"Would God let an atheist into heaven if they were a good person with good morals?"
I don't want to go to heaven. I prefer a universe without that childish cowardly fantasy, and fortunately that's the way it is. There is no magic in the universe.
Saturday, February 29, 2020
What I wrote for the liberal fucktards at the Washington Post.
If it's Sanders against Trump, then Trump will win.
If it's Bloomberg against Trump, then Bloomberg wins.
Take your pick.
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Update: A socialist moron complained about what I wrote. I never met a socialist who wasn't a fucking moron. And thanks to these morons, we will be stuck with Trump another 4 years.
If it's Bloomberg against Trump, then Bloomberg wins.
Take your pick.
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Update: A socialist moron complained about what I wrote. I never met a socialist who wasn't a fucking moron. And thanks to these morons, we will be stuck with Trump another 4 years.
February 29, 2020
Wikipedia - February 29
February 29, also known as leap day or leap year day, is a date added to most years that are divisible by 4, such as 2016, 2020, and 2024. A leap day is added in various solar calendars (calendars based on the Earth's revolution around the Sun), including the Gregorian calendar standard in most of the world. Lunisolar calendars (whose months are based on the phases of the Moon) instead add a leap or intercalary month.
In the Gregorian calendar, years that are divisible by 100, but not by 400, do not contain a leap day. Thus, 1700, 1800, and 1900 did not contain a leap day; neither will 2100, 2200, and 2300. Conversely, 1600 and 2000 did and 2400 will. Years containing a leap day are called leap years. Years not containing a leap day are called common years. February 29 is the 60th day of the Gregorian calendar in such a year with 306 days remaining until the end of the year.
February 29, also known as leap day or leap year day, is a date added to most years that are divisible by 4, such as 2016, 2020, and 2024. A leap day is added in various solar calendars (calendars based on the Earth's revolution around the Sun), including the Gregorian calendar standard in most of the world. Lunisolar calendars (whose months are based on the phases of the Moon) instead add a leap or intercalary month.
In the Gregorian calendar, years that are divisible by 100, but not by 400, do not contain a leap day. Thus, 1700, 1800, and 1900 did not contain a leap day; neither will 2100, 2200, and 2300. Conversely, 1600 and 2000 did and 2400 will. Years containing a leap day are called leap years. Years not containing a leap day are called common years. February 29 is the 60th day of the Gregorian calendar in such a year with 306 days remaining until the end of the year.
Friday, February 28, 2020
Cowardly Christians are gullible and just plain fucking stupid. They think they will have a magical 2nd life in a magical paradise for retards.
"Why is it hard for you to believe that humans SOMEHOW survive death in a non-physical form and step into another dimension with God or without God?"
Step on a cockroach. Make sure it's dead. Does it go anywhere? Of course not. Does it have a magical soul that magically flies to a magical paradise for insects? Of course not.
We are apes. We share an ancestor with cockroaches. And just like the cockroaches, we have only one life.
The magical heaven fantasy is impossible. Only cowardly morons believe it's real.
Step on a cockroach. Make sure it's dead. Does it go anywhere? Of course not. Does it have a magical soul that magically flies to a magical paradise for insects? Of course not.
We are apes. We share an ancestor with cockroaches. And just like the cockroaches, we have only one life.
The magical heaven fantasy is impossible. Only cowardly morons believe it's real.
What someone else wrote at the Wall Street Journal about Mike Bloomberg and Fucktard Trump.
Wall Street Journal - The Trump-Bloomberg New York Story: Public Warmth, Private Disdain
Wall Street Journal comment:
I hope it comes down to a choice between these two men. I worked for Bloomberg, and one of the common pieces of feedback I hear from others like me, who have worked for Mike, is he is a great man, possibly the best manager in the US, who builds great teams and achieves great things. It's interesting that he commands that kind of admiration from so many people who USED to work for him. (I left Bloomberg LP 23 years back). But I'm a results guy, and Trump has given us results that matter - especially strong employment numbers that have especially delivered for the working class and underprivileged. Trump has done surprisingly well, but as a former Bloomberg guy, I think Mike gets a whole different level of performance out of his people. I have zero doubt if Mike wins the race, we'll have never seen as well-run a White House and Executive Branch as we will see under Mike. As someone who has experienced working for Bloomberg, the idea of Mike in the White House is very exciting.
-- James Barringer
Wall Street Journal comment:
I hope it comes down to a choice between these two men. I worked for Bloomberg, and one of the common pieces of feedback I hear from others like me, who have worked for Mike, is he is a great man, possibly the best manager in the US, who builds great teams and achieves great things. It's interesting that he commands that kind of admiration from so many people who USED to work for him. (I left Bloomberg LP 23 years back). But I'm a results guy, and Trump has given us results that matter - especially strong employment numbers that have especially delivered for the working class and underprivileged. Trump has done surprisingly well, but as a former Bloomberg guy, I think Mike gets a whole different level of performance out of his people. I have zero doubt if Mike wins the race, we'll have never seen as well-run a White House and Executive Branch as we will see under Mike. As someone who has experienced working for Bloomberg, the idea of Mike in the White House is very exciting.
-- James Barringer
This Wall Street Journal article is about the breathtaking stupidity of President Fucktard Trump and his moronic love for trade wars.
Wall Street Journal
OPINION
COMMENTARY
Where’s That 3% Growth?
The Trump tax cut hasn’t lived up to its promise. The reason may be Trump.
By James K. Glassman
February 26, 2020
President Trump is reportedly planning another tax cut. If so, he should figure out why the first one was a dud.
As a card-carrying supply-sider, I was certain tax reform would at last lift the U.S. economy out of its rut of 2% growth. On Dec. 16, 2017, a few days before he signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Mr. Trump told reporters: “The economy now has hit 3%. Nobody thought we’d be anywhere close. I think we can go to 4%, 5% and maybe even 6% ultimately.”
But the increase in gross domestic product hasn’t hit 3%. It was only 2.3% in 2017 and 2.9% in 2018, when the cuts kicked in. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates only 2.3% for 2019. Overall, annual GDP growth under Mr. Trump has averaged only a few tenths of a point better than that of President Obama’s second term.
I supported the 2017 corporate and personal tax cuts, expecting them to add incentives to work and invest. Businesses were supposed to plow tons of money into new factories and machines. Instead, in 2019, real private nonresidential fixed investment fell.
Economic growth lifts all boats, and it is disappointing—but probably inevitable—that the Democratic presidential candidates have focused on redistribution rather than increasing GDP.
Still, why didn’t the tax cuts have the desired effect? Perhaps they did but were overwhelmed by losses from other policies. Tariffs on foreign goods harmed growth by raising prices for consumers and producers and disrupting supply chains. Restrictive immigration policies helped cut U.S. population growth to less than 0.5% last year, the smallest increase since the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. A growing population, especially of working-age immigrants, is crucial to economic growth.
There’s another likely deterrent as well. Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior and penchant for economic and diplomatic isolation have almost certainly dampened the enthusiasm of both foreigners and Americans to devote capital here. Foreign direct investment has dropped for five straight quarters.
The Obama years were hardly brilliant for the economy. After a bad recession, we didn’t get our usual roaring recovery. Instead, we puttered along at little better than 2%. Unfortunately, we’re still puttering along.
Mr. Glassman, a consultant to businesses and nonprofits, served as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy under President George W. Bush.
OPINION
COMMENTARY
Where’s That 3% Growth?
The Trump tax cut hasn’t lived up to its promise. The reason may be Trump.
By James K. Glassman
February 26, 2020
President Trump is reportedly planning another tax cut. If so, he should figure out why the first one was a dud.
As a card-carrying supply-sider, I was certain tax reform would at last lift the U.S. economy out of its rut of 2% growth. On Dec. 16, 2017, a few days before he signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Mr. Trump told reporters: “The economy now has hit 3%. Nobody thought we’d be anywhere close. I think we can go to 4%, 5% and maybe even 6% ultimately.”
But the increase in gross domestic product hasn’t hit 3%. It was only 2.3% in 2017 and 2.9% in 2018, when the cuts kicked in. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates only 2.3% for 2019. Overall, annual GDP growth under Mr. Trump has averaged only a few tenths of a point better than that of President Obama’s second term.
I supported the 2017 corporate and personal tax cuts, expecting them to add incentives to work and invest. Businesses were supposed to plow tons of money into new factories and machines. Instead, in 2019, real private nonresidential fixed investment fell.
Economic growth lifts all boats, and it is disappointing—but probably inevitable—that the Democratic presidential candidates have focused on redistribution rather than increasing GDP.
Still, why didn’t the tax cuts have the desired effect? Perhaps they did but were overwhelmed by losses from other policies. Tariffs on foreign goods harmed growth by raising prices for consumers and producers and disrupting supply chains. Restrictive immigration policies helped cut U.S. population growth to less than 0.5% last year, the smallest increase since the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. A growing population, especially of working-age immigrants, is crucial to economic growth.
There’s another likely deterrent as well. Mr. Trump’s erratic behavior and penchant for economic and diplomatic isolation have almost certainly dampened the enthusiasm of both foreigners and Americans to devote capital here. Foreign direct investment has dropped for five straight quarters.
The Obama years were hardly brilliant for the economy. After a bad recession, we didn’t get our usual roaring recovery. Instead, we puttered along at little better than 2%. Unfortunately, we’re still puttering along.
Mr. Glassman, a consultant to businesses and nonprofits, served as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy under President George W. Bush.
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Mike Pence, the Vice President of the United States, is a know-nothing anti-science Christian asshole. Global warming and evolution makes this fucking moron cry. Virtually everyone in Trump's administration is creationist asshole. And thanks to the liberal fucktards of the Democratic Party and their love for a socialist asshole, we will be stuck with Trump and Pence for another 4 years.
New York Times
Opinion
LETTER
Mike Pence vs. the Coronavirus
A reader cites the vice president’s response to previous health emergencies like AIDS, when he urged prayer.
February 27, 2020
To the Editor:
Re “Trump Taps Pence to Lead Response as Virus Spreads” (front page, Feb. 27):
Why should we be worried by President Trump’s naming Vice President Mike Pence to coordinate the government’s response to the coronavirus? Mr. Pence has an established and proven record in the scientific field.
Many of us remember that Mr. Pence wrote: “Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.” He is also a longtime climate change denier. And, of course, he has denigrated the theory of evolution while championing creationism.
As governor of Indiana, when H.I.V. started its rampage, Mr. Pence’s proposed solution was to have those seeking assistance change their sexual behavior. He initially refused to open needle exchange programs to stop the spread of the virus. Instead, he said the most important thing we can do is “pray.”
Mike Pence has succeeded already, because that is exactly what I am doing now. Not only for myself and my family but for my country.
Fred Polvere
Yonkers, N.Y.
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There is some more stuff about this fucking moron at Newsweek:
FROM 'SMOKING DOESN'T KILL' TO CONVERSION THERAPY—MIKE PENCE'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL SCIENCE REMARKS
Opinion
LETTER
Mike Pence vs. the Coronavirus
A reader cites the vice president’s response to previous health emergencies like AIDS, when he urged prayer.
February 27, 2020
To the Editor:
Re “Trump Taps Pence to Lead Response as Virus Spreads” (front page, Feb. 27):
Why should we be worried by President Trump’s naming Vice President Mike Pence to coordinate the government’s response to the coronavirus? Mr. Pence has an established and proven record in the scientific field.
Many of us remember that Mr. Pence wrote: “Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.” He is also a longtime climate change denier. And, of course, he has denigrated the theory of evolution while championing creationism.
As governor of Indiana, when H.I.V. started its rampage, Mr. Pence’s proposed solution was to have those seeking assistance change their sexual behavior. He initially refused to open needle exchange programs to stop the spread of the virus. Instead, he said the most important thing we can do is “pray.”
Mike Pence has succeeded already, because that is exactly what I am doing now. Not only for myself and my family but for my country.
Fred Polvere
Yonkers, N.Y.
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There is some more stuff about this fucking moron at Newsweek:
FROM 'SMOKING DOESN'T KILL' TO CONVERSION THERAPY—MIKE PENCE'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL SCIENCE REMARKS
A New York Times article about Mike Bloomberg.
Opinion
The Case for Mike Bloomberg
He’s a practical manager who can get things done.
By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
February 27, 2020
The best case for Mike Bloomberg is that he’s a brilliant debater who has a witty riposte for every line of attack.
OK. Let me start over. The best case for Mike Bloomberg is that he is not a brilliant debater. He can’t whip a rally crowd into an ideological frenzy. The best case for Bloomberg is that we’ve already elected a reality TV star to the White House. We need somebody who can actually run things.
We need somebody who can actually lead a government, staff an administration with talented professionals and do the mundane but essential tasks of pushing legislation and executing laws. We need somebody who will turn down the ideological temperature, so we don’t rip ourselves apart as a nation. We have enough politicians who cater to people who treat politics as the place they go to get self-indulgent moral affirmation baths. We need someone who can improve the lives of actual Americans.
Bloomberg was one of the most successful mayors of this century. He was a Republican who left office with two-thirds of New Yorkers saying he made their city a better place.
