I Want You

from the unite for mike site

Uncle Sam Draft Mike Bloomberg Meetups for Michael Bloomberg are spreading around the country. To aid this effort we have created an easy guide to walk you through starting your own chapter! Here is quick list of Meetups across the country. If you don’t find your city on this list, we encourage you to stand up and lead the change.

* In Columbia, South Carolina - Jerry Francis has stood up for change by starting the first Mike Bloomberg Meetup in the South. Their first event will take place on February 11th.
* In Buffalo, New York - Sayed Ali is leading the way, showing that even upstate New Yorkers want Mike Bloomberg to run. The next event will take place on January 20th.
* In New York City - Dave Wakeman, a recent addition to our team, has rekindled the NYC Meetup. The next event will take place on January 23rd. This group will join with the previous NYC Meetups led by Karin Gallet.
* In Washington, DC - Andrew MacRae (that’s me) has started a Meetup. The next event will take place on January 23rd.
* In Boston, Massachusetts - John Keith a concerned citizen is leading the way for change. The next event will take place on February 12th.
* In Ocala, Florida - Bruce Foster has started Meetups in one of the most crucial states for victory. The next event will take place on February 12th.
* In Las Vegas, Nevada - Louis Lederman wants Mike to run, so he has started a Meetup in Sin City. The next event will take place on February 11th.

We are the people who are fed up with partisan bickering, while the problems of this country go unaddressed. We don’t care if either Democrats or Republicans are in charge, so long as they are making sound decisions that lead the whole country forward. We are the growing radical middle, and we need your support.

the image is photoshopped, but I wonder why Mike isn't looking us straight in the eye.
He probably saw some "chick" he'd like "to do"

Working Out The Super Bowl Bet

Candidate Bingo: How to Tell If Bloomberg Is Running

From npr of Friday 1/18/08:

There's been a lot of speculation recently about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg running for president as an independent. Bloomberg keeps denying that this is so, but his surrogates and supporters keep giving off signals that the multi-billionaire is seriously considering a bid. So NPR's Robert Smith decided to tail Bloomberg for a week to see if he could spot the "tells" signaling a possible Bloomberg candidacy. Robert even used an ingenious method devised by NPR to help him in mission: Candidate Bingo! Some of the candidate-like activities on our bingo card that can earn you a square include: "Follow NASCAR," "Smile Constantly," "Kiss Babies." But it looks like Robert won't be jumping up and shouting "Bingo!" anytime soon. Based on the his performance during the week he was observed, Bloomberg passed up one opportunity after another to act like a candidate. As Robert reports:"Mayor Bloomberg doesn't exude the populist touch. He didn't talk NASCAR or eat junk food. In fact, when faced with a buffet table of sweets, he opted for an eighth of a pumpernickel bagel. Another big test was at the firefighter graduation. The room was filled with adorable babies. Adorable babies of firefighters. What politician could resist? Bloomberg didn't smooch a one of them."

I don't know, according to Robert Smith on NPR he didn't talk NASCAR, but ..

Bloomberg Is Like H. Ross Perot On Steroids

Some really good Bloomberg comedy and satire from joemande

The Washington Times is reporting that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is prepared to spend up to a billion dollars of his own money if and when he decides to enter the 2008 presidential race as an independent candidate.
A divorced billionaire Jew running for president. That shouldn’t scare too many people. He might as well make Flava Flav his running mate.
Although, truthfully, I think a billion dollars might just be enough money to win over some unlikely voters. Like a couple of farmers having a beer after a long day’s work. “You know, I’ll tell you this, I don’t trust the Jews. And I think New York City is a filthy place full of queers. And I know he wants to kill babies and all that. But, gee whiz, if a man wants to spend a billion dollars of his own money to be President, then that’s gotta tell you somethin’.” ......Best quote in the article: “Bloomberg is H. Ross Perot on steroids” You know who else is Ross Perot on steroids? Any billionaire over three feet tall.

