Day: November 1, 2012

So Much for the Rumors — Bloomberg Endorsed Obama

Trish

bloomberg

You heard the speculation this week that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to let Obama assess places destroyed by Hurricane Sandy because he is rooting for Mitt Romney and didn’t want to give the president any photo ops. Looks like the rumors were wrong.

Bloomberg, who had previously said that he would not make a public endorsement in the 2012 race, apparently changed his mind after New York was pummeled by Hurricane Sandy…

Bloomberg’s endorsement comes as momentum for Obama seems to be building as the race ends

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast — in lost lives, lost homes and lost business — brought the stakes of Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” Bloomberg wrote.

“We need leadership from the White House — and over the past four years, President Barack Obama has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks,” the mayor continued. “His administration also has adopted tighter controls on mercury emissions, which will help to close the dirtiest coal power plants…which are estimated to kill 13,000 Americans a year.”

He then went on to praise President Obama’s “Race to the Top” education initative, his defense of a woman’s right to choose, and his support for marriage equality, noting that “I want our president to be on the right side of history.”

But, Bloomberg added, it’s not just that he likes Obama. It’s also that he doesn’t like Romney.

[…]

October Job Growth Might Have Been Twice the Forecast. Cue the Rightwing CEO Tweets

Trish

Tweets galore address the report from ADP (a payroll services provider) that 158,000 private sector jobs were added in October. Since this figure is about twice the gain of 88,000 jobs that was forecasted, we can again expect rightwing CEOs to start questioning the motives of the company, in between sending emails to their staffs threatening to cut their jobs if Obama is re-elected.

While we wait for those tweets to proliferate, here’s one I liked:

Four More Years @4More99
We expected the US to create 88,000 jobs in October – instead there were 158,000. I blame Obama.

Huckabee, Who Once Called Romney’s Church a ‘Satanic Cult,’ Now Puts Out Ad That Says, Vote for Mitt Or You Will Go to Hell

Jon Ponder

In 2007, when he was running against Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries, Mike Huckabee, the evangelical Baptist preacher and former governor of Arkansas, suggested that Mormonism was a “satanic cult,” based on an assertion that it is part of the cult’s dogma that Jesus and Satan were brothers.

Now Huckabee is out with a pro-Romney ad that warns voters that if they do not vote for Romney, they are bound for hell.

Partial transcript:

[…]

GOP ‘Unskewed’ Poll Denier Dean Chambers, Who Is Obese, Attacks Nate Silver for Being ‘of Very Small Stature, a Thin and Effeminate Man’

Jon Ponder
Dean Chambers, left, and Nate Silver
Dean Chambers, left, and Nate Silver

The fact that Republicans are so desperate to discredit Nate Silver over his prediction that Mitt Romney has a less than a 25 percent chance of winning the presidency is a clear sign that desperation is setting in on the right.

But the oddest, and most childish, attack on Silver comes from polling conspiracy theorist Dean Chambers — he’s behind the “unskewed” poll website that reconfigures polling results so that Romney always comes out ahead. Based on the only photo of him that is widely available, Chambers appears to be at least 100 pounds over optimum for a man of normal height, and yet he issued a statement in which he insulted Silver’s appearance:

“Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the ‘Mr. New Castrati’ voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program.”

[…]