Showing posts with label mike bloomberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mike bloomberg. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 04, 2020

A Biden Bloomberg Ticket Would Be Best

I don't see Bernie making a comeback. He had his warm month. Now it is Biden as far as the eyes can see. The guy reminds people of Barack Obama, and I wonder why, I wonder how. Not all that is white is white.

Bernie is inflexible: when Medicare For All is not catching fire you tack and offer the public option for now. He lacks nuance: enough said. He has blind spots: you don't praise Castro in Florida. That is not to say Castro can not be praised, but context is important. I think Cuba has had great education and health for a poor country. That Cuba beats the mighty US on infant mortality is an objective fact, even in the Trump fact-free era.

Trump wants to hop onto the time machine and go back to the 1950s. Looks like the Dems just want to go back to the 2010s. It is the Obama stimulus that has created the jobs of the past four years. Biden can take credit while he is at it. He was Vice.

Now the race is on for the number two spot, and I make a case for Mike Bloomberg. "Money talks." That is a Mike Bloomberg quote.

There is the Bloomberg infrastructure, unprecedented, and the best in the business. Biden will have it no matter if he puts Bloomberg on the ticket or not. But don't tell me that makes no difference to Team Bloomberg. For a campaign that started so late, a second place is the first place. It will be victory.

A Biden-Bloomberg ticket will 100% win in November. I will bet you 10 dollars. Who will you rather have, a real billionaire or a fake one? Some people will have the fake one, and that's okay. This is a democracy.

If Biden has been VP of the nation, Bloomberg has been a three term Mayor of NYC. NYC represents all the Dem hubs in the country. Dems are primarily urban. Respect that.

Bernie and Warren can still rage in the US Senate for the public option, why not! Mayor Pete can still be Secretary of Urban Affairs. Klobuchar can keep representing the great state of Minnesota, now more visibly. Kamala Devi Harris can be Attorney General.

But Mike is the only number two who can guarantee victory come November. Every other way it is a 50-50 chance. And don't put your bet on the Coronavirus. It will be gone by summer. You need Mike.








































After Tuesday’s vote Mike Bloomberg followed them. The hope is that he will put his formidable electoral machine and even more formidable wallet behind Mr Biden.


Why Biden Is the Change Candidate




if nothing else the Democratic impeachment effort results in the end of Collins’ Senate career and gives Democrats the 50 seats they need for control of the Senate with a Democrat in the White House next year- perhaps another indication that Nancy Pelosi is playing three dimensional chess.
Parscale: In October, 2019, Thomas B. Edsall wrote a long Times column called “Trump Is Winning the Online War,” listing several of the “technological advances that have allowed Trump and the Republican Party to leave Democrats in the dust.” If money were no object, some of these deficits could be overcome quickly; others might not be surmountable by November........ “In comparison to Trump’s operation, Mike Bloomberg is the only Democrat positioned to compete with him on every single digital platform.”
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Tuesday, February 18, 2020

A Mike Warren Ticket



Right now it is looking like it is going to be a Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren ticket, and it will be a fair ticket, fair in that Warren represents the Bernie wing of the party and Mike represents moderates like Pete and Klobuchar, and it is going to be a strong ticket because I trust Warren more than Mike on being able to go toe to toe to the inevitable pettiness of Donald Trump. With Mike Bloomberg clocking at 20% to Bernie's 30, for the first time I am breathing easy that Trump will be out. The fucker lacks basic decency. Get him out. (Robert De Niro on Trump has been one of the great comedies of the past four years.)

Right now the arithmetic is in Mike's favor. Even in the best-case scenario, even if he leads, Bernie is looking at 25% of the delegates at the convention. He is going to do worse this time than last time when he lost. And that is assuming Mike stays at 20 and Bernie at 30. That needle will move. It is easy to imagine a scenario where most of the non-Bernie delegates switch to Mike and he clinches the nomination.

I thank Bernie. Four years ago Mike Bloomberg was worried the country might not be ready for a "Jewish divorcee." Bernie put that to rest. His Einstein hairstyle gives away his Jewishness. And he is right up there on the Trump scale on divorces and remarriages. Bernie pushed Mike into the ring and I thank him for that.

I wrote a 20-page memo late in 2015 that I hand-delivered to the Bloomberg Foundation Offices urging Mike to run. He did not. He did the Elizabeth Warren thing of thinking that was Hillary's year. And so it would be fair to blame Mike for Trump. Will you please wipe away this mess you gave to us? The blame is on you.

The big news today is not climate change. The big news today is the Age Of Abundance that is right around the corner. 2,000 years ago (and every year since) Jews rejected Jesus because they had been waiting for a messiah who would sit on a throne like David and usher in an Age Of Abundance. Like a rabbi said recently about that abundance, "I look outside my window, I don't see it!" Instead they saw a guy helplessly dangling from a cross.



Mike deserves to win because he is the only Steve Jobs in the race. And I mean that literally. He is not as big as Steve Jobs, but he is like Steve Jobs. He is a tech entrepreneur. It was a West Coast East Coast thing like among rappers. The Bloomberg Terminal has a PC form, and the PC form while pedestrian today was cutting edge when it came out. To start from zero and take it to 50 billion is something.

Some people ask, how old is Mike? Well, how old is Donald? How old is Bernie? Moses had seniority, so does Mike.



Mike Bloomberg has been spending a lot of money. Is that a billionaire buying an election? If it is, it is at least a self-made billionaire. But this is not a billionaire buying an election. This is someone who believes in campaign finance reform so much he is taking zero special interest and lobbyist money.

