Sunday, February 9, 2020
Big Buttigieg Bloviations: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02/09/big-buttigieg-bloviations-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
by Caitlin Johnstone
Prediction: if Sanders somehow manages to win the primary, a majority of the centrist pundits screaming "vote blue no matter who" at Bernie supporters right now will help amplify smear campaigns against him and undermine his campaign against Trump.
~
The UK media's shrieking, deceitful smear campaign against Corbyn last year far exceeds anything we've seen against Sanders so far in terms of intensity and egregiousness. I point this out to highlight the fact that there's still plenty of room for it to get a whole lot worse.
~
Bernie's most important job is being a very reasonable thing that the people want and the establishment refuses to let them have. Force them to kill his run openly and you can wake more people up to the reality that they're not living in the kind of nation they thought they were.
~
Fun fact: Amy Klobuchar's support base consists of nothing but TV news pundits and mainstream op-ed writers.
~
Fun fact: the most dangerous synthetic material ever invented in a laboratory for public consumption is Pete Buttigieg.
~
Most politicians are experts at the art of eloquent-sounding bloviations that never actually say anything. Pete Buttigieg is like the Mozart of that art.
~
Buttigieg has almost no political history and still has to deal with significant scandals from his tiny mayoral stint. Yet he's still polling well. Very interesting.
~
Nobody's shocked that the Democratic establishment is rigging the election, but some are shocked that they're being so brazen about it. Don't be. Remember, there are no consequences for these people: they know they'll never lose their jobs, and they're fine with Trump winning.
If you're suffering under the status quo, you're much more likely to care about changing it. If you're benefiting from the status quo, you're more likely to care about protecting it and making sure you never become one of those poor suckers who are being crushed to death by it. Establishment lackeys benefit from it.
~
One under-appreciated establishment-friendly perk of the Iowa caucus rigging is that the scandal completely eclipsed the big story of the day: the spectacular face-plant of the anointed king Joe Biden. If not for the scandal, that's all anyone would be talking about right now.
~
At some point the establishment narrative managers are going to realize that criticizing "Bernie bros" for being angry isn't an effective strategy, because the answer coming back is only ever going to be "Oh you have no fucking idea."
~
By July establishment Democrats are going to be literally urinating on progressives and telling them they're helping Trump if they react in any way.
~
Any political issue which doesn't directly threaten the interests of oligarchs and the military-industrial complex is incapable of delivering meaningful political change; it will be hijacked and used as a carrot or a stick by the two-headed one-party system to distract from anything that threatens existing power structures.
~
Anyone who claims the left is starting a "class war" is claiming that the billionaire class has not already been waging war on normal people on a multitude of fronts for many years. They're saying that the exploitation, oppression, manipulation, corruption and poverty is all in your imagination.
~
There is a large and influential political faction which has spent the last three years subtly indoctrinating the American public into assuming that all of America's problems will go away once Trump is out of office. These people are doing far, far more harm than good.
~
All the major power players are perfectly fine with Trump getting reelected; he's been advancing all their key toxic agendas. Democratic Party leaders are fine with it too; they'll all keep their jobs, wealth and influence regardless of what happens in November, and they know it.
[...]
Prediction: if Sanders somehow manages to win the primary, a majority of the centrist pundits screaming "vote blue no matter who" at Bernie supporters right now will help amplify smear campaigns against him and undermine his campaign against Trump.
~
The UK media's shrieking, deceitful smear campaign against Corbyn last year far exceeds anything we've seen against Sanders so far in terms of intensity and egregiousness. I point this out to highlight the fact that there's still plenty of room for it to get a whole lot worse.
~
Bernie's most important job is being a very reasonable thing that the people want and the establishment refuses to let them have. Force them to kill his run openly and you can wake more people up to the reality that they're not living in the kind of nation they thought they were.
~
Fun fact: Amy Klobuchar's support base consists of nothing but TV news pundits and mainstream op-ed writers.
~
Fun fact: the most dangerous synthetic material ever invented in a laboratory for public consumption is Pete Buttigieg.
