Bill Maher soft-pedaled Mike Bloomberg’s racism last night. You know, this Bloomberg, who bragged about targeting minorities for selective policing.
Maher was addressing the tape of Bloomberg from 2015 that re-emerged this week, wherein the former mayor of New York City admitted—to a crowd of rich, white folks in Aspen—that his stop-and-frisk policy, which was unconstitutional, led to thousands of dubious marijuana arrests, and ruined many lives, was about targeting “minorities.”
“Ninety-five percent of your murders and murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description and Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male minorities 15 to 25…That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city in America. And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed,” said Bloomberg.
He continued: “People say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana who are all minorities!’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why’d we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you should get the guns out of the kids’ hands is throw them against the wall and frisk them.”
Bloomberg is terrible. He’s the worst choice among the Democrats, and I say that as someone who detests Biden. I’m still going to vote Democrat if Biden is the nominee, but if it’s Bloomberg…I might not. Allowing Bloomberg to buy his way into the presidency is the end of the party and democracy in general in the US. It means we’re a total plutocracy, and that our representatives have willingly sold out. Besides, Bloomberg is a stone cold racist piece of shit.
Maher joked about that, and got booed.
“Bernie Sanders won Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s also leading in the national polls, which means we have a new frontrunner… Michael Bloomberg? What the fuck?” offered Maher, adding, “Well, Bloomberg must be the frontrunner because liberals are calling him a racist.”
When the audience began booing Maher’s joke castigating liberals for calling Bloomberg a racist, he sniped, “Keep booing—that’s how you lost the last election.”
He’s not the frontrunner, no matter how much the media and rich phonies like Maher get starry-eyed over him, and liberals are calling him racist because he said racist things. Why is Maher glossing over the blatant, outrageous things a rich man with power said? Those remarks are not a minor issue.
What’s interesting, though, is that Maher has lost his audience. Part of that is almost certainly that revealing accusation: “you lost the election.” Maher does not identify with his audience, and does not identify with those of us who are suffering with the election of Donald Trump. Maher’s got his, he’s feeling no pain, and his audience of centrist liberals can go fuck themselves.
Why does Maher still have a show? Why do you (that’s right, I don’t identify with people who watch him) continue to watch his crappy program and his smug face? When will he find himself unemployed, so he can more righteously complain about his cancellation?
“And the way you should get the guns out of the kids’ hands is throw them against the wall and frisk them”
I know a better solution. Stop fucking selling them!
I wonder if his liberal audience will notice how Maher distanced himself from them? “liberals are calling him a racist” i.e. Maher is no liberal, although he likes to describe himself as one when he isn’t using the libertarian label. Libertarian seems more accurate anyway. He’s the epitome of the IGMFY crowd.
Granted libertarians are capable of doing racist things: Goldwater voted against landmark civil rights legislation and inspired the Southern Strategy that realigned the parties and Murray co-authored The Bell Curve, but, risking No True Scotsman, would a bona fide libertarian support a candidate who promotes police as an arm of the state violating the civil rights of minorities, targets marijuana distribution, and attempts enacting draconian nanny state measures limiting soda cup size? Not sure Maher has ever been clear why he labels himself a libertarian, but at least hasn’t thought the contradictions in Bloomberg targeting marijuana through. Isn’t Maher in favor of legalization?
In The Coddling of the American Mind Haidt and Lukianoff point out how some libertarians on the right can find common ground with the premises of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow in terms of the drug war, police policies and the prison pipeline. Hmmm…
Libertarians don’t support social programs involving redistribution that ameliorate conditions that lead impoverished minority youth toward crime though and support privatization of prisons that leads to a motel vacancy reducing profit motive.
Damn you principle of charity! Actually clicking on link I found Maher said these things:
“Bloomberg does have some blind spots, I’m not going to lie about that. He’s not too good on pot, either.”
[…]
“I think he has real blind spots […] part of this is because the police can’t be trusted with this policy, because they do throw people against the wall instead of doing it the way they should sometimes, not all…”
But Van Jones did lay into Maher a bit.
I doubt I could vote for Biden so Bloomberg is a no go. The other billionaire, Steyer, is more to my liking but not perfectly so.
I love how the Democratic Party is trying to push Bernie out for not being enough of a Democrat; yet I was a republican until 2018 Bloomberg gets a pass. Wtf. What if it comes down to trump and Bloomberg?
