The most important lesson of yesterday is that Sanders needs to get young people to vote in the primaries.
This is a non-trivial task.
The race is still basically even, but the entire machinery of the Democratic Party is aligning itself against Sanders, so it is not a simple thing.
Biden is exceeding expectations, but Bernie Sanders is winning decisively in California, so it looks like under the Democratic Party formula, (Proportional apportionment of delegates above a 15% cutoff) Sanders will get more delegates.
Not a great night for Sanders, but not horrible either.
The losers tonight, Warren, who will place third in her home state of Massachusetts and finish completely out of the delegate count in California, and Michael Bloomberg, who appears to have won only the primary in American Samoa. (Tulsi Gabbard actually won her only delegate there)
See ongoing returns here.
Am I the only one who thinks that Klobuchar just wanted to out last Buttigieg?
In any case, failed Presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Beto O’Rourke have endorsed Joe Biden, because people who ran and failed as Washington outsiders feel compelled to endorse the Washington insider.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
Pete “Mayo” Buttigieg has announced that he he is ending his run for President:
Pete Buttigieg, the former small-city Indiana mayor and first openly gay major presidential candidate, said Sunday night he was dropping out of the Democratic race, following a crushing loss in the South Carolina primary where his poor performance with black Democrats signaled an inability to build a broad coalition of voters.
The decision comes just 48 hours before the biggest voting day of the primary, Super Tuesday, when 15 states and territories will allot about one-third of the delegates over all. The results were widely expected to show him far behind Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders.
Buttigieg’s problem is that he could never make inroads with minority voters, because they (IMHO correctly) saw that his record as mayor was profoundly racist, and you cannot win the Democratic Primary without black and Latino support.
Now we learn that the Sackler family attempted to enlist Michael Bloomberg and his media empire to rehabilitate their public image.
It should note that there is no evidence of any direct actions by Bloomberg on behalf of the notorious opioid pushing family, but it DOES present an image of a media organization whose culture is deliberately and aggressively shaped to provide positive coverage to the billionaire class.
As such, this is something which will not play well in either the primary or the general election:
Long celebrated as civic-minded philanthropists, the Sacklers were becoming pariahs. The billionaire family whose company created and pushed the addictive painkiller OxyContin had managed to escape connection with the opioid crisis for years, but now two magazine pieces were portraying them as pain profiteers. Museums that had sought their donations were being asked about giving the money back. Mortimer D.A. Sackler — son of a co-founder of the company, Purdue Pharma, and a member of its board — was openly furious.
And so he turned to a person he knew and admired in the media industry. A person known as a devoted public health crusader, widely recognized for banning smoking in public places and pushing soda taxes around the country: Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire ex-mayor of New York City and founder of Bloomberg L.P.
“I am meeting with Michael Bloomberg tomorrow morning at 10 am to seek his help and guidance on the current issues we are facing,” Sackler wrote to Purdue’s top executives in December 2017. “I plan to discuss the following with him: 1. Current narrative vs the truth. 2. What advice does he have on how best to deal with it? 3. Does he have a journalist that he would recommend who could get the FULL story out there”?
………
Previously undisclosed emails, including some filed in lawsuits against Purdue and others provided by sources, reveal a little-known relationship, forged in part by mutual philanthropic interests, between the Sacklers and Michael Bloomberg. They show that when the Sacklers were facing critical media coverage, they looked to Bloomberg and his news and philanthropic organizations for help. Bloomberg advised Mortimer Sackler on how to handle negative coverage in 2017, and steered the family to a crisis communications specialist who had been his mayoral press secretary. In 2018, Bloomberg Philanthropies staff met with Sackler to discuss launching a joint initiative to combat the opioid crisis.