~
Most politicians are experts at the art of eloquent-sounding bloviations that never actually say anything. Pete Buttigieg is like the Mozart of that art.
~
Buttigieg has almost no political history and still has to deal with significant scandals from his tiny mayoral stint. Yet he's still polling well. Very interesting.
~
Nobody's shocked that the Democratic establishment is rigging the election, but some are shocked that they're being so brazen about it. Don't be. Remember, there are no consequences for these people: they know they'll never lose their jobs, and they're fine with Trump winning.
If you're suffering under the status quo, you're much more likely to care about changing it. If you're benefiting from the status quo, you're more likely to care about protecting it and making sure you never become one of those poor suckers who are being crushed to death by it. Establishment lackeys benefit from it.
~
One under-appreciated establishment-friendly perk of the Iowa caucus rigging is that the scandal completely eclipsed the big story of the day: the spectacular face-plant of the anointed king Joe Biden. If not for the scandal, that's all anyone would be talking about right now.
~
At some point the establishment narrative managers are going to realize that criticizing "Bernie bros" for being angry isn't an effective strategy, because the answer coming back is only ever going to be "Oh you have no fucking idea."
~
By July establishment Democrats are going to be literally urinating on progressives and telling them they're helping Trump if they react in any way.
~
Any political issue which doesn't directly threaten the interests of oligarchs and the military-industrial complex is incapable of delivering meaningful political change; it will be hijacked and used as a carrot or a stick by the two-headed one-party system to distract from anything that threatens existing power structures.
~
Anyone who claims the left is starting a "class war" is claiming that the billionaire class has not already been waging war on normal people on a multitude of fronts for many years. They're saying that the exploitation, oppression, manipulation, corruption and poverty is all in your imagination.
~
There is a large and influential political faction which has spent the last three years subtly indoctrinating the American public into assuming that all of America's problems will go away once Trump is out of office. These people are doing far, far more harm than good.
~
All the major power players are perfectly fine with Trump getting reelected; he's been advancing all their key toxic agendas. Democratic Party leaders are fine with it too; they'll all keep their jobs, wealth and influence regardless of what happens in November, and they know it.
[...]
IOWA CAUCUS APP DEVELOPER WAS EMBEDDED IN DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT
[THIS ARTICLE IS WORTH READING AGAIN]
https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-shadow-acronym/
NEW DETAILS SHOW HOW DEEPLY IOWA CAUCUS APP DEVELOPER WAS EMBEDDED IN DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT
Lee Fang
February 4 2020, 2:34 p.m.
DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVE Tara McGowan is denying that her high-profile liberal firm ACRONYM played a role in the Monday evening caucus debacle, claiming that her firm was merely an investor in the company Shadow Inc., which developed the app at the center of the controversy. But internal company documents, a source close to the firms, and public records show a close and intertwined relationship between Acronym and Shadow.
In addition, ahead of the caucuses, questions swirled inside Shadow over the company’s ability to deliver a quality product, and there was concern from at least one staff member that senior leaders of Shadow and Acronym — both of which were launched as a new Democratic bulwark against President Donald Trump — have been far from neutral in the Democratic primary.
Throughout the caucus yesterday, Democratic officials reported widespread problems downloading the app and inconsistencies uploading caucus results, leading to the Iowa Democratic Party’s decision to take the unusual step of delaying the release of the results. This is the first year the app was used, and ahead of the caucuses, the Iowa Democratic Party asked that the app’s name be kept secret. The New York Times reported that “its creators had repeatedly questioned the need to keep it secret.”
Kyle Tharp, a spokesperson for Acronym, released a statement on Monday night downplaying his company’s affiliation with Shadow.
“ACRONYM is an investor in several for-profit companies across the progressive media and technology sectors,” Tharp said. “One of those independent, for-profit companies is Shadow, Inc, which also has other private investors.”
David Plouffe, a former campaign manager to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential bid who joined Acronym’s board, also distanced himself from the company during an MSNBC panel last night. “I have no knowledge of Shadow,” said Plouffe. “It was news to me.”