After he got his show in HBO, Maher became rich enough that he started to benefit from institutionalized racism, and so he’s perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to it or to mock people who are against it. Not that he was exactly a staunch opponent of racism before then, but now he’s a lot more eager to protect it than he was in the 90s. It’s amazing how enough money turns people into dickweeds of the highest caliber.
Bloomberg really should be running for the Republican nomination. He would actually have done some good there. He was a Republican governor, then nominally independent, and only signed up as a Democrat in late 2018. I’ve criticized Bernie for his reluctance to identify as a Democrat in between running for their Presidential nomination, but Bloomberg makes Bernie look like a loyal foot-soldier. Anyway, Bloomberg’s policies mostly fit in the Republican caucus, except for that guns and abortion stuff, which really shouldn’t be a problem for a party so dedicated to its principles that they can support a lying, philandering, ignorant, criminal who never heard of Pearl Harbor and obviously never cracked a Bible in his life.
<
blockquote>a bona fide libertarian – hemidactylus@3
Oxymoron alert!
I do not know much about politics these days not from the media coverage at least. It is too much a competition of winning and precious little about policies and principles. that the “party of Lincoln” is now the racist party and the party of Teddy Roosevelt now is the drill baby drill party.
the anti-abortion movement and professional evangelists have taken over the rational part of the republicans and allied with the greedy corporatists are driving us over the cliff of authoritarianism.
Maher can dry up and blow away in the dust for all I care his phony smug attitude and unfunny jokes are boring and insulting.
uncle frogy
“that’s right, I don’t identify with people who watch him”
You mean like me not identifying with people who consider voting for Biden and thus justifying a failed political system?
The frontrunner? He didn’t even place. He got 0% in Iowa, and “less than 0.1%” in New Hampshire. The idea that he is viable is a bad joke.
And, in fact, that’s really the point: Bloomberg is not in the contest to win, he’s in the contest to try to stop Bernie Sanders, because a Sanders win might mean that he had to pay some taxes. He doesn’t care if that results in a Trump win in the general, because as a billionaire he is fine with Trump. It’s quite noticeable, and occasionally it is even being said outright, on TV and radio.
And in joining the race, Bloomberg is proving everything negative that Sanders supporters have ever said true. The DNC is demonstrably in the pockets of the rich, they are entirely and blatantly up for sale, they would be happier losing with a right-winger than winning with a left-winger, and they don’t really care about the issues to which they pay lip-service.
All you Clinton cultists who were denying all of that in 2016? You were wrong. And the unbelievably terrible candidate you shoved down everybody’s throats then paved the way for Bloomberg’s run (and predictable loss) now. (And you should be at least a little bit worried — in 2017, the DNC went to court to defend their behavior and got a judgement saying that as a corporation they are not answerable to party members, who are not shareholders. If they want, they can simply declare Bloomberg the winner despite his 0% share of the primaries and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.)
Interesting that some people would prefer Trump to Bloomberg or Biden. Because that’s what not voting for them means. Kind of like Sanders supporters who didn’t vote for Clinton in 2016.
@12
My notions of math may be rusty but isn’t there still a difference between not voting for Biden/Bloomberg and actually voting for Trump? If I don’t vote for the corporate shill centrist jackass my vote doesn’t numerically contribute to their total. But not voting for Trump is a zero for him too versus a 1 or relative drop in the bucket. My not voting for BorB would be more than offset by David Brooks, George Will, and maybe Romney not voting for Trump.
I did vote for Hillary and look what good that did. I won’t feel guilty sitting out this vote on sheer principle and if the DNC expects me to toe the line regardless I got news for them. Don’t bank on it.
Seriously, all those Democratic Party apparatchiks whining about “how we will ever appeal to middle America with a socialist like Bernie or an elitist like Warren” who are now falling for Michael Bloomberg need to be purged from the party (yes, I know that’s not how parties work here, but there has got to be some kind of limit). I don’t know too many Dems here in “middle America” who will turn out for a contest between two bigoted, racist, misogynistic, asshole billionaire New Yorkers.
Bloomberg cannot win the general. He’s poison to every demographic the Democratic Party relies on and, while he’ll be able to rely on some turnout from people voting against Trump rather than for him, he’s far less popular than Clinton. He doesn’t have a ghost of a chance.
