Blaska Policy Werkes

Big Brother Gummint knows best

Clint Eastwood is one of America’s national treasures, on the same scale as James Stewart, John Wayne, Bob Hope, and Frank Sinatra — to mention four other Republicans, of an earlier time.

You may remember Clint Eastwood addressing the empty chair, standing in for Barack Obama, at the 2012 Republican national convention. 

So it was a bit of a shock to read down to the bottom of Tunku Varadarajan’s interview (Tunku, Tunku very much) with Mr. Eastwood in the weekend Wall Street Journal, which closes thusly:

As for the domestic political scene, Mr. Eastwood seems disheartened. “The politics has gotten so ornery,” he says, hunching his shoulders in resignation. He approves of “certain things that Trump’s done” but wishes the president would act “in a more genteel way, without tweeting and calling people names. I would personally like for him to not bring himself to that level.”

So far, so good. But then

… he expresses an affinity for another former mayor: “The best thing we could do is just get Mike Bloomberg in there.”

Mr. Eastwood describes himself as a libertarian 

Clint Eastwood was once a mayor himself, of Carmel-by-the-Seat, in 1986. He ran because of the hassles city government threw in his way of starting up a restaurant. One of his first acts in office, Mr. Varadarajan reports,

was to reduce the onerous municipal prohibitions on the public sale of ice cream. More than three decades later, he laments that the Golden State is “like Regulation City right now.” An excess of rules is “making California a place other than a democracy.”

Strange, then, that he would support Michael Bloomberg. Varadarajan does not explore the sentiment; he just leaves it hanging there. Perhaps Dirty Harry supports Bloomberg’s stop and frisk, which reduced crime and saved countless lives — both of innocent victims and the bangers. (Inexcusable, on the other hand, was Bloomberg’s racist shorthand for that policy. Stop and frisk targeted behavior, not race.)

There’s Bloomberg’s non-disclosure agreements, which seem to cover nothing approaching Harvey Weinstein’s alleged depredations. (Progressives will yet make the world safe from dirty jokes.) Or his diss on farmers and factory workers. (Goodbye Wisconsin and Michigan.)

Big brother knows best

“Individually, these stories are bad, syndicated columnist S.E. Cupp writes.

“But Bloomberg’s long history of invasive nanny state policies deserves renewed scrutiny.”

Cupp itemizes Mayor Bloomberg’s big-government crusade against cigarettes, trans fats, sugary sodas, and “black and brown men aged 14 to 24.” She does not mention his war on gun owners but does include this stunner: “breasts.”

In 2012, Bloomberg launched the Latch On NYC initiative, which attempted to coerce breastfeeding in new mothers by limiting access to formula in hospitals, discontinuing the distribution of free infant formula and removing any formula promotional material in hospitals. It also required that nurses document dispensing of formula to new moms, citing “medical reasons” for its necessity.

Ms. Cupp concludes:

Anyone with this much determination to insert himself into the public and private lives of Americans should be treated as dangerous … Whatever the issue and however personal, Michael Bloomberg will always know what’s best for you, whether it’s his business or not.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Doesn’t sound very libertarian to us.

What do YOU think?

His campaign strategy
is a non-disclosure agreement 

What did we say Wednesday (02-19-2020) before that night’s Democrat(ic) presidential debate? That all of Michael Bloomberg’s considerable money can’t buy him love. 

Mike Bloomberg is finished. The other five Democrats on stage last night in Las Vegas used him as target practice. Bloomberg was undone by his party’s obeisance to identity politics, economic redistribution, and victim envy. 

We’ve become fans of the New York Post because it is almost British in its cheeky irreverence. “Oh, was it glorious,” writes the Post’s John Podhoretz. “The sheer raging hostility spraying across the stage … 

It’s not that the gloves were off. No, my friends, everybody was wearing steel-tipped boots and going right for the crotch. Those weren’t snowflakes. They were nunchucks.”

Podhoretz’s highlights:

•   Klobuchar wheeling on Buttigieg and demanding to know if he was trying to say she was dumb. “Are you mocking me here, Pete?” [Blaska: Do I amuse you?]

•   Joe Biden saying he’s the only one on stage who has met all kinds of Mexican presidents — whose names he clearly couldn’t remember.

•   Bloomberg saying he was too rich to release his returns because he can’t do Turbo Tax like all of you losers.

•   Sanders fuming that Bloomberg would dare mention he has a summer house.

Two-point nine on a scale of ten!

The New York Times employs a panel of 16 debate judges. They scored it this way on a scale of 0 to 10: Elizabeth Warren 8.4; Bernie Sanders 7.2; Mayor Pete (too lazy to look up spelling of his last name) 6.9; Joe Biden 6.2; Amy Klobuchar 6.0; Michael Bloomberg 2.9.

On Bloomberg, the NY Times panel was merciless. A sampling:

Ross Douthat (2/10) — He introduced himself with terrible, fumbling, unpleasant responses to the most predictable lines of attack (race, sexism, tax returns). Some OK moments later against Sanders but the first hour was a real-world demolition of his virtual candidacy.