Now that Michael Bloomberg has joined the Democratic presidential campaign, his history in public life, his role as a news executive and his business history are being re-examined. As his rivals criticize his wealth and accuse him of trying to buy the nomination, his relationship with the Sacklers could prove problematic. Unlike some other candidates, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Bloomberg has not publicly denounced the Sacklers for their role in fostering the opioid epidemic. While “it is not Mike’s usual practice to call out individual companies or company owners,” a spokesperson for Bloomberg Philanthropies said, he has “certainly called out” opioid manufacturers as a group.
………When it came to coverage of their family and its business, the Sacklers felt comfortable reaching out. In fall 2014, Theresa Sackler called then-Serpentine Galleries director Julia Peyton-Jones to express concern about a forthcoming Bloomberg Businessweek story.
“Theresa Sackler rang me about a reporter from Bloomberg who is tracking everyone in the Sackler family and is writing what she believes will be an unflattering article referring to Sackler ‘dirty drug money,’” Peyton-Jones emailed Jemma Read, the London-based head of Bloomberg Corporate Philanthropy. “Theresa thinks that MB’s name could be mentioned in the article. She has no wish to interfere editorially in any way, however, she does want to alert Mike to the situation, and I would be grateful if you could make him aware of it.”
Read then emailed Theresa Sackler, asking for the reporter’s name. Sackler responded by identifying David Armstrong, then a reporter on Bloomberg’s investigations team. “We REALLY don’t want to interfere in any journalist’s work,” she wrote. “Just would not wish MB to be embarrassed by his association with the Serpentine Sackler gallery.” Read followed up by emailing Armstrong (now a senior reporter at ProPublica), asking when the story was scheduled to appear.
The piece was dropped from the magazine’s lineup a day before the issue closed and later ran in a shortened version on Bloomberg’s website and terminal. Editors who worked on the story say that it was handled on its journalistic merits, and that such last-minute changes were common.
………
Aware that Bloomberg Businessweek was working on the Sackler story, Brendan Coffey, then a member of the billionaires team, started to build a model to evaluate their wealth. But he realized it wasn’t a priority for his editors, and didn’t finish the project. “After Mike came back, the wind shifted,” said Coffey, who has since left Bloomberg. “It was a culture of not wanting to upset billionaires.”
………
That same year, Bloomberg threatened to shutter Bloomberg View, part of the news organization’s opinion section, after getting a call from a friend, the billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson. Paulson was upset about a snarky column that suggested his record-breaking donation to Harvard should have gone to “literally any other charity.” Bloomberg cooled down over the weekend and decided that Bloomberg View could stay open, but the columnist was given a talking to, according to people familiar with the incident.
Bernie Sanders came in a distant second place, with Tom Steyer in third despite devoting millions of dollars to the state contest (He has now announced that he is dropping out of the race)
As to the effect on the election, I think that this is generally bad news for Sanders, who underperformed IMHO, and Michael Bloomberg, who, while not on the ballot, has been selling himself as an alternative to a flagging Biden campaign.
Super-Tuesday is in 3 days, and I have no predictions beyond that some of the also-rans are likely dropping out after that.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. scored a decisive victory in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, reviving his listing campaign and establishing himself as the leading contender to slow Senator Bernie Sanders as the turbulent Democratic race turns to a slew of coast-to-coast contests on Tuesday.
Propelled by an outpouring of support from South Carolina’s African-American voters, Mr. Biden easily overcame a late effort by Mr. Sanders to stage an upset. The victory in a state long seen as his firewall will vault Mr. Biden into Super Tuesday, where polls open in just over 48 hours, as the clear alternative to Mr. Sanders for establishment-aligned Democrats.
Mr. Biden, the former vice president, captured just under 50 percent of the vote, well ahead of Mr. Sanders, who had 20 percent. Tom Steyer, the California billionaire, was a distant third, followed by Pete Buttigieg and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. The victory enabled Mr. Biden to significantly narrow Mr. Sanders’s pledged delegate lead, but he did not appear poised to overtake him.
Reports that the Democratic establishment is willing to burn the party to the ground so that they can preside over the ruins is proof of this.
