Brilliant Move Or Clown Show?

In the last year, former mayor of New York City Mike Bloomberg has either made a series of brilliant moves that will bring him the Democrat nomination for president or he has been the star in an ongoing clown show that reveals both his unsuitability for the office and the sorry state of Democrat politics.  Here are just a few of his moves:

1.  Bloomberg announced last spring that he would not be running for president.  He stayed on the sidelines for many months only to change his mind just a few months ago.  By the time he flipped, it was already too late to compete in the first four states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.  There's no way of knowing if Bloombergs avalanche of political ads would have propelled him into or close to the lead in any of these early states.  Certainly that strategy didn't work for Tom Steyer who has spent roughly $15,000 of his own money for each of the few votes he got in the first two contests.  Bloomberg did give Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren time to see their candidacies implode.  Also rans like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Julian Castro and the others have also been cleared away without any involvement from Bloomberg.  That's a positive for Mike.  On the other hand, candidates like Buttigieg and Klobuchar who could never have kept up with Bloomberg and his limitless source of cash have managed to establish themselves as real candidates in the first two contests.  Bernie Sanders has also been able to get the Socialist portion of the base firmly in his camp.  Bloomberg's delay most likely gave his main rivals time to dig themselves in so as to withstand the flood of Bloomberg ads.

2.  When he announced, Bloomberg decided to jettison some of his main positions from his days as mayor.  One thing for which Bloomberg was known in New York was keeping the crime rate in the city very low.  Bloomberg not only continued the policies put in place during the Giuliani years, but he also intensified them.  Stop and frisk and variable community policing were the two main components of his policy.  Stop and frisk gave police the right to stop and frisk people if the policeman had reasonable cause to believe that the subject might be illegally armed or else about to commit a criminal act.  That meant that a guy wearing gang insignia or lurking in the wrong place could be frisked.  Community policing used computerized statistics to put extra police into neighborhoods where there was any uptick in crime.  The idea was to stop crime before it got a foothold in a neighborhood.  The combination put more police in minority neighborhoods who then stopped and frisked people they though looked suspicious.  The far left (which in New York City means most Democrat politicians) said the programs were racist because they "targeted"  blacks and Hispanics.  Bloomberg, however, actively defended these policies.  He pointed out that they got thousands of guns off the street either by confiscation or by convincing young men with illegal weapons that it was foolhardy to carry that gun because they might get frisked by the cops.  The end result was that New York became the safest large city in the country.  That meant, as Bloomberg said many times, that literally thousands of lives -- mostly minority lives--were saved.  As Bloomberg put it, the program was not racist, rather ending the program would be consigning many blacks or Hispanics to being murdered and THAT is what would be racist.

About the time that Bloomberg announced his candidacy, he also announced that he had changed his view on stop and frisk.  He apologized for ever supporting it.  The program was racist according to Mike's new view.  So, in other words, in order to try to get the support of the far left base of the Democrat party, Mike threw away and even denounced perhaps his greatest achievement as mayor.

I'm sure that Bloomberg had done poll after poll after poll to determine what course to follow to attract Democrat votes.  Still, the question remains, how has this played?  How many voters really would stay away from voting for Mike because he supported a program that cut crime in his city in dramatic fashion.  Was it really racist to save black and Hispanic lives from murder and communities from crime?  Would Democrat voters looking for authenticity support the guy who threw away a program he supported for 12 years or would they prefer a guy who put forth a defense of that program and announced that as president he would always analyze what to do based upon what was good for Americans rather than what the loud mouthed protesters were shouting.  We will have to wait to see how this plays out.  This is especially true since now all sorts of video is surfacing of some of the things that Bloomberg said as mayor in support of these programs.  Even after having apologized for the programs, Bloomberg is still being denounced for his supposed racism.

3.  Bloomberg leaked to Drudge that he is considering naming Hillary Clinton as his candidate for VP.  I've written about this previously, but now I want to look at it with regard to how it will affect the race for the nomination.  Just who are the voters who are going to be attracted to Bloomberg because he might pick Hillary as VP?  Is Mike trying to pick up the black support for Joe Biden as that campaign disintegrates?  But hey, isn't Bloomberg a racist supporter of stop and frisk?  (Just kidding; he apologized.)  Seriously, what actual voter is going to select his or her candidate based upon who that candidate might pick for VP?  My guess is that Bloomberg would pick up the votes of Chelsea and her husband and also maybe he could get the vote from Bill Clinton, but who else would care enough about a possible VP to make their selection on that base?

Wouldn't the voters know that Bloomberg will never pick Hillary?  All those scandals would be back on the front page.  Even the new ones would be pushed to the front.  Would Bloomberg really pick a candidate with such a strong connection to Jeffrey Epstein and that whole mess?

So you decide.  Is Bloomberg a genius or a clown.  I know where my vote goes.  Personally, I think Mike is going to look really silly in those big floppy shoes.

Just Imagine This

According to the Drudge Report, Mike Bloomberg is considering naming Hillary Clinton as his candidate for VP.  This, we are told, would be a "formidable force" according to polling.

