Archive for the ‘Texas’ Category
Monday, March 16th, 2020
Between almost everyone dropping out, Biden continuing to rack up victories, and the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic, almost all the air has been sucked out of the Democratic Presidential race. So this is going to be a relatively short and subdued Democratic Presidential clown car update.
Delegates
Right now the delegate count stands at:
- Joe Biden 885
- Bernie Sanders 732
Elizabeth Warren 72
Michael Bloomberg 61
Pete Buttigieg 26
Amy Klobuchar 7
- Tulsi Gabbard 2
Polls
Eh, not posting any individual polls this week, as Biden is stomping Sanders in every single one of them, usually by just shy of a 2-1 ratio. The closest thing to a surprise is that Hill/Harris X has Gabbard at 5% nationally, which suggests that 4% is the level of “Operation Chaos”-type effects.
Real Clear Politics polls.
538 poll average.
Election betting markets. Biden’s first at a whopping 87.3%. However, second place is not Sanders, it’s Hillary at 5.1%. (strokes chin)(stops)(washes hands annoyingly long period of time) (strokes chin again)
Pundits, etc.
Biden won Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Idaho and Washington (where results were close), while Sanders won South Dakota.
Coronavirus is one of the topics that dominated last night’s Biden-Sanders debate, as well it should, as both Biden and Sanders are part of the target demographic most likely to drop dead of it. Plus coronavirus provides Biden the perfect excuse to run the first “front porch” campaign since Warren G. Harding.
Liveblog of the Biden-Sanders debate.
Another one from 538.
Older Democrats and blacks may have pushed Biden over the top, but young and Hispanic Democrats are going socialist:
The electoral patterns in Texas, which Biden narrowly won, were marked by divisions of age and ethnicity. Voters over 65 went for Biden nearly four to one, according to Washington Post exit polls. By contrast, among voters under 30, Sanders cleaned up, beating Biden 59 percent to 13 percent. African-Americans, who constitute 20 percent of the state’s electorate, gave nearly three-fifths of their votes to Biden, almost four times Sanders’s share. Carroll Robinson, who served on the Houston City Council for six years and is chairman of the Coalition of Black Democrats, notes that Sanders failed to connect, particularly with older black voters; he cites in particular his being the only major candidate not to attend the 55th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma as reflective of his “signaling problem” with African-American voters.
Black voters, Robinson notes, were critical to Biden’s small margin of victory, boosting his totals in Harris County, which includes Houston, and in Dallas County. In contrast, Latinos, already roughly one-third of the state’s Democratic voters, voted heavily for Sanders. The Vermont senator won roughly 40 percent of Latino voters, compared with about a quarter who opted for Biden. Sanders won easily in heavily Latino Bexar (San Antonio), Hidalgo (the Rio Grande Valley), and El Paso Counties.
Sanders also appealed to younger voters in Texas, as elsewhere, beating Biden among voters under 30—making up some 15 percent of the electorate—by almost four to one. He won hugely in Austin, the state’s epicenter of millennial culture, with its high concentration of tech workers. Sanders easily took Travis County over Biden, 83,000 to 52,000.
Moderate Texas Democrats can take heart in halting the momentum of a socialist candidate, but the broader trend is against them. According to exit polls, some 56 percent of Texas Democrats view socialism favorably. In Houston, voters elected an inexperienced 27-year-old progressive, Lina Hidalgo, as judge of Harris County in 2018. Despite its title, the role is nonjudicial; Hidalgo is actually the chief executive of the nation’s third most-populous county. This year, Christian Menefee, a young social-justice advocate, won the primary for Harris County Attorney over more mainstream opposition, on a platform of progressive criminal-justice reform. “There’s an incipient change among the grassroots activists,” notes Bill White, former Houston mayor and deputy energy secretary under Bill Clinton. “There’s a whole new group who are very anti-establishment and gaining influence.” White suspects that the ascendency of these forces may just be beginning. Sanders and Warren—before she dropped out of the race on Thursday—enjoyed a combined 40 percent support of the Texas Democratic electorate, running strongest among the fastest-growing demographic groups.
This leftward transformation is even further along in California. As Morley Winograd, a longtime Democratic activist and former aide to Al Gore, suggests, the state is not only “unique politically, but also big enough to have its own weather system. Democrats in the state feel the economy is strong enough to allow it to maintain its current high-tax, high regulation environment without causing a major downturn.” Socialism remains in vogue. At last year’s state party convention, when former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, then a presidential aspirant, suggested that “socialism is not the answer,” he was lustily booed.
As in Texas, Sanders won biggest among Latinos and millennials, who represent the party’s future. He won an astounding 55 percent of Latino voters, according to New York Times exit polls, compared with a mere 21 percent for Biden. He won 72 percent of voters under 30 and 57 percent of voters in the 30-to-44 age range, beating Biden by wide margins. Biden did win older voters and among African-Americans, but blacks constitute only 7 percent of the state’s Democratic electorate, barely a third of their Texas share.
You may have wondered “With everyone else out, will Tulsi Gabbard start picking up protest votes?” Looking at the various vote totals, the answer appears to be “No.” She does not appear to have broken 1% in any state last week.
Here’s a piece that argues that Cory Booker could have been the nominee if only he hadn’t taken that hard-left turn. There’s a bit of truth to it, but Booker was already looking a little goofy before the pandering began, and primaries are littered with candidates who looked formidable on paper.
Bloomberg last month: Oh sure, I’m going to pay you campaign staffers through the end of the year whether I stay in or not. Bloomberg this month: Psych!
Heh:
Now on to the clown car itself (or what’s left of it):
Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. We need to talk about Joe Biden:
Joe Biden is clearly not well. The comeback front-runner for the Democratic nomination hasn’t lost a step; he’s lost the plot. You’re not supposed to diagnose or psychoanalyze people from afar, I know. It is rude. Having any conversation about the frailty of an elderly public figure always feels rude. Such conversations are difficult to have even about elderly family members, behind closed doors.
But this subject needs to be broached right now. Accusations that Hillary Clinton was unwell were treated as a conspiracy theory up until the moment she seemed to collapse at a 9/11 memorial and was pushed into the side of a van like a sack of meat. Though that viral clip surely hurt Clinton, it was a one-day story and she performed reasonably well on the campaign trail afterward. Biden is amassing a series of viral clips that are much worse. He’ll forget the name of former president Barack Obama, or the state he’s in, or stock phrases of American oratory: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women created by . . . you know . . . you know the thing.” He’ll announce to a baffled crowd that “I’m Joe Biden’s husband and I work for Cedric Richmond” (Richmond is a congressman, in case you were wondering.)
Yes, we need to make room for verbal slip-ups among people who are tirelessly barnstorming around the country and giving public speeches. But any look at a video of Biden in a previous campaign for president shows that the former vice president has diminished.