The army of overpaid incompetent consultants, and their friends on the revolving door track at the DNC, realize the iff Bernie Sanders wins, then their personal gravy train comes to an end.
Of course they are willing to produce long lasting damage to the party in order to preserve their position within the party.
It’s the Iron Law of Institutions, “The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.”
Dozens of interviews with Democratic establishment leaders this week show that they are not just worried about Mr. Sanders’s candidacy, but are also willing to risk intraparty damage to stop his nomination at the national convention in July if they get the chance. Since Mr. Sanders’s victory in Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday, The Times has interviewed 93 party officials — all of them superdelegates, who could have a say on the nominee at the convention — and found overwhelming opposition to handing the Vermont senator the nomination if he arrived with the most delegates but fell short of a majority.
Such a situation may result in a brokered convention, a messy political battle the likes of which Democrats have not seen since 1952, when the nominee was Adlai Stevenson.
“We’re way, way, way past the day where party leaders can determine an outcome here, but I think there’s a vibrant conversation about whether there is anything that can be done,” said Jim Himes, a Connecticut congressman and superdelegate, who believe the nominee should have a majority of delegates.
In the words of Mel Brooks, “We gotta protect our phony baloney jobs.”
Harrumph.
9:07 OK, I’m done. Time to pick up Nat.
9:06 Michael Bloomberg mentions the naked cowboy, a New York City institution.
9:05 Sanders notes that the profit motive is what drives hospitals out of rural areas.
9:04 Pete Buttigieg who systematically excluded blacks from political participation in South Bend, argues for more black political participation. Cognitive dissonance.
9:03 Klobuchar calls free public tuition as a give away to rich kids. F%$# her with Cheney’s dick.
9:01 Steyer just said the truest thing of the evening, that every major policy issue in the United States has a subtext of race. Major Props.
9:00 Biden is asked about helping inequality on race, and he talks about entrepreneurship grants.
8:59 Michael Bloomberg is a self-important pompous ass.
8:57 Klobuchar talks about building coalitions on housing and education, and Charlie says that he wants to go into airplane mode, as in FLYING INTO A BUILDING.
8:56 F%$# me, they are now taking questions from Twitter. Just f%$#ing kill me.
8:55 Buttigieg notes that he is married to a school teacher.
8:54 Sanders largely echoes Warren on this.
8:53 Warren savages charter schools and high stakes testing. Probably got a few teacher votes there.
8:52 Bloomberg gives a full throated defense of charter schools, because of course he does, because Wall Street sees it as a profit center.
8:50 Steyer suggests term limits for Senate, excuse me while I vomit.
8:49 Sanders is just weak on gun control.
8:47 Buttigieg goes after Sanders for not opposing the filibuster. Mayo Pete is right. Kill the filibuster.
8:46 Klobuchar claims that she can get gun control because she is from Minnesota? Whiskey Tango Forxtrot?
8:45 Sanders asked about his votes against gun control, he notes that they were bad votes, and he was wrong. Best possible response.
8:44 Warren notes that the problem is the filibuster.
8:43 Biden claims that he beat the gun manufacturers, notes that there are 150 MILLION gun deaths since the passage of the Brady Bill. Maybe he means 150 thousand?
8:42 Gayle King and Nora O’Donnell are now joined by Margaret Brennan, Major Garrett, and Bill Whitaker.
8:40 OMFG!!!! There is a Mike Bloomberg add!!! Motherf%$#er!
8:38 Advertising break. Walmart ad, f%$# Walmart.
8:37 Warren notes (correctly) that the actual progressive agenda is overwhelmingly popular. Line of the night so far, “We have to choose hope over fear.”
8:36 Bernie notes that he polls better against Trump than anyone else on stage.
8:35 Bloomberg: I may have funded Graham, but I also funded Democrats. Theme of the night for everyone but Warren is, “Bernie is dangerous.”
8:34 Klobuchar speaks, and my son, Charlie, who does not drink, wants my rum. I want my rum.
