After 11 years of waiting, the moment is finally approaching: Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s three-term reign comes to a close January 1, 2014. To celebrate, we’ve created HowLongUntilBloombergLeaves.com, a single-serving site that counts down the time–to the second–until El Bloombito says adios. Come through, watch as Bloomberg’s time in office drains out of a 17-oz soda cup, and leave a farewell message while you’re at it.
Considering all of the crazy things Bloomberg has said and done during his third term alone, his departure couldn’t come quicker. Here’s but a few snippets:
-Bloomberg claimed Democratic nominee Bill de Blasio was running a “racist” campaign for showcasing his multiracial family.
-Despite overwhelming statistics to the contrary, the mayor believes the NYPD disproportionally stops “whites too much, and minorities too little.”
-“If I were the federal government, assuming you could wave a magic wand and pull everybody together,” the mayor said in 2011, “you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agree to go to Detroit and live there for five or ten years.”
-There’s nothing wrong with the NYPD surveilling the websites of Muslim student groups all over the East Coast, says Bloomberg. “The Police Department goes where there are allegations, and they look to see whether those allegations are true,” he said. “That’s what you would expect them to do.”
-As long as we have good teachers, it doesn’t matter how big class sizes are, he said, “even if it meant [students] standing rather than sitting.”
