Well, the reviews are in — and sadly for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, what happened in Vegas hasn’t stayed in Vegas.

Instead, the entire nation got to see him get his 78-year-old butt kicked back and forth across the stage at the Democrat debate Wednesday night.

The reason is simple. Bloomberg has imperiously tried to buy the party’s nomination even as his history of misogynistic statements, racially-charged policing policies and “let them eat cake” demeanor have made voters bristle.

On the bright side, it’s only Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals and independents – oh, also farmers and the media — who don’t like him.

Can you blame them? Just to be certain, when the debate ended I grabbed a dictionary and looked up the word “elitist.” Sure enough, there was a photo of Bloomberg right next to it. (His photo also graces the pages holding the words “smug,” “contemptuous” and “entitled.”)

Maybe I ought to buy a new dictionary — but then again, it’s the same one that political pundits and insiders across the spectrum are apparently using. Who knew that it was the diminutive former mayor who could finally bring a divided America together.

I wonder if they’ll mention that on Bloomberg News.

As Fox News recounted, “MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ played a montage of Bloomberg’s ‘worst moments’ and Mika Brzezinski said he was ‘hard to watch.’ Lawrence O’Donnell said the billionaire suffered ‘the worst blows’ of the evening and an NBC News article co-bylined by Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Melissa Holzberg said ‘the biggest individual news from the debate was Michael Bloomberg struggling to defend his stop-and-frisk record as New York City mayor, as well as the non-disclosure agreements his company settled with women.’”
         
“Cringe” doesn’t quite capture the full Ozymandiasistic quality. Remember the classic Percy Bysshe Shelley poem? “And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Uh…… thanks Mike, but no thanks.

Said Joe Scarborough: “For a guy who is worth $55 billion and says he could run the world, he couldn’t even run his own microphone last night.”
CNN’s Van Jones: “It’s unanimous: a horrible night for Bloomberg….” His “dream scenario turned into a nightmare.”
Democrat David Axelrod: “… disastrous debut… the big loser.”
CNN’s Paul Begala: “Bloomberg lost.”
The Huffington Post: “…rude awakening.”
Vox: “… loser.”
Mother Jones: Bloomberg “got lit up.”
CNBC: the former mayor “took a beating.”
Donald Trump, Jr: “He spent half a billion dollars to look like a jerk.”
Ann Coulter: “Bloomberg ad: ‘I led a complex diverse city through 9/11 …’ Um, I think that was Giuliani. Dem primaries are getting to be like Nursing Home Bingo.”
President Donald J. Trump: “… worst debate performance in history.”

Nor did the humiliation end with the debate. The following day, it was reported that Bloomberg’s campaign staffers tweeted out a video of his performance that, as thehill.com phrased it, “was selectively edited to make it appear that his fellow candidates fell into a lengthy silence when he asked if any of them have started their own business.”
 
“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Edited by: JV Staff

As calls for tolerance and diversity for different lifestyles claim prominence on college campuses and in society in general, it was reported by the Jewish Week that seven LGBTQ students from New York’s Yeshiva University have now filed a discrimination complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights over the fact that they are still facing opposition from the university in creating an undergraduate gay/straight alliance.

Yeshiva University has gained a reputation for educating modern Orthodox Jews under the banner of “Torah & Science.” The battle for acceptance of gays on campus as well as their demand to form a group rages on, despite the pitfalls.

The complaint said that YU has “refused to allow an official LGBTQ student group” over the course of many years, and has “suppressed LGBTQ-themed events,” as was reported by the Jewish Week. The paper also reported that within the complaint the student activists state that an unnamed senior vice president at the university “tried to pressure student council leaders to reject” the club’s second bid for approval in two consecutive years.

The group that the LGBTQ activists are attempting to form would be known as the YU Alliance. According to campus procedure, the decision to grant or ban a student group or club is now in the hands of the YU administration after student council presidents abstained on the motion calling for the forming of such a gay/straight alliance.

As was reported by the Jewish Week, in a statement emailed to the student body last week explaining their decision, the presidents said that “our role is to express the student voice, our role is not to determine major ideological decisions for the institution.” The decision, they said, “has larger implications outside of Yeshiva University.”

“We, as the Student Council Presidents, are supportive that all students feel welcomed and included on campus,” added Zachary Greenberg, president of the Yeshiva Student Union. “We feel that by abstaining we are helping facilitate direct communication between the club applicants and the administration to work together to determine the best solution.”

Club members decided to file the complaint with the city’s Human Rights Commission and explore legal options beyond the university.

