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These days, even Third World countries tend to have rapid vote counting, and when the process breaks down, such as in Bolivia recently, it’s a national crisis.
In contrast, America seems to have gotten slower at figuring out who won, with the closer you get to Silicon Valley, the slower. Good thing the presidential primary season doesn’t start in California or the results wouldn’t be final until April. As I wrote in 2018 about California’s recent four-week vote-counting process:
Of course, countries like Paraguay don’t have mail ballots coming in by slow boat from Honduras, the Galapagos Islands, the Kerguelen Islands, Guatelombia, Transnistria, Abbottabad, Abkhazia, Azkaban, Raqqa, Narnia, and The Republic of Pirates.
Nor do these Third World countries have to provide, by court order, ballots in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Armenian, Persian, Arabic, Syriac, Panjabi, Punjabi, Hmong, Mixtec, Esperanto, Hittite, Klingon, Linear B, Linear A, !San Clickspeak, Shavian Alphabet, Incan Knot Lingo, Runic, Voynich Manuscript, Semaphore, Canary Islands Whistle Speech, The Analytical Language of John Wilkins, American Sign Language, Thieves’ Argot, Smoke Signals, Ouija Board, Enigma Encryption, Turing Machine, General Semantics, System Basic, Cityspeak, Telepathy, Dolphin, Assembler, COBOL, Coco Sign Language, HTML, PDF, Graffiti, Gang Signs, SMS, Bitcoin, and Emoji, plus certain languages spoken only by individual pairs of identical twins.
You left out Polari and Volapük.
Oh, and Toki Pona, which has only 123 words.
As my contribution toward getting my fair share of the proceeds from the ongoing bust out of the USA I propose that, irrespective of the language(s) mandated locally, semaphore become the sole means of communication to be used by all levels of gummint.
K
Interesting to see if the Republicans win big in November, they have English only ballots as part of the new Congress’ items.
After all, proficiency in English is a requirement for naturalized citizens.
Indeed. I’ve always viewed multilingual ballots as a white flag.
Oh, and Toki Pona, which has only 123 words.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sYWQo6aCFcQ
I *could* be wrong, but I suspect that when Christopher Huff was in high school the tough kids regularly held his head down in the toilet and locked him in gym lockers.
So you’re saying there’s lots of languishes?
https://twitter.com/latweetx/status/1224507363887144961
Results from 40% of Iowa.
https://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2017_29/2078956/170720-bernie-jane-sanders-ew-1143a_817f5740cb15dc6146395f312323a7eb.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
Also, the meaningless precision of an inaccurate number always unnerves me.
10115 votes, really. Why not "10000 (within 5%)"
And, on MSNBC, I saw Chris Matthews and Joy Reid bemoaning the collapse of the Democratic Party.
Klobuchar's people have claimed she is neck and neck with Biden and may beat him: it will be interesting to see the final data.
It is beginning to look as if the powers-that-be are shocked and dismayed that Biden is collapsing and are doing whatever they can to delay (or alter?) the bad news and blunt its effect on the race (particularly New Hampshire).
Personally, I have faith in our ruling elite's ability to get the candidate they want and need: either Ukraine Joe or, perhaps, McKinsey Pete. And Bernie has never had the will to go for the killing blow, whether Hillary's corruption or the Biden family cronyism: I think they can take him out.
I saw Klobuchar interviewed recently when she announced that we need more plumbers, not more sports marketing majors, as a way of explaining why college for all, cancelling student debts, etc. are bad ideas. Her campaign slogan should be "I'm not as crazy as the rest of them!" But no doubt the ruling elite can block her too.
Yeah, but today they’re dodging IEDs in the Hindu Kush, their only available job, while he’s at home making videos and collecting checks from YouTube and perhaps Patreon.
Oh, and Toki Pona, which has only 123 words.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sYWQo6aCFcQ
I prefer Celestial Alphabet, which is meant to communicate with angels, so you probably can use it to communicate with raging progressives, too.
Also, Enochian. After all, there is a new trend of regressive spiritualism and witch role-playing by disaffected people adrift in a world they don’t understand.
A completely OT passage from a little essay I came across,” (The History of T” (one of the first “Scheme” Programming Language implementations see this) by Olin Shivers:
https://twitter.com/danielmarans/status/1224578266851356672
Bernie wins BIG!
Be the Democrats.
Spike the Des Moines Register poll results.
Spike the actual Iowa Caucuses voting results.
Rig the entire party apparatus to ensure the homosexual McKinsey consultant CIA operative nobody had ever heard of a year ago gets the nomination.
But Donald Trump is an existential threat to Our Democracy.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-cities/3/
https://twitter.com/latweetx/status/1224507363887144961
Herbert West, reanimator, is on the case.
‘… In contrast, America seems to have gotten slower at figuring out who won…’
It’s possible the winner is simply unacceptable. Getting all the numbers to add up right in such a scenario could be a challenge.