Mayor Mike was a Republican. But before that he was a Democrat. He saw what a mess the Democratic primary was going to be, and so he ran as a Republican and served three terms: best business move he ever made. It is the power of branding that the market value of his company went up substantially when he was doing nothing at the company except being in news all day long. That brings me to why Warren needs to be on the ticket. She understands the power of branding. She has been speaking for some of the same things as Bernie, but nobody can call her a socialist. I don't know what it is about this country, but the word socialist is toxic. It is like the gun laws. People in other countries scratch their head.

Mike was a partner at a firm on Wall Street. And his partners kicked him out. The guy was a troublemaker, always coming up with new ideas, giving everyone headaches. So they kicked him out. He did not choose to launch Bloomberg. He was forced into it. But that is not my favorite Bloomberg story. My favorite story is, after he had managed to build the Bloomberg Terminal, he needed people to buy them. So he would show up. But you can't get into those tall buildings unless you work there. And so he would buy coffee. When some of the top guys came along, he would say, "I bought you coffee." And I guess free coffee is appreciated in all income brackets. He would sneak into those buildings with them to sell his Bloomberg Terminals.

When he was Mayor I was in the city. What was most perplexing to me was Al Sharpton never saw a white politician he did not suspect. But here was Al getting along just fine with Mike. What is going on, I thought.



Stop and frisk is controversial because racism is America's original sin. Okay, so I have been stopped and frisked. I speak from experience. This was in Ridgewood, Queens. It was not even that late. I was walking from a friend's apartment to mine. Just when I crossed the street, I heard the police car siren and saw the flashing light. I turned around on instinct before I could figure out what was going on. A young, good looking woman police officer came straight towards me and reached for my pant pocket. She pulled out the pen. "Oh, it is a pen?" She thought the flash was that of a knife. She gave it back to me and equally swiftly went back to the older male police officer waiting by the car.

Better stop and frisk than shoot and kill. Because before Bloomberg, there was a Giuliani, and it was shoot to kill. Giuliani's slogan was, "We own the night."



It has to be situational. Great effort has to be made to make sure the sting of racism is taken out of the equation. It has to be data based. Collect all crime data in the country. And go by the crime rate. At particular crime rates, stop and frisk would make sense. On the other hand, that same community, once the crime rate has gone down enough shoud no longer be seeing stop and frisk.

Not to say there were not excesses. But let that who has not sinned cast the first stone. Who would you rather have? A guy who will apologize? Or some dude who never once apologized for his relentless racist comments? And is in the White House. Donald Trump is racist. Mike Bloomberg is not racist. I went to school in the South. There racist meant you said bad things about people like Mike.

When you are Mayor, even of NYC, it is not about ideology. It is about management. Mike brought good management skills to the table. His first act was to rearrange the furniture. The setup he asked for was more like Mark Zuckerberg has at Facebook. Anyone can readily come over to the boss.

This country has become so divided and hyperpartisan that alone might be a big enough reason to elect Mike. This guy is officially bipartisan. He was a Republican Mayor. Now he is a Democratic candidate. What do you do after you have held the second most visible political office in the land? You go for the most visible one.

Who conducts foreign policy as Mayor? This guy has. He got together lots of Mayors around the world on climate.

Talking about climate, I think a big part of the solution is that we need 10 Elon Musks. When Trump heaped praise on Musk about how he was a great American entrepreneur, Musk shot back: "I am from South Africa, you idiot." Musk is likely to see a fellow entrepreneur in Bloom and respect him. Only Kanye thinks Donald Trump is some sort of an entrepreneur.

A country where the Chancellor of Trump University can become president is not a country that is doing well. The guy is a scam.

Full disclosure: I have applied for a job as a political strategist. I have met Mike in person.









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Sunday, December 15, 2019

Bloomberg's Political "Innovation:" Money Heavy

"Money talks."
-- Mike Bloomberg

‘Mayors for Mike’: How Bloomberg’s Money Built a 2020 Political Network Michael Bloomberg is relying on powerful city leaders as allies in his presidential campaign. Several have received grants, training and support packages totaling millions from his foundation. ...... Mr. Tubbs had reason to feel kinship with Mr. Bloomberg. Last year, he graduated from a mayoral training program that Mr. Bloomberg sponsors at Harvard University. Mr. Tubbs had attended a conference co-sponsored by Mr. Bloomberg’s philanthropic foundation in Paris in 2017, and was featured in its 2018 annual report. And this past June, Mr. Bloomberg’s foundation donated $500,000 to an education reform group based in Stockton, a struggling inland city in Northern California......... Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has assets totaling $9 billion, has supported 196 different cities with grants, technical assistance and education programs worth a combined $350 million. Now, leaders in some of those cities are forming the spine of Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign: He has been endorsed so far by eight mayors — from larger cities like San Jose, Calif., and Louisville, Ky., and smaller ones like Gary, Ind., representing a total of more than 2.6 million Americans............

the extraordinary nature of Mr. Bloomberg’s candidacy

...... After an onslaught of self-funded television ads, he reached 5 percent support in two national polls this week........... Mr. Bloomberg is one of the richest people in the world, with a net worth estimated at more than $50 billion....... “Unlike Donald Trump, Mike Bloomberg has a real foundation that does real work addressing people’s serious needs ........ One graduate of the Bloomberg program at Harvard is a leading opponent in the presidential race — Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., whose city also received $1 million from a Bloomberg program in 2018.



To skip the first four contests entirely, that is something. That has never been attempted before.

When you are Mayor of NYC, you are already holding the second most high profile political office in the land.

He was a Democrat. Then he was a Republican. Then he was an Independent. Now he is a Democrat. The claim to being "basically nonpartisan" rings true.