Mayberry Mike: I Don't Think So

Great (and comforting) post from reality based educator
an excerpt:

...But there's only one problem with all these theories: when Survey USA conducted a 50 state poll to see what Bloomberg's support is and the kind of base his potential candidacy would appeal to, they found something quite startling - he garners little support anywhere across the country, never receives more than 13% in any state including New York, wouldn't even win in New York City as a presidential candidate no matter who the Democratic or Republican candidates are and has little effect on the presidential race except that he takes some votes away from Republicans. In other words, as of now he has no shot to win the White House as an independent. Now it's true he has a billion dollars or more to drop on advertising to sell himself and his candidacy to America and it's true that a billion dollars in advertising can change opinions awfully fast. Think about how he outspent his opponents in both 2001 and 2005, sold himself to the electorate and bought City Hall. But even so, Bloomberg's got a long hard slog to do it and I don't think even a billion dollars and glowing columns from David Broder would pull it out for him in the end. As for the rationale behind his candidacy, Bloomberg likes to sell himself as the change agent in the race, a post-partisan figure who will bring the parties together and stop the fighting in Washington, but we already have one of those in Barack Obama, the Democrat who claims Ronald Reagan is his hero. Bloomberg also likes to sell himself as the competent businessman who can clean up the fiscal mess left behind by George W. Bush, but we also have one of those candidates already in the race and his name is Mitt Romney. Bloomberg's supporters also like to sell him as a candidate without the personal baggage of a Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Rodham Clinton, one who has no skeletons in his closet and will not be hit with personal or public scandals as president. But let us not forget that Bloomberg has been slapped with a plethora of sexual harassment lawsuits in the past and settled them all and got non-disclosure agreements from the victims. Let us also remember that his company, Bloomberg LP, is being sued by the federal government for gender discrimination and that his own role in the discrimination problem is being eyed by the feds. Bloomberg is NOT a candidate without personal or public scandal baggage. Bloomberg's supporters also say that Bloomberg needs to run because people are fed up with politics as usual and only a post-partisan independent like himself can restore America's interest in politics. And yet how turned off from politics can America be when interest in the election is so high and turn-out in the primaries and caucuses this year is at a record high? (See here and here for that story.) It doesn't seem to me like people are being turned off politics these days. If anything, the Iraq war and the tanking of the economy have heightened interest in politics and the '08 elections among all segments of the America - including young people. So at the end of the day, why is Bloomberg going to run for president?

Take A Hike Mike

Unite With Mike The Education Mayor: Finding a High School for an Immigrant Child is Tougher than you Think, The maze of America by Jessica Siegel, from the Village Voice, an excerpt:

Ralph Antony Louissant just wanted a school to take him. Ralph Antony Louissant is a sweet-faced 16-year-old, tall with closely cropped hair. Quiet and polite, he greets a visitor to his aunt's apartment with a soft "bon soir." He arrived from Haiti in August to join his sister Carla, his aunt, and his cousins in Brooklyn. His family's attempts to get him registered in a New York City public high school started back then and culminated during two weeks in September, in an odyssey through five public high schools, trying to find one that would accept him. Such is the situation with many English-language learners (ELLs), advocates say, where more than half of New York City's new small schools—the centerpiece of Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's reorganization of the city's education system—have student bodies in which less than 5 percent are ELLs. And despite a number of rulings saying that each school must provide services for ELLs, Ralph Antony's experience shows that it's perhaps only through family persistence and the intervention of advocates that many immigrant students are getting the services to which they are entitled.

Michael Of Arabia

Bush gets a lecture from King Abdullah. If only George could be like Mike.
from Robert Scheer

Why is it that George W. Bush only gets a 12 percent favorability rating in Saudi Arabia? Even Osama bin Laden and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad scored higher in a poll last month by the nonpartisan Terror Free Tomorrow group. What ingrates those Saudis are—didn’t the Bush family save them twice from Saddam Hussein?

Keep Them Doggies Rolling, Rawhide!

Mike gives his girl friend Diana a tour of Richmond Hill High.
It's easy to unite when you pack 3600 kids in a space built for 1800. Samuel Freedman's excellent article in yesterday's nytimes reveals the truth about the education mayor. An excerpt:

Over the past dozen years, Richmond Hill’s most notable architectural accouterment has been the quote-unquote temporary classroom. Twenty-two of these red metal trailers, encased within chain-link fencing, occupy the school’s former yard, evoking the ambience of the Port Elizabeth container-ship terminal.
As for the cargo, that would be the students, faculty members and staff. Richmond Hill currently holds more than 3,600 pupils, twice its supposed limit, and could have 4,000 next fall as other neighborhood high schools in Queens are broken into mini-schools with smaller, more selective enrollments. Andrew Jackson, Springfield Gardens and Franklin K. Lane have already closed; next year, Far Rockaway will, too. These days at Richmond Hill, the first lunch period starts at 8:59 a.m., class sizes routinely exceed city and state averages and students have four minutes to negotiate hallways that one biology teacher at the school likens to clotted arteries.
The classroom trailers, never meant for more than a decade of nonstop use, need new walls, ceilings and plumbing. One social studies teacher, Peter McHugh, was reduced last year to conducting class while holding an umbrella against a leaky roof.