So the Democratic Party cannot perform the most basic function of a democracy: counting votes. That may be the most perfectly ironic situation I’ve ever seen.
This has got to hurt the Democrats, because the paranoid Bernie Bros are gonna be on the war path for sure now.
And this episode is a self written campaign ad for Trump this fall: “how can you trust a party to run a country when it can’t even run its own elections?”
Oh, and Toki Pona, which has only 123 words.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sYWQo6aCFcQ
Polari…that’s good. I was aware of its existence from acquaintances in the Degenero-American community, but not of its apparently widespread use in the Brit merchant navy.
As my contribution toward getting my fair share of the proceeds from the ongoing bust out of the USA I propose that, irrespective of the language(s) mandated locally, semaphore become the sole means of communication to be used by all levels of gummint.
K
https://twitter.com/CANCEL_SAM/status/1224586174595059712
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/30/coup-plotters-cia-agents-mayor-pete-endorsers/
Why are so many intelligence veterans throwing their weight behind a young Indiana mayor with such a thin foreign policy resume?
What we are seeing tonight is a clumsy effort by Silicone Valley & the Deep State to find a new back channel to manage democracy since they can longer manage dominant narratives before polling day.
It's stunning to see how brazen & malevolent they are about this. Makes you realize Noam Chomsky was understating the power & ruthlessness of the Elites to "manufacture consent". The Left will surely split in two after 2020, once the Bernie Bros realize the Neoliberal gang controlling the DNC will always rig the game to favor a Wall Street-friendly puppet candidate.
These are Central African Republic results.
Although Bernie at 30% passes a smell test,
However, the largest elephant in the room are all the tech millionaires and billionaires that pursue alternative lifestyles. They are bent on showing the rest of us exactly how normal they are. Their funding is why things like World War T has gotten traction in the past few years.
“Iowa caucus voter pulling support for Pete Buttigieg after learning he's married to a man.”
https://youtu.be/ffwAyzpcGTQ
The DNC’s mistake was not entrusting the Cupertino based company to develope their “app”. Like them or not, good chance at least that aspect of the caucus process would have worked.
https://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2017_29/2078956/170720-bernie-jane-sanders-ew-1143a_817f5740cb15dc6146395f312323a7eb.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
https://twitter.com/latweetx/status/1224500846131646466
After all, proficiency in English is a requirement for naturalized citizens.
How could they stop it, except perhaps by withholding funds? Voting is a state matter. Of course, if a state is putting out multilingual ballots, it’s probably lost to the GOP already.
But because Trump chose to cozy up to the GOP Establishment over his voters during the course of his Presidency far too often, an undamaged Sanders candidacy would present real problems for him in 2020. Sanders, unlike most of the Democratic candidates, nullifies Trump’s biggest appeal: he can be blasted for many things, but he can’t be portrayed as a BlobMan.
His best hope is that the DNC knifes Sanders, that the cultural Bolsheviks force Sanders to talk less about economic issues (or get him to promise open borders or something else that would completely undermine his economic program), or that Bloomberg launches a third party campaign. Or some combination of the three. No matter how much of a farce the impeachment is going to be, Trump will not be winning on his own merits. He’s got to rely off the Democrats messing up or going off the rails: and going off the rails here means socio-cultural and foreign policy issues. Few voters are listening to the K-Street boys on economics now these days, whatever reservations they may have about socialism.
Sanders has his problems: like with most older leftists, I’m really not a fan of his hypocritical 60s greenie nuclear-phobia. But he’s the last candidate Trump should want to face off against. Better Bloomberg or Biden or the schoolmarm.
Indeed. Speaking for myself, I'll vote for Sanders over Trump. In all the other match-ups, Trump gets my vote.
I really didn't think I'd be voting for Trump again, but I'd like to have an actual country, something the Democrats seem determined to dismantle. While I'd like to see some progressive economic policies, I don't want them to be part of a Green New Deal framework. I'm very concerned with what the Green New Deal would mean for our energy supply in the not-too-distant future. (Look at how "green" energy policies are playing out in Germany.) Granted, the president is in more of a position to single-handedly make a difference on immigration policy than on economic and energy policy, so my concerns about the GND are secondary.
Haha.
The Kerguelen Islands are uninhabited, save for 50 to 100 researchers, not all of whom are French. In a hanging chad situation, though, who knows?
The French National Assembly, by the way, has 11 representative specifically representing overseas Frenchmen. U.S. expats are represented by their congressman in their last U.S. domicile, who couldn’t give a crap about expat special concerns.
This is scary. It really looks like the Dem establishment is trying to cheat pretty openly now to give us a candidate they approve of.
See why a completely apolitical FBI is such a must. No way America will go for Buttigeg, so Im inclined to think the spooks are behind this.
