Business Week predicts Bloomberg candidacy, McCain presidency

[villager]

from their "Ten Likely Events in 2008" article, which also predicts the arrival of internet TV, and the death of the CD:

Bloomberg's Historic Run

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will enter the Presidential race in February, after it becomes clear which nominees will get the nod from the major parties. His multiple billions and organization will impress voters—and stun rivals. He'll look like the most viable third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. But Bloomberg will come up short, as he comes in for withering attacks from both Democrats and Republicans. He and Clinton will split more than 50% of the votes, but Arizona's maverick senator, John McCain, will end up the country's next President.

<snip>

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/dec2007/db20071229_145447_page_2.htm

[BlueManDude]

1. that "maverick" shit just won't die.

[bigscott]

5. didn't you know

maverick is slang for old fossilized has-been douche bag

[Donnachaidh]

2. yet more wishful thinking from corporations

They are not going to give up the corporate gravy train put into place by Regan and the rest of the neocons.

Robber baron bloviation.

[warrior1]

3. What are these people smoking?

"John McCain, will end up the country's next President."

[Highway61]

4. They can say anything they want

The people of this country are SICK and tired of the Corporate Bullshit...Bloomberg will "fly" ..just like Mitt is "flying".....negative.

[gasperc]

6. do they predict, or wish to impose a McCain presidency

to be shoved down the throats of us good Americans, just like Bush was the better choice when the majority of Americans aparently made the "incorrect" choice as they had done in 1992

[TwilightGardener]

7. That's what they're doing. Even Tweety, who ostensibly opposes the war, wants

McCain to win because he "deserves" it. He actually said this. Why I bother watching him is anybody's guess. But if McCain wins the nom, be prepared for 10 months of HERO WORSHIP and MAVERICK COOL.

[Oilwellian]

8. Glen Greenwald wrote a great piece on Bloomberg

he wrote:

Here's Bloomberg's record of Independence, Judgment, Competence, and Trans-partisan Wisdom. Consider how sterling his judgment is and how able he would be to make the world respect us again:

NYT, May 11, 2004:

Laura Bush and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stood shoulder to shoulder yesterday in an appearance that may well dispel any lingering doubt as to the mayor's feelings about the president, or of the mayor's own political identity. . . .

here he was yesterday, throwing in his words of support for the president's decision to invade Iraq -- promoting one of the notions that is central to the rationale for the attack, that the conflict was justified by what happened on Sept. 11.

"Let me add something to that," Mr. Bloomberg said after Mrs. Bush gave her defense of her husband and his decision to go to war. "Don't forget that the war started not very many blocks from here."

Joe Conason, Salon, June 22, 2007:

Dating back to his infatuation with Bush, the mayor has always been an enthusiastic supporter of the war in Iraq. He marched lockstep in the Bush drive toward invasion when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in September 2002: "Freedom comes at a price, and tragically, sometimes that price is the commitment to defend freedom by arms. America has been, is, and always will be willing to do its duty -- to sacrifice even its own blood, so that people everywhere can live as individuals responsible for their own destinies." (As Wayne Barrett once pointed out in the Village Voice, the man spouting this brave talk got out of the Vietnam draft because his feet are flat.)

Bloomberg's pro-war rhetoric dutifully echoed the White House line connecting Saddam Hussein with al-Qaida and 9/11, almost as if Karl Rove had programmed his brain. "I'm voting for George W. Bush and it's mainly because I think we have to strike back at terrorists," he said in September 2004. "To argue that Saddam Hussein wasn't a terrorist is ridiculous. He used mustard gas, or some kind of gas, against his own people."

Bloomberg's speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention:

I want to thank President Bush for supporting New York City and changing the homeland security funding formula and for leading the global war on terrorism.

(APPLAUSE)

The president deserves our support.

(APPLAUSE)

We are here to support him.

(APPLAUSE)

And I am here to support him.

(APPLAUSE)

NYT, January 29, 2004:

We are going to get George W. Bush re-elected as president of the United States! We are going to carry New York City and New York State. Everybody thinks I'm crazy, but I think we can do it.

Wayne Barrett, Village Voice, October 18, 2005:

Even though the City Council passed a resolution opposing the war, Bloomberg called an old friend, Paul Wolfowitz, to express his desire to host a ticker tape parade "to say thank you," apparently as unaware as the "Mission Accomplished" president that the troops would not be coming home for years. Bloomberg actually contributed $5 million to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Affairs in the late '90s, when war architect Wolfowitz was dean. . . .

Even before the war, Bloomberg brought his mother and daughter to the United Nations, where he addressed the General Assembly a day after Bush did in September 2002. Echoing Bush's warnings that the U.S. would go it alone if the U.N. didn't act, Bloomberg "praised" Bush's war on terror "and offered support for an attack on Iraq," according to the Daily News.

Michael Bloomberg Press Release, July 17, 2006, as the Israeli bombing of Lebanon proceeded:

Israel rightly continues to defend itself from unprovoked attacks on innocent civilians, and the killing and abduction of Israeli soldiers by the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Let there be no doubt: Hamas and Hezbollah must return the Israeli soldiers they abducted and cease their attacks against Israel.

I have said time and again that you cannot negotiate when there is a gun to your head. The international community needs to send a clear message to these terrorist organizations -- and the countries that fund and support their reign of terror -- that these kinds of attacks on peaceful, democratic nations will not be tolerated. . . . .

I commend President Bush and his cabinet for their continued support of Israel and its right to defend itself. I deeply hope that the fighting will end soon, and that all the innocent people affected by this conflict will again be safe. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those soldiers who have fallen in combat, the brave sons and daughters of Israel who are defending Israel's freedom at this very moment, and with the people of Israel who are an inspiration to all of us as they continue to go about their lives in the face of such uncertainty.

I have always believed that the fate of Israel and the future of New York City are deeply connected. If Israel's democracy is compromised, so too are our freedoms here at home. A strong Israel means a strong America and a strong New York. And as Americans and New Yorkers, we must continue to stand with Israel as we have done for the past 58 years, and we must never lose our hope for peace.

Rolling Stone, August 22, 2006:

Bloomberg, in fact, identifies strongly with the defeated Democrat from Connecticut. "I think what they're doing to Joe Lieberman is a disgrace," the mayor volunteered when I met with him in his offices in July, shortly before anti-war bloggers helped Ned Lamont beat Lieberman in the primary. . . . A few days later, Bloomberg was offering to campaign for Lieberman.

He also is as enamored of government control, police powers and surveillance as anyone in the Bush administration. He is an unrestrained advocate and enforcer of the War on Drugs (despite his own acknowledged use of marijuana, of course) and advocates the creation of "a DNA or fingerprint database to track and verify all legal U.S. workers," about which the NY Civil Liberties Union said, with extreme understatement: "It doesn't sound like the free society we think we're living in. It will inevitably be used not just by employers but by law enforcement, government agencies, schools and all over the private sector."

Clearly, this is just exactly what our country desperately needs, what it is missing most -- a neoconservative, combat-avoiding, Bush-supporting, Middle-East-warmonger who sees U.S. and Israeli interests as indistinguishable and inextricably linked, with a fetish for ever-increasing government control and surveillance, and a background as a Wall St. billionaire. We just haven't had enough of those in our political culture. Our political system, more than anything, is missing the influence of people like that. That's why it's broken: not enough of those.