Like any good politician, Jill Karofsky wants the public to know where she stands on the issues and how she will enact an agenda based on her ideals once elected.
“I believe in protecting our environment from corporate polluters, protecting women’s health care, and holding corrupt politicians accountable,” she says in a television ad that has been running all month.
It’s direct, to the point, and effective. It also completely disqualifies her as a serious candidate for the office she seeks.
“As your Supreme Court Justice,” she concludes in her ad, “I’ll make decisions based on the law.”
The irony here is at once laughable and terrifying. Karofsky, a very liberal Dane County Circuit Court judge, is promising to make decisions based on the law while listing off decisions that she would leave to her own conscience. Restrictions on abortion? She’d strike them down because she believes in “protecting women’s health care.” Disputes over mining regulations? Sorry, corporate polluters, but she will be the greatest champion for the environment since Captain Planet.
Not content to simply legislate from the bench, Jill Karofsky is promising to legislate from a hunch—relying on nothing more than the brilliance and morality of…Jill Karofsky.
Hers is the worst sort of judicial arrogance; a deeply held belief in her own ability to delineate right from wrong independent of the U.S. or Wisconsin Constitutions, applicable statutes, and relevant case law. It also violates the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct.
SCR 60.06 3(b) explicitly provides that “a judge, judge-elect, or candidate for judicial office shall not make…with respect to cases, controversies, or issues that are likely to come before the court, pledges, promises, or commitments that are inconsistent with the impartial performance of the adjudicative duties of the office.”
Promising to stand up against “corporate polluters,” “corrupt politicians,” and anyone who would threaten “women’s health care” is about as blatant a violation of both the letter and spirit of this guideline as one could imagine.
Land use, abortion issues (which is rather obviously what Karofsky means by “women’s health care”) and political corruption cases will obviously come before her, should she be elected to the Supreme Court, and could conceivably come before her in her current role on the Dane County Circuit Court.
How can she possibly adjudicate these cases fairly when she is openly advertising the fact that she will rule for certain parties and against others?
In December, she used her Twitter account (@JudgeKarofsky), which clearly identifies her as a judge, to publicly call for stricter gun control legislation.
“Families in Sparta and at Waukesha North have also had to deal with lockdowns in the last couple of days, and incidents like these have been happening all over Wisconsin, including a ‘hit list’ in Shorewood,” she tweeted in the wake of a particularly troubling week in the state. “I’m thankful for first responders who keep us safe.
“But that’s not enough. As a parent, I know our kids shouldn’t have to fear for their lives at school, and not a single parent should be worrying about whether our kids are coming home after school. It’s up to the policy-makers to decide what the law should be, and judges like me are here to apply and interpret the law. But I know action is needed.
“We can respect constitutional rights and at the same time take steps to make every family safer. It’s way past time for lawmakers to step up to the plate.”
Does that screed leave any conceivable doubt about how she would rule on gun control legislation signed by Governor Evers? Even if such a law represents a gross violation of the citizenry’s Second Amendment rights, Karofsky’s stated belief that “more action is needed” to “make every family safer” prejudices her in favor of the law’s constitutionality.
It is thus impossible for Karofsky to impartially (and therefore ethically) hear any gun control case that would come before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but given her stated mission to crusade against the proliferation of firearms, does anyone really believe that she would recuse herself?
Of course not. Activists like her live to decide these sorts of cases by substituting personal political preferences like the ones Karofsky tweeted for actual precedent and Constitutional principle.
By contrast, her opponent, incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly actually did recuse himself from the most hot-button political case of the year, even though it meant handing a (temporary) victory to his political opponents.
Last month, Kelly recused himself from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty’s lawsuit against the Wisconsin Election Commission over the Commission’s refusal to follow state law and remove more than 200,000 names from voter registration lists.
Because the ruling would affect the Spring Election and Kelly is on the ballot and could theoretically benefit from that ruling, he recused himself. Political conservatives were beside themselves since his vote would have broken a 3-3 tie (fellow conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn sided with the Court’s two liberals) and allowed the Supreme Court to immediately take up the case instead of waiting for it to make its way through the appeals process.