He is formidable. No doubt. As to how this will play out, we will just have to wait and see.

Mike Bloomberg’s money buys him a very different kind of campaign. And it’s a big one. After two weeks in the presidential race, Mike Bloomberg now employs one of the largest campaign staff rosters, has spent more money on ads than all the top-polling Democrats combined and is simultaneously building out ground operations in 27 states........ with the Bloomberg campaign, it is not at all clear what established rules apply, if any. Everything he is doing is so unlike what has been done for decades that it is difficult to decipher how voters will react............ Rather than focus on the early states, he is campaigning for votes deep in the 2020 calendar, in places where voters are less tuned in to the nominating process. Rather than worry about a budget, he has put no limit on the money he is prepared to spend. Rather than run in a Democratic primary by appealing to ideological die-hards or partisan flag bearers, he describes himself as “basically nonpartisan.” ........ As a former three-term New York mayor, he comes to the race with more executive governing experience and has represented more voters than most of his competitors, as well as a philanthropic record he has emphasized in campaign ads while pushing several core liberal priorities, including increased gun regulation and the reduction of carbon pollution. His campaign message is focused on his own competence and electability............ no one has ever run a national primary campaign since Kennedy in 1960.” ........ there are hundreds of staff members working remotely or out of the temporary campaign headquarters in one of Bloomberg’s Beaux-Arts limestone mansions on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where the blinds rise and fall with time of day, the food is free ......... The campaign has been offering field organizers salaries of $6,000 a month, a 70 percent premium from the going rate of $3,500 paid by the campaigns of ........ and Gary Briggs, a former top marketing executive for Facebook and Google......... Since his campaign launch on Nov. 24, Bloomberg has spent or reserved about $60 million in television and radio ads, with no sign of slowing down. Taken together, the top four polling Democrats in the race — former vice president Joe Biden; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Sanders and Warren — have spent about $28 million on similar ads all year.......... He has also purchased $4.6 million of Google ads ...... On Facebook, his spending over the past week ran at more than $170,000 a day, 2½ times the level of President Trump’s reelection campaign and about three times more than Tom Steyer, the other billionaire Democrat seeking the nomination. All of his digital ads are focused on increasing his support and recruiting staff........... When he entered in November, he decided to skip the first four contests, which tend to pick presidential nominees by showing early momentum and redirecting the national focus.......... Instead, his operation is aimed at the 25 states that will award nearly two-thirds of the available convention delegates over a 15-day period that begins March 3........

it is something no one has ever tried to do before.”

......... Rival Democratic strategists remain skeptical of the effort, as they focus on finding a way for their candidates to catch fire in the early states. Bloomberg’s campaign skills are rusty ....... The Trump campaign, by contrast, has chosen to attack Bloomberg early, with Trump tweeting about “Mini Mike Bloomberg” and announcing he would bar reporters for Bloomberg’s eponymous news organization from his campaign events....... Through the Bloomberg campaign and a separate anti-Trump digital effort he is funding, a campaign adviser said, Bloomberg has already spent more than $8.3 million in television and digital ads in six core swing states: Florida, Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina............ since then, Bloomberg, who has always cast himself as a competent manager able to build and run large organizations, decided that Biden and the rest of the field were not up for the job of beating Trump........ “He is not afraid of them winning,” said Howard Wolfson, another top political adviser. “He is afraid they are not going to win.” ......... In 2018, he said, he gave away $767 million. Recipients have included groups such as Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, smoking-cessation efforts and a number of grant projects for cities and mayors around the country........

Bloomberg used the platform to assail Trump — saying he was the only New York billionaire in the race

....... “The way I see it, Texas is the biggest battleground state, and I’m going to fight like hell to win its 38 electoral votes,” Bloomberg said.



P.S. I got to meet him once. Him, and one other billionaire standing next to him. This was an event at the Bloomberg Foundation on the Upper East Side where the LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman was the featured speaker. Curiously the person I talked to most at the event was Arianna of the Huffington Post, a sleep specialist and crusader.



Late in 2015, I wrote a long memo that I dropped off in person at that same location urging him to run. About 20 pages.
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Sunday, February 28, 2016

Hillary Is On

क्यारालिनामा क्लिन्टन भारी मतले विजयी



South Carolina might have decided. Hillary is on. By now the two parties have their nominees. And Mike Bloomberg might have waited too long.

This race is over. Hillary has won. There's no way a Democrat can lose in November.
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China And The Next Thousand Years

China And The Next Thousand Years

The Chinese think in terms of a thousand years. As do the Jews. The Hindus are not mad at Muslims for no reason. Individual births and deaths are not that big of a deal, if you think about it. But the future is not always in the past. Maybe it never is. There ought to be a freshness to looking at the future.

To ask, does God exist, is like asking, do you believe in the Sun? It’s there. What’s there to believe? And the sun has nothing on God. Look up the YouTube video on 10 dimensions. A four dimension creature should perhaps approach the larger dimensions with some humility.

What if it is genetic? Speciation is genetic. We became a species only a few hundred thousand years ago. How did it happen? Did it start with one birth? Obviously the process did not stop. Every birth is a step forward in evolution. Was there only one beginning? And even if there was, by the time you end up with large numbers of people, is it possible that there is genetic variation? All human organs have genetic roots. The brain is no different. Is it possible that there is slight variation? For example, are the Jews genetically predisposed as a people to read more books than everyone else? I don’t know. I am only asking. Are the Karnataka people genetically predisposed to not fear death? To die in battle is no big deal, it is not even a consideration. How much do we know about genes?