8:33 Steyer notes that Biden wrote that awful crime bill in the 1990s.
8:31 Biden notes that Steyer bought a horrific private prison.
8:30 Buttigieg talks about how Sanders is a danger to the party.
8:29 Steyer claims that the current choices are a Democratic Socialist and a Republican.
8:28 Lots of cross talk. The moderators are losing control.
8:25 Klobuchar goes on Jihad against Medicare for All.
8:25 Sanders is asked about how to pay for Medicare for All, and Sanders notes that Lancet article that shows that Sanders saves $450 billion annually.
8:23 Bloomberg denies the baby story, Buttigieg notes that it’s going to be litigated until election day.
8:22 Colloquy between Warran and Bloomberg, and Warren, and Warren again demands release from the non-disclosure agreements.
8:21 Now, Warren is telling the Bloomberg the “Kill the Baby,” story.
8:19 Bloomberg’s response, “A noun, a verb, and 911.”
8:18 Warren is asked about why she said that Bloomberg is not the safe choice. Woo hoo!!!!!! She goes after how Bloomberg donated to Lindsey Graham and other right wingers. Bloomberg wincing. HAH!!!!
8:17 Klobuchar specifically says that Bloomberg’s stop and frisk program was racist. She raises voter suppression. Good for her.
8:16 Buttigieg is asked about his dubious racial record, and he goes kumbuya. Meh.
8:15 Bloomberg is asked about stop and frisk, and he shucks and jives.
8:14 Props to CBS for only having 2 moderators on stage on at a time.
8:13 Biden says that he will win South Carolina.
8:12 Pete has a hissy fit over that. He’s crying all the way to the wine cave.
8:11 Sanders states his support for the increase in the minimum wage, free college tuition, and Medicare for all. Then he calls out Buttigieg’s sucking up to billionaires.
8:10 Joe Biden changes the subject, brings up the valid point that Sanders’ record on gun control is weak, and wraps himself in the flag of Barack. Probably the best he can do.
8:08 Pete Buttigieg talks about how the real problem is divisiveness. I just realized that Mayor Mayo is a poster child for Backpfeifengesicht, a face that begs to be slapped.
8:07 Warren argues that she has achieved more success than Sanders. Respectful, and a good point.
8:05 Bloomberg suggests that Sanders is Putin’s version of the Manchurian Candidate. I want a f%$#ing drink, so bad right now. He’ll, I’m tempted to smoke crack after that.
8:04 They ask Sanders why, if the economy is so good, how can he argue for socialism. Big fat one up the middle for Sanders who rattles off how many people are not doing well.
8:03 CBS is partnering with Twitter, #DemDebates. I’ll use #DeezeNuts.
8:02 The 7 candidates, Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg, Warren, Klobuchar, Steyer, & Bloomberg.
8:00pm And the debates start the standard network fluff pretending that this is the Super Bowl. It’s more like the Super Bowel.
I will attempt a limited live blogging of the Presidential debates.
I have to leave pick up my NJ from rehearsal at about 9 pm, so I can’t drink, and obviously, I’ll be unable to comment then, because I will be on the road.
I will be SOBER!
Damn your eyes.
Normally, I’d suggest that the most batsh%$ insane bit of punditry over the past week or so would be Chris Matthews likening Bernie Sanders’ victory in the Nevada caucus to the Nazi defeat of France in 1940.
This week, I’d be wrong, because Washington Post editorial editor Fred Hiatt just penned an article stating that Bernie Sanders is the real climate change denier because he isn’t listening to the opinions of oil company executives:
………
Unfortunately, there is no magic wand to make such things happen, as Patrick Pouyanné told me last week. Pouyanné is one of those people whose hatred Sanders might welcome; he is chairman and chief executive of Paris-based Total, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.
As Dan Froomkin pithily notes,(Cleaned up from a Twitter post) “The author of this piece, Fred Hiatt, runs the Washington Post’s opinion side. And as I have long argued, he has done more damage to the Post brand than anyone since Janet Cooke.”
