For all his awesome Village-endorsed principled nonpartisan Burkean centrist moderate ways, Mike Bloomberg is just another Galtian douchebag:
“What I’ve tried to do is find liberal middle-of-the-road Republicans and Democrats. In the Senate, Scott Brown, who single-handedly stopped the right-to-carry bill. You can question whether he’s too conservative. You can question, in my mind, whether she’s God’s gift to regulation, close the banks and get rid of corporate profits, and we’d all bring socialism back, or the U.S.S.R.”
Steve M points out that nine times out of ten, Scott Brown is a whore for the gun lobby.
Violet
Mike Bloomberg has always looked to me like someone in need of comeuppance.
ericblair
Nothing says relevance like Better Dead than Red. Go Galt, Mike! That’ll show us!
Dork
Audio gap, sex change, pronoun typo, or was this a ref to Chocktaw Nation without uttering her moniker?
Mike Goetz
Is he implying that she is a socialist, bring back the USSR type or is he questioning the caricature of her that the Repubs are concocting?
General Stuck
The more I hear of Bloomberg, the more he seems a sniveling weasel, too clever by half to cast his self as some kind of moderate orb quasi caretaking liberal NE patrician type, to eventually end up what he is. A plutocrat control freak, looking out for other plutocrat control freaks, first and foremost. Or the politically applied version of David Brooks.
Short Bus Bully
Whenever someone says “Centrist” or “middle of the road” they are actually trying to say Bob Dole Republican which is Obama in this election. The only difference is they don’t get to punch hippies by voting for Obama.
Politics really is very simple.
Tonal Crow
Been a GOP-er whore so long I hardly know the truth,
God it’s good to pimp the GOP.
Leave it to the lib’rals to repair the place,
Gotta get another jet!
I’m back in the GOP-S-S-R!
You don’t know how lucky you are — boy!
Back in the GOP-S-S-R!
(Sponsored by Romunists for a Greater Plutocracy. Not associated with any campaign or committee.)
danimal
Whenever you are tempted to support Bloomberg-and he sounds reasonably liberal a fair chunk of the time-remember where he puts his money. You can be liberal on the social issues and be ok with Mike, but threaten the world of high finance with (gasp) accountability…and you’ll get the wrath of Bloomberg.
I don’t particularly blame him, high finance is to New York what Wal-Mart and chicken farms are to Arkansas, but I hope people have a clear understanding of the situation.
Violet
The USSR is not a relevant talking point for a large number of voters. It hasn’t been a country for ages. It’s just a place in an old Beatles song. They’ll be asking, “What does Bloomberg even mean?”
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
Funny how they never explicitly say what terrible things a Sen. Warren would do if she wins.
reflectionephemeral
Steve M’s facts are irrelevant to the public discourse. Bloomberg poses as being between the two parties, so he is treated as a “centrist”, which by definition merits respect and deference. Real-life facts and policy just plain don’t matter.
I can’t decide if that’s a permanent feature of how our political elite view politics, or a bubble that will pop in the next five, or twenty, years.
Mike Goetz
Clicking through to the original, it really sounds to me as though Bloomberg is questioning the caricature of Warren, in a typically above-the-partisan-nastiness centrist pose.
Tonal Crow
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
My God! She’ll prohibit banks from exploiting their customers and crashing the economy! Isn’t that enough, you libtard?
Ella in New Mexico
Why didn’t someone ask Bloomberg how limiting me to 12oz of Dr. Pepper at a time is anything other than socialism?
The Moar You Know
Bloomberg is just another Stalin waiting for a chance to seize control of the nation. Bought and paid for member of the Totalitarian Party.
Yeah, I went there. That guy fucking sucks.
schrodinger's cat
@The Moar You Know: He is also short, like Stalin.
Cassidy
It’s been a little over a week, so I’m going to do some light spamming again. On Feb 2, 2013 I’ll be taking part in the Fight for Air Climb in Jacksonville, FL. My Firefighting class is required by our Chief to do a community service project to remind and reinforce the idea that Firefighters are public servants and role models; personally, I agree with that sentiment. I don’t have a personal connection to lung cancer, or any cancer really, other than my continual struggle to quit smoking.