Knowledge changes things. There is no artificial. A skyscraper is as much a part of nature as a tree in the Amazon. Because the human brain, the human limb, they are very much part of nature. How much do we know? How much can we know? How much can we hope to know? How much can we collaborate?

In 500 years we might become a multi-planetary species. I don’t know at what point, but there is a dollar figure to it. Maybe it is 10,000 trillion dollars. The global economy will have to move from 60 to 10,000, and then it is Star Wars time. There doesn’t have to be war, by the way. But if human history is any guide, be prepared for anything.

500 years is a blip. Perhaps the Homo Sapiens will forge one common identity, internal variations allowed, desirably allowed.

Maybe the human rights charter is too long. We just need two points. One, free speech. You may express thoughts, and you will not be bothered for it, not by the state. Two, zero tolerance for violence. Countries will not be allowed to go to war with each other. Civil wars are not allowed. Individuals may not kill or assault each other, except Putin throwing people around for sport. We could have a really small government, if those are the only two things that the government needs to do. The rest of the time we could focus on getting to that 10,000 trillion dollar figure fast. Because maybe we want to travel.

We have now the option to create a borderless world, thanks to biometric IDs and facial recognition technology, the policing part need not be expensive. Once we attain a world government and a species level identity, there is no room for talk of whose century it is, and who is the superpower now. All that goes by the wayside. Just like we laugh at the little kingdoms that were in our countries a long time ago. Every fort was a country. A city country.

The Chinese, once the leader in science, are great engineers. They think the British messed up with them because the British were great engineers, and the Japanese messed up through universal high school education. The Chinese have learned the lesson a little too well. They are great engineers. But there is this mention of a people in the Bible who were great engineers but did not believe in God. They did not do well. The Chinese need the Dalai Lama more than they realize. Buddhism is custom made for their atheistic tastes. And they are already half way there on their own. The Chinese did not abandon communism, they did not pick up capitalism. They got organized and they engaged in evidence based decision making. Communism made sense then, capitalism makes sense now. What has stayed constant is evidence based decision making. They have not changed in their ways. It is the evidence and the conclusions that have changed. Capitalism gives you the motorbike. Buddhism gives you the helmet. The Chinese just might end up with the best of both worlds: a capitalism that is subservient to the political process (fire versus forest fire) and Buddhism as the crown jewel. The material and the immaterial. Buddhism is practically science.

It is not possible the Chinese are atheists if the Chinese are Buddhists. Evidence based decision making is the most direct path yet to God, more so than philosophical surmising, crusades, superstition, witchcraft, and everything in between.

Building a road everywhere where there is a need to build a road, building a bridge every place where there is a need for a bridge: who will do it? Who is best equipped?

Parking money is a bad idea. That is admission that you don’t know what you are doing. The ocean currents are not supposed to stop. The money is supposed to keep flowing. That is what is best for both the money owners and the world.

We used to have gold coins. Then we used paper money and kept equivalent amounts of gold in a safe place. Then we realized gold is not necessary. Money floats on trust. Occasionally we become very good at losing that trust, but that is another story. Now is the time to lose the paper altogether. We have to go 100% digital and 100% global with the money. If every transaction can be recorded, we can let it loose. Blockchain technology allows us to move money globally like email, for free and instantly. And every transaction stays in the books. Money has to go where the need is the greatest. Every infrastructure project in every poor country can give you a 10% annual return easy. So if you have 10 trillion dollars just sitting there doing a 0%, something is very wrong in the picture. It is a primitive arrangement, quite literally. You are avoiding people you don’t like. You are not driven by self-interest. If all money can go 100% digital, and 100% global, and can reside 100% on the blockchain, forget leveraging to the tune of 30, which is where the markets crashed in 2008. We could easily leverage to 1,000. We could have plentiful money. Economic activity globally could hit new heights.

The market did not crash because one dollar got leveraged to 30. One dollar can safely be leveraged to 1,000. But when you park money, that is negative leveraging. One dollar gets turned to zero. A dollar out of circulation is a dollar that has been vaporized, as far as the economic system is concerned. Parked money is not neutral, it has a negative pull.

So why did the market crash?

To leverage to 1,000, you have to apply the Kumbha Mela concept. The largest gathering of humanity sees zero chaos.

While Mike Bloomberg is having his Arjuna doubts, and Barack Obama is plotting retirement (foundation and paid speeches) instead of a world government, the Chinese are engineering the hell out of it.

A global, digital 911 would have several community elements. You will ring up your neighbor for the most part. No matter where on earth, you could not get lost. Your biometric ID would allow you to check in with any police officer.

What is artificial is scarcity. Abundance is natural. Human beings are the only species that starves. Because there is not enough coordination.

Finance
Race
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Wednesday, February 17, 2016

In The News (8)



Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders have something to prove in Nevada
The state's Democratic electorate -- 40% non-white and including a heavy union presence spread across a vast, difficult-to-organize territory -- provides the first true test of both candidates' national viability and battle plans. ...... For Clinton, Nevada is an opportunity to prove her strength with minorities and demonstrate how a six-month organizing head start can put the lid on her upstart opponent. ..... "Not everything is about an economic theory, right?" Clinton rhetorically asked the crowd Saturday in Henderson. "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow -- and I will, if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will -- will that end racism?" she said as the crowd answered "no." ...... After a narrow win in Iowa for Clinton, and a historic victory for Sanders in New Hampshire, the national polls show the race turning into a dead heat: Quinnipiac University's latest survey has

Clinton up just 44% to 42%.

