Now Klobuchar is out. My mother will be disappointed — she was planning to vote for Amy. I’m just disappointed because she endorses Biden on the way out the door.
So now there are just five left: Sanders, Biden, Warren, Bloomberg, and…Tulsi Gabbard? Gabbard is still campaigning?
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?
We need more candidates to drop out of the Democratic field, but I’m not happy at seeing some of the more interesting candidates dropping out, like Julian Castro. We still have 14 people spreading confusion and acting as spoilers! Get rid of Steyer and Bloomberg, we don’t need any more narcissistic billionaires. Williamson is a flake, Yang is an oblivious entrepreneur, Gabbard is a mole, Bennet, Delaney, and Patrick are negligible nobodies who don’t have a chance. It’s incomprehensible that anyone is still promoting Buttigieg. I wish I could fling Biden into a dumpster somewhere, but he has a polling advantage and needs to be taken seriously. There were 15 candidates who dropped out!
The process is generating a lot of noise and the winnowing that is happening isn’t based on merit, at all.
You should all know by now that my wife Mary is the mature adult at my house. While I fled to the movie theatre to watch a tired fantasy about space wizards, Mary stayed home to watch the Democratic debate and all the follow-up news stories — I think she eventually crawled into bed in the early hours of the morning. I don’t know what she thought of the candidates because she’s still unconscious in the other room.
I can guess, though. She’s very dedicated to getting Bernie elected. In fact, I’m beginning to fear the election because I’m inclined more towards Warren, but if Bernie loses there will be much anger and anguish here. If I didn’t do my part by voting for Bernie in the primary, I might get the icy glare of rage and death afterwards.
So while she is recovering from her binge mainlining politics last night, I turned to Amanda Marcotte to find out how the debate went down.
Klobuchar, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts all came across the actual grown-ups in the room. Sanders, as usual, impressed with his moral clarity. Klobuchar is an unapologetic centrist, but presented a strong case for her competence as a leader and ability to pull the levers of power to get things done. Warren, in particular, took advantage of the time to show off her earnest intelligence and in-depth knowledge of both policy and the strategies needed to get those policies passed.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I’d rather not see Klobuchar as the candidate, but she does have a reputation in her home state for being a tenacious fighter who would run a strong campaign. But I don’t want a centrist. Warren wins me over with her brains. Sanders really does have a strong moral vision of what is right and is probably the best anti-Trumper we’ve got.
Buttigieg, Steyer, Yang, and most of all Biden aren’t even in the running for space in my mind. I want them gone. I’d give more credibility to Castro and Booker, and they weren’t even on the stage, which tells you there’s another deep problem with the Democratic machine.
I enjoy a good morning scathe of a contemptible politician, don’t you?
Now do Biden. And Yang. And those horrid billionaires. All you have to do is look at the field of potential presidential candidates and see that there is something deeply wrong with the Democratic party — there seems to be an absence of guidelines on what it means to be this thing called a “Democrat”.
They don’t realize it’s coming. The rich think that, because they’ve succeeded so well so far, they never need to worry that it can all come crashing down. They think we’re just talking a good game.
Rousseau’s most enduring contribution to the current revolutionary discourse, though, came via a 1789 speech. As writer Talia Lavin noted in a recent piece on the phrase’s origins, his pithy warning — “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich” — has become a rallying cry on social media and at contemporary political protests, where the people’s great and terrible anger at the economic predation of the 1% has helped propel a resurgent anti-capitalist movement. The phrase is all over Twitter, TikTok, and various other social media platforms. It has long been immortalized in song thanks to British heavy metal legends Motörhead (who provided the soundtrack for a bloody 1987 movie also named Eat the Rich about a restaurant that serves the meat of its former wealthy patrons), Swiss hard rockers Krokus, and, bizarrely, Aerosmith, whose vocalist Steven Tyler is currently estimated to be worth about $130 million. (Full disclosure: I have eat the rich tattooed on my stomach, which doubles as a tribute to Motörhead and my own political inclinations.)
