He Did Buy That

Bloomberg gets in trouble for telling the truth, basically admitting he bought the Democratic Majority, and wondering why they aren’t more appreciative. They aren’t, Mike. They mock you for it. You should spend your money on something else. Any plutocrat who’s anybody today has their own space program. Help us get to Mars, Mike. Help you get to Mars, Mike. Don’t let that Musk guy beat you there. He’s only worth a measly 44 billion. Who does he think he is?

30 thoughts on “He Did Buy That”

  1. “he bought the Democratic Majority, and wondering why they aren’t more appreciative.”

    Read Matthew 7:3. The most dangerous people are the people who are bought, and don’t even know that they have been bought.

  2. I’d like to see a list of the 41 congressional seats that Bloomberg bought. I don’t believe “Bought by Bloomberg” is a winning re-election ad.

  3. I’d rather see him head straight to the sun since he seems to believe he’s such a bright shining star. Maybe then he could solve the global warming crisis.

    1. The reason we know he didn’t do that is that he was busy teaching farmers how to grow food.

  4. I’m deeply disappointed that no one here wants Bloomberg to run for President. I’m confident run-of-the-mill Democrats want him for President!

    Keep running, Mike! Double down on what you’re doing, and hire as many of the best campaign staffers from local races as possible, Mike! And if you don’t win the Democratic nomination, be sure to continue running as a third party candidate, Mike! You can do it! Through your efforts, you can make America a better place!

    And hopefully, after all your efforts (and four more years of President Trump), part of the “America is now a better place” will be both a Judiciary and a Democratic Party that’s more friendly to gun rights…

    1. “be sure to continue running as a third party candidate, Mike!”

      My guess (as a former third-party acolyte) is that third parties are going to do miserably this year, for the POTUS race, anyway. My guess is that most votes are going to be Trump, For/Against. Few “Against” are going to waste their vote on a single-digit candidate.

      I suspect too that could extend down-ballot, the alignment being Trump Fellow-Travelers, For/Against. As I’ve mentioned before, here in Bucks County we’ve had Democratic Dog Catchers elected where they haven’t been for years. Point being, “Dog Catchers” meaning office-holders where ideology or partisanship shouldn’t be a factor at all.

      Your results may vary.

      1. I don’t particularly want Bloomberg to do well as a third-Party candidate. I’d like him to continue to suck the oxygen out of the room for the Democrats — both for local elections, and for national ones.

  5. I look at him as being a combination fool / egomaniac. The only other thing I would see him as is a wannabe dictator, problem is most of them use other people’s money to get there.

    1. I don’t know about fool but wanna-be dictator for sure. Conservatives are hyperventilating about Bernie but Bloomberg is far more dangerous. Bernie may admire communist dictators but he doesn’t have the skill set or maybe even the inclination to do it himself. Bloomberg does and will go for it should he be elected.

  6. “wanna-be dictator for sure.”

    The thing we all need to understand is that everyone who has ever been appointed to their local Shade Tree Commission immediately has fantasies of being POTUS, and POTUS with dictatorial powers. There have been so few exceptions to that in history, that the exceptions are legendary.

    That invites a long essay about how all ideologies seek the power to impose themselves for “the people’s own good”, and to the extent that people embrace ideologies the way they do theologies, they feel justified in having their own way, because only they really “get it”. But I will forebear such an essay.

    1. I think that this is a major problem Libertarians, and to a lesser extent Conservatives, have always run into.

      Namely, that both groups have a major “Just leave my alone” contingent who simply aren’t willing to run for public office, because public office in general has a strong element of “We’re not going to leave you alone”. Thus, you end up with weak and wacky candidates for the Libertarians, and candidates who aren’t going to leave you alone for the Conservatives.

