ahead of the caucus, followed by Mayor Cheat winning it. Crooked. Crooked. Crooked. All of it.
Judging on his debate performances, donor-related flip flops on the issues and the general smug tone of his Obam-ish politi-speak, I’d say Buttigieg’s pretty well exposed himself as the power monger that he is, willing to do or say anything to get what he wants. A terrible candidate by every stretch. Considering his time on the national stage, it’s easy to imagine his deliberately sabotaging Iowa, thinking he’d get away with it. To my eye, there’s something off about the man, pathological perhaps; his brazen grasps for attention, his casual disregard of the truth, his staggering arrogance. He may have stolen Iowa, but he’ll never get an ounce of support frome.
No matter which major American political party it is, never underestimate the danger of large groups of stupid people especially when they work with Israeli lobbyist.
I for one have seem plenty enough of the love dance of death ( dancing to the music of the rapture ) between Natinyahoo and the large orange blob. And I damned sure don’t want to the culmination in my front yard.
But, hey, ain’t the markets doing great!
Since we’re now living in a post-evidence era, the actual voting results don’t matter anymore.
Anyone declaring himself the winner of an election, actually becomes the winner, if his claim gets the support of the MSM presstitutes.
My advice to all Americans is to vote with your feet: stay at home! Preserve your own dignity by turning down this voting scam. Refuse to vote. Show those swamp creatures that they’ve lost all legitimacy with an election turnout of 0.00% of all voters
In any case, it does not matter anymore whoever gets to sit in that white house somewhere in D.C.: Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, whoever; the wars will continue anyway, just like the pillaging of the lower and middle classes.
So the best way to vote is to not vote at all.
Yes, by all means stay home…which is exactly what most Americans do and have been doing for years….look how brilliantly it has worked!
So, Will, do you think that all U$ians of voting age should be required, by law, to vote?
Would that not necessitate the option of “None of the Above”?
You know, in case the choices were appallingly awful and only promised “More of the $ame”, only reflected perpetual war, corporations as “people”, money as “speech”, a two-tiered “legal” system where the poor went to jail and the rich, bankers for example, were bailed out for committing fraud, and torture was held to be merely a “policy difference”, where money making money was taxed (if at all) at a much lower rate than “earned income, you know as the result of actual work, where the media were corporate owned whores who dutifully propagandized the lies used to take the nation to war or unleash its “beautiful” weapons and so on?
Or would you simply insist that there was NO option but to vote for team blue or team red?
With all those who do dutifully vote, have been dutifully partisan, have voted for lesser (if more effective) evil candidates, for many years, for decades, how do you explain the current state of affairs?
Clearly, if voting is the sole measure of democratic engagement, then it has not had much capacity to change much of anything beyond what money and power has deemed to be in THEIR best “interest”, to their profit and dominance.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the real problem is that no actual democracy has heretofore really existed in this exceptional and indispensable nation?
Perhaps it is all a sham and the “franchise” is a controlled and managed means of manufacturing “consent” such that the few can have their way despite the cost and harm to the many?
And, just perhaps, all those whose lack of “participation” you decry so vehemently have come to understand that, as Mother Jones (or Helen Keller) pointed out, if voting could change anything, if it could make a real difference, then it would be illegal …
Indeed, if you really favor voting then why should there be any need of “representatives” and the Founder’s fear of “mob rule”?
Do not both those things get in the way of real, participatory democracy?
Of course, the problem with participatory democracy is that political saviors would go out of vogue, for then each citizen would truly bear responsibility for the nature of society and all that was done in their name.
Are we “there” yet?
Or are we just a “republic” and not a real “democracy”, in fact simply a military empire where citizens are meant to be but patriotic consumers of myth and bluster, of hegemony and bombast, whose task, every two or four years, IS but to cheer and vote for more of the same?
What bothers you about this nation that you blame those who you feel have not “bothered” to vote?
Is it a politician, a political wing of the war and money party?
Or is it something larger?
Perhaps systemic failure?
Perhaps economic insanity?
Possibly the plight of the many?
What is your beef with those who consider that voting seems ineffective, or even useless in terms of generating policies that would improve their lives and those of whom they love?
Or is that something you would not be comfortable with?
Just curious.
DW-
Excellent response to Will.
I do make it a point to vote, but only for a “peace” candidate, which usually means third party by the General Election.
Mr Blumenthal makes it evident that the rich and powerful will be very active during this election year, and that Mr.Sanders and Ms. Warren will be thwarted at every opportunity. The only unknown are those young voters, who are not as vulnerable to MSM methods of persuasion. I am hopeful that they have amassed the numbers to impact the selection of the Democratic nominee or to empower a viable third party candidacy. It is highly unlikely that the Democratic Party apparatus would be removed by anything less than an overwhelming popular uprising.
I would go for the “overwhelming popular uprising”. Solidarity, common cause and urgent need for aloha and cooperation are needed in order for us to stand together for Justice and guide her to course. Resist evil.
