Comment by gremlinsinc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gremlinsinc | Hacker News Reader

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Biggest thing that worries me is how and in what way is Pete Buttigieg related to the app.

First off could this be more out of an Austin Powers movie? Literally the company is Shadow Inc. That just wreaks of 'shady'.

Next info on the corp is almost as shady as a Shell Corp.

Here's gist from this article:

* IA Caucus mobile app was created by Shadow Inc.

* Shadow website has scant info except that they worked for Hillary's campaign.

* Related to Groundbase started in 2017 by Gerard Niemara who's twitter is private. According to LI he worked w/ Clinton's campaign in 2015-2016.

* Raised money from Higher Ground Labs - "investors, partners, collaborators, trainers of tech for progressives"

* Tuesday Higher Ground labs no longer listed Groundbase[1] as portfolio company but cached version in google search does (Jan 18th) [2]

* 01/2019 Nonprofit Acronymn announced it acquired Groundbase [3]

* Niemara served as CTO of Acronym while running Groundbase

* Affiliated with Pacronym a political action committee

* Also invests in https://lockwoodstrategy.com and https://couriernewsroom.com/

* David Plouffe Former Obama campaign manager and Acronym board member disavows knowledge of Shadow [4]

* "In a blog post introducing Shadow now only visible via the Internet Archive[5], Niemira wrote: “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."

* Dem campaigns using Shadow include: Mayor Pete, Joe Biden, and Kirsten Gillibrand. Also the TX Dem Party, and Super PAC 'For Our Future', and NV Dem Party [6]

[1] https://highergroundlabs.com/companies/groundbase/

[2] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9nALhm...

[3] https://twitter.com/taraemcg/status/1085980913467564033

[4] https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1224585857832816641

[5] https://web.archive.org/web/20190415130443/https://www.anoth...

[6] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/04/after-epic-nigh...

In the same way all the campaigns pay Google for advertising services, a bunch of the Democratic campaigns pay this small company for a different set of services.

The bug was clear long before we had any sense what results were going to be. And if Buttigieg ends up in first (which is an "if" but still) he'd be the one most hurt -- far more than anybody else.

Do you think that Pete is so stupid to publicly pay a company to rig a caucus for him when caucus voting is literally public with a paper trail?

Last time the person in charge of the debates rigged it in favor of Hillary, and ended up forming part of her campaign. In plain sight.

Has happened before, keeps happening.

No, but I think it’s within the realm of possibility that he delegated the rigging to someone who was. Declaring victory when results aren’t out is just hopelessly bizarre and demands a better explanation than overconfidence.

Yes.

He could be even more stupid to hire a company named Shadow Inc, that has ties to the DNC that could make him look complicit in any rigging should it happen. Was it smart? Definitely not. So stupid for one thing or another, still means stupid right?

Whatever Gremlinsinc assessment of Pete's intelligence is, the facts he just listed have very bad optics for Pete, the DNC and the Democrat party. If they again squeeze Bernie out of the nomination, any other candidate will not have a strong base of supporters.

Judging by how this election season went so far up to this point (including all the primary debates controversies [0]), it seems like DNC didnt learn anything and decided to double down on their previous efforts. I predict that Bernie is almost definitely going to get squeezed out.

0. Referring mostly to that one where they asked Bernie a question based on a made up quote regarding female president viability, and then proceeded asking further questions from other candidates treating that quote as a fact, despite Bernie explicitly denying it mere seconds before. And Bernie isn’t even my first choice candidate, but seeing all this happen just felt really surreal and unfair.

The man gave a victory speech with no results in that show him winning. This, along with the delay in announcing the results, is all an effort to influence the outcomes of the upcoming primaries by showing false "momentum" in Iowa. If the official results aren't out, no one can prove him wrong yet.

This morning, above all other natural trending information on Twitter, Bloomberg had a tidal wave of articles promoted saying how good Iowa was for several candidates, none of which is supported by the data that I've seen. It seems Sanders won pretty substantially, and the DNC is trying to delay results to control the narrative long enough to get results from other states.

"The man gave a victory speech with no results in that show him winning"

The POTUS claimed his inauguration crowd size was far larger than it actually was.

Politicians talk big about polls that favor them ... often their own polls.

Giving a speech is PR, not a conspiracy.

And distrusting the DNC is not a conspiracy theory. A political party is free to choose its candidate however it pleases, and it came out that they tampered with the 2016 results. A few months ago, Obama was quoted saying that if Sanders appeared to be the pick that he'd "step in," whatever that's supposed to mean. The whole thing is a circus.

Distrust is one thing, implying a conspiracy is another.

There's a weird world of "Oh man here's all these mysterious connections... I'm not saying it is a conspiracy"... yeah you are.

His words were - "Looking at what happened last night, looking at all of the data that we've got, it was an extraordinary night and we are absolutely victorious coming into New Hampshire." That's not lying about turnout to a speech, its lying about the results of the political process.

Coupled with the "coin flip" shenanigans that were (fortunately) overturned, the DNC claiming the delay is for "quality control", and the fact that numbers STILL haven't been released, its fair to say something shady is in play here. How can "quality control" for a caucus be executed when everyone has left and gone home? If we can have the results of a national election cleared up in a single day, there's no reason it should be taking this long.

Also: we have all been taught to treat "conspiracy" as a dirty word. If multiple entities get together to do something shady, they have "conspired". That's "conspiracy". Do you also believe Jeffery Epstien killed himself? Because according to the authorities, any other story is "conspiracy theory".

I don't think that speech means anything more than the things I cited.

I feel like folks see something happen then hear a speech like they've never heard a campaign speech before and assume they're evidence of something...

When John McCain was being nominated he gave a speech saying that he "knows where Osama Bin Laden is".... nobody really believed it literally.

Supposedly, the code was created by the "Defending Digital Democracy" project. Robby Mook consulted the project, but claims that he did not develop any code directly.

“Sorry, folks. I did NOT have anythjng to do with building the Iowa caucus app. I dont know anything about it, had no role in it, and dont own a company that makes mobile appa. Please contact @iowademocrats with questions about it.” - Robby Mook

https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/robby-mook-iowa-caucus/

Note sure why this is getting downvoted.

Sure it's wild speculation, but at least the guy is posting links to help justify the wild speculation.

Better than the average comment which is someone postulating what they know without any reference to sources/data/logic.

"Sure it's wild speculation"

HN has been inundated by sometimes entirely nonsensical speculation lately.

We're at the point where "so and so benefits form this they must be behind it / it's all a lie" ... even sometimes when they don't benefit.

>Note sure why this is getting downvoted.

Followed by

>Sure it's wild speculation

...but at least the guy is posting links to help justify the wild speculation.

Conspiracy sites have the worst link rot. Except for the Flat Earth Society (tm). Those guys are rock solid.

https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/

Personally, I downvoted because this kind of wild speculation only leads to wasteful conflict and bad blood in a time when that's the last thing we need. And I'm saying that as someone who has personally contributed to the Sanders campaign.

Because it's textbook conspiracy theory crap. Obviously there are links. Every conspiracy theory is bristling with links.

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