Bloomberg-Trump-- Same-Same

Trump and Bloomberg had a dysfunctional relationship that goes back decades-- friends, rivals, allies, enemies. The used to play golf together, although Bloomberg is still whining that Trump always cheated, something Mini-Mike has in common with everyone else who ever played golf with Trump. Bloomberg wound up with 20 or 30 times more money than Trump, so he won. He became mayor of the city they both lived in. He won. Then Trump became president and Bloomberg flipped out. He has been driven insane by his incompetent, laughable, moron-competitor beating him. So he decided to run himself. This has nothing to do with our country or our people, other than the potential to ruin everything that is America as we know it.

The two are mirror images of each other-- although Trump seems crazier... at least so far.

Tactically, they are too similar for comfort. Yesterday, I tweeted that since Trump's understanding of government doesn't go further than Louis XIV's most famous quote, "L'etat c'est moi," he has decreed that John Bolton's embarrassing new book will not be published before the election... since it could harm national security ("national security" meaning his reelection bid). Trump will stop at nothing to win since he identifies and conflates national interest with self-interest. Bloomberg is that same kind of character. What billionaire isn't? (Note: Bernie is right; there should be no billionaires.)


Yesterday, Shaun Hussain and Jeff Bercovici, writing for the L.A. Times reported that Twitter is suspending 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts, citing "platform manipulation". It's another example of two things:

1- Bloomberg's unawareness that the rules apply to him
2- Bloomberg trying to deceive voters into thinking he has grassroots support through social media manipulation

According to Hussain and Bercovici one of Bloomberg's strategies-- "deploying a large number of Twitter accounts to push out identical messages-- has backfired. On Friday, Twitter began suspending 70 accounts posting pro-Bloomberg content in a pattern that violates company rules. 'We have taken enforcement action on a group of accounts for violating our rules against platform manipulation and spam,' a Twitter spokesman said. Some of the suspensions will be permanent, while in other cases account owners will have to verify they have control of their accounts."

As part of a far-reaching social media strategy, the Bloomberg campaign has hired hundreds of temporary employees to pump out campaign messages through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These “deputy field organizers” receive $2,500 per month to promote the former New York mayor’s candidacy within their personal social circles, in addition to other, more conventional duties. They receive campaign-approved language that they can opt to post.

In posts reviewed by The Times, organizers often used identical text, images, links and hashtags. Many accounts used were created only in the last two months. Bloomberg officially entered the presidential race on Nov. 24.

After The Times inquired about this pattern, Twitter determined it ran afoul of its “Platform Manipulation and Spam Policy.” Laid out in September 2019 in response to the activities of Russian-sponsored troll networks in the 2016 presidential election, the policy prohibits practices such as artificially boosting engagement on tweets and using deliberately misleading profile information.

By sponsoring hundreds of new accounts that post copy-pasted content, Twitter said the campaign violated its rules against “creating multiple accounts to post duplicative content,” “posting identical or substantially similar Tweets or hashtags from multiple accounts you operate” and “coordinating with or compensating others to engage in artificial engagement or amplification, even if the people involved use only one account.”

The suspensions may sweep up accounts belonging to unpaid Bloomberg supporters or campaign volunteers. While the Bloomberg’s campaign’s practice of paying Twitter users was a factor in the suspensions, a company spokesman said accounts behaving in substantially the same manner will receive the same treatment, regardless of who controls them.

...Facebook’s response to the Bloomberg campaign’s novel social strategy has also been evolving. The social network views the campaign’s activity as falling under its rules for branded content, not the rules against “coordinated inauthentic behavior” devised largely in response to Russian election meddling.

Coincidence? Oh sure

Facebook’s rules for branded content “require disclosure of paid partnerships anytime there has been an exchange of value between a creator or publisher and a business partner.” In 2018, the company began to require more detailed disclosure for political ads to discourage state-sponsored influence operations.

The software tool created for buying political ads on Facebook did not allow for branded content campaigns by influencers. Earlier this month, after the Bloomberg campaign bypassed the tool entirely to mount a large-scale paid influencer campaign, Facebook lifted that ban.

I get between 100 and 200 spam e-mails a day and I've become adept at identifying spam and deleting it unopened. The other day I received an e-mail from the New Republic and opened it. But Bloomberg had paid them for the right to send out his propaganda to their list. Once I opened it, I found this box at the top and at the bottom of the e-mail:

The body of the e-mail purported to be a survey of "top supporters," without identifying what they were top supports of-- until read a little further and realized that Bloomberg hadn't just bought out the New Republic but also a scam-PAC called Stop Republicans, run by Harry Pascal who tries passing his operation off as "progressive." So far this cycle-- before the payoff from Bloomberg-- they had taken in $3,781,486, not a nickel of which has gone to candidates.

The "survey" was just a slick push-poll for Republican oligarch Michael Bloomberg, pretending to be a Democrat in his personal feud with Señor Trumpanzee. I bet Bloomberg could offer Trump a couple of billion dollars to dump Pence and name him his running mate with an agreement that he'd resign after the election. Do you doubt Trump would agree?