Speaking of Warren…pretty savvy of the NYTs to endorse Warren *and* Klobuchar in an attempt to make sure neither Warren nor Sanders win. A kiss of death combined with a divide and conquer
If the guilty software was not given a couple of test runs the day before the caucus something is terribly wrong.
How many test runs and how did the app preform in each test?
Whatever the outcome of the first tally there should be a hand recount where every ballot is projected on a wall or screen so TV viewers can count the number of ballots and the tally for each candidate, along with the official counters.
In every city that has cable TV there is a channel reserved for city council meetings. Those TV stations can cover the recount from the first ballot to the last. The commercial stations must make a living broadcasting advertisements but can give their viewers periodic updates. Doesn’t matter how long it takes. Accuracy is more important than speed. Especially a recount. Iowa democrats you owe it to the country to do another count. If it serves no other function it could deter future skullduggery and vote stealing. Don’t leave voters harboring suspicions. It could reduce democratic turnout.
Who would have guessed!
Len
If you had any doubts that America & it’s so called Democracy is nothing more than a badly run, Banana Republic, the IOWA primary is a microcosm of this Political charade? Shamelessly rigged by a desperate DNC, to sabotage Bernie Saunders campaign & minimise his IOWA win result & the Media bump this would have given his Campaign, this disgusting behaviour demonstrates that the fix was in, once again, to deny Bernie any chance of being the preferred Presidential Candidate, starting in IOWA? And who better to blame but the Democratic Party’s “go to” bogeyman to explain away this public relations disaster by once again claiming “It was RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA” who are responsible for this debacle? Pathetic & sad. Bernie is being screwed again by the same idiots who lost the previous Presidential race to a bankrupt Reality TV Star & are going to blow the 2020 Campaign as well by picking another lousy Candidate? Bernie is the only man that can beat Trump! Stop the nonsense DNC & listen to the voters who want Bernie, not Corporate stooges!
That’s the scary thing Kiwi, not only does the DNC not care about the wishes of the voters the establishment Dems such as Pelosi, Schumer, Hoyer, et al don’t care either as is more often than not reflected in how they vote on important legislation. The establishment Dems simply will not support anything that might endanger the flow of corporate/billionaire campaign contributions into their re-election coffers. The bottom line is these people will always vote the way that will personally benefit them country and constituents be damned. Bernie Sanders poses a direct threat to that continued inflow of campaign donations since much of his proposed legislation will take away tax cuts and impose progressive taxation that the ruling elites have enjoyed and paid for via campaign donations (legal bribes) ever since Reagan was elected. The whole reason the establishment politicians fear Bernie is because he is honest, has integrity and can’t be bought. He truly believes in representing his constituents which makes him a rare politician that poses a true threat to the ruling elites.
GO BERNIE SANDERS – 2020
” The delay in reporting is the result of a failed app….”
So far , I’d say the app has been wildly successful , and we still haven’t seen the final results. If the purpose was to dilute the impact of Bernie’s victory , mission accomplished. If the app was a man-in-the-middle mechanism designed to steal the election outright , it may yet succeed at that , as well. Mayor Pete Guaido seems to think that will be the outcome. Half the results will be announced today at 5 PM EST , ( I’d expect those results to show a razor-close race between Bernie and Pete ) allowing time for evaluating public reaction to see if a blatant theft would be accepted when final tallies are released.
Mayor B was just taking a page from Venezuela’s “president” Juan Guaido, who got such good advice from the CIA. If you can’t win, just create some chaos and declare yourself in charge.
Frankly, what this fiasco suggests to me is that, in the real world, Bernie won the actual vote in a landslide and these are the “corrective” measures by the Democratic establishment. However, if the coders did their jobs “right,” no one will ever know. Plus it creates one more malefaction to blame on Putin don’tcha know and more reason to prefer a war-mongering hard right-wing Democratic Party. Meh, 2016 redux so far.
These have pretty much been my thoughts on this whole imbroglio: Sanders was all too clearly winning the IA primary and the DNC and its plutocratic supporters balked, so created this “chaos” in order to deny him his win.
Looks like fanatical pro-settler hard right pro-Israelis want to throw election to Trump. When the app failed the Iowa dems had no back up methods of communicating, like emails, telephones, or telegrams? Looks like the DNC brought out the clown car and said VOTE TRUMP.
Why would we need the Russians to meddle in our election process? This year’s democratic primaries are going to be something else. The party is in its death throes.
I was hoping that Consortium News would publish this article.
While it must be understood that much of what this article reveals will not reach the eyes or ears, will not cross the thought threshold of most U$ians, it is nonetheless of very significant import.
It points to the manipulation (the manufacturing) of “consent”, it pulls the curtains from the behind-the-scenes mechanations of Big Money and the petty jiggering of candidates within the context of big-time political maneuvering in such a fashion that international connections, influence peddling, and vested interests are exposed as ubiquitous and “business” as usual, call it corruption, in an “electoral” process whose principal purpose is convince the many that actual democracy exits, that voting makes a difference, that the many matter, and that politicians actually care about the lives and well-being of those many.