Just imagine that team.  Imagine it!

1.  First, Bloomberg obviously is unconcerned about all those reports of people who were inconvenient for Hillary, who have died mysteriously.  One wag earlier today tweeted that Hillary would come with an 8 foot long rope and a pre-written suicide not.

2.  My first item obviously got ahead of itself.  A bigger question would be Bloomberg/Clinton winning a general election.  How many of the Bernie Bros would stand for this.  A combination of the guy for whom the rules were changed in 2020 so he could beat Bernie with the woman for whom the same thing was done in 2016, hardly seems like the best way to pull in Bernie's supporters.  They might not actually vote for Trump, but it's hard to see them turning out on election day.

3.  Putting Hillary on the ticket makes it impossible for Bloomberg to be someone outside of the "swamp".  You just don't put the queen of the swamp on your ticket and then claim to be an outsider.

4.  There's only one politician in America whose presidential (or vice-presidential) candidacy is almost as tired as that of Hillary Clinton:  Joe Biden.  Adding Hillary guarantees Bloomberg an outcome similar to Biden's.

Personally, I think it's a wonderful idea.  It guarantees that Bloomberg has no chance. 

Questions For the Next Debate

On the 19th, the Democrats are going to debate in Las Vegas.  As of now, it looks like there will be six candidates on the stage: Biden, Bernie, Mayor Pete, Klobuchar and Warren have guaranteed places since they won delegates in either Iowa or New Hampshire or both.  Bloomberg seems likely to make it on polling although that is not guaranteed.  Steyer's and Gabbard's chances of participation are not very good.

What's important about the debate, however, is not who is in them, but rather what gets discussed.  So far the debates have centered on just a few issues.  The biggest interest for the moderators seems to have been how to get the candidates to argue with or attack each other.  We've had questions about what Sanders may or may not have said to Warren at a dinner two years ago.  We haven't had questions exploring much in the way of foreign policy.  We've had questions about comments or votes made decades ago, but there's been hardly a mention of trade policy with China or the EU or the UK.  There has also been no questioning about the best way to deal with the outbreak of the corona virus since that is something new.  Do the candidates approve of the government having cut off entry of people from China?  It would be nice to hear specifics.  No one is interested in hearing one of these candidates talk about the need for a new Manhattan project to fight the virus.  People deserve to hear sense rather than BS.

It would also be good to hear specifics from the candidates about the economy.  Stop questions that just let them lie about how terrible the economy is for many.  (The truth is that it's great for a vast majority.)  Why not ask them how they would continue the growth of jobs in the USA?  Why not ask them how they would deal with the loss of 14 million jobs across the country that would come from an end to fracking?  Why not ask them how to deal with the loss of millions of jobs in the banking and related fields if many of the new restrictions they are proposing were to go into effect?

And how about entitlements?  Ask them how they would preserve Social Security.  Ask them about Food Stamps.  Do they think it is a good thing that 8 million people came off the food stamp rolls in the last three years?  How do they pay for entitlements and welfare programs without raising taxes?  And by how much would they need to raise taxes, which taxes would they be, and when would they be raised?

Then there's military spending.  Would they cut it?  If so, by how much?  What items in particular would get cut?

How about the war in Afghanistan?  Do they have a plan to bring that to an end?

These are not minor questions.  We've had more than half a dozen debates and countless interviews for all these candidates.  Shouldn't we all know what the candidates think about these subjects?

Why Stop There?

Tom Steyer has a problem.  So far he's spent more than two hundred million dollars of his own money in his presidential campaign.  In Iowa and New Hampshire combined he got about 13,000 votes.  That' a little over $15000 per vote.  Tom is getting desperate to try to figure out a way to attract attention.  His latest stunt is to announce that once elected president, he will get enacted a national minimum wage of $22 per hour.

My question for Steyer is "why did you stop at only $22 per hour?"

Think about it.  Why not set the minimum wage at $100 per hour, or $10,000 per hour?  Wouldn't it be nice to come home after a 40 hour week with four hundred thousand dollars?  Work a full year for over 20 million bucks!  Hey, why not make it $100,000 per hour?  That would make nearly everyone in the entire country a billionaire in just a few years.  It would give Bernie Sanders a mental breakdown.

Obviously, were the minimum wage to rise to $22, we would get one of two results:

1.  There would be extreme inflation as prices rose to cover the huge cost increase for labor.

2.  America's economy would crash.  Jobs would be moved abroad to get cheaper labor costs.  Businesses in the USA would close since they would be unable to afford the higher wages.  The decline in employment and economic activity would bring on a long term depression.

Steyer knows this.  He's not only a bad candidate; he's a bad person.

Maybe Greta's Pointing The Wrong Way

In the last year, Greta Thunberg gained fame (like Time Magazine's Person of the Year) by coming to the USA to express her outrage over the lack of action on climate change.  Her catch phrase has been "How dare you....." 

So what's the reality?  Has the USA under President Trump actually contributed to the greenhouse gases that are supposedly driving climate change?  Did Trump just decide to ignore this supposed "crisis" so that his rich buddies in the oil industry could get richer still?