Right after the Nevada caucuses, Elizabeth Warren absolutely eviscerated Bloomberg up in Seattle in no uncertain terms. She began talking about a "threat that is coming our way. And it's a big threat-- not a tall one, but a big one." Apparently someone told her that Mini-Mike goes absolutely berserk when anyone comments on his physical stature. But she was just getting started. Watch this classic clip:

It Would Be Hard To Imagine A President As Entitled And Self-Centered As Trump... But Think About Republican Oligarch Michael Bloomberg

Julia Carrie Wong, reporting for The Guardian-- $45 Million in 90 days: How Bloomberg Bought Your Facebook Feed-- wrote that "In the first six weeks of 2020, more than 1.6 billion of the 2.4 billion presidential campaign ads shown to U.S. Facebook users were from the Bloomberg campaign. Since launching his campaign in mid-November, the former mayor of New York City has spent nearly $45m on Facebook ads-- more than all his opponents combined. And Bloomberg’s spending doesn’t just dwarf that of other Democrats; Donald Trump’s giant re-election effort on Facebook looks paltry in comparison.”

Bloomberg is also blanketing the TV and radio airwaves-- especially in deep red SuperTuesday states like Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Alabama where the other Democrats are spending nothing. He has also been pestering YouTube and Google users with another $40 million in annoying pop-up ads and paying Instagram "mini-influencers for Mini-Mike" to put up "well-lit" photos of himself with campaign-approved messaging. That debate performance killed his momentum on the spot. He's now behind Biden for the conservative lane and, by his own logic, should drop out and help rally conservative Democrats around Status Quo Joe. But no one things his ego-driven campaign would consider doing anything like that. Note that after the debate the two progressive in the race gained 4 points while the 4 conservatives lost a total of 5 points.

Tomorrow, Bernie will be the featured guest on 60 Minutes. In a teaser CBS put out yesterday, Anderson Cooper asked him about Bloomberg's debacle debate in Vegas this week:





In that debate, Elizabeth Warren pulverized Bloomberg on several fronts, one of which was his Trump-like non-disclosure agreements he signed with women he molested after paying them off to keep quiet. At a CNN town hall Wednesday Warren rubbed it in, saying "I used to teach contract law. And I thought I would make this easy. I wrote up a release and covenant not to sue. And all that Mayor Bloomberg has to do is download it. I’ll text it. Sign it. And then the women, or men, will be free to speak and tell their own stories." Her "or men" is a reference to the fact that Bloomberg is a closet case who has also molested young men and shut them up with pay-offs as well. Can you imagine what Trump would do with that information?

On Thursday, NYC-based journalist Alison Rose Levy, writing for TruthDig, took on the DNC's disaster-in-the-making decision to align with the Republican oligarch, a political opportunist with an open checkbook. And this despite (???) Bloomberg's years-long battle to help elect Republicans. "Bloomberg," she noted, "calls himself an environmentalist while investing in fracking, championing it politically (as he did at this week’s Democratic presidential debate), and donating to a notorious green-washing environmental organization, the Environmental Defense Fund, in an ongoing but doomed effort to make fracking safe."

“Michael Bloomberg is often sold to people as a climate hero. Headlines that tout him as a green visionary adorn the pages of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He skips across the globe as the UN’s special envoy for climate action,” Derek Seidman wrote in Eyes on the Ties. “Bloomberg’s framing of fracking as the practical, common-sense option is a big obstacle to more far-reaching measures needed to curb carbon emissions now.”

At this week’s Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, Bloomberg reiterated his support for fracking, dismissing the Sanders-backed Green New Deal. Bloomberg also opposes plans to transition to renewables within the time frame dictated by reports issued by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Bloomberg’s support for both fossil fuels and Republicans may be connected. Consider this useful research provided by Alex Kotch of the Center for Media and Democracy:

Over the last decade, Bloomberg helped Republicans take and maintain control of the U.S. Senate, which, in the Trump era and under Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) leadership, has confirmed scores of right-wing judges, blocked liberal legislation passed by the House, and shielded the president from any repercussions after seeking foreign election assistance, tampering with witnesses and defying congressional subpoenas.

For several decades up to and through 2018, Bloomberg, whose own party affiliation has changed repeatedly, “donated over $900,000 directly to Republican candidates’ campaigns, national GOP party committees and federal PACs of state Republican Party committees,” Kotch reported. Bloomberg added millions more through his two super PACs, one of which spent over $10 million “supporting Republican federal candidates from 2012-16.”

In what the Philadelphia Inquirer called a “pivotal” 2016 campaign that “many thought could decide control of the Senate,” Bloomberg “poured millions of dollars into the contest-- to help Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey” gain reelection. Bloomberg’s $5.9 million donation, used to buy television ads in key Philadelphia suburbs, portrayed the pro-fracking Republican as a moderate centrist, helping him win by a narrow margin over Democrat Katie McGinty, an environmental policy expert.