But previous statements and internal Acronym documents suggest that the two companies, which share office space in Denver, Colorado, are deeply intertwined.
Last year, McGowan, a co-founder of Acronym, wrote on Twitter that she was “so excited to announce @anotheracronym has acquired Groundbase,” a firm that included “their incredible team led by [Gerard Niemira] + are launching Shadow, a new tech company to build smarter infrastructure for campaigns.” McGowan also noted that “With Shadow, we’re building a new model incentivized by adoption over growth.” The acquisition was announced in mid-January of last year.
In an interview on a related podcast last month, McGowan described Niemira as “the CEO of Shadow, which is the technology company that Acronym is the sole investor in now.”
What’s more, internal documents from Acronym show a close relationship with Shadow. An internal organizational chart shows digital strategy firm Lockwood Strategy, FWIW Media, and Shadow as part of a unified structure, with Acronym staff involved in the trio’s operations.
In an all-staff email sent last Friday, an official with Lockwood Strategy reminded team members about “COOL THINGS HAPPENING AROUND ACRONYM.” The list included bullets points such as, “The Iowa caucus is on Monday, and the Shadow team is hard at work,” and “Shadow is working on scaling up VAN integration with Shadow Messaging for some Iowa caucus clients.” (VAN refers to the widely used Democratic voter file technology firm.) Acronym staffers also attended the Shadow staff retreat.
A person with knowledge of the company’s culture, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, shared communications showing that top officials at the company regularly expressed hostility to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s supporters. McGowan is married to Michael Halle, a senior strategist with the Buttigieg campaign. There is no evidence any preference of candidates had any effect on the coding issue that is stalling the Iowa results.
Acronym launched with a promise to compete with the Trump campaign’s strong emphasis on digital media, launching Democratic messages through paid advertisements on Facebook and other platforms. But the source said the company in many ways was woefully unprepared for the many challenges it had taken on, including the Iowa caucus app.
A precinct captain for Sanders, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press, confirmed that the rollout was rushed. “We didn’t know about the app until like a month ago. And we didn’t have access to the app until like three days ago,” the source said.
“This app has never been used in any real election or tested at a statewide scale and it’s only been contemplated for use for two months now,” David Jefferson, who also serves on the board of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization, told the New York Times.
Federal campaign finance records show that the Iowa Democratic Party and the Nevada Democratic Party retained Shadow to develop its caucus app. Shadow has also been retained for digital services by Buttigieg’s campaign, which paid the company $42,500 for software-related services last July, and by Joe Biden’s campaign, which paid Shadow $1,225 for text messaging services, last July as well.
Shadow was launched by former staffers to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, including Niemira, Krista Davis, Ahna Rao, and James Hickey, according to professional biographies listed on LinkedIn. Shadow did not respond to a request for comment.
Acronym, which includes a hybrid model of a 501(c)4 entity that does not disclose donors and a Super PAC that does, has been a favorite for deep-pocketed Democratic donors. Donald Sussman, the founder of Paloma Partners, and Michael Moritz, a partner at Sequoia Capital, each donated $1 million to Acronym last year. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg gave $500,000. Investor Seth Klarman, once a major donor to Republican causes, gave $1.5 million to Acronym.
Acronym appears to have deleted portions of its website showcasing its involvement in Shadow. “ACRONYM is thrilled to announce the launch of Shadow, a new technology company that will exist under the ACRONYM umbrella and build accessible technological infrastructure and tools to enable campaigns to better harness, integrate and manage data across the platforms and technologies they all use,” wrote Niemira in a now-deleted blog post.
This morning, William McCurdy II, the chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, released a statement announcing that the party will not be using the Shadow app for its February caucus.
“NV Dems can confidently say that what happened in the Iowa caucus last night will not happen in Nevada on February 22nd. We will not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus,” said McCurdy. “We had already developed a series of backups and redundant reporting systems, and are currently evaluating the best path forward.”