I’m not endorsing Bloomberg. I think it’s a mistake for journalists, even opinion journalists, to endorse, and I’d be fine with many of the candidates. But I just want to throw Bloomberg’s record before you:
Education: As mayor, Bloomberg took over a dysfunctional school system and instituted a series of fantastically successful reforms. When he became mayor, less than half of New York students were graduating from high school on time. When he left, nearly two-thirds did so within four years. He replaced large failing schools with small attentive schools. The graduation rates in those places surged from 38 percent to 68 percent. Under Bloomberg test scores rose more quickly than in other cities. The black-white achievement gap decreased by 23 percent.
Job creation: Bloomberg inherited a city reeling from the 9/11 attacks and helped kick-start an economic boom. He inherited a city that was economically over-reliant on Wall Street and had a relatively tiny tech sector. Now New York receives the second highest amount of tech investment, after Silicon Valley. He led the effort to create an applied sciences university on Roosevelt Island that will supply the city with talent for generations. Private sector jobs increased by 10 percent during the last four years of his term alone. The mayor’s office said that 29,000 people found jobs through the city’s career centers in 2012, compared to 500 people in 2004.
Housing: Bloomberg rezoned about 40 percent of New York City and helped spark a neighborhood renaissance along just about every waterway in the city. He led a $2.4 billion expansion of the subway system to serve the new Hudson Yards neighborhood. He managed to finance 170,000 new affordable housing units, even while the state and federal governments slashed housing budgets.
Health and the environment: He banned artificial trans fats and smoking from bars and restaurants. New York experienced about a 30 percent decline in adult smoking over his tenure. Meanwhile his administration added more than 850 acres of parkland, reduced greenhouse-gas emissions in city-owned buildings, and created a bike-share program. Life expectancy in New York is now 81.2 years, more than two years longer than the national average.
Crime: Stop-and-frisk is obviously a blot on Bloomberg’s record. His focus on crime data made him blind to the human beings who were mistreated by his policies. And yet during his tenure homicide rates dropped by 65 percent and shootings dropped by 55 percent. In Bloomberg’s final year there were only 335 murders in New York, comparable to the 1950s.
Budgets: He raised property taxes on the most affluent citizens and used the money to boost city services. When he entered office the city budget was $42 billion. When he left it was about $70 billion.
The case against Bloomberg is that he’s said insensitive stuff and he didn’t succeed in making New York more equal. The case for him is that he led an immense amount of change that made life better overall. You decide. Does America need more gridlock and ideological fireworks or a practical manager who gets stuff done?
The Case for Mike Bloomberg
He’s a practical manager who can get things done.
By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
February 27, 2020
The best case for Mike Bloomberg is that he’s a brilliant debater who has a witty riposte for every line of attack.
OK. Let me start over. The best case for Mike Bloomberg is that he is not a brilliant debater. He can’t whip a rally crowd into an ideological frenzy. The best case for Bloomberg is that we’ve already elected a reality TV star to the White House. We need somebody who can actually run things.
We need somebody who can actually lead a government, staff an administration with talented professionals and do the mundane but essential tasks of pushing legislation and executing laws. We need somebody who will turn down the ideological temperature, so we don’t rip ourselves apart as a nation. We have enough politicians who cater to people who treat politics as the place they go to get self-indulgent moral affirmation baths. We need someone who can improve the lives of actual Americans.
Bloomberg was one of the most successful mayors of this century. He was a Republican who left office with two-thirds of New Yorkers saying he made their city a better place.
I’m not endorsing Bloomberg. I think it’s a mistake for journalists, even opinion journalists, to endorse, and I’d be fine with many of the candidates. But I just want to throw Bloomberg’s record before you:
Education: As mayor, Bloomberg took over a dysfunctional school system and instituted a series of fantastically successful reforms. When he became mayor, less than half of New York students were graduating from high school on time. When he left, nearly two-thirds did so within four years. He replaced large failing schools with small attentive schools. The graduation rates in those places surged from 38 percent to 68 percent. Under Bloomberg test scores rose more quickly than in other cities. The black-white achievement gap decreased by 23 percent.
Job creation: Bloomberg inherited a city reeling from the 9/11 attacks and helped kick-start an economic boom. He inherited a city that was economically over-reliant on Wall Street and had a relatively tiny tech sector. Now New York receives the second highest amount of tech investment, after Silicon Valley. He led the effort to create an applied sciences university on Roosevelt Island that will supply the city with talent for generations. Private sector jobs increased by 10 percent during the last four years of his term alone. The mayor’s office said that 29,000 people found jobs through the city’s career centers in 2012, compared to 500 people in 2004.
Housing: Bloomberg rezoned about 40 percent of New York City and helped spark a neighborhood renaissance along just about every waterway in the city. He led a $2.4 billion expansion of the subway system to serve the new Hudson Yards neighborhood. He managed to finance 170,000 new affordable housing units, even while the state and federal governments slashed housing budgets.
Health and the environment: He banned artificial trans fats and smoking from bars and restaurants. New York experienced about a 30 percent decline in adult smoking over his tenure. Meanwhile his administration added more than 850 acres of parkland, reduced greenhouse-gas emissions in city-owned buildings, and created a bike-share program. Life expectancy in New York is now 81.2 years, more than two years longer than the national average.
Crime: Stop-and-frisk is obviously a blot on Bloomberg’s record. His focus on crime data made him blind to the human beings who were mistreated by his policies. And yet during his tenure homicide rates dropped by 65 percent and shootings dropped by 55 percent. In Bloomberg’s final year there were only 335 murders in New York, comparable to the 1950s.
Budgets: He raised property taxes on the most affluent citizens and used the money to boost city services. When he entered office the city budget was $42 billion. When he left it was about $70 billion.
The case against Bloomberg is that he’s said insensitive stuff and he didn’t succeed in making New York more equal. The case for him is that he led an immense amount of change that made life better overall. You decide. Does America need more gridlock and ideological fireworks or a practical manager who gets stuff done?
"U.S. Stocks Slide Into a Correction as Virus Fears Show No Sign of Easing."
The stock market crashed today. I don't care because I'm holding my AT&T shares for the rest of my life. I'm in it only for the dividend income.
Other investors are getting wiped out. That's their problem. Nobody cares.
Other investors are getting wiped out. That's their problem. Nobody cares.
I wrote this for the liberal morons at the Washington Post.
Bloomberg is the only candidate who is qualified for the job, but he has been very successful and liberals hate success.
Sanders, who is obviously not qualified for the job, will win because liberals like the way he screams. Then in November Trump will win easily.
Sanders, who is obviously not qualified for the job, will win because liberals like the way he screams. Then in November Trump will win easily.
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Some more "Idiot America Stupid".
Angry Ken Ham labels Ark Encounter documentary ‘propaganda’
FEBRUARY 26, 2020 BY BARRY DUKE
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This is about a movie that ridicules Ken Ham's "everything is magic" museum for children. It's about their idea that the entire fucking universe was magically created 6,000 years ago. Millions of American fucktards agree with this insanity. I'm not making this up.
Click the link if you're interested in child abuse.
FEBRUARY 26, 2020 BY BARRY DUKE
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This is about a movie that ridicules Ken Ham's "everything is magic" museum for children. It's about their idea that the entire fucking universe was magically created 6,000 years ago. Millions of American fucktards agree with this insanity. I'm not making this up.
Click the link if you're interested in child abuse.
Fucktard Sanders and Fucktard Trump.
Super Tuesday Primaries
I looked at the polls for March 3, 2020. The socialist moron, Bernie Sanders, is going to win in most of these states. If the polls are correct, it will be almost impossible to prevent this fucking idiot from winning the Democratic nomination.
If Sanders against Trump then it will be moron against moron.
I could never vote for a socialist asshole like Sanders. I would have to vote for the other moron, President Fucktard Trump.
It would be so nice if the brilliant Mike Bloomberg won the Democratic nomination but there is a problem. Democrats are fucking idiots. Successful people make them cry.
I looked at the polls for March 3, 2020. The socialist moron, Bernie Sanders, is going to win in most of these states. If the polls are correct, it will be almost impossible to prevent this fucking idiot from winning the Democratic nomination.
If Sanders against Trump then it will be moron against moron.
I could never vote for a socialist asshole like Sanders. I would have to vote for the other moron, President Fucktard Trump.
It would be so nice if the brilliant Mike Bloomberg won the Democratic nomination but there is a problem. Democrats are fucking idiots. Successful people make them cry.
Atheists eat babies for breakfast but we don't eat the dead Jeebus.
I answered this idiotic question:
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Why do Athiest not go to jail for eat babis?
eating jesus also bad
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Atheists, not Athiest.
Babies, not babis.
Jeebus, not jesus.
Eating, not eating.
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Why do Athiest not go to jail for eat babis?
eating jesus also bad
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Atheists, not Athiest.
Babies, not babis.
Jeebus, not jesus.
Eating, not eating.
I asked a question about Christian fucktards who want to throw out evolution or stick Jeebus into science.
Humans evolved from ancient apes and God had absolutely nothing to do with it. Why does this scientific fact make Christians cry?
Somebody wrote this answer:
Because they fear everything that isn't retarded magic. They hate education, and they think that being ignorant is something to take pride in. They only want to believe in things that aren't real, such as the fairytale bible, because it is just as retarded as they are. They hate science and especially evolution since it explains the origin of humans without magic and fairies. As a matter of fact evolution is incompatible with religion, and that is because evolution is science (reality) and religion is magic (fairytale). They want to change science class into magic class, because Christians are the scum of the earth (along with Muslims), they want to replace evolution with creationism/intelligent design/retardation because they want the education level to be as retarded as they are. Education and reality is the biggest threat to religion, so that is why they want to indoctrinate people with fairytales about magic, they think that being stupid is a good thing.
-- Anonymous
Somebody wrote this answer:
Because they fear everything that isn't retarded magic. They hate education, and they think that being ignorant is something to take pride in. They only want to believe in things that aren't real, such as the fairytale bible, because it is just as retarded as they are. They hate science and especially evolution since it explains the origin of humans without magic and fairies. As a matter of fact evolution is incompatible with religion, and that is because evolution is science (reality) and religion is magic (fairytale). They want to change science class into magic class, because Christians are the scum of the earth (along with Muslims), they want to replace evolution with creationism/intelligent design/retardation because they want the education level to be as retarded as they are. Education and reality is the biggest threat to religion, so that is why they want to indoctrinate people with fairytales about magic, they think that being stupid is a good thing.
-- Anonymous
Our ancestor. December 6, 2017 - "For the past 20 years, Professor Ron Clarke from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits University has worked painstakingly to chisel Litte foot, the world's most complete skeleton of an Australopithecus fossil out of the rocks at the Sterkfontein caves. Today, he introduces it to the world."
"Since the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan through mid-2019, nearly 2,400 American servicemembers have died. Additionally, over 20,000 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department."
18 years and we accomplished nothing except one thing. We killed the fucking asshole who attacked America on September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden.
The war will soon be over with. We lost.
You want to see this 20-minute video:
The war will soon be over with. We lost.
You want to see this 20-minute video:
Mike Bloomberg
A comment I wrote at the New York Times:
Mike Bloomberg won the debate. Mike will win in most of the states on Super Tuesday, March 3. Mike was the only adult at the debate.
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Somebody wrote this reply:
Thank you. Bloomberg is the strongest by a long shot. Warren’s harping on him is evidence that she doesn’t have the temperament or skills to do the job. Has she ever managed anything, started a business, met payroll? Don’t think so. She’s a wonk and probably better to stay in the Senate.
-- John, Brooklyn New York
Mike Bloomberg won the debate. Mike will win in most of the states on Super Tuesday, March 3. Mike was the only adult at the debate.
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Somebody wrote this reply:
Thank you. Bloomberg is the strongest by a long shot. Warren’s harping on him is evidence that she doesn’t have the temperament or skills to do the job. Has she ever managed anything, started a business, met payroll? Don’t think so. She’s a wonk and probably better to stay in the Senate.
-- John, Brooklyn New York
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
A comment someone wrote at the New York Times about Mike Bloomberg. I agree with the whole thing.
Girish Kotwal
Louisville, KY
Times Pick
Bloomberg bounced back in his second debate. He put Warren in her place by denying he said something he had never said. He also projected his executive experience is more significant than the others. I like how he wants people to take responsibility for their own health. Having health insurance does not equate good health and longevity. Each one of us has to take advantage of the scientific findings from research. What's the use if science tells us the smoking is injurious to our health and we continue to smoke? What is the use if science tells us that excessive alcohol consumption can damage our liver and we ignore that? What's the use if science tells us that excessive sugar consumption from sugary drinks can cause obesity and we continue to drink liters of sugary soda pops?
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New York Times - In a messy South Carolina Democratic forum, featuring frequent interruptions, angry crosstalk and theatrical hand-waving, Bernie Sanders faced the most serious test so far.
Christian are so fucking gullible (not to mention stupid and insane) they think their Magic Man listens to them talk to themselves. I never met a Christian who wasn't a fucking retard.
Dumb question somebody asked:
"How do you know what God's answer is when you ask him a question?
What I wrote:
When I ask the god fairy for the winning lottery number, I get no response.
Do you morons really believe the magical master of the entire fucking universe listens to you idiots talk to yourselves?
"How do you know what God's answer is when you ask him a question?
What I wrote:
When I ask the god fairy for the winning lottery number, I get no response.