A Bloomberg spokesperson now claims the billionaire’s support for Toomey was based on the latter’s stance on gun control, even though Toomey’s challenger McGinty “supported far stronger gun measures, including bans on assault-style weapons.”

Raising further questions as to Bloomberg’s actual agenda in pushing Toomey, McGinty campaign adviser Mike Mikus noted that with the Senate secured by Republicans, no gun bills “would see any light as long as [McConnell] controlled the chamber. The Senate was up for grabs, and [Bloomberg] clearly sided with Mitch McConnell.”

Whatever his purported motive in helping Toomey, Bloomberg spent considerable funds to reelect a fracking apologist who represented the environmentally devastated swing state of Pennsylvania, the second most important natural gas state after Texas. Fracking may represent a boon to investor-donors like Bloomberg and their vested politicians, but the practice poses a clear health hazard to Pennsylvania communities as well as climate hazards to the global community. A recent review of scientific literature found close correlations between “health impacts including cancer, infant mortality, depression, pneumonia, asthma, skin-related hospitalizations and other general health symptoms” and “living near unconventional oil and gas development [in] Pennsylvania.”

In November 2019, Toomey introduced federal legislation to unilaterally prevent future presidents from introducing a moratorium on fracking. The Pike County Courier reported that the measure squarely aims “at several Democratic presidential candidates” by thwarting their potential moves with regard to introducing fracking regulations.

Bloomberg’s intervention-- supporting a pro-fracking senator and keeping the Senate under Republican-control-- unleashed other serious consequences. One related outcome of that Senate race is that in preserving GOP control, the Senate was able to see through Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. In Justice Kavanaugh, the nation’s top court gained an anti-choice ideologue who had faced credible charges of sexual predation.

The problematic aspect of Bloomberg’s personal history vis-s-vis allegations of his own sexist remarks and actions was discussed at Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate. After being energetically challenged on the debate stage by Democratic rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Bloomberg explained that he had needed to sign non-disclosure agreements with several women in his professional milieu who he claimed were offended because “they did not like a joke I told.”

...The exploitation of people, earthly resources and money cannot be ignored or dismissed. Bloomberg now poses a new danger by using his largesse to act, in turns, as either a kingmaker or candidate, thus threatening the nomination process and the will of American voters. Sanders, currently the clear Democratic front-runner, is the sole candidate who has pledged to rely only on donations from citizens rather than from the billionaires who fund nearly all the other candidates.

Through the campaign this year, Sanders has helped Americans to grasp what has been apparent but long denied: Billionaires like Bloomberg have been controlling the country, decimating the middle class, putting health care out of reach and destroying the environment for profit. Democrats can’t afford to anoint a candidate who uses his money and influence to rob them of their futures.

Bloomberg's Campaign Is About One Thing: An Offer To Sell Your Soul

Yesterday I got an e-mail from a progressive member of a listserv I'm a member of. I'm not sure if he's a Bernie supporter or an Elizabeth supporter but I'd guess he's backing one of them. He wrote that "some grassroots organizers have compiled a social media toolkit and are planning a twitter storm from 12-2 pm CST to highlight Bloomberg's terrible record. The hashtag is #AskBloomberg-- please send this to your networks and get your posting fingers stretched out to contribute this afternoon!!

My own social media accounts are filled with pro-Bernie posts-- and have been for decades. Why? Easy: I agree with his policy agenda and I admire his leadership traits. No one is paying me to post about him.

Bloomberg is paying everyone without a soul to work for him, to endorse him, to post well lit pictures of him. And yesterday Wall Street Journal reporters Jeff Horowitz and Georgia Wells wrote that Bloomberg is bankrolling a social-media army to push his propaganda. Yep, Mini-Mike is paying social media mini-influencers $2,500 per month to promote him to all their contacts-- "hundreds of workers in California to post regularly on their personal social-media accounts in support of the candidate and send text messages to their friends about him."

The effort, which could cost millions of dollars, is launching ahead of California’s March 3 primary and could later be deployed nationwide, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. It is one of the most unorthodox yet by the heavy-spending billionaire and blurs the lines between traditional campaign organizing and the distribution of sponsored content.

Most campaigns encourage their supporters to post on social media about their candidates, but paying them at this scale to express support on their personal accounts is unusual, experts say.





A California staffer and the documents reviewed by The Journal describe a multimillion-dollar-a-month effort aimed at helping Mr. Bloomberg attract support after having entered the race long after other candidates had built their ground campaigns. The documents also say the campaign is adopting a strategy, which it credits the Trump campaign with using to great effect, to try to influence potential voters through people they know and trust rather than strangers.

To staff the effort, the campaign is hiring more than 500 “deputy digital organizers” to work 20 to 30 hours a week and receive $2,500 a month, the documents show. In exchange, those workers are expected to promote Mr. Bloomberg to everyone in their phones’ contacts by text each week and make social-media posts supporting him daily, the documents show.