      It’s a problem I really wish we could fix, but there’s probably not a good answer to the problem. Perhaps we need a culture of fostering “guardianship” and “civic duty” among Libertarians and Conservatives — namely that you seek out office out of a civic duty, to be guardian of liberty, and to prevent the office from becoming a source of dictatorial power. Even then, I suspect that we’ll run into the issue of “Hey, I have power, now what can I do with it?” — I’m not fully convinced that power corrupts, but it’s downright rare to find a person who has enough moral strength not to be corrupted by power!

      1. The only fix is the National Divorce. Get most of the leftists off in another country and preserving liberty won’t be so difficult. If we try to live with them in the same country, we have the choice of adopting their tactics (which I agree is destructive of liberty) or surrender/defeat.

        1. “Get most of the leftists off in another country and preserving liberty won’t be so difficult.”

          The trouble is that even in the most extreme red/blue states the mix of “leftists” to “rightists” is probably 60/40 in either direction. So, what will we do, have our legislatures vote on who should get up and move? Or do we just deny the vote to anyone who isn’t sufficiently right-thinking?

          That sounds to me like a formula for what happened with Hindus and Muslims in India. It resulted in extreme violence, millions of displaced refugees, and the creation of Pakistan, a nuclear power that at best is one of our “frenemies,” that harbored Bin Laden for a lot of years.

          Neither country is exactly a font of “religious liberty,” even for their own religions. Modi’s proposal for “religious liberty” that Trump gushed over, consists of enabling the deportation of native born Indian Muslims on almost any pretext.

          I’m sure there are big problems and failings with my analogy, but current events brought it to my mind. Lots of people were killed at the very moment Trump was kissing Modi’s ass speaking in India.

          Last, I’m wondering what sort of test we would apply to deciding who should be deported from our new country of liberty? By voter registration? I haven’t been registered with any political party for over a quarter of a century. Maybe we would have to depend on neighbor denouncing neighbor as thought criminals. Or would we have to depend on “red” states making it so unpleasant for “blue” people they would flee voluntarily?

          I really can’t see your “divorce” idea resulting in “liberty” for anyone, but maybe there’s some aspect I just don’t get.

          1. Do it by county, not states and it will be a lot more homogeneous. Your model may be India but mine is Czechoslovakia. No deportations but no restrictions on voluntary movement. America and the People’s Republic might enact programs to assist their people on the other side of the the line. I suspect the the People’s Republic would be harsher with the Deplorables than America would be with leftists so the flow might be unbalanced

            The alternative is civil war which will be provoked by the Left based on their perception of the correlation of forces. That would be a much worse disaster no matter who wins.

            1. ” No deportations but no restrictions on voluntary movement.”

              Thanks! I will check out Czechoslavakia, though I confess I’m so out of it I didn’t think it existed anymore.

              What I’m wondering though, is what the situation needs to be to cause people to “volunteer” to move, that correlates with their individual ideologies?

              1. I’m sincere in being interested in what you have to say.

                I read a quick outline of the government of the Czech Republic, and it sounds like what you are talking about. But in the process I cam across the following:

                https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/26/czec-j26.html

                300,000 demonstrate in Prague against right-wing Czech government
                By Markus Salzmann
                26 June 2019

                An estimated 300,000 people protested in the Czech capital of Prague last Sunday against the right-wing government of Prime Minister Andrei Babiš. At what was the biggest demonstration in the Czech Republic since the so-called Velvet Revolution of 1989, protesters demanded the resignation of the billionaire founder of the right-wing neo-liberal party ANO.

                (snip)

                For seven weeks, thousands of Czechs have protested against Babiš, who is accused of corruption and of using his political power for private, business purposes. The protests are also directed against Czech Justice Minister Marie Benešova, who is accused of obstructing investigations against Babiš. According to Forbes magazine, the assets of the Czech Prime Minister are estimated at around 3.3 billion euros, making him the second richest man in the country.

                (snip)

                That doesn’t sound a whole lot different from what we’re facing here, so I guess I could use more explanation of what you think the virtues are — unless of course I’m looking at the wrong place!