..... "They downplayed Nevada so much that I wondered, what do they know that I don't?'" said one unaffiliated Democratic operative who knows Nevada.
3-D 'bioprinter' produces bone, muscle, and cartilage
The researchers produced three types of tissue - bone, cartilage, and muscle - and transplanted it into rats and mice. ..... Five months after implantation, the bone tissue looked similar to normal bone, complete with blood vessels and with no dead areas ......... "We are also using similar strategies to print solid organs" ...... "Actual personalized medicine, especially in the tissue regeneration field, is on its way."
Flower preserved in amber was ancestor of modern poisonous plants
The perfectly-preserved flowers named Strychnos electri are estimated by researchers from Oregon State and Rutgers universities to be from 20 million to 30 million years old. ..... It comes from the family of flowering plants called asteroid that gave us potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, petunias and our morning cup of coffee. But this one is from the genus Strychnos, which ultimate produce strychnine and curare – poisons used in everything from rat control to blow-gun weapons. Strychnine also played a part in the movie “Psycho,” in which Norman Bates uses rat poison to kill his mother and her boyfriend. ....... And one ancient genus, which has now been shown to be inherently toxic, existed for millions of years before humans appeared on the planet.
No longer blind: Why that gravitational wave discovery is so heavy
The detection of spacetime ripples produced by a cataclysmic collision of two black holes is the first major discovery of the new field of gravitational-wave astronomy. President Obama Criticizes G.O.P. Field, Particularly Donald Trump
Mr. Obama also made clear his reluctance to change course in Syria, where he said Russia had blundered into a “quagmire.” ......He spoke more optimistically about Libya, saying that there was a recognition of the need for a coherent state. The United States, he said, would support efforts to put together a new government there. ..... “The good news in Libya is that they don’t like outsiders coming in and telling them what to do,” he said.
Mike Bloomberg’s Outlandish Presidential Fantasy
An independent presidential run by the billionaire would help Democrats retain the White House
Bloomberg would have almost no chance of actually getting elected President. .... Perhaps he might get 40 percent or so of the overall vote, but not in enough states to either win 270 electoral votes or to prevent an other candidate from winning a state’s electoral votes. While the country is closely divided between Democratic and Republican voters, most states are not. ........ he would have to take mostly from Democrats in some states, and mostly from Republicans in others. That would be extremely difficult for any candidate, even one with Mr. Bloomberg’s thick wallet. ...... Mr. Bloomberg has said he would run only if the Democrats nominated Mr. Sanders and the Republicans nominate either Mr. Trump or Ted Cruz. In that scenario, centrists from both parties would consider voting for Mr. Bloomberg. .....

The Democratic base, therefore, would be unmoved by Bloomberg, while Republican voters frightened by the prospect of Mr. Trump or Mr. Cruz, and more concerned about economic rather than social policy would be a more fertile ground for Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign.

....... this year, as many Republicans embrace Mr. Trump’s populism, seems to be a limited appetite for a candidate who does not have a populist bone in his body and who promotes gun control. To suggest his political profile will resonate broadly in the electorate is to be oblivious to what is going on, and what many people are thinking, in America. ....... Mr. Bloomberg is clearly smart, qualified and experienced enough to be President, and perhaps even a very good one, but that will not be enough to get him elected President.
Black and Latino Voters Sway From Clinton to Sanders
If Sanders stays on message, Clinton will see the nomination disappear like it did in '08 against Obama
I can’t believe Hillary would be coasting into the primaries with her current margin of black support if most people knew how much damage the Clintons have done—the millions of families that were destroyed the last time they were in the White House, thanks to their boastful embrace of the mass incarceration machine and their total capitulation to the right-wing narrative on race, crime, welfare and taxes. ........ In South Carolina, where African-Americans comprise 30 percent of the population, Mr. Sanders cut Ms. Clinton’s lead from 40 points to 22 points. ...... To combat the surge in support Mr. Sanders is receiving in South Carolina, Ms. Clinton sent her husband, Bill Clinton, and 170 black women to try to protect her lead in the state. ...... In Nevada, where Latinos make up nearly 30 percent of the population, Mr. Sanders is rapidly closing the gap against Ms. Clinton. ....... When Democratic voters are exposed to Mr. Sanders, they overwhelmingly support him ..... If Mr. Sanders continues to stay on message with a campaign that is resonating with Democratic voters who actually want change, Ms. Clinton may begin to see the nomination dissipate before her eyes like it did in 2008 against Barack Obama, who was a junior senator from Illinois with little name recognition prior to his campaign.
Michael Bloomberg could be the one to stop Trump: Wells
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering running for U.S. president and could be an antidote to the Donald.
I like to think that Donald Trump is Bloomberg’s No. 1 target, and that it was the Donald he was addressing when he told the Times that he finds the current level of campaign discourse “distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to the voters.” ....... Trump responded in his trademark fully infantilized style: “He was a friend of mine. As far as I’m concerned, he’s not a friend anymore.” What sounded to Trump like a “nasty shot” was, he assumed, directed at him. ...... Bloomberg in his first run for mayor. ... As I wrote then, Bloomberg’s schedule was as light as dandelion fluff. He showed up half an hour late at a Staten Island bingo hall and spoke for all of two minutes — a felicitous public speaker he was not — before retreating into his tinted-window black Suburban. There were no connecting-with-the-people moments. ....... An encounter at his campaign office could not have lasted more than 30 seconds, barely enough time to note the man’s taut presence, a person of physical discipline ..... But that is what happened. Bloomberg didn’t win by much, but he won. And ran the city for three terms. (In a 2013 profile, the New Yorker’s Ken Auletta pegged Bloomberg’s three-campaign spend at $260 million.) ....... In office he was anti-smoking, anti junk food (autocratically so), pro gay rights, pro abortion rights, pro bike lines and was a founder of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. He pushed through tax increases and left office with a $2-billion surplus. Critics include those opposed to charter schools, which Bloomberg fought for. ....... I once interviewed his partner, Diana Taylor, who at the time was superintendent of banking for the state of New York. Taylor’s big push was to incentivize banks to service low income and immigration populations, which had been red circled (read abandoned) by the financial services industry.......Unlike Trump, in other words,

Bloomberg is not a hard-line ideologue and surrounds himself with thinkers. ...... unlike Trump, he really is a self-made businessman. His father was a bookkeeper at a dairy.