“The Fight for Equal Rights Has Been One of the Great Fights of Mike’s Life,” reads one such suggested prompt regarding Mr. Bloomberg’s early support for same-sex marriage.

Publicly available job applications for those positions require applicants to provide their social-media handles for review and state that staffers may be asked to undertake more traditional field-organizing work like phone banking.

Helping organize the effort is Outvote, an app that enables users to send pre-written texts, post campaign materials to social media and send data back to campaigns. The app, funded by Higher Ground Labs, a Democratic political technology incubator, generally focuses on pushing volunteers to send content. Outvote also allows users to look up whether their friends have voted in past elections by matching their contact lists against public data.

A spokeswoman for the campaign characterized the workers being paid to promote Mr. Bloomberg as the future of political organizing. “We are meeting voters everywhere on any platform that they consume their news,” a spokeswoman for the Bloomberg campaign said. “One of the most effective ways of reaching voters is by activating their friends and network to encourage them to support Mike for president.”

Facebook Inc.’s policies historically have addressed the worlds of political advertising and influencer marketing as separate. The company has only recently begun to grapple with the intersection of the two.

It is not clear if messages like those the Bloomberg campaign is suggesting would need to be labeled as sponsored content under Facebook’s disclosure rules. A Facebook spokeswoman said posts by outside “content creators” would require labels if a campaign paid for them, but that posts by campaign employees wouldn’t need to be labeled as ads. The company didn’t address how it would categorize posts by employees paid to promote content to their personal social networks.

A review of social-media posts by some people being paid by the campaign found they aren’t labeled as sponsored content.

Officials at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have said that merely tagging a brand or business on social media is a form of endorsement that falls under its purview--and should be disclosed if an audience would view an endorsement differently knowing that an influencer had financially benefited from the brand.

The Bloomberg campaign spokeswoman said that the campaign doesn’t believe posts from its deputy field organizers need to be labeled, describing them as a new form of political organizing rather than paid influencer content.

Political campaigns have long used a combination of volunteers and paid workers to do things like run phone banks and knock on doors to support a candidate. But experts said the Bloomberg campaign’s willingness to pay to leverage supporters’ existing social connections is novel.

James Thurber, professor of government at American University, said groups promoting political issues sometimes use similar strategies of paying people to express support online, but it is unusual from a candidate. “It’s classic AstroTurf tactics,” he said. “When you have unlimited resources the way Bloomberg seems to, you can do that.”

The Trump campaign includes staff dedicated to digital and social media, but it doesn’t compensate people to post on their personal social media accounts, a spokeswoman said.

At least until recently, the Bloomberg campaign also planned to recruit another 2,500 campaign “digital organizing fellows” who would be paid $500 a month in exchange for posting daily on social media and putting every person in their contact list into the Bloomberg campaign’s database, according to documents reviewed by the Journal and a deputy organizer who had been told to expect to oversee five of the fellows.

The campaign spokeswoman said that it had decided not to proceed with the “fellows.” She also said the campaign had changed the title of the $2,500-a-month deputy digital roles to “deputy field organizer” to reflect that the role may also include more traditional campaign activities.

Bloomberg’s spending has helped spark a rise in the polls, enabling him to qualify for Wednesday’s Democratic debate.

Though he only declared his candidacy late last year, Mr. Bloomberg has exceeded the advertising spending of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar combined.

The Bloomberg campaign also recently worked with an offshoot of media and marketing company Jerry Media to contract with large meme accounts to push the campaign, the New York Times has reported, leading Facebook last week to clarify its rules around such posts.

The Bloomberg campaign will suggest content for sharing and exert some control over the social-media outreach efforts, according to the documents reviewed by the Journal. Though the Bloomberg campaign won’t have direct access or authority over its organizers’ social-media feeds, a team of quality-control staff will verify that the organizers are posting appropriately.

“Ha! Even Republicans think Mike is our best bet to defeat Trump! Let’s prove them right,” said one suggested message for text or social media, linking to a news article citing conservative political operatives bullish about Mr. Bloomberg’s chances.

The campaign’s approach is fine with at least some unpaid Bloomberg supporters, like Jason Miller.

A rabbi in Michigan who runs a social-media marketing company, Mr. Miller said he believes the former New York mayor is “a mensch” and that his willingness to spend a vast amount on his campaign makes him uniquely suited to beating Donald Trump.

He said he believes it is important to be transparent about paid commercial promotions, but he views the ethics of political activism as less clear.

“With a campaign, there is a gray area,” he said, noting the standard campaign practice of assigning both volunteers and paid staff to phone bank and knock on doors. While it is possible there should be clearer lines drawn in social media, he said, “it took decades for TV and radio to figure out what disclosure for ads should be.”

Meanwhile, I've never seen a campaign before where so many people hate the candidate's guts and want him to loose. I have leakers in the Bloomberg campaign calling me at least 2-3 times a week complaining about him or giving me harmful tips to checkout about the candidate they're working for!