Indeed.
One of the criticisms of Bernie Sanders is that he has 3 homes, his primary residence, his DC residence, and a vacation home, and that this is excessive for a self-proclaimed socialist.
The three houses combined have a value that is a rounding error for the homes of Obama, Clinton, or Biden, as this TikTok video shows:
Here are the homes of #obama #HillaryClinton and #BernieSanders . One is not like the others… Use this for those pesky rumors. pic.twitter.com/GRDEiLuEJB
— Biden's Hairy Leg 🦵🌹 (@BernieWon2016) January 4, 2020
Sanders has been declared the decisive winner of the Nevada caucus, getting nearly half of the caucus votes, and scoring more than double of his nearest competitor, Joe Biden.
Needless to say, someone at MSNBC will call this a potential disaster.
(Performs quick Google)
Yep, Tweety delivers.
Chris Matthews compares the Sanders victory to the Nazi invasion of France.
What the f%$# is wrong with these people?
The latest diss of Bernie Sanders is that he shouts too much.
This is complete bullsh%$.
He is just talking like a New York Jew:
Sen. Bernie Sanders opened Tuesday night’s debate with an impassioned response to a question about one of his signature policy planks: Medicare for all.
“Right now we have a dysfunctional healthcare system [with] 500,000 Americans every year going bankrupt,” he said, his voice growing louder with each word. Sanders spoke emphatically of the injustice in forcing patients to face both their health issues and outrageous hospital bills.
After the debate, a pattern emerged: The Brooklyn-born candidate was too angry, too loud, too passionate. CNN’s S.E. Cupp tweeted, “How is Bernie Sanders already this angry, and it’s just his opening statement.” Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney also mocked Sanders for being “angry.” And, shortly after the debate—during which Democratic candidate Rep. Tim Ryan quipped to Sanders, “You don’t have to yell” during a fossil fuel debate—his campaign started selling stickers that read, “You don’t have to yell. Tim Ryan 2020.”
As the pundits weighed in, some Jewish Americans pointed out that the way Sanders speaks is just how a lot of Jewish people, particularly those from Brooklyn, speak. Some said that perceiving his speech patterns as inherently angry or abrasive was ignorant at best and anti-Semitic at worst. Following the debate, many American Jews voiced their disappointment over critiques against Sanders’s speech patterns:
Yeah pretty much.
On my mom’s side, from the Bronx, a lot of them talk like Bernie.
On my dad’s side, Los Angeles and San Francisco, not so much.
For someone who hates socialism Bloomberg sure loves getting publicly owned #DemDebate
— pokey pup (@Whatapityonyou) February 20, 2020
Now THAT is some world class snark.
DC posted this at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
This is unbelievably f%$#ing brilliant.
Facebook has now announced that Russian provocateurs spent as much as $100,000.00 on political ads in 2016.
Seriously? In a campaign where both sides spent billions, this is beneath the level of chump change:
Providing new evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Facebook disclosed on Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.
Most of the 3,000 ads did not refer to particular candidates but instead focused on divisive social issues such as race, gay rights, gun control and immigration, according to a post on Facebook by Alex Stamos, the company’s chief security officer. The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, were linked to some 470 fake accounts and pages the company said it had shut down.
Facebook officials said the fake accounts were created by a Russian company called the Internet Research Agency, which is known for using “troll” accounts to post on social media and comment on news websites.
The disclosure adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign, which American intelligence agencies concluded was designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election. Multiple investigations of the Russian meddling, and the possibility that the Trump campaign somehow colluded with Russia, have cast a shadow over the first eight months of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
I’m wondering if the incompetent Hillary Clinton campaign might have played a bigger role in this clusterf%$# than any potential foreign interference.
Of course, that conclusion would mean that any number of incompetent political consultants would have to find honest work, and as we know, the motto of the Democratic party is, “We gotta protect our phony baloney jobs.”