I assume you saw my piece on Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. Speaking of which, welcome to the 21st century, Joe:
For some damn reason, Biden decided that he needed to put Beto O’Rourke’s campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon in charge of his campaign. Certainly the lackluster Biden campaign has needed a shakeup for a long time (current run of success notwithstanding), but why you’d hire the person who couldn’t even get their candidate to the primary is beyond me. (Who he should be hiring is Buttigieg’s head of fundraising.) In the debate, Biden promised to pick a woman as Veep, which is exactly the sort of pander you expect of Democrats these days:
James Clyburn and James Carville say the quiet part out loud, that debates should be shut down so Biden doesn’t embarass himself. Thanks to the Wuhan Coronavirus, Biden’s fundraising is now being done on the intertubes. Also: “According to campaign finance records, Biden raised $11 million immediately after his South Carolina primary win and $7 million following his Super Tuesday victories. The victories helped alleviate some of the campaign’s money woes, but it’s unclear how a ban on actual campaign events and fundraisers may impact his ability to raise money.” Those are good but not out-of-the-park numbers. He got endorsed by the NEA. Also endorsed by Andrew Yang. Joe Biden’s “bioethics advisor” (and ObamaCare architect) Ezekiel Emanuel wants people to die at age 75 (i.e., younger than Biden is now).
What about simple stuff? Flu shots are out. Certainly if there were to be a flu pandemic, a younger person who has yet to live a complete life ought to get the vaccine or any antiviral drugs.
A big challenge is antibiotics for pneumonia or skin and urinary infections. Antibiotics are cheap and largely effective in curing infections. It is really hard for us to say no. Indeed, even people who are sure they don’t want life-extending treatments find it hard to refuse antibiotics. But, as Osler reminds us, unlike the decays associated with chronic conditions, death from these infections is quick and relatively painless. So, no to antibiotics.
I’m sure that will go over great with Biden’s core of supporters…
Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Does Tulsi have any chance in the race? I could say “if both Biden and Bernies keeled over dead,” but even then I would expect someone like Warren or Bloomberg to jump back into the race and do better than Gabbard. She goes full Andrew Yang in calling for a Universal Basic Income, which should douse any remain fires for her on the right. “Tulsi Gabbard Says Her Sick Friend and Three Others Were Denied Coronavirus Testing in Hawaii.” Interesting (especially since Democrats absolutely dominate Hawaii), but rather peripheral to the race.
Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. By and large, women don’t like Bernie. “Bernie Bros warn of ‘massive exodus’ if Democrats nominate Joe Biden.” Well, they would. But some said the same in 2016, and a “massive exodus” was not apparent. “Just Like Socialism, Bernie’s Campaign Collapsed Under Its Own Contradictions:
What can only be characterized, at best, as an election-year makeover campaign began to fall apart on Feb. 23 in an interview Anderson Cooper on “60 Minutes.” Among other things, Sanders stated: “We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?”
Right afterward, Sanders doubled down, which was really his only play, lest he come off as a flip-flopper. Despite his proclamation “Truth is truth,” his point wasn’t clear. Does improved literacy that occurred in the context of indoctrinating the population in communist ideology redeem Cuba in any way? Should the United States become more like such countries? Ultimately, these remarks went nowhere, perhaps because there wasn’t anywhere to go but down.
Again, these remarks aren’t new and are entirely consistently with Sanders’ history. But, as even left-wing Vox conceded, it made for a bad look: “The other read, though, is more in line with Sanders’ past. Time after time, he has apologized for the actions of brutal left-wing dictatorships from Cuba to Nicaragua to the Soviet Union, partly out of a critique of America’s meddling in these countries but also – some argue – because of his ideological sympathies toward them.”
In a single interview, Sanders may’ve forever demolished the effort to convince the American electorate the 78-year-old career politician is a perfectly benign “democratic socialist” and not the hard-left socialist he’s always been.
Bernie’s ceiling shows that the limits of socialism in America, even among Democrats:
Sure, socialism carries much less of a stigma in Democratic politics than it did a decade ago. Polling continually indicates that America’s young people have a much more positive attitude toward socialism than their parents and grandparents did. But that is a separate question from whether an openly socialist candidate can win elections — though it is worth noting that the two biggest Democratic Socialists of America victories in 2018 came from the wins of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib in the Democratic primaries of deep-blue House districts.
The response of the rest of the party to Sanders’s rise proved illuminating. Democrats feared that a 2020 cycle with Sanders atop the ticket would risk their House majority, destroy them in swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania, and obliterate them in red states.
In theory, socialism is supposed to appeal to the working class, including the white working class, which drifted toward Trump in 2016. But on Super Tuesday, Joe Biden ran ahead of Sanders among white non–college graduates in the states that Biden won, and the former vice president largely kept it close among this demographic in the states that Sanders won.
Bernie doesn’t let facts get in the way of True Belief:
Out of the Running
These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:
Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti.
Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
Actor Alec Baldwin
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet (Dropped out February 11, 2020)
li>Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Dropped out March 4, 2020 and endorsed Biden)
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (Dropped out January 11, 2020)
Former California Governor Jerry Brown
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg (Dropped out March 1, 2020 and endorsed Biden)
Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro (Dropped out January 2, 2020)
Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Stated again and again she’s not running, but there’s still a cottage industry in predicting she’ll displace Biden at the DNC or be the veep pick. Not really seeing either, but stranger things have happened this year…
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
Former Maryland Representative John Delaney (Dropped Out January 31, 2020)
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
Former Vice President Al Gore
Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
Former Attorney General Eric Holder
Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.(Dropped out March 2, 2020 and endorsed Biden.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
Former First Lady Michelle Obama
Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Dropped out February 12, 2020)
Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
Billionaire Tom Steyer. (Dropped out February 29, 20020)
California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. (Dropped out March 5, 2020)
Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson (Dropped out January 10, 2020)
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
Venture capitalist Andrew Yang (Dropped out February 11, 2020, later endorsed Biden)
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Tags:2020 Presidential Race, Andrew Yang, Austin, Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, California, coronavirus, debate, Democrats, Ezekiel Emanuel, Harris County, Hawaii, Hillary Clinton, James Carville, James Clyburn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, National Education Association, ObamaCare, Social Justice Warriors, socialism, Stephen King, Texas, Travis County, Tulsi Gabbard
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Elections, ObamaCare, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »
Thursday, March 12th, 2020
Everyone and their dog is doing a Wuhan coronavirus roundup, so let’s make this update Texas-specific (which may make it easier to get into the other roundups).
There are currently 19 reported cases in Texas, 13 of those in the Houston area.
This New York Times map says 33 cases, which presumably includes foreign and cruise ship evacuees in quarantine at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.
Fortunately, Texas is one of the most prepared states.
The already-in-progress Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was closed early at 4 PM yesterday instead of running through March 22.
There are a bunch of people on Twitter saying they’ll just attend the Greenpoint carnival instead of the rodeo. Which is like saying that, instead of seeing Avengers: Endgame in IMAX, you’re going to go home and watch a VHS of the Roger Corman Fantastic Four on your 13″ tube TV.