Do you morons really believe the magical master of the entire fucking universe listens to you idiots talk to yourselves?
South Carolina debate Tuesday February 25, 2020.
I'm watching the debate now. Warren is a fucking asshole. She can't stop harassing Mike Bloomberg.
Mike is doing a great job explaining why a socialist moron (Sanders) would lose the November election which means we would be stuck with Trump for 4 more years.
Mike talked about what he did when he was Mayor of New York City for 12 years. He did a fantastic job.
Warren, who is way behind in the polls, can't stop yapping. Sanders, the socialist asshole, can't stop screaming.
Bloomberg told Warren to shove it.
Pete Buttigieg talked about his husband.
Warren never puts up her hand for permission to talk, she just starts yapping as loud as possible. What a stupid fucking asshole.
Bloomberg is the only adult in this debate.
It should be obvious to anyone who isn't a socialist fucktard, the only candidate who is qualified for the president job is Mike Bloomberg.
I'm adding these 2 quotes to my list of favorite quotes. It's about Christian fucktards.
"The story is that god will save you from the horrific things he plans to do to you if you suck up to him and worship him in exactly the right way."
-- Internet name: Thunder
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
If you could have a rational conversation with religious people, there'd be no religious people.
-- Internet name: Mack
-- Internet name: Thunder
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
If you could have a rational conversation with religious people, there'd be no religious people.
-- Internet name: Mack
The Magic Man Did It.
Creationism – The belief that the creation story in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible book of Genesis is literally true and is akin to a scientific explanation for the creation of the Earth and the development of life. The Magic Man Did It.
Creation science – A movement that has attempted to uncover scientific evidence to show that the biblical creation story is true. Some in the creation science movement, known as “young Earth creationists,” reject not only evolution but also the idea that the universe and the Earth are billions of years old. The Magic Man Did It.
Intelligent design – The belief that life is too complex to have evolved entirely through natural processes and that an outside, possibly divine force must have played a role in the origin and development of life. The Magic Man Did It.
Theistic evolution – A belief held by some religious groups, including the Catholic Church, that God is the guiding force behind the process of evolution. The Magic Man Did It.
I recommend this post: http://darwinkilledgod.blogspot.com/2017/12/google-search-what-are-religious.html
Creation science – A movement that has attempted to uncover scientific evidence to show that the biblical creation story is true. Some in the creation science movement, known as “young Earth creationists,” reject not only evolution but also the idea that the universe and the Earth are billions of years old. The Magic Man Did It.
Intelligent design – The belief that life is too complex to have evolved entirely through natural processes and that an outside, possibly divine force must have played a role in the origin and development of life. The Magic Man Did It.
Theistic evolution – A belief held by some religious groups, including the Catholic Church, that God is the guiding force behind the process of evolution. The Magic Man Did It.
I recommend this post: http://darwinkilledgod.blogspot.com/2017/12/google-search-what-are-religious.html
I love Amazon. Everything I buy, Amazon delivers, and it's fast and cheap. I trust them and I want the government to leave them alone. There are workers who complain about having to work too hard. The solution for them is "I quit". This video is 2 hours but it's very interesting.
Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos (full film) | FRONTLINE
•Feb 18, 2020
I never met a Christian who wasn't a fucking moron.
I asked this question:
Do you "God did it" people understand this famous quote?
Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.
Laplace: Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This is what a know-nothing anti-science Christian moron wrote:
Why would I care what other people say? If I did I would believe in a million different things. I believe what God said, you can believe whatever you want.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I wrote this for the fucktard:
Your childish magic god fairy fantasy is a belief because it has zero evidence. Scientific facts supported by strong testable evidence do not require belief. Take your pick. I prefer reality. You're afraid of reality.
Do you "God did it" people understand this famous quote?
Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.
Laplace: Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This is what a know-nothing anti-science Christian moron wrote:
Why would I care what other people say? If I did I would believe in a million different things. I believe what God said, you can believe whatever you want.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I wrote this for the fucktard:
Your childish magic god fairy fantasy is a belief because it has zero evidence. Scientific facts supported by strong testable evidence do not require belief. Take your pick. I prefer reality. You're afraid of reality.
What I wrote at the New York Times about the socialist moron, Bernie Sanders.
"It’s like asking me to choose between a slow-growing malignant cancer (Trump) and a sudden brain hemorrhage (Sanders)."
I agree it's a terrible choice to have to make. I would have to vote for Trump. Trump is an idiot but at least he's not a socialist.
The Democrats need to nominate Mike Bloomberg whether they like him or not. Mike is the only candidate who can defeat Trump.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
New York Times - Imagine Bernie Sanders in the Oval Office
"If things continue the way they’re going now, would you vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump?"
I agree it's a terrible choice to have to make. I would have to vote for Trump. Trump is an idiot but at least he's not a socialist.
The Democrats need to nominate Mike Bloomberg whether they like him or not. Mike is the only candidate who can defeat Trump.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
New York Times - Imagine Bernie Sanders in the Oval Office
"If things continue the way they’re going now, would you vote for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump?"
Monday, February 24, 2020
The Washington Post has an interesting article about when Mike Bloomberg was trying to get the Mayor of New York City job when Muslim assholes murdered almost 3,000 New Yorkers on September 11, 2001.
Even Bloomberg’s mom thought his mayoral bid was doomed. Then 9/11 changed everything.
The deadliest foreign attack on American soil helped make Mike Bloomberg New York’s mayor and now a presidential contender.
By Paul Schwartzman
FEBRUARY 24, 2020
NEW YORK — Mike Bloomberg awoke early on that crisp and cloudless Tuesday and walked from his East Side mansion to his neighborhood polling place, where he saw his name on an election ballot for the first time, as a Republican candidate for mayor.
It was Sept. 11, 2001, primary day, and Bloomberg was in the thick of trying to reinvent himself as the face of America’s largest city, an aspiration many New Yorkers regarded as audacious, if not laughable, for a little-known billionaire CEO.
After voting, Bloomberg walked downtown to his campaign headquarters, where he drank coffee and scanned the newspapers at his desk, a cubicle among rows of cubicles occupied by strategists and policy advisers.
Then someone told him that an airplane had slammed into the World Trade Center.
On television, a newscaster wondered whether technical problems had disrupted communications between air traffic control and the plane.
“Bulls---,” Bloomberg said.
As a licensed pilot, he knew that the morning’s clear skies were perfect for flying and that it was unthinkable a plane would travel at such a low altitude. “ ‘You don’t need radar or air traffic control to tell you where the World Trade Center is,’ ” Bill Cunningham, an adviser, recalled Bloomberg saying. “He knew something really bad was going on.”
At 9:03 a.m., when the second plane hit the South Tower, Bloomberg’s fears were validated.
In that moment of confused panic, Bloomberg displayed the instincts that propelled his evolution from Wall Street trader to technology entrepreneur to founder of a multibillion-dollar media empire with offices around the world, his name over each entrance.
It was that same self-assurance — some would say arrogance — that drove Bloomberg, then 59, with a crooked smile and no discernible trace of charisma, to surrender the cloistered life of a private citizen for the hothouse of New York politics.
Yet what Bloomberg did not know in that moment — what no one could have known — is that the deadliest foreign attack on American soil would fuel his unlikely rise as New York’s mayor and become a foundation for his race for the White House.
As he stakes his presidential campaign on capturing a windfall of Super Tuesday delegates, Bloomberg invokes his stewardship of post-9/11 New York to cast himself as the competent, even-keeled antidote to President Trump’s turbulent reign.
“We began to write a comeback story,” Bloomberg tells audiences, recalling that he took over a city “in tatters” after winning an election that “almost no one” — not even his mother, he often notes — “thought I had a chance.”
At the same time, Bloomberg, an engineer by training, is suspicious of analyses devoid of data and reluctant to attribute his political birth entirely to 9/11.
“I don’t know how I got elected or why I got elected other than more people voted for me,” he said this month in Detroit during a brief interview between campaign stops. “But I don’t know why they voted for me.”
Bloomberg’s 12 years at City Hall lifted him to newfound prominence and spanned the rebirth of Lower Manhattan, the rise of the new World Trade Center and the opening of the 9/11 Memorial.
Yet, in 2001, as he aspired to succeed Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani, he was largely unknown beyond Wall Street and the exclusive dinner parties and charity galas he frequented.
“Who is Bloomberg?” Ester Fuchs, then a Barnard College political science professor, asked when his pollster suggested she meet with him.
By the morning of Sept. 11, polls showed Bloomberg would win the GOP primary. But his prospects in November remained dim in a city where Democrats outnumbered Republicans 5 to 1.
After the twin towers collapsed and Gov. George Pataki (R) postponed the primary, Bloomberg learned that the brother of a campaign staffer was missing and that three of his company’s employees had been at a conference on the 106th floor of the North Tower.
“I’m SCARED,” Peter Alderman, 25, a Bloomberg employee, wrote in a 9:07 a.m. email to his sister from Windows on the World, where he was trapped. “THERE IS A lot OF SMOKE.”
Alderman’s parents were in France that day celebrating his father’s 60th birthday when their phone rang.
“It’s Mike Bloomberg,” he said.
As the company’s boss, he felt it was his responsibility to tell the Aldermans what he knew about their son. A team of his employees had been assigned to call hospitals around the city about Peter. His whereabouts remained unknown.
“ ‘We’re searching for him,’ ” Elizabeth Alderman, Peter’s mother, recalled Bloomberg saying.
She struggled to remain hopeful. The billionaire was measured and matter-of-fact.
He promised to call back.
Rudy Giuliani wanted to sound encouraging as he listened to Bloomberg talk of his ambition to follow him as mayor. They were sitting in the living room at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, in the spring of 2001, a few months before Bloomberg entered the race.
“What do you want to make a change for?” Giuliani asked.
Bloomberg said only four jobs piqued his interest: U.N. secretary general, World Bank president, president of the United States and the seat opening at City Hall at the conclusion of Giuliani’s term.
Bloomberg impressed the mayor with his knowledge of city policies and his willingness to spend millions of his own fortune on the campaign. But Giuliani told Bloomberg what he told any Republican running in his city. “ ‘Republicans can’t win in New York unless there’s a disaster,’ ” Giuliani recalled warning. “Or, let’s say, things are really bad.”
Giuliani listed the crises that had swept Republicans Fiorello La Guardia and John Lindsay into office. In his own case, Giuliani cited two riots and a soaring murder rate that presaged his victory over Democratic incumbent David Dinkins.
“ ‘Yes, but times change,’ ” Bloomberg said, recalled Giuliani, who thought the businessman was “very sure of himself. I was more impressed than I thought I’d be. I came away thinking he’d be a good mayor; too bad it’s a Democratic city.”
A Democrat until just before the mayor’s race, Bloomberg became a Republican because he couldn’t win the Democratic nomination against two well-known city pols, Fernando Ferrer and Mark Green, the eventual nominee.
His party switch was emblematic of the pragmatism and ambition that had infused Bloomberg since his upbringing in Medford, Mass. — the son of a bookkeeper and a homemaker — where he collected enough merit badges to become an Eagle Scout at age 12.
“Suck it up and just get on with it!” was how his parents taught him to deal with adversity, Bloomberg told a biographer. “Don’t let bad things that happen to you stop you.”
At Salomon Brothers, where he earned $9,000 a year after graduating from Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School, his first job was counting billions of dollars in securities inside a sweltering vault known as “the Cage.” To keep cool, he stripped to his underwear and drank beer.
Salomon’s culture was a blend of Brooks Brothers suits and loading-dock profanity. Bloomberg gained a reputation as a hard-driving boss who on occasion would throw a phone if the conversation wasn’t going his way. His underlings teased that his edge was unbefitting “someone born on Valentine’s Day,” said Richard Levy, a trader who worked for Bloomberg.
When Levy had to miss work on a frenetic trading day because his grandfather died, Bloomberg asked whether he could delay the funeral, even though Jewish law requires burial within 24 hours. “Michael, you should know better,” Levy recalled telling him. Bloomberg, who is Jewish, apologized.
After Salomon merged with another company in 1981, the firm dismissed Bloomberg, though not without a $10 million payout he used to create the now-famous computer terminal that carries his name. Over the next two decades, Bloomberg LP grew to 8,000 employees in more than 100 countries and annual earnings exceeding $2 billion.
A rising star in business circles, Bloomberg in 1993 invited a New York magazine reporter to his office, apparently unconcerned about how his banter might come off. At one point, he commented on the attractiveness of an employee, saying, “She is the reason all the young programmers come in early and stay late.” At another, he tossed Cheez-Its into a trash can and joked, “I could play for the Knicks if I ever grew up to be seven foot one and black.”
Entering his 50s, Bloomberg divorced his wife, Susan, the mother of their two daughters, and became a bachelor about town. His dates with stars such as Marisa Berenson and Diana Ross, viewed as age-appropriate, inspired the New York Post to tag him the “anti-bimbo billionaire.” Bloomberg hosted parties with the likes of Harvey Weinstein, the now-disgraced Hollywood producer, and Tina Brown, the then-prominent magazine editor. In London, he threw a bash called “Seven Deadly Sins,” featuring drag queens, massage tables and an oversize bed sheathed in purple satin.
“Money, ain’t it gorgeous?” shouted performers waving cash.
