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Can Bloomberg ever recover from his disastrous debate debut? By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/can_bloomberg_ever_recover_from_his_disastrous_debate_debut.html

Michael Bloomberg is at the crux of a battle of clichés. America may be the land of second chances, but you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

The level of saturation of Bloomberg’s television advertising actually is working against him now. Few are potential voters who have not been bombarded with the theme that “Mike can get it done,” featuring a candidate who appears strong yet accessible, powerful but caring. However in Las Vegas, Bloomberg pulled back his own curtain, having bribed the DNC to change its rules and allow him onstage, and Americans saw an uncertain-yet-imperious, cold, little man being bullied and out-talked by Elizabeth Warren, mumbling excuses for non-disclosure agreements that lasted just a few days until the mighty oligarch capitulated to the fake Native American.

The stark contrast between what the ads promised and what the reality delivered will take roughly forever to fade from memory. Bloomberg provided his own gotcha, debunking his marketing thrust as a strong man of action.  

Americans instinctively distrust politicians, and they instinctively distrust manipulative advertising.  We love to scorn the pretentious, the high and mighty brought down from their lofty perches.

Even worse for Bloomberg, television advertising is not a welcome interruption of the programming that attracted the eyeballs in the first place. Why do you suppose so many ads these days use humor? It’s as if insurance companies are in the comedy business, not selling a product whose necessity is unpleasant to contemplate. They will happily settle for a  vague association with a cute talking animal or a working class heroine, sold with a sugar coating of humor.

When those television interruptions are all for the same product – a politician – and come with stirring music and visuals, but no humor, resentment starts to kick in, and more ads produce more resentment. The only humor related to Bloomberg ads now is scornful laughter directed at him.

Mike Bloomberg, American Julianus Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/22/mike-bloomberg-american-julianus/

The billionaire former New York City mayor is throwing a lot of money around and renouncing plenty of sensible positions to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nod. His effort to buy the presidency will fail.

I see that Mike Bloomberg is angling to become the Didius Julianus of our day. Historians refer to 193 A.D. as the “Year of the Five Emperors.” Julianus became the second contestant in that sweepstakes after the Praetorian Guard murdered the emperor Pertinax, who had been stingy about distributing the pelf they had come to expect. By this time, the Praetorian Guard was a law unto itself, much as the administrative state is today.

Pertinax only survived for about three months as emperor. Cutting to the mercenary chase, the Guard then announced they were auctioning off the office of emperor to the highest bidder. The main contenders were Claudius Sulpicianus, prefect of Rome, and Julianus, a rich politician and former consul under Commodus. Each made multiple offers until Sulpicianus reached the astounding sum of 20,000 sesterces per soldier in the Guard, several times their annual salary. Julianus saw and raised that bid, offering 25,000 sesterces per head.

Thus did he become emperor, earning a place in the history books.

It did not end happily, though. Neither the legions nor the Senate was happy about the office of emperor being bought outright and Julianus was abandoned by his supporters as Septimius Severus, the ultimate successor as emperor, bore down upon Rome. Julianus, having reigned a mere 66 days, was killed by a soldier in the palace on June 1. His last words are said to have been, “What evil have I done? Whom have I killed?”

The bidding for the Democratic nomination is not quite as brazen as was the contest between Sulpicianus and Julianus. Bloomberg is not barking offers over office partitions at the DNC as Julianus did outside the Praetorian camp. But, still, Bloomberg is pretty brazen.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic Civil War The divide between labor leaders and environmental activists widens in a state dependent on fossil-fuel industries. Charles F. McElwee

https://www.city-journal.org/pennsylvania-democratic-divide

For generations, Pennsylvania’s blue-collar voters found political refuge in the Democratic Party. Even when the national party moved leftward on social issues, this voting bloc—largely Catholic, with multigenerational roots in coal and steel towns—elected Democrats to defend their economic interests. But the party’s environmental activists are jeopardizing this allegiance. A clash is taking place between progressives, who want a carbon-free future, and organized labor, which sees fossil-fuel industries and the jobs they create as essential for many communities. This opposition, reflective of a national trend, could fracture the party statewide and help ensure another victory for Donald Trump.

From Pennsylvania’s big-city wards to its rural townships, union members feel disenfranchised within a party that once championed their interests. In South Philadelphia, for example, the closure of Philadelphia Energy Solutions, the East Coast’s largest and oldest oil refinery, has exposed divisions between the city’s powerful building-trades unions and a newer liberal constituency. Located in the 26th ward—one of only three wards citywide that supported Trump in 2016—the refinery symbolizes the cultural tensions of a changing neighborhood. Near the city’s sports stadiums, older Italian residents, who revere the late mayor Frank Rizzo, live side-by-side with young, secular, and progressive professionals on blocks lined with row homes.