I don’t think tattooing a phrase on your belly is a precursor to revolution, and I think that right now we have a complacent middle class (how else could Joe Biden be doing so well in the polls?). One real crisis is what it will take, and crises are on the way. Climate change is going to cause all kinds of disruption, the country is being managed so badly that new conflicts are going to arise, domestic unrest is going to be fomented by a militarized police and splintered right wing terrorist groups. Even minor things could be the tipping point — remember the gas shortages of the 1970s? Something like that could be the spark that wakes up a pissed-off majority.
I’m just saying the 1% need to recognize that they aren’t as well sheltered as they think they are. Buying off an election or hiring lobbyists isn’t going to turn them into good guys in the eyes of the people.
It’s a masterwork. Some advertising genius was asked to encapsulate Joe Biden in a single phrase, and they thought hard about it, and distilled him down to two words.
It’s perfect! You see “malarkey”, and you think “antiquated, old-fogeyish” and it’s a natural to associate that with Biden. It’s going to go over well with timid old boomers.
In a particularly nice touch, in smaller print on the back of the bus, it includes a dictionary definition of “malarkey”. I guess that’s their idea of outreach to the young folks.
You wanna watch a train wreck? Probably not, so I’ll summarize this video down below. The interviewer, on the left, is someone named David Worley (sorry, never heard of him before), and on the right is Lance Gregorchuk, one of the organizers of that silly anti-theism conference to be held in Brighton. Warning: Gregorchuk seems to be unable to complete a thought, or even a full sentence. The squirrels are running races in his cranium.
OK. To summarize the chaos, in the first half of the video, Gregorchuk seems to be trying to persuade Worley to attend his conference, but doing so by negging him, telling him he’s run-of-the-mill, that he’s failed to ask any hard questions in the interview. What he wants is for Worley to come to the event and have every speaker come to him for an interview afterwards with hard, challenging questions. He says he would love someone to challenge their thinking, and to challenge Dawkins or Krauss. He gives an example of a hard question to ask Dawkins: “Why are you an atheist?”
Jesus. That’s a softball. Dawkins has written whole books on that; do you think he’s going to be stunned by such a difficult question? Gregorchuk is clueless and naive. It’s painful to watch.
But not as cringeworthy as the last half! Worley finally gets a word in edgewise, and gives an example of a question he would ask, and it’s a good one: “Is it right to platform Lawrence Krauss given the sexual assault allegations?”
Whoa, Gregorchuk is thrown for a loop. He becomes even more incoherent as he tries to justify his answer, which is Absolutely!
I can’t possibly transcribe his words. It’s a collection of sentence fragments, stammered out without much connection between them. I’m just going to give you an incomplete collection of his confident excuses.
Absolutely. You never got wrong signals from a girl and you touched her? I did it, you did it.
They could have nailed you, me, anyone else.
We don’t get signals from women.
You’re out with a girl. I’m out with a girl. She’s nice, she’s flirting her hair, how do you do this?
It’s like hand on the knee, hand on the … come on man, I’m not justifying anything, I’m just being honest.
I’m thinking of the 80s, I probably put my hand on a few…
The 80s, 90s were a time when we weren’t very…
It was a different time. It wasn’t correct…but Joe Biden used to put people’s arm on other people’s hands whatever, it’s OK.
Wow. That conference is going to be a gathering of yammering shitgibbons, isn’t it?
Allow me to answer from my experience as a man. Women are sending out signals all the time, but you have to listen to hear them. They are most definitely not sending the signal “Please lunge for my breasts” or “Stick your hand up under my skirt”, and if you think that’s what you’re waiting for, you’re going to be frustrated. Maybe you should try talking with them, listen to what they have to say, and at professional and provisionally intellectual events in particular, consider that they are people who have not come out of an urge to gratify random men’s sexual urges.
Women were not welcoming breast-lunges in the 1980s. In fact, they never appreciated those in all of human history. It’s never been that different time, except in the minds of men who had the power and the will to execute it thoughtlessly, but even those cases, the recipient of that careless brutality wasn’t appreciating it.
As for “how do you do this”, I started dating my wife in the mid-70s. The initial overture did not involve my hand creeping up her thigh — I asked her out to a dance. I was a bad dancer. We mainly talked. We got along and enjoyed each others company. We went on more dates — initially, we double-dated and went to churches, which is safe ground for a young woman in the company of a man who, in Gregorchuk’s head, might start randomly grabbing things. We went for walks, we went out for pizza, we had long phone calls, we got to know and trust each other as people and friends first.