Bloomberg and Alfred Sommer, a prominent ophthalmologist he knew through their affiliation with Hopkins, were eating steaks one night when the businessman asked a surprising question.
“What do you think about me running for mayor?”
“Why would you want to do that?” Sommer replied. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
By then, Bloomberg had palatial homes in Manhattan, London and Bermuda, and enough money that he could afford to donate tens of millions to various causes. He wanted a new challenge, and public service appealed to his inner Eagle Scout.
As he contemplated a different path, Bloomberg consulted a long list of political operatives, including Bill Cunningham, a former adviser to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.).
“You have any idea what guys like me do to guys like you?” Cunningham recalled asking. He warned that Bloomberg’s wealth would be a bull’s eye for opponents lampooning him as an out-of-touch oligarch.
“That’s what’s wrong with politics,” Bloomberg snapped. He insisted that he was more than his money and that he had the credentials to govern.
Cunningham joined a growing cast of strategists around Bloomberg, a troupe including New York’s preeminent political guru, David Garth, who had steered Lindsay, Democrat Ed Koch and Giuliani to mayoral victories.
Their new boss, they learned, had no patience for chitchat or navel-gazing. He could be blunt, profane and biting.
“How do you live with her?” Bloomberg said when meeting the husband of Ester Fuchs, by then a policy adviser, who was flabbergasted until she saw the billionaire’s smirk.
He also had a lot to learn about New York politics.
When pollster Frank Luntz told him that winning would be difficult, Bloomberg said, “The only reason I’m talking to you is for you to make it less difficult.”
“There were no pleasantries,” Luntz said. “Mike is business: To him, I was a political hack, and he didn’t want to fake it.”
One adviser’s assignment was to make flashcards to quiz him on New York minutiae such as “How many miles is the transit system?” “Who is the City Council speaker?” and “What is rent control?”
Bloomberg knew that he needed Hispanic votes, which is why he hired a Spanish teacher, Juan Carlos Ayarza. At one point, Ayarza accompanied Bloomberg on a week-long business trip to Europe and Asia, tutoring him only when they were airborne in his jet.
“Here’s your money. Go tour,” Bloomberg said when they landed, Ayarza recalled.
His political operatives had to teach him the basics of campaigning.
“Ever march in a parade before?” Ed Skyler, his press secretary, asked as they set off for the Israeli Day celebration.
“Maybe the Boy Scouts,” Bloomberg said, an answer that compelled his aide to remind him that, when encountering a television camera, “wave and smile like you’re in a sold-out stadium.”
On the campaign trail, Bloomberg was The Unnatural, dressed in polo shirts and tasseled loafers, his nasal voice an odd blend of Bahston and New Yawk.
“A friend of mine just bought the Jets,” he said cheerfully after meeting a kid wearing a Baltimore Ravens T-shirt, an exchange captured by a documentary filmmaker. Another voter, grilling hot dogs, is shown asking Bloomberg for a loan of “half-a-mill” to renovate his house.
“I know Michael’s got it,” the man says as Bloomberg chuckles and moves on.
As he announced his candidacy at a Queens senior center, Bloomberg boasted that his company’s “customers think we walk on water — and we do. I can do that for the city.”
“Not Even Close to Being Ready,” a Daily News headline declared the next day.
As summer passed, Bloomberg poured millions into TV ads and climbed in polls that once showed him losing by more than 2 to 1. George Arzt, Koch’s former adviser, had doubted that working-class voters would embrace a billionaire. But Arzt found himself beginning to think otherwise as he left a Mets game one night and saw dozens of Bloomberg volunteers handing out “Mike for Mayor” bubble gum.
“Wow, I never saw this in a campaign,” he thought.
On the eve of the primary, Bloomberg fended off attacks over off-color wisecracks he had purportedly made a decade earlier, all of them collected by a former employee in a booklet called the “Portable Bloomberg.” “Make the customer think he’s getting laid when he’s getting f---ed,” read the first entry.
At their final debate, Herman Badillo, his Republican primary opponent, cited the booklet as evidence that Bloomberg was unfit to be mayor.
Two days later, after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, voters were no longer paying attention.
At his headquarters, Bloomberg learned about the three company employees who had been on the 106th floor. When he reached Peter Alderman’s parents in France, he assured them that he would send his plane to fly them back to New York.
“I want you to stay calm,” he said. “We’ll call you back as soon as we know anything.”
The following day, he phoned again.
“No one survived above the 91st floor,” Bloomberg told the Aldermans. “I wish I could tell you better news.”
Elizabeth Alderman felt her knees buckle. She began to weep and dropped to the floor.
His pilot would be in touch, Bloomberg promised. A few days later, a limousine was waiting when the Aldermans landed in New York.
The next morning, their doorbell rang. Bloomberg was on their front step, alone.
He had come to say how sorry he was about their son.
Twenty-four hours after the attack, Bloomberg and his advisers convened at campaign headquarters. Outside, the midtown streets were barren as the city and the country awakened to fears of new threats and an uncertain future.
“What do we do now?” Bloomberg asked his team.
His campaign commercials would halt, and he would make no immediate public appearances. But larger questions remained: How would they respond to the catastrophe once the campaign resumed?
Before Sept. 11, Bloomberg struggled to sell voters on the merits of a political outsider with a business background. But Lower Manhattan was now defined by a huge crater, and voters feared that corporations would flee and the city’s economy would tank. Bloomberg’s advisers saw an opportunity. Their candidate’s executive background was now an asset.
“It became pretty clear once the shock of the event passed that the qualifications for the job had changed,” Skyler said. “Mike’s experience became a lot more relevant.”
A day after winning the rescheduled Republican primary, a gaggle of television crews followed Bloomberg to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which overlooks the East River and has panoramic views of Manhattan’s skyline.
“What we have going forward here is a different city,” he said after pausing to gaze across the water where the twin towers had stood. “And the mayor’s job is different than it was before.”
While Bloomberg still trailed by 16 points in the polls, the gap narrowed as Green, his opponent, made missteps and the Democrats were consumed by racially charged infighting.
Yet Bloomberg’s greatest advantage was the endorsement he received from Giuliani, whose post-9/11 performance inspired standing ovations wherever he went. “Mike will build on what we’ve accomplished,” Giuliani said in an ad that aired ceaselessly in the campaign’s final hours.
On the election’s eve, as he circled the city to rally voters, Bloomberg received a late-night call from Harvey Weinstein, who somehow thought it essential to let him know that he had abandoned Green and was supporting him.
“ ‘Call the newspapers and tell them!’ ” Weinstein urged, Bloomberg recalled. “And I said, ‘Harvey, it’s 11 or 12 o’clock, f--- you! The newspapers are on the streets already. I’m not going to call them.’ ”
On Election Day, Bloomberg told his mother that he might lose but the results would be close enough that she wouldn’t be embarrassed. Past midnight, his campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, put away the concession speech he had drafted. After spending a record $70 million of his own money, Bloomberg had won by 35,000 votes — or less than 3 percent.
“New York is alive and well and open for business!” the mayor-elect told supporters.
But the city remained in a suspended state of anguish. As the first anniversary of the attack approached, Bloomberg’s staff assembled a list of survivors of the 400 firefighters and police officers who were killed.
He would call each one.
Sometimes, the person on the other end was composed and the call began and ended easily. Sometimes, the person was crying and Bloomberg could hear children playing in the background.
After a few minutes, the new mayor hung up and went on to the next call.
On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, as bagpipers played and New York paused to reflect, Bloomberg presided over the opening of the 9/11 Memorial, a milestone that drew President Barack Obama and more than 10,000 relatives of the dead.
Soaring over the ceremony was the rising symbol of New York’s recovery — 82 of the 104 stories that would become the new World Trade Center.
“We can never un-see what happened here,” Bloomberg told the crowd assembled alongside two memorial pools tracing the footprints of the fallen towers. Etched in bronze parapets were the nearly 3,000 names of the dead, including that of Peter Alderman.
Over the years, Bloomberg had prodded the city to move past its collective grief. Giuliani had envisioned Ground Zero as a 16-acre memorial. Bloomberg wanted a smaller memorial and pushed for new offices and schools. He warned of turning downtown into a “cemetery.”
When he spoke to relatives of the dead still in the throes of grief, Bloomberg felt the urge to say, “Suck it up,” as his parents had taught him.
“I thought to myself, ‘It’s tragic, but you’ve got to take care of your kids,’ ” he said. “You don’t want to be crying. You want to be talking about the future — ‘What can I do to help your kids?' 'What can I do to help you?’ — rather than look back. Looking back isn’t going to help.”
On the 10th anniversary, Bloomberg told a reporter that he did not want to be “remembered in terms of 9/11. I want the public to remember someone was there — not even knowing who they were. That they built the right thing. That they did the right thing.”
Three years later, the 9/11 Memorial Museum opened, a subterranean time capsule of that morning, the horror memorialized in photos of terrified bystanders and recordings of last voice mails from those inside the towers.
On a wall were flashing images of fliers that families taped to lampposts for the missing. “Call Mom,” one pleaded. On the bottom floor were the twisted remains of the firetruck used by the men of Ladder Company 3, a dozen of whom died.
On another wall, behind glass, was a campaign flier with the date in white letters — Tuesday, Sept. 11 — reminding voters to support a Republican on that day’s ballot.
“Mike Bloomberg,” the leaflet reads. “Don’t turn the clock back.”
The deadliest foreign attack on American soil helped make Mike Bloomberg New York’s mayor and now a presidential contender.
By Paul Schwartzman
FEBRUARY 24, 2020
NEW YORK — Mike Bloomberg awoke early on that crisp and cloudless Tuesday and walked from his East Side mansion to his neighborhood polling place, where he saw his name on an election ballot for the first time, as a Republican candidate for mayor.
It was Sept. 11, 2001, primary day, and Bloomberg was in the thick of trying to reinvent himself as the face of America’s largest city, an aspiration many New Yorkers regarded as audacious, if not laughable, for a little-known billionaire CEO.
After voting, Bloomberg walked downtown to his campaign headquarters, where he drank coffee and scanned the newspapers at his desk, a cubicle among rows of cubicles occupied by strategists and policy advisers.
Then someone told him that an airplane had slammed into the World Trade Center.
On television, a newscaster wondered whether technical problems had disrupted communications between air traffic control and the plane.
“Bulls---,” Bloomberg said.
As a licensed pilot, he knew that the morning’s clear skies were perfect for flying and that it was unthinkable a plane would travel at such a low altitude. “ ‘You don’t need radar or air traffic control to tell you where the World Trade Center is,’ ” Bill Cunningham, an adviser, recalled Bloomberg saying. “He knew something really bad was going on.”
At 9:03 a.m., when the second plane hit the South Tower, Bloomberg’s fears were validated.
In that moment of confused panic, Bloomberg displayed the instincts that propelled his evolution from Wall Street trader to technology entrepreneur to founder of a multibillion-dollar media empire with offices around the world, his name over each entrance.
It was that same self-assurance — some would say arrogance — that drove Bloomberg, then 59, with a crooked smile and no discernible trace of charisma, to surrender the cloistered life of a private citizen for the hothouse of New York politics.
Yet what Bloomberg did not know in that moment — what no one could have known — is that the deadliest foreign attack on American soil would fuel his unlikely rise as New York’s mayor and become a foundation for his race for the White House.
As he stakes his presidential campaign on capturing a windfall of Super Tuesday delegates, Bloomberg invokes his stewardship of post-9/11 New York to cast himself as the competent, even-keeled antidote to President Trump’s turbulent reign.
“We began to write a comeback story,” Bloomberg tells audiences, recalling that he took over a city “in tatters” after winning an election that “almost no one” — not even his mother, he often notes — “thought I had a chance.”
At the same time, Bloomberg, an engineer by training, is suspicious of analyses devoid of data and reluctant to attribute his political birth entirely to 9/11.
“I don’t know how I got elected or why I got elected other than more people voted for me,” he said this month in Detroit during a brief interview between campaign stops. “But I don’t know why they voted for me.”
Bloomberg’s 12 years at City Hall lifted him to newfound prominence and spanned the rebirth of Lower Manhattan, the rise of the new World Trade Center and the opening of the 9/11 Memorial.
Yet, in 2001, as he aspired to succeed Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani, he was largely unknown beyond Wall Street and the exclusive dinner parties and charity galas he frequented.
“Who is Bloomberg?” Ester Fuchs, then a Barnard College political science professor, asked when his pollster suggested she meet with him.
By the morning of Sept. 11, polls showed Bloomberg would win the GOP primary. But his prospects in November remained dim in a city where Democrats outnumbered Republicans 5 to 1.
After the twin towers collapsed and Gov. George Pataki (R) postponed the primary, Bloomberg learned that the brother of a campaign staffer was missing and that three of his company’s employees had been at a conference on the 106th floor of the North Tower.
“I’m SCARED,” Peter Alderman, 25, a Bloomberg employee, wrote in a 9:07 a.m. email to his sister from Windows on the World, where he was trapped. “THERE IS A lot OF SMOKE.”
Alderman’s parents were in France that day celebrating his father’s 60th birthday when their phone rang.
“It’s Mike Bloomberg,” he said.
As the company’s boss, he felt it was his responsibility to tell the Aldermans what he knew about their son. A team of his employees had been assigned to call hospitals around the city about Peter. His whereabouts remained unknown.