11:00 On to the Daily Show. (Or not, it appears that they are running reruns of of South Park)
10:57 Sanders goes back to being Sanders in his closing statement. Sanders implacable positions are his strong point. Even of they disagree, voters liek consistency.
10:57 Someone is heckling Joe Biden. I cannot understand what they are saying.
10:53 We have the candidates recite memorized statements. Meh.
10:52 Closing statements.
10:49 Advertisement break. I am completely sh%$ faced.
10:48 Chuck Todd asks about brokered convention. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? MRDA.
10:46 Klobuchar is pissed off at Buttigieg. So am I.
10:43 Buttigieg notes that Klubuchar was the Democrat most likely to support Trump judges. That will leave a mark.
10:42 Klobuchar invokes 99 year old Hispanic veteran. Pander much?
10:40 This is clearly the most contentious debate so far.
10:33 Another ad break.
10:29 Warren may have had the line of the night, “We cannot be friends with Mitch McConnell.” It is a winning line.
10:29 Biden has clearly decided to go after Bloomberg’s wealth. It’s a good tactic,
10:27 Sanders is accused of being a socialist. Take a drink. Sanders notes that the rich get plenty of socialism.
10:22 I am completely sh%$ faced.
10:21 Buttigieg invokes that he is not a millionaire. AGAIN Take a drink.
10:21 The fact that the candidates have to f%$#ing raise their f%$#ing hands to get recognized if f%$#ed up and sh%$.
10:18 Bernie Sanders notes that Billionaires pay less in taxes than their secretaries, and Bloomberg takes umbrage, despite the fact that his lobbying led to this.
10:14 Vanessa Hauc asks about how rolling back Trump’s give away to mega corps and billionaires will somehow or other hamper small businesses. What the f%$# is wrong with you?
10:11 Mayor Mayo is claiming that the problem is the two most polarizing people on the state (Sanders and Bloomberg). This is the least inspiring chant of Kumbaya ever.
10:09 Biden calls for prosecuting polluting executives. I don’t believe him, but this is a good talking point.
10:04 Sanders is challenged on his call for a fracking ban, and he comes right back to the questioner, saying that anthropogenic climate change is a moral issue and a crisis, and there can be no compromise. This is actually playing to Sanders’ strength, because he gets to show how he is not going to kowtow to lobbyist.
10:02 Warren is challenged about her call to end drilling and mining on public lands.
10:00 Bloomberg calls for rejoining the Paris agreement.
9:59 Climate change is the next subject. Biden is asked first, and his response is largely word salad. Take a drink.
9:57 Captain Morgan’s rum is like drinking perfume.
9:56 No insurance funded anti-M4A ads. I am surprised.
9:53 Ad break, and I am drunk.
9:52 Biden is now begging to have some questions thrown his way. Take a drink.
9:50 Klobuchar calls Buttigieg a loser. (His disastrous Indiana Secretary of State campaign) Hah!!!! Drink.
9:48 Calling out Klobuchar not being able to recall the President of Mexico is bullshit, and I HATE Klobuchar.
9:47 Sanders notes that Bloomberg wanted to cut social security and ACTIVELY CAMPAIGNED for Bush in 2004. Good point.
9:45 Biden notes that Bloomberg could release them this moment. Nice hit.
9:42 Oh, snap. Warren’s response, “Bloomberg’s defense is that I’ve been nice to SOME women.” Calls for Bloomberg to release the women from the non disclosure agreement. Blood drawn, and Bloomberg is sounding awfully snippy.
9:39 Bloomberg is challenged on his refusal to release his tax returns. His response is, “We’re working on it, but it will take a while, until after most of the delegates are allocated.” Asshole. Take a drink.
9:35 The shot at Bernie on his health status. What Sanders has released is a detailed description of health status.
9:33 Klobuchar is confronted on her refusal to investigate police misconduct and the case of of a highly dubious conviction. She shucked and jived on this.