The refinery, shuttered after a massive fire last year that resulted in bankruptcy, prompted discussions about how to redevelop a parcel of land larger than the Center City district. Labor leaders, with support from the Trump administration, called for restoring a facility that supplied 335,000 barrels per day—principally to New York’s market. In January, the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council rallied at City Hall, where the organization’s leaders ripped “elitists” and “rich kids” for prioritizing environmental concerns over saving jobs. It would take years, after all, to clean up a complex in operation since 1870, not long after the first oil well was drilled in northwestern Pennsylvania. Legal restrictions inhibit the contaminated property’s reuse, the leaders pointed out, whereas reopening the site would restore more than 1,000 jobs—many unionized, well-paying, and highly skilled—lost after the fire.

The Democrats are fracking insane Proposing a ban is election suicide. The Democrats are doing it anyway. James Delingpole

https://spectator.us/democrats-fracking-insane/

What could be more emblematic of the American Dream than fracking, the miracle technology that has created thousands of real jobs, lowered the cost of living, generated wealth and prosperity, boosted competitiveness and helped make the United States not just energy independent, but a net exporter of natural gas and petroleum products for the first time in decades? And what could be more characteristic of the elitist, small-minded, anti-market, anti-blue-collar, anti-growth, green-obsessed liberal-left than that the Democratic party is hell-bent on banning it?

Modern fracking — horizontal hydraulic fracturing — combines two technologies in a way that only a few decades ago would have sounded more like witchcraft or alchemy than a viable business proposition. It was devised in the late Nineties by Texas entrepreneur George Mitchell, the son of Greek immigrants (his father had been a goatherd), who set out to solve a seemingly impossible problem: how to make the richly abundant but apparently inaccessible pockets of gas trapped in America’s shale formations economically viable.

After spending $6 million on research and development, Mitchell found the solution. He combined the existing process of fracking (invented in the 1940s) — forcing liquid at high pressure into the shale so as to break up the rock and release the gas — with horizontal drilling. Everyone told him he was wasting his time and money but Mitchell was vindicated. As the Economist wrote in 2012, the year before his death, ‘Few business people have done as much to change the world as George Mitchell.’

AMERICAN JEWS: COME CLOSE, WE NEED TO TALK

https://mailchi.mp/139e127f2279/krd-news-american-jews-come-close-we-need-to

The toughest thing about being an American Jew right now is other American Jews.

The toughest thing about being an American Jew right now is other American Jews. No, wait, hear me out. Imagine being part of any minority group in the US in the 60’s and 70’s and rather than showing solidarity with one’s own minority, you’re met with large members actively working against your minority’s own self-interest. How would the gay movement have fared if a large number of gay people themselves stated “Well, you know, the straights do have a point about us.” But that didn’t happen, nor did that happen with the black community. And it didn’t happen because both communities were educated, proud and determined. They didn’t read a story about one of their own doing bad things and yell “Let’s scrap this because he is representative of us all!”

So, what’s up with us Jews? A group of people who delight in levels of self-deprecation. A group of people who can’t defend the actual definition of Zionism because our enemies have so skillfully bastardized its meaning that there are those among us who actually utter this word in hushed voices. A group of people to our credit would bend over backwards to call out the plight of any minority on the planet but when it comes to our tiny little population, at less than 0.2% of the world’s total population, we feel we need to apologize for wanting basic human rights?

Why Bloomberg Can’t Stop Bernie Karin McQuillan

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/20/why-bloomberg-cant-stop-bernie/

Newly radicalized liberals provide the foot-soldiers and useful idiots backing Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, and the Squad. Bloomberg thinks he can win simply by out-organizing and out-spending them. He is wrong.

Michael Bloomberg is selling the Democratic Party establishment on the idea he can solve the party’s problem with money. He is doing well so far in terms of buying ad time and endorsements, having the leadership bend rules for him, and hiring every Democrat campaign staffer across the country. But his lackluster performance in the Nevada primary debate did nothing to slow Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) momentum. Sanders is already showing that the leadership no longer calls the shots.

Millennial Democrats have turned socialist in the 21st century. They are identity-politics Marxists with a digital twist—the “woke.” Marxist promises to destroy the rich, followed by free everything for the masses are all there, relabeled as “social justice.” The ugly totalitarian underpinnings are given a virtue-signaling makeover and said to be fighting bigotry and saving the planet from global warming.

The future is theirs unless conservatives stop the progressive perversion of our educational system. We have made little discernible progress in the past three years. With the power of social media and the corruption of the old media, progressives have moved beyond our schools to mainstream their ideas among Democratic voters of all demographics.

Marxists such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who pressured House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to impeach the president with disastrous political results, are not the self-destructive fools they seem. They have the unified discipline, the energy, the numbers, and the money to dominate the Democratic Party.

They are succeeding with their long-term strategy, which is to discredit our republican institutions among Democrats. They have pushed mainstream liberals to the left. Not one single politician has dared confront them.

Benny Gantz’s cluelessness on US politics According to Gantz, it is Netanyahu’s fault that Israel has become a partisan issue in the US, and it is the mission of the “anybody-but-Bibi” faction to remedy the situation Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Benny-Gantzs-cluelessness-on-US-politics-618267

Addressing a large audience of English-speaking Israelis on Monday, Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz made a promise that he cannot possibly keep. This isn’t what made his vow laughable, however. It’s par for political candidates to give utopian guarantees to prospective voters, particularly during the final countdown to an election – or, in this case, the last days leading up to a third round of Knesset elections on March 2, which are likely to result in the same impasse as the previous two.

