Mayor Bloomberg Gets a High-Five

Anyone else wanna denounce their affiliation with a bullshit poliltical party? Time to speak up, yo.

HELLS YEAH.

i want to vote for the AUTOMATICALLY LOSING CANDIDATE

yeah way to finally grow a pair.

wow, sheldon silver really wants a LOT in return for maybe someday going along with the congestion charge

j/k

i'll give him a high-five for this, too - http://www.nysun.com/article/56868

Can someone tell me why he would do this other than to pave the way for a presidential run.

I think some of you all owe JBR an apology.

So besides a current Senator from New York and a former Mayor of New York, we also need the current mayor of New York to run for President? Can an NY resident explain to those of us who don't live there why we need this?

Yeah, I'm so sick of politicians from New York dominating our presidential races...

Well the last one won the Presidency four times so stay the F away...

A state with only 19 million people too

he's from Massachusetts, yeah? Would lose even w/out the whine.

He's kind of like a non-crazy Ross Perot - I can see him taking just as many votes from Republicans, to be honest

but yeah, he will never be President

But he could have a big impact on both Hillary and "Rudy"

Can someone tell me why he would do this other than to pave the way for a presidential run.

to give the appearance of paving the way for a presidential run, in order to encourage the parties (or the Dems, at least) to hew to the middle in their primary process

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2007/06/20/bloomberg_inches_towards_a_run.html

I would vote for Bloomberg over any of the current announced candidates.

for some reason my friend would always react to bloomberg's initiatives (smoking ban, noise reduction, etc.) by calling me up and saying, 'so, did see what your boy bloomberg's up to now?!' despite the fact that i never voted for him or ever praised him -- i may have said once or twice that i liked him more than guiliani or something. anyway, i hope my boy bloomberg runs! congestion pricing for the whole country!

Finally, a New Yorker the heartland can get behind--a Jewish zillionaire who won't let you drive or smoke.

Despite the current 'numbers,' ego and zillions may make him the only New York pol on the November 08 ballot.

not sure how useful the Obama and especially the Romney numbers are yet, but interesting that for the better-known candidates, Bloomberg flips OH, MO, IA and NM from R to D

er - http://www.surveyusa.com/3WayMBwheel062007

I got stuck listening to Sean Hannity today - it was funny how hard he laid into Bloomberg for this. Hannity claimed Bloomberg had been a "total disaster" for NYC. His sole example? The time Bloomberg didn't cancel alternate side parking for the snowstorm or whatever.

Oh, man. It's still 2007 and we've already got postal abbreviations all over the place.

lol @ 2005
Bloomberg or Ferrer?

Jimmy Breslin (yes, still alive) lays into Mike:

If the two major parties wind up offering Rudy Giuliani, Republican, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, or Barack Obama, Democrat, Bloomberg must consider running in the middle as irresistible. They would be stale and he would be fresh. Also, he would end this vile business of playing trumpet calls when a new fundraising amount is announced. A big Bloomberg fundraiser would consist of him sitting at dinner in his house on East 79th Street and asking one of the help to bring his checkbook. He has to write a piece of paper for $750 million for his campaign.

But...still remembered is Mike Bloomberg, mayor, standing in St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church in Washington Heights at the funeral of Marine Riayan Tejeda, dead in a box from Iraq at 26.

Bloomberg said, "He died to keep the weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of . . ."

He repeated the lie started by George W. Bush and his people, a lie that was the reason why they took this country into a war that resulted in the box on the floor at the church and has caused so many more since then.

These young died because of a lie told by Bush. Mike repeated the lie and will be called for it.

Bloomberg or Ferrer?

misread as "Bloomberg or Ferret?"

Riayan Tejada died in April 2003, about a month after the invasion of Iraq. To "call" Bloomberg for repeating a widely accepted statement that had not yet been proven a lie (even if it was questionable) is really an outrageous stretch. And we're talking about a speech at a soldier's funeral, not a political position.

This is interesting:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/NA-AN214_BLOOMB_20070620190033.gif

I too doubt Bloomberg would win, but he might be less of a longshot than these numbers suggest. Polling 10% with no declared candidacy, no party affiliation, and no debate appearances or advertising is really not bad, especially for someone who doesn't have a position of national impact.

To put it in pollster/pundit sort of terms, Bloomberg seems to be the kind of guy you slowly get to know and get to like. The question is whether people outside the NYC area would have adequate opportunity to get to know him in a presidential race (which is generally a soundbite-driven process), and how much of that likability would translate with other demographics. In any case it's clear he'd seriously complicate the race.

Also I just noticed that poll is already 6 months old, so even since then Bloomberg has probably gained some exposure.

Finally, a New Yorker the heartland can get behind--a Jewish zillionaire who won't let you drive or smoke.

-- Martin Van Burne, Wednesday, June 20, 2007 2:54 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

LOL! Don't forget own a gun, vend hot dogs on the streets, or dance. OK, just kidding about that last one. For now...

Here's a better founded critical piece:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0727,robbins,77106,2.html

I still like a lot of things about Bloomberg, but some of the facts in this article were surprising.