The SXSW music, film and tech festival have been cancelled. On the plus side, this will keep some people from seeing the drug-addicted transients Mayor Steve Adler and the City Council have lured to Austin streets, a health and safety concern all their own.
For now, Rodeo Austin is still on, but that could change.
Willie Nelson’s Luck Reunion Music Festival is also currently scheduled to occur.
Austin Independent School District has banned travel to hard-hit states, including “California, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Washington and Utah.”
There are at least 10 testing centers around the state.
The NBA season has been suspended, including the three Texas teams (Rockets, Mavericks and Spurs).
A lot of Texas universities have extended spring break and started planning for teaching online.
Stay safe out there…
Tags:Austin ISD, coronavirus, Houston, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, pandemic, San Antonio, SXSW, Texas, Wuhan
Posted in Austin, Texas | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 6th, 2020
Been a hell of a week. Monday’s Clown Car update will be yuuuuuuuugggggeeeeee! Also remember that the horror begins anew this weekend.
Trump Administration: Sanctuary city? No federal funds for you!
Democrats lie about coronavirus budget cuts.
How tranny pandering damaged the Labour Party:
“Rebecca Long Bailey and Lisa Nandy have backed a 12-point plan put forward by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights group that calls for sex-based rights campaigners to be expelled from Labour. Angela Rayner and Dawn Butler, who are in the running for deputy leader, also backed the group’s pledges. The trans rights group is calling for long debated changes to the Gender Recognition Act that would allow people to formally self identify as the opposite sex without paying for a certificate or demonstrating that they have accessed transitioning services. It also vows to ‘organise and fight against transphobic organisations such as Woman’s Place UK, LGB Alliance, and other trans exclusionist hate groups.’”
People were then asked whether they agreed with the pledge. Then they also answered the question about how likely they were to vote Labour.
The results show that being exposed to even this small snippet of news about the pledge seems to reduce support for Labour. As figure one reveals, the share of survey respondents who said they would likely vote Labour was 42.6 percent among those who read nothing and just 32.7 percent among those who read the paragraph about the Labour trans pledge.
One reason for the drop was the limited popularity of the trans pledge among many survey respondents. For instance, less than a third of this mainly left-leaning sample who read about the pledge agreed with it. Among Labour voters, agreement rose to 40 percent, with 18 percent opposed and the rest undecided. However, Green, Liberal Democrat and Scottish National Party (SNP) voters split fairly evenly between opposing and supporting the pledge, with many undecided.
It seems that most opposed the pledge or were undecided. Among the 40 people who agreed with the pledge, 70 percent said they planned to vote Labour. Among the 99 who either disagreed or were unsure about the pledge, just 20 percent planned to do so.
Democrats behaving badly: “Hawaii councilman led meth-trafficking ring, conspired with Samoan gang ‘shot caller,’ investigators allege.”
A Hawaii councilman pleaded not guilty Friday to multiple charges accusing him of leading a methamphetamine-trafficking ring, supplying weapons and conspiring with a gang leader while serving as an elected official, investigators said.
Arthur Brun, 48, operated the major drug-trafficking conspiracy involving 11 other defendants since at least June 2019, while serving as an elected member of the Kauai County Council and vice chairman of its Public Safety and Human Services Committee, the U.S. Attorney’s Office alleged in a news release.
Also, another case of “name that party,” since Brun is a Democrat.
There are two middle classes: the yeomanry and the clerisy:
First there is the yeomanry or the traditional middle class, which consists of small business owners, minor landowners, craftspeople, and artisans, or what we would define historically as the bourgeoisie, or the old French Third Estate, deeply embedded in the private economy. The other middle class, now in ascendency, is the clerisy, a group that makes its living largely in quasi-public institutions, notably universities, media, the non-profit world, and the upper bureaucracy.
Snip.
The yeomanry’s distress can be seen in everything from falling rates of business formation as well as declining homeownership, particularly among the young, most notably in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Even in the United States, a country that never experienced feudalism, the proportion of land owned by the nation’s 100 largest private landowners grew by nearly 50 percent between 2007 and 2017.
Land ownership in Europe is also increasingly concentrated in smaller hands; in Great Britain, where land prices have risen dramatically over the past decade, less than one percent of the population owns half of all the land. On the continent, farmland is increasingly concentrated while urban real estate has fallen into the hands of a small cadre of corporate owners and the mega-wealthy.
Growing corporate concentration, in both the US and Europe, has now seeped into the once dynamic tech economy. In Silicon Valley, the renowned garage culture is being supplanted by a gargantua of giant firms that have achieved market power unprecedented in modern times, controlling in some cases 80 – 90 percent of their key niches like search, social media, cellular, and computer operating systems. One online publisher uses a Star Trek analogy to describe his firm’s status with Google: “It’s a bit like being assimilated by the Borg. You get cool new powers. But having been assimilated, if your implants were ever removed, you’d certainly die. That basically captures our relationship to Google.”
The decline of the yeomanry threatens the future of democracy as we have known it. Faced with growing assaults on their businesses, and in some cases, their communities, they have begun to fight back against many of the policies, notably climate policy, that are widely supported by the oligarchs and the clerisy. A policy to force the rapid replacement of fossil fuels with heavily subsidized renewables requires the development of the kind of largely unaccountable bureaucracies that both employ and empower the clerisy while providing the oligarchs both in the US and Europe with a unique opportunity to cash in on energy “transitions.”
In contrast, for large parts of the yeomanry, a call for a rapid, radical shift towards renewables imposes much higher energy prices. It also threatens to diminish industries in which many of them work and undercut the sustenance to the Main Street merchants in smaller cities and the countryside. Already attempts to impose such policies have led to yeoman rebellions in a number of countries.
Math is hard:
It’s indicative of a bigger problem:
This, right here, is why so many left-leaning Americans think that “the billionaires” can pay for everything. It’s why Elizabeth Warren was enthusiastically boosted by the media despite her ridiculous pretense that she could pay for a series of gargantuan initiatives without raising taxes on anyone but the extremely rich. It’s why Democrat after Democrat promises not to raise “middle class taxes” while promising programs that require the raising of middle class taxes. How did this bad tweet make it onto TV to be endorsed? Why did Mara Gay agree with it? Why didn’t Brian Williams notice? Because the people involved in this clip thought it was true. This is how they see the world.
But it’s not true. Not even close. Forget the million for a moment and make it Andrew Yang’s thousand instead. Would that be possible? Nope! If Michael Bloomberg were to try to achieve what Andrew Yang promised ($1,000 per American per month, forever), he would be able to give every American about $183 in the first month before he’d have $0 left. To make it through a single month, he would have to be five times richer than he is. And, after that single month, even at five times his current wealth, his fortune would be completely and permanently depleted. Elizabeth Warren’s unconstitutional wealth tax topped out at six percent. Filter Bloomberg’s money through that tax and you get $11 per American per year.