Mike Tries To Solidify His Base 2

I don't think the Diana Taylor/Tannenbaum argument was convincing.

Mike Tries To Solidify His Base

It's always good politics to solidify your base before you try to convince others.
I would imagine there is some concern of Mike's choice of a shiksa girl friend.

Bloomberg Girl 6: Merv Griffin

Merv came out of the closet from the "next world" and heard about the Bloomberg Girl auditions and now he wants in. This song is certainly non-sensible enough for anyone considering a Bloomberg presidency

down at the english fair
one evening i was there
when i heard a showman shouting underneath the flair
*chorus*
i've got a lovely bunch of coconuts
there they are standing in a row
big ones small ones some as big as your head
give 'em a twist
a flick of the wrist
that's wut the show man said
now that i've got a lovely bunch of coconuts
everybody knows they'll make me rich
there stands me wife
the idle of me life
singing a rolly polly paul a penny a pitch
singing a rolly polly paul a penny a pitch
rolly polly paul
a rolly polly paul
singing rolly polly paul a penny a pinch

i've got a lovely bunch of coconuts
*how lovely*
there they are standing in a row
*1-2-3-4*
big ones small ones some as big as your head
*and bigger*
give 'em a twist
a flick of the wrist
that's wut the show man said
now that i've got a lovely bunch of coconuts
everybody knows they'll make me rich
there stands me wife
the idle of me life
singing a rolly polly paul a penny a pitch
singing a rolly polly paul a penny a pitch
rolly polly paul
a rolly polly paul
singing rolly polly paul a penny a pinch

Bloomberg Girl 5: Liza Redux

Liza's back to audition with this tipsy version of Michael Jackson's, "You Are Not Alone." On a rare serious note, it's only fitting that Mike (a staunch supporter of gay rights-I admire him for that) should have the iconic Liza as his Bloomberg girl

A Possible Presidential Debate

That's if Rudy manages to withstand another crushing loss

Mike Testing His I Had A Dream Speech

The secret discussion that Mike and Barack had during a NYC breakfast in December

The Big Tease

Will he or won't he run? Image from a website called the weekly donut

The Cheesecake Solution

Pressure Grows On Bloomberg: Make Up Your Mind, Already!
from talking points by greg sargent 1/11/08

This has already gotten some attention, but we wanted to flag it anyway. Today's Times has a good piece on the backlash that's growing towards Mike Bloomberg's suggestions that he may run or may not run for President. We wanted to point you towards this priceless quote from Democratic strategist Robert Zimmerman, who is a Hillary supporter: “I think it is becoming a very old story very fast. Mike Bloomberg has failed to make a case that he represents an independent movement, as opposed to a former Democratic liberal, former Republican, former Bush-backer running a campaign of opportunism.” This really is the point. Bloomberg, who has criticized all the candidates for lacking policy specifics, has simply not said a darn thing that lets us place him in an ideological or policy sense. He is for "bipartisanship" in all its platitudinous glory, without telling us what policy ends he thinks should be accomplished with that bipartisanship. Which raises another point: Bloomberg's condemnation of "partisanship" needs to be seen as an electoral strategy, rather than a governmental one. That's what he used to get around the Democratic Party in New York, and it's what he would use to get around the parties should he run for President. As Zimmerman says, this is all about opportunism, pure and simple.

Schmucks Who Don't Need No Badges

I'm talking about the unity 08 bunch, but don't get me wrong beck is certainly a schmuck too. also from the dailykos listserve