Acronym group that sabotaged Iowa caucus
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/06/acronym-iowa-caucus-billionaire-alabama-disinformation/
Acronym group that sabotaged Iowa caucus birthed by billionaire who funded Alabama disinformation campaign
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Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman funded the creation of ACRONYM, the group that sabotaged the Iowa caucus results, after bankrolling voter manipulation campaigns including the notorious online “false flag operation” in Alabama’s 2017 senate race.
By Max Blumenthal
At the time of publication, February 6, the winner of the Iowa’s Democratic Party caucus is still unknown. Senator Bernie Sanders, the clear winner in virtually every exit poll, is currently ahead in votes. Yet somehow Pete Buttigieg, a favorite of the party establishment who was unknown to most voters until last year, has claimed victory.
The force accused of sowing the confusion and disarray surrounding the first Democratic Party contest of the 2020 election season is a dark money nonprofit called Acronym. It was Acronym that launched Shadow Inc, the mysterious company behind the now-infamous, unsecured, completely unworkable voter app which prevented precinct chairs from reporting vote totals on caucus night.
The exceptionally opaque Acronym was itself created with seed money from a Silicon Valley billionaire named Reid Hoffman who has financed a series of highly manipulative social media campaigns.
The billionaire founder of LinkedIn, Hoffman is a top funder of novel Democratic Party social media campaigns accused of manipulating voters through social media. He is assisted by Dmitri Mehlhorn, a corporate consultant who pushed school privatization before joining Hoffman’s political empire.
One of the most consequential beneficiaries of Hoffman’s wealth is Acronym CEO Tara McGowan, a 33-year-old former journalist and Obama for America veteran.
Once touted as “a weapon of a woman whose innovative tactics make her critically important to the Democratic Party,” McGowan’s name is now synonymous with the fiasco in Iowa. She also happens to be married to a senior advisor to Pete Buttieg’s presidential campaign.
Back in December 2018, McGowan personally credited Hoffman and Mehlhorn’s “Investing in US” initiative for the birth of her dark money pressure group, Acronym.
“I’m personally grateful and proud to be included in this group of incredible political founders + startups @reidhoffman and his team, led by Dmitri [Mehlhorn], have supported and helped to fund over the past two years,” she declared on Twitter in December 2018.
Tara McGowan@taraemcg
· Dec 21, 2018
Replying to @taraemcg
So many of the most innovative organizations changing our politics today, including @anotheracronym wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for bold funders + leaders who believe in our vision, are unafraid to take risks and provide the resources for us to test and scale new models.
Tara McGowan@taraemcg
I’m personally grateful and proud to be included in this group of incredible political founders + startups who @reidhoffman and his team, led by Dmitri, have supported and helped to fund over the past two years. https://medium.com/@DmitriMehlhorn/investing-in-us-64afe222face …
Investing in US
2017–2018 in Reviewmedium.com
7
1:07 PM - Dec 21, 2018
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At the time, Hoffman had just been exposed for funding Project Birmingham, a covert disinformation campaign consisting of false flag tactics that aimed to depress voter turnout and create the perception of Russian interference in the 2017 Alabama senate election.
Hoffman and Mehlhorn have also faced scrutiny for their alleged operation of a series of deceptive pages which attempted to manipulate center-right users into voting for Democrats. Today, Acronym’s McGowan oversees a massive Facebook media operation that employs similarly deceptive techniques to sway voters.
Through youthful, tech-centric operatives like McGowan, Hoffman and Mehlhorn are constructing a massive new infrastructure that could supplant the party’s apparatus.
As Vanity Fair reported, “Hoffman and Mehlhorn, after all, are not just building a power base that could supplement traditional Democratic organizations, they are, potentially, laying the groundwork to usurp the D.N.C. entirely.”
‘Laying the groundwork to usurp the D.N.C. entirely’
Having fostered friendships with nationally known Silicon Valley oligarchs like right-wing libertarian Trump supporter Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, is now making his name as a top sugardaddy of the Democratic anti-Trump resistance.
Following Trump’s election in 2016, Hoffman plowed his money into an array of new Democrat-aligned social media groups through a funding hub he founded called Investing in US.