We are told that the debacle in Iowa diminishes the “trust” that the many have of “the system”, of the political process, indeed of all the many myths of U$ exceptionalism, of U$ moral virtue and the righteousness of U$ military “intervention” for “humanitarian” purposes and so on.
In 2016, the DNC made clear that the Democratic Party is a private club, that can change its rules (as it recently has done for Bloomberg), can ignore the popular will and substitute its own choices as candidates, and has NO obligation to conduct itself in a “fair”, “open”, or even consistent fashion, that it can resort to “smoke-filled rooms” decisions whenever it chooses and has every reason to assume that ALL who choose to consider voting for Democrats fully comprehend that the process is “rigged”, dishonest, and graft and grift driven.
The Dems are but one of the two right wings of the war and money party, the Republicans the other.
Both wings exist to serve the donor class,
Not “their” donor class, but the whole international (globalist) financial class.
Would it not be wise to consider the very real likelihood that neither of these two wings has any real interest in serving the many, here in the U$, or anywhere else in the world?
That is to say, given the current reality, who can possibly imagine that the many can or may vote their way out of perpetual war, out of wealth inequality, out of for-profit healthcare, or propagandistic media owned by the financial (corporate) class?
If voting is simply a rite, an empty ritual designed not to change anything in meaningful fashion, but merely to provide the appearance but not substance of democracy, then how may it be believed that voting is anything other than passive acquiescence to a tyranny of deceit and population management, especially when leading intellectual “lights” admonish a third party, the Green Party, to effectively neuter itself because only the existing sham is possible?
We live in most interesting times, a time fraught with existential issues too long ignored, and quite unlike any others time in human history.
Can or will a pretend democracy, a bogus electoral system owned by a mere handful of “interests” of obscenely wealthy individuals and administered by sycophantic lap dogs, come to any honest grips with environmental collapse or nuclear Armageddon when the owners and their lackeys, as well as the upper “middle” class profit directly from those existential threats?
Might it not be time to think beyond the two and four year spectacles, beyond the horse race of personality, brand, spin, and media love-(and hate)-fest?
Might our time require more of us than dutifully going along to get along with the insanity?
Might it not be time to ponder how we might build a sustainable and humane human society that need not destroy the ability of the planet to support life simply to allow somewhat more than two thousand individuals to live like tyrannical “royalty”?
Who still believes or thinks that we can vote our way out of corruption and destruction when the only permitted choice is “More of the Same”?
Lesser weevil voting?
That only ensures that the “same” becomes more virulent, more vicious, and more powerful.
I think one of the most important things the average person can do to change the world is to examine their consumer and investment choices. Everyone who pays a cable bill and sits hypnotized for hours each day in front of the “idiot box” is feeding the beast and becoming a compliant victim rather than an active citizen. Lifestyle choices matter.
I choose to vote each election because the Oligarchy loves low voter turnout as confirmation of the masses feeling powerless and complacent to whatever the elite chooses. We also have “propositions” here in Arizona that provide an opportunity for engaging in “direct” democracy.
Can this DNC ineptitude and the actions of Buttigieg, who is associated with and brazenly trying to benefit from it, even be considered conspiracy theory anymore? When the net result is the same? You’ll never convince me that the Iowa debacle wasn’t a purposeful event, or that Buttigieg’s complaint about the poll last week – whose results were thwarted as a result – weren’t coordinated efforts to squash Sanders’ momentum.
We know from reliable reporting that Buttigieg sold his soul long ago (if he has one) to the devils of Wall Street, the tech industry, and the intelligence agencies. And, whether he participated in deliberate sabotage in the two instances above or not, his brazen attempt to ‘shape the narrative’ and benefit from them is sickening enough.
Buttigieg and the like are facilitating and benefitting from a new and dangerous marriage between good old fashioned American propaganda and 21st century technological trickery to win elections that, in any just system, they’d never come close to winning.
I pray to God we are nearing the moment when thinking people finally abandon these frauds, hypocrites, thieves and charlatans en masse once and for all.
The DNC has put all its know-how in the Impeachment of Trump and now they can’t even count 300.000 votes anymore…
Shooting yourself in the foot or rather in both feet while shouting Trump is unfit to be president.
Excellent report!
The influence of private money in the Democratic party is shocking.
Forget Russia—The problem is much closer to home.
Have people noticed the common thread of most of the money and most of the billionaires donating? It was also true for Hillary Clinton’s massive 2016 war chest. It was true for Obama. It’s been true for many election cycles. Russia’s not influencing American politics and foreign policy, it is Israel and it’s proponents in America and abroad.
But this is Iowa, the land of hard-working farmers and factory workers. Are we sure it’s not Chicago we’re talking about?
ROTFLMAO. And here I thought the Republicans were incompetent!
They deprived Bernie of his moment.
This Iowa fiasco was all orchestrated by the corporate-Wall Street Dems to preempt Bernie. The last thing they wanted was Bernie giving a raucous populist victory speech live to the entire world. It would have focused solely on progressive-populist bread and butter issues which would have fired up the entire nation. This is a theft that should not go unpunished.
If Tom Perez has any integrity he’d resign by lunch time today.