Forbes estimates Bloomberg’s current net worth at a whisker shy of $40 billion. The magazine pegs Trump’s net worth at $4.5 billion. And he started out with $1 million from dad. .......

Someone needs to block the Trump insanity. Mike Bloomberg might be just the man for the job.

Mark Cuban Says Mike Bloomberg Should Run For President
Bloomberg is reportedly considering a run, and sees an opportunity for an independent candidacy if Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were to become the nominees for their respective parties. ..... Cuban added that he isn’t ready to pick a candidate, but he again encouraged Bloomberg to run to see if he would change the tone of the debate.
The 'good billionaire': Silicon Valley roots for Bloomberg for president
The tech industry sees Michael Bloomberg, who is fiscally conservative and socially liberal, as one of its own – the hero to Donald Trump’s ‘bad billionaire’
there is one corner of the US still holding out for a Bloomberg candidacy: Silicon Valley. ..... The tech industry sees the billionaire entrepreneur, who is fiscally conservative and socially liberal, as one of its own....... “Bloomberg is good billionaire to Trump’s bad billionaire,” former Google executive and current startup founder Mike Dudas said. ..... In part, Bloomberg’s popularity in the tech sector stems from the absence of any other candidates that so closely resemble the values that underpin the industry. ...... “In Silicon Valley, everybody loves somebody who’s an operator,” Calacanis added. “Bloomberg’s an operator. You just look on Twitter people are like yes, yes, yes, Bloomberg please, please, please.” ...... Vermont senator Bernie Sanders may enjoy a constituency among some radicals in Silicon Valley – and the self-avowed socialist is now outpacing Clinton in fundraising among employees at the five largest tech companies. ...... “He’s an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur,” Shonfeld said. “He invented the SaaS business model. That’s how he made his billions.” ....... He added: “Literally I’m here at the Nob Hill Center and there’s hundreds of companies here that are all trying to sell subscriptions and most of them for data services, and he [Bloomberg] invented this.” .......

“The guy who won the New Hampshire primary for the Republicans has openly threatened to shut down the internet to fight Isis,” Johnson said, referring to Trump. “How do you propose to shut down the internet?”

Thomas Piketty on the rise of Bernie Sanders: the US enters a new political era
The Vermont senator’s success so far demonstrates the end of the politico-ideological cycle opened by the victory of Ronald Reagan at the 1980 elections
From 1930 to 1980 – for half a century – the rate for the highest US income (over $1m per year) was on average 82%, with peaks of 91% from the 1940s to 1960s (from Roosevelt to Kennedy), and still as high as 70% during Reagan’s election in 1980. ....... This policy in no way affected the strong growth of the post-war American economy, doubtless because there is not much point in paying super-managers $10m when $1m will do. The estate tax, which was equally progressive with rates applicable to the largest fortunes in the range of 70% to 80% for decades (the rate has almost never exceeded 30% to 40% in Germany or France), greatly reduced the concentration of American capital, without the destruction and wars which Europe had to face....... Reagan was elected in 1980 on a program aiming to restore a mythical capitalism said to have existed in the past. ....... The culmination of this new program was the tax reform of 1986, which ended half a century of a progressive tax system and lowered the rate applicable to the highest incomes to 28%. ....... Democrats never truly challenged this choice in the Clinton (1992-2000) and Obama (2008-2016) years, which stabilized the taxation rate at around 40% (two times lower than the average level for the period 1930 to 1980). This triggered an explosion of inequality coupled with incredibly high salaries for those who could get them, as well as a stagnation of revenues for most of America ......

Reagan also decided to freeze the federal minimum wage level, which from 1980 was slowly but surely eroded by inflation (little more than $7 an hour in 2016, against nearly $11 in 1969). Again, this new political-ideological regime was barely mitigated by the Clinton and Obama years.

...... Hillary Clinton, who fought to the left of Barack Obama in 2008 on topics such as health insurance, appears today as if she is defending the status quo, just another heiress of the Reagan-Clinton-Obama political regime. .......

Sanders makes clear he wants to restore progressive taxation and a higher minimum wage ($15 an hour). To this he adds free healthcare and higher education in a country where inequality in access to education has reached unprecedented heights, highlighting a gulf standing between the lives of most Americans, and the soothing meritocratic speeches pronounced by the winners of the system.

....... Meanwhile, the Republican party sinks into a hyper-nationalist, anti-immigrant and anti-Islam discourse (even though Islam isn’t a great religious force in the country), and a limitless glorification of the fortune amassed by rich white people. The judges appointed under Reagan and Bush have lifted any legal limitation on the influence of private money in politics, which greatly complicates the task of candidates like Sanders......However,

new forms of political mobilization and crowdfunding can prevail and push America into a new political cycle.

What a Bloomberg Run Might Look Like
If it feels to the Democratic and Republican Party establishments that events are spinning out of control, there’s a reason for that, but things could get worse in a hurry. ..... If Bloomberg is actually willing to commit 10 figures to a presidential run, he can compete on turf that has not been up for grabs in decades. That’s not to say it would be an easy fight, but the GOP nominee or Hillary Clinton could not ignore him in California, New York, Florida or Texas. If a “silent majority” truly exists, and they are disgusted with their options for the general election, Bloomberg could find his path down the middle. ...... His campaign would add radical uncertainty to a race that already feels unpredictable.