“ ‘We’re searching for him,’ ” Elizabeth Alderman, Peter’s mother, recalled Bloomberg saying.
She struggled to remain hopeful. The billionaire was measured and matter-of-fact.
He promised to call back.
Rudy Giuliani wanted to sound encouraging as he listened to Bloomberg talk of his ambition to follow him as mayor. They were sitting in the living room at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, in the spring of 2001, a few months before Bloomberg entered the race.
“What do you want to make a change for?” Giuliani asked.
Bloomberg said only four jobs piqued his interest: U.N. secretary general, World Bank president, president of the United States and the seat opening at City Hall at the conclusion of Giuliani’s term.
Bloomberg impressed the mayor with his knowledge of city policies and his willingness to spend millions of his own fortune on the campaign. But Giuliani told Bloomberg what he told any Republican running in his city. “ ‘Republicans can’t win in New York unless there’s a disaster,’ ” Giuliani recalled warning. “Or, let’s say, things are really bad.”
Giuliani listed the crises that had swept Republicans Fiorello La Guardia and John Lindsay into office. In his own case, Giuliani cited two riots and a soaring murder rate that presaged his victory over Democratic incumbent David Dinkins.
“ ‘Yes, but times change,’ ” Bloomberg said, recalled Giuliani, who thought the businessman was “very sure of himself. I was more impressed than I thought I’d be. I came away thinking he’d be a good mayor; too bad it’s a Democratic city.”
A Democrat until just before the mayor’s race, Bloomberg became a Republican because he couldn’t win the Democratic nomination against two well-known city pols, Fernando Ferrer and Mark Green, the eventual nominee.
His party switch was emblematic of the pragmatism and ambition that had infused Bloomberg since his upbringing in Medford, Mass. — the son of a bookkeeper and a homemaker — where he collected enough merit badges to become an Eagle Scout at age 12.
“Suck it up and just get on with it!” was how his parents taught him to deal with adversity, Bloomberg told a biographer. “Don’t let bad things that happen to you stop you.”
At Salomon Brothers, where he earned $9,000 a year after graduating from Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School, his first job was counting billions of dollars in securities inside a sweltering vault known as “the Cage.” To keep cool, he stripped to his underwear and drank beer.
Salomon’s culture was a blend of Brooks Brothers suits and loading-dock profanity. Bloomberg gained a reputation as a hard-driving boss who on occasion would throw a phone if the conversation wasn’t going his way. His underlings teased that his edge was unbefitting “someone born on Valentine’s Day,” said Richard Levy, a trader who worked for Bloomberg.
When Levy had to miss work on a frenetic trading day because his grandfather died, Bloomberg asked whether he could delay the funeral, even though Jewish law requires burial within 24 hours. “Michael, you should know better,” Levy recalled telling him. Bloomberg, who is Jewish, apologized.
After Salomon merged with another company in 1981, the firm dismissed Bloomberg, though not without a $10 million payout he used to create the now-famous computer terminal that carries his name. Over the next two decades, Bloomberg LP grew to 8,000 employees in more than 100 countries and annual earnings exceeding $2 billion.
A rising star in business circles, Bloomberg in 1993 invited a New York magazine reporter to his office, apparently unconcerned about how his banter might come off. At one point, he commented on the attractiveness of an employee, saying, “She is the reason all the young programmers come in early and stay late.” At another, he tossed Cheez-Its into a trash can and joked, “I could play for the Knicks if I ever grew up to be seven foot one and black.”
Entering his 50s, Bloomberg divorced his wife, Susan, the mother of their two daughters, and became a bachelor about town. His dates with stars such as Marisa Berenson and Diana Ross, viewed as age-appropriate, inspired the New York Post to tag him the “anti-bimbo billionaire.” Bloomberg hosted parties with the likes of Harvey Weinstein, the now-disgraced Hollywood producer, and Tina Brown, the then-prominent magazine editor. In London, he threw a bash called “Seven Deadly Sins,” featuring drag queens, massage tables and an oversize bed sheathed in purple satin.
“Money, ain’t it gorgeous?” shouted performers waving cash.
Bloomberg and Alfred Sommer, a prominent ophthalmologist he knew through their affiliation with Hopkins, were eating steaks one night when the businessman asked a surprising question.
“What do you think about me running for mayor?”
“Why would you want to do that?” Sommer replied. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
By then, Bloomberg had palatial homes in Manhattan, London and Bermuda, and enough money that he could afford to donate tens of millions to various causes. He wanted a new challenge, and public service appealed to his inner Eagle Scout.
As he contemplated a different path, Bloomberg consulted a long list of political operatives, including Bill Cunningham, a former adviser to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.).
“You have any idea what guys like me do to guys like you?” Cunningham recalled asking. He warned that Bloomberg’s wealth would be a bull’s eye for opponents lampooning him as an out-of-touch oligarch.
“That’s what’s wrong with politics,” Bloomberg snapped. He insisted that he was more than his money and that he had the credentials to govern.
Cunningham joined a growing cast of strategists around Bloomberg, a troupe including New York’s preeminent political guru, David Garth, who had steered Lindsay, Democrat Ed Koch and Giuliani to mayoral victories.
Their new boss, they learned, had no patience for chitchat or navel-gazing. He could be blunt, profane and biting.
“How do you live with her?” Bloomberg said when meeting the husband of Ester Fuchs, by then a policy adviser, who was flabbergasted until she saw the billionaire’s smirk.
He also had a lot to learn about New York politics.
When pollster Frank Luntz told him that winning would be difficult, Bloomberg said, “The only reason I’m talking to you is for you to make it less difficult.”
“There were no pleasantries,” Luntz said. “Mike is business: To him, I was a political hack, and he didn’t want to fake it.”
One adviser’s assignment was to make flashcards to quiz him on New York minutiae such as “How many miles is the transit system?” “Who is the City Council speaker?” and “What is rent control?”
Bloomberg knew that he needed Hispanic votes, which is why he hired a Spanish teacher, Juan Carlos Ayarza. At one point, Ayarza accompanied Bloomberg on a week-long business trip to Europe and Asia, tutoring him only when they were airborne in his jet.
“Here’s your money. Go tour,” Bloomberg said when they landed, Ayarza recalled.
His political operatives had to teach him the basics of campaigning.
“Ever march in a parade before?” Ed Skyler, his press secretary, asked as they set off for the Israeli Day celebration.
“Maybe the Boy Scouts,” Bloomberg said, an answer that compelled his aide to remind him that, when encountering a television camera, “wave and smile like you’re in a sold-out stadium.”
On the campaign trail, Bloomberg was The Unnatural, dressed in polo shirts and tasseled loafers, his nasal voice an odd blend of Bahston and New Yawk.
“A friend of mine just bought the Jets,” he said cheerfully after meeting a kid wearing a Baltimore Ravens T-shirt, an exchange captured by a documentary filmmaker. Another voter, grilling hot dogs, is shown asking Bloomberg for a loan of “half-a-mill” to renovate his house.
“I know Michael’s got it,” the man says as Bloomberg chuckles and moves on.
As he announced his candidacy at a Queens senior center, Bloomberg boasted that his company’s “customers think we walk on water — and we do. I can do that for the city.”
“Not Even Close to Being Ready,” a Daily News headline declared the next day.
As summer passed, Bloomberg poured millions into TV ads and climbed in polls that once showed him losing by more than 2 to 1. George Arzt, Koch’s former adviser, had doubted that working-class voters would embrace a billionaire. But Arzt found himself beginning to think otherwise as he left a Mets game one night and saw dozens of Bloomberg volunteers handing out “Mike for Mayor” bubble gum.
“Wow, I never saw this in a campaign,” he thought.
On the eve of the primary, Bloomberg fended off attacks over off-color wisecracks he had purportedly made a decade earlier, all of them collected by a former employee in a booklet called the “Portable Bloomberg.” “Make the customer think he’s getting laid when he’s getting f---ed,” read the first entry.
At their final debate, Herman Badillo, his Republican primary opponent, cited the booklet as evidence that Bloomberg was unfit to be mayor.
Two days later, after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, voters were no longer paying attention.
At his headquarters, Bloomberg learned about the three company employees who had been on the 106th floor. When he reached Peter Alderman’s parents in France, he assured them that he would send his plane to fly them back to New York.
“I want you to stay calm,” he said. “We’ll call you back as soon as we know anything.”
The following day, he phoned again.
“No one survived above the 91st floor,” Bloomberg told the Aldermans. “I wish I could tell you better news.”
Elizabeth Alderman felt her knees buckle. She began to weep and dropped to the floor.
His pilot would be in touch, Bloomberg promised. A few days later, a limousine was waiting when the Aldermans landed in New York.
The next morning, their doorbell rang. Bloomberg was on their front step, alone.
He had come to say how sorry he was about their son.
Twenty-four hours after the attack, Bloomberg and his advisers convened at campaign headquarters. Outside, the midtown streets were barren as the city and the country awakened to fears of new threats and an uncertain future.
“What do we do now?” Bloomberg asked his team.
His campaign commercials would halt, and he would make no immediate public appearances. But larger questions remained: How would they respond to the catastrophe once the campaign resumed?
Before Sept. 11, Bloomberg struggled to sell voters on the merits of a political outsider with a business background. But Lower Manhattan was now defined by a huge crater, and voters feared that corporations would flee and the city’s economy would tank. Bloomberg’s advisers saw an opportunity. Their candidate’s executive background was now an asset.
“It became pretty clear once the shock of the event passed that the qualifications for the job had changed,” Skyler said. “Mike’s experience became a lot more relevant.”
A day after winning the rescheduled Republican primary, a gaggle of television crews followed Bloomberg to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which overlooks the East River and has panoramic views of Manhattan’s skyline.
“What we have going forward here is a different city,” he said after pausing to gaze across the water where the twin towers had stood. “And the mayor’s job is different than it was before.”
While Bloomberg still trailed by 16 points in the polls, the gap narrowed as Green, his opponent, made missteps and the Democrats were consumed by racially charged infighting.
Yet Bloomberg’s greatest advantage was the endorsement he received from Giuliani, whose post-9/11 performance inspired standing ovations wherever he went. “Mike will build on what we’ve accomplished,” Giuliani said in an ad that aired ceaselessly in the campaign’s final hours.
On the election’s eve, as he circled the city to rally voters, Bloomberg received a late-night call from Harvey Weinstein, who somehow thought it essential to let him know that he had abandoned Green and was supporting him.
“ ‘Call the newspapers and tell them!’ ” Weinstein urged, Bloomberg recalled. “And I said, ‘Harvey, it’s 11 or 12 o’clock, f--- you! The newspapers are on the streets already. I’m not going to call them.’ ”
On Election Day, Bloomberg told his mother that he might lose but the results would be close enough that she wouldn’t be embarrassed. Past midnight, his campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, put away the concession speech he had drafted. After spending a record $70 million of his own money, Bloomberg had won by 35,000 votes — or less than 3 percent.
“New York is alive and well and open for business!” the mayor-elect told supporters.
But the city remained in a suspended state of anguish. As the first anniversary of the attack approached, Bloomberg’s staff assembled a list of survivors of the 400 firefighters and police officers who were killed.
He would call each one.
Sometimes, the person on the other end was composed and the call began and ended easily. Sometimes, the person was crying and Bloomberg could hear children playing in the background.
After a few minutes, the new mayor hung up and went on to the next call.
On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, as bagpipers played and New York paused to reflect, Bloomberg presided over the opening of the 9/11 Memorial, a milestone that drew President Barack Obama and more than 10,000 relatives of the dead.
Soaring over the ceremony was the rising symbol of New York’s recovery — 82 of the 104 stories that would become the new World Trade Center.
“We can never un-see what happened here,” Bloomberg told the crowd assembled alongside two memorial pools tracing the footprints of the fallen towers. Etched in bronze parapets were the nearly 3,000 names of the dead, including that of Peter Alderman.
Over the years, Bloomberg had prodded the city to move past its collective grief. Giuliani had envisioned Ground Zero as a 16-acre memorial. Bloomberg wanted a smaller memorial and pushed for new offices and schools. He warned of turning downtown into a “cemetery.”
When he spoke to relatives of the dead still in the throes of grief, Bloomberg felt the urge to say, “Suck it up,” as his parents had taught him.
“I thought to myself, ‘It’s tragic, but you’ve got to take care of your kids,’ ” he said. “You don’t want to be crying. You want to be talking about the future — ‘What can I do to help your kids?' 'What can I do to help you?’ — rather than look back. Looking back isn’t going to help.”
On the 10th anniversary, Bloomberg told a reporter that he did not want to be “remembered in terms of 9/11. I want the public to remember someone was there — not even knowing who they were. That they built the right thing. That they did the right thing.”
Three years later, the 9/11 Memorial Museum opened, a subterranean time capsule of that morning, the horror memorialized in photos of terrified bystanders and recordings of last voice mails from those inside the towers.
On a wall were flashing images of fliers that families taped to lampposts for the missing. “Call Mom,” one pleaded. On the bottom floor were the twisted remains of the firetruck used by the men of Ladder Company 3, a dozen of whom died.
On another wall, behind glass, was a campaign flier with the date in white letters — Tuesday, Sept. 11 — reminding voters to support a Republican on that day’s ballot.