Worse still, he’ll almost certainly guarantee Democrats lose the vital down-ballot races, too. Whether we like it or not, the presidential candidate is one of the biggest drivers that gets people to the polling places, and without a decent candidate at the top we’ll probably lose the house, and the Republicans will keep the senate. If Bloomberg gets the nom, the odds are good that the Democrats will lose all three branches of the government, and Trump will be completely unchecked.
I hate Biden, too, but he’s got a hell of a lot better chance of winning than Bloomberg. I don’t think he’ll poison the whole ballot, either.
I’m not surprised to see Bloomberg and Maher getting along, though. They’re both the same kind of a sexist, racist douchebros, and they both really, really hate fat people.
Just like Trump was a mask-off moment for the republicans, that they don’t care at all about their “values”, the Bloomberg candidacy is mask-off for the liberal institutions endorsing him. They were bought and don’t actually hold any progressive values.
I wonder if Biden would consider me a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier”. I would be proud to be one if it pisses him off, man who yells at clouds.
I don’t, anymore. Haven’t even watched any clips of him on YouTube in years. Once it was clear he was an anti-pharma nut, I tuned out and never looked back.
What did Bill Maher and or Michael Bloomberg say that was wrong?
I know there’s lots of white collar crime that goes on behind closed doors but that is not the kind of crime that cops on the street can arrest people for. Bloomberg said that the cops were sent where the violent crime was. Where is he wrong?
@ #13
” isn’t there still a difference between not voting for Biden/Bloomberg and actually voting for Trump?”
No, there isn’t. Not in the general election.
lawdyme #18
The main reason to go into and arrest people for marijuana is to fill the for-profit jails with slave labour.
Bloomberg and his ilk don’t give a shit if the “minorities” kill each other.
If you’re serious about not voting for Bloomberg if he’s the nominee, then you’re effectively voting for Trump. I don’t care if Bloomberg sleeps in a KKK robe, he is better than Trump. Hitler’s corpse is better than Trump. What Bloomberg WON’T do is appoint 25-year-old, unqualified libertarians to the federal bench, or throw brown children into dog cages. Yes, he says offensive things and has a sketchy past. Have you forgotten about Trump’s brazen criminality, his “grab ’em by the pussy” view of women, his world-class grifting and buddying up with murderous dictators? I don’t have to like Bloomberg to recognize he’s the lesser of two evils.
Lawdyme google Adrian Schoolcraft if you want evidence of police deliberately targeting minorities. He was a white cop who ratted them out and recorded them doing so . and the cops tried to have him put into a mental ward to prevent him from making the recordings public
@19- tomh
Well I did some perhaps error prone number crunching but here are the ranks of percentage points (no sig fig but rounded to point of differentiation) Hillary loses by from worst to best in Florida General Presidential based on my vote:
Worst to best
Rep- 1.19864684
No vote- 1.19863635
Other party- 1.19863622
Dem- 1.19862561
Here’s my work. Hopefully not too rusty so please check or critique:
From the wikipedia numbers in Florida:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election
Actual (me voting Clinton):
Dem- 4,504,975 votes 47.8233158058051%
Rep- 4,617,886 votes
49.0219414165907%
Other- 297,178 votes
3.1547427776042%
Total- 9,420,039 votes
Me voting Trump:
Dem- 4,504,974 votes
47.8233051901377%
Rep- 4,617,887 votes
49.021952032258%
Other- 297,178 votes
3.1547427776042%
Total- 9,420,039 votes
Me voting other:
Dem- 4,504,974 votes
47.8233051901377%
Rep- 4,617,886 votes
49.0219414165907%
Other- 297,179 votes
31.547533932715%
Total- 9,420,039 votes
Me not voting Presidential:
Dem- 4,504,974 votes
47.8233102669013%
Rep- 4,617,886 votes
49.0219466205975%
Other- 297,178 votes
3.1547431125012%
Total- 9,420,038 votes
As I voted
Dem-47.8233158058051%
Rep- 49.0219414165907%
Trump wins by 1.1986256107856%
MAGA Me-
Dem- 47.8233051901377%
Rep- 49.021952032258%
Trump wins by
1.1986468421203%
Other me-
Dem- 47.8233051901377%
Rep- 49.0219414165907%
Trump wins by
1.198636226453%
Not voting Pres-
Dem- 47.8233102669013%
Rep- 49.0219466205975%
Trump wins by
1.1986363536962
Vote Dem- 1.1986256107856%
1.19862561
Vote Rep- 1.1986468421203%
1.19864684
Vote Other- 1.198636226453%
1.19863622
No vote- 1.1986363536962%
1.19863635
@21 littlejohn: you may want to read up on Bloombergs “sketchy past”. Because he will absolutely do all of those things and afterwards claim he inherited those policies. He has said as vile things about women as Trump as well. The difference between Trump and Bloomberg is that one is ridiculous and inept and the other efficient. Won’t matter anyways because Bloomberg would also lose the election to Trump.