The Jewish Week reported that the university has previously resisted an official gay representation on campus because gay sex is strictly prohibited under Orthodox Jewish law. (Jewish Week)

Edited by: TJVNews.com

The offspring of Hollywood royalty have often put the real royal family in the United Kingdom to shame in terms of their bizarre antics, but this might be more difficult to digest.

According to published reports in the New York Post and the US Sun, it appears that Mikaela Spielberg, the 23-year old daughter of iconic filmmaker Steven Spielberg has announced her plans to pursue a career path in the adult entertainment industry. That essentially translates into the younger Spielberg becoming a porn star, either in private gigs or on the silver screen.

She has justified her decision by saying that such work would help her deal with difficult experiences. She told the media that she was the victim of body-shaming. When she was sent to a boarding school during her youth, the younger Spielberg said that she suffered from anxiety eating disorders and alcoholism, according to a report in the JPost. She also said that she nearly drank herself to death on a daily basis.

Mikaela also said that her career choice was predicated on her ability to prevail over her addictions and dysfunctional behavior and not as a result of her emotional problems.
 
“My body, my life, my income, my choice,” Spielberg said, according to the JPost report. She came out publicly to speak about having borderline personality disorder as well. The JPost also reported that Spielberg said that people who have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder are often depicted in a negative light such as in the 2014 film, Gone Girl, where they are portrayed as “manipulative monsters” or “cold, unfeeling in-it-for-the-money monsters,” she said.  

Before going public with her controversial choice of career, the younger Spielberg told her parents and says they were supportive of her career decision.
 
Spielberg made it clear, however, that her parents were unaware of the abuse she was exposed to.  According to a JPost report, she said that she career choice was empowering and positive.

Currently, the younger Spielberg is in a relationship with a 47-year old man named Chuck Pankow. JPost reported that she will focus on solo performances of an erotic nature. The report indicated that she is looking into acquiring a stripper’s license in Tennessee.
 
The requirements for obtaining a stripper’s license are more detailed than obtaining a license for a firearm. The stripper’s license is granted by the Sexually Oriented Business Licensing Board and a background check as well as fingerprints and passport photos are listed as the requirements for submission, according to the JPost report.
 
 Film director Steven Spielberg is famous for his work on such massive hits as the 1975 film Jaws, the 1982 film E.T the Extra-Terrestrial and the 1993 Jurassic Park, among many more. 
 
He also directed films dealing with such historically painful issues as the Holocaust in the 1993 film Schindler’s List, the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 2005 film Munich. His 1997 film Amistad dealt with the 1839 slave rebellion on the ship La Amistad. 

By: Michael Tarm

Rod Blagojevich returned home to Chicago early Wednesday, shaking hands and signing autographs after President Donald Trump cut short the 14-year prison sentence handed to the former Illinois governor for political corruption.
Blagojevich landed at O’Hare airport hours after walking out of a Colorado prison where he served eight years, promising to work for judicial and criminal justice reform while maintaining his innocence.

“I didn’t do the things they said I did and they lied on me,” Blagojevich, a one-time contestant on Trump’s reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice,” told WGN-TV as he walked through the airport greeting travelers who welcomed him home.

Blagojevich, 63, hails from a state with a long history of pay-to-play schemes. He was convicted in 2011 of crimes that included seeking to sell an appointment to Barack Obama’s old Senate seat and trying to shake down a children’s hospital.

Trump, who announced clemency for 11 people on Tuesday, called Blagojevich’s punishment excessive.
“That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence in my opinion and in the opinion of many others,” Trump told reporters in Washington.

Blagojevich told WGN-TV he learned of his commutation when other inmates told him they saw it on the news, insisting he “had no inkling it was coming.’’

Trump had said repeatedly in recent years that he was considering taking executive action in Blagojevich’s case, only to back away from the idea.

“I’m profoundly grateful to President Trump and it’s a profound and everlasting gratitude,” Blagojevich told WGN. “He didn’t have to do this, he’s a Republican president and I was a Democratic governor.”

Blagojevich was rushed by media and supporters as he exited the airport in Chicago early Wednesday, signing a few autographs before getting into a white SUV and speeding out of the airport toward his home in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood. There he was rushed through a crowd of journalists and supporters to his front door.

The silver-haired former governor stopped briefly on his porch and said he was happy to be home with his wife and children before disappearing into the house, where he and his family planned a “homecoming press conference” later Wednesday.

Some in Illinois, including the current governor, said Tuesday that setting Blagojevich free was a mistake.
Trump “has abused his pardon power in inexplicable ways to reward his friends and condone corruption, and I deeply believe this pardon sends the wrong message at the wrong time,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a written statement.
Many Republicans agreed.