              2. I found the following:

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia#Reasons_for_the_division

                Reasons for the division

                A number of reasons are given for the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, with the main debates focusing on whether dissolution was inevitable or whether dissolution occurred in conjunction with, or even in contrast to, the events that occurred between the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the end of the joined state in 1992.[5]

                Those who argue from the inevitability stance tend to point to the differences between the two nations, which date back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and other issues. There are ethnic differences between the Czechs and Slovaks. These issues included, but were not limited to, problems with the shared state during communism, the success of the communist state in Czech lands and its failure in the Slovak lands which still resulted in the adoption of communism, because the Czechs were more influential in the running of the state than Slovaks, and the 1968 constitution, which had a minority veto.[6]

                Those who argue that events between 1989 and 1992 led to dissolution point to international factors such as the breakaway of the Soviet satellite nations, the lack of unified media between the Czech and Slovak republics, and, most importantly, the actions of the political leaders of the two nations (most specifically the disagreements between prime ministers Klaus and Mečiar).[7][8]

                It seems to me what made the “divorce” possible is that the two regions already had their own historical national identitities. Separations based on nationalist identities are probably easier than separations based on “belief.” I doubt there was much of a mix of people who saw themselves as aligned with either region in their respective populations. Czechs saw themselves as Czechs and Slovakians as Slovakians.

                When you mix populations and try to separate, you get violence. I’m thinking of Ireland as an example.

                1. There was no violence in the CZ breakup which is why the media didn’t cover it. Demonstrations are fine in a democracy. The problem with Ireland is that when they made peace in 1923, they left a lot of people behind enemy lines with no way to address their problem other than to fight. And the Ulstermen were serious bigots in ways that do not occur in conservative America. For that matter, there wasn’t much violence when the Soviet Union collapsed when one would have expected much violence. Most of it was in the Caucasus which is always violent. Couple of minor skirmishes in the Baltics. Even with the subsequent economic disaster, there wasn’t much violence. A generation down the road we are seeing some violence caused by Russian irredentism and large Russian populations left behind in Ukraine. Potential future problems exist in Estonia and Kazakhstan. Both the Tsars and the Communists heavily promoted ethnic Russian migration to other areas, leaving a mess for the future. Still, no general war however, just the Little Green Men in ethnic Russian areas of E Ukraine. And, of course, the Caucasus is still a mess. A lot of that relates to Islamic terrorism rather than the breakup.

                  So a lot depends on doing it right. Yugoslavia was another place that did it horribly wrong. Lots of ethnic cleansing and outright genocide in places and now they are split up anyway. I think Belgium and Canada could split up without violence and I think we could too if we get on it before things progress too far.

                  You should also consider the places where partition would have been easy but didn’t happen because one or both parties wouldn’t agree and a bloody, destructive civil war ensued. Russia and Mexico were too fragmented and chaotic to have prevented civil war no matter what they did but other places had a choice. Spain, for example could have split into regions which is what the Catalans and Basques wanted anyway and separating Andulucia from Castille would have been a good thing. But once the war started, it was too late with serious atrocities on both sides, the radio war between La Passionaria and Quiepo de Llano spewing hate through the media and the intervention of foreign powers on both sides. It was war to the finish then. Nigeria could probably have avoided their civil war. there could have been Israel and Palestine in 1948 but the Arabs wanted the whole thing and went to war. They still do though other Arabs seem to be getting tired of it and wanting to worry about Iran. Lot of blood under the bridge by now though.

                  And then there are our two previous civil wars. The Founders didn’t initially want war with Britain, they wanted the traditional liberties of the English people but the Brits responded with repression. As for CW1, Lincoln could have ended slavery in the US by simply letting the South go. The remaining slaves in the union which were few in number could have been emancipated by purchase for far less than the war cost, not to mention the 600,000 dead. Yeah, slavery anywhere is an abomination but you will notice we didn’t declare war on Brazil or Morocco or Russia. He chose war when the South simply wanted to go their own way.

                  1. “the Ulstermen were serious bigots in ways that do not occur in conservative America.”