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/30/coup-plotters-cia-agents-mayor-pete-endorsers/
Why are so many intelligence veterans throwing their weight behind a young Indiana mayor with such a thin foreign policy resume?
https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1224570627673161729
https://twitter.com/galaxysearchers/status/1224585049191931904
Back in Pre-Internet Times, the Legacy Media & Donor Class could more precisely curate candidate exposure, messaging, image & “excitement”.
What we are seeing tonight is a clumsy effort by Silicone Valley & the Deep State to find a new back channel to manage democracy since they can longer manage dominant narratives before polling day.
It’s stunning to see how brazen & malevolent they are about this. Makes you realize Noam Chomsky was understating the power & ruthlessness of the Elites to “manufacture consent”. The Left will surely split in two after 2020, once the Bernie Bros realize the Neoliberal gang controlling the DNC will always rig the game to favor a Wall Street-friendly puppet candidate.
I do wonder if the fix is in, but at least some of the nice solid Iowans involved are just not that good at implementing it. Subterfuge is not our best feature.
ONE POINT that Trump’s advisers are failing to push, perhaps intentionally to make him stumble and fall:
• Impeachment is a fancy term. What happens is that Adam Schiff and his buddies are trying to set aside and nullify the votes of 146 million American voters, and substitute their own view for those of the voters. 99.86% of American voters did NOT vote for Adam Schiff.
https://twitter.com/danielmarans/status/1224578266851356672
How come there are immense differences between “first count” and “final count”.
Also, the meaningless precision of an inaccurate number always unnerves me.
10115 votes, really. Why not “10000 (within 5%)”
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/30/coup-plotters-cia-agents-mayor-pete-endorsers/
Why are so many intelligence veterans throwing their weight behind a young Indiana mayor with such a thin foreign policy resume?
https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1224570627673161729
https://twitter.com/galaxysearchers/status/1224585049191931904
There is no way I believe Pete @ 25% and Tulsi at 0.01%
These are Central African Republic results.
Although Bernie at 30% passes a smell test,
Embarrassing stuff for you guys, Trump should tweet his sympathy for Bernie and tell Barr to open an investigation.
‘Sanders has his problems: like with most older leftists, I’m really not a fan of his hypocritical 60s greenie nuclear-phobia. But he’s the last candidate Trump should want to face off against. Better Bloomberg or Biden or the schoolmarm.’
Indeed. Speaking for myself, I’ll vote for Sanders over Trump. In all the other match-ups, Trump gets my vote.
The fundamental problem with socialists is not that all socialists are power-hungry, predatory, ruthless thugs: most socialist voters are just ordinary, economically ignorant fellow citizens.
The real problem is that socialism creates an institutional structure that enables and incentivizes power-hungry, predatory thugs to get into positions of power and authority where they can intimidate their fellow human beings.
As Hayek said, under socialist institutions, "the worst get on top."
Bernie himself may be a real mensch. But if he changes our society in the way he desires, he will in fact empower the worst among us.
What we are seeing tonight is a clumsy effort by Silicone Valley & the Deep State to find a new back channel to manage democracy since they can longer manage dominant narratives before polling day.
It's stunning to see how brazen & malevolent they are about this. Makes you realize Noam Chomsky was understating the power & ruthlessness of the Elites to "manufacture consent". The Left will surely split in two after 2020, once the Bernie Bros realize the Neoliberal gang controlling the DNC will always rig the game to favor a Wall Street-friendly puppet candidate.
As an Iowan by birth and raising, I am conflicted: on one hand, it’s a lot of fun right now watching the Democrats spinning harder than Iowa’s vast arrays of windmills. On the other hand, though, it’s pretty embarrassing to see my homies displaying this level of incompetence. It’s a global humiliation; right now both the BBC and the Guardian new sites have IA caucus chaos/disaster/debacle as their headline stories.
I do wonder if the fix is in, but at least some of the nice solid Iowans involved are just not that good at implementing it. Subterfuge is not our best feature.
Seems to be the fate of Californians to tell us how great the state was.
Even our host, Ron Unz; while bragging about the crime-free Hispanics in Palo Alto; bemoans the traffic and constant construction.
A bit of schadenfreude to be savored, but a bit concerning in that we can’t maintain nice things, like; to get back OT; counting ballots.
“Democrats for Trump” seems to be a thing. I wonder, in a Trump-Sanders race, if Bernie loses a bunch of the D base to the more Establishment certified Trump?
There’s a lot of embarrassment in this nation.
Opposite dynamic on two counts:
1) Whoever the Establishment visibly hates more is going to have more dynamism with average voters.
2) A lot of the Rust Belt voters that gave Trump his victory in ’16 would still support him over, say, Bloomberg, but not over Sanders. Again, had Trump not decided to play nice with the GOP Establishment, this might not be the case. But it is what it is.
https://twitter.com/danielmarans/status/1224578266851356672
The cable networks reported that a lawyer from the Biden campaign sent a threatening letter to the Iowa Dem Party telling them not to issue the final results until the different campaigns could look them over and approve them. That could certainly delay the official count for quite a while!