“Mike Bloomberg,” the leaflet reads. “Don’t turn the clock back.”
The moronic childish god fantasy is good for nothing but getting in the way of human progress.
"Among other things, Tyson asserts that the religiosity of some of history's greatest scientists and their willingness to invoke the philosophy of intelligent design limited the scope of their inquiry into the natural world, to the detriment of scientific progress in general."
Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.
Laplace: Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.
Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.
Laplace: Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.
I never met a Neil deGrasse Tyson video I didn't like.
To see 9 more Neil deGrasse Tyson videos, please click this
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB6B594473F65FF0C
Imagine the worst-case scenario then bet on it.
In 2016 nobody imagined Trump would win the Republican nomination for president. When he won the nomination despite the odds, nobody imagined this celebrity clown would defeat Ms. Clinton.
What the fuck happened?
For the Republican nomination, there were many candidates. Trump didn't have to get most of the votes. He just had to get more votes than anyone else. And that's what happened because there were so many other candidates.
How did Trump defeat Clinton?
She made mistakes, especially when she insulted the people who wanted to vote for Trump. She called them "deplorables".
What about 2020?
Now we have the same problem. There are too many candidates for the Democratic nomination. This will make it possible for a socialist moron to win the nomination without having to win most of the votes. That stupid fucking asshole is Bernie Sanders. The people who have been voting for him are very young and very fucking stupid.
The worst-case scenario: The candidate for president could be Trump against Sanders (moron against moron).
If that happened then the voters would have to choose which moron to vote for.
I have extreme contempt for Trump. He is the stupidest president this country ever had. But if Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, then I'm voting for Trump.
8 fucking years of Trump.
March 3, 2020, is a big fucking deal because numerous states will be voting that day. Mike Bloomberg has to win most of those states or else this country is in big trouble. Are the Democrats as stupid as I think they are? We will see what happens.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This is from a transcript of the Nevada debate:
JACKSON: Mayor Bloomberg, you own a large company. Would you support what Senator Sanders is proposing?
BLOOMBERG: Absolutely not. I can't think of a way that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get re-elected than listening to this conversation.
(APPLAUSE)
It's ridiculous. We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn't work.
What the fuck happened?
For the Republican nomination, there were many candidates. Trump didn't have to get most of the votes. He just had to get more votes than anyone else. And that's what happened because there were so many other candidates.
How did Trump defeat Clinton?
She made mistakes, especially when she insulted the people who wanted to vote for Trump. She called them "deplorables".
What about 2020?
Now we have the same problem. There are too many candidates for the Democratic nomination. This will make it possible for a socialist moron to win the nomination without having to win most of the votes. That stupid fucking asshole is Bernie Sanders. The people who have been voting for him are very young and very fucking stupid.
The worst-case scenario: The candidate for president could be Trump against Sanders (moron against moron).
If that happened then the voters would have to choose which moron to vote for.
I have extreme contempt for Trump. He is the stupidest president this country ever had. But if Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, then I'm voting for Trump.
8 fucking years of Trump.
March 3, 2020, is a big fucking deal because numerous states will be voting that day. Mike Bloomberg has to win most of those states or else this country is in big trouble. Are the Democrats as stupid as I think they are? We will see what happens.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This is from a transcript of the Nevada debate:
JACKSON: Mayor Bloomberg, you own a large company. Would you support what Senator Sanders is proposing?
BLOOMBERG: Absolutely not. I can't think of a way that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get re-elected than listening to this conversation.
(APPLAUSE)
It's ridiculous. We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn't work.
Sunday, February 23, 2020
I found this thing. It's about Idiot America's fucktard science deniers.
Pew: 66 million Americans still believe evolution is totally bogus
FEBRUARY 22, 2020 BY RICK SNEDEKER
15 COMMENTS
Among the many fascinating things I learned in a recent report by Pew Research Center was that because the United States was on the verge of civil war when Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection was published in 1859, the groundbreaking book “went largely unnoticed” in America.
Indeed, the report notes that the fundamental truths underpinning biological evolution that the then-revolutionary book revealed for the first time are still viewed with dismissive contempt by a vast subgroup of Americans.
“In spite of the fact that evolutionary theory is accepted by all but a small number of scientists, it continues to be rejected by many Americans,” wrote Pew staff writer David Masci in an essay accompanying the report released this month. “In fact, about one-in-five U.S. adults reject the basic idea that life on Earth has evolved at all. And roughly half of the U.S. adult population accepts evolutionary theory, but only as an instrument of God’s will.”
In other words, some 66 million Americans reject the idea of natural evolution out of hand, and 164 million believe that, whatever may have occurred naturally, God unquestionably caused it to happen.
And these are the same folks who, in large part, gave America a president named Donald Trump.
These numbers should alarm all nonreligious people and those committed to facts and scientific demonstrability. What the Pew report indicates is that hundreds of millions of Americans’ views on reality continue to be based on spiritual fantasies 160 years after Darwin’s discovery should have flung such notions into the dust bin of history.
But supernatural religion is nothing if not insensible to contradictory fact.
What Pew has discovered over years of surveying people’s religious attitudes and assumptions is that the “theological implications of evolutionary thinking” not only unnerve religious believers — but often skew their answers when polled.
“For many religious people, the Darwinian view of life – a panorama of brutal struggle and constant change – conflicts with both the biblical creation story and the Judeo-Christian concept of an active, loving God who intervenes in human events,” Masci wrote.
So, Pew has developed survey questions which seek to mitigate religious bias and elicit answers more representative of respondents’ views and attitudes.
Conservative Christian antipathy to evolution has a long pedigree as a religious proxy war against science and modernity, which has increasingly and irrefutably debunked many core religious claims. From the 1890s to 1930s, American Protestantism cleaved into two divisions: modernist, which held a theologically liberal understanding of the faith; and conservative evangelical Protestantism, Pew reported.
“By the early 1920s, evolution had become perhaps the most important wedge issue in this Protestant divide,” Masci wrote in his essay, “in part because the debate had taken on a pedagogical dimension, with students throughout the nation now studying Darwin’s ideas in biology classes.”
The inherent problem for literal-Bible Protestantism in this debate was scripture’s expansive inconsistencies and factual errors. This issue was front and center during the infamous Scopes “monkey” trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. The state’s prohibition of teaching anything in public schools that contradicted scripture, specifically evolution, was the trial’s focus. During the courtroom event, famed secular prosecuting attorney Clarence Darrow squared off against evangelical Christian populist and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in arguing the merits (or not) of the Bible.
The disadvantage Bryan labored under became starkly evident under Darrow’s withering questioning.
“With Bryan on the stand, Darrow proceeded to ask a series of detailed questions about biblical events that could be seen as inconsistent, unreal or both,” Masci wrote. “For instance, Darrow asked, how could there be morning and evening during the first three days of biblical creation if the sun was not formed until the fourth?”
Although the defendant in the trial, Dayton science teacher John Scopes, was convicted of teaching anti-biblical evolution banned by state law and was directed to pay a symbolic $100 fine, the conviction was later dismissed on appeal on a technicality.
In the ensuing years, predominantly Southern and Midwestern states continued to promote anti-evolution laws, because the Constitution’s prohibition against government proselytizing only applied to federal, not state, actions. Nonetheless, court rulings still consistently rejected them as unconstitutional promotion of religious ideology in public schools. (For more information, read about Epperson v Arkansas and Edwards v. Aguillard.)
Also, in 1947, the Supreme Court ruled in Everson v. Board of Education that the constitutional prohibition on religious establishment applied to state as well as federal actions, although, ironically, the court also ruled in the case that public funds could be used to bus students to private, generally religious, schools. That was what the plaintiffs were specifically arguing against.
Since, fundamentalists have been busy trying to repackage their anti-evolution arguments — “creationism” and “Intelligent Design” — to allow biblical creation dogma to be taught side-by-side with evolution in U.S. science classes, as though it were also science, if “alternative.” The tactic was disingenuously proclaimed as “teaching the controversy,” although evolution by then was long established, noncontroversial science, the bedrock theory of biology.
Evangelicals simply refuse to yield these fantasies of a world created by an invisible being in six days.
That is why 66 million Americans still today refuse to accept that evolution is a real thing, and while 164 million concede that perhaps it is real — it was a personal, loving God that caused it, not godless nature.
FEBRUARY 22, 2020 BY RICK SNEDEKER
15 COMMENTS
Among the many fascinating things I learned in a recent report by Pew Research Center was that because the United States was on the verge of civil war when Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection was published in 1859, the groundbreaking book “went largely unnoticed” in America.
Indeed, the report notes that the fundamental truths underpinning biological evolution that the then-revolutionary book revealed for the first time are still viewed with dismissive contempt by a vast subgroup of Americans.
“In spite of the fact that evolutionary theory is accepted by all but a small number of scientists, it continues to be rejected by many Americans,” wrote Pew staff writer David Masci in an essay accompanying the report released this month. “In fact, about one-in-five U.S. adults reject the basic idea that life on Earth has evolved at all. And roughly half of the U.S. adult population accepts evolutionary theory, but only as an instrument of God’s will.”
In other words, some 66 million Americans reject the idea of natural evolution out of hand, and 164 million believe that, whatever may have occurred naturally, God unquestionably caused it to happen.
And these are the same folks who, in large part, gave America a president named Donald Trump.
These numbers should alarm all nonreligious people and those committed to facts and scientific demonstrability. What the Pew report indicates is that hundreds of millions of Americans’ views on reality continue to be based on spiritual fantasies 160 years after Darwin’s discovery should have flung such notions into the dust bin of history.
But supernatural religion is nothing if not insensible to contradictory fact.
What Pew has discovered over years of surveying people’s religious attitudes and assumptions is that the “theological implications of evolutionary thinking” not only unnerve religious believers — but often skew their answers when polled.
“For many religious people, the Darwinian view of life – a panorama of brutal struggle and constant change – conflicts with both the biblical creation story and the Judeo-Christian concept of an active, loving God who intervenes in human events,” Masci wrote.
So, Pew has developed survey questions which seek to mitigate religious bias and elicit answers more representative of respondents’ views and attitudes.
Conservative Christian antipathy to evolution has a long pedigree as a religious proxy war against science and modernity, which has increasingly and irrefutably debunked many core religious claims. From the 1890s to 1930s, American Protestantism cleaved into two divisions: modernist, which held a theologically liberal understanding of the faith; and conservative evangelical Protestantism, Pew reported.
“By the early 1920s, evolution had become perhaps the most important wedge issue in this Protestant divide,” Masci wrote in his essay, “in part because the debate had taken on a pedagogical dimension, with students throughout the nation now studying Darwin’s ideas in biology classes.”
The inherent problem for literal-Bible Protestantism in this debate was scripture’s expansive inconsistencies and factual errors. This issue was front and center during the infamous Scopes “monkey” trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. The state’s prohibition of teaching anything in public schools that contradicted scripture, specifically evolution, was the trial’s focus. During the courtroom event, famed secular prosecuting attorney Clarence Darrow squared off against evangelical Christian populist and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in arguing the merits (or not) of the Bible.
The disadvantage Bryan labored under became starkly evident under Darrow’s withering questioning.
“With Bryan on the stand, Darrow proceeded to ask a series of detailed questions about biblical events that could be seen as inconsistent, unreal or both,” Masci wrote. “For instance, Darrow asked, how could there be morning and evening during the first three days of biblical creation if the sun was not formed until the fourth?”
Although the defendant in the trial, Dayton science teacher John Scopes, was convicted of teaching anti-biblical evolution banned by state law and was directed to pay a symbolic $100 fine, the conviction was later dismissed on appeal on a technicality.
In the ensuing years, predominantly Southern and Midwestern states continued to promote anti-evolution laws, because the Constitution’s prohibition against government proselytizing only applied to federal, not state, actions. Nonetheless, court rulings still consistently rejected them as unconstitutional promotion of religious ideology in public schools. (For more information, read about Epperson v Arkansas and Edwards v. Aguillard.)
Also, in 1947, the Supreme Court ruled in Everson v. Board of Education that the constitutional prohibition on religious establishment applied to state as well as federal actions, although, ironically, the court also ruled in the case that public funds could be used to bus students to private, generally religious, schools. That was what the plaintiffs were specifically arguing against.
Since, fundamentalists have been busy trying to repackage their anti-evolution arguments — “creationism” and “Intelligent Design” — to allow biblical creation dogma to be taught side-by-side with evolution in U.S. science classes, as though it were also science, if “alternative.” The tactic was disingenuously proclaimed as “teaching the controversy,” although evolution by then was long established, noncontroversial science, the bedrock theory of biology.
Evangelicals simply refuse to yield these fantasies of a world created by an invisible being in six days.
That is why 66 million Americans still today refuse to accept that evolution is a real thing, and while 164 million concede that perhaps it is real — it was a personal, loving God that caused it, not godless nature.
Every day I eat chicken thighs, vegetables, fruit, and wheat bread. Money will never be a problem. Imagine never having enough to eat. 3 million children under five starve to death every year.
Wikipedia - Starvation
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage[1] and eventually, death. The term inanition refers to the symptoms and effects of starvation. Starvation may also be used as a means of torture or execution.