Even though it could have benefited him and his political supporters, Justice Kelly recognized that sitting on the case would have violated the Code of Judicial Conduct. Even though political conservatives were furious with him, as a judicial conservative Kelly could not have made any other decision.
Wisconsin faces a clear choice on April 7th: Principled, moral deference to governing law or shameless, reckless politicking.
Karofsky’s advertisements and Twitter rants are the very essence of judicial activism and illustrate why it is so dangerous. Justice Kelly, on the other hand, has just demonstrated his strict adherence to the Rule of Law. The April 7th election, then, isn’t so much a contest between two judges as it is a battle for what Wisconsin wants its Supreme Court to be.
-
No comments on From Feb. 18 to April 7
-
Democrats are panicking over the prospect that socialist Bernie Sanders could win the Democrat nomination for president, saying that he would cause massive damage to the United States.
South Carolina Democrat Representative Joe Cunningham strongly pushed back on Sanders’ extremist proposals, which would cost between $60 trillion to $100 trillion, a figure that would easily bankrupt the U.S.
“South Carolinians don’t want socialism,” Cunningham said. “We want to know how you are going to get things done and how you are going to pay for them. Bernie’s proposals to raise taxes on almost everyone is not something the Lowcountry wants and not something I’d ever support.”
Self-described “registered Democrat” Lloyd Blankfein, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, warned that Sanders would destroy America’s economy and that Russia would use him to destroy America.
“If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US. Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin our economy and doesn’t care about our military,” Blankfein said. “If I’m Russian, I go with Sanders this time around.”
…Other so-called “moderate” Democrats warned that nominating Sanders could cost the Democrats the m majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The anxiety is particularly acute on Capitol Hill among a small but politically important group of freshman Democrats who helped their party win control of the House in 2018 by flipping Republican seats in districts that President Trump won in 2016. Now, they fear that having a self-declared democratic socialist at the top of the ticket could doom their re-election chances in November,” The New York Times reported. “Members of the group of about three dozen — often called ‘front-liners’ or ‘majority-makers’— have toiled to carve out political identities distinct from their party’s progressive base, and most are already facing competitive re-election challenges from Republicans who bill them as radicals who have empowered a far-left agenda in Congress.”
Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) told The New York Times: “I’m the first Democrat to win in my district since 1958. I attracted a lot of independent and moderate Republican support, many of whom probably voted for a Democrat for the first time in a long time. And while I respect Bernie Sanders as a senator, as a candidate, his candidacy is very challenging for people who come from districts like mine.”
Another member of Congress, who did not feel comfortable criticizing Sanders publicly, told the Times: “There is a growing concern among especially those of us on the front lines that we will not only lose the White House but the House of Representatives.”
Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) said, “If Bernie Sanders was at the top of the ticket, we would be in jeopardy of losing the House. We would not get the Senate back.”
Steve Israel, former chairmen of the party’s House campaign arm, told the Times that Trump will use the fact that Sanders is a socialist to decimate Democrats in down ballot races.
Israel said, “Donald Trump will paint every Democrat — whether they’re running for U.S. Senate or county sheriff — as a socialist, as a ‘Bernie Sanders socialist,’ and that’s a tough deal in a lot of these districts.”
One wonders specifically how that will go over in the Third Congressional District, represented by supposedly moderate, bipartisan Rep. Ron Kind (D–La Crosse).
Sanders, however, is not a Democrat. He remains an independent in the Senate, though he is running for president for the second time.
Someone who is an actual Democrat isn’t impressed, according to Paul Bois:
A fiery feud has escalated between veteran Democratic Party strategist James Carville and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Just one day after the socialist candidate referred to him as a “political hack,” Carville angrily fired back, denouncing Bernie Sanders as a “communist.”
According to Peter Hanby, a contributor to Vanity Fair, James Carville said in a phone interview on Thursday that he relishes the label “political hack” and took it as a compliment.
“Last night on CNN, Bernie called me a political hack. That’s exactly who the f*** I am!” said Carville. “I am a political hack! I am not an ideologue. I am not a purist. He thinks it’s a pejorative. I kinda like it!”