And, on MSNBC, I saw Chris Matthews and Joy Reid bemoaning the collapse of the Democratic Party.
Klobuchar’s people have claimed she is neck and neck with Biden and may beat him: it will be interesting to see the final data.
It is beginning to look as if the powers-that-be are shocked and dismayed that Biden is collapsing and are doing whatever they can to delay (or alter?) the bad news and blunt its effect on the race (particularly New Hampshire).
Personally, I have faith in our ruling elite’s ability to get the candidate they want and need: either Ukraine Joe or, perhaps, McKinsey Pete. And Bernie has never had the will to go for the killing blow, whether Hillary’s corruption or the Biden family cronyism: I think they can take him out.
I saw Klobuchar interviewed recently when she announced that we need more plumbers, not more sports marketing majors, as a way of explaining why college for all, cancelling student debts, etc. are bad ideas. Her campaign slogan should be “I’m not as crazy as the rest of them!” But no doubt the ruling elite can block her too.
Biden will sue the Democratic Party?
I do wonder if the fix is in, but at least some of the nice solid Iowans involved are just not that good at implementing it. Subterfuge is not our best feature.
All the news sites make this seem like a much bigger deal than it is. So the results are delayed a day. Steve’s right that it’s funny we can’t do this competently, but this isn’t hanging chad level suspense. It’s just the Iowa caucus. There’s a long way to go regardless. Anyway, let’s go Bernie. I’m ready for the Queens versus Brooklyn boro battle for POTUS.
hhsiii wrote:
I take it you are too young to kow how the Democratic Party spells “democracy.”
I grew up in a state next door to Illinois, and got to watch the Daley machine in operation in my youth.
“Democracy” means “We count the votes and get the results we want!”
Spike the Des Moines Register poll results.
Spike the actual Iowa Caucuses voting results.
Rig the entire party apparatus to ensure the homosexual McKinsey consultant CIA operative nobody had ever heard of a year ago gets the nomination.
But Donald Trump is an existential threat to Our Democracy.
And the chief executive of a small Indiana city with a shockingly high murder rate.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-cities/3/
Indeed. Speaking for myself, I'll vote for Sanders over Trump. In all the other match-ups, Trump gets my vote.
Colin Wright wrote:
You misunderstand socialism.
The fundamental problem with socialists is not that all socialists are power-hungry, predatory, ruthless thugs: most socialist voters are just ordinary, economically ignorant fellow citizens.
The real problem is that socialism creates an institutional structure that enables and incentivizes power-hungry, predatory thugs to get into positions of power and authority where they can intimidate their fellow human beings.
As Hayek said, under socialist institutions, “the worst get on top.”
Bernie himself may be a real mensch. But if he changes our society in the way he desires, he will in fact empower the worst among us.
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/30/coup-plotters-cia-agents-mayor-pete-endorsers/
Why are so many intelligence veterans throwing their weight behind a young Indiana mayor with such a thin foreign policy resume?
https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1224570627673161729
https://twitter.com/galaxysearchers/status/1224585049191931904
To the points above I’d add that there are plenty of alternative lifestyle types in the diplomatic and intelligence services that will stump for the Buttigieg.
However, the largest elephant in the room are all the tech millionaires and billionaires that pursue alternative lifestyles. They are bent on showing the rest of us exactly how normal they are. Their funding is why things like World War T has gotten traction in the past few years.
https://twitter.com/latweetx/status/1224507363887144961
Based on that last photo a, “languish, ” is now defined as a paperwork American who showed up three weeks ago to vote themselves more gibs from tax-paying deplorables. Got it.
After all, proficiency in English is a requirement for naturalized citizens.
“After all, proficiency in English is a requirement for naturalized citizens.”
Indeed. I’ve always viewed multilingual ballots as a white flag.
Now I’m interested to see how the Dems will handle the NH primary.
I grew up in a state next door to Illinois, and got to watch the Daley machine in operation in my youth.
"Democracy" means "We count the votes and get the results we want!"
I’m aware. But that was the presidential election, not an early primary.
I wrote about this last week: https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=19761
In the old days, the Party would have had guys in the field making sure the votes were counted according to party dictates. That meant men bossing around other people. Today, no one can emotionally deal with such interactions, so technology does the bossing around. In this case it means the technology will rig the results for the party.
I suspect we are seeing that passive-aggressive rule by robot is not going to work very well. The Democrats have been fixing elections for generations. Now all of sudden they are all thumbs. Not exactly a great start to the robot revolution.
> The students will happily comply, preferring to be ruled by their mobile devise.
Device!
I do wonder if the fix is in, but at least some of the nice solid Iowans involved are just not that good at implementing it. Subterfuge is not our best feature.