9:31 Warren notes that “Stop and Frisk” was intended to terrorize peoples of color, and that Bloomberg’s apology was profoundly insincere/
9:29 Bloomberg is still defending, “Stop and Frisk.” He claims that he stopped it when it got out of hand. HE DID NOT. As Biden notes, Bloomberg was FORCED to abandon the policy, he fought dropping the policy tooth and nail. Point Biden.
9:26 Biden notes that Bloomberg called Obamacare a “Disgrace”. Good point, but Biden is largely invisible.
9:26 Warren went after Klobuchar’s plan, and notes that it constitutes only 2 paragraphs.
9:24 Sanders notes that we are the only industrialized nation that does not have public health system. Drink.
9:22 Klobuchar’s claiming Post-It Notes for Spain Minnesota is kind of amusing.
9:19 Warren (IMHO correctly) accuses of Buttigieg and Klobuchar of having phony healthcare plans, sand makes the point that take the wins and move forward. (Not unreasonable) I like her description of Klobuchar’s plan as a “Post-It Note”.
9:16 Amy Klobuchar claims that nominating a woman will end misogyny on the internet, because that worked so well in 2016. That level of stupid is worth a double.
9:14 Buttigieg accuses Bernie of fomenting nastiness on the internet. Seriously? Twitter is a f%$#ing cesspool, and the “Bernie Bros” is a fraud.
9:11 Colloquy between Sanders and Buttigieg, and Buttigieg restates Bloomberg’s republican talking
points about Medicare for All. Take a drink.
9:09: Buttigieg makes the point that Bloomberg is not a a real Democrat. Touche.
9:07: Biden says that he polls best, so he should be the nominee. Meh.
9:05: Klobuchar piles on too, goes with her, “I’m the only heartland-American here,” schtick. Drink.
9:02: First question, to Sanders, “Why won’t Bloomberg be the moderate who can beat Trump?
Sanders response, “You need turnout, and Mayor Stop and Frisk won’t drive turnout.”
Bloomberg, “Medicare for all, is taking people’s insurance away.” Bullsh%$.”
Warren unloads a can of whup ass, and notes that Boomberg has said a lot of Trumpesque misogynist sh%$. Take a drink.
9:00: Introductions.
8:59: I am doing rum (Captain Morgan’s) and coke.
I am liveblogging/drunkblogging the debates again, and this time,I will be using a slightly modified version of Matt Taibbi’s drinking game.
“Only our racist billionaire can beat their racist billionaire.“ – some Democratic pollster somewhere shopping for a new boat https://t.co/bPS4QAe2Zo— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) February 15, 2020
This is what the Bloomberg candidacy is all about, Democratic Party consultants desperately trying to get a piece of the money he is throwing around the campaign right now.
I am beginning to think that Michael Bloomberg is running for President to provide cover for the racist resort of Pete Buttigieg.
Unlike Buttigieg, whose hostility can only be divined from his actions as mayor, Bloomberg is on tape many times saying unbelievably racist bullsh%$:
While promoting a multi-million dollar initiative to “reduce disparities” as the mayor of New York City in 2011, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said “enormous cohorts” of young black and Latino men “don’t know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively.”
Bloomberg made the remarks during an interview with PBS Newshour, as he promoted his Young Men’s Initiative, a $127 million, three-year program funded in part by Bloomberg’s charitable organization, financier George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the city of New York. “Blacks and Latinos score terribly in school testing compared to whites and Asians. If you look at our jails, it’s predominantly minorities,” Bloomberg said.
“If you look at where crime takes place, it’s in minority neighborhoods. If you look at who the victims and the perpetrators are, it’s virtually all minorities,” Bloomberg continued. “This is something that has gone on for a long time, I assume it’s prevalent elsewhere but it’s certainly true in New York City.”