He’s just the latest harbinger of the coming end of America’s devotion to its two-party heritage. He might just be the disrupter the system needs.

....... Reed Galen is a political strategist in California. He was John McCain's deputy campaign manager until July 2007.
Michael Bloomberg’s Road Map to the White House
You are the eighth-richest person in America with a net worth of more than $38 billion..... You served three terms as mayor of New York. You’ve been a Democrat, a Republican and an independent. And you believe that the country has suffered from political polarization and needs a strong president who can get things done and bring the country together. ....... One-third of voters self-identify as independents, and Congress’ job approval sits in the low double digits. Voters are unhappy with the status quo and the two parties’ political establishments. ...... with the two major parties nominating controversial candidates – that’s the scenario I’m starting with – there looks to be room for a candidate in the middle. ...... Gallup found

Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Utah, Arkansas, Tennessee, Montana, Idaho, Oklahoma and South Carolina

are the nation’s most conservative states. Bloomberg could not carry any of them. ....... Gallup’s most reliably Republican presidential states that are not already on the most conservative list:

Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kentucky, West Virginia, Missouri, Texas and Georgia.

....... Voters in those

20 states, with 166 electoral votes

, would be very likely to support a conservative and/or a Republican, not an elitist Manhattan billionaire independent who occupies the left on guns, the size of soft drinks and other issues. ....... Gallup’s list of most liberal states includes Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Maryland. Add to them states that are among the most reliably Democratic – Rhode Island, Delaware, Illinois, New Mexico, Michigan and the District of Columbia – and you have

12 states with 151 electoral votes.

........ New York, Connecticut and New Jersey might be uniquely receptive to a Bloomberg candidacy, and California, which ranks seventh as both the most liberal and the most Democratic state in the nation, according to Gallup, might find his message appealing. More importantly, if Bloomberg were to have any chance of winning 270 electoral votes, he would need to carry the Golden State and the other three Northeast states. ........ I count 29 states (plus D.C.) with 243 electoral votes as starting out of Bloomberg’s reach. That leaves 21 states, with 295 electoral votes, as potentially winnable ....... Bloomberg would need to win 270 of the available 295 electoral votes, a virtual impossibility considering that some states would be particularly difficult for him in a three-way race – e.g., Alaska, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, North Carolina and Ohio. ........ the national map and voters’ strong partisan attachments – in spite of the public’s grumbling about partisanship – make it tantamount to impossible for Michael Bloomberg to win the White House. The electoral votes simply are not there. And if he were to run,

he almost certainly would increase the GOP nominee’s chances of becoming the next president

......At the end of the day, Bloomberg’s path to the presidency in 2016 looks remarkably like a dead end.
Why Michael Bloomberg Could Run for President and Win
Not many people considered the possibility last year that Trump could win the Republican nomination, or that Bernie Sanders could win the Democratic nomination. Before we join all the other pundits in dismissing out of hand the possibility that Michael Bloomberg might be sworn into office as the 45th president of the United States, let’s stress test the assumption. ......

A candidate who is neither a socialist nor a racist would have a large niche.

...... Jesse Ventura in Minnesota, Lowell Weicker in Connecticut, or Angus King in Maine, among others, have established the mechanical viability of defeating two major-party candidates. It is clearly possible for an independent to win a three-way race against two established party candidates in a state. And if it is possible to do it in a state, it is also possible to do so in enough states to add up to 270 electoral votes. ......... In 1992, Ross Perot was up to 39 percent in the polls, before he began wigging out in public, ranting about President Bush’s plot to disrupt his daughter’s wedding, dropping out of the race even while riding high, and then erratically reentering in October. Perot still received 19 percent of the vote. ....... Getting from competitive to first place is not as imposing a barrier as it might seem, though. A three-candidate race creates an inherently unstable dynamic, where voters have to choose based not only on their preference, as they do in a normal two-way race, but also on the basis of which candidate can win. ...... One paradox of American politics is that high numbers of voters call themselves “independent” even as smaller numbers of them actually swing between the parties. Political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster have called this phenomenon “negative partisanship” — most voters have developed deep voting attachments not out of positive affection for their own party but out of intense loathing and fear of the opposing party. An initial Bloomberg base would consist of pure independents (a small number) plus Democrats who can’t abide socialism and Republicans who can’t abide Trump. If that base reached a threshold of viability, Bloomberg could see a sudden influx of Democrats who are terrified of Trump, Republicans who are terrified of Sanders, or both. ......... the election of either a self-professed critic of the “free enterprise system,” or

a reality-television buffoon

as president ....... In a world like that, the election of buttoned-down CEO Michael Bloomberg might quickly seem not just thinkable but downright boring.
Bihar court orders registration of case against JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar
The complaint said that the news of Kanhaiya and others raising anti-national slogans injured national sentiment and created hatred in the minds and urged the court to take legal action against the accused.
JNU Student Leader Kanhaiya Kumar Framed By Centre: Bihar CM Nitish Kumar
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday said the central government framed JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar on sedition charges. ..... He said Jawaharlal Nehru University is a prestigious institution and there is a tradition of free debate and discussion in a democratic environment. An attempt is now being made to “murder” democracy in the institution. ..... Kumar also said

the BJP-led government is trying to create an emergency-like situation in the country