Iowans should have voluntarily given up the insane caucus system after the Democrats had trouble reporting results the last couple of times. This will certainly be the last time they go first, there were already Democrats complaining they shouldn’t get to vote first because Iowa isn’t diverse enough. I can’t believe people still want to participate in it, who wants to go to the local school gym for two hours in the dead of winter and listen to morons drone on about why you should support hack politician X before you are allowed to vote?
My Iowa contacts seem pretty sad today, though. I think they all know you're right: the Establishment's patience with the caucuses has run out, and Iowa will be just another middle-of-the-pack primary state in the future.
Iowans love to bitch about being bombarded with political ads and unwanted attention from creepy presidential candidates every four years, but the caucuses were the one way in which Iowa stood out from its normal regular ordinary middle-of-the-road unremarkable place in American geography and culture.
In the old days, the Party would have had guys in the field making sure the votes were counted according to party dictates. That meant men bossing around other people. Today, no one can emotionally deal with such interactions, so technology does the bossing around. In this case it means the technology will rig the results for the party.
I suspect we are seeing that passive-aggressive rule by robot is not going to work very well. The Democrats have been fixing elections for generations. Now all of sudden they are all thumbs. Not exactly a great start to the robot revolution.
Speaking of which, online evidence has been found the CEO behind this Shadow app worked for Hilary until Nov 2019:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/thousands-furious-supporters-claim-iowa-caucus-rigged-against-bernie
This individual also has a serious case of soyface.
America’s broken voting system could easily be fixed – we just need to bring in a team of Iraqi election monitors and several tons of purple dye, so they can teach us the method we inflicted on them. That should work, right?.
https://media.pri.org/s3fs-public/styles/story_main/public/story/images/RTR3N70V.jpg?itok=V6OX-PKQ
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-04-30/purple-finger-remains-hopeful-symbol-iraq-iraqis-go-polls
After all, proficiency in English is a requirement for naturalized citizens.
A fair number of people are exempt from the English requirement — mostly older people.
He has already moved close to a position that amounts to open borders. I saw a clip of AOC campaigning for him, saying she supported him because he wants to dismantle ICE. If AOC thinks he is a-OK on immigration, we are in trouble.
I really didn’t think I’d be voting for Trump again, but I’d like to have an actual country, something the Democrats seem determined to dismantle. While I’d like to see some progressive economic policies, I don’t want them to be part of a Green New Deal framework. I’m very concerned with what the Green New Deal would mean for our energy supply in the not-too-distant future. (Look at how “green” energy policies are playing out in Germany.) Granted, the president is in more of a position to single-handedly make a difference on immigration policy than on economic and energy policy, so my concerns about the GND are secondary.
The fundamental problem with socialists is not that all socialists are power-hungry, predatory, ruthless thugs: most socialist voters are just ordinary, economically ignorant fellow citizens.
The real problem is that socialism creates an institutional structure that enables and incentivizes power-hungry, predatory thugs to get into positions of power and authority where they can intimidate their fellow human beings.
As Hayek said, under socialist institutions, "the worst get on top."
Bernie himself may be a real mensch. But if he changes our society in the way he desires, he will in fact empower the worst among us.
It seems increasingly that people like you are talking to yourselves. The worst are at the top, have been for a while. Democrats will become the permanent government, this year or next election. So at this point the choice is between a guy who believes the looting of the country’s productive capacity for personal enrichment and immense concentration of wealth at the top are bad things, and also thinks YT should pay, and some other people who don’t seem to have a problem with the status quo as long as YT is made to pay. Oh, and the first guy is comfortable with your no-no word. It’s not a choice im going to make, I have other commitments that preclude them both, but I sympathize with those that see the first as preferable.
And when you get an over-bearing, all-intrusive government, it does not actually matter who is at the very top. It's the mid-level apparatchiks who make life miserable for everyone: the local gauleiters, the local Gestapo agents, etc.
When was the last time you were treated rudely by a waiter in a restaurant? Did you continue to patronize that restaurant? Or did you start patronizing another restaurant?
When was the last time you were treated badly by a government functionary or a bureaucrat at a government-sanctioned monopoly -- a cop, a guy at the local electric company, an IRS agent, someone at the DMV, a public schoolteacher, etc.? Did you just start patronizing a different IRS or DMV or electric company?
Institutions matter. The problem with Nazism and Communism was not simply that they guys at the top were evil. The problem was that petty, brutal, and abusive people at middle and lower levels were enabled and incentivized by the system.
Bernie is a Bolshevik. An amusing, engaging Bolshevik, but still a Bolshevik.
The trend toward “early voting” will only add to the opportunity for hilarity. NY State for example is adding eight early voting days to even the most trivial primary or off-year vote. The Board of Elections I part-time with in my mostly white backwater has its act together, but in many districts this could mean eight times the screwups and shenanigans.
The fundamental problem with socialists is not that all socialists are power-hungry, predatory, ruthless thugs: most socialist voters are just ordinary, economically ignorant fellow citizens.