So, your donation, if you’re willing, either contributes money to that particular cause or buys you a small piece of my misery. I’ll be climbing 42 stories up in full bunker gear and air pack (roughly 30lbs). If you can or feel like it, please donate. I’ve already met my goal thanks to some very generous individuals. At this point it’s become a bit of a competition between classmates (I’m 3rd place) and to see if we can get our team into 1st (currently 2nd).
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
A comeuppance in the form of a tumbrel ride.
Villago Delenda Est
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
For one thing, she’ll have Bloomberg’s cronies of Wall Street sent off to extermination camps.
And not a moment too soon.
RSA
So Bloomberg describes a corrupt class of people who have gotten rich by gaming the system, and says this makes us different from the U.S.S.R.? Weird.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: I wouldn’t complain. It would be better if more people like him were also escorted in tumbrels. Let’s start with anyone at the VP or above level at an investment bank. If traders aren’t at that level, let’s include them too. And anyone except interns or personal assistants at hedge funds ought to get a ride.
After that, we’ll take a look around.
Violet
Question: I keep seeing Romney ads at the top of Balloon-Juice. If we click on those ads, does that end up costing Romney money? How does that work?
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
What do Putin and Romney have in common? They both want employers to dictate how their employees vote.
RaflW
And 10 times out of 10, Mike Bloomberg is a whore for a buck.
Villago Delenda Est
@RSA:
They do not fucking get it. They believe, that if the label is the right one, the actual behavior is irrelevant.
These people hate actual democracy (as well as social and economic equality) every bit as much as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Osama bin Laden.
red dog
Bloomberg is that typical New Yorker who does not believe most people in the nation have agendas that do not involve the financial sector of his city. What an asshole.
Joshua Norton
and we’d all bring socialism back, or the U.S.S.R.
1950 called and it wants its meme back.
MikeJ
Why is it that repealing a 2% tax cut for millionaires can be described in polite society as something that would happen in the USSR, but you aren’t allowed to bring up examples of European countries that crushed trade unions without being deeply unserious?
max
I almost linked this in comments yesterday, but I figured everyone had seen it.
Mike Bloomberg is just another Galtian douchebag:
As far as I can tell, he’s in favor of gay marriage and gun control (people on Wall Street might get hurt!) and is otherwise, pretty much with, I dunno… Mitt Romney on most everything, like bombing Iran. Wait, full credit, I think he’s in favor of abortion.
That’s not centrist, that’s Republican dissident. And as far as I can tell almost everyone routinely described as ‘centrist’ is a Republican dissendent. On our side of the aisle a dissident is described as ‘a member of our caucus’.
Perhaps in future we could describe ‘centrist’ as ‘a person who differs with Republicans on a few issues’.
max
[‘Accuracy in media!’]
EconWatcher
Have you ever watched the entire 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate? Both of them come across as nearly crazed with paranoia about the red menace. You would really think from listening that both Canada and Mexico had fallen to the Soviet Union, and our days were numbered.
I guess the Cuban revolution and sputnik had people shaken up, but really. The country must have been just nuts. It makes the current debates sound relatively sane.
AA+ Bonds
The seizure of Mr. Bloomberg’s property is a necessary condition for democracy, you heard it here first so enjoy the next decade or so where that doesn’t happen
WereBear
What doesn’t get talked about?
The Republican swing… to the left.
Oh, we aren’t nuts, and religious fanatics! We lurve women. We didn’t mean all that crap about rape. We just shoot our mouths off sometimes, ya know?
Finally, Romney runs to the center: because they can’t get elected if they don’t lie their behinds off.