@ littlejohn, #21
And your evidence for that is… what, exactly? He’ll appoint terrible judges for slightly different reasons, but that’s all.
He’s fine with throwing POC up against the wall and sticking guns in their faces for the crime of existing. Why should we believe he’d be better with even more power?
Yeah, at least Bloomberg isn’t a grotesque misogynist:
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2020/02/13/if-you-looked-like-that-id-do-you-in-a-second-michael-bloombergs-long-history-of-appalling-remarks-about-and-to-women
All that said, I agree that Bloomberg probably wouldn’t be as utterly heinous as Trump, but he still has fuck-all chance of winning the general election, and him being the candidate will do immense damage to down-ballot races. We need someone who will inspire people to get out and vote, not someone who’ll cause people to stay home out of sheer disgust.
Without POC and especially women, the Democrats are sunk. Bloomberg winning the nom would be serving them a giant shit sandwich and telling them that they have to eat it for the
greater goodslightly less awful. That’s not inspiring. That’s a recipe for despair.@21
See, this is like, actually just proves that your opposition to trump is purely aesthetic, if you think a literal klansman would be better than trump by virtue of running as a democrat.
Question, if someone with trump’s exact policies ran as a democrat against trump, would you vote for them because “vote blue no matter who?”
Citation needed.
Because we all know, democrats never endorse horrific immigration conditions. The overwhelming majority of people I represent in the hellish concentration camps we call “detention centers” were apprehended under Obama.
Things that make the assumption that he actually believes the offensive things he says far more likely.
Yet more proof that your objection to Trump is purely aesthetic. You’re okay with democratic presidents raining hellfire missiles on weddings overseas and supporting the exact same racist policies as republicans, as long as they put on an air of respectability and wear a blue pin instead of a red one.
Even if you could theoretically make the argument that he is in some minor ways better than trump, so the fuck what? He would still massacre people overseas, still imprison immigrants in literally torturous prisons, and still enforce the mass incarceration of people of color. It’s the difference between being shot in the head and being chainsawed to death – one is quicker and cleaner but you’re still dead either way.
@ #23
Rationalize it however you want, anyone not voting for whatever Democrat runs in November is supporting Trump. A lot of people seem to be OK with that. But I don’t think you have to worry about Bloomberg, IMO there’s not a chance in hell he gets the nomination.
If Bloomberg would somehow get the nomination, would it not be better to vote for a third party instead of not voting at all?
If Bloomberg actually gets the nomination, it’s time to admit that the entire American election system is flawed beyond any redemption.
Perhaps if we’re repeatedly running into elections where it boils down to “Republican that will massacre and oppress people” and “Democrat that will massacre and oppress people but be less visibly malicious while doing so”, perhaps we might not want to be hitching our wagon to electoral politics so thoroughly.
It demonstrably leads to us being screwed and having to pick the least aesthetically evil candidate over and over again, while the most vulnerable people suffer irrespective of who we elect.
@31
Obviously they are both terrible but there are people who will get through a Bloomberg administration who will not get through another Trump administration. Great that you are lucky enough to not have that concern but more vulnerable folks need you to hold your nose and pitch in.
I would also say Bloomberg is less likely to provoke war on a whim.
The only joke I see is Bloomburg is the frontrunner because he’s a racist. Meaning most people are inherent raists and will vote for anyone more like themselves emotionally. His wealth is only incidental.
@32
If the best you can say is that “The Democratic candidate will massacre slightly less people than the republican one”, fuck you, I’m not taking part in your system.