The real problem is that socialism creates an institutional structure that enables and incentivizes power-hungry, predatory thugs to get into positions of power and authority where they can intimidate their fellow human beings.
As Hayek said, under socialist institutions, "the worst get on top."
Bernie himself may be a real mensch. But if he changes our society in the way he desires, he will in fact empower the worst among us.
The worst are already on top. I don’t mean President Trump, I mean university presidents and Fortune 500 CEOs, etc. Horrible, awful people.
I probably should have made clear that Hayek's phrase "on top" did not just mean the CEOs or the university presidents or the members of Congress or the mayors. The point is the people who are "on top" of the rest of us: it may be only a university administrator making $70K a year (I've seen several such at my own kids' college) or an "education consultant" making $80K a year to wreck your kids' high-school education or a junior diversicrat or journalist who gets some poor soul fired.
The point is that under free-market capitalism, if you satisfy your customers, you're okay. But under socialism (AKA "crony capitalism" -- the Left is right that there has never been "real" socialism -- it's always a scam game for those with influence), there is some other criterion rather than just doing your job.
Socialism = corruption.
Call me a paranoid conspiracy theorist but this “delay” in tallying the votes in the Iowa caucuses make me want to believe that Bernie won the thing, but DNC elites behind the scenes are now trying to rig the results so he’s not declared the winner.
Mark my word, if Bernie officially “loses” by a small margin and/or there’s good reason to believe he was deprived of victory due to some shenanigans behind the scenes, expect internal chaos for the Dems for the foreseeable future, maybe till November. While I may not approve of Sanders about-face on immigration, he in many ways is the Left-wing version of Trump.
https://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2017_29/2078956/170720-bernie-jane-sanders-ew-1143a_817f5740cb15dc6146395f312323a7eb.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
You left out a language invented by an iSteve commenter!
https://ial.fandom.com/wiki/Ceqli
https://www.unz.com/isteve/is-this-the-worst-set-of-macarthur-genius-grants-ever/#comment-696085
The late Rex F May, a.k.a. Baloo, is what we might get if Steve could draw.
https://www.cartoonistgroup.com/properties/template_about.php?id=150
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/08/meet-cartoonist-rex/
Very iStevey at times:
I wonder if this failure could have been intentional (either internal or sabotage). I can’t believe some Democrats like having Iowa (not sure if the bigger problem is the demographics or the caucus system) first on the primary calendar. It looks like this debacle has a decent chance of changing that.
Perhaps the plan all along. The dems should just have California and New York first and be done with it.
The fundamental problem with socialists is not that all socialists are power-hungry, predatory, ruthless thugs: most socialist voters are just ordinary, economically ignorant fellow citizens.
The real problem is that socialism creates an institutional structure that enables and incentivizes power-hungry, predatory thugs to get into positions of power and authority where they can intimidate their fellow human beings.
As Hayek said, under socialist institutions, "the worst get on top."
Bernie himself may be a real mensch. But if he changes our society in the way he desires, he will in fact empower the worst among us.
‘…Bernie himself may be a real mensch. But if he changes our society in the way he desires, he will in fact empower the worst among us.’
You misunderstand my motives in voting for Sanders; I’ll do so not because of what he would do here at home, but in spite of it.
“I can’t believe some Democrats like having Iowa first on the primary calendar. It looks like this debacle has a decent chance of changing that.”
Perhaps the plan all along. The dems should just have California and New York first and be done with it.
The point of order of the primaries is to find someone who will have widespread appeal in swing states. NY and CA are voting Dem no matter what so it makes no difference to them if they put Bozo the Clown at the top of the ticket.
Both. Iowa is too old and too white and caucuses favor high involvement voters, so the results are very distorted compared to say having South Carolina 1st where the voter base is more typical (for Democrats).
The two strongest red meat get out the vote issues for the Democrats both revolve around obfuscation of people’s identity. Voter ID for blacks in the South and drivers licenses for illegals both involve hiding behind some perceived ‘privacy’ or fairness issue that apparently does not apply to white men who pay taxes and are under the constant eye of computers that relentlessly cross check 1099s, w-22, 1040s, SS#, and tax ID # etc. to make sure that they can’t hide and are paying their “fair share” (i.e. most of it). In fact, it is considered the penultimate of a ‘progressive income tax’ which is raised using exactly those methods. Contrast that to the current state of ID in the US were it is purposely issued in a way to help black and brown people drive or conduct banking translations without triggering any legal problems. Same for voting. It is an absolute scandal that with modern computers there are still issues with excess voting roles, double voting, and stuffing ballot boxes, all in the name of “they are stealing our vote”.
I expect Iowa is close to the demographic of the typical deep-pocketed Democratic donor, religion aside. If they started first with South Carolina, Democratic plutocrats would all become Republicans. Because that’s how they end up with Hugo Chavez in drag as their nominee.
And, on MSNBC, I saw Chris Matthews and Joy Reid bemoaning the collapse of the Democratic Party.