“In a state where corrupt, machine-style politics is still all too common, it’s important that those found guilty serve their prison sentence in its entirety,” said the chairman of the Illinois GOP, Tim Schneider.
Trump made clear that he saw similarities between efforts to investigate his own conduct and those who took down Blagojevich.

“It was a prosecution by the same people — Comey, Fitzpatrick, the same group,” Trump said. He was referring to Patrick Fitzgerald, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Blagojevich and now represents former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired from the agency in May 2017. Comey was not at the FBI or anywhere in the Department of Justice during the investigation and indictment of Blagojevich.

The Illinois House in January 2009 voted 114-1 to impeach Blagojevich, and the state Senate voted unanimously to remove him, making him the first Illinois governor in history to be removed by lawmakers. He entered prison in March 2012.

Blagojevich’s wife, Patti, went on a media blitz in 2018 to encourage Trump to step in, praising the president and likening the investigation of her husband to special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election — a probe Trump long characterized as a “witch hunt.”

Blagojevich’s conviction was notable, even in a state where four of the last 10 governors have gone to prison for corruption. Judge James Zagel — who sentenced Blagojevich to the longest prison term yet for an Illinois politician — said when a governor “goes bad, the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured.”

After his Dec. 9, 2008, arrest while still governor, Blagojevich became known for his foul-mouthed rants on wiretaps. On the most notorious recording, he gushed about profiting by naming someone to the seat Obama vacated to become president: “I’ve got this thing and it’s f—— golden. And I’m just not giving it up for f—— nothing.” (AP)

4 ads featuring diverse range of Jewish New Yorkers to be published in multiple Orthodox Jewish publications, online.

By: Josefin Dolsten

New York City is hoping that a new ad campaign will make Jewish New Yorkers feel comfortable despite a recent spate of anti-Semitic attacks.

The campaign, launched Wednesday by the city’s Commission on Human Rights, consists of four ads each featuring a photograph of a different Jewish New Yorker and a bold proclamation: “Jewish New Yorkers belong here. Anti-Semitism does not.”

The ads will appear online and in three Orthodox publications — Hamodia, Jewish Press and Mishpacha Magazine — but feature Jews from diverse backgrounds.

“I think it’s undisputed right now that Jewish communities, both those who are visibly Jewish and those who are not, are feeling particularly vulnerable and are looking for allies, for solidarity, for support and we hope that this campaign addresses some of those concerns and that fear,” said Dana Sussman, a deputy commissioner who helped develop the campaign.

Sussman appears in one of the ads. The other New Yorkers featured are Yosef Rappaport, a Hasidic Brooklyn resident and community activist; Laura Shaw Frank, a Bronx resident and Orthodox feminist; and Marques Hollie, a Manhattan resident and queer Jew of color.

Orthodox feminist Laura Shaw Frank is among those featured in the campaign. (NYC Commission on Human Rights)
Rappaport said he had agreed to participate in the campaign after criticizing the city for excluding visibly Jewish New Yorkers from previous ads on other topics.

“I’m active on social media and I also sometimes rightfully or wrongfully complain when New York City has promotional material ads for all kinds of stuff, tourism and all, showing the diversity of people, [but] they hardly ever show Hasidic children, men or women,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a voice message on the WhatsApp messaging platform. “Now that they asked me it was kind of difficult for me to say no.”

Rapaport said he hoped the campaign “will have the desired effect of making us visible, that we belong.”

In addition to running the ads in the three Orthodox publications, the commission will also promote the images on social media and in digital ads on the New York Jewish Week website. The campaign cost $50,000, city officials said.

Shaw Frank wrote in an email to JTA that she had been concerned about recent anti-Semitic attacks and that participating in the campaign “felt like something concrete I could DO, instead of just feeling helpless.”
Marquis Hollie hopes the campaign can increase awareness of diversity in the community and bring Jews together. (NYC Commission on Human Rights)

The commission has run similar campaigns to combat racism, Islamophobia and discrimination against the LGBTQ community. The city is also responding to the recent spate of anti-Semitic incidents in other ways, including by launching an education campaign in schools and creating an Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes.
Hollie said he hoped the campaign would yield benefits even beyond combating anti-Semitism.

“The Jewish people are a racially and ethnically diverse group of people,” he said in an email. “My hope is that this campaign will not only remind the public about this, but also remind us that our community is multi-faceted and that we, collectively, are pillars of support for one another in times of joy as well as times of adversity.” (JTA)

By: Rob Garver

In the space of just three years, the Trump administration has helped usher in a major reversal in how the Republican Party views the relationship between the federal government and U.S. businesses. Ten years after the Tea Party movement sent a wave of Republican legislators to Washington with a mandate to disassemble the regulatory state and slash “corporate welfare,” the GOP is backing a president with a dramatically different vision of the relationship between the federal government and the free market.