Gail Collins (1/10) — Likeability moment never arrived.

Peter Wehner (1/10) — His performance was a catastrophe — stiff, arrogant, tone deaf and intensely unlikeable.  His answer on [non-disclosure agreements] was among the worst in the history of presidential debates.

Gil Duran (1/10) — Bloomberg’s not a leading candidate — he just plays one in TV ads. When he wasn’t taking blows, he was invisible. His answers on racism and sexism were awful. Money can’t buy charisma — or humility. Historically bad debate performance.

“My wife likes to talk during sex. Last night she called from Chicago.”

Dems still searching for a Bernie beater

Someone should tell Bloomberg that real Democrats (his current political party) hate billionaires like him. All those consent agreements were because of sexist jokes? Well, were they at least Rodney Dangerfield funny? Why not parry Elizabeth Warren (that scold!) with a Henny Youngman, “Take my wife, please.”

“Somebody tell Mike Bloomberg that Roseanne Barr was kicked off her own show for telling a joke some people didn’t like,” advises Ann of Althouse, blogger at law.

Haven’t seen any mention that the other Democrats scored Bernie Sanders for the vicious behavior of many of his supporters. True believers, like we have here in Madison WI who will spray “white supremacist” at anyone who argues for school discipline. (Ahem.)

Blaska’s Bottom Line: There is no clear contender for the Democratic middle. Bernie Sanders remains the front-runner and Bloomberg got one thing right: “I don’t think there’s any chance of the senator beating Donald Trump.” 

What do YOU think?

Soulless capitalist plutocrat
or proto-Communist?

Are Democrats desperate enough
to make a Faustian bargain?

Abraham Lincoln said something about a house divided being unable to stand. Democrats are divided between following their redistributionist impulse to its logical conclusion, that being Bernie Sanders and full-bore expropriative socialism. Four years of a nationwide, all-expenses paid people’s vacation in a virtual Soviet-era Moscow. The show trials will be live-streamed on your portable devices.

On the other side establishment wing, desperate to beat Trump at any cost — even to sell its soul to the highest bidder, he being the multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

Which is why Blaska wants the 4 by 8-foot plywood concession for Downtown Milwaukee come this August. For the Antifa kristallnacht, doncha know. 

The man has no soul

Bloomberg has purchased the likes of Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Al Sharpton in NYC. They’re bought and paid for. Does anyone actually like Michael Bloomberg? Believe in Michael Bloomberg? It is impossible to imagine this prickly plutocrat filling an auditorium with adoring fans like Trump does every week. The common touch, he lacks. He’s Mr. Burns.

Almost-Never Trumper Jonah Goldberg calls Bloomberg “the poster boy for a kind of arrogant, progressive post-partisan technocratic government that prizes data over feelings. … An icon of the credentialed upper class who saw ideological culture-war fights as so much boob bait.”

The arrogant billionaire is doing what he can to lose America’s heartland.  Where Donald Trump in Air Force One buzzed car racing fans at Daytona 500, the satiric Babylon Bee has Bloomberg handing out speeding tickets to the Nascar racers.

For those white workers who pushed
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania
into Trump’s column, Bloomberg is the personification
of everything they can’t abide. — The American Prospect

So God made an arrogant billionaire

President Bloomberg will not rip my supersized Kwikie-Mart Squishee from my cold dead hands! Not even Virginia’s Democrat-controlled legislature could ban so-called “assault rifles.” All criminals look young and black to the putative Democrat(ic) nominee. China-loving internationalist trader. Wall Street profiteer. His relations with women paint him as Harvey Weinstein-lite. He said good riddance to the Upper Midwest when he dissed farmers.

In The Federalist, Sean Davis riffs on Bloomberg to that classic Paul Harvey radio essay, “So God made a farmer.” 

And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a tiny, soulless technocrat to tell everyone else how to live their lives.” So God made a Bloomberg.

God said, “I need a know-it-all Wall Street banker who made more money by getting fired than most men will make their entire lives working an honest job.” So God made a Bloomberg.

“Somebody who would tell a female employee to kill her own baby so she could work longer hours, a grieving family that it’s a waste to give medical care to old people, or a farmer that growing food is easy and any idiot with half a brain could manage it. Someone who could tell a mother that parenting was as simple as hiring ‘some black who doesn’t even have to speak English’ to raise her dumb kid.” So God made a Bloomberg.

Blaska’s Bottom Betting Line: We are so watching tonight’s (02-19-2020) debate in Las Vegas. Here is betting that the live audience gives Mr. Bloomberg the silent treatment, at least when compared to the other five on stage. Say what you will about Trump — and Bernie, for that matter — those two are entertaining. Bloomberg is one big BUZZ KILL!

BONUS platinum subscriber thought: When Houston Astros travel to New York, could the Yankees organize a symphony of banging garbage cans in the box seats over the visiting dugout? 30 or 40 of all sizes would be about right. 

One more thing: the President of the United States IS the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.
The attorney general (only referenced as an “inferior officer” in Section 2, Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution) works for the President. At his pleasure. More here.

What do YOU think?