Klobuchar's people have claimed she is neck and neck with Biden and may beat him: it will be interesting to see the final data.
It is beginning to look as if the powers-that-be are shocked and dismayed that Biden is collapsing and are doing whatever they can to delay (or alter?) the bad news and blunt its effect on the race (particularly New Hampshire).
Personally, I have faith in our ruling elite's ability to get the candidate they want and need: either Ukraine Joe or, perhaps, McKinsey Pete. And Bernie has never had the will to go for the killing blow, whether Hillary's corruption or the Biden family cronyism: I think they can take him out.
I saw Klobuchar interviewed recently when she announced that we need more plumbers, not more sports marketing majors, as a way of explaining why college for all, cancelling student debts, etc. are bad ideas. Her campaign slogan should be "I'm not as crazy as the rest of them!" But no doubt the ruling elite can block her too.
Or else, what?
Biden will sue the Democratic Party?
In the old days, the Party would have had guys in the field making sure the votes were counted according to party dictates. That meant men bossing around other people. Today, no one can emotionally deal with such interactions, so technology does the bossing around. In this case it means the technology will rig the results for the party.
I suspect we are seeing that passive-aggressive rule by robot is not going to work very well. The Democrats have been fixing elections for generations. Now all of sudden they are all thumbs. Not exactly a great start to the robot revolution.
Agree, but:
> The students will happily comply, preferring to be ruled by their mobile devise.
Device!
The point of modern Silicon Valley isn’t efficiency, it’s control.
Ohhhh, whaaaaaaat, just because that’s what they did last time? Paranoia thy name is, er, thy number is 467.
I think we’re so far gone that the rot extends further down to the middle management levels, department heads, etc.
This article does a good job of explaining the Iowa mess:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7965517/A-wide-disaster-Iowa-Caucus-Meltdown-did-wrong.html
The bottom line is that a bunch of kids did not anticipate that (older and dumber) Dem. campaign volunteers would be stymied by a phone app. Apparently the “hanging chads” of FL taught them nothing. The stupidity of Dem. voters is bottomless.
Apparently the “hanging chads” of FL taught them nothing.
That was, like, 20 years ago. When this bunch of kids was, like, 5 or maybe 10 years old. History book stuff!
Perhaps the plan all along. The dems should just have California and New York first and be done with it.
Republicans would love this. Then Trump could run against Congressman Nadler or Schiff or some other local Leftist favorite who would have no chance in the general election.
The point of order of the primaries is to find someone who will have widespread appeal in swing states. NY and CA are voting Dem no matter what so it makes no difference to them if they put Bozo the Clown at the top of the ticket.
Trump would lose a lot of his base to Sanders.
I really didn't think I'd be voting for Trump again, but I'd like to have an actual country, something the Democrats seem determined to dismantle. While I'd like to see some progressive economic policies, I don't want them to be part of a Green New Deal framework. I'm very concerned with what the Green New Deal would mean for our energy supply in the not-too-distant future. (Look at how "green" energy policies are playing out in Germany.) Granted, the president is in more of a position to single-handedly make a difference on immigration policy than on economic and energy policy, so my concerns about the GND are secondary.
That’s basically my position. While I’d like to believe that part of this is just party politics, part of me knows better. I just can’t believe that an open freaking *American socialist* is embracing open borders. I’m no Marxist myself, but I do respect people who go their own way against all pressure, and the standbys of the Old Left have, almost as much as the Old Right. After decades of sticking to your guns on policy in a completely ideologically hostile environment, it’s really freaking shameful to do something this craven at the penultimate moment.
American politics really has become a game for actors. That’s what they all are. Actors.
I am not even a hardcore restrictionist, relative to most people here: to me, immigration is an important issue, not the sole issue. But our elites seem determined for the US to be a market with a nation, not a nation with a market. That’s sick. For Sanders to embrace open immigration while knowing full well what it’ll do to ordinary Americans, out of a mix of ideological climate and TDS, is despicable. I don’t expect authentic leftists to embrace the social cohesion aspects, but blowing off the economic ones and embracing Kaplan style arguments is a sign of cowardice at best.
Maybe I’ll write in Mike Judge for President?
The fundamental problem with socialists is not that all socialists are power-hungry, predatory, ruthless thugs: most socialist voters are just ordinary, economically ignorant fellow citizens.
The real problem is that socialism creates an institutional structure that enables and incentivizes power-hungry, predatory thugs to get into positions of power and authority where they can intimidate their fellow human beings.
As Hayek said, under socialist institutions, "the worst get on top."
Bernie himself may be a real mensch. But if he changes our society in the way he desires, he will in fact empower the worst among us.
And the worst are somehow not already at the top as it is?
