US election 2020

[David]

[pietillidie]

^BTW, I meant to ask: do we know anything about Bloomberg on foreign policy?

[David]

Backed the Iraq War and "doesn't regret it", which is always a good sign...

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... gret-world

The rest seems pretty predictable:

https://theintercept.com/2019/11/25/mic ... omination/

Bloomberg is a longstanding supporter of Israel and especially Benjamin Netanyahu, who he has called a friend and wished him well on his birthday. During both the 2009 and 2014 Israeli assaults on Gaza, Bloomberg flew to Israel to express solidarity with Tel Aviv. “Israel is doing the right thing in defending itself,” he said in 2009. “Israel was entirely justified” in attacking Gaza, he declared in 2014.

You might argue that Bloomberg was only parroting the standard liberal defense of Israel but, no, he went much further than that. During the 2014 bombardment of Gaza, in which more more than 500 Palestinian kids were killed, Bloomberg told CBS News that Israel “cannot have a proportional response” when fighting Hamas.

Sticking with the Middle East, also consider Bloomberg’s awful stance on Saudi Arabia. During the most recent debate, Democratic presidential candidates, including Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, fell over one another to attack the Saudis for their role in both the Yemen war and the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Even Biden, who served in a Democratic administration that sold more weapons to Saudi Arabia than any other in modern American history, took to the stage in Atlanta to denounce Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, for ordering the murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi while promising to make the Gulf kingdom a “pariah.”

Bloomberg, on the other hand, helped launder the reputation of the crown prince in March 2018, when he hosted the reckless autocrat in New York and smiled for photos with him in a Starbucks.

Have Bloomberg’s views of MBS or Saudi Arabia changed in the wake of the Khashoggi killing last October? Nope. Two months ago, the former mayor sat down for an interview with the Saudi-owned newspaper, Arab News, and heaped praise on the economic and social reforms introduced by the crown prince and his father, King Salman, claiming that the Saudi royals had “made progress” and were “going in the right direction.”

No mention of Khashoggi’s murder. No mention of war crimes in Yemen. No mention of imprisoned women’s rights activists.

More here:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-b ... ng-ukraine

[pietillidie]

^Geez, he's an old school hawk. Imagine overlaying that on Trump's authoritarian executive. He's off the table, then.

Next, to get Bernie a pragmatic sidekick.

[Wokko]

Trump derangement syndrome alive and well here. It takes wilful ignorance to see him as some kind of evil Hitler-lite style cartoon villain.

Seeing as we were doing a "When they were young" here's Trump on Letterman in 1987.

https://www.facebook.com/thehodgetwins/ ... 673643659/

[David]

An eye-opening (and well-sourced) Twitter thread on just how much Bloomberg’s campaign is an insult to democracy. I had no idea about a lot of this stuff:

https://mobile.twitter.com/blakezeff/st ... 6936171520

[stui magpie]

Not that you're actively looking for stuff to nail him about.

Feel the Bern.

[David]

Not actively looking, but it’s true that a lot of this stuff is coincidentally turning up on rose twitter right now.

[pietillidie]

It takes wilful ignorance to see him as some kind of evil Hitler-lite style cartoon villain.

You mean the pathological con and serial bankrupt with an endless stream of lowlife criminal associates who gets unqualified relatives to negotiate peace deals, invites foreign parties to interfere in elections, gives handouts to billionaires, creates massive unproductive national debt, neglects serious productive infrastructure, rolls back already insufficient environmental protections, lines the pockets of fossil fuels sponsors, calls Mexicans rapists, incites violence against journalists, abuses his office by doing comment-for-coverage deals with media outlets, hides his finances from public view, refuses to disavow conflicts of interest, suppresses global GDP to inflate his economy, rouses hatred against other countries including allies, supports women-hating Luddites and their backward policies, engages in economic warfare to drive up oil prices for his sponsors, funds war through favoured proxies like Saudi Arabia, dismantles serious healthcare provisions, violates the balance of power and tramples on executive custom, abuses his own charity, breaks election funding laws, makes history by getting impeached, causes widespread national instability and hatred, fails to build a stable government because no one decent will work for him, keeps guns in the hands of crazies, maintains an unrivalled reputation as a serial creep and sleaze, lies like a toddler every other minute, desperately needs psychiatric treatment for the grandiose narcissism which makes him behave like an erratic and vindictive baboon, continues to deceive working people over the high quality jobs that he can't create, and is about to screw strugglers to pay for his bribes to the ultra rich? You mean ignorance of that, or of something else?