“At least I’m not a communist,” he added. …
The feud between the former Clinton adviser and Bernie Sanders kicked off last week when Carville told Vox that he was “scared to death” of the upcoming election following the disastrous Iowa caucus.
“Look, the turnout in the Iowa caucus was below what we expected, what we wanted. Trump’s approval rating is probably as high as it’s been,” said Carville. “This is very bad. And now it appears the party can’t even count votes. What the hell am I supposed to think?”
“We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration,” Carville continued. “They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments — talking about that is not how you win a national election.”
“There’s no chance in hell we’ll ever win the Senate with Sanders at the top of the party defining it for the public,” he added.
Shortly thereafter, Carville doubled-down on his attacks against Sanders and specifically denounced the “cult” that seems to have built up around him.
“The only thing, the only thing between the United States and the abyss is the Democratic Party. That’s it. If we go the way of the British Labour Party, if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it’s going to be the end of days. … So I am scared to death, I really am,” Carville said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“If we lose that, we’re going to be the British Labour Party and be out in some theoretical left-wing la-la land,” he continued. “There’s a certain part of the Democratic Party that wants us to be a cult. I’m not interested in being in a cult.
Wednesday night, in an appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Bernie Sanders dismissed Carville as a “political hack” while vowing to fight establishment figures like himself from being in control of the Democratic Party.
“Look, James, in all due respect, is a political hack who said very terrible things when he was working for Clinton against Barack Obama,” Sanders said. “We are taking on Trump, the Republican establishment, Carville, and the Democratic establishment. At the end of the day the grassroots movement we are putting together of young people, of working people, of people of color, want real change.”
Democrats continue to fail the normalcy test. -
Today in 1956, Elvis Presley performed three shows at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa, Fla. Presley closed the final show by announcing to the crowd of 14,000, “Girls, I’ll see you backstage.”
Many of them took Presley at his word. Presley barely made it into his dressing room, losing some of his clothes and his shoes in the girl gauntlet.
The number one single today in 1966 here (on the singer’s birthday) …
… and over there:
-
James Wigderson:
Tuesday is the Spring Primary, which is when we sort out the candidates who will be on the ballot for the April 7 Spring Election, unless you’re in the 7th Congressional District. Then you will also be picking, in addition to the non-partisan races, a candidate for the special election on May 12 because our Democratic governor did not want to take a chance that all of you Republicans in that district would also vote for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly on April 7.
Remember how Democrats screamed bloody murder when the Republicans in the legislature considered moving the Supreme Court election so it wouldn’t coincide with the Democratic Presidential Primary on April 7? Something about sacred voting Election Day blah, blah blah.
So, if you are planning on voting Tuesday, keep in mind that Kelly is the only conservative running for Wisconsin Supreme Court. That’s something everyone agrees upon.
In the 7th Congressional District, Republicans have two candidates, state Sen. Tom Tiffany (R-Minocqua) and Jason Church. Tiffany earned a rare endorsement from RightWisconsin in the race because of our concerns about Church’s ties to former Assembly Speaker John Gard and the odd flip-flop on the Davis Bacon issue, which leads us to question whether Church will be a pawn of special interests. We have a special turnout preview for that race, as well.
In Milwaukee County, your choices are bad, yucky, awful, and meaningless gesture. Milwaukee County Supervisor Theo Lipscomb decided to adopt the Petyr Baelish plan, “Chaos is a Ladder,” and got two rival candidates thrown off the ballot. Lipscomb would be the yucky choice, and he knocked off the one halfway decent choice, former Democratic state Sen. Jim Sullivan. As much as Democrats are mad at Lipscomb for using such tactics, they’re also surprised that he was competent enough to pull it off.
That leaves State Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) as the awful choice, state Rep. David Crowley (D-Milwaukee) as the bad choice, and local businesswoman Purnima Nath (R?) as the meaningless gesture vote.
Good luck, Milwaukee County.Wigderson wrote more specifically about the Seventh Congressional District GOP race:
Writing in The Dispatch, Andrew Egger reports on the 7th Congressional District Republican Primary and sees two different sides of President Donald Trump. One side of the president is state Sen. Tom Tiffany (R-Minocqua) and the other flavor is Jason Church.