If we get to the point that were picking between “Person who will massacre x amount of people” and “person who will massacre x-1 amount of people”, your system is fundamentally broken and no amount of voting will fix that.
Okay so first off that’s a real big assumption to make, and a fucking untrue one. Not only do I have family in regions that both Democrat and Republican politicians have been devastating, I’m both transgender and a person of color.
Bloomberg would be just as shitty about my rights as Trump, and my family demonstrably gets bombed just as much under Democrats as they do under Republicans, so take that kind of rhetoric and shove it.
The “more vulnerable people” you’re talking about will suffer and die just as much under a Bloomberg presidency as a Trump one.
Dying when your village gets drone striked under a democratic presidency makes you just as dead as when you get drone striked to death by a republican president. Would you like to tell all the people that died under Obama that hey, at least he only killed 50 people in their village and not 51?
As mentioned, the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of immigrants I represent legally in our domestic concentration camps were put there under the Obama administration. The detention centers were just as hellish under Obama as they are under Trump. I know, because I go to certain ones daily. Going from Republican to Democrat to Republican did absolutely nothing to improve their lives.
Maybe you have the privilege of blissful ignorance necessary to believe that DINO candidates like Bloomberg will somehow be better than Trump, but I’m not so afflicted.
That’s because Bill Maher is a “reasonable” Democrat and the first rule of “reasonable” Democrats is that you never EVER criticize a Democrat from the left.
coreyschlueter@29 in the US voting for a third party and not voting at all would effectively be the same thing. Those votes will be ignored at best.
I watch the opening monologue, which has occasional humorous moments, then fast-forward directly to New Rules, which also has its moments, occasionally pausing along the way to hear what his more conservative “guests” are trying to push—and usually failing.
Harryblack ;
There are people who won’t get through either.
And I’m suspicious of Anglos who suddenly adopt a stand for civil rights only when it benefits them.
@38
Especially when said Anglo’s record, even in a relatively recent amount of time, are completely at odds with his attempted re-branding.
You don’t get to cheer on S&F or call trans rights “men in dresses wanting to creep on little girls” or tell workers with kids to “just hire a black or a mexican to do it” and then suddenly act like you’re a civil rights icon.
If a Democrat is elected, whatever they do reflects on the Democrats come the next election. Whoever steps up then in place of Trump will probably be morally similar, but potentially more competent. So, electing a Democrat who will not work to improve things is effectively voting for worse than Trump in 2024. So a part of me says Bernie, Warren, that’s basically all the good choices. But realistically, anyone who can be counted on to fix the ‘children in cages’ thing should probably get your vote. So, probably not Bloomberg.
“Rationalize it however you want, anyone not voting for whatever Democrat runs in November is supporting Trump.”
If you’re content to vote for whatever monster the Dems put up, then all you’re doing is helping the race to the bottom. Because it’s Trump this time, next time the Republicans know they can put up someone even worse than Trump (possibly somebody who is competent as well as being evil) and the Dems will put up somebody as bad as Trump. Then, next time, once Trump2 has run his course, they can run Trump3 while the Dems present Trump2 as a better candidate.
microraptor, #30
Not disagreeing with your point about Bloomberg, but it already is flawed beyond redemption. Just look how Trump got elected, what he did while in office, and how openly he got away with it.
Why couldn’t we have had the giant spiders instead?
I’m not sure what is going on but of all the candidates the support for Bloomberg just seems off. If you go to the prediction markets you see he’s way overpriced compared to the other candidates based on polling and internet chatter. If you read random articles online you find literal dead celebrities spending their last dying breath endorsing him. That really happened. I’d get it if it were Bloomberg publishing these articles but these are well reputed news sites that compete with Bloomberg. Yet I can’t find a single supporter who isn’t an A-list celebrity or realty TV judge.
@ 18.
Let’s say for a moment that Bloomberg is right about crime. Why didn’t he do the same to stop right wing terrorism? Oh, right because that would mean putting cops in white neighborhoods and arresting white people non-stop.
By upsetting racist morons who can’t stand the fact that racism is socially unacceptable? I mean, I’m not gonna deny it was a factor, but I wouldn’t say it was the reason.
Anyway, I’m trying to be optimistic about Bloomberg’s campaign. By which I mean I think he’s far more likely to screw over the Biden campaign than actually win.