Ted Rall for February 17, 2020

Oh schnikes…hope everyone remembered to wear their flame-retardant gear today.

Is Machiavelli running? I can no longer keep up with the absurd machinations on both sides of the aisle. I’m of reasonable intelligence and education, but it all gets too deep for me. I’m simply treading water until i can vote.

I sure wish I could afford to care about the Democrat’s corruption. Too bad they are entirely overshadowed by Republican corruption.

George Carlin used expound how the game was rigged, and if you weren’t in the club that actually ran the show, you should get used to losing what few rights, principles, and protections you now enjoy. How really prophetic he was..

Let me see if I got this right. A company develops an app, probably a year or more before the Iowa caucus. They write the code with intentional bugs though, because they know Sen. Sanders will win and want to spoil his moment of glory. They also donated money to someone else running, which was a waste because the results were known to them in advance. And if that wasn’t enough, the app developer is connected to the Clintons! Do you think the developers worked out of Benghazi storing their work on Hillary’s email server? Sorry Mr. Rall, this whole line of “reasoning” sounds like something the tin-foil hat wearing, crazy right-wing crowd would come up with and I ain’t buying it.

Hmmmmmmm

Yeah, well, maybe . . . I like Rall but sometimes he’s just too cynical to believe.

and i’ve got an alien living in my big toe…

Not a bad theory, Mr. Rall. But how about, more likely, the Democrats committed the cardinal sin of software development, i.e. not field testing the product under circumstances similar to those under which it will be deployed. It’s bad to bug test software under real life scenarios.

Clinton was projected to win big in the US. Maybe wishing won’t make it so.

So, I should vote for Trump???

Dictator Donald is projected to lose big no matter who runs against him.

Establishment Democrats tried to rig the Iowa caucus, but the open nature of the process exposed them for the crooks they are. But that wasn’t a problem in New Hampshire. Paper ballots there are counted by machines, machines programmed by people working for corporations that really don’t want Bernie to win. And the code is secret. Yeah, sure, I trust that. Not.

Eliminate caucuses, use paper ballots COUNTED BY HAND, IN PUBLIC. Anything else is illegitimate.

Bernie led in most (but not all) polls of Iowa. Polls measure first-round votes, which aren’t the same as delegates, and even the best poll is inherently imperfect. Bernie ended up with a very slight lead in first-round votes, as predicted by the polls. Delegates have a more complex calculation, and Bernie came in second in the delegate count.

Do you really think there’s no possible explanation, besides a conspiracy?

If the people involved are such evil geniuses, how do they ever lose elections?

“A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America” is a 2020 book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.

“Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” by NYT reporter David Enrich available through Amazon tomorrow.

Now tell me all about the corrupt and evil Democrats…

I guess the cross hairs on Bernie were necessary.. or, a subtle hint

Oh geeze…although maybe there was a grand conspiracy, it seems much more likely, watching the Democrats recently, that it was indeed simple incompetence. I applaud Bernie fans’ dedication, but until the Trump campaign starts putting resources into attacking him, it’s clear he doesn’t have a chance. I think their biggest hope is that he DOES get the nomination. The Trump campaign, targeting as they do the most simple-minded of voters, will simply 24/7 hammer the “Socialism = Communism” lie and, no matter how hard Bernie tries to explain his actual politics and policies, the GOP will make sure that that simple untruth UTTERLY OVERWHELMS anything else.

Check this out, it’s great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQPeVJQaUSw

The DNC caused their own loss of the 2016 election. They “rigged” the election for Hillary- They believed that she would be most likely to win and she had been a loyal participant in Democratic politics for decades. They put all their muscle behind her and that worked against Bernie, almost certainly causing him to be defeated in the primaries, She would have been a good president. Compared to Trump, she would have been a great president. And, she did win, by three million votes, just not in the states than have heard nothing other than Republican propaganda for decades. . The thing is the DNC is a private organization. It has no responsibility to represent the voters. It sponsors the candidate it prefers. The organization preferred Hillary. To be upset about that fact is to misunderstand that the parties exist to push their agenda, and to support the candidates that they believe will further that agenda. If you agree with their agenda, then support them. If you don’t support their agenda, then that would be a dumb thing to do, because they don’t represent you, they never promised to do so, and they have no responsibility to you. And, it doesn’t make any more sense to allow them to determine your opinion of any candidate than it would if it were your local YMCA. For that, you need to actually do a little research ( try Open Secrets) and find out who does best represent your opinions. But, most Bernie supporters, myself among them, actually agree with about 95% of the Democratic party agenda. And, most of them disagree with roughly 1000% of the Republican agenda. When a Bernie supporter says that they will refuse to vote for anyone else, which it is reported that 15% of Bernie supporters actually did in 2016, that is the epitome of stupid. Those 15% would have given us President Hillary and if anyone believes that wouldn’t be any better than Trump, they are either lying, shilling for the Republicans or completely put of touch with reality.