As Egger explains, the 7th Congressional District is definitely Trump country, embracing the president even during the Republican presidential primary in 2016 when the rest of the state went for Sen. Ted Cruz.
He quotes yours truly on how the once-progressive bastion of northern Wisconsin became the reliable vote generator for Trump.
“There’s a lot of people up there that have been hit hard in the last couple of recessions. … They’ve now embraced the Trump agenda out there,” James Wigderson, who runs the conservative blog RightWisconsin, told The Dispatch. “It is very blue collar up there, and they moved from Obama to Trump rather easily, just because of the nature of the people that are up there—it’s not dominated by universities. It’s not dominated by big cities.”
Of Tiffany, Egger wrote about the senator’s legislative record:
In the legislature, Tiffany was an enthusiastic ally of the Walker agenda, which he credits for helping to turn the state’s economy around. It’s the backbone of his pitch to voters: You could trust me to push hard for a conservative agenda in Madison, so you can trust me to push hard for a conservative agenda in Washington. Tiffany is endorsed by a number of prominent state Republicans, including both Walker and Duffy.
Meanwhile, Church has a different message.
As a political neophyte, Church lacks Tiffany’s solid legislative CV. But in his messaging, he’s leaned into the contrast: waving off Tiffany’s decade of work in the state legislature as “being a machine politician.” In his telling, what the district needs isn’t just someone who will go to Congress and vote for conservative policies. It’s someone who is ready to go and wage war for the soul of America against the likes of young progressive lawmakers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. It’s someone, as Church repeatedly said to me, who’s willing to be a little “boisterous.”
“There’s an issue in Washington, and in fact in Madison in general too,” Church said, “that if we just continue to try and elect people who move up the ladder, if what we’re trying to do is just work within a party system of self-promotion, we’re not going to bring the new energy and vibrance needed into Washington.”
Tiffany embraces the low-regulation, low-taxes reformer, side of Trump.
In Tiffany’s telling, Donald Trump is a model free-market, small-government, pro-business conservative: “I just look at the actions of the president, the tax cuts. I’ve seen how it’s turbo-charged the economy. I see it right here in Wisconsin, the regulatory reform that is near and dear to my heart, because I’ve worked on those issues. When I hear ‘drain the swamp,’ I think about the regulatory stuff, with all those alphabet agencies that you have out in Washington, D.C., that put so much red tape that strangles businesses large and small, that puts great restrictions on our economy.”
It’s not surprising that Tiffany plays up those elements of the Trump agenda. “In the case of Tiffany, it’s playing to his strengths because that’s the type of thing that he does in the state legislature,” said Wigderson, who has endorsed Tiffany in the race. “Tom Tiffany is definitely a small-government conservative; he’d have been very comfortable as a conservative under Ronald Reagan.”
Meanwhile Church has embraced union interests, once anathema in GOP primary politics, and Trump’s culture battles.
“I’ll tell you why I’ve supported him from day one,” Church said. “And that’s because President Trump identified something that we all here in northern Wisconsin have felt for a long time. And that is that our culture was under attack. I mean, people like Omar and AOC, when they start pushing things like multiculturalism and intersectionality, what they’re really doing is they’re pointing a finger at someone here in Tomahawk, someone here in Bloomer, in Hudson, in Wausau. And they’re saying, ‘You’re what’s wrong with America.’”
Egger asks, will the race signal an end for a preference among Republicans for Scott Walker-style reforms of government?
“Tom Tiffany helped create and pass an aggressive fiscal-conservative agenda that turned Scott Walker into a national conservative hero,” Egger wrote. “It’ll be up to the district’s voters to determine whether that’s a pro or a con.”
-
“The more zealous the attacks, the greater the risk he turns his campaign ATM against them. They’re already struggling to catch up with Sanders in national support and campaign dollars. Turning their focus toward Bloomberg only complicates that task. There’s another risk, at least for the moderates: Weakening the one who may be best poised to stop Sanders, a democratic socialist, if they fail themselves…. By not competing in the four early states, Bloomberg has gone basically unchallenged, allowing him to define himself without interference or really any debate. This has made him a top-tier candidate and the only one with the certain cash to run to the end.”
