Shadow.  No, not the one caused by the sun, the one founded by former Hillary staffers Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis.  Shadow is the company that developed the app that blew up last night making Iowa Dems look like idiots.  Oh, and the IDP (Iowa Democratic Party) paid Shadow $63,000 for the privilege of being made to look like idiots.  It gets better.  Shadow was also paid over $42,000 by Mayor Pete’s campaign, $1200 by the Biden campaign, and $37,000 by Kirsten Gillibrand’s DOA campaign for software licenses and data.  It gets even better. Shadow rushed this new app into deployment in TWO MONTHS.  And even better, the IDP turned down Homeland Security who had offered to check it for security flaws.

The IDP blames a “coding” problem, but still maintains that the “data and paper trail” are intact.  Are all state Dem parties run by morons?

File under: How Can You Be This Stupid?

Last night on national television, the Iowa Democratic Party shot itself in foot, and this morning it’s holding the same gun to its own head.  At this writing at 6:00 am, results of the caucus last night are still not in, and no one can say when they will be.  Holy Jesus.  With the 2020 election being probably the most significant presidential election in US history, some genius in Iowa decided it was a REALLY GOOD IDEA to roll out a new app to report caucus results.  AND, employing typical state party incompetence, training on said new app was between lame and non-existent.  Chaos ensued during the evening caucuses and the app, as apps are wont to do, locked up.  The state party then told precinct chairs to phone it in, jamming phone lines.  Some precincts actually had to take a photo of the app screen and drive the results in.  Stupid.  Incredibly stupid.

I’ve never really understood why Iowa has been so important for the last 40 years since Jimmy Carter put it on the map.  Or why it goes first.  Or why it still uses the caucus system which has never been all that reliable. Along with New Hampshire and Vermont, Iowa is probably the least representative of national diversity.  It’s sparsely populated and overwhelmingly white. I do know one thing – the Democratic Party didn’t need this, and is a terrible start to the 2020 election cycle.  Also, I predict that this is Iowa’s last time to be first and last caucus.

I have a suggestion for reforming Iowa’s caucus system and it goes like this:

1. Print up a whole bunch of sheets of paper with the candidate’s names on them.
2. Find a whole bunch of buildings around the state (churches, schools) that people can easily find.
3. Provide some little tables that have some privacy (We can even call them voting booths).
4. Have people come to this place, take a form, and put a mark next to the name of the candidate they want.
5. Count the marks for each candidate.
6. Send the totals in.
7. Go home and drink a beer.

I know this is a really unique approach to picking a presidential nominee, but it might just work, especially if the precinct chairs could read and count.  And, it would eliminate the idiocy of hopeful candidates spending years and millions of dollars drumming up support among the three dozen or so people living in the goddam state.  Iowa never deserved to go first with it’s stupid caucus system, and richly deserves to be moved to like the last on the list of Super Tuesday (or later).

Sheesh

Dana Milbank has a great piece in the Washington Post this morning where he describes how Republican senators made a mockery of Trump’s impeachment trial, repeatedly violating their oaths and violating Senate rules.  Many didn’t even bother to show up during the House Managers’ presentations, or if they did, smacked on chewing gum or read magazines.  As I read these descriptions, what struck me was what a poor job Chief Justice John Roberts did, not even trying to get Republicans to follow their own rules in the trial.  Trump always whines about how everything is rigged against him; well, this trial was certainly rigged in favor of him even before it started.

In voting to block all witnesses and close the record, Republicans completed their corrupt mission of acquitting Trump even as they admitted that he is guilty.  Milbank’s best line of the the piece was when he described Lamar Alexanders illogical reasoning for refusing to hear any witnesses.  Alexander’s statement was whiplash inducing as described by Milbank:

“’There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this,’ Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) declared late Thursday. But the choice of ‘what to do about what he did,’ Alexander said, should be ‘in the presidential election.’ What an elegant solution! He accepts that Trump is guilty of cheating in the election — and, therefore, his fate should be determined by the very election in which he has cheated.”

Milbank nails it in those brief sentences by pointing out the idiotic reasoning behind not only Trump’s lawyers but his enablers in the Senate.  They admit Trump is guilty, yet either say it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachability or that the election should determine his fate.  How goddam stupid – if inviting, indeed extorting a foreign government to interfere in a presidential election is not impeachable, then nothing is.  Even more stupid is saying that the election he’s trying to rig is the one in which he should be punished.

The illogic is gobsmacking.

Remember during the 2012 and 2016 elections when Republicans admitted (on television) that their strict voter ID laws were not about fictional “voter fraud”, but about suppressing Democratic voter turnout?  Well, in 2020, it’s happened again.  This time, right-winger, Joni Ersnt of Iowa, said (on television) that the Iowa caucuses were coming up and mused about how smearing Joe Biden using the Trumped up Ukraine conspiracy was going to hurt him by keeping people from caucusing for him.

The shocking thing about how conservatives talk is that they say this crappola so much amongst themselves that they blurt it out are the worst time – for them.  The jig is up.  Not only was Trump trying to smear Biden with a fake conspiracy theory and associated fake investigations, the GOP is continuing that strategy by saying “Biden” as much as possible during the trial about TRUMP.

Martha McSally, the Trumpist right winger from Arizona who former astronaut Mark Kelly is challenging, stupidly fumbled on national television this morning by insulting CNN reporter Manu Raju, when he asked her if the Senate should consider additional evidence in Trump’s impeachment trial.  Instead of just answering the question, she retorted, “Raju, you’re a liberal hack.  I’m not talking to you,” and stormed past him.

Suddenly, Mark Kelly started trending on Twitter.  Kelly is a formidable candidate, and doesn’t need her making an ass of herself on national television, but it damn sure helps.  Have a look.

Every year, the Eurasia Group, a political risk management and consulting group, issues its report on the top ten global risks of international crisis.  This year’s report is profoundly disturbing, especially the largest risk it identifies.  Who is it? Is it Iran? Saudi Arabia? Russia?  Nope.  It’s the US and its broken political system.  Before we talk about this, let’s look at all ten:

1. Delegitimizing of our elections in US.
2. The decoupling of US and China technology cooperation.
3. US/China relations.
4. Multi-National Corporations in conflict with emerging nation/states.
5. Upheaval in India as social policies are causing economic downturns
6. Geopolitical influence of Europe as pushes back against the US and China.
7. Politics vs economics in climate change.
8. US policies toward Shia led nations.
9. Discontent in Latin America.
10. Turkey – pretty much everything.

These risks are all disturbing and obvious to geopolitical observers, but the first risk is scary in that it recognizes the shambles our own political system is in.  It talks about how Trump is greatly worsening the situation through his immoral and illegal behavior, but expresses great concern that he has already delegitimized the 2020 election by claiming that if he loses it’s because the election was “rigged”.  If he wins, the majority of Americans will believe it was rigged the other way (with the help of the Republicans and the Russians) and many won’t accept the result.  It is a lose-lose situation, and with Republicans enabling and protecting Trump, the crisis is unavoidable, especially since they’ll acquit him in the Senate trial emboldening him more if that’s even possible.  I mean, after all, he’s now announced that the only way he’s going to communicate with Congress is through Twitter.  Jesus.

None of this will end well, even in the remote chance that by some miracle he’s removed from office.