Culture of Truth
@EconWatcher: Midway through, Nixon calls for “Russian dressing” to be renamed “Freedom sauce” — some say it cost him the election.
liberal
@EconWatcher:
My favorite example is that there was some kind of minor border conflict at one point between China and the USSR, and some people here thought it was just a feint to deceive us into thinking they weren’t marching in lockstep towards world revolution.
Culture of Truth
@EconWatcher: Toward the end of the debate, an exhausted Nixon takes off his shirt and shows the audience his Mamie Eisenhower bicep tatto. The incident was damaging to Nixon, but those who listened on the radio scored it as a win for the VP.
Schlemizel
@EconWatcher:
Part of the problem was the whole nation agreed communism was a bad thing so each side had to work really hard to out-anti the other side.
Culture of Truth
Just read JFK’s inaugural. It’s a call to arms for a long twilight struggle with a clear conscience the only sure reward.
Schlemizel
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
Lets just say its too horrible to contemplate and leave it at that! Much much too horrible, bad dreams the rest of your life, best not to think about it. Take my word for this, have they ever lied to you before?
Chyron HR
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
What part of PROFESSUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRR don’t you understand?
Cris (without an H)
One of the things that irritated me about X-Men: First Class was that they kept referring to the USSR as “Russia,” even in military briefing rooms. My guess was that the filmmakers (who are old enough to know better) were worried that their young audience would have no idea what “USSR” meant.
(Which irritated me further, because nothing makes me hate a filmmaker more than when they don’t respect their audience.)
Hungry Joe
@Villago Delenda Est:
Exactly, but exactly. Yet they insist that they love actual democracy, etc. — it’s just that, well, voter fraud … and affirmative action … and socializm! … and …
rlrr
@liberal:
I remember William F. Buckley stating back in the 80’s there was some sort of secret alliance between the USSR and China.
eemom
@Cris (without an H):
Not to defend the filmmaker, but the USSR was referred to as Russia when it existed.
I am old enough to know.
Svensker
@Cris (without an H):
You get exercised about the makers of X-Men 1st Class not respecting history and their audience? I hate to break it to you, but the Superman comics/movies have been lying about his home planet for years…Krypton doesn’t actually exist.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Chyron HR:
Fortunately, Sen. Brown’s ‘Perfesseah Warren’ schtick didn’t have the legs his team expected it would. Turns out that profs are reasonably well-liked in school-heavy Massachusetts (who knew?).
Some of them even hire contractors from time to time.
Suffern ACE
@Mike Goetz: yep. And this from the guy who would limit the sizes of soft drinks. You can question whether he’ll be handing out ration tickets when that fails, but shouldn’t we be prudent?
Haydnseek
@Violet: I thought pretty much the same thing when Rmoney referred to the Soviet Union as “our greatest foe,” or something to that effect earlier in the campaign. That sort of ignorance is truly appalling, but for Rmoney it’s par for the course.
EconWatcher
@rlrr:
Never understood where old Buckley got his rep as a genuine intellectual. I remember him writing, in the 80s, that you could tell the Soviet Union was culturally bankrupt, because the country had only produced one great writer since the revolution–Solzhenitsyn.
Ummmm, Paternak? Bulgakov? Heck, maybe Sholokhov (views differ on him)?
Now it’s true that virtually all of the SU’s great writers evenutally ran into trouble with the authorities. But that’s a different point.
Cris (without an H)
@eemom: So am I. But when we said “Russia” ‘we were usually corrected with “Soviet Union.” And no way would a big freaking map in the Joint Chiefs room (or whatever, I’m not going to watch that movie again) say “RUSSIA” in big red letters.
@Svensker: You’re right, since most fiction has some implausible elements, we should not ever expect any consistency or attention to detail from any of it.
feebog
So, regulating the size of soda containers so people don’t get too much sugar, good. Regulating corrupt Wall Street gamblers so they don’t crash the economy again, bad.
Villago Delenda Est
@EconWatcher:
Sputnik SERIOUSLY shook the country up. ZOMG, the commies have the HIGH GROUND! Quick, get our Germans to work on beating their Germans to the moon!