A party wary of government interference in the free market has come to support Trump’s use of punitive tariffs to protect specific U.S. industries, like steel and automobiles. It also backs him on the use of the Export-Import Bank to have the federal government finance competition with China in multiple sectors, and barely batted an eye early this month, when Attorney General William Barr suggested that the U.S. government take an ownership stake in telecommunication firms that compete with Chinese 5G giant Huawei.

It’s a stark departure from the years, early in the Barack Obama administration, when the Tea Party movement held an iron grip on Republican policymaking. Tea Party activists and their allies in Congress demanded less government involvement in the economy, not more, and rode to power protesting government efforts to aid struggling financial firms through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and the stimulus package contained in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

“The Tea Party narrative about economic statecraft is going out the window in favor of something a lot more Trumpian,” said Todd N. Tucker, a political scientist and fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank in New York.

“One of the things that shifted in the Republican Party over the last few years is Trump, showing through his successful campaign and winning office, that you can talk about using the government to do things for people to shape the economy, and that that doesn’t have to be antithetical to a traditional pro-business Republican message,” Tucker said.

The message from Trump may have been easier for Republican lawmakers to digest because it has usually been tied to economic growth, job creation, and national security — three areas on which the GOP has traditionally focused. But the change is profound nonetheless.

“Donald Trump is overseeing the explicit shaping of corporate behavior by the state, which is a stark break from the libertarian framework that has guided U.S. policy since the 1990s,” writes Matt Stoller, the Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project and the author of “Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy”.

To be sure, the idea that the federal government ought to take a more active role in stimulating the development of certain market sectors did not spring fully-formed from the Trump White House. An influential train of thought in modern economics, championed by outspoken proponents like Mariana Mazzucato, an economist at University College of London and the author of “The Entrepreneurial State”, holds that targeted government investment and subsidies are essential to strong growth.

“An entrepreneurial society needs an entrepreneurial state, one that through visionary and strategic public investments, distributed across the innovation chain, can create animal spirits in private businesses,” Mazzucato writes in the Harvard Business Review. “Entrepreneurs then see growth opportunities, and business investment follows.”

That line of thinking has strong support among some Republican members of Congress, like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who says targeted government support of certain industries is vital to national security.
In a speech in December at the National Defense University, Rubio made the case for what he referred to as a “21st-century pro-American industrial policy.”

“What I am calling for us to do is remember that from World War II to the Space Race and beyond, a capitalist America has always relied on public-private collaboration to further our national security,” he said. “And from the internet to GPS, many of the innovations that have made America a technological superpower originated from national defense-oriented, public-private partnerships.”

He added, “This kind of collaboration is not a rejection of capitalism. It is a call to encourage and harness the dynamism of our economy’s most productive private industries to further our national security and ultimately our national economic development.”

Rubio, like Trump, focuses much of his attention on China, which unabashedly uses the power of the state to create favorable conditions for its domestic industries, though outright subsidies, low-cost loans, and economic protectionism.

In December, the GOP-led Senate approved the passage of a seven-year reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. The Ex-Im Bank, as it is commonly known, helps U.S. manufacturers and service providers sell to clients overseas. Its assistance usually takes the form of loan guarantees that help the buyers of U.S. made goods secure affordable financing for large purchases.

This is particularly remarkable, because only five years ago, the Republican-led Congress allowed the Ex-Im Bank’s charter to expire, and came close to shutting it down entirely.

“This is one of the most jarring pivots of many pivots we’ve seen in the Republican Party discourse on economic policy,” said the Roosevelt Institute’s Tucker. “Going from seeing this as a form of corporate welfare to seeing it as one of our best tools for tackling the competitive threat from China.”

The bill included a provision that directs the bank to use 20% of its resources to the new “Program on China and Transformational Exports.”

The new program was created specifically to help U.S. firms that compete with Chinese companies in the markets for artificial intelligence, biotechnology, 5G technology, quantum computing, renewable energy, and more.
Stoller, of the American Economic Liberties Project, argues that the change in the federal government’s stance toward the free market is not something that will end with the Trump administration. Writing in his newsletter, “Big”, which explores the effects of business monopolies, he argues that future administrations may target different areas of the economy, with Democrats perhaps focused on environmental issues while Republicans focus on defense and national security.