                    First, thanks so much for the long, thoughtful reply that I will continue to digest piece by piece over time.

                    But that said, I need to differ with your statement that I have quoted above. The same bigotry existed in “conservative” Bucks County when my family moved here in the 1940s — which of course seems like “recent” history to me, since I can remember it. Someone attempted to keep us out with a petition, because we were “[Ethnic] Catholics from South Philadelphia” and I was turned away from joining the local Cub Scout troop. My wife and I were both Catholic kids in (different) Protestant-controlled public school systems, and we both excperienced discrimination on the part of Protestant teachers, my wife’s experiences being much worse than mine. Those were in the days when many of our reading exercises and coloring books in public school involved bible stories.

                    Also, our parents’ generation who grew up in Bucks County in the early decades of the last century had numerous stories about how active the Ku Klux Klan had been in the county, and in those days, the focus of the Klan locally was more anti-Catholic than anti-black or antisemitic, though those were part of their package. They burned a local Catholic Church midday in the 1920s, while the neighbors gathered and cheered. Of course, Bucks County much prefers its “staid, Quaker” image — on the subject of things the MSM avoid reporting.

                    Since it is all “recent history” to me, I believe all of that remains just under the surface or in a closet with a rickety door, and many/most of the “Christian conservative” personalities have from time to time come out as overtly anti-Catholic. So I will take issue with your statement that no parallels to the Six Counties exist in conservative America, even if Catholcis and Protestants have fellow-traveled on certain issues.

                    (FWIW my wife’s family in County Derry experienced “ethnic cleansing” in the 1920s after partition, so that also guides my thoughts.)

                    1. I am more or less your age and I didn’t see it. I did grades 3-7 in Mt. Lebanon which is suburban Pittsburgh. I suppose it could be different by locality.

                      Since you are Catholic and Derry is in the North, your story about ethnic cleansing would seem to support my comment about Ulstermen. I have known some and that has affected my perception. For what it is worth I am mostly from a Northern Irish background too. Protestant in my case though I do not attend church but I think I would have been aware of it. I remember some church bigotry but it was more against Protestants who were not Presbyterians. My parents pulled out of the church over that and I never went back.

                      You are right about KKK 2.0 being very anti-Catholic. They were pretty anti-Semitic even then though. I suppose that since Jim Crow was entrenched in the South at that point blacks were a lower priority for them. I had not realized they were so active in PA. I knew they were very strong in the Midwest and Plains. KKK 2.0 was larger than KKK 1.0 and hugely larger than KKK 3.0 which was fringe. If we are on 4.0 now it is even smaller with most of the membership being FBI undercover. There was apparently a connection between the KKK and Prohibition which may have been connected to the animus against Catholics.

                      Whatever the history is though 2020 conservatives are far different beings than the ones from the 1920s or even the 1940s. I don’t think that they would harass leftists in the communities anywhere near as much as leftists harass conservatives. It is a pretty common observations by gay gun owners that it is much less difficult to come out as gay to gun owners than it is to come out as a gun owner to other gays.

                    2. I’m enjoying our conversation and for now I’ll just continue with an Old Bucks County story.

                      The father of my best friend was born and raised in Bucks County, and was a kid in the 1920s. One of his favorite stories was how when he was a kid, one afternoon he had sneaked over to where the KKK had set up their kerosene-soaked cross in preparation for a rally that night, and set it on fire prematurely. He got in big trouble for that, because the Klan members were some of the most prominent men in town. But, there was nothing “ideological” involved in the prank, it was just a kid looking for mischief. The rallies and cross-burnings were held on a property immediately adjacent to the Country Club, on a low ridge where the flaming cross could be seen for miles.

                      At the time the KKK was (nationally) considered the premier “patriotic” organization. Out your way (actually, Butler County) Protestant relatives of mine were alleged to have been KKK members in the 1920s, but they themselves never talked about it.