Whatever the actual measurable impact of political blogs may be, their movement is clearly grassroots and heartfelt. So, it’s funny to see the traditional media caught in the attempted creation of a campaign phenomenon. In this case, Daily Kos diarist SusanG has fun at the expense of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Mitchell describes speculation over a possible presidential bid by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg reaching a “fevered pitch,” to which SusanG asks: A fevered pitch? Seriously? Breaking: Some schmuck hasn't decided whether or not to run in 08. But his indecision is freakin' fevered as all hell. This is all part of the Unity ‘08 nonsense coming out of Oklahoma this week where former officeholders are spending their pensions gathering to get excited about moderation, compromise, tepidity and Bloomberg. I know nothing in politics quite gets my blood flowing like contemplating a party-switching billionaire plutocrat discussing "across-the-aisle" unity with the likes of Christine Todd Whitman, Bob Graham, Bill Brock, Charles Robb, John Danforth , Sam Nunn and Gary Hart. I think Andrea Mitchell’s pitch is so fevered you could consider it hallucinatory

Mayor Mike Explains It All

Why hasn't anyone ever thought this through before with such amazing clarity

Unity 08, Aka Mike As Miss Congeniality

from the carpetbagger report 1/10/08

What a Bloomberg/Unity agenda might look like
According to several news outlets, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has launched a “research effort” to determine whether he’d be a viable third-party presidential candidate in November. The mayor has reportedly been eyeing “early March as a timetable for making a decision.” All of this, of course, comes just a few days after Bloomberg gathered with a group of bipartisan former officials in Oklahoma, where they apparently talked about how nice it would be if everyone in Washington was nicer to one another. Bloomberg’s perspective at the event, in particular, seemed unusually foolish: “Government is dysfunctional. There is no collaboration and congeniality. There is no working together and ‘Let’s do what’s right for the country.’” This is pretty tiresome. Democrats have an agenda; Republicans have a different one. Both want to do what’s right for the country — but they disagree about how to do that. Do Bloomberg and his cohorts have anything specific in mind? Sort of. Former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn read a statement issued by the group — it said the nation is “headed in the wrong direction” — with a lengthy list of areas of concern. I won’t bother with the whole list, but the highlights include:

* The United States is now unpopular around the world and our credibility is low;

* We’re not leading on counter-terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and climate change;

* The deficit is out of control and the middle-class is struggling;

* Our military is “stretched thin”;

* We lack a coherent energy policy;

* Our schools aren’t good enough;

* Nearly 50 million Americans are without health insurance;

* We’ve neglected infrastructure needs.

I think I’m noticing a pattern here.
All of these concerns are identical to those of most Democrats. Listen to any of the Democratic presidential candidates and you’ll hear largely the same things. All of these problems were created (or exacerbated) by Republican incompetence and/or neglect, and all of them have been met with Democratic policy proposals that have faced GOP obstructionism. It gets to why the Bloomberg initiative is simply inane. Dems and Bloomberg see the same problems. Dems believe the way to address those problems is to implement a progressive policy agenda, while Bloomberg believes we need more “congeniality.” It’s as if we can just split the difference and fix the problems. That may occasionally be sufficient, but not with any of the challenges Bloomberg’s group identified. What’s the split-the-difference solution to global warming? Or Iraq? Or taxes? Or healthcare?

All we get from this silly endeavor are process arguments. They say we need:

* Clear descriptions of how they would establish a government of national unity

* specific strategies for reducing polarization and reaching bipartisan consensus

* plans to go beyond tokenism to appoint a truly bipartisan cabinet with critical posts held by the most qualified people available regardless of political affiliation

* proposals for bipartisan executive and legislative policy groups in critical areas such as national security.

These guys don’t want to offer policy solutions; they want to offer suggestions on how to talk about policy solutions. They don’t care what people say at the negotiating table; they care what the table looks like.

from commentators

To really tackle climate change, for example, what you need is not “a truly bipartisan cabinet” but rather elected officials who put the national interest over the interests of oil and gas companies. Most of the problem actors here are Republicans, but some are Democrats like Mary Landrieux. Back when he was a right-wing Democratic Senator, David Boren worked slavishly to advance the interests of polluting energy firms. Now he wants us to have more bipartisanship? It’s absurd.

Second is that the egomaniacs like Bloomberg, Perot, Ventura, Boren, Nunn, etc. always want to be visible leaders in this movement at the highest levels and no one wants to do the real work, the invisible party building. You dont create a real, lasting, “good government” solution by simply having a billionaire buy the White House once. You form a credible, third governing alternative by electing quality third/non/post party to the most local, smallest turnout offices and working your way up the ballot so that when the day comes you have a third/non/post party President, you also have a handful (or more) of similarly situated people in the House and Senate to help out.

Curly And Mike In The Corn Fields

With Hillary's comeback and the Presidential situation in flux, Mike's hopes may still be alive.