Nor did the message that Gantz conveyed to the 1,000 people present at the Tel Aviv International Salon event get muddled as a result of his heavy Hebrew accent. No, the contender to the premiership that has been held for more than the past decade by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said what he meant and meant what he said, as did his running mate, Yair Lapid, who shared the podium and the sentiment that Netanyahu is to blame for the growing lack of support for Israel in America’s Democratic Party.

“It’s very important that we return to the bipartisan relationship between Israel and the United States,” Gantz said. “This is something that Netanyahu, unfortunately, neglected.”

Gantz assured the crowd that, unlike Netanyahu – who shows favoritism for the Republican Party – Blue and White “doesn’t care if the American president is a Republican or a Democrat. If he is a good president for the United States, by definition, he will be a good president for the State of Israel, as well.”

According to Gantz, it is Netanyahu’s fault that Israel has become a partisan issue in the US, and it is the mission of the “anybody-but-Bibi” faction, if elected to head the next Israeli government, to remedy the sorry situation.

“We have rehabilitation to do with the Democratic Party,” Lapid chimed in. “But we also need rehabilitation with American Jewry.”

Bloomberg Picks up 3 New Congressional Endorsements After Debate By Zachary Stieber

https://www.theepochtimes.com/bloomberg-picks-up-3-new-congressional-endorsements-after-debate_3244660.html

Three members of the House of Representatives announced their support for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg the morning after a fiery primary debate in Nevada.

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, said she’s endorsing Bloomberg, 78, for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“Mike and I have worked together for years in New York, and whether it’s homeland security or gun safety, there’s no one you can depend on more to get important initiatives over the finish line,” Lowey said in a statement released by Bloomberg’s campaign.

“We need someone in the White House who will help secure a bright future for our children and families, free of gun violence, with opportunity for educational success and good jobs, and with access to affordable health care and prescription drugs. That person is Mike Bloomberg, and there’s no doubt about it, no matter how big the challenge, Mike will get it done.”

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) speaks onstage during Global Citizen: Movement Makers at NYU Skirball Center in New York City on Sept. 19, 2017. (Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Global Citizen)

Reps. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) also announced endorsements for the billionaire.

Aguilar, who Bloomberg said would serve as a co-chair for his campaign, cited Bloomberg’s efforts to restrict gun ownership and combat climate change in his statement of support. Gottheimer, co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, called the former mayor “an experienced, proven leader who has big ideas, will fight to get things done, and knows how to work with—and get votes from—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.”

How The Ruling Class Might Elect Bloomberg and Realign American Politics Angelo Codevilla

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/18/how-the-ruling-class-might-elect-bloomberg-and-realign-american-politics/

The Democratic Party’s establishment might well succeed in making Michael Bloomberg president of the United States—not on Election Night 2020, however. But it could happen if a third party were to win some electoral votes and, with no candidate receiving a majority of them, the House of Representatives was called upon to choose between the top-two electoral vote-getters.

Today’s civil war within the Democratic Party makes it possible that two candidates will come from it: Bernie Sanders for the Woke Left, and Bloomberg for the establishment. In that case, enough establishment Republicans in the House might join their establishment Democratic colleagues to defeat Trump. This would realign U.S. politics: a consolidated, single, left-trending establishment party would rule, opposed by the extreme Left as well as by the Right.

Here is how it might come about.

Today, the Democratic Party establishment is realizing that, in its present condition, it cannot win the 2020 presidential election and is likely to lose Congress as well. That is why it is scrambling to grab onto Michael Bloomberg, who is scrambling to adapt himself to the Democratic Party’s unpresentable wokeness. But integrating Bloomberg into today’s Democratic Party won’t work.

The corruption of Barack Obama – How to wake the media up about TRUMP J.B Shurk

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/how_to_wake_the_media_up_about_trump.html

The national media are flabbergasted that Americans won’t consent to President Trump’s removal from office.  How can so many of his compatriots be indicted and so many government bureaucrats condemn his behavior without giving them what they desire: self-assurance that they are “on the right side of history”?

If they ever wish to understand, the critical starting point in their education is not the current presidency, but the last one.  Although there are numerous ways to describe the present divide in America, one of the simpler is thus: those Americans who take Barack Obama at his word that his presidency was historically “scandal free” and those Americans who see the unrelenting stream of Deep State attempts to take down President Trump as a continuing coup and the natural extension of an unethical, criminal, and at times unconstitutional Obama presidency.

For those of us in the latter camp, Barack Obama presided over a corrupt administration and used his historic election as the first non-white American president as a get-out-of-jail-free card to abuse his power while silencing his critics.

Whataboutery is frowned upon now that President Trump is in office, but if President Trump had done a tiny percentage of what Obama orchestrated, he actually would be in federal prison.  Imagine what would have happened if President Trump had done the following: