Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Let’s finish the job.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

In after Baud. Damn.

We won’t go back.

This fight is for everything.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

Their freedom requires your slavery.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Fair is Fair

Fair is Fair

by | 101 Comments

This post is in: 

This is a good ad. I don’t have Bloomentum yet, but if he’s spending his money on ads like these rather than auto-fellatory “meet Mike Bloomberg, a great, great guy” media, good for him. Open thread.

Reader Interactions

101Comments

  2. 2.

    schrodingers_cat

    OT: I wrote a blog post about what is happening in India, the Citizenship Amendment Act which passed last week and the protests that have followed after that.

    I have sent it to AL and she will FP it but if you have questions leave them on the link I have included here.

  3. 3.

    Betty Cracker

    The only Bloomberg ads I’ve seen have been “Bloomberg, super citizen job creator and not a socialist” type ads, so yeah, this is much, much better. Still wish he wasn’t running for president in the Democratic Party, but if he’s going to set fire to piles of money, this is a positive way to do it.

  4. 4.

    glory b

    Interestingly, my daughter and a few other young African American voters I know of (nieces, nephews, their friends) are interested in Bloomberg.
    They brush off stop and frisk (I’m surprised too) saying it’s no different than a lot of other mistakes made by white folks in charge. They admire his (and Steyer’s) self-made stories, and are fervently anti- gun, mentioning that no one else has gone as far with that issue as they’d like.

    My daughter has a number (larger than I want to think about) of acquaintances killed by guns, a former boyfriend shot and killed during a robbery attempt, and a friend from elementary school killed standing on his front porch for reasons no one has figured out.
    A girl who lived down the street from us was shot in the head (no one knows why) sitting in front of a police commander’s house with the commander’s daughter and a few friends. She lived.

  5. 5.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I can’t see anything in Bloomberg except an old white man with too much money trying to buy the nomination. That just blocks out everything else for me, even stuff like his position on guns.

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    you’d think the fact that Bloomberg is wiling to spend $100,000,000– one hundred million freaking dollars– to stop Warren’s wealth tax, even discussion of the wealth tax, cause I don’t even think a Schumer-led Senate could pass it, would be a great argument for the wealth tax, but what the fuck do I know.

     

    @glory b: Uber-Bernie Bro Jon Fugelsang counts Bloomberg and Biden as real liberals who would be a good corrective to that do-nothing corporate sell-out closet-Republican Barack Obama. /shrug emoji/

  8. 8.

    joel hanes

    The ad is excellent.

     

    Bloomberg did not have to run for President to make and air it.

    He could do so much good with GOTV.

    Or buying Fox News and neutering it.

    Or funding a permanent liberal equivalent of The Heritage Society.

    Or …

  10. 10.

    Tim C.

    @joel hanes: Running for president to just spend billions on attacking Trump isn’t the worst though.  And he correctly identifies the thing that unites Democrats.

  11. 11.

    catclub

    @Betty Cracker: Still wish he wasn’t running for president in the Democratic Party,

     

    Exactly. His highest use would be running in the GOP primary. When he ran for NY mayor? Republican.

  12. 12.

    catclub

    @joel hanes: Bloomberg did not have to run for President to make and air it.

     

    I think technically, he might have to be running. Otherwise, the places where he wants to post the ad can turn him down, and the large ads might be viewed as illegal political donations to other candidates.

  13. 13.

    glory b

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Crazy! I’ve mentioned this before, but lots of my daughter’s friends (and her herself) work for the big banks and the healthcare companies and the insurance companies. They make decent money, most do form processing/customer service type work, enough to have a decent place, a car, child care, etc.

    Some get promoted, even without college degrees. A friend of a friend of mine worked her way up from teller to Vice President, without a degree.

    They live in Pittsburgh. If you break up the banks, eliminate insurance companies, etc., they see the place they’ve carved out for themselves disappearing. Frankly, no one proposing those things has mentioned any ideas for what they’d do for a living if those things happen. Many aren’t necessarily interested in going back to school, more than you’d think already have degrees.

    Let’s not discount the years of hip hop, glorifying making money, as having some influence in admiring self made millionaires.

  15. 15.

    Wag

    ABT for President.  If the Democratic nominee is Warren, I’m on board.  If Bloomberg, I’m on board.  If anyone in between (except Gabbard), I’m on board

  16. 16.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    one ad I’m looking for in this same style of using trump’s words against him is health care: “We’re gonna get rid of Obamacare and replace it with something terrific that’ll cost a lot less and we’re gonna take care of everybody and it’ll be easy believe me”

  17. 17.

    Mandalay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    …an old white man with too much money trying to buy the nomination

    Bloomberg trying to pull this shit is what makes him dead to me:

    New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will seek a change in the law so he can run for a third term in 2009, arguing on Thursday that the financial crisis demands a leader of his business acumen.

    That was ten years ago, but I still get angry when I think about it. I can (barely) accept the argument that stop and frisk was an awful mistake made with good intentions, but naked power grabbing is a bridge too far. I don’t trust him on anything now, and never will.

  19. 19.

    glory b

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, this!!!

    I can’t figure out why no one has used it already!

    He said he already had figured out his plan ,better, cheaper. covered more illnesses and more people. It was already done (according to him)!

    No one in the MSM ever asked about it, that I ever saw.

  20. 20.

    WhatsMyNym

    @glory b: Self-made is all relative…

    In 1981, the businessman Michael Bloomberg was let go from Salomon Brothers with a $10 million severance check. In 1982, Bloomberg started a company named Innovative Market Systems, and originally called the Market Master. In December 1982, 20 units of the Market Master were sold to Merrill Lynch for trading. Until the late eighties, Bloomberg only sold terminals to Merrill Lynch because of a contract between them.

    via wikipedia

  22. 22.

    JPL

    Steyer was viewed by me as being the better billionaire, because his money wasn’t used to just puff up his ego.   Bloomberg has a ways to go but I will say that’s a darn good ad.

  23. 23.

    joel hanes

    @glory b:

    Breaking up the big banks will create a number of small banks, which will tend to employ more, not less, bank employees.

    Similarly, if most corporate-funded health insurance goes away and is replaced by some single-payer scheme, the government and its contractors will need to hire scads of people in every state with experience in administering health benefits.

    But one thing one learns as a software guy:  people hate change they didn’t choose.

  25. 25.

    joel hanes

    @Baud:

    Is there a “Dumber than Trump” contest

    Contenders:
    Louie Gohmert
    Devin Nunes
    Ron Johnson
    Gym Jordan
    county Republican party aparatchiks literally everywhere

  30. 30.

    mad citizen

    Good ad–I was able to see my godsons’ school in the list.  Come on Liz Warren, though–first time typing that since Kamala left.

  31. 31.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @joel hanes:

    people hate change they didn’t choose.

    well put, and something I wish were clear to more of our candidates and lefty-twitter

  34. 34.

    Searcher

    @catclub: I’m willing to pretend that as long as he doesn’t attack real Democratic candidates or progressive policies.

    I kind of assume that has already happened, but TBH I pay so little attention to vanity campaigns by the billionaires and the millionaires that I don’t actually know.

  35. 35.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debbie: he’s done a lot on the environment, too. I just wish the thought of being slightly less wealthy didn’t trigger his Napoleon complex to the point where he’ll light all this money on fire instead of say, using it to get the Democrats the Senate majority.

  36. 36.

    debbie

    @glory b:

    Frankly, no one proposing those things has mentioned any ideas for what they’d do for a living if those things happen.

    They might want to ask all the laid off factory workers who were given no idea of what to do either. //

    (FWIW, you’re wrong about job losses after bank breakups. The number of jobs added when banks began to be held accountable (ie, stress tests, OCC consent order, etc.) was very significant. And they haven’t been let go since.

  40. 40.

    WhatsMyNym

    @glory b: They should be more worried about the coming insurance company mergers which will lead to layoffs.   The big banks are pulling out of areas already.

  41. 41.

    glory b

    @debbie: I may not have made myself clear, those are the things they are saying. They have older relatives who lost jobs when the steel mills collapsed, some of them just getting those jobs after integration. They are reluctant to embrace changes, they see themselves as likely to come out with the short end of the stick.

    Some of them see this as catering to predominantly white, upper middle class young people, who they also see as being mostly Bernie supporters. Don’t get me wrong, some of them see something in Sanders, but like the other jackals of color have pointed out, most of us are afraid of change, not revolutionaries, trying to maintain what we’ve managed to obtain.

  42. 42.

    hueyplong

    It’s possible there are 63 million Americans dumber than Trump.

     

    That’s a lot of the problem.

  44. 44.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @joel hanes:

    The ad is excellent.

     

    Bloomberg did not have to run for President to make and air it.

    He could do so much good with GOTV.

    Or buying Fox News and neutering it.

    Or funding a permanent liberal equivalent of The Heritage Society.

    Or …

    Amen.

    Bloomberg and Steyer alone could use their money in ways that far out-power anything one, single President could ever do for posterity. We don’t need them as President to do all the things we want to do, but we need changes to the laws, institutions and structures that will support those changes for more than 8 years.

    They could be powerful forces for good and do just that. I wish I knew how that message could be transmitted to them before 2020.

    Maybe someone could get Barack to pay these two a visit?

  45. 45.

    Kay (not the front-pager)

    Not only is Bloomberg a rich a-hole trying to buy his way into the presidency, he has more than a little in common with the current occupant. For instance, he is a sexist <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Thirty years ago. Do we care? &quot;I know for a fact that any self-respecting woman who walks past a construction site doesn’t get a whistle will turn around and walk past again and again until she does get one.&quot; <a href=”https://t.co/B9tulq5EGE”>https://t.co/B9tulq5EGE</a></p>&mdash; Connie Schultz (@ConnieSchultz) <a href=”https://twitter.com/ConnieSchultz/status/1206549748074917889?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>December 16, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

    He was an Epstein buddy.

    He opposes raising minimum wage.

    He’s a basic rich-guy who thinks he should control us peons, but with a slight leftist bent (i.e. anti-sugar, anti-global warming, anti-gun). No thanks.

  46. 46.

    Jay

    @catclub:

    Nope, just air them as a “single issue” PAC product. The contents of such ads do not have to be nonpartizan, fair or true, and only count as “in kind” contributions if the FEC can prove collusion,

    given that the FEC no longer “exists”, and has rarely managed to “prove” such cases, even as blatant as the NRA/Russia/ReThug collusion of 2016, it’s a no brainer.

  48. 48.

    Jay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Change is constant. Change you know is coming from a long way off, beats the “surprise” changes.

    Funny how none of the “Whattabout Becky anti-MFA” employment articles and retweets exist for ACA changes that caused Insurer Bankruptcies and layoffs.

  49. 49.

    Kay (not the front-pager)

    @Kay (not the front-pager): Well this screwed up royally. I was trying to embed a tweet with a quote from Bloomberg. He said, “I know for a fact that any self-respecting woman who walks past a construction site doesn’t get a whistle will turn around and walk past again and again until she does get one.” He said it 30 years ago, but that was the ’90s so really no excuse.

  50. 50.

    trollhattan

    The ad is perfect. I’d just edit out the last frames and run it relentlessly. Sadly, the tally would need frequent updating.

    Our kids have what the Germans call Galgenhumor about school shootings, and a large cohort, maybe even a majority, consider it just a matter of time before they too experience it. They have complex discussions over which of their classmates are Most Likely to Shoot Up the School. This is our saddest gift to the upcoming generation.

  51. 51.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay (not the front-pager): Yeah, it turns out that when you copy and try to embed a tweet, you have to click the “text” tab at the top of the comment box. Why, I don’t know.

    I don’t know what the “visual” tab is for either.

    Also I don’t know how to reply to more than one commenter at a time

  52. 52.

    debbie

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:
    I have come to learn that Visual shows you how it looks. Embed a tweet on the text tab and then switch over to visual. You’ll see what I mean.

    To reply to multiple posts, I learned to click one name, close the box, click another name. When the box opens, both names will be there.

    Disclosure: This is what has worked for me; I am not an expert — by any means!

  53. 53.

    Jay

    White Men are being White Men again,….

    2020 head-to-head polling by gender via Fox News poll:

    Among men:
    Trump v. Biden: Trump +2
    Trump v. Warren: Trump +14

    Among women:
    Trump v. Biden: Biden +15
    Trump v. Warren: Warren +15

    — Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) December 15, 2019

  54. 54.

    John Revolta

    In some uplifting news: some British heiress/model had Fifty Meellyun Pounds worth of jewelry stolen from her house in West London over the weekend. Made my day. Go, International Jewel Thieves!

  56. 56.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I don’t know what the “visual” tab is for either.

    The “visual” tab should be the default editing mode.  It’s a “What You See Is What You Get”(sort of) editing mode, the “text” tab shows the HTML code.

    Also I don’t know how to reply to more than one commenter at a time

    Close the reply box by hitting the “X” at the top right.  Go to the next comment you wish to reply to, click reply(repeat as needed).

  57. 57.

    Jay

    NEW: I talked to dozens of campaign staff members & disinformation researchers about what infrastructure (if any) existed within campaigns to proactively spot disinformation & combat it. The answer: there isn't really much of an infrastructure in place. https://t.co/9gu5brqdvo— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) December 16, 2019

  59. 59.

    evap

    @catclub:  Yes, I wonder if Bloomberg is only running for president so he can air ads like this.   He must know he hasn’t much of a chance (famous last words!)

  60. 60.

    trollhattan

    @Jay:

    Ye gods. Misogyny–never out of fashion.

    Stumbled across the video from early December of Warren answering a young lady’s difficult question about not getting approval from somebody she looked up to, and Warren responded by relating how difficult it was to tell her disapproving mother about breaking with her first husband, then hugging the young lady.

    Apparently, that’s not presidential material.

  67. 67.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Yutsano: and Conor Lamb, who was the anti-Pelosi in Chuck Todd’s mind until a different Broderist Butterfly distracted him

  69. 69.

    Yutsano

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I would love for the caucus to be unanimous on this, but Nancy can count votes. She also respects decisions of her individual members and whether she can cut them loose or needs to whip them.

    And I want every Republican to vote no. And hang that albatross around all their necks.

  71. 71.

    Zinsky

    @Betty Cracker:  As usual, Betty nails it.  Bloomberg running as a Republican would have been far, far better!  This twerpy little Richie Rich ads can inflict a few cuts on Trump with his millions but taking electoral votes away from Trumpo would be far more helpful.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    Yeah, this is a trade I won’t make. Some weak gun regulations aren’t worth trading health care and income issues and education.

    Bloomberg is a bad deal for Democrats. The “liberal on social issues but Right wing on economic issues” combo is a loser. It only works for his voters- well off, college educated urban voters. That’s just not enough to beat Trump and it excludes too much of our coalition.

    He’s a moderate Republican. It’s not my fault his Party collapsed in a heap of conspiracy theories and corruption. I shouldn’t have to become a moderate Republican.

  74. 74.

    joel hanes

    @Jay:

    I can do a passable Donald Duck, but the only one of Mel Blanc’s wonderful voicings I can imitate with any degree of fidelity is Foghorn Leghorn.  I try to do Bugs, but just can’t quite get it right.

  75. 75.

    Jay

    @Zinsky:

    a bunch of State GOP parties have closed the Primaries to anybody but Dotus.

    running as a ReThug won’t harm Dotus in the general.

  76. 76.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Reid WilsonVerified account @PoliticsReid
    Rep. Collin Peterson, anti-impeachment Dem, says he’s had “overtures by the highest levels of the Republican Party in the last couple weeks. … I told them no.”

    Dave Weigel‏Verified account @daveweigel 2h2 hours ago
    Dave Weigel Retweeted Reid WilsonVan Drew was a freshman with not much to lose. Peterson would be giving up the Ag gavel he dreamed of for a decade in order to [checks notes] get turfed in a primary

  79. 79.

    Kay (not the front-pager)

    @Kay:

    He’s a moderate Republican. It’s not my fault his Party collapsed in a heap of conspiracy theories and corruption. I shouldn’t have to become a moderate Republican.

      Kay, we share more than a first name. This guy is not our team and he can’t be our team captain. He’ll just have to try to get his own team to make sense again.

    Meanwhile, we have several good candidates, and a lot of work ahead of us to clean up the mess left by his team.

  81. 81.

    ...now I try to be amused

    @glory b:

    They brush off stop and frisk (I’m surprised too) saying it’s no different than a lot of other mistakes made by white folks in charge.

    It confirms my impression that African Americans are the most politically pragmatic people in America. I wish white Democrats were more like that.

  83. 83.

    J R in WV

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

     

    Also I don’t know how to reply to more than one commenter at a time

    To reply to multiple comments, reply to one, type your comment below the @Nym, then click the big X in the upper right corner of the Leave a Comment block. Return to the second comment you want to reply to, click that Reply link, and the second @Nym will appear where your point of focus was when you clicked the big X after your first reply.

    You can do this up to 6 or 7 times IIRC.

    It actually says this [To reply to more than one person, click the X to save & close the box.] in the fine print at the botton of the comment box, below the Nym and Email fields.

    By not clicking on the Clear Comment your @Nyms and text remain behind the scenes when you close the comment box.

    I don’t know what the “visual” tab is for either.

    That’s a version of your comment, the way it will look to a viewer after it is submitted. The “Text” tab allows HTML code to be entered, which is the gobbledegook you see when you enter a Twit on the Visual tab. It’s called What You See Is What You Get, WYSISYG technically.

    Tools are invented to allow people who can’t code to enter text which is converted to HTML behind the scenes. But people who know how to code in HyperText Markup Language, aka HTML, sometimes prefer to use the actual HTML rather than allowing the machine to produce the HTML for them. That’s the difference between the Visual tab and the Text tab. The Text is raw HTML in part.

     

    ETA the 5th and last…. I see others have answered more concisely. Sorry to take up the space!

  88. 88.

    Jay

    Quite the thread,….

    Lots of talk about McKinsey & how corps work w/consultancies like them. I've a story that might be of interest. Sharing this as when I worked on these projects for Google I couldn't believe this was how the world worked. It baffled me how blatant and 'normal' it was.— William Fitzgerald (@william_fitz) December 11, 2019

  89. 89.

    Jay

    I wrote and produced a film set in 1933 directed by Agnieszka Holland called @MrJones_Film, about Russia's attack on Ukraine and propaganda warfare aided by Western corruption, including leading journalists. History is a mirror we're forced to look into: https://t.co/hpYiFcurBe— Andrea Chalupa (@AndreaChalupa) November 12, 2019

    Spoiler alert, it’s about the Holodomor and a bunch of “The Ususal Suspects” (FTFNYT) make an appearance.

  93. 93.

    The Moar You Know

    REALIZATION:  Even shithead Republican Michael Bloomberg would be nine million times better as president than the loser we have now.

    The primary kind of doesn’t even matter.  Pick one.  Any one.  Better than Trump?  Oh yeah.  Christ, even Gabbard can speak in public with words recognizable as English, doesn’t change her mind every thirty seconds, and knows enough to look sad when kids get shot – vast improvement.  Literally doesn’t matter.  Just pick one.  And then vote for the person that is not Donald Trump.

    In a way, easiest election ever.

  94. 94.

    Anya

    @debbie: didn’t he already suffer the  collective quitting of all of his staff? I mean, who are they kidding about this morally coward’s stand?

  96. 96.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @trollhattan:
    As we used to say when I was still somebody in software development, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the slowest camper (who quite often was the client).

  97. 97.

    Terraformer

    Lots of great ideas for ads here. But really, that’s always been the case though, right?

    This really is a “the ads write themselves” environment. Any pol that doesn’t make use of the wealth of ad material that Republicans and the great orange shitbag have provided is guilty of gross but incompetence.

  99. 99.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Anya: I really like him when the subject is not Sanders or Obama. I think he’s very smart, and I like having a liberal who can quote the bible like a medieval monk, but his belief that Sanders could, and Obama could have, shout(ed) the Nordic welfare state into law is amazing.

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