Today, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released the data regarding carbon emissions for 2019.  If you read the mainstream media, you already know that America is indiscriminately pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and no longer cares about the threat of climate change.  After all, Trump pulled the USA out of the Paris climate accords.  The problem, of course, is that none of this is true.

According to the IEA, in 2019, carbon emissions from the USA fell y 2.9% from the prior year.  That means that of all developed countries, emissions fell more in the USA since 2000 than in any other country.  Over that time, emissions from US sources fell by just about 20%. 

Emissions from the other developed countries are falling now too, pretty much in line with the current rate of decline in the USA.  The EU and Japan both have declines in emissions.

Despite these declines, worldwide emissions still rose slightly.  The entire increase came from underdeveloped nations like India and China.  Given these facts, why did Greta come to New York to scream "How dare you?"  Shouldn't someone have sent her to Beijing or New Delhi?

It's also worth remembering these statistics the next time that someone tells you about how urgently we need the Green New Deal.  As of 2019, fully two thirds of the emissions world wide came from underdeveloped nations.  Why would the USA, as one of the few big nations that has been consistently cutting emissions for the last 20 years, take steps that destroy our economy in the hope of stopping climate change?  Shouldn't those responsible for current emissions take the lead in dealing with that problem?

Looking At The Roger Stone Sentence

There seems to be a faulty circuit in the machine that generates perpetual outrage among the mainstream media and Democrats because of whatever the President does.  The latest big push by the Dems for -- you guessed it -- new investigations of Trump arise in connection with the sentencing of Roger Stone.  Stone is a friend of the President.  Stone was convicted of lying to a federal agent in a trial last year.  It was one of those process charges that arose out of the Mueller investigation.

Here are the pertinent details.

1.  After the trial, it was up to the judge to sentence Stone for these crimes. 

2.  Under the federal sentencing guidelines, the sentence for Stone is supposed to be lightened due to his advance age, his lack of any prior criminal convictions, and his health.

3.  Both the prosecution and the defense get to put in sentencing recommendations before the judge makes her decision. 

4.  The four attorneys who prosecuted Stone are actually from the Mueller team.  The prosecution, however, is under the direction of the Justice Department.

5.  The four Mueller attorneys put in a recommendation that Stone get sentenced to 9 years in prison.

6,  By way of contrast, Georges Papadopoulos who pled guilty to lying to an FBI agent was sentenced to two weeks in prison.  General Flynn who also pled guilty to lying to an FBI agent  has not yet been sentenced, but the Justice Department original recommendation was for probation only.

7.  The sentence recommended for Stone is outrageously long.  It is out of line with normal conduct by the Justice Department.

8.  Because the sentence recommended by the Mueller attorneys was way too long and because it had not been approved by the DOJ, the department withdrew that recommendation.  This was done by Attorney General Barr and DOJ without any conversation with the President or any request by the President for that action.

9.  In place of the original bizarre request from the Mueller team, the new DOJ request asks the Judge to make the decision while considering the nature of the crime, Stone's lack of a prior record, his age and his health.  That's exactly what the law requires the judge to do.

10.  The four Mueller attorneys resigned because their overly harsh sentencing request was withdrawn.

11.  The media and the Dems are still going crazy over this "outrage" of Barr asking the judge to follow the law.  After all, that's what Barr did; he asked the judge to follow the law, nothing more and nothing less.  And lest you think that I'm overstating the reaction from the media and the Dems, you should know that Schumer wants investigations, but many other Dems and media types have called for Barr to be -- yes, you guessed it -- impeached.

I don't think the media or the Dems will ever give up unless someone seeks an order of commitment for many of them.

Media Hype

It never fails to amaze just how much hype the media can put into a really minor event.

Bernie Sanders won the NH primary.  It was extremely close between Bernie and Mayor Pete.  Amy Klobuchar wasn't that far behind.  In Iowa, Sanders and Buttigieg won.  In neither state did Bernie or Pete get even 30% of the vote.  In other words, in these two small states the people who voted were pretty evenly split and a tiny plurality picked Bernie.  That's it!  Bernie is now the national front runner in the Democrat nomination race.  What utter nonsense.

The importance of NH is not who won.  Rather, it is important because of who lost.  Warren and Biden fell apart.  NH was the best state possible for Warren aside from Massachusetts.  She started with the bulk of the NH Dems knowing her from the Boston media that blankets the state.  Biden started with nearly universal name recognition from his years as VP.  In both their cases, for NH voters, to know them was NOT to love them.  Bernie also had an underperformance of a sort.  Four years ago, he got a large majority of the vote in NH.  Last night he struggled to get a quarter of the vote.  That means that something over half of his supporters from four years ago abandoned Bernie.

One thing that you may not know:  the candidate with the most votes yesterday in NH was President Trump.  Even without a race on the GOP side, Trump got way more votes than any Democrat.

But I guess the media will stick to its narrative.  NH was a big deal for Bernie Sanders, (except it wasn't).