Here’s some info on Sanders’ dark-money group “Our [i.e., His] Revolution”: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/08/03/bernie-sanders-seeks-contributions-our-revolution/88038338/

The underlying assumption here is that the final outcome would somehow have been different if the app had never existed. Yet there’s no reason to believe that. Its failure just forced going back to the old ways of counting. The Iowa polls leading up to the caucuses generally showed tight clustering and a lot of volatility. Combine that with the goofy way the caucuses operate, and the outcome becomes unsurprising. Not to mention that it was essentially confirmed by the New Hampshire results (where, by the way, Bernie did much worse than he did in 2016). Hard though it may be for Bernie enthusiasts to accept, he’s just not an attractive candidate for most Democrats.

Well, there we finally have it. Yes Rall, you are absolutely right. I have it on good information that the app was developed in the basement of Comet Pizza. And by all means, keep reminding everyone that these conspirators all oppose Trump.

If another “new” Democrat gets elected, I swear I’m changing parties – Labor or Communist, or something. The only reliable protest to the two parties is to join and vote some third party – not that they could ever get elected, or do anything if they were. I’m beginning to think the ‘Conservative Movement’ has subsumed them, like they did the Republican party in Goldwater’s time.

So, what I am hearing is "Bernie won’t win because they won’t let him win regardless of votes – just like last time, so the Bernie supporters should stay home in November as protest the injustice – just like last time – and let tRump stay in office for another term just to show those corrupt Democrat party members.

Funny stuff. The comments. I followed the story as it broke, followed the various links (including the vanishing proof).

There is no proof that the DNC or it’s top people actually tweaked the Primary but they sure as hell did a job trying to hide their ownership/control interest in the company and the app. Between the Clinton operatives employed by the company, Buttigieg and Biden purchasing services and the DNC contractual control of final approval prior to distribution…well…it gives the appearance of impropriety. Especially if you are a Bernie-Bro.

Shadow was offered and refused security testing by DHS. Another factor that carries a bad smell, at least under the circumstances. Conspiracy? Given the past actions of the DNC against Bernie? I suppose it looks that way to some people.

Every lying racist Republican stinks to high heaven.

Oh, it’s so nice to see Ted has returned to bat guano conspiracies about how the DNC is trying to deprive Sanders of winning a primary where he got 99% of the votes.

First & foremost: there are actual pieces of paper backing up the votes of each assignment in each caucus. Sanders got about 25% in both rounds. Enough people moved to the Buttigieg camp in the second assignment to give him a bare win of the delegates. Sanders wasn’t cheated in any way shape or form. The biggest takeaway is that Iowa is a terrible place to start the nomination process.

Second: Shadow is a company that does work for various candidates & state parties. Rall is conflating the people who have steered business towards the company with the company. It’s totally dishonest, but totally in keeping with Rall’s behavior when his preferred candidate isn’t getting preferential treatment.

Sanders received about half as many votes as he did in 2016. He failed to make a persuasive case to retain the support of people who decided he was better than the sole alternative that year. He’s not going to be the nominee, unless he figures out how to persuade those people again. Maybe he can do it, but cheap lies & conspiracy theories just don’t play out among Democrats.

If Sanders can’t get a majority of pledged delegates before the convention, he doesn’t deserve an automatic nomination. I’m sure Rall will cry foul if two more moderate candidates combine their delegates to create a majority, but that is in fact how democracy works.

Nice. And we all wonder how Trump won in 2016.. It’s a lot easier when your opponent is divided.

We did not win World War II, climb out of the Great Depression, or set the stage for the rise of the greatest middle class ever seen in history because Franklin Roosevelt got every program or program detail that he wanted, but because he had a big enough vision to lead our nation through transformational changes – improving the well-being of nearly everyone and making our country the richest and strongest in the world. Don’t fear or disregard Sanders because he wants too much. Support him because he wants enough.

A surly nation doing dodgy things to its dissidents.

The cartoon makes no sense. “Sanders was projected to win big”. He didn’t. The program slowing down that news getting out made all Democrats look bad. Instead of pointing out that just maybe some Republican supporters made the situation worse by trying to tie up the alternate phone lines, and then moving on, Rall is amplifying the problem and not even doing Bernie any good in the process.