To run Investing in US on a day-to-day basis, Hoffman tapped Dmitri Mehlhorn, a venture capitalist and political strategist accustomed to walking the line between the corporate world and Democratic Party.
“There was no risk-capital or growth-capital arm of the resistance, and so that is what we’ve tried to build,” Mehlhorn told Vanity Fair. “Now, in terms of what that implies, that implies that we are backing founders, so people who we think have big, potentially game-changing ideas.”
Mehlhorn’s career path tracked closely with neoliberal party favorites like Pete Buttigieg and Cory Booker. He studied at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, launched his career at McKinsey Associates, and became a leading advocate for school privatization as the chief operating officer of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst.
According to Mehlhorn’s bio, he sits on the board of American Prison Data Systems, a company that claims to reduce recidivism by giving prisoners tablets to study coding for five hours a day.Mehlhorn is also an advisor to the Democratic group DigiDems, which Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign paid $1,540 for technology services.
In a 2018 Medium post, announcing the “founders” that Investing in US planned to back, Mehlhorn resorted to distinctly neoconservative talking points to emphasize the mission of his organization.
After quoting Ronald Reagan, he declared, “Trump and his movement, borrowing heavily from other authoritarian criminals such as Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin, promised to hollow out America’s principles in favor of his own personal enrichment.”
Pledging to “inoculate our politics and our economy against corruption, white nationalism, and mass deceit,” Mehlhorn announced major donations to “diverse groups” with names like Woke Vote, PushBlack, and an “anti-Nazi” organization known as Integrity for America.
Among the top recipients of support from Investing in US was McGowan’s Acronym, which Mehlhorn described merely as a “media group.”
As The Grayzone reported, Acronym has ballooned since its founding into a massive dark money operation, even launching a Super PAC dubbed Pacronym that has raked in money from hedge fund billionaires like Seth Klarman and Donald Sussman.
What Mehlhorn and Hoffman never disclosed to the public, however, was their support for a Democrat-aligned group that waged a covert online disinformation campaign which aimed to influence the outcome of the 2017 special senate election in Alabama.
Project Birmingham: From New Knowledge to no knowledge
The 2017 senate election in Alabama was one of the most dramatic races of President Donald Trump’s first term in office. Treated by national media as a referendum on Trump in a red state, it pitted a far-right Republican, Roy Moore, against Doug Jones, a moderate Republican who ran as a Democrat. In the end, Jones won an upset victory in a deep red state, thrilling Democrats across the country.
As Dan Cohen wrote in a series of reports for The Grayzone, the outcome of the 2017 Alabama race was heavily influenced by an online disinformation operation. The campaign, which was unknown to voters at the time, was called Project Birmingham.
Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman provided $100,000 to the architects of this black ops campaign. His money was pipelined through American Engagement Technologies (AET), a company run by Obama administration veteran and Democrat tech operative Mikey Dickerson. Through AET, another firm comprised of Obama campaign veterans and national security state operatives called New Knowledge was contracted to carry out the secretive voter manipulation project.
In internal documents first covered by the New York Times, Project Birmingham’s architects described the scheme as an “elaborate false flag operation” which aimed to convince voters that the Kremlin was supporting Moore through thousands of fake Russian bots.
Project Birmingham went to absurd lengths to drive voters away from Moore. Its architects deployed a phony Facebook page encouraging Alabamians to vote for an obscure write-in Republican candidate, arranged interviews for the candidate in major newspapers, and even sought to arrange SuperPAC funding for his dark horse campaign.
The deeply un-democratic campaign was overseen by a cast of characters remarkably similar to those who bungled the 2020 Iowa caucus count. Like the staff of Acronym and Shadow Inc., the New Knowledge operatives who carried out Project Birmingham were 30- and 40-something techies who had worked in the Obama administration and on various Democratic campaigns. (New Knowledge was rebranded as Yonder after the scandal was exposed in national media.)
The devious tactics they waged in Alabama likely influenced the outcome of the election. A leaked “Project Birmingham Debrief” claimed that New Knowledge’s black operations “moved enough votes to ensure a Doug Jones victory.”