. ......“Those who stand and speak in favour of the BJP are nationalists and those who oppose the BJP are termed anti-national. The BJP should not try to impose its ideology on the country,” he said.
Nepal PM says Constitution can be amended
India publicly expressed its unhappiness with the new Nepalese Constitution, which it felt was not “inclusive” enough and failed to protect the rights of the Madhesis in the Terai region. ..... India has been pushing Nepal to amend its Constitution to address the demands of the Madhesis who are ethnically and culturally closer to India.
Meet Madhesi demands for successful India visit: Nepal PM told
“The people and the government of India have shown overwhelming support to our issues during the six-month-long agitation, launched by the UDMF, so if the Prime Minister wants to make his India visit successful, he should address our issues,” Mahato told reporters in Kathmandu. ..... Madhesis, who are largely of Indian-origin, have led a nearly six-month-long violent protest for better political representation, redrawing of the provincial boundaries and the federal structure of the Constitution. The protests have claimed more than 50 lives before being called off unexpectedly this month. .... “Boundary demarcation is the bottom-line of our demands and unless the demands are properly addressed through an amendment to the Constitution the movement will not stop,” Mahato warned.
In South Carolina, Clinton and Sanders compete for black votes
who helped Jesse Jackson win the state of Vermont in the ’80s ..... feel that many of the crime policies that began under President Bill Clinton have done long-term harm to their communities. ..... Sanders has to do the ‘Carolina two-step’ ” — increasing his name recognition and then convincing voters he can deliver. ..... Clinton proposed new federal regulations that would end what she said were

overly punitive school discipline policies that disproportionately affect minority students

. ........... “We have got to achieve the day when young black males and women can walk the streets without being worried about being harassed by a police officer.” ...... Sanders participated in the 1963 March on Washington as a college student and says he wants to end racial profiling, combat police misconduct and dismantle private prisons. ...... “Bernie has a passionate, motivational speech that draws young people,” she said, taking a respite from her call sheet. “What I love about Hillary is her facts. Her reality. She’s not selling you a white picket fence. She’s selling you things that she can deliver.” ......

“Things are picking up, and Bernie’s name is coming up in every conversation,” he said. “It’s going to be a lot closer than people ever believed it could be.”

After Historic Freeze, an Unlikely Spring Spreads East
Take off your parkas and get out your umbrellas — only two days after some of the coldest weather in decades blasted the Northeast, vastly warmer conditions moved in Tuesday, flipping temperatures by as much as 60 degrees and opening the rain buckets. ..... Binghamton, New York, went from a low of minus-18 on Sunday to a high of 43 on Tuesday. Boston, which plunged to minus-9 degrees on Sunday, basked in 50 degrees Tuesday. .... The transformation comes thanks to the leading edge of a surge of warm Western air moving in from the Rocky Mountains.
No longer blind: Why that gravitational wave discovery is so heavy
The detection of spacetime ripples produced by a cataclysmic collision of two black holes is the first major discovery of the new field of gravitational-wave astronomy.
The ability to directly detect gravitational waves — which are generated by the acceleration or deceleration of massive objects in space — has been compared to a deaf person suddenly gaining the ability to hear sound. An entirely new realm of information is now available. ....... "It's like Galileo pointing the telescope for the first time at the sky" ...... For many centuries, astronomers could only work with optical light. But relatively recently, researchers built instruments allowing them to study the universe using X-rays, radio waves, ultraviolet waves and gamma-rays. Each time, scientists got a new view of the universe. .......... Other exotic objects scientists hope to study with gravitational waves are neutron stars, which are mind-bogglingly dense, burned-out stellar corpses: A teaspoon of neutron-star material would weigh about a billion tons on Earth. Scientists aren't sure what happens to regular matter under such extreme conditions, but gravitational waves could provide extremely helpful clues, because these waves should carry information about the interior of the neutron star all the way to Earth, LIGO scientists said. ........ "Until now, we have only seen warped space-time when it is very calm — as though we had only seen the surface of the ocean on a very calm day, when it's quite glassy" ...... Questions remain about the nature of the graviton, the particle believed to carry the gravitational force (just like the photon is the particle that carries the electromagnetic force). ..... scientists have many questions about the inner workings of black holes, which gravitational waves may help illuminate (so to speak). ....... "When Einstein predicted general relativity, who would have predicted that we'd use it every day when we use our cellphones?" ...... (General relativity provides an understanding how gravity influences the passing of time, and this information is necessary for GPS technology, which uses satellites that orbit further away from the gravitational pull of the Earth than people on the surface). ........ LIGO is "the most sensitive instrument ever built," said Reitze, and the technological advances that have been made while building the observatory may feed into technologies that will be used in ways people can't yet predict.
The Chirp Heard Across the Universe
two of the largest and most sensitive microphones ever made — a brief, rising tone from gravitational waves generated by an immeasurably powerful collision of two black holes a billion years ago ..... Various justifications have been offered, from lists of the practical benefits of past discoveries that seemed useless when they were made, to the metaphysical notion that the better we understand our universe, the better we understand ourselves. ...... The curiosity of our species knows no bounds; more remarkably, neither does our capacity for satisfying it. And that is truly wonderful in itself, even if it doesn’t lead to a better toaster. ...... “seems destined to take its place among the great sound bites of science, ranking with Alexander Graham Bell’s “Mr. Watson — come here” and Sputnik’s first beeps from orbit.” ..... LIGO (for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) ...... potentially changes the shape of scientific inquiry into the next century ..... vindicates an investment of about $1.1 billion over 40 years by the National Science Foundation.
Bypoll Results 2016 from Bihar, MP, UP, Punjab, Karnataka and Telangana: BJP and allies win 7 out of 12 seats
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