http://nymag.com/news/politics/25015/index.html
Personally, I love the guy, and if you read the article, you see that he’s not a focus-group polished politician. He’s an empiricist technocrat, which has worked pretty well for NYC.
http://nymag.com/...ics/25015/index.html
Personally, I love the guy, and if you read the article, you see that he’s not a focus-group polished politician. He’s an empiricist technocrat, which has worked pretty well for NYC.
My only concern with him (and I do like him) is that he seems to come down on the side of business at the expense of the individual too often.
I don’t know that I would argue that. The smoking ban comes to mind - think about how many bar/restaurant owners and associations came threatening when he pushed it through.
I think his bigger problem is that he will have to disengage himself from the Republican party to do it, and soon. His positions on practically anything fundamentally conflict with the planks, so we’ll see how that shakes out.
http://nymag.com/...ics/25015/index.html
Personally, I love the guy, and if you read the article, you see that he’s not a focus-group polished politician. He’s an empiricist technocrat, which has worked pretty well for NYC.
We definately need another billionaire in the WH. Who better to understand the wants and needs of the common man/woman than someone who doesn’t know the price of a carton of eggs? I honestly can’t believe Bloomberg and his kind are the best this nation has to offer.
Which humble poor man would you like to see nominated?
He certainly couldn’t do worse…
Unfortunately though, he’s anti-gun, pro-choice, pro gay-rights, pro-stem-cell, etc. Only thing different between him and me is about a gazillion dollars. So he’ll get elected right before me…like in never…
I think it would be intriguing to contrast him and Giuliani. Personally, I wasn’t a fan of Giuliani, and opinion polls before 9/11 had Giuliani doing quite poorly - i.e., people had gotten sick of his schtick and way he tended to polarize different interests in the city and be rather opaque. Bloomberg has gone out of his way to contrast himself as more of a uniter, while being fundamentally competent at the day-to-day running of the city. The easy comparison would be between the mayors during police shooting incidents. Giuliani would trot out criminal records of the victims, while Bloomberg would say something a bit more commonsense, like “gee, it seems excessive when unarmed men get shot 51 times.” That kind of thing goes a long way in getting people on your side.
Which humble poor man would you like to see nominated?
I don’t personally know anybody worthy of being Prez. But there HAS to be someone out of the millions of people in this country.
It is just so depressing that it is the same old sh*t year after year. Honestly, when was the last time we had someone truly great in the Whitehouse. Everyone will probably say The Ronald. I’m not sure I would label him as great but let’s assume he was; how long ago was he in office? Why do we settle for mediocrity at best?
My wife works at the ER of the local hospital. No, it isn’t like the ER of any television show with the drama and glitter and glamor. 99% of the people do NOT have medical insurance – they are illegal aliens or white trash mothers and their cases are anything but emergencies. They usually milk the system because their child has a fever or they are addicted to pain meds. This healthcare is all free to them. At my last job (with lots of migrant workers) we offered the Mexican employees medical insurance. One brave sole spoke up and said, “why would we want to pay for something we already get for free.” Good point, why would you want to pay for something you get for free? Yet my out of pocket healthcare costs go up without fail year after year and I don’t go to the doctor unless I’m dying because I haven’t reached my deductible. Well, didn’t Mr. Clinton promise to clean up the health care system? He was too busy getting BJs in the oval office to do anything worthwhile. We won’t even talk about how worthless W is.
During last November’s election the people of this country made it clear that we want change. But as far as my eye can see it is business as usual.
Giuliani’s got even less a shot that Bloomberg. Anti-NY sentiment aside, neither has enough national exposure, when you ignore one really, really bad day.
Funniest thing is, it’s probably Pataki who’s got the best shot. How wild is that?
Pataki has no chance. New Yorkers hated him, and his name recognition is practically zero, which was probably why Frist dropped out last week. Pataki was sort of this milquetoast cipher that really didn’t do much. I think it will be interesting to see how much of a contrast Spitzer presents to Pataki. I watched Spitzer on CNBC last week talking about SOX and he was remarkable - he intellectually outclassed the interviewer, which may not have been hard to do, but I was impressed he was able to drop words like “imprimatur” into his response without any effort at all.
Giuliani probably has no chance, but it will be fun to watch him backtrack on all the positions he had when he was mayor - pro-gay, anti-guns, etc. I believe that you wouldn’t see Bloomberg do that. He is what he is, and if you don’t like it, drop dead. Although his legendarily salty language and “little red book” of sayings may come back to haunt him.