Axios summarizes.
It’s crazy that Bloomberg has achieved such status in the race without exposing his candidate skills to the people. We have no idea what impression he will make on a debate stage, which will be crucial for challenging Trump. Bloomberg has stood back and watched so many of the Democratic candidates drop out, candidates who had to try to stand out in a debate and couldn’t make it in a heavy crowd. Now, the crowd has thinned out, and everyone left is running out of money. And here’s Mike, with endless money and still waiting to go on stage.
Will he even be in the next debate, which is this Wednesday? The DNC changed the qualification rules to help Bloomberg. They got rid of the requirement of number of donor. But he needs a number of polls putting him over 10%, and the latest info I can find, here, says he’s still one short. It’s funny, because I was just checking for new polls at Real Clear Politics, and there hasn’t been anything new since last Friday and no new national poll since last Wednesday. The most recent national poll surveyed people from 2/9 to 2/11. That seems odd, doesn’t it? Are polls being held back? I remember before the Iowa caucus, the Des Moines Register held back its poll.
I wonder if the Democrats aren’t getting themselves into terrible trouble over Mike Bloomberg. I like listening to “Morning Joe” on my car radio as I drive back home after my sunrise run. This is a 5 minute drive and about all I can tolerate, but it’s good for giving me a sense of what Democrats are freaking out about at the moment. Today, they were tormenting themselves over Mike Bloomberg. He’s got race-and-gender problems, but so did Trump. He’s a billionaire, but so is Trump. If Trump did it, shouldn’t that mean Bloomberg can do it?
I don’t think they’ve faced up to why Trump was able to do what he did. Without first giving Trump credit, they’re in no position to say so then Mike can do it too. It sounded to me as though they think of Trump as evidence that weird magic things happen. So, why not Mike? At the very least, they should recognize that Trump had a powerful skill in knocking down rivals on the debate stage, and Bloomberg has yet to set foot on the stage. It’s crazy to forsake all others for Bloomberg.That prompted this comment:Of course I want to see the Dems fail and destroy themselves from within, but it is about time one Dem really challenged another Dem. They all basically agree about most policy issues and – to me – they all look crazy.
The Green New Deal would destroy America. So-called moderate Middle Class Joe is basically for it.
Pete, however, has distinguished himself for calling for decriminalizing ALL drugs and eliminating the Electoral College. Two truly insane policies from a failed small town mayor.
There’s not a dime’s worth of policy difference with these candidates so they have to resort to superficial differences like race, age, wealth and sex.
In a way, this is all good for the country. When Trump wins in a landslide the Dems will know they were totally defeated and America has completed rejected them.Read the other comments, which are fascinating, about such subjects as whether or not Bloomberg wants to be in the Democratic debates, what very rich Democratic donors think about Comrade Sanders, and whether Bloomberg even wants to be president.
-
The number one single today in 1956:
Today in 1962, the Everly Brothers, on leave from the U.S. Marine Corps, appeared on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew:
The number one British single today in 1965:
-
Todd Starnes:
The Centers for Disease Control is grappling with a massive outbreak of Trump Derangement Syndrome among Democrats and the Mainstream Media following pre-race festivities on Sunday at the Daytona 500.
President Trump was named grand marshal of “The Great American Race” and his appearance sent leftists scampering to their designated safe spaces.
Tens of thousands of race fans cheered, “USA, USA” as Air Force One flew about 800 feet over the speedway as “America the Beautiful” played over the public address system.
When the president arrived he was greeted with spectators waving “Make America Great Again” flags and chants of “four more years.”
“It doesn’t get more American than this,” NASCAR driver Joey Logano said.
And then he did what no other sitting president has done – he took a lap around the track. “The Beast” was the official pace car of the race.
Despite the fact “The Beast” is actually a diesel truck with a limousine body.
Among those breaking out into a flop-sweat was New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman. She accused the president of “using the official apparatus of government for what appears to be a political event.”
It’s as if she’s already writing the first draft of another round of Articles of Impeachment: Abuse of the White House Motor Pool.