There is still no such thing as a free lunch. If Americans want expanded services — or a monthly stipend — they are going to have to pay for them themselves. There is no billionaire out there who can do it for them.
Iran is cheating on its nuclear commitments again. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
America doesn’t need more foreign workers.
Are we so “desperate” for more bodies to “fuel economic growth?” Let’s recap the demographic math: We live in a nation of 330 million, 44 million of whom are foreign-born. Upward of 30 million immigrants are currently living, working and going to school here illegally. One million new legal immigrants are granted green cards every year. An estimated 600,000 temporary worker visas are issued annually, including the H-1B, H-2A, H-2B and H-4 programs. That doesn’t include spousal visas or the more than half a million foreign “students” now working through the stealth guest worker plan known as the Optional Practical Training program, which allows foreign students to work with little monitoring, no wage protections, no payment of Social Security payroll taxes and no requirement for employers to demonstrate labor market shortages.
“We” ordinary Americans don’t need more immigrants. Corporations (and their trusty house organ, the Wall Street Journal) want higher profits, lower wages, and endless pipelines of cheap foreign labor. They’ve been cooking up manufactured worker shortage crises since World War II and crying apocalypse since the 1980s, when the National Science Foundation’s Erich Bloch hyped a STEM shortage based on groundless projections to crusade for agency budget increases.
I don’t agree 100%; I think it behooves us to get the very best in some fields, people with PhDs in science and technology, and masters of various arts. But that’s a far cry from “Hey, my cousin Sanjay knows Sharepoint. Let’s write an H1B rec so we can get him over here.”
“Billionaire Republican buys major Twitter stake, may oust CEO amid GOP concerns of bias.”
A billionaire Republican megadonor has purchased a “sizable” stake in Twitter and “plans to push” to oust CEO Jack Dorsey among other changes, according to new reports, raising the prospect of a shocking election-year shakeup of the social media platform that conservatives have long accused of overt left-wing political bias.
Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. has already nominated four directors to Twitter’s board, Bloomberg News reported, citing several sources familiar with the arrangement. The outlet noted that unlike other prominent tech CEOs, Dorsey didn’t have voting control over Twitter because the company had just one class of stock; and he has long been a target for removal given Twitter’s struggling user growth numbers and stock performance.
Singer, who opposed President Trump’s campaign in 2016, has since changed his tune, raising the prospect that some of the changes to Twitter could make the platform a friendlier place for pro-Trump users. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Singer donated $24 million to Republican and right-leaning groups in the 2016 election.
Defense contractor accused of passing classified human intelligence information to a Hezbollah-connected lover. “Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, formerly of Rochester, Minn., was arrested by FBI agents on Feb. 27.” Other reports have noted she herself was born in Lebanon. Who gave a foreign born contractor Top Secret clearance?
Fourteen Coronavirus cases in Texas, but only three in the wild (all in the greater Houston area), the rest evacuees in quarantine.
Heh:
Kinda news: Joyriding in a stolen car. Kicking it up a notch: Adler joyriding in a stolen police car.
Heh 2.
Dwight wanted this in the clown car, but since John “Whale Farker” McAfee isn’t a Democrat, I’m including it here:
Thew only problem is that once you install McAfee as your running mate, he slows your campaign down by 90%…
Come as you are:
Tags:Arthur Brun, Austin, coronavirus, Crime, Democrats, dogs, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Hawaii, Hezbollah, homeless, Iran, Jihad, Labour, Lebanon, LinkSwarm, Mariam Taha Thompson, Media Watch, Paul Singer, sanctuary cities, Social Justice Warriors, spying, Texas, transexual, Twitter
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 5th, 2020
Didn’t have time for these yesterday, but here are a few interesting results from the Texas primary on Tuesday:
In Texas, being endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is a one-way ticket to Palookaville:
The two far-left candidates backed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lost their primary elections in Texas on Tuesday.
Ocasio-Cortez announced last month that she would be supporting the primary contests of several democratic socialists running against establishment candidates. The New York Democrat endorsed Texas hopefuls Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez, a candidate for Senate, and Jessica Cisneros, a primary challenger to Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar.
Ramirez lost to the establishment-backed Senate candidate M.J. Hegar. Hegar, an Air Force veteran, was endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to take on Republican Sen. John Cornyn. Ramirez came in third place in the primary with 13.3% of the vote. The divisive primary featured seven candidates who all received 5% or more of the vote.
Cisneros, a 26-year-old attorney, was gunning for the seat held by Cuellar, one of the moderate Democrats Ocasio-Cortez targeted for his pro-gun policy preferences and “A” rating from the National Rifle Association. Cuellar defeated Cisneros by 4 percentage points, carrying 52% of the vote compared to her 48%.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Evidently Hegar is going to face state senator Royce West in the runoff. I got half that bracket right, predicting West to make the runoff, but I was badly wrong on Hegar’s chances. I didn’t realize that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee would endorse Hegar just five days after my roundup. Why the DSCC choose a candidate whose biggest achievement was losing a congressional race to John Carter in the Year of Beto is a mystery to me, but she’s in the runoff, albeit with only 22% of the vote.
Pierce Bush lost. That’s the sort of thing that happens when you run a carpetbagger bid in a Republican primary but go out of your way to alienate Republican voters. Instead Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls and conservative Kathaleen Wall will meet in the runoff for the retiring Pete Olson’s seat.
I hope the Texas has a solid, well-funded get out the vote effort for this fall, as there are a lot of incumbent Republican congressmen in seats where Democratic votes exceeded Republican votes, including the 2nd (Dan Crenshaw), 3rd (Van Taylor), the 10th (Mike McCaul), the 21st (Chip Roy), the 25th (Roger Williams), and the 31st (John Carter),
Tags:10th Congressional District, 25th Congressional District, 2nd Congressional District, 31st Congressional District, 3rd Congressional District, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Chip Roy, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, Dan Crenshaw, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democrats, Jessica Cisneros, John Carter, Kathaleen Wall, M. J. Hegar, Mike McCaul, Pierce Bush, Republican Party of Texas, Republicans, Roger Williams, Royce West, Texas, Texas 21st Congressional District, Troy Nehls, Van Taylor
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 4th, 2020
All that “Bernie is the inevitable nominee” talk?
Yeah, not so much. They’re still counting, but it looks like Biden won:
Alabama
Arkansas
Oklahoma
Maine (though less than a point separates them there)
Massachusetts(!)
Minnesota
North Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
While Sanders won:
California
Colorado
Utah
Vermont
Also looks like Michael Bloomberg is going to pick up delegates in Arkansas, Colorado, North Carolina, Tennessee, while Elizabeth Warren will pick up delegates of her home state of Massachusetts (coming in third), Colorado, Minnesota and Maine. Bloomberg also won American Samoa, picking up four delegates, where Tulsi Gabbard also picked up one, which is more than Tom Steyer, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris or James Inslee will ever pick up.