“Regardless of what happens, the libertarian era is over,” Stoller concludes. “Going forward, U.S. government policymakers are beginning to think of themselves once again as key actors in structuring industrial outcomes.” (VOA)

Edited by: TJVNews.com

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg made his national debate debut tonight as he joined the other Democratic contenders for the White House in 2020 on a stage in Las Vegas. Only days before the Nevada caucuses, the candidates battled vociferously with one another. At the beginning of the debate, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders went after Bloomberg’s jugular with scathing accusations of being a racist and sexist and supplying evidence proving that he was. According to a CNN report, Bloomberg had been practicing for tonight’s debate for several weeks, spending countless hours with a team of advisers who have been preparing him to go toe-to-toe with his Democratic rivals.

Unfortunately, the tutelage he received was not sufficient. Bloomberg appeared unprepared and was not nearly as aggressive as his opponents.

According to a CNN report, the former New York City mayor was asked about sexually suggestive comments he’d made in the 1990s, and claims from women that Bloomberg LP was a hostile workplace for women. He responded by touting his company as being ranked highly as a place for women to work now, and pointing to female executives at his company and foundation.

CNN reported that Elizabeth Warren interjected, saying: “I hope you heard what his defense was: I’ve been nice to some women. That just doesn’t cut it.”

She asked Bloomberg whether he would release women who had signed non-disclosure agreements from those agreements so that they could describe their experiences.

Bloomberg essentially denied that he was a racist and sexist; refusing to say that he would allow female employees who worked for his company to opt out of their non-disclosure agreements regarding sexual harassment claims.
CNN reported that Warren responded by asking if he’d release women who don’t wish to keep their experiences quiet live on television. Bloomberg said he wouldn’t — and Warren responded that he was keeping women “bound and muzzled” and that their stories would become a liability in a general election against President Trump.

Joe Biden jumped in, pointing out that Pete Buttigieg had asked his former employer, McKinsey, a major consulting firm, to release him from non-disclosure agreements that prohibited him from listing the companies he’d worked for, as was reported by CNN.

“It’s easy. All the mayor has to do is say, you are released from the non-disclosure agreements, period,” Biden said.

But Bloomberg wouldn’t budge. “I’m simply not going to end these agreements because they were made consensually and they have every right to expect they will stay private,” he said.

The aggressiveness and ad hominem attacks were not limited to targeting Mike Bloomberg. Polls say that Bloomberg’s approval rating is increasing in the polls.

CNN reported that Senator Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg sparred over the Minnesota senator forgetting the name of the president of Mexico on Wednesday night, with the senator eventually asking the former mayor directly if he was “saying I’m dumb.”

Klobuchar and Tom Steyer both couldn’t name the president of Mexico when asked during a Telemundo interview while campaigning in Nevada this week, as was reported by CNN. Klobuchar, when asked if she knew the president’s name, simply said no.

The senator looked to explain her misstep by saying that she didn’t think “momentary forgetfulness actually reflects what I know about Mexico and how much I care about it.”

“I said I made an error,” Klobuchar said. “I think having a president that maybe is humble and is able to admit that here and there maybe wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

CNN reported that Buttigieg tried to use the misstep against Klobuchar, suggesting it shows her Washington experience has not prepared her to be President. And he did the same on Wednesday night.
“You are staking your candidacy on your Washington experience,” Buttigieg said. “You’re on the committee that oversees border security. You’re on the committee that does trade. You’re literally in the part of the committee that’s overseeing these things.”

Public opinion polls in Nevada show Sanders as the clear leader, but after that the race is less clear with different polls showing varying levels of support for Warren, Biden, Klobuchar and Buttigieg.

A Las Vegas Review Journal poll released last week had Sanders with 25% support, followed by Biden at 18%, Warren with 14%, billionaire Tom Steyer at 11%, and both Buttigieg and Klobuchar at 10%.

Steyer failed to qualify for the debate, after participating in the past five events.

Candidates sought to appeal to a different demographic makeup this time after competing in two overwhelmingly white states.

Nevada’s population is about 29 percent Hispanic, 10 percent African American and 10 percent Asian.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas political science professor Dan Lee told VOA’s Russian service that Nevada’s caucus is arguably the first test of how truly viable the candidates are.

“So for instance, Buttigieg performed quite well in New Hampshire and in Iowa, but then does that translate to the core Democratic support? A lot of the core support is African Americans and now to a growing extent Latino voters,” Lee said. “So how he performs in Nevada is going to go a long way to saying exactly how viable he truly is.”

Democrats will compete again this month in South Carolina, before the contest really expands March 3 with voting in 14 states, including huge prizes California and Texas.