We kissed (and I asked if I could first) after 3 months of weekly dating. I know, it doesn’t reward you with quick sexual gratification, if that’s what you’re after, but if you really want to know someone as a human being, talking works. Start there. We humans evolved to have some very sophisticated and subtle means of communicating information-rich signals, and women are just as good at it as men. Try it! There’s something wrong with you if you think women don’t send signals or are sending confusing signals.
Also, an atheist conference isn’t an 80s disco, usually. People don’t usually go there to hook up, they’re there to learn and share ideas and be inspired. I do not recommend that women attend the anti-theism international conference, since it’s going to be full of strange awkward men peering you at you looking for the “please fondle me” signal, and if you don’t give it, they might intentionally misinterpret your “please stop staring at me” signal. Or they’ll only hear the first word of your “Fuck off!” signal.
By the way, Gregorchuk is listed on the conference home page as the “marketer of the event”. He is quite possibly the worst communicator I’ve ever witnessed with a lead role in an organization.
Oh, no. Just as I was looking forward to the Democrats weeding out the deadwood, another useless narcissist steps forward to enter the race: Michael Bloomberg. Ugh.
“As a former business magnate and mayor of New York City, Bloomberg has the two qualities essential to enter the presidential race at this late stage: money and name recognition,” Dr. Thomas Gift, a political scientist at University College London, told Newsweek.
Money? Seriously? How out of touch is this guy? Bloomberg is a billionaire 50 times over. The plan is to tax a big chunk of that away, and if he resists, to put his head on a pike on Wall Street, as a warning to the others. He is the antithesis of what progressives want.
As for name recognition…maybe in New York. Not out here in the “heartland”.
“For that reason, I think Bloomberg can immediately become a heavyweight in the Democratic primaries. Beyond the attention he’d garner with his announcement, there’s plenty of space for Bloomberg to position himself as a moderate voice, especially with Joe Biden’s candidacy stuck in neutral.”
Gift said Bloomberg may appeal to moderate Democrats “looking for a reasoned and pragmatic approach to policy, especially someone with a proven track-record of competence.”
“Unlike Elizabeth Warren, he also radiates electability, which is important to many Democrats who, above all else, prioritize beating Trump in the 2020 election,” Gift said.
Right. Let’s replace Trump with an obscenely wealthy New York real estate mogul. New boss, same as the old boss.
Also, when I hear the word “electability”, which is just a code word for “conservative supporter of the status quo”, I start thinking we’re going to need more pikes.
Yesterday, I was trapped in a hotel room, unable to escape, while my wife listened to this joke of a “news” program on CNN in which they semi-randomly assembled the Democratic debate roster. I was ready to scream. They drew it out to a ridiculous degree, selecting candidates one by one live on air, while reading little blurbs about them. With commercial breaks. They, of course, saved the most significant candidates for last — Sanders, Warren, Harris, and Biden — and what killed me was that before they did the final draws they sat there and yammered speculatively about what match-ups they might get in the next few minutes. Shut the fuck up and just do it.
They don’t seem aware that the process of randomizing candidates into two nights is trivial, uninteresting, and not news. It is, however, representative of how our benighted, self-involved news media deals with an election. They have made themselves the center of the process as a group of people who have to babble about the horserace. I hate it.
This was the final outcome of their blithering idiocy, and it’s ridiculous.
I don’t care. Most of the faces up there shouldn’t be there — they are wasting our time. Go run for congress, or governor, or school board and get something done. CNN was aware of that, too, because they arranged the debate specifically to split up the top four equally. If, by chance, Biden, Harris, Sanders, and Warren all ended up together on one night, no one would bother to watch the other debate, and there goes the advertising revenue.
You also cannot have a debate with 20 sides to it. There will be no substantive discussion. This will be a mob of people vying for the 10-second sound bite that will be picked up by the news the next day.
I have to say as well that using money in the form of donations as a criterion for who gets to be in the debate is offensive and puts the whole silly affair on an absurdly capitalist foundation, and clearly fails as a useful criterion for winnowing the field anyway. Bring back the cursus honorum — you don’t get to run for consul until you’ve run a gamut of lower offices in government.
I won’t be watching any part of the second “debate”, by the way.