Tom Robbins
Mike Bloomberg, Free at Last
But while a Republican, the mayor made quite a contribution to the party
by Tom Robbins
July 3rd, 2007 12:21 PM

It is never good to live with lies, even half-lies, and it is a great cleanser of the spirit to finally speak the truth. So it was helpful for the mayor and for us last week to finally learn Michael Bloomberg's real feelings about political parties. He has been in two of them, so he knows something about the subject. "I don't think either national party stands for anything. Individuals stand for things. There isn't any philosophy for any party," he told the crowd at Crain's Wednesday breakfast forum in midtown. Party platforms? "C'mon, get serious," he said, that little smile tugging at a corner of his mouth. "That's just something to give you to write about during a boring convention."

We know Bloomberg is speaking from the heart, because state campaign records show that he has not written huge checks to the state's Republican Party apparatus since. . . January. That was when he sat down and wrote one for $75,000 to the New York Republican State Committee. For good measure, he sent another $75,000 to the New York State Senate Republicans.

This is true noblesse oblige. When Bloomberg dropped his Democratic Party registration back in 2000 to become a Republican and run for mayor, he took on the responsibility of supporting the state GOP. It was a billionaire's burden. How could he ask for support and not give it himself? He opened his checkbook and started writing to the party that believes in nothing: State Republicans got some $466,000 between 2000 and 2003; the Republican National Committee received $250,000 in 2002.

By rights, he should have been quit of this noxious obligation when he easily won re-election in November 2005. It was the biggest win ever, and it was due to his own triumphant record of governing; his party affiliation was, if anything, more hindrance than help. Term-limited as mayor, what more could he expect the Republicans to do for him? But Bloomberg is not the kind of guy to walk away from a friend: In a true generosity of spirit, he kept giving to the Nothing Party. In October 2006, almost a full year after his own re-election, he gave a whopping $500,000 to the Republican Senate Campaign Committee so that it could hold onto its majority against the Spitzer juggernaut then in full throttle.

Altogether, since he entered politics, Michael Bloomberg has given $1.5 million to a party he knew to be engaged in existential nothingness.

As hard as it was for Bloomberg to write those checks to a party devoid of all belief, think how hard it was for him to take on the mission in 2004 to host the Republican National Convention in New York City.

Not only did he have to court the party's leadership, he had to tell those little lies over and over again, that theirs is a "great party" that would honor him and his city if they held their convention here. Worse, after he got what he asked for (all right—he agreed to bankroll the convention as well), he had to stand before the delegates and praise the standard-bearer of the Nothing Party and say that he was his candidate, too. He was the host—what could he do? Be rude and say that they all believed in nothing? Not Michael Bloomberg. "The president deserves our support. We are here to support him, and I am here to support him," he said of George W. Bush.

Even harder for the mayor was the task of controlling the hundreds of thousands of antiwar protesters. First he kept them out of Central Park, where they wanted to hold a massive rally since it was the only place big enough. Bad for the grass, he said. Then he had his police commissioner lock up 1,821 of them and hold them for more than 24 hours so the president could give his speech and slip out of town. National security, he said. We now know he was chewing on his lip hard enough to bring blood when he spoke, because he believed none of it. He was only going through the motions, trapped in a loveless marriage with a party that was empty.

You can already tell that Bloomberg is much more relaxed now that the truth is out and the divorce public. He's like Jim McGreevey, giving that big grin as he resigned as New Jersey governor and saying, "I am a gay American." Bloomberg didn't want a big announcement for his own coming-out. It was a shock to him that filing a public notice changing his political registration to "unaffiliated voter" with the city Board of Elections—an agency whose staff is chosen directly by the Democratic and Republican parties—would ever leak out so soon.

But he is now a liberated man. You can see it in his demeanor during a talk he gave to the Google company in California on June 18, just a day before his party switch became known. (The show is on Channel 74, NYC TV, running on a loop three times a day, it is that good.)

He went to the lovely town of Mountain View to appear as part of Google's author series. They put a copy of his most recent book beside him on the table. It is called Bloomberg by Bloomberg. It was published 10 years ago.

From the moment he plants himself in a tall director's chair and crosses his legs, you can see he is totally at ease. Wearing a blue blazer, he speaks without a note for more than an hour. A bottle of water sits beside him, but he never looks at it. It is a question-and-answer format, but he does all the talking. He lists his education and health policies, the smoking ban, his call for immigration reforms, the drive to get illegal guns off the streets. More people are killed every day by street crime than by terrorists, he notes, throwing a jibe at the current crop of presidential candidates. "Every press conference, they all beat their chests and say, 'I can protect this country better from terrorists.' Well, what about protecting them out on the streets every day?"

This is all good stuff, the product of a thoughtful man finally unchained from a false alliance. And then, out of nowhere, he announces that he has "a great story" to tell. A couple of weeks earlier, he had been to Bard College in upstate New York to give a commencement address. "It's a very, very liberal college," he says. "They think Trotsky was a capitalist." During the speech, he noticed that many of the students had signs on the back of their gowns that read "Troops Out of Iraq." "I said—and this was Memorial Day weekend—'I am not unmindful of seeing the signs, but just remember that young men and women are overseas fighting and dying and have been for 235 years so that you have the right to protest, which you don't have in many other places.'"

At the convention for that Nothing Party he has since quit, he might have gotten big applause for this story. The Google techies sat on their hands.

In the book beside him on the table, there's a sentence that tells how he handled his chance to defend freedom while the Vietnam War raged: "I had a great agreement with the draft board—they never called me and I never called them."

yep, high fives

http://gothamist.com/2011/08/23/bloomberg_wants_to_publish_the_name.php

high-five