This morning Rudy Giuliani, who sold himself for eight years as the Saint of 9/11, said on two separate morning shows that no terrorist attacks occurred during the Bush years.

First he said it on Morning Schmoe until Mike Brzezinski reminded him about 9/11, then he said it on Good Morning America:


And that hack cable news whore Stephanopoulos said nothing. He didn't confront him, he didn't do anything. He has since acknowledged his "mistake" on his blog, but the damage is done, because the "low-information voters" who are susceptible to short memories are the ones watching the morning shows while they make the kids' lunches. They are not going to read a retraction on Stephanopoulos' blog.

But this is now a pattern with ex-Bushies. The tally is now Dana Perino, Mary Matalin, and Rudy Giuliani, ALL claiming that there were no terrorist attacks under the Bush Administration. Even when they clarify later on that they mean "...after 9.11", that isn't true either. We had the anthrax attacks, the shoe bomber, the DC snipers, the guy who plowed into a group of students in Chapel Hill in the name of Mohammed Atta....and that's just what I can think of. And the reality is that if the Bushistas were so successful in their so-called "war on terror", why are we still in this mess?

The Republicans are doing no less than attempting to rewrite history. They know how inattentive Americans are. They know what short memories Americans have. Republicans have always known how to play to American stupidity and willful ignorance. While the Democrats have always taken the high road and claimed that "Americans are too smart to believe....." -- Republicans know that they will believe anything if it's claimed often enough. That's how we had the Swift Boat Liars turning George Bush into a war hero and John Kerry into a chickenshit traitor. That's how we have a majority of Republicans buying into the birther nonsense. It may be cynicism, but Republicans understand this about a population that's easily distracted by reality television and their own dwindling prospects. And in four years, a majority of Americans really WILL believe that 9/11 happened on either Bill Clinton's or Barack Obama's watch. Just wait.

UPDATE: More at Scholars and Rogues, including a list of terrorist attacks that took place on US soil between September 11, 2001, and the day George W. Bush left office.

Labels: American Idiots, hopelessness, Republican lies, Rudy Giuliani

Well, it looks like Judi Nathan's dreams of being America's Queen have been dashed on the shoals of Dade County. No longer will we have her zombie, plasticene, Botoxed-to-within-an-inch-of-her-life rictus of an adoring smile to make shivers of revulsion run down our collective spine. "Little Louis", her affectionate name for her Louis Vuitton handbag, won't be residing in the White House after all. (/meow)

And Rudy Giuliani's dreams of huge armies goosestepping through the streets at his command as they head off to endless, expansive war in the Middle East, of long prison sentences for potsmokers and jaywalkers and murderers alike, similarly must be put away, perhaps to be resurrected later, but for now -- simply a dream deferred.

And the rest of us can heave a deep sigh of relief.

For now.

Because the Republican nominee who will treat us to either an entire summer and fall of strolling down Whitewater Vince Foster Rose Law Firm Monice Lewinsky Lane, or a summer of turning Barack Obama into either a cousin of Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden's mole here in the U.S. will be either the craven Bush whore John McCain or the even more craven panderer Willard Mitt Romney.

And one of them could still pick Rudy as a running mate.

So what went wrong? Is the age of fearmongering past? Was it his personal life? Last night on MSNBC, the horror that is Pat Buchanan was offset by the treat of a rare appearance by Bob Herbert and of course the insights of Rachel Maddow. Herbert is dead-on here, that Giuliani is at heart a cop -- and it actually says something redeeming about Republican voters that this ultimate punitive daddy figure was so soundly repudiated:



However, the redemption stops there. For as noted at ThinkProgress (with more video), John McCain's vision for America is "less jobs and more wars."

So what went wrong for Rudy? Why is it that his attempts to reframe himself as a conservative were such a spectacular failure whereas Mitt Romney's same game has him still in the race? Is it simply a matter of Romney being better-looking? Was it the Vanity Fair article about his sleazy business dealings that include representing Middle Eastern dictatorships that have harbored the very terrorists he decried at every turn? Or the article in the New York Times revealing the police memo that unequivocally urged the then-mayor to NOT locate his command center in the World Trade Center? Did the revelation of his use of city vehicles to chauffeur his then-goumah around turn off socially conservative voters, and was the "Eww!" factor triggered by Judi's gushing about her hot, manly husband a symptom of just too much information? Did Joe Biden distill that nagging something that people didn't like about Rudy but couldn't put their finger on when he famously and accurately said in a debate that every sentence out of his mouth is a noun, a verb, and 9/11? Or is it just that he's an openly authoritarian prick, and Republicans prefer their authoritarian pricks to have a stupid grin and a towel-snapping frat boy demeanor?