NBC White House Correspondent Kelly O’Donnellnoted that the trip to Daytona was an “official White House event.” Meaning, that the president’s appearance and trip around the track in “The Beast,” was paid for by the “taxpayers.”
And as near as I could tell the American taxpayers overwhelmingly approved of the president’s visit.
So why were so many Pajama Boy Snowflakes and Mexican Man Shoe Feminists so bothered by the Daytona 500?
Could it be that the race started with an invocation that included a preacher praying in the name of Jesus? Or was it the fact that no one took a knee during the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner? Or maybe it was the display of so much red-blooded “toxic masculinity”?
I contend Ms. Haberman and Ms. O’Donnell were more upset with the people in the stands. President Trump explained why in his address to the fans.
“NASCAR fans never forget that no matter who wins the race, what matters most is God, family and country,” he declared.
The reason why Democrats and the Mainstream Media suffered a sudden onset of Trump Derangement Syndrome is because NASCAR values are the antithesis of everything the leftists stand for – freedom, liberty, patriotism.
The president’s lap around the Daytona International Speedway was a victory lap for gun-toting, Bible-clinging, flag-waving patriots. Well done, Mr. President.
And if you’ve got a problem with that, might I kindly suggest you blow it out your tailpipe.
Perhaps those NASCAR hicks (as Trump non-fans have been saying on social media today) realize that Democrats are the party that would like to ban auto racing for being unsafe and harmful to the environment, and private vehicle ownership. Democrats, after all, foisted on us Cash for Clunkers, in which workable cars were deliberately destroyed. Plus, of course, hunting and fishing, gun ownership, meat-eating, animal agriculture and other red-blooded-American activities.
Ironically the race itself was rained out and rescheduled to today. Liberal tears are blamed.
-
As the 2020 presidential primaries continue trudging on, Michael Bloomberg has entered the fray. Mr. Bloomberg has long been a participant in American society. His history as a software entrepreneur brought him to the forefront of wealth and fame as the Bloomberg name became synonymous with finance and he became the world’s 12th richest man. In 2002, he became a member of the political discourse, becoming Mayor of New York for the next 11 years. Now he’s come back wanting to be president, but the truth is there’s just too much riding against Mike. Although an excellent businessman, he has little going for him in the way of being the Presidential beacon this country will need… and here’s why.
#1: He has no followers, no fans, no support, his base is as tiny as he is.
Let’s face it, who is Michael Bloomberg representing? The man has poll ratings of only 14.2% (at the time of writing for the pedantry practitioners among you), and with the hype around Buttigieg it’s hardly likely to let up as the younger “moderate” appeals to Bloomberg’s more mainstream Democratic base. He also needs to post up against Bernie Sander’s “revolution”, a very serious threat compared to Bloomberg’s meager following, and even President Trump knows it. And his actual reach is abysmal too. The man might have the money but he certainly doesn’t have the movement like Trump or Bernie. The man is hardly representative of America for Republicans or Democrats. To Republicans, he is just another political elite buying off elections just to snuff out their rights. And in the eyes of Democrats the man is an old, prejudiced billionaire white guy, which is even worse than Bernie’s million-dollar conundrum. The former mayor is going to have a hard time appealing to an ever-younger American public, disillusioned by the rich and the powerful like himself.
Non-tall readers may think that cracks at Bloomberg’s height are cheap shots. But history says that the average height of presidents is 5–11, and we haven’t had a president shorter than 6 feet tall since Richard Nixon.
#2: His policies are abysmal, and won’t work for Democrats either.
For starters, the man wants to ban e-cigarettes and vapes, and I don’t know how many college-aged leftists you know that vape near constantly, but I for one know that he has just lost a large percentage of that pie. He’s also historically been an opponent to marijuana legalization, limiting his ability to drive votes home on that civil liberty, given the desire nationally for legalization. On economics, while he may be less egregious than some Democrats, his taxes are too rich for any liberty warrior’s blood, and too little for your typical progressive alphabet warriors. His college education plan is along the same lines of big government opportunity distribution programs that Democrats see as pandering and the rest of America see as “wasted tax dollars”. Furthermore, the man has a history of being tough on crime to many Democrats’ dismay, and you can bet that his policy outline uses his ability to reduce crime through this as a “positive” to behold rather than a shameful part of his past, that being said-
#3: He can’t ever hope to escape stop and frisk, and he knows that.
