Do as I say, not as I do
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who describes himself as a “global leader” on the environment and climate change in his recently announced 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, may have a little trouble convincing those who consider themselves woke on the issue.
The billionaire, after all, uses a fleet of his own jets and helicopters. In January, Inside Sources described how his private jet likely “generates an estimated 37 times more carbon emissions than the same trip on a commercial flight.” And his $7 million AgustaWestland AW109 helicopter “burns a jaw-dropping 72 gallons of fuel every hour.”
It’s also been reported he’s also on the waiting list for an even nicer helicopter, an AgustaWestland AW609, worth somewhere between $5 and $20 million.
Of course, Bloomberg, whose policy would eliminate the coal industry in this country, doesn’t always travel by air. In 2014, according to The New York Times, “Mr. Bloomberg kicked back on a huge two-story yacht procured by staff members to take him from his hotel on the Bosporus [in Turkey] to the next event on his schedule.”
Trump propaganda?
Familiar with the upcoming Clint Eastwood film “Richard Jewell,” about the hounded innocent suspect in the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta?
Well, the Daily Beast didn’t like it because it, um, is a pro-Trump film.
Wait, what?
Film critic Nick Schager said the film’s portrayal of Jewell unfairly being targeted by the FBI and by a biased media is similar to how the president sees himself.
“Clint Eastwood’s ‘Richard Jewell’ wants to be a gripping, outrage-inciting drama about an innocent victim persecuted by – and driven to fight back against – institutional power,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, what it turns out to be is a MAGA [Make America Great Again] screed calibrated to court favor with the red hat-wearing faithful by vilifying the president’s two favorite enemies: the FBI and the media.”
Schager doesn’t seem to argue the facts presented in the movie but maintains “it makes such a cartoonishly slanted case against the feds and the media that it plays as a politically motivated Trump Twitter rant masquerading as a David-vs.-Goliath thriller.”
Say it isn’t so, Mayor Pete
Whoops, just when the LGBTQ crowd scored a win when the Chick-fil-A family foundation decided it would no longer support the Salvation Army, photos of gay 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, surfaced ringing bells for the organization in 2017.
Gay rights advocates are not happy about it, either.
Out, an LGBTQ publication, published a story last week on the photos, listing some of the critical tweets of Buttigieg’s actions at the organization’s South Bend annual Red Kettle Ring Off, in which local officials raise money for the charity.
LGBTQ advocates claim the Salvation Army has a history of discrimination against gay and transgender individuals, but a spokesperson for the organization told Out last month it is dedicated to helping all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Buttigieg campaign declined to comment, but others did not.
“I know the photos are two years old,” tweeted Zach Ford, press secretary for the Alliance of Justice, “but still, I can’t help but wonder if Mayor Pete just looks at what LGBTQ activists have been working on for years and then chooses to spite it (e.g. Salvation Army, Chick-fil-A, queer media in general, etc.).”
That was then
A U.S. House member and former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate didn’t exactly know how to answer last week when during a Fox News interview the current chairman of the House Judiciary Committee was shown in 1998 explaining how a president shouldn’t be impeached without “an overwhelming consensus of the American people.”
Well, said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-California, “I was 17 years old. And most Americans who are voting today were not tuned in then, and so I think let’s focus on what we have right now.”
Of course, that didn’t explain why the comments of U.S. Rep. Gerald Nadler, D-New York, were so different when impeachment was being considered for Democrat Bill Clinton rather than today when he is all to happy to impeach President Trump, no matter what people think.
In 1998, the New York congressman said, “We must not overturn an election and remove a president from office. Except to defend our system of government or our Constitutional liberties against a dire threat. And we must not do so without an overwhelming consensus of the American people. There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment supported by one of our major political parties and opposed by the other.”
Of course, that is what is happening today, and, as Swalwell said, “I’m going to live in the present.”