Biden won all the states Hillary won in 2016, plus Maine, Minnesota and Oklahoma.
Biden now has more projected delegates than Bernie, 397 to 356.
It’s now the Biden and Bernie show, with a side-order of Mini-Mike for as long as he wants to waste his money. Warren is toast, but right now she says she’s going to continue running.
Too busy this week to offer up much analysis than that. Likewise thoughts on Buttigieg and Klobuchar leaving the race and endorsing Biden, which will have to wait until Monday’s Clown Car Update.
Tags:2020 Presidential Race, Alabama, Arkansas, Bernie Sanders, California, Elections, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Maine, Massachusetts, Michael Bloomberg, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Super Tuesday, Tennessee, Texas, Tulsi Gabbard, Virginia
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, February 28th, 2020
Welcome to a Friday LinkSwarm! There are five Saturdays in February this month, something that won’t happen again until 2048.
Giant water main break in Houston shuts down lots of schools and streets. The pipe, which is 8 feet across and supplies 40-50% of Houston’s water, burst during repairs. There’s a boil notice in effect for Houston for the next 24 hours. (Hat tip: Kemberlee Kaye.)
Why we need to secure the border to fight coronavirus: “U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 1,155 Chinese migrants this fiscal year after they illegally entered from Mexico, Canada, or coastal boundaries. More than 95 percent came over the southwestern border between October 1, 2019, and January 31, 2020.”
Kurt Schlichter covers the Gathering of the NeverTrumpaloos:
Woke Rule No. 1 is that anything with “Principles” in its name is a grift. Now, something called “Principles First” – ugh – is trying to shoehorn into CPAC’s spotlight with its “National Summit on Principled Conservatism” to be held in D.C. on February 29th, and for the low, low, almost certainly lib tech tycoon-subsidized price of $10, you can attend this sexless Never Trump Freaknik.
It’s an opportunity to get one-on-one with all your favorite relevancy-challenged B-list MSNBCNN guests for a full day of complaining about Donald Trump and having them show you on the doll exactly where Trump hurt them. Brace yourselves for impassioned pleas by impotent weirdos to vote for the crusty commie curmudgeon because Trump sends mean tweets, plus plenty of “Oh well I nevers” and “We’re better than thats” as Pearl Clutchfest 2020 gets well and truly lit. Just don’t be surprised if the marquee outside reads “Puppet Show and Never Trump.”
From political consultants who are no longer consulted to writers who are no longer read, this is the Woodstock for conservatives who never actually conserved anything.
Excited? Worried you might miss out? Calm down. There are plenty of tickets left. And I hear they’ve got loads of Doritos and Zima at the buffet, if you can squeeze in between the ravenous Bulwark staffers stuffing their talk holes.
Who’s coming to this soiree? Well, just imagine the universe’s worst county fair dino-rock concert line-up, and this is its political equivalent. Mona Charen! Bill Kristol! David Frum! It’s basically the Swamp’s version of Bachman Turner Overdrive, Blue Öyster Cult, and Average White Band – except this band of totally white people are well below-average, though I’m sure we’ll get a fussy email reading “Excuse me, but we have a/an __________.” The closest thing to diversity I could detect in their line-up was the aptly named Heath Mayo – he’s diverse because he’s a younger kind of white person. I’m sure Mayo is ready to unleash the full benefit of his life experience upon the eager crowd – he can explain how learning about Reagan in high school in 2008 totally changed his life.
Sadly, Ana Navarro isn’t on the bill, but she probably has important work to do completing Dr. Stephen Hawking’s string theory research. And there’s no sign of Jennifer Rubin, probably because the event occurs during the hours of daylight.
Former Texas state Senator Don Huffines has some sobering behind-the-scenes look at Texas government.
- Abolished an obscure quasi-educational agency: “A rats nest of crooks.”
- “We uncovered the biggest political corruption scandal in the history of the state of Texas.”
- “We discovered these people were stealing a lot of money.”
- “Over 3000 employees.”
- At least 5 employees are currently in prison, with more potentially coming soon.
- “I didn’t get a lot of help in Austin.”
- “I didn’t get any support of the Governor.”
- “I got nothing but opposition from the speaker of the house.”
- The Lt. Governor wasn’t particularly helpful, but didn’t actively work against him either.
Trump campaign to open storefronts in black neighborhoods in swing states.
China lases U.S. Navy plane in international waters.
The “Green New Deal” “would cost a typical household a minimum of $74,287 in the first year of implementation…for the subsequent four years, the average annual costs per household for 10 of the 11 states is $47,755, decreasing to $40,706 for ever after.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Young Turks founder fights unionization. “In the staff meeting, the network’s co-founder and influential host, Cenk Uygur, urged employees not to do so, arguing that a union does not belong at a small, independent outlet like TYT, according to two workers who were present. He said if there had been a union at the network it would not have grown the way it has.” See, it’s always different when they do it…
Bad: Zyxel announced security bug in their NAS products. Worse: It was also in their firewall products.
There’s a California bill that would require porn stars to get a license. Inspector: “Yeah, I’m going to need to see your license.” Porn star (opens blouse): How about these licenses?” (Bowchickawowow…)
Hosni Mubarak dead at age 91. Of all the strongmen who have ruled Egypt, Mubarak falls in about the middle; less brutal than Morsi or Nasser, but more corrupt than Sadat or Sisi. His real downfall came from trying to install his son as a dynastic successor, at which point the army let the popular revolt oust him, leading eventually to the Muslim Brotherhood’s brief reign. He kept the peace with Israel, was a fairly reliable US ally for the region, and suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood (obviously not well enough).
Today’s elite facepalm: “Immigration to America is down. Wages are up. Are the two related?” Hey, you just might be on to something with that radical ‘supply and demand’ theory there, Einstein… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
With Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction, let’s remember what a huge Democratic Party donor he is. Also: “He faces an L.A. criminal trial soon, where 90 women have filed complaints against him, including well-known actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Uma Thurman, and Salma Hayek.”
How a treasure trove of aviation drawings was saved from destruction thanks to a single engineer, including those for the P-51 and the B-25.
Scientist: Here’s a journal article. Editor: Think you could provide the raw data? Scientist: (Hissses, holds up arm to shield the crucifix from it’s sight, withdraws paper.)
The garbage world of corporatespeak.
“Recently Listed $1.5 Million Home In San Francisco Just Soggy Cardboard Box Full Of Used Needles.”