Michael Bloomberg has worked very hard to try and escape his past decision of stop and frisk, but it seems to never escape him. Although some will argue back and forth on the effectiveness of this policy, ultimately it was a privacy ignorant invasive search policy, one which saw unparalleled use under his years as the Mayor of New York. And it’s probably occurred to him now that this was too big of a mistake to just simply undo, and is likely fearing how it will inevitably compare to Trump’s softer approach to crime. Not only is this something the communities most affected by his decision to engage in predatory policing also happen to be groups that are now essential to securing his victory. This was not a good call back in the day, and he seems to have admitted to that now, but although he may try to say he’s moved on, evidence only 5 years old has come forward on him supporting the method and the actions he took. There is evidence in this that his claims of change and growth could simply be political pandering, after all I’d hardly be one to change my ways at his age.
#4: While you can definitely buy elections, this one’s going to go a little differently.
As much as Bloomberg’s money may win elections, curb civil liberties, and supposedly buy his way into heaven, this time he’s going to have to do a lot more to get ahead in the race. While even presidencies have generally been decided by the largest pocketbooks, Trump has largely been an exception to this rule. As it stands, he was largely outperformed by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in 2016, with the Clinton campaign raising 1.2 billion dollars, roughly double that of Trump’s. This is quite an atypical outcome, and even though Hillary Clinton may have won by popular vote, the fact remains that Trump was voted by this country’s law as President of the United States. Yes, the political topography may have changed as well, but as Trump has allowed all of us to find out, anything can happen on the presidential race track. Can someone just trying to swing around their pocketbook really make a dent against a case like that, and can that really be the person who unifies America?
#5: Late entry candidates don’t win, he won’t even make it past the primary.
Let’s face it, as it stands the man isn’t going to even make it past the primary. There’s the bevy of aforementioned issued mounting against him, which will prove difficult to overcome given the reliance on Democrats to pull minority voting blocs within their party. There’s Bloomberg’s toxic past (and present) policies towards them and his inability to identify. Most fatal of all, he also decided to join the primaries late, on top of announcing his candidacy late. This decision will ultimately prove to be his gravest error of the entire electoral cycle, as late-entry candidates rarely (if ever) manage to achieve victory in the primaries. As it stands, there’s just too much setting Bloomberg back from breaking Bernie and Buttigieg’s ballot bonanza.
There are more than five reasons, though. M. Dowling:
His background isn’t glorious. He made a lot of his money off Red China, which he praises often, and he thinks it’s okay to throw black kids up against a wall to frisk them. What is getting little attention, however, is his sexist pig past, which he has always denied having.
The work environment he has set up over the years is described as deeply sexist, even as he claims to be Progressive fighting for minorities and women.
Mike Bloomberg’s stories of misogyny and sexism appear in lawsuits and journalistic accounts. He doesn’t physically abuse women; he’s more insidious than that, concentrating on disparaging comments and demeaning jokes.
“In December 2015, employees at Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-control organization funded by Bloomberg, arrived at work to find a holiday gift on their desks from their employer: the former mayor’s 1997 autobiography, Bloomberg by Bloomberg. Flipping through the book, staffers found themselves uncomfortably reading their billionaire founder’s boasts about keeping “a girlfriend in every city” and other womanizing exploits as a Wall Street up-and-comer,” far-left GQ reported.
There are some 40 sex discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits brought against him and his organizations by 64 women over the past several decades.
Sekiko Garrison didn’t meet his criteria for respectful treatment.
Sekiko Sakai Garrison, a former sales representative at Bloomberg LP, alleged in a 1997 lawsuit that when then-CEO Mike Bloomberg found out she was pregnant, he told her, “Kill it!” He also said, “Great! Number 16!” There were 16 women on maternity leave at the time.
When Bloomberg saw her engagement ring, he commented, “What is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?”