How effortlessly you went from being a utopian libertarian to a fasco-protectionist. But libertarianism has always been a euphemism for self-entitlement; predictably, it mutates into protectionism when its adherents can no longer lord it over the planet and actually have to compete.

[stui magpie]

Not actively looking, but it’s true that a lot of this stuff is coincidentally turning up on rose twitter right now.

Then you have to check out The Portable Bloomberg.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mich ... tes-2020-2

In 1990, employees at Bloomberg LP gave their boss, presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a booklet containing notable quotes they said were attributed to him over the years as a gag birthday gift.
That booklet, called “The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg,” is a compendium of allegedly sexist, crude, and off-colour remarks that Bloomberg’s employees heard him make, including “if women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of Bloomingdale’s.”
Insider recently obtained a copy of the booklet, and is publishing it below.
A Bloomberg campaign spokesperson told Insider that, “Mike simply did not say the things somebody wrote in this gag gift, which has been circulating for 30 years and has been quoted in every previous election Mike has been in.”

There's a very prophetic quote about Apple in there.

[Woods Of Ypres]

Economy growing 4% quarterly
Unemployment lowest levels
Tariffs introduced
Tax reform
Red tape removed
Defeated ISIS
Dialogue with Fat Kim


The man gets sh*t done.
Trump again please

[Pies4shaw]

It takes wilful ignorance to see him as some kind of evil Hitler-lite style cartoon villain.

You mean the pathological con and serial bankrupt with an endless stream of lowlife criminal associates who gets unqualified relatives to negotiate peace deals, invites foreign parties to interfere in elections, gives handouts to billionaires, creates massive unproductive national debt, neglects serious productive infrastructure, rolls back already insufficient environmental protections, lines the pockets of fossil fuels sponsors, calls Mexicans rapists, incites violence against journalists, abuses his office by doing comment-for-coverage deals with media outlets, hides his finances from public view, refuses to disavow conflicts of interest, suppresses global GDP to inflate his economy, rouses hatred against other countries including allies, supports women-hating Luddites and their backward policies, engages in economic warfare to drive up oil prices for his sponsors, funds war through favoured proxies like Saudi Arabia, dismantles serious healthcare provisions, violates the balance of power and tramples on executive custom, abuses his own charity, breaks election funding laws, makes history by getting impeached, causes widespread national instability and hatred, fails to build a stable government because no one decent will work for him, keeps guns in the hands of crazies, maintains an unrivalled reputation as a serial creep and sleaze, lies like a toddler every other minute, desperately needs psychiatric treatment for the grandiose narcissism which makes him behave like an erratic and vindictive baboon, continues to deceive working people over the high quality jobs that he can't create, and is about to screw strugglers to pay for his bribes to the ultra rich? You mean ignorance of that, or of something else?

How effortlessly you went from being a utopian libertarian to a fasco-protectionist. But libertarianism has always been a euphemism for self-entitlement; predictably, it mutates into protectionism when its adherents can no longer lord it over the planet and actually have to compete.

Just some edited highlights, there, PTID?

[Wokko]

Trump at the Daytona 500








Nascar driver says she wants her helmet signed by Trump.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/young-na ... =mattwalsh

[stui magpie]

Doing a lap in The Beast would have been so cool,

[pietillidie]

I have no strong view on cryptocurrency (not to be confused with blockchain per se) aside from expecting it to be subject to gradual legislation. But when you're knee-deep in corruption, crony appointments and abuse of office, the question is always this: just who is being punished or rewarded by the Fasco-Protectionist-in-Chief?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambr ... y-revealed