Tags:#NeverTrump, 2020 Presidential Race, aircraft, B-25 Mitchell, black, Border Controls, California, Cenk Uygur, China, Dallas, Dallas County Schools, data security, Democrats, Don Huffines, Egypt, Green New Deal, Harvey Weinstein, Hosni Mubarak, Houston, Kurt Schlichter, LinkSwarm, Military, P-51 Mustang, Republicans, Taxes, Texas, unions, Young Turks, Zyxel
Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Republicans, Texas, unions | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 19th, 2020
The Bush family has been a long-time fixture in Texas politics. George H. W. Bush was instrumental in building up the Republican Party in Texas, and George W. Bush helped transition the state from a one-party Democratic state to a one-party Republican state. Even Jeb Bush was considered a very conservative Republican governor of Florida back in the dim mists of the 20th Century.
Sadly, the current crop of Bushes is not adding any luster to the family name.
Example the first: Land Commissioner (and son of Jeb) George P. Bush failed to disclose a grant of stock options by a company the Land Commission does business with:
Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush failed to disclose his ties to at least 11 companies, including a Cayman Islands-based oil and gas firm that did business with a state fund he helps oversee, records obtained by The Texas Tribune show.
Arabella Exploration, which declared bankruptcy in 2017, put Bush on its board in January 2014, paid him $43,000 for his service and granted him stock options that were valued at over $100,000, regulatory filings show. The next year, a few months into his new job as land commissioner — and about a year after he left the Arabella board — the School Land Board, which Bush chairs, approved a lease agreement with Arabella for oil and gas exploration in West Texas, records show.
State politicians must provide details of their personal finances, including business dealings and corporate board service, every year to the Texas Ethics Commissions so voters can judge whether their elected leaders have any conflicts of interest.
Nowhere did Bush’s 2015 state disclosure mention Arabella, however. Nor did he list 10 other companies in which he has a stake on more recent disclosure forms.
And don’t forget him keeping campaign communications director J. R. Hernandez as his chief of staff at 10K a month while he was also working on his campaign.
Next up: Pierce Bush, son of Neil Bush and grandson of George H. W. Bush, is running for the Texas 22nd congressional district, currently held by retiring Republican Pete Olsen. While he claims to be running as a pro-Trump conservative Republican, he hasn’t always acted that way:
He marched in an anti-Trump protest back in 2017.
He penned a letter likening traditional Catholics to the Taliban because they won’t embrace the ordination of women and “accommodate our progressive world society.”
Consider this a reminder that voting for someone based on their last name is a bad idea…
Tags:2020 Election, 22nd Congressional District, Elections, George H. W. Bush, George P. Bush, George W. Bush, Pierce Bush, Republicans, Texas
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, February 18th, 2020
Early voting in Texas starts today!
Here are some links for research:
The League of Women Voters.
Empower Texans endorsements.
Governor Greg Abbott’s endorsements.
Williamson County early voting locations.
Travis County voting locations.
A Tale of Two Rockeys.
And here are the websites for a few Republican candidates in down-ballot races:
Ryan Sitton, who’s running for the Railroad Commission.
Gina Parker, running for Texas Criminal Court of Appeals Place 3.
Mike Guevara, who’s running to take back Texas State Representative District 136 from John Bucy III.
Tags:2020 Election, 2020 Presidential Race, Austin, Elections, Judicial Elections, Mike Guevara, Primary, PSA, Railroad Commission, Republicans, Texas, Texas House District 136
Posted in Austin, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Monday, February 17th, 2020
Bloomberg channels Barney, Yang, Bennet and Patrick are Out, enjoy the Buttigieg Platitude Generator, Bernie bros break out the blacklist for Bloomberg hires, and Mayor Pete has a fake Nigerian problem. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!
The Nevada caucus looms, but not until Saturday.
There are now six candidates left in the race with a theoretical chance to earn the nomination (Sanders Buttigieg, Bloomberg, Klobuchar, Biden, and Warren), plus Gabbard and Steyer. I don’t see Warren getting any traction, but I do see the DNC working desperately behind the scenes to make sure she keeps siphoning votes away from Sanders…
Delegates
After New Hampshire, the actual delegate count stands at:
- Buttigieg 22
- Sanders 21
- Elizabeth Warren 8
- Amy Klobuchar 7
- Joe Biden 6
It’s a neat trick, Buttigieg leading the delegate count after coming in second in the first two states…
Polls
Las Vegas Review Journal (Nevada): Sanders 25, Biden 18, Warren 13, Steyer 11, Buttigieg 10, Klobuchar 10.
East Carolina University (South Carolina): Biden 28, Sanders 20, Steyer 14, Buttigieg 8, Klobuchar 7, Warren 7, Bloomberg 6, Gabbard 1.
Texas Tribune/University of Texas (Texas): Sanders 24, Biden 22, Warren 15, Bloomberg 10, Buttigieg 7, Yang 6, Klobuchar 3, Steyer 3, Gabbard 2.
WBS-TV (Georgia): Biden 32.1, Sanders 14.2, Bloomberg 14, Buttigieg 4.9, Warren 3.7, Klobuchar 3, Steyer 1.5, Gabbard .8.
St. Pete Polls (Florida): Bloomberg 27.3, Biden 25.9, Buttigieg 10.5, Sanders 10.4, Klobuchar 8.6, Steyer 1.3. First state with a poll lead for Bloomberg. Sample size of 3,047, which should be excellent for a state poll.
High Point (North Carolina) (likely voters): Biden 24, Sanders 20, Bloomberg 16, Warren 11, Buttigieg 8, Steyer 4, Yang 3, Klobuchar 3, Gabbard 2.
Economist/YouGov (page 198): Sanders 22, Biden 18, Warren 15, Bloomberg 12, Klobuchar 7, Gabbard 4, Yang 2, Steyer 1.
Monmouth: Sanders 26, Biden 16, Buttigieg 13, Warren 13, Bloomberg 11, Klobuchar 6, Yang 4, Gabbard 1, Steyer 1.
Morning Consult: Sanders 25, Biden 22, Bloomberg 17, Buttigieg 11, Warren 11, Yang 4, Klobuchar 3, Steyer 3, Gabbard 1.
Talk Business/Hendrix College: Bloomberg 19.6, Biden 18.5, Sanders 16.4, Buttigieg 15.5, Warren 8.9, Klobuchar 4.8, Yang 2.
Real Clear Politics polls.
538 poll average.
Election betting markets.
Pundits, etc.
538 is now predicting that it’s slightly more likely that no one will win a majority of delegates.
A brokered convention would be a lot of fun to watch but devastating for Democrats. The chances of Bernie Sanders coming out on top in a brokered convention seem slim to me—and if Bernie goes into the convention with the most delegates but doesn’t leave the convention as the nominee, Bernie supporters are going to be livid. Whoever the candidate is, if the Democrats have to wait until mid-July to know for sure who their nominee is going be, it puts their party at a significant disadvantage.
“Majority of Americans would vote against socialist candidate for president.” Ruh-Roh, Rernie! (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The problem for Democrats is that Sanders leads, but most Democrats are voting against him:
While the far-left or more liberal candidates — including Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — collectively earned 35 percent of the New Hampshire vote, the center-left and more moderate candidates — including Biden, former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) — collectively earned more than one-half of the vote, with 53 percent between the three of them.