According to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single gravest threat to the world's public health.[2] The WHO also states that malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases.[2] Undernutrition is a contributory factor in the death of 3.1 million children under five every year.[3] Figures on actual starvation are difficult to come by, but according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the less severe condition of undernourishment currently affects about 842 million people, or about one in eight (12.5%) people in the world population.[4]
The bloated stomach represents a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor. The exact pathogenesis of kwashiorkor is not clear, as initially it was thought to relate to diets high in carbohydrates (e.g. maize) but low in protein.[5] While many patients have low albumin, this is thought to be a consequence of the condition. Possible causes such as aflatoxin poisoning, oxidative stress, immune dysregulation and altered gut microbiota have been suggested.[6] Treatment can help mitigate symptoms such as the pictured weight loss and muscle wasting, however prevention is of utmost importance.[5]
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage[1] and eventually, death. The term inanition refers to the symptoms and effects of starvation. Starvation may also be used as a means of torture or execution.
According to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single gravest threat to the world's public health.[2] The WHO also states that malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases.[2] Undernutrition is a contributory factor in the death of 3.1 million children under five every year.[3] Figures on actual starvation are difficult to come by, but according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the less severe condition of undernourishment currently affects about 842 million people, or about one in eight (12.5%) people in the world population.[4]
The bloated stomach represents a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor. The exact pathogenesis of kwashiorkor is not clear, as initially it was thought to relate to diets high in carbohydrates (e.g. maize) but low in protein.[5] While many patients have low albumin, this is thought to be a consequence of the condition. Possible causes such as aflatoxin poisoning, oxidative stress, immune dysregulation and altered gut microbiota have been suggested.[6] Treatment can help mitigate symptoms such as the pictured weight loss and muscle wasting, however prevention is of utmost importance.[5]
Magical creationism is not just a stupidity problem. It's an incurable mental illness. The only solution: Lock these Christian fucktards up and force them to wear straitjackets.
Creationism as a mental illness
Robert Rowland Smith asks if creationists are sane.
Posted March 29, 2010
187 COMMENTS
Creationism as a mental illness
In Cockney rhyming slang, the word ‘believe' is represented by ‘Adam and Eve'. When faced with something baffling, shocking or plain peculiar, you might use the rhetorical expression, ‘Would you Adam and Eve it?' It's ironic, then, that one of the great debates of the day is about the literal truth of the bible story; or in other words, the extent to which we should Adam and Eve in Adam and Eve.
It's a question not just of belief but of denial. The phrase ‘in denial' has become so commonplace it's hard to still hear its power. In common with the ostrich which, as danger approaches, buries its head in the sand, those who are ‘in denial' prefer a false but subjective sense of security to a true but objectively scary reality. Denial brings short term, if illusory, comfort.
Hence creationism, the theory/superstition that, contrary to massive scientific evidence, the world began exactly as described in the Book of Genesis. Instead of deriving from millions of years of patient evolution, Adam and Eve popped out, fully formed, like characters from a Swiss cuckoo clock. Would you Adam and Eve it? Of course not. It's a myth, but like many myths it serves a psychological purpose which is to provide a storybook sense of simple origins, which allays people's fears. Those who believe this myth to be the truth are in a state of denial.
Along with denial, two other factors connect creationism with mental illness. The first is psychosis, which is an extension of denial. If psychosis is marked by the discrepancy between one's personal view of the world and the consensual view, creationism holds onto the personal view at all costs, refusing to accept what is abundantly clear. True, if creationism became the majority view, its psychotic character might be mitigated. Except that this majority view would have no more valence than the belief so widely held about the relationship between the sun and the earth before Copernicus proved how the latter orbits the former, and not vice versa.
Finally, creationism shares with autism an alleged lack of ability for irony. Creationists take the bible story as literally true, unable to recognise that it might be working on those other, mythic levels.
If tests for madness include talking to yourself and looking for hairs on the palm of your hand, then here's another: do you Adam and Eve in Adam and Eve?
Robert Rowland Smith is the author of 'Breakfast with Socrates: an Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through your Ordinary Day' (Free Press).
Robert Rowland Smith asks if creationists are sane.
Posted March 29, 2010
187 COMMENTS
Creationism as a mental illness
In Cockney rhyming slang, the word ‘believe' is represented by ‘Adam and Eve'. When faced with something baffling, shocking or plain peculiar, you might use the rhetorical expression, ‘Would you Adam and Eve it?' It's ironic, then, that one of the great debates of the day is about the literal truth of the bible story; or in other words, the extent to which we should Adam and Eve in Adam and Eve.
It's a question not just of belief but of denial. The phrase ‘in denial' has become so commonplace it's hard to still hear its power. In common with the ostrich which, as danger approaches, buries its head in the sand, those who are ‘in denial' prefer a false but subjective sense of security to a true but objectively scary reality. Denial brings short term, if illusory, comfort.
Hence creationism, the theory/superstition that, contrary to massive scientific evidence, the world began exactly as described in the Book of Genesis. Instead of deriving from millions of years of patient evolution, Adam and Eve popped out, fully formed, like characters from a Swiss cuckoo clock. Would you Adam and Eve it? Of course not. It's a myth, but like many myths it serves a psychological purpose which is to provide a storybook sense of simple origins, which allays people's fears. Those who believe this myth to be the truth are in a state of denial.
Along with denial, two other factors connect creationism with mental illness. The first is psychosis, which is an extension of denial. If psychosis is marked by the discrepancy between one's personal view of the world and the consensual view, creationism holds onto the personal view at all costs, refusing to accept what is abundantly clear. True, if creationism became the majority view, its psychotic character might be mitigated. Except that this majority view would have no more valence than the belief so widely held about the relationship between the sun and the earth before Copernicus proved how the latter orbits the former, and not vice versa.
Finally, creationism shares with autism an alleged lack of ability for irony. Creationists take the bible story as literally true, unable to recognise that it might be working on those other, mythic levels.
If tests for madness include talking to yourself and looking for hairs on the palm of your hand, then here's another: do you Adam and Eve in Adam and Eve?
Robert Rowland Smith is the author of 'Breakfast with Socrates: an Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through your Ordinary Day' (Free Press).
Saturday, February 22, 2020
New York Times article: Mike Bloomberg wants the other candidates to get out of the way so he can defeat the socialist moron, Bernie Sanders.
Michael R. Bloomberg was not on the ballot in Nevada. But his campaign was quick to weigh in on the victory of Bernie Sanders, saying it would spell doom for the Democratic Party in November.
In a statement, Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, blamed a “fragmented field” of candidates for putting the Vermont senator on the path to the nomination. Implicit within those words was what appeared to be a warning shot to the other Democrats who remain in the race but are struggling to break through as the Sanders alternative: Drop out or Mr. Sanders will win.
“This is a candidate who just declared war on the so-called ‘Democratic Establishment,’” Mr. Sheekey added. “We are going to need Independents AND Republicans to defeat Trump — attacking your own party is no way to get started.”
Mike Bloomberg's website. If you want to see the whole thing, please click the link.
https://www.mikebloomberg.com/about
Mike’s Story
Mike Bloomberg started as a middle class kid who worked his way through college. After getting laid off at age 39, he started a company from scratch and built it into a business that today employs 20,000 people. He gives virtually all of the company’s profits to charity, to support causes he is passionate about, including gun safety, climate change, education, women’s rights, and health care. He served three terms as Mayor of New York and created nearly a half-million jobs, expanded health insurance to 700,000 people, reduced the city’s carbon footprint, and cut the incarceration rate by nearly 40%. Now he’s running to unite America, defeat Donald Trump, and start getting big things done.
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Foreign Policy
Mike Bloomberg knows from decades of experience how rapidly our world is changing. As president, Mike will repair the damage done by President Trump and return the United States to a position of global leadership. He will strengthen all elements of American national power, investing in education, cutting-edge infrastructure and R&D, and reviving a sophisticated and principled diplomatic corps. He will partner not just with other nations but with cities, businesses and civil society groups to address new challenges that can’t be solved in traditional ways. Most importantly, he will return thoughtful, evidence-based decision-making to the White House so that, at this moment of unprecedented challenge and opportunity, America will continue to lead and prosper.
How Mike Will Get It Done:
Protect Americans against new threats
Rebuild the foundations of American power
Reinvigorate alliances with U.S. partners
Drive global action to fight climate change
Restore presidential leadership
Mike’s Story
Mike Bloomberg started as a middle class kid who worked his way through college. After getting laid off at age 39, he started a company from scratch and built it into a business that today employs 20,000 people. He gives virtually all of the company’s profits to charity, to support causes he is passionate about, including gun safety, climate change, education, women’s rights, and health care. He served three terms as Mayor of New York and created nearly a half-million jobs, expanded health insurance to 700,000 people, reduced the city’s carbon footprint, and cut the incarceration rate by nearly 40%. Now he’s running to unite America, defeat Donald Trump, and start getting big things done.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Foreign Policy
Mike Bloomberg knows from decades of experience how rapidly our world is changing. As president, Mike will repair the damage done by President Trump and return the United States to a position of global leadership. He will strengthen all elements of American national power, investing in education, cutting-edge infrastructure and R&D, and reviving a sophisticated and principled diplomatic corps. He will partner not just with other nations but with cities, businesses and civil society groups to address new challenges that can’t be solved in traditional ways. Most importantly, he will return thoughtful, evidence-based decision-making to the White House so that, at this moment of unprecedented challenge and opportunity, America will continue to lead and prosper.
How Mike Will Get It Done:
Protect Americans against new threats
Rebuild the foundations of American power
Reinvigorate alliances with U.S. partners
Drive global action to fight climate change
Restore presidential leadership
My previous post was the entire Nevada debate transcript. This is the same thing but it only has what Mike Bloomberg said. The other candidates are morons so it doesn't matter what they said.
HOLT: Mayor Bloomberg, can Senator Sanders beat President Trump? And how do you want to respond to what else he said?
BLOOMBERG: I don't think there's any chance of the senator beating President Trump. You don't start out by saying I've got 160 million people I'm going to take away the insurance plan that they love. That's just not a way that you go and start building the coalition that the Sanders camp thinks that they can do. I don't think there's any chance whatsoever. And if he goes and is the candidate, we will have Donald Trump for another four years. And we can't stand that.
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HOLT: Thank you. Mayor Bloomberg, there's a lot for you to respond to there, so here's your opportunity.
BLOOMBERG: I think we have two questions to face tonight. One is, who can beat Donald Trump? And, number two, who can do the job if they get into the White House? And I would argue that I am the candidate that can do exactly both of those things.
I'm a New Yorker. I know how to take on an arrogant conman like Donald Trump, that comes from New York. I'm a mayor or was a mayor. I know how to run a complicated city, the biggest, most diverse city in this country.
I'm a manager. I knew what to do after 9/11 and brought the city back stronger than ever. And I'm a philanthropist who didn't inherit his money but made his money. And I'm spending that money to get rid of Donald Trump, the worst president we have ever had. And if I can get that done, it will be a great contribution to America and to my kids.
(APPLAUSE)
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RALSTON: Thank you, Mr. Vice president. I want to get some of the rest of you in on this because y'all have plans. Mayor Bloomberg, let me read -- let me read what you've said about this issue. You said you want to intensify U.S. and international actions to stop the expansion of coal. How exactly are you going to do that?
BLOOMBERG: Well, already we've closed 304 out of the 530 coal-fired power plants in the United States, and we've closed 80 out of the 200 or 300 that are in Europe, Bloomberg Philanthropies, working with the Sierra Club, that's one of the things you do.
But let's just start at the beginning. If you're president, the first thing you do the first day is you rejoin the Paris Agreement. This is just ridiculous for us to drop out.
(APPLAUSE)
Two, America's responsibility is to be the leader in the world. And if we don't, we're the ones that are going to get hurt just as much as anybody else. And that's why I don't want to have us cut off all relationships with China, because you will never solve this problem without China and India, Western Europe, and America. That's where most of the greenhouse...
RALSTON: I just...
BLOOMBERG: Let me just finish one other thing. I believe -- and you can tell me whether this is right -- but the solar array that the vice president is talking about is being closed because it's not economic, that you can put solar panels into modern technology even more modern than that.
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HOLT: We're going to stay on the topic. My question is to Mayor Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg, your business is heavily invested in China. I think you mentioned that a few questions back. The number one producer in the world of carbon emissions. How far would you go to force China to reduce those emissions and tackle the climate crisis?
BLOOMBERG: Well, you're not going to go to war with them. You have to negotiate with them and try to -- and we've seen how well that works with tariffs that are hurting us. What you have to do is convince the Chinese that it is in their interest, as well. Their people are going to die just as our people are going to die. And we'll work together.
In all fairness, China has slowed down. It's India that is an even bigger problem. But it is an enormous problem. Nobody's doing anything about it. We could right here in America make a big difference. We're closing the coal-fired power plants. If we could enforce some of the rules on fracking so that they don't release methane into the air and into the water, you'll make a big difference.
But we're not going to get rid of fracking for a while. And we, incidentally not just natural gas. You frack oil, as well. It is a technique, and when it's done poorly, like they're doing in too many places where the methane gets out into the air, it is very damaging. But it's a transition fuel, I think the senator said it right.
We want to go to all renewables. But that's still many years from now. And we -- before I think the senator mentioned 2050 for some data. No scientist thinks the numbers for 2050 are 2050 anymore. They're 2040, 2035. The world is coming apart faster than any scientific study had predicted. We've just got to do something now.