GregB
I would like to throw a drink larger than 12 ounces in Bloomberg’s face.
Suffern ACE
Between you and me, I heard that Warrens foreign policy involves annexing Bermuda, the Caymans and Virgin Islands, leveling their tax shelters and sending their residents to the country for a period of arduous works in the fields and some self reflection.
Chris
@max:
Ah, a “socially liberal fiscal conservative.”
I wonder: when push comes to shove and he has to choose (e.g. every two years), who does he throw under the bus? His buddies on Wall Street, or the gays, women and gun victims?
Maude
Mike Bloomberg owns eleven houses.
Chris
@WereBear:
Same as Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” shtick. Their “run to the left” lasts just long enough for them to get elected and dies a quick death immediately thereafter.
Nicole
I read the NYTimes piece just to be sure he wasn’t being taken out of context, but in fact, the Warren thing is the least offensive of the crap he spouts. In Bloomberg’s world, it is not Congress’ job to write legislation.
Small comfort that I didn’t vote for him for any of his three campaigns. I know my husband regrets voting for him the first time.
Reklam
It almost without exception that to be a Billionaire means you are probably a reprehensible human being. One of those rare exceptions would be the author of Back in the USSR. (I don’t mean DougJ; not that he isn’t nice, but I’m not aware of him having a ten* digit net worth.)
I.e. Bloomberg is scummier than the Gowanus Canal.
Edit: Bloomberg’s NW is actually more than ten digits.
Villago Delenda Est
@rlrr:
A good demonstration of how little Buckley actually understood either the Soviet Union, China, or the supposedly monolithic worldwide commie conspiracy.
What Buckley basically did was buy into COMINTERN propaganda wholesale and swallowed the whole fucking thing. No critical thinking skills or knowledge of history (or understanding of the tribal nature of humans) needed. He bought into one of Marx’s greater deceits, the notion of transnational class solidarity.
Fuckhead, fuckhead, fuckhead.
MikeJ
@Cris (without an H): People really were that stupid back then. Now too, but also then.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Suffern ACE:
You say this like it’s a bad thing, because why again?
Chris
@Hungry Joe:
Actually, one of their favorite quotes you hear a lot is “we’re a REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY.” They tend to break it out whenever the man on the street is getting dangerously uppity in exercising his right to not follow the GOP’s lead on every issue. And while I get the technical difference between “republic” and “democracy,” it’s pretty clearly a dog-whistle for “FUCK the people, respect the authoritah of your Betters!”
Chris
@EconWatcher:
He took the unhinged screams of the far right fringes and made them “respectable” in a way that Ayn Rand, Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society never could. Mostly by being one octave less shrill than they were, I think.
The Moar You Know
@feebog: Find me one poster here who said that Bloomberg’s soda law horseshit was a good idea.
There aren’t any, because it’s idiotic.
The Moar You Know
@Reklam: McCartney’s not a billionaire. Michael Jackson took care of that for him (outbid him on rights to his own music!) and Heather Mills made sure he’d never get within reach.
Sterling
Bloomberg wants a big tax cut. Republicans are promising 20% cut in taxes, so Bloomberg is Mr. Republican today. So Scott Brown is awesome, and Warren is a dirty commie. It’s never any more complex than that with guys like Bloomberg.
? Martin
So, according to Americas Moderate Mayor™ getting consumers refunds when their credit card issuer broke the law is totalitarianism now.
Alrighty then.
Reklam
@The Moar You Know: I was going to make a similar note (or a Heather Mills joke) but teh Google tells me he’s worth £750 Million pounds. So a billion dollars (and probably a billion pounds since it lists the estimate as of 2009. Though yes, I know about the UK Rich list which puts him much lower.)
Anyways, if Paul isn’t, then I’ll take out the possibility of exceptions to my rule. Though Ringo is still my favorite.
Also too Bloomberg is an ass.
chopper
shorter bloomie: brown’s the original maverick! look, just like mccain, he disagrees with his party a few percent of the time!