This guy has made racism a central part of his public personae, and when juxtaposed with scores of allegations of sexual harassment at his company, this guy should not be able to be elected dog catcher.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party establishment seems to think that Michael Bloomberg’s checkbook is the last firewall against a Bernie Sanders success:
As Mike Bloomberg celebrated his 48th birthday in 1990, a top aide at the company he founded presented him with a booklet of profane, sexist quotes she attributed to him.
A good salesperson is like a man who tries to pick up women at a bar by saying, “Do you want to f—? He gets turned down a lot — but he gets f—– a lot, too!” Bloomberg was quoted in the booklet as saying. Bloomberg also allegedly said that his company’s financial information computers “will do everything, including give you [oral sex]. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.”
………
Several lawsuits have been filed over the years alleging that women were discriminated against at Bloomberg’s business-information company, including a case brought by a federal agency and one filed by a former employee, who blamed Bloomberg for creating a culture of sexual harassment and degradation.
The most high-profile case was from a former saleswoman. She sued Bloomberg personally as well as his company, alleging workplace discrimination. She alleged Bloomberg told her to “kill it” when he learned she was pregnant. Bloomberg has denied her allegation under oath, and he reached a confidential settlement with the saleswoman.
The Washington Post interviewed a former Bloomberg employee, David Zielenziger, who said he witnessed the conversation with the saleswoman. Zielenziger, who said he had not previously spoken publicly about the matter, said Bloomberg’s behavior toward the woman was “outrageous. I understood why she took offense.”
………
A number of the cases have either been settled, dismissed in Bloomberg’s favor or closed because of a failure of the plaintiff to meet filing deadlines. The cases do not involve accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct; the allegations have centered around what Bloomberg has said and about the workplace culture he fostered.
Now, as Bloomberg is increasingly viewed as a viable Democratic candidate for president and the #MeToo era has raised the profile of workplace harassment, he is finding that his efforts to prevent disclosure are clashing against demands that he release former employees and complainants from their nondisclosure agreements.
The degree to which taxpayers are effectively funding fraudulent non-profit activities buggers the mind:
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is helping to fund a Super PAC launching attack ads against Sen. Bernie Sanders in Nevada on Saturday, according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement. The ads are being run by a group called Democratic Majority for Israel, founded by longtime AIPAC strategist Mark Mellman.
The Nevada attack ads, which will air in media markets in Reno and Las Vegas, follow a similar spending blitz by DMFI ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Like the ads that aired in Iowa, the Nevada ads will attack Sanders on the idea that he’s not electable, Mediaite reported.
DMFI spent $800,000 on the Iowa ads, while the spending on the Nevada ads remains private. AIPAC is helping bankroll the anti-Sanders project by allowing donations to DMFI to count as contributions to AIPAC, the sources said. As is typical with most big-money giving programs, the more a donor gives to AIPAC, the higher tier they can claim — $100,000 level, $1 million level, and so on — and the more benefits accrue to them. A $100,000 donor gets more access to members of Congress at private functions, for instance, than someone who merely pays AIPAC’s conference fee. A $1 million donor gets still more, which means that it is important to donors to have their contributions tallied. There is also status within social networks attached to one’s tier of giving. The arrangement allows donors to give directly to DMFI, which is required to file disclosures naming its donors, without AIPAC’s fingerprints.
Rachel Rosen, a spokesperson for DMFI, said she was unaware of any AIPAC encouragement to donate to the organization. “As far as we know, what you are suggesting is completely untrue,” she said. “But because we are a separate organization, we can’t know exactly what other organizations are doing. Therefore, we are the wrong address for the the specific questions you ask — they need to [be] directed to AIPAC.”
AIPAC denied the arrangement. “AIPAC is not and has not been involved in the ad campaigns of any political action committee,” spokesperson Marshall Wittmann wrote in an email. “The accusation that AIPAC is providing benefits to members for donating to fund these political ads or this political action committee is completely false and has no basis in fact.”
If you believe AIPAC’s denials, I have some prime swamp land in Tel Hazor to sell you.