                      There were a number of similar organizations at the turn of last century, for example, “The Patriotic Order of Americans.” All had platforms that were explicitly “white” and anti-immigrant, holdovers from the Know Nothing days. An oddity was, most of them had a platform plank that it should be illegal for children not to attend public schools. The purpose of that position was implicitly anti-Catholic and antisemitic, because it would have made parochial religious schools effectively illegal, with no students; it also was a demonstration that the vast majority of public schools at the time were controlled by Protestants, who controlled the classroom religious instruction. That scenario totally reversed in 1963, following the Abington SCOTUS decision eliminating religious activities from government schools. It was after that, that many Protestant Christian sects turned hostile to public schools, and alternatives were sought that would result in government funding of religious schools.

                      I’ll close acknowledging that the Catholic Church has always sought public funding of their schools, going back to at least the 1850s.

      2. “Perhaps we need a culture of fostering “guardianship” and “civic duty” among Libertarians and Conservatives”

        You may want to check out “libertarian municipalism” which is a term going around of late. It allegedly already has a track record of having functioned in some places for decades. Some people allege that the reason Trump sold out Rojava to Erdogan is, that all the powers-that-be in the world didn’t like that it was working so well there.

  7. @Andy B
    We seem to blown out the limit to reply on the last thread so I started a new one.

    Those anti-Catholic amendments you mention are still on the books. They are collectively know as the Bryan amendments after progressive darling, William Jennings Bryan who was the leader in them enacted. They are still being used too, now by the left, especially the teacher unions, to shut down efforts re vouchers and charter schools. The voucher movement does include a lot of the descendants of the old conservatives but are more diverse than a lot of people think. Lots of homeschoolers. I have had contact with them from both the US and Canada. I would say they are about 2/3 religious people (mostly evangelicals but I have encountered Wiccans too) and about 1/3 old hippies. In spite of this, they cooperate with each other because they have a common enemy, the public schools which both groups believe are indoctrinating rather than educating. Charter schools are very different. They are legally public schools usually chartered by school districts but sometimes by states. There are all kinds but the real energy in this movement is minority based, mostly black but some Hispanic. Their motivation is obvious-no where have standard public schools failed worse than in minority communities. In spite of all of the latter group and some of the former group being members of the Democrat base, the Left is hell bent to destroy them. The teachers union is just too important to them financially and neither private or charter schools are unionized (usually).

    1. “They are collectively know as the Bryan amendments after progressive darling, William Jennings Bryan who was the leader in them enacted.”

      I’m only using the above quote as an anchor point for the spirit of my reply.

      Historically, there was not the degree of polarization between “progressivism” and “conservatism/’patriotism'” at the turn of the last century, as today, when what people think about Issue A can be predicted from what they think about Issues B, C, and D, and our broader ideologies have become effectively theologies.

      For example, Teddy Rooselvelt was a progressive, and his Bull Moose Party just a renaming of the Progressive Party, despite him being a militarist, imperialist, and racist — though his brand of racism was consistent with the prevailing attitudes of the day. It would be hard to imagine, or classify, a similar alignment today.

      So, even though “polls” as we know them didn’t exist at the time, I suspect they would have shown a similar attitude toward immigrants or Catholics among people who self-defined as “progressives” or “patriots.” (I’m thinking of how some of the women’s suffragettes in the 1910s opposed having blacks in their movement.)

      On schools, as with many things, I’m thinking that valid ideas can be (and are) polluted, and arguably damned to failure, when all the people in a broader “movement” do not have the motives they claim to have in public. I’m thinking of the pivot c. 1963 from “evangelicals” essentially seeking to make public school attendance mandatory, when they controlled those schools, to seeking alternatives to them after they lost control, and becoming their mortal enemies.

      I of course believe we have been plagued by “other motives” in the RKBA movement, but I seem to be an outlier with that opinion.

      1. “though his brand of racism was consistent with the prevailing attitudes of the day.”