If there were no other reasons to wish Steve Gilliard was still here, the spectacular fall of Rudy Giuliani would be enough reason all by itself. But since he's not, let's let one of his torch-carriers, the great Lower Manhattanite, answer the question:

Take the worst elements of Captain Queeg, Nellie Oleson, Stinky from Abbott & Costello, and an STD'd scorpion, bundle it into a man and put said man in charge of a complex, challenging city and you'll get what Rudy Giuliani was really all about. Tourists and outsiders didn't get him. They didn't have to live with him. They got the cathode-ray Bing Crosby of the pipe, red alpaca sweater and the Christmas specials. We lived with the drunken Bing swinging the extension cord and windmilling signet-ringed fists as he prowled the house looking for someone to fuck up.

Time won out, though, and it managed to utterly expose him. Quite honestly, Rudy was nearly as lazy and disinterested a candidate as Fred Thompson was—both of them lazy honoraria-grabbers swearing somebody owed 'em something because they thought they were somebody . And in the end, they can now go meet at Tree's Loser Lounge and swap notes on star-fucking and prosecutorial malfeasance.

Me? I'm gonna sit here with the icy blonde tonight, and get around town a bit later in the week. I'm sure I'll see a bunch of her doppelgangers out and about with my fellow revelers in town. But for now, the mind wanders.

What's Ol' Judith gonna do now? Cialis and dough is fine, but mama wanted more. Access to power was the drug. What new doll will she start crawling after in the “Valley of Delusions”?

The Aqua Velva's gone—along with the leathery, old-man skin. And now, so too is the “tough cop”—his precious Sipowicz. It's down to McCain for Tweety to toss the lettuce, tomatoes and ranch dressing for. Ick. I just threw up in my mouth. Not a little. A lot.

And the irony isn't lost on me that Rudy's final come-down is tomorrow in California—of all places, Simi Valley. Home of the Reagan Library, and home of the springboard for the police-brutality-fueled L.A. riots. Rudy should be right at fucking home.

Full circle. Bullshit's end. And please let the door hitcha' on the way out—and may there be a patch of ice right in front of the Goddamned door.

(And while you're at it, don't miss installment one of his series The NY/DC Power Play on the Giuliani/Kerik/Judith Regan Axis of Evil.)

Whatever the reason, today we can all breathe a deep sigh of relief that Republican voters in Florida -- especially the transplanted snowbirds -- saw how cynical the relentless repetition of 9/11 was, and how terrifying the Foreign Policy of Norman Podhoretz was and said "No!". We can be thankful that Jewish voters in Florida are not the blind, crazy Zionists that Rudy thought they were and didn't think turning the entire Middle East into a sheet of glass was a swell idea. Today we owe a debt of gratitiude to the state of Florida.

But don't get too cocky, there, guys. Don't forget, your state is still, and forever will be, the scene of the original crime of November 2000.

Labels: I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning, Rudy Giuliani

Sam Seder covers a less-than-packed Giuliani event in New Hampshire:

Labels: comedy, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Seder

If you've liked having Dick Cheney as vice-president, and you like the idea of an unaccountable vice-president who switches off among the executive, legislative, and a self-contained branch of government operating outside the Constitution, you'll LOVE what Rudy has in store for us:

Would a Rudy Giuliani administration be populated with a cabinet of Republican rivals and a powerful, all-knowing vice president like Dick Cheney?

Possibly, according to musings Giuliani shared in answers to questions from New Hampshire voters Wednesday evening in Hooksett.

[snip]

Later, Giuliani pivoted from a question about potential picks for secretary of state to this: "Let me answer with the question of what you would look for in a vice president first -- again without any presumption that I'm going to be the nominee."

In an answer that mentioned Cheney more than once, Giuliani said, "A vice president has to be a partner in the administration. The vice president has to know everything that's going on, just in case the vice president has to step in at a moment's notice," he said. He added that during a conversation with Cheney on Sept. 11, 2001, he felt the vice president "had a sense that he knew what he was doing."

I guess Rudy relies on his gut too. (h/t)

Labels: batshit crazies, Dick Cheney, icepick meet forehead, Rudy Giuliani

How dare these firefighters question the leadership of a man who declares himself an expert on terrorism because he happened to show up on 9/11/01 to watch the command center he'd ordered placed in a building that had already been attacked once, and who had five years to get workable radios for firefighters and didn't do it:



OK, so not all firefighters are gorgeous after all. But they've got guts and they dare to speak the truth.

Labels: Rudy Giuliani

Can you imagine THIS being the message we present to the world?

John Deady, Co-Chair for New Hampshire’s Veterans for Rudy:

…(Rudy Giuliani has) the knowledge and judgment to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history. And that is the rise of the Muslims. And make no mistake about it, this hasn’t happened for a thousand years. These people are very, very dedicated. They’re also very smart, in their own way. And we need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people ‘til we defeat them or chase them back to their caves, or in other words, get rid of them.

That, my friends, is Rudy Giuliani's message: mass genocide. Of course it's the message of the entire Republican party, he's just more up front about it than most.

Labels: batshit crazies, Rudy Giuliani

Isn't it funny that whenever it seems George W. Bush is in trouble, Osama Bin Laden comes to his rescue by releasing a recording?

Joe Sudbay remembers here how a Bin Laden tape released right before the 2004 election played right into that reptilian brain of the voters and put George W. Bush in office for a second, