Too Bad Bloomberg Didn't Run For President

From the NY Post:

Georgina Bloomberg reveals she was relieved that her dad, Michael, didn’t make a run for president, “because it would have been so difficult on him,” she says. “I’ve seen the process of a campaign . . . I know how brutal it is.”

If anybody could use a little brutality - in this case, ego deflation - it's Michael "I Know Best About Everything!" Bloomberg.

Nothing would have been sweeter than seeing Bloomberg outpolled by comedian Pat Paulsen (dead since 1997) in Iowa.

In any case, here's hoping Sheriff Andy Cuomo runs in 2016 or 2020 and gets some similar ego deflation in the Democratic Primary.

In fact, here's hoping Cuomo gets some via Zephyr Teachout in this year's gubernatorial primary.

Bloomberg Calls NYPD "My Own Army"

All part of a speech designed to give people the impression he could and should be president:

In a speech at MIT last night to discuss the packed sweepstakes to build a tech campus in New York City, Mayor Bloomberg said he prefers City Hall to the White House. Almost immediately after Mayor Bloomberg dampened recent speculation he’s eyeing a White House bid, he added fuel to the fire by explaining why a mayor would be the best person for the job.

Mayor Bloomberg’s recent criticism of President Obama for allowing the debt reduction Supercommittee to fail led many political tea leaf watchers to believe he’s eyeing a potential White House bid. To the dismay of those who hope he’ll mount presidential campaign, Mayor Bloomberg began his speech last night by discussing why City Hall is just fine by him.

“I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

At first, Mayor Bloomberg sounded he was outlining why three terms as mayor was enough experience in public office for him, but he quickly switched gears and began characterizing City Hall as the perfect preparation for the White House because it allowed him to buck the Beltway establishment get real on-the-ground knowledge.

“I don’t listen to Washington very much, which is something they’re not thrillled about,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “We have every kind of people from every part of the world and every kind of problem.”

Mayor Bloomberg explained that, unlike Washington politicians, mayors are people of action.

“The difference between my level of government and other levels of government is that action takes place at the city level,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “The cities and mayors are where you deal with crime, you deal with real immigration problems, you deal with health problems, you deal with picking up the garbage.”

That Bloomberg still thinks he can run for president after the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2010, after CityTime and all the other outside consultant scandals that add up to over $1 billion in wasted or stolen taxpayer money, after he declared Zuccotti Park a no-fly zone and sent in his NYPD goons to beat Occupy Wall Street protesters and move them out of the park, after he overhauled the NYC public school system, closed hundreds of schools, threw the entire system into chaos and still couldn't raise test scores or close the achievement gap - well, that takes a lot of chutzpah.

But calling the NYPD "my own army" after all the acts of police brutality over the past few months, well, that really does give some insight into the Little Dictator's mind.

He thinks he's Napoleon and the country's his for the taking.

It's oligarchs like this that the Occupy movement has come to wash away.

Let's get the firehose going.

Disaster Economics

Austerity for the masses, free money for the banksters, or we're all dooooommmmmmmeeeeedddddd!!!!!

So says The Economist.

Frankly the doomed part might be right if the Euro Zone goes under.

Or even if it just hits a deep recession and tilts the rest of the world into the abyss with it.

But it's these same arrogant assholes who are clamoring for bankster bailouts or we're going to see Lehman 2.0 x 2 who caused all this shit in the first place.

How come the austerity comes for the masses, but the banksters and hedge fund criminals who caused all of this stuff get to ride off on huge waves of free, newly minted cash?

I'm not an economist, I'm not a political scientist, I'm just an English teacher with a skeptical nature, but my sense is that these people have no idea what the fuck they're doing, are making things worse rather than better with all these imposed austerity measures, and when the Lehman 2.0 x 2 crash comes, the disorder and chaos that is set to be unleashed is going to make the Great Depression look like the Eisenhower Fifties.

No wonder they're clamping down so hard and heavy on the Occupy encampments and such.

And no wonder they're unleashing all that Homeland Security technology on the Occupy people.

They know, man.

They know.

And they're scared.

Imagine what happens if we get Lehman 2.0 x 2?

People are pissed and living in fear already.

And some are finally waking up to not only how dire the circumstances are, but just who it was who caused this mess in the first place.

People aren't going to put up with this bailout for the banksters/austerity for the masses shit a second time.

And they're going to come looking for the arrogant assholes who caused the disaster.

Bloomberg Exposed As Arrogant Jerk During EEOC Discrimination Deposition

You can tell a lot about a man by how he handles power.

Here is how the Mayor of Money handles it:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was patronizing, telling a lawyer who quoted from his memoir that “your reading is good.” He was unsympathetic, saying that as a hard-driving and ultracompetitive boss, he believed that those who left his company were disloyal and “bad people.”

And he was sarcastic. At one point in his testimony, Mr. Bloomberg mocked flexible work schedules and telecommuting by suggesting an alternative to videotaping his testimony from the discomfort of his lawyers’ offices.

“Could we continue this via phone conference so that I can be back in my office, or do you believe that that’s not acceptable?” Mr. Bloomberg said. “I’m just asking. I’d be happy to do it if you want.”

Such moments of thrust and parry, irritability and self-assuredness bordering on cockiness are perhaps the most striking parts of Mr. Bloomberg’s deposition in a federal discrimination lawsuit against Bloomberg L.P., the giant financial services and media corporation that he founded. And while the deposition took place two years ago, Mr. Bloomberg’s comments had never been made public. A few excerpts were included in a filing by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dated April 8.

Mr. Bloomberg, the company’s majority shareholder, is not a defendant in the class-action lawsuit, which was filed in 2007 on behalf of 65 employees who argued that the business had engaged in a pattern of discrimination against pregnant women who took maternity leave. The discrimination is alleged to have occurred after Mr. Bloomberg left to run for mayor in 2001.

But recent court documents submitted by the commission show what it asserts to be a pattern among company executives, not only of bias, but of outright hostility toward women who take maternity leave, with some executives suggesting that they did not deserve to work for Bloomberg L.P.

...

Mr. Bloomberg testified twice — on May 14, 2009, and July 27, 2009 — for approximately eight hours. The excerpts that have been made public represent just a sliver of that deposition, and are part of the commission’s rebuttal to Bloomberg L.P.’s motion this year to dismiss the case. More specifically, the excerpts are intended to bolster arguments made by Raechel L. Adams, a lawyer for the commission, that “discrimination against women and mothers in compensation, demotions and other terms, conditions or privileges of employment has been standard operating procedure since at least 2002.”

In his deposition, Mr. Bloomberg dismissed the argument that the company created a hostile work environment for pregnant women. Instead, in his often curt exchanges with Kam S. Wong, a lawyer who worked for the commission at the time of the deposition, he defended the company as valuing hard-working employees equally.

“We treat everybody in the company from the top, in every single part of the company, the extent the law will allow it,” he said.

At times, though, the mayor distanced himself from the company’s operations, saying that he had spoken no more than 15 times in seven years with Lex Fenwick, who replaced Mr. Bloomberg as chief executive of the company in 2001 and then left in 2008.

“I long lost track of what they’re doing,” Mr. Bloomberg testified.

But the mayor displayed his famously testy and sarcastic side, as evidenced when Ms. Wong read a passage from his 1997 memoir, “Bloomberg by Bloomberg”:

Q.: “ ‘And God forbid one of our people go to work for a competitor, then we all heartily and cordially really do hope they fail. In their new job, they have an avowed purpose to hurt their old co-workers. They’ve become bad people. Period. We have a loyalty to us. Leave, and you’re them.’ Did I read that accurately?”

A.: “Your reading is good.”

Q.: “Thank you. Do you continue to believe that statement today?”

A.: “More so than ever before.”

In another exchange, the mayor noted that the deposition was providing a forum for a rereading of his book.

“One benefit of a deposition,” Ms. Wong said.

“Absolutely,” the mayor responded. “Could you name the other?”

“I’m sure we’ll think of plenty others later on,” she replied.

“I don’t think so,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

This is who this man is - arrogant, bullying, hostile and condescending.

And that's leaving aside the misogyny that he has engaged in, which didn't make it to these excerpts from the deposition.

In the past, Bloomberg has been alleged to have suggested to a pregnant employee that she "kill" her baby in order to keep her job.

Why would anybody give this man total power over a school system with over 1 million children?

Frankly, if anybody seems like they need a check and balance, it's this guy.

Sting Loves Charter Schools, Hates Children

Former Police frontman Sting (aka Gordon Sumner) looks like an asshole.

Stories in both the media and accounts by his former bandmates say he is an asshole.

If this piece in the Post is true, we have another example of his assholitude:

Sting stung a helpless 12-year-old fan Wednesday night during intermission at the Broadway hit "The Book of Mormon." When the lad spotted Sting in the audience at the Eugene O'Neill, he approached the star and declared that "Message in a Bottle" was his favorite tune. But it wasn't music to Sting's ears. "I'm not Sting," replied Sting, according to an onlooker. "I'm some British dude." The Police frontman was spotted the next night watching Robin Williams in "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" at the nearby Richard Rodgers. No children were harmed.

Sting has raised money for charter schools and used to teach back in the day when he was still Gordon Sumner.

He says he raises lots of money for lots of charity causes.

You would think somebody like that might be a halfway decent bloke.

But in Sting's case, you would be wrong.

I guess when it comes to meeting actual children and giving them just a minute of his time and treating them like human beings, that's just too difficult a proposition for the Policeman.

Maybe he only likes people in crowds?

Anyway, it's too bad Led Zeppelin's John Bonham didn't make good on his threat to step on Sting's face for being an arrogant asshole.

If anybody could use a good stomping by a drummer, it's Sting.

The Arrogance Of Mike Bloomberg

The Esquire profile.

Bloomberg on himself:

He's so forceful, so absolutely certain of himself. His confidence is a thing with texture and size, grown vast in the hothouse of his fortune.

"I'm not certain," he says. "I'm right."

Other people on Bloomberg:

"There's a we-never-make-mistakes attitude that makes it hard to fix problems," says Steve Banks of the Legal Aid Society. "I don't get the sense that he hears what I'm saying when I talk to him directly," says city comptroller John Liu. "I believe he's the least in touch with ordinary people of any mayor in modern history," says Joel Berg of the Coalition Against Hunger. Small-business advocate Richard Lipsky says Bloomberg's cigarette taxes are costing bodegas and delis $250 million a year. "He called it a minor economic issue — that shows the hauteur." In Brooklyn, councilwoman Letitia James is icy. "Ask my colleagues in Brownsville or East New York what he's done in their districts. Ask them when was the last time they saw the mayor out there, or has the mayor ever visited?"

Even after CityTime, Cathie Black and the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2010, Bloomberg STILL thinks he can win the White House in 2012.

He's got $350 million to drop on the race.

We'll see if that works for him.

Right now, he's a national joke.

Obama Gets Punched In Face

Well, sort of:

WASHINGTON - President Obama is known for his tough, trash-talking brand of basketball - and it got him a split lip and 12 stitches on Friday.

The White House confirmed that Obama was hammered by an errant elbow in a game with friends at Fort McNair in southwest Washington, D.C.

The historic Army post is a favorite basketball haunt when Obama is in town on the weekend.

"After being inadvertently hit with an opposing player's elbow in the lip while playing basketball with friends and family, the President received 12 stitches today administered by the White House Medical Unit," press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

"They were done in the doctor's office located on the ground floor of the White House," Gibbs added.

Medical aides who treated Obama used a smaller filament than typically used, which increases the number of stitches but makes a tighter stitch and results in a smaller scar.

Obama was given a local anesthetic while receiving the stitches.

The White House didn't release a list of the combatants, but his pals on the court often include personal aide Reggie Love and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Wouldn't it be ironic if Arne Duncan elbowed Obama in the face and cut his lip?

I bet Arne got the rebound and blew the dunk anyway.

NY Times: It's Not About Black - It's About Bloomberg

Pretty good article from the Times summarizing what the Cathie Black fight has been about:

Like many other parents, Lisa B. Donlan was cautiously optimistic back in 2002 when Joel I. Klein, a former federal prosecutor and Bertelsmann executive, was appointed chancellor of the New York City public school system. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had just won control of the city schools from Albany, and while Ms. Donlan was happy with her own children’s school, she knew that parts of the system were badly broken.

“Back then, people were hopeful, people were open-minded,” Ms. Donlan recalled this week.

But when Mr. Bloomberg announced this month that his next pick for chancellor was Cathleen P. Black, the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, Ms. Donlan was outraged. She not only signed a petition asking the state education commissioner, David M. Steiner, to deny Ms. Black the waiver required for chancellor candidates who lack the necessary education credentials, but also joined other parent leaders in descending upon Dr. Steiner’s apartment on Monday to deliver a bound stack of petitions and letters opposing the appointment.

The difference in Ms. Donlan’s reaction, and in that of many public officials and private citizens, cannot solely be explained by Ms. Black’s even slimmer experience in the public schools (Mr. Klein at least went to them, and taught briefly) or her high-society profile and dearth of public service (Mr. Klein had served as deputy White House counsel and as the nation’s top antitrust official). It is as much about the drastically changed educational and political landscape over the past eight years. In many ways, whether people support or oppose her appointment has become a proxy for what they think of the mayor and his imperial style of running the city.

...

In 2002, Mr. Klein benefited from parental frustration: he was the brainy and committed outsider, swooping in to save what the insiders could not and bring a fresh eye to problems that had ossified.

But parents and others frustrated by Mr. Klein’s and Mr. Bloomberg’s approach do not see another noneducator from the upper crust as a relief; they see her as more of the same at best, and at worst, a slap in the face. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” said Mark S. Weprin, a City Councilman from Queens.

I can sum the whole article up in just a few words - the mayor is an arrogant, imperialistic, autocratic asshole and people are sick of him, sick of the way he has run the school system, and sick of the way he displaces blame for all of the problems in the system on others and refuses to take any responsibility for them himself.

And now, we have a governor coming in with the same arrogant, imperialistic, autocratic asshole tendencies.

It's time to take these people down.

Bloomberg now.

Cuomo next.

Maybe Bloomberg Is Right?

Bloomberg called Obama one of the most arrogant people he has ever met.

Considering how arrogant Bloomberg himself is, that's saying something.

But after reading this quote from a Politico article, I'm starting to think Bloomberg is - God forgive me for writing this - right:

In the anthology of Barack Obama quotations, one of the classics came just hours before the event that made him the hottest property in American politics.

As Obama walked toward the arena at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, where he gave an electrifying keynote address, a Chicago Tribune reporter noted that he seemed to be making a good impression.

“I’m LeBron, baby,” Obama told author David Mendell. “I can play on this level. I got some game."

You want more arrogant, self-aggrandizing b.s. from Obama?

Try this quote on for size:

A 2008 New Yorker article quoted Patrick Gaspard, now the White House political director, describing what Obama told him during the job interview: “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Or this one:

In author David Remnick’s Obama biography, “The Bridge,” he quotes White House adviser and longtime friend Valerie Jarrett: “I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. ... He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. ... So, what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. ... He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

My God, the best thing that could happen to this arrogant asshole is for him to be sent home after one term and be reminded for the rest of his life that George W. Bush got two terms while he got one and that he managed to erase the bad institutional memories people have of Herbert Hoover with the very bad recent memories of Barack Obama.

Bloomberg Calls People In Congress Stupid

This seems like a great way to start a third party presidential campaign:

Mayor Bloomberg, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal while in Hong Kong and Shenzhen for the C40 climate summit, had some rather harsh words about members of Congress.

...

"If you look at the U.S., you look at who we're electing to Congress, to the Senate—they can't read," he said.

"I'll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We're about to start a trade war with China if we're not careful here," he warned, "only because nobody knows where China is. Nobody knows what China is."

Change "members of Congress" to "general American public" and you sum up the mayor's attitudes toward the country.

He thinks he's smarter than everybody else.

He thinks he knows everything there is to know.

And he thinks anybody who doesn't agree with him is an idiot.

He called Obama arrogant the other day.

Sure, Obama's arrogant and full of himself.

But NOBODY doesn't arrogant and full of himself like Mayor Moneybags.

Obama Is Sticking With The Failed Mortgage Program

Jesus, Obama really is as stupid and stubborn as George W. Bush:

Policymakers will likely keep mortgage rates low for the next several years because it's the best and cheapest way to heal the housing market, a senior Obama administration official hinted on Wednesday.

In a nearly hour-long, wide-ranging interview with a small group of reporters from various publications, the senior official, who spoke frankly on the condition of anonymity:

* Defended the administration's lackluster foreclosure-prevention initiatives, arguing that a million struggling homeowners benefited from a temporary period of lower monthly payments even though they may ultimately lose their homes;

* Acknowledged that one success for the administration has been its role in lengthening the foreclosure process, despite the risks it poses to the stability of the housing market;

* Said that home prices will likely decline in the near future; dismissed concerns that low interest rates may lead to another asset bubble as investors chase ever-higher returns, and instead encouraged such risk-taking because it will benefit the economy;

...

# Said that most of the unemployed are jobless because of the boom-bust nature of the business cycle, but that the jobless rate could remain high for the foreseeable future if the unemployed lose critical skills due to long spells of joblessness;

Wow. Wow. I mean wow.

The Obama administration DOESN'T care that the mortgage relief program ISN'T helping homeowners, all they want to do is stretch out the rate of foreclosures to keep housing prices from falling even more when a bunch of foreclosed properties hit the market all at once.

Is that the change we can believe these people sold on the campaign trail?

Vote for Obama, he'll extend the foreclosures out while sticking hundreds of thousands of troubled mortgage holders with a few more months of extra payments before they ultimately lose their homes!

Gee, I don't remember hearing that on the campaign trail?

But that's exactly the plan.

And the worst part is, IT'S NOT ACTUALLY WORKING.Here is another participant at that briefing, Mike Konczal on that:

- They are sticking by HAMP. The narrative seemed to change from helping homeowners to spacing out the foreclosures. I asked them to repeat it, because the idea that billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to smooth out foreclosures for banks struck me as new narrative – it’s explicitly extend-and-pretend, and also fairly cynical.

- There was talk about how fiscal policy can’t move through Congress. I asked them about only 0.5% of HAMP being spent and how that could be used without Congress’ permission. Before I suggested that the remainder of the $50bn be divided into two funds, the Digging Holes Across States (DHAS) fund and the Filling Holes Across States (FHAS) fund, two far more socially productive means of spending the HAMP money than what is currently being done with it, I was told that the entire $50bn is expected to be spent by the time the program is over. I didn’t believe it; we will see.

- Overall, there seemed to be a sense of “we are done here” from the meeting. Maybe it was the fact that it is August, the informal manner of the meeting and a news cycle is driven by insane things, but there was a sense with the financial reform bill passed, deadlock in Congress and a Federal Reserve tip-toeing around its mandate things were going to slow down and options are more or less removed from the table. Which is a very scary thought with the economy the way it is.

They REALLY, REALLY have NO FUCKING CLUE how to deal with either economy or the housing problem.

Here's Atrios' reaction to the Obama "plan":

Really fucking unbelievable. As I think I said to Mike at Netroots Nation, if HAMP is actually a program designed to boost the housing market and funnel money several billion more dollars to banks, it's also a really fucking horrible and stupid and inefficient way to do that even without the "screwing people over" part.

Indeed.

These are very stupid, very arrogant, very stubborn morons in the administration and the head guy seems to be the most stupid, most arrogant and most stubborn.