        Yes and no. He seemed to love Jews, and that later fed the claims that “their family name is really Rosenfeld” that were used against FDR in the 1930s. He also loved the Japanese, at least more than he loved other Asians. He favored the Japanese in negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War, and he double crossed the Koreans, reneging on diplomatic promises. Much of what he negotiated and pushed through for the Japanese, is supposed to have enabled their military dominance in the Pacific early in WWII.

      2. I don’t think that the idea of a complex of issues has changed since back in the day, It’s just that the issues have moved around and we should not try to apply modern concepts to those of yesteryear. For example, with WJB, was this really the same guy that gave the Cross of Gold speech and was fired by Wilson as SoS for being too pacifist and then was a special prosecutor in the Scopes trial and was a major player in the Prohibition movement. Yes, it was and it made perfect sense in the political alignment of the day.

        I think you will find this interesting.
        https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/08/the-kennedy-speech-that-stoked-the-rise-of-the-christian-right-123369

        It is Politico so left wing. Short synopsis. JFK’s speech to the evangelical ministers, while a tactical tour de force planted the seeds for a major realignment. The evangelicals realized their problem with Kennedy was political and not religious and paved the way for a political alliance with conservative Catholics and a migration of both groups to the Republicans.

        I think I have spared with you in the past about the alignment of RKBA with right wing groups. You answered the question yourself with the complex of issues. People are capable of caring about more than one issue at a time and they do tend to align at least at one point in time. Put that with the increasing hostility of the Democrats to the RKBA and you have a perfect storm. Democrats could stop this by quit threatening to nuke us.

        1. “Put that with the increasing hostility of the Democrats to the RKBA and you have a perfect storm.”

          I think one my my key points that you have missed is, neither Democrats nor Republicans are really highly motivated by the RKBA issue (as political parties) and only use it as it has evolved into a partisan alignment, for its vote-getting value. That is not to say there aren’t a lot of individuals on both sides of the issue, who are both sincere and highly motivated in their beliefs. But both sides in their pursuit of power exploit the issue for votes without really meaning much of what they say.

          For our RKBA side, my crticism for more than 30 years has been that gun owners would follow beyond the grave anyone who could master event the tiniest bit of pro-gun rhetoric. I think it was in the 1990s that that was reduced to, any Republican who could master “enforce existing laws” became a pro-gun god. I have never made a secret of blaming the National Republican Apologists (NRA) for that, or at least contributing heavily to it. (I will decline to repeat my Old Stories about, here in PA, the NRA providing cover for Republican gubernatorial candidate, gun-grabber Tom Ridge; their support and cover for his comprehensive 1995 gun control bill they labeled “The Sportsmens Omnibus Anti-Crime Bill”; or their subsequent support for Ridge’s anti-gun hatchet-man, AG Mike Fisher when he ran for governor. All of those examples transcended questions of “lessers of two evils” to include NRA concealment or misrepresentation of anti-gun positions.)

          On the Democrats’ side, if “Democrats” rank-and-file and “establishment” really embraced gun control as a key issue, Bloomberg would have been a lot more successful as a primary candidate. It’s that simple. But their other candidates are obligated to pay lip-service to it — the same way Republicans are obligated to pay lip-service to gun rights — but like the Republicans, the Democrats will not deliver much unless it becomes dead easy. As issues go, for both parties the RKBA is a tiger they grabbed by the tail, that they wish they could let go of and abandon, and they probably will if the balance of power ever becomes so secure for one side that they no longer need to manipulate their base.

          The only party I ever aligned with was the Libertarian Party, and I abandoned that 25 years ago. I no longer believe in political parties, so in that way I am probably closer to “independent” than most people who profess to be. Back in the late ’90s I recall being criticised in the PA-RKBA movement for “hating Democrats and Republicans” and to a degree it was true, though I think that phrased truthfully, it would have been clear my critic was criticizing me for not hating Democrats more than Republicans. That was something I could not do, because it was Republicans who were jerking us RKBA types around and stringing us along.

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