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TODD: Look, I want to get into something. Mayor Bloomberg, the vice president talked about red-lining.
BLOOMBERG: As the only one here that started a business, maybe you...
TODD: Mayor Bloomberg, you seemed to imply that red-lining and stopping that is -- that stopping red-lining has somehow contributed to the financial crisis.
BLOOMBERG: No, that's exactly wrong.
TODD: And that was the implication that came out in your quote, so I want to give you a chance to clarify this.
BLOOMBERG: I've been well on the record against red-lining since I worked on Wall Street. I was against during the financial crisis. I've been against it since.
The financial crisis came about because the people that took the mortgages, packaged them, and other people bought them, those were -- that's where all the disaster was. Red-lining is still a practice some places, and we've got to cut it out. But it's just not true.
What I was going to say, maybe we want to talk about businesses. I'm the only one here that I think that's ever started a business. Is that fair? OK.
What we need is -- I can tell you in New York City, we had programs, they're mentoring programs for young businesspeople so they can learn how to start a business. We had programs that could get them seed capital. We had programs to get branch banking in their neighborhoods, because if you don't have a branch bank there, you can't get a checking account. You can't get a checking account, you can't get a loan. You can't get a loan, you can't get a mortgage. Then you don't have any wealth. There's ways to fix this. And it doesn't take trillions of dollars. It takes us to focus on the problems of small businesses.
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TODD: Mayor Bloomberg, should you exist?
BLOOMBERG: I can't speak for all billionaires. All I know is I've been very lucky, made a lot of money, and I'm giving it all away to make this country better. And a good chunk of it goes to the Democratic Party, as well.
(APPLAUSE)
TODD: Is it too much? Have you earned too much -- has it been an obscene amount of -- should you have earned that much money?
BLOOMBERG: Yes. I worked very hard for it. And I'm giving it away.
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JACKSON: Mayor Bloomberg, you own a large company. Would you support what Senator Sanders is proposing?
BLOOMBERG: Absolutely not. I can't think of a ways that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get re-elected than listening to this conversation.
(APPLAUSE)
It's ridiculous. We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn't work.
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BLOOMBERG: What a wonderful country we have. The best known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses. What did I miss here?
SANDERS: Well, you'll miss that I work in Washington, house one.
BLOOMBERG: That's the first problem.
SANDERS: Live in Burlington, house two.
BLOOMBERG: That's good.
SANDERS: And like thousands of other Vermonters, I do have a summer camp. Forgive me for that. Where is your home? Which tax haven do you have your home?
BLOOMBERG: New York City, thank you very much, and I pay all my taxes. And I'm happy to do it because I get something for it. And let me say, I thought the senator next to me was half right.
WARREN: Elizabeth.
BLOOMBERG: I agree we should raise taxes on the -- I disagree with the senator on the wealth tax but I do agree with her that the rich aren't paying their fair share. We should raise taxes on the rich. I did that as mayor in New York City. I raised taxes. And if you take a look at my plans, the first thing I would do is try to convince Congress, because they've got to do it, we can't just order it, to roll back the tax cuts that the Trump administration put in with the -- through Congress.
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TODD: Guys, guys, we are at the end here. We are at the end here. I've got to let that one go.
We are less than two weeks away from a national primary. And I want to ask all of you this simple question. There's a very good chance none of you are going to have enough delegates to the Democratic National Convention to clench this nomination, OK?
If that happens, I want all of your opinions on this. Should the person with the most delegates at the end of this primary season be the nominee, even if they are short of a majority? Senator Sanders, I'm going to let you go last here, because I know your view on this.
(LAUGHTER)
So instead, I will start with you, Mayor Bloomberg.
BLOOMBERG: Whatever the rules of the Democratic Party are, they should be followed. And if they have a process, which I believe they do...
TODD: OK, I'm trying to do this yes or no to make it fast.
BLOOMBERG: ... everybody else -- everybody can...
TODD: So you want the convention to work its will?
BLOOMBERG: Yes.
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KLOBUCHAR: I ask you to join me at amyklobuchar.com. Thank you.
HOLT: Senator Klobuchar, thank you.
JACKSON: Mayor Bloomberg, to you.
BLOOMBERG: Well, you can join me at mikebloomberg.com, too, if you want, but I'm not asking for any money.
(LAUGHTER)
Look, this is a management job, and Donald Trump's not a manager. This is a job where you have to build teams. He doesn't have a team so he goes and makes decisions without knowing what's going on or the implications of what he does. We cannot run the railroad this way.
This country has to pull together and understand that the people that we elect -- and it's not just the president of the United States -- they should have experience, they should have credentials, they should understand what they're doing and the implications thereof.
And then we should as a society try to hold them accountable so the next time they go before the voters, if they haven't done the job, we shouldn't just say, oh, nice person, gives a good speech. We should say, didn't do the job and you're out of here.
JACKSON: Mr. Mayor, thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
BLOOMBERG: I don't think there's any chance of the senator beating President Trump. You don't start out by saying I've got 160 million people I'm going to take away the insurance plan that they love. That's just not a way that you go and start building the coalition that the Sanders camp thinks that they can do. I don't think there's any chance whatsoever. And if he goes and is the candidate, we will have Donald Trump for another four years. And we can't stand that.
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HOLT: Thank you. Mayor Bloomberg, there's a lot for you to respond to there, so here's your opportunity.
BLOOMBERG: I think we have two questions to face tonight. One is, who can beat Donald Trump? And, number two, who can do the job if they get into the White House? And I would argue that I am the candidate that can do exactly both of those things.
I'm a New Yorker. I know how to take on an arrogant conman like Donald Trump, that comes from New York. I'm a mayor or was a mayor. I know how to run a complicated city, the biggest, most diverse city in this country.
I'm a manager. I knew what to do after 9/11 and brought the city back stronger than ever. And I'm a philanthropist who didn't inherit his money but made his money. And I'm spending that money to get rid of Donald Trump, the worst president we have ever had. And if I can get that done, it will be a great contribution to America and to my kids.
(APPLAUSE)
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RALSTON: Thank you, Mr. Vice president. I want to get some of the rest of you in on this because y'all have plans. Mayor Bloomberg, let me read -- let me read what you've said about this issue. You said you want to intensify U.S. and international actions to stop the expansion of coal. How exactly are you going to do that?
BLOOMBERG: Well, already we've closed 304 out of the 530 coal-fired power plants in the United States, and we've closed 80 out of the 200 or 300 that are in Europe, Bloomberg Philanthropies, working with the Sierra Club, that's one of the things you do.
But let's just start at the beginning. If you're president, the first thing you do the first day is you rejoin the Paris Agreement. This is just ridiculous for us to drop out.
(APPLAUSE)
Two, America's responsibility is to be the leader in the world. And if we don't, we're the ones that are going to get hurt just as much as anybody else. And that's why I don't want to have us cut off all relationships with China, because you will never solve this problem without China and India, Western Europe, and America. That's where most of the greenhouse...
RALSTON: I just...
BLOOMBERG: Let me just finish one other thing. I believe -- and you can tell me whether this is right -- but the solar array that the vice president is talking about is being closed because it's not economic, that you can put solar panels into modern technology even more modern than that.
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HOLT: We're going to stay on the topic. My question is to Mayor Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg, your business is heavily invested in China. I think you mentioned that a few questions back. The number one producer in the world of carbon emissions. How far would you go to force China to reduce those emissions and tackle the climate crisis?
BLOOMBERG: Well, you're not going to go to war with them. You have to negotiate with them and try to -- and we've seen how well that works with tariffs that are hurting us. What you have to do is convince the Chinese that it is in their interest, as well. Their people are going to die just as our people are going to die. And we'll work together.
In all fairness, China has slowed down. It's India that is an even bigger problem. But it is an enormous problem. Nobody's doing anything about it. We could right here in America make a big difference. We're closing the coal-fired power plants. If we could enforce some of the rules on fracking so that they don't release methane into the air and into the water, you'll make a big difference.
But we're not going to get rid of fracking for a while. And we, incidentally not just natural gas. You frack oil, as well. It is a technique, and when it's done poorly, like they're doing in too many places where the methane gets out into the air, it is very damaging. But it's a transition fuel, I think the senator said it right.
We want to go to all renewables. But that's still many years from now. And we -- before I think the senator mentioned 2050 for some data. No scientist thinks the numbers for 2050 are 2050 anymore. They're 2040, 2035. The world is coming apart faster than any scientific study had predicted. We've just got to do something now.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
TODD: Look, I want to get into something. Mayor Bloomberg, the vice president talked about red-lining.
BLOOMBERG: As the only one here that started a business, maybe you...
TODD: Mayor Bloomberg, you seemed to imply that red-lining and stopping that is -- that stopping red-lining has somehow contributed to the financial crisis.
BLOOMBERG: No, that's exactly wrong.
TODD: And that was the implication that came out in your quote, so I want to give you a chance to clarify this.
BLOOMBERG: I've been well on the record against red-lining since I worked on Wall Street. I was against during the financial crisis. I've been against it since.
The financial crisis came about because the people that took the mortgages, packaged them, and other people bought them, those were -- that's where all the disaster was. Red-lining is still a practice some places, and we've got to cut it out. But it's just not true.
What I was going to say, maybe we want to talk about businesses. I'm the only one here that I think that's ever started a business. Is that fair? OK.
What we need is -- I can tell you in New York City, we had programs, they're mentoring programs for young businesspeople so they can learn how to start a business. We had programs that could get them seed capital. We had programs to get branch banking in their neighborhoods, because if you don't have a branch bank there, you can't get a checking account. You can't get a checking account, you can't get a loan. You can't get a loan, you can't get a mortgage. Then you don't have any wealth. There's ways to fix this. And it doesn't take trillions of dollars. It takes us to focus on the problems of small businesses.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
TODD: Mayor Bloomberg, should you exist?
BLOOMBERG: I can't speak for all billionaires. All I know is I've been very lucky, made a lot of money, and I'm giving it all away to make this country better. And a good chunk of it goes to the Democratic Party, as well.
(APPLAUSE)
TODD: Is it too much? Have you earned too much -- has it been an obscene amount of -- should you have earned that much money?
BLOOMBERG: Yes. I worked very hard for it. And I'm giving it away.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
JACKSON: Mayor Bloomberg, you own a large company. Would you support what Senator Sanders is proposing?
BLOOMBERG: Absolutely not. I can't think of a ways that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get re-elected than listening to this conversation.
(APPLAUSE)
It's ridiculous. We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn't work.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
BLOOMBERG: What a wonderful country we have. The best known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses. What did I miss here?
SANDERS: Well, you'll miss that I work in Washington, house one.
BLOOMBERG: That's the first problem.
SANDERS: Live in Burlington, house two.
BLOOMBERG: That's good.
SANDERS: And like thousands of other Vermonters, I do have a summer camp. Forgive me for that. Where is your home? Which tax haven do you have your home?
BLOOMBERG: New York City, thank you very much, and I pay all my taxes. And I'm happy to do it because I get something for it. And let me say, I thought the senator next to me was half right.
WARREN: Elizabeth.
BLOOMBERG: I agree we should raise taxes on the -- I disagree with the senator on the wealth tax but I do agree with her that the rich aren't paying their fair share. We should raise taxes on the rich. I did that as mayor in New York City. I raised taxes. And if you take a look at my plans, the first thing I would do is try to convince Congress, because they've got to do it, we can't just order it, to roll back the tax cuts that the Trump administration put in with the -- through Congress.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
TODD: Guys, guys, we are at the end here. We are at the end here. I've got to let that one go.
We are less than two weeks away from a national primary. And I want to ask all of you this simple question. There's a very good chance none of you are going to have enough delegates to the Democratic National Convention to clench this nomination, OK?
If that happens, I want all of your opinions on this. Should the person with the most delegates at the end of this primary season be the nominee, even if they are short of a majority? Senator Sanders, I'm going to let you go last here, because I know your view on this.
(LAUGHTER)
So instead, I will start with you, Mayor Bloomberg.
BLOOMBERG: Whatever the rules of the Democratic Party are, they should be followed. And if they have a process, which I believe they do...
TODD: OK, I'm trying to do this yes or no to make it fast.
BLOOMBERG: ... everybody else -- everybody can...
TODD: So you want the convention to work its will?
BLOOMBERG: Yes.
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KLOBUCHAR: I ask you to join me at amyklobuchar.com. Thank you.
HOLT: Senator Klobuchar, thank you.
JACKSON: Mayor Bloomberg, to you.
BLOOMBERG: Well, you can join me at mikebloomberg.com, too, if you want, but I'm not asking for any money.
(LAUGHTER)
Look, this is a management job, and Donald Trump's not a manager. This is a job where you have to build teams. He doesn't have a team so he goes and makes decisions without knowing what's going on or the implications of what he does. We cannot run the railroad this way.
This country has to pull together and understand that the people that we elect -- and it's not just the president of the United States -- they should have experience, they should have credentials, they should understand what they're doing and the implications thereof.
And then we should as a society try to hold them accountable so the next time they go before the voters, if they haven't done the job, we shouldn't just say, oh, nice person, gives a good speech. We should say, didn't do the job and you're out of here.
JACKSON: Mr. Mayor, thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
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