Indeed, while Sanders may have eked out a victory, a majority of the New Hampshire voters aligned with the moderate bloc of the party.
This discrepancy poses a serious problem for Democrats as the primary season continues. In order to build a broad-based coalition of voters to defeat Trump, there needs to be an understanding within the party that the message will be inclusive, will encourage unity and will eventually focus on supporting the nominee.
Where everybody stands on everything.
There are no moderates, only Zuul. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Master Troll Trump at work.
“Trashing America as racist won’t help Democrats beat Trump.”
No bounce for anyone out of New Hampshire?
Stephen Green drunkblogged the New Hampshire primaries.
Now on to the clown car itself:
Update: Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: Dropped Out. He dropped out February 11, 2020, after a dismal rounding-error showing in New Hampshire. Not really seeing any post mortem pieces out there, but here’s a piece on his last few days on the campaign trail. The most interesting part is finding out his New Hampshire office is in the same building as Buttigieg and Steyer’s state offices. He’s perhaps the most forgettable politician making a serious run for President this century. If you stuck a gun to the head of each Democratic Party voter and demanded they pick Bennet out of a list of candidates, 99% of those people would be dead.
Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. South Carolina or bust? The Bidenberg may still be leaking hydrogen, but I think he stays in until Super Tuesday. Cracks in the firewall? He blames his poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire on being outspent. Well, does he think that’s going to get any better with Bloomberg in the race? The benefits of being Joe Biden’s brother:
It was not the first time — or the last — during his long career that Jim Biden turned to Joe’s political network for the kind of assistance that would have been almost unimaginable for someone with a different last name. Campaign donors helped him face a series of financial problems, including a series of IRS liens totaling more than $1 million that made it harder to get bank financing. Jim Biden took out two more loans from WashingtonFirst before its sale in 2018.
These transactions illuminate the well-synchronized tango that the Biden brothers have danced for half a century. They have pursued overlapping careers — one a presidential aspirant with an expansive network of well-heeled Democratic donors; the other an entrepreneur who helped his brother raise political money and cultivated the same network to help finance his own business deals.
Jim Biden, 70, has cycled over the years from nightclub owner to insurance broker to political consultant and fundraiser to startup investor and construction company executive. But the through line of his resume was his bond with his brother, a Democratic Party stalwart in a position to push legislation or make government contracts happen.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Inside his outreach to black voters.
A meeting with nearly 80 black pastors in Detroit. A speech before a black Democratic organization in Montgomery. A rally at a historically black university. A tour of Martin Luther King Jr.’s church. An early voting kickoff at an African American museum. All in the past two weeks.
While Mike Bloomberg’s rivals battled it out in majority-white Iowa and New Hampshire, the billionaire presidential candidate aggressively courted the black voters critical to any Democrat’s chance of winning of the nomination. The effort, backed by millions of dollars in ads, has taken him across Southern states that vote on March 3, from Montgomery, Alabama, and this week Raleigh, North Carolina, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, states where African American voters can decide a Democratic primary.
His pitch is one of electability and competence — hoping to capitalize on black Democrats’ hunger to oust President Donald Trump. But as he courts black voters he’ll also have to reconcile his own record as mayor of New York and past remarks on criminal justice.
Bloomberg’s outreach aims squarely at former Vice President Joe Biden, who is banking on loyal black voters to resuscitate his bid after poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire.
“Who can beat Donald Trump? That’s what people care about,” said former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who is among the black leaders endorsing Bloomberg. Nutter says Bloomberg’s record of accomplishments outweighs the damage of flawed policing.
Bloomberg has no doubt been helped by his limitless financial resources and his strategy to focus on states conducting primaries on Super Tuesday. One of the world’s richest men thanks to a net worth of roughly $60 billion, Bloomberg has spent more than $300 million of his own money on advertising, including spots on black radio stations, a Super Bowl ad that featured an African American mother who lost her son to gun violence and a national ad touting his work with President Barack Obama on gun legislation and a teen jobs program.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) “The Complete List of Everything Banned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Is Bloomberg the common enemy?
The Democratic presidential candidates raced on Sunday to make the most of their final weekend day before the Nevada caucuses, selling their messages and tearing into their opponents.
But the rival they focused on most intently was one who isn’t even competing in the state.
“I got news for Mr. Bloomberg,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said at an event in Carson City, Nev., taking aim at the former New York City mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, within five minutes of opening his remarks. “The American people are sick and tired of billionaires buying elections.”
In a rarity, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. echoed his progressive counterpart. “Sixty billion dollars can buy you a lot of advertising, but it can’t erase your record,” he said of Mr. Bloomberg in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired on Sunday.
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, another moderate, had similar thoughts. “I’m here getting votes,” Ms. Klobuchar said in an interview on Sunday. “It’s not something where I can just — what would be the word — transport in a bunch of ads.” She called on Mr. Bloomberg to “go on the shows that every other candidate goes on, on the Sunday shows and the like.”
She added: “I don’t think I’m going to beat him on the airwaves, but I can beat him on the debate stage.” At a forum on Sunday focused on infrastructure, Ms. Klobuchar, who won the endorsement of The Las Vegas Sun last week, mentioned Mr. Bloomberg early on, referring to President Trump’s comments about his height as she stood to speak. “I am the only candidate that is 5-foot-4,” she joked. “I want that out there now.”
The fixation on Mr. Bloomberg, the free-spending multibillionaire, reflected his rising prominence in the Democratic race, even though he is skipping the first four nominating contests and focusing on the 14 Super Tuesday states that will vote on March 3.
As early voting continued in Nevada on Sunday, some of the criticism seemed to be sticking.
“Bloomberg just has bad connotations that come along with him,” Leah Garwood said as she waited in line with her husband on Sunday in Las Vegas for roughly 45 minutes to vote for a different billionaire, Tom Steyer of California. “It’s just at the back of my mind. It makes me uncomfortable, uneasy.”
Don’t believe it; Most of the people backing Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar (i.e., the Corrupt Wing) would choose Bloomberg over Sanders without hesitation. The meme machine. Bloomy can buy memes, but can he buy good memes? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Tolerant Bernie Bros want to Blacklist Bloomberg staffers:
(Tweet has since been deleted, but there’s plenty of reference to it on Twitter.) Are you an old person with cancer? Bloomberg just wants to let you die:
He also thinks that any idiot can be a farmer. Bloomberg, the Big Purple Dinosaur:
Don’t worry: It gets worse:
(Hat tip: Daddy Warpig.)
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Master of the Platitude:
Pete Buttigieg really speaks in platitudes a lot. Last night brought, “[You’re] ready to vote for a politics defined by how many we call in, instead of by who we push out . . . So many of you chose to meet a new era of challenge with a new generation of leadership . . . A fresh outlook is what makes new beginnings possible. It is how we build a new majority . . . The answers, they lie in a vision that brings Americans together not only in the knowledge of what we must stand against, but in the confidence of knowing what we are for.”