I already told Jack this: you can make all the rational arguments against socialism you like, and you’ll probably be right on a lot of it. I’m not economically competent, so I’m not going to pretend I know what I’m talking about. But in political terms, it doesn’t matter. Unless the USA is de-oligarchized and de-rentiered fast, the masses are going to find it an increasingly attractive option, economically sound or not. The Overton Window is shifting radically these days as our out-of-touch-with-reality elites continue to resist even the slightest reforms, in favor of putting on theater. Anything that many of our elites hate will likely sound appealing, truth be told.
The zombie Reaganism and mindless MBA worship that is still so normative in the GOP needs to go if they are to take advantage of the insanity of the modern Democratic Party and appeal to a new generation of Americans. There’s no way around it. The world has changed since 1984. The role of the party should not be to serve as market evangelicals, but as people who advocate finding a way to make the market work for American citizens. Certainly not the other way around, as Jeb Bush and Co. would have it. Trump won not least because he ignored or mocked longstanding GOP ideology in 2016, including here.
Gabe Ruth wrote to me:
Ir would not matter much who was on top if we had a minimal government that basically left us alone, as was true in the early decades of the Republic.
And when you get an over-bearing, all-intrusive government, it does not actually matter who is at the very top. It’s the mid-level apparatchiks who make life miserable for everyone: the local gauleiters, the local Gestapo agents, etc.
When was the last time you were treated rudely by a waiter in a restaurant? Did you continue to patronize that restaurant? Or did you start patronizing another restaurant?
When was the last time you were treated badly by a government functionary or a bureaucrat at a government-sanctioned monopoly — a cop, a guy at the local electric company, an IRS agent, someone at the DMV, a public schoolteacher, etc.? Did you just start patronizing a different IRS or DMV or electric company?
Institutions matter. The problem with Nazism and Communism was not simply that they guys at the top were evil. The problem was that petty, brutal, and abusive people at middle and lower levels were enabled and incentivized by the system.
Bernie is a Bolshevik. An amusing, engaging Bolshevik, but still a Bolshevik.
I agree — the caucus system is flat-out crazy. I grew up an Iowan, and I still don’t really understand how it works, or why it’s supposed to be better somehow than just having a primary.
My Iowa contacts seem pretty sad today, though. I think they all know you’re right: the Establishment’s patience with the caucuses has run out, and Iowa will be just another middle-of-the-pack primary state in the future.
Iowans love to bitch about being bombarded with political ads and unwanted attention from creepy presidential candidates every four years, but the caucuses were the one way in which Iowa stood out from its normal regular ordinary middle-of-the-road unremarkable place in American geography and culture.
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/30/coup-plotters-cia-agents-mayor-pete-endorsers/
Why are so many intelligence veterans throwing their weight behind a young Indiana mayor with such a thin foreign policy resume?
https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1224570627673161729
https://twitter.com/galaxysearchers/status/1224585049191931904
Mr. Walker, this woman is my favorite, maybe typical, Buttigieg caucus voter:
“Iowa caucus voter pulling support for Pete Buttigieg after learning he’s married to a man.”
The DNC’s mistake was not entrusting the Cupertino based company to develope their “app”. Like them or not, good chance at least that aspect of the caucus process would have worked.
Remember, there is no such thing as a "low information voter", that's just crazy talk!
Probably fake news spread by Russian hackerbots!
“Iowa caucus voter pulling support for Pete Buttigieg after learning he's married to a man.”
https://youtu.be/ffwAyzpcGTQ
The DNC’s mistake was not entrusting the Cupertino based company to develope their “app”. Like them or not, good chance at least that aspect of the caucus process would have worked.
Mr. Walker, this woman is my favorite, maybe typical, Buttigieg caucus voter:
Remember, there is no such thing as a “low information voter”, that’s just crazy talk!
Probably fake news spread by Russian hackerbots!
Whoa! Nothing to do with me.
“Iowa caucus voter pulling support for Pete Buttigieg after learning he's married to a man.”
https://youtu.be/ffwAyzpcGTQ
The DNC’s mistake was not entrusting the Cupertino based company to develope their “app”. Like them or not, good chance at least that aspect of the caucus process would have worked.
The abject ignorance and stupidity displayed by both women – the one endorsing candidates about whom she lacks the most basic knowledge and the insipid one convinced her Bible endorses buggery – is glorious.
JMcG replied to me:
Actually, the average university president is just a figurehead who raises money, an empty suit who is good at sucking up to donors.
I probably should have made clear that Hayek’s phrase “on top” did not just mean the CEOs or the university presidents or the members of Congress or the mayors. The point is the people who are “on top” of the rest of us: it may be only a university administrator making $70K a year (I’ve seen several such at my own kids’ college) or an “education consultant” making $80K a year to wreck your kids’ high-school education or a junior diversicrat or journalist who gets some poor soul fired.
The point is that under free-market capitalism, if you satisfy your customers, you’re okay. But under socialism (AKA “crony capitalism” — the Left is right that there has never been “real” socialism — it’s always a scam game for those with influence), there is some other criterion rather than just doing your job.
Socialism = corruption.