He once pointed to another female employee and told Garrison, “If you looked like that, I’d do you in a second.” Bloomberg denied having said most of those things, but reportedly left Garrison a voicemail saying that if he did make the comments, he “didn’t mean it.”
Bloomberg reportedly did concede that he had said of Garrison and other women, “I’d do her.” In making the concession, however, he insisted that he had believed that to “do” someone meant merely “to have a personal relationship” with them.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Nice try.
In a 1998 filing, Mary Ann Olszewski reported that “male employees from Mr. Bloomberg on down” routinely belittled women at the company. It culminated in her being raped in a Chicago hotel room by a Bloomberg executive who was also her direct superior. The case was dismissed because Olszewski’s attorney had missed the deadlines to respond to a motion to end the case.
Before the dismissal, in a deposition relating to the suit, Bloomberg testified that he wouldn’t consider Olszewski’s rape allegation to be genuine unless there was “an unimpeachable third-party witness” to corroborate her claims.
Once, he told a journalist and her friend, “Look at the ass on her,” while gazing at a party.
The rising presidential candidate, according to a top aide, seeing attractive women. reflexively remarked, “Nice tits.”
Bloomberg, mocked Christine Quinn, the then-speaker of New York’s City Council, for waiting too long between hair colorings.
The billionaire businessman, quoted by colleagues as saying, “If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale’s.”
Bloomberg was asked in a deposition, “Have you ever made a comment to the effect that you would like to ‘do that piece of meat,’ or I’d ‘do her in a second’?” Bloomberg replied, “I don’t recall ever using the term meat at all.”
“Mini Mike” Bloomberg once described his life as a single billionaire bachelor in New York City to a reporter as being a “wet dream.” “I like theater, dining, and chasing women,” he said.
On a radio show in 2003, he said that he would “really want to have” Jennifer Lopez. He later explained it away as wanting to “have dinner” with her.
Employees of his in 1990 put together an entire booklet of some of his more egregious comments. One of the comments included the computer terminal that made him a billionaire. He said, “It will do everything, including give you [oral sex]. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.”
He’s so arrogant that he can make these comments while pretending he is something else. However, he does deny it all, every last bit of it.
Democrats have been criticizing Donald Trump for his bad behavior with women. There are more examples of Bloomberg’s bad behavior toward women. Of course, Democrats have for a long time excused bad behavior toward women as long as said bad actor has the correct attitude about abortion rights. (See Clinton, Bill.)
Then there’s this, which started flying around the Internet Sunday, here from William Addison:
A resurfaced discussion is coming back to haunt billionaire Mike Bloomberg in his bid for the White House.
In the video, which took place at the Said Business School summit in November 2016, Bloomberg chalked up farmers and tradesmen as individuals with brainless careers that “anybody” can do.
He argued that the new “information economy” actually requires skillsets of “how to think and analyze.”
“Anybody, even those in this room — no offense intended — can be a farmer. It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put the seed in, you put dirt on it, add water, and up comes the corn,” Bloomberg said. “You could learn that.”
He made a similar comment about tradesmen in the industrial age before jumping to the real kicker: “Now comes the information economy … it’s built around replacing people with technology, and the skillsets you have to learn are how to think and analyze. And that is a whole degree level different.”
He concluded by saying that you have to have “a lot more grey matter.” …
Ironically, these comments come from a billionaire businessman who’s probably never sweat it out in the fields and is clueless about the grueling logistical aspect of farming/tradesman-ship.
Nobody is impressed with pompous remarks made at a leadership summit. Everyone is grateful to God that hard-working Americans work day and night to feed an entire nation.
That will go over well in flyover country.
-
The number one one one single today-day-day in 1962:
The number one British single today in 1966:
Today in 1969, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash recorded the album “Girl from the North Country.”
Never heard of a Dylan–Cash collaboration? That’s because the album was never released, although the title track was on Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” album.
-
Today in 1964, the Beatles appeared on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew, for the first time since last week.
The number one British single today in 1967 was written by Charlie Chaplin:
Today in 1974, members of Emerson, Lake and Palmer were arrested for swimming naked in a Salt Lake City hotel pool. They were fined $75 each.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 