Plus a handy link to the Mayor Pete Platitude Generator:
Why gays think he’s not gay enough.
Buttigieg is the ultimate candidate of the country’s post-2016 trauma. He is not a woman. He is not a socialist. He is decidedly not a revolutionary. He does not make big, sweeping promises, except one: that nothing much will change, only Donald Trump won’t be President. “What I like about Mayor Pete is that he is not a strong ideologue,” Tod Sedgwick, a volunteer who had gone to New Hampshire to canvass for Buttigieg, told me. Sedgwick, who is seventy-one and the former U.S. Ambassador to the Slovak Republic, was canvassing with his girlfriend, Christina Brown, a seventy-three-year-old community activist from Louisville, Kentucky. Sedgwick lives in Washington, D.C.
Left out of this reassuring portrait is the fact he’s embraced most of the crazy ideas floated by his fellow candidates this year, and that his father is a hardcore Marxist scholar of Antonio Gramsci. Top Buttigieg advisor Lis Smith has a fake Nigerian burner account named Chinedu that’s a huge Mayor Pete fan. Because of course a Nigerian is going to be a huge fan of a gay Midwestern American politician. If Lis Smith’s name sounds familiar, it’s because she was carrying out an affair with disgraced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer while working for him.
Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? Drudge floated a trial balloon suggesting Bloomberg would tap her as his veep pick. Which presents the tiny problem that it violates Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution, since both are from New York. Plus:
Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Says U.S. military should scale back overseas operations. She blames a total media blackout for her faltering campaign. Eh, she has a point, the Democratic Media Complex does hate her, but her failure to break through that barrier is on her. I mean, if you’re a youngish, attractive woman, how do you lose the Outsider Excitement Race to a 79-year old socialist?
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. Says that Obama was just too much of an immigration hawk for deporting non-felon illegal aliens, part of her desperate, unconvincing hispandering for Nevada votes, along with saying that English should not be the national language. Gets endorsed by the Houston Chronicle. Thirty years ago that would have meant something. Enjoy her one stump joke:
“What Klobuchar’s Tater Tot Recipe Says About Her Candidacy.” File that one under “attempted humor”…
Update: Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: Dropped Out. He dropped out February 12, 2020.
Patrick focused his campaign entirely on New Hampshire, hoping the familiarity of a neighboring state would help boost his chances in the race. He offered what aides felt was a unique message in a field that ultimately boiled down largely to career politicians with little executive or private sector experience: that he had the track record as governor and through years of business experience to deliver on Democratic priorities like fighting climate change and reforming health care.
You would think the failure of several other governors to run viable campaigns might have deterred him, but no. Patrick got into the race in November, made no impression whatsoever, and sank without a trace. Mike Gravel and Wayne Messam had more compelling reasons to run…
Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Democrats fear Sanders could cost them the House. “‘Doomsday Scenario’: Washington Moves To Crush The Sanders Revolution“:
We have previously discussed the efforts of the Democratic establishment and some in the media to (again) derail the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, including the raw bias against Sanders shown by CNN reporter Abby Phillip in a prior presidential debate. Now, with Sanders’ victory in New Hampshire and rising polls, figures from both politics and media are putting on a full-court press to stop Sanders. Everyone from James Carville to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews are sounding alarms over Sanders. His victory last night was called the “doomsday scenario” by a Democratic Super PAC. The most shocking was MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd who used a quote form a columnist to compare Sanders supporters to Nazi brown-shirted thugs. It is a technique used before by Todd who reads letters or quotes from others to preserve the patina of neutrality like his recent attack on Trump supporters.
Longtime Texas Democrats fear Sanders getting the nomination.
“There is overall uncertainty which is growing. The real fear for Texas D’s remains Sanders,” Bill Miller, a longtime Austin lobbyist who has worked with both Democrats and Republicans, said of a Sanders ticket. “’We’d be fucked’ — that’s what they’re saying. The drain at the top goes down to the bottom.”
Texas may not be a presidential battleground, but a wave of GOP retirements in Congress, shifting demographics and Donald Trump’s lightning-rod presidency offer Democrats a shot at real power after two decades of Republican dominance. And to insiders like Miller, plans to nationalize the health care and electricity sectors will spook voters and weigh down local Democrats who are trying to thread a needle in this still deeply conservative state.
“Sure you can see my medical records! And by ‘sure’ I mean ‘no way.'” Topless PETA protestors interupt his speech.
Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. He and Klobuchar can’t name the President of Mexico. Steyer is spending a lot of time on the ground in Nevada and South Carolina.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Warren campaign continues its controlled flight into terrain:
Elizabeth Warren’s straggling campaign is cutting ad buys worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in key early states after bruising losses in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The retrenchment follows a dismal fourth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, down from third place in Iowa.
“We were hoping for a better result in New Hampshire,” Warren’s campaign conceded in an email to supporters Wednesday. “It hurts to care so much, work so hard, and still fall a little short.”
The campaign has cut more than $300,000 worth of ads in Nevada and South Carolina, according to two advertising trackers. The Massachusetts U.S. senator appears to be shifting her focus to Maine, with ad buys worth tens of thousands of dollars there on Wednesday, according to FCC filings.
Her New Hampshire finish behind U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has also raised concerns about whether Warren can sustain the national organizing effort her campaign is relying on for success on Super Tuesday on March 3.
“She put her eggs in a New Hampshire basket. That was the right thing to do, but it didn’t pan out,” said Democratic strategist Scott Ferson. “She’s entering a period of darkness and belt tightening and hard choices about options.”…
Warren’s much-lauded ground game has now failed her twice, making it harder to generate the millions of dollars needed to sustain her massive operation, strategists say. Warren entered 2020 with $13.7 million in the bank and raised more than $5 million after Iowa. But her campaign also spent $12 million more than it took in at the end of 2019, FEC reports show.
Maybe Warren had a great ground game, and she just sucks too hard as a candidate to take advantage of it… (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Update: Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: Dropped Out. He dropped out February 11, 2020. One of the more interesting and least pandering of the candidates, Yang ran much better than anyone (myself included) expected, but never broke out of single digits. He gets an exit interview in the New York Times. Might run for New York City mayor. It would be nearly impossible for him to do a worse job than Di Blasio…
Out of the Running
These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:
Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti. Gonna be hard to run for the White House when you’re facing up to 42 years in the big house.
Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
Actor Alec Baldwin
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (Dropped out January 11, 2020)
Former California Governor Jerry Brown
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro (Dropped out January 2, 2020)
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
Former Maryland Representative John Delaney (Dropped Out January 31, 2020)
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
Former Vice President Al Gore
Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
Former Attorney General Eric Holder
Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
Former First Lady Michelle Obama
Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson (Dropped out January 10, 2020)
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
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