After the scheme was exposed, Hoffman issued a public apology and claimed he had no knowledge of the New Knowledge disinformation project. He said nothing about the Investing in US employee who worked directly on Project Birmingham, however.
This was hardly the first time Hoffman and Mehlhorn’s finger prints were discovered on a deceptive voter manipulation campaign.
Aiming to ‘mirror’ the tactics of Russia’s Internet Research Agency
Following the 2018 midterm congressional election, Reid Hoffman and his henchman Dmitri Mehlhorn faced further scrutiny in national media, this time for operating a fake news-style organization called News for Democracy.
This shady outfit managed an array of community Facebook pages initially focusing on sports, Christianity, patriotism, and other topics that were likely to generate interest from right-wing voters in swing states.
Yet the seemingly locally-branded cultural pages took a decisively political turn as election night approached. After racking up millions of likes, News for Democracy slipped in ads for Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke on a Facebook page targeting evangelical Christians, and attacked a Republican candidate, Senator Marsha Blackburn, on a page focused on local Tennessee sports.
While Hoffman’s right-hand man, Mehlhorn, claimed to reject the spread of misinformation, he told the Washington Post that through projects like News for Democracy, he aimed to “mirror” the tactics of the notorious Russian Internet Research Agency troll farm.
Max Blumenthal
✔@MaxBlumenthal
· Dec 27, 2018
A Senate report on $100,000 of Russian Facebook ads (56% of which appeared post-2016 election) sent US media into a frenzy. Its authors have since been exposed for spending the same amount on a "Russian style" op to swing a Senate race: https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/12/25/senate-report-on-russian-interference-was-written-by-disinformation-warriors-behind-alabama-false-flag-operation/ … via @dancohen3000
Senate Report on Russian Interference Was Written By Disinformation Warriors Behind Alabama ‘False...
Hailed by Congress and the media as defenders of democracy, high-tech Russiagate hustlers Jonathon Morgan and Ryan Fox have been exposed for waging "an elaborate 'false flag' operation" to swing the...thegrayzone.com
Max Blumenthal
✔@MaxBlumenthal
Tech billionaire Reed Hoffman funded the @NewKnowledgeAI Alabama black op. His advisor, Dmitri Mehlhorn, has called for efforts to "mirror" the tactics of the Russian Internet Research Agency troll farm. This IRA Facebook ad is clearly worth emulating. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/26/internet-billionaire-reid-hoffman-apologizes-funding-group-behind-disinformation-alabama-race/?utm_term=.954128002954 …
139
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Facebook eventually launched an investigation into the insidious manipulation ploys of Hoffman and Mehlhorn’s News for Democracy.
The very tactics that landed the two in hot water are remarkably similar to those that Tara McGowan, the Acronym founder who disrupted the Iowa caucuses, has put on display.
McGowan recently founded Courier Newsroom, a seemingly journalistic initiative that appeared to take on a more overtly partisan role with time. Like News for Democracy, Courier Newsroom has opened local news pages on Facebook with unassuming names like “The Virginia Dogwood” or “Arizona’s Copper Courier.” After seeding the pages with folksy local stories, Courier Newsroom bombards users with pro-Democrat political messaging.
As Bloomberg reported, McGowan used “her sizable war chest and digital advertising savvy to pay to have her articles placed into the Facebook feeds of swing-state users.” McGowan then used “that feedback to find more people like them.”
One of McGowan’s dubious news pages, the Virginia Dogwood, spent a whopping $275,000 on Facebook ads during the 2018 midterm elections.
“We’ll try it, see if we can make it work, and hopefully become a permanent piece of the new infrastructure,” McGowan told Bloomberg.
Tara McGowan’s shenanigans in Iowa could be seen in the light of a wider string of manipulations by the Silicon Valley-backed neoliberal network behind her. While Democratic Party elites blame incompetence for the fiasco in Iowa, the history of Acronym and its billionaire backers casts a disturbing shadow over the whole episode.
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