Oligarch Alert: Michael Bloomberg Will Pay $150 To Anyone With A Following Of Over 1,000 People Who Says Nice Things About Him

Republican oligarch Michael Bloomberg goes batshit when anyone calls him "Mini-Mike." But focus groups have told him to ditch the "Michael," now that he's pretending to be a Democrat, and brainwash everyone into calling him "Mike." Just plain ole regular Mike. He's also paying social media influencers to make him seem cool. I bet anyone who goes for that will lose a lot of followers!

Daily Beast reporter Scott Bixby wrote that "in addition to a flood of traditional advertising on television, radio, and online outlets targeting Super Tuesday voters, the campaign’s advertising budget includes a strategy familiar to every other startup with a ton of cash and a questionable business model: paying influencers to make it seem cool."

The Bloomberg campaign has quietly begun a campaign on Tribe, a “branded content marketplace” that connects social-media influencers with the brands that want to advertise to their followers, to pitch influencers on creating content highlighting why they love the former New York City mayor-- for a price.

For a fixed $150 fee, the Bloomberg campaign is pitching micro-influencers-- someone who has from 1,000 to 100,000 followers, in industry parlance-- to create original content “that tells us why Mike Bloomberg is the electable candidate who can rise above the fray, work across the aisle so ALL Americans feel heard & respected.”

“Are you sick of the chaos & infighting overshadowing the issues that matter most to us? Please express your thoughts verbally or for still image posts please overlay text about why you support Mike,” the campaign copy tells would-be Bloomberg stans under the heading “Content We’d Love From You,” asking influencers to “Show+Tell why Mike is the candidate who can change our country for the better, state why YOU think he’s a great candidate.”

Tribe, which works with nearly 70,000 aspiring influencers, offers brands-- and, in this case, presidential campaigns—the ability to solicit custom-made content from aspiring influencers, who create custom social within the brand’s parameters for submission. If the brand accepts the content, the influencer is paid in exchange for the ability of the brand to license the content and place it on their own social channels-- or, if the campaign prefers, the influencers post the #sponcon to their own feeds, targeting followers that the brand might not otherwise reach.

The campaign post, reviewed by the Daily Beast, encourages submissions to be well lit, mention why the influencer thinks “we need a change in Government,” and for the creator to “be honest, passionate and be yourself!”

Influencers are asked not to use profanity, nudity, or “overtly negative content,” as well as be U.S. residents to participate.

“Mike Bloomberg is a middle class kid who worked his way through college,” the posting states under an “About Us” section, describing Bloomberg as “a self-made businessman, proven supporter of progressive values & can get things done.” The post also highlights his work on gun violence, creating a clean-energy economy, and “flipping 21 of 24 down-ballot House races he supported in 2018.”

The Bloomberg campaign declined to comment on the Tribe post, and an email to Tribe about whether it had worked with other political campaigns was not immediately returned.

The Bloomberg content campaign appears geared toward collecting content that can later be shared by the campaign, essentially creating a stock-image library of well-crafted, “organic”-seeming still images and videos custom-made for the campaign. The relatively low $150 cost per post also makes the investment comparatively cheap-- some influencers can command fees in the five or even six figures for a brand campaign, and that’s not even including celebrity accounts, who can earn enough money per post to make even billionaire Bloomberg blush.

The approach is novel. No other high-polling candidates reached by the Daily Beast said that their campaigns have ever paid influencers to create content for the campaign, or for influencers to post such content on their own channels in exchange for money.

But the notion that one of the richest people on the planet is paying micro-influencers in exchange for authentic-seeming endorsements from Instagrammers risks giving off what might be described as a Monty Burns-entering-a-film-festival vibe.

Bloomberg’s posting also sidesteps some of the more un-millennial aspects of his three-term mayoralty, from his years-long endorsement of the New York Police Department’s “stop-and-frisk” policy that disproportionately targeted black and Latino men to his unsuccessful war on large soft drinks.

If Mini-Mike is willing to pay $150 for a nice well-lit Instagram post, I wonder what he'll be offering people to fill his name in on their absentee ballot. I know there's someone high up in his sleazy campaign who specializes in that little tactic. Walker Bragman will NOT be getting a $150 check for this well-lit Bloomie-oriented post that reminds people that elitist closet cases, even from New York City, have little or no sympathy for transgender people.

Why Marianne Williamson Belongs On That Debate Stage

Marianne Williamson is not a member of the Inside the Beltway Club, and the Democratic establishment-- including their media allies and polling firms-- have largely blacked her out and pretended her campaign doesn't exist. (That said, she will be a guest on Morning Joe tomorrow.) When some random polls do include her, she always polls ahead of the 1% crowd, even U.S. senators like Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar and Reps like John Delaney and Julian Castro. When she was asked how she's going to dumb down her message for the media, she responded that she isn't getting shallow with voters and that she wants them to get deep with her. That's not a campaign that appeals to mass marketing media, whose job is selling Liberty Mutual auto insurance, Lifelock Identity Theft service, Gold Bond Ultimate Healing, Hersheys, Zantac, Allegra-D, Coffee-Mate and Geico Insurance. (Yes, those are this year's top-spending TV ad buyers.) I bet Marianne's message would appeal to as many of them as anything Mayor Pete has to say.

When it comes to which candidates are being covered by TV, Dhrumil Mehta has the beat covered (at fivethirtyeight.com). Whose kickoff got the most coverage?. "[V]oters," he wrote," haven’t heard the same amount of noise from each campaign, because cable news has amplified their launches differently... We found that Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke saw dramatic, mountainous peaks in mentions immediately following their announcements, and in some cases still days after. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren saw more modest bumps. And others-- such as Pete Buttigieg, John Hickenlooper and Jay Inslee-- saw molehills." Marianne Williamson? Not included. She rarely is. I was surprised to see her on the definitive NY Times list of candidates and probable candidates.

This week, Mehta updated his coverage to let his readers have a look at what the 3 cable news networks are doing since the announcement phase. Beto, Kamala and Bernie had the most, followed by Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar. Below 60 mentions between March 24-30 were Mayor Pete, Gillibrand, Frackenlooper, John Delaney, Julian Castro, Jay Inslee, Tulsi and Andrew Yang. Look how flat the graph of Yang's media coverage looks compared to front-runner (for coverage) Beto's.

[I]n the past week, Beto O’Rourke got the most coverage of any candidate on cable news, with Kamala Harris, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker all at least 95 mentions behind. Jay Inslee, Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard got next to no coverage.

Pete Buttigieg, who saw some favorable polling in Iowa and nationally this past week, was the only candidate who didn’t have a large reduction in media coverage from the previous week, but the overall amount of coverage he received was still modest compared with other major candidates.

Another way to gage which candidates are getting their messages out has to do with Social Media, of course, rather than TV. These are the candidates that the NY Times listed, but listed here according to the number of their Twitter followers. The biggest discrepancy-- among declared candidates-- between Twitter followers and TV coverage is, as you might guess, Marianne Williamson.

• Bernie- 9.18 million
• Cory Booker- 4.23 million
• Joe Biden- 3.39 million
• Marianne Williamson- 2.61 million
• Kamala Harris- 2.52 million
• Elizabeth Warren- 2.33 million
• Kirsten Gillibrand- 1.39 million
• Beto- 1.39 million

• Amy Klobuchar- 667K
• Mayor Pete- 645K
• Eric Swalwell- 501K
• Tulsi- 320K
• Michael Bennet- 285K
• Andrew Yang- 211K
• Julian Castro- 197K
• Steve Bullock- 167K
• Frackenlooper- 141K
• Seth Moulton- 136K

• Tim Ryan- 69.3K
• Terry McAuliffe- 65.8K
• Jay Inslee- 43.2K
• John Delaney- 18.5K
• Wayne Messam- 5,170

The irony of the non-coverage of Williamson is that she is one of the most issue and policy-oriented of the candidates. Her campaign website's issues section is probably the best of anyone running. Nor does she beat around the bush, ducking and weaving like most careerist politicians who are afraid of the voters. Yesterday she sent her supporters a very clear statement on why she supports the Green New Deal.

There’s a lot of talk these days about the Green New Deal, and for good reason. I do support a Green New Deal, and I want to be very clear about why. We need job opportunities for more Americans. We need massive infrastructure repair. And we need to green our economy. A Green New Deal does all three.

The Green New Deal cites the UN Study that says that we only have a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. The Green New Deal assumes that the only way to save our climate is to make huge and fundamental changes to the underlying systems that have created the climate crisis.

The Green New Deal sets the goal of making America a zero emissions nation by 2030. In addition, it mandates universal health care and a guarantee of a living wage for every American, reinforces the strength of unions, and mentions enacting and enforcing trade rules with strong labor and environmental protections.

Opposition to the Green New Deal comes of the form of those who say it will be “bad for business,” but in too many cases an unrestrained business sector has been bad for our democracy and bad for our lives. The American people should no longer acquiesce to the canard that making short terms profits for fossil fuel companies-- or any other major corporate conglomerate-- is somehow “better for business.” In fact, while such an amoral organizing principle has increased the profits for a few Americans, it has led to devastation for far too many.

As president, I will not forget this. I believe in capitalism with a conscience, and responsible business leaders will find me an enthusiastic partner in any effort to claim for the capitalist enterprise a moral and ethical center.

I support the Green New Deal because we cannot wait any longer to repair our country. A better version of same old same old will not disrupt a dysfunctional trajectory. Some things need to change in this country, and if I am president they will.

Keeping Marianne largely off TV, prevents her from reaching potential contributors to her campaign. If she doesn't get the 65,000 donors she needs, she won't be part of the debates. Even if it's just a buck, please consider contributing to her campaign here Her voice and perspective can only make the Democratic Party stronger and more relevant. Take a look at this video of Marianne doing a Q&A session on Boston's NPR television station.

The American People Understand That What's Needed Now Is Disruption, NOT Status Quo Politics

The carbon-tax approach to Climate Change has been an utter and preposterous failure-- the stupidest bullshit approach to an existential calamity in the history of man. Pelosi and other establishment Democrats like it and it's becoming a fallback for Republicans now that the real world is moving away from that "market-based" non-solution. Over the weekend, The Economist was singing its praises:

In economics, climate change is a big but straightforward example of a market failure, with a correspondingly straightforward solution. People take environmentally harmful decisions because the private benefits of doing so (using a car to get to work, say) outweigh the private costs (the price of the petrol to run the car). But emission-producing activities also impose social costs-- deaths from pollution and collisions, the contribution of carbon emissions to climate change-- that do not influence an individual’s decision to drive rather than walk or take public transport. To solve the climate problem, then, governments need only include the social cost of carbon in the prices people pay. The simplest approach is a levy on emissions corresponding to that social cost. Carbon-intensive activities become more expensive, and people efficiently reduce their emissions by responding to prices. It is an elegant approach favoured by this newspaper. In January a distinguished and bipartisan list of economists signed a letter that ran in the Wall Street Journal arguing in favour of a version that would refund carbon-tax revenue in the form of a flat, universal dividend.

It works on paper but would do little to save humanity. The Green New Deal proposed by Alexandria Ocasio and others is a game-changer that frightens status quo politicians out of their minds. They don't like game-changing; it threatens the status quo. That's why they fear and hate Ocasio Cortez. She's turning their world upside down and inside out and they're about ready to explode. Everything she wants is too hard.

"On the campaign trail," reported Gregory Krieg and Ashley Killough for CNN, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned herself into a phenomenon. So far it's been the same in Congress, where she's using her star power to turn ordinarily dry hearings into viral, must-see TV. This week her target-- well, one of them-- was campaign finance. Seated at a big leather chair, she went on the attack like she was back on the stump, whipping through a fierce argument about Washington's influence machinery that got retweeted and described as "just sensational" by late-night host James Corden. By Friday afternoon, she was getting invited to watch the Grammys with Chrissy Teigen, who called her 'my hero'."

Kevin McCarthy has been in electoral politics since 2000 when he was elected to be a Kern Community College District trustee. 2 years later he was in the state Assembly and in 2006 he was elected to Congress, where he's a DC version of a star-- like Mitch McTurtle, who has been in elective office since 1977 and was first elected to the Senate in 1984 and exercises immense-- and almost exclusively destructive-- power over every man, woman and child in our country. Can you image Chrissy Teigen ever inviting either over to watch the Grammys and have some pizza. The idea is absurd. Maybe if she was a lobbyist instead of a model...

Last week she "debuted the Green New Deal resolution, her first major legislative proposal, alongside Sen. Ed Markey-- a Massachusetts Democrat who's been in Congress for longer than she's been alive. The launch further stoked a suddenly riveting debate over climate change and jobs programs, which landed on the front page of the New York Times," a paper that barely mentioned her name while she ran her successful campaign against a hack status quo garbage politician who was slated to become the next Speaker after Pelosi finally disappears.

While the fate of the Green New Deal remains a long way off, Ocasio-Cortez has consistently defied critics from both parties who at times seem to be tripping over each other to question her tactics, especially her aggressive use of social media. Ocasio-Cortez's communications director and longtime aide, Corbin Trent, said the Bronx-born congresswoman has no plans to change-- that Twitter and Instagram were key tools for galvanizing the public support that ultimately inspired a handful of the party's top presidential hopes to back the resolution.

"The way she operates, whether it's to come up with lines of questioning or lines of messaging, or how to present things to her constituents or to the American people or to the party-- it's continuous listening and talking," Trent told CNN. "When she using social media, that is essentially a practice run and a conversation that she's working and developing."

It's a long way from November, when she spent part of her first official visit to Washington joining a sit-in of now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, where young activists from the Sunrise Movement gathered to agitate for urgent climate action.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said Ocasio-Cortez represents "a classic story of how somebody gets assimilated into the institution while preserving all their values and desires for change."

"I think it's been a wonderful transition to see someone go from being a full-time activist to being a legislator and an activist," he said.

Pelosi's relationship with Ocasio-Cortez has, to date, been mutually beneficial. Ocasio-Cortez helped secure the California liberal's left flank amid a leadership challenge. Pelosi, even while denying the New Yorker a new select committee assignment that would have been dedicated specifically to shaping the Green New Deal, offered her a seat on a different climate panel.

Ocasio-Cortez turned down the offer, citing the time she needed to manage her other assignments. Their relationship now is less a fight than a dance.

Asked on Thursday about Pelosi's description, in a Politico report, of the Green New Deal as "the green dream or whatever they call it," Ocasio-Cortez passed up a chance to land a jab.

"No, it is a green dream," she told reporters. "I don't consider that to be a dismissive term."

Even as her profile-- and influence-- rises, Ocasio-Cortez operates much as she did on the campaign trail. During a visit to the Midwest last summer to stump for other progressive hopefuls, Ocasio-Cortez would unleash her fire at the mic but then move quietly backstage at events, jotting in her notebook, constantly updating her speech with a new line or idea.

"What we're seeing is that there is not one single way to get things done," Trent said. "She was saying today, everybody says this is the way things are done in Washington and there certainly is a way things have been done in Washington, and there are certainly people who are going to continue to work that way. And I'm sure they'll be able to get things done. But there are also other paths."

Rep. Brenda Lawrence said Ocasio-Cortez and other new members who came in as activists are learning how to operate in a deliberative body.

"It's one thing to protest. It's another to pass laws and bills and actually impact lives and make a difference," said Lawrence, a third-term Michigan Democrat who co-chairs the bipartisan Women's Caucus. "So she's at the beginning of that. And I'm excited. She's going to have some growth and some bumps in the road."

"Every step is growth," she added. "She has such a large media platform, which I pray continues to be a positive one and continues to be one of the boldness of speaking truth to power."

How about a House twitter update? These are the members of the House who were mentioned a lot in the media last week and who have prominent roles in Congress-- along with the number of people who follow them on Twitter

• AOC (D-NY)- 3 million
• Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)- 2.23 million
• Peter King (R-NY)- 1.8 million
• Adam Schiff (D-CA)- 1.19 million
• John Lewis (D-GA)- 1.03 million
• Maxine Waters (D-CA)- 974 K
• Ted Lieu (D-CA)- 943 K
• Joe Kennedy III (D-MA)- 745 K
• Ilhan Omar (D-MN)- 507 K
• Eric Swalwell (D-CA)- 448 K
• Gym Jordan (R-OH)- 419 K
• Devin Nunes (D-CA)- 362 K
• Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)- 336K
• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- 288 K
• Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)- 270 K
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- 232 K
• Barbara Lee (D-CA)- 223 K
• Mark Meadows (R-NC)- 222 K
• Matt Gaetz (R-FL)- 203 K
• Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)- 193K
• Louie Gohmert (R-TX)- 189 K
• Justin Amash (R-MI)- 153 K
• Seth Moulton (D-MA)- 135 K
• Steve King (R-IA)- 113 K
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- 111 K
• Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)- 103 K
• Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)- 97.3 K
• Ro Khanna (D-CA)- 90.5 K
• Conor Lamb (D-PA)- 89.4 K
• Jerry Nadler (D-NY)- 87K
• Liz Cheney (R-WY)- 79.1 K
• Mark Pocan (D-WI)- 76.2 K
• David Cicilline (D-RI)- 73.9 K
• Tim Ryan (D-OH)- 68.8 K
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)- 48.9 K
• Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)- 47.7 K
• Jim McGovern (D-MA)- 45.7 K
• Jamie Raskin (D-MD)- 44.4 K
• Frank Pallone (D-NJ)- 31.6 K
• Cheri Bustos (D-IL)- 31.3 K
• Eliot Engel (D-NY)- 28.5 K
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- 24.5 K
• Elise Stefanik (R-NY) 21.9 K
• Richard Neal (D-MA)- 20.1 K
• Ben Ray Lujan(D-NM)- 20.2K
• Kathy Castor (D-FL)- 17.4 K
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)- 13.2 K
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC)- 4.4 K

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

So Señor Trumpanzee has learned that when he searches google and other social media for "facts" that support his "achievements" and his far, far right conservative views, and even polls that show he is the "most popular president of all time, more popular than Lincoln" and loved by all, well, more often, much more often, the opposite information shows up. Trumpanzee finds that very bothersome and said so a few days ago. Damn if his computer doesn't reveal that reality has a liberal bias!

Poor little Trumpanzee. He thinks google should be just like his rallies, Republicans in congress, and his BFF Vladimir Putin. He thinks google should be a feedback loop of positive reenforcement and cheering for his mayhem. He thinks the entire internet is "rigged" against him.

It seems Doofus-in-Chief got his feelings crushed when, needing some of that positive reenforcement for all of the damage he is deliberately doing to America and the world, he sat down and started searching for his name and the alternative facts and delusions he believes in and those around him also believe in. You know, things like "global warming is a hoax" and the like. Betraying a complete lack of understanding about algorithms, he even thinks that google promotes President Obama's speeches over his. He's so deranged and paranoid that he probably thinks the word algorithm is a liberal plot against him because it says Al Gore.

Can't you just see him sitting at his computer and looking for proof that LeBron James and Maxine Waters have lower IQs than, not only his but that of any white person? Can't you just see him reaching for the phone to call Tucker Carlson or David Duke to ask them where they get their information? And, why would he do this when he has a whole staff of white supremacists? Hell, Stephen Miller, the pride of Duke University, is just down the hall. I guess Stephen must have been out to lunch.

Here's a thought, Donnie; next time you get the urge to google, why not avoid the frustration by following these three easy steps: 1) pull the computer power plug out of the outlet. 2) grab a metal fork. 3) While securely holding the fork, jam it into the outlet where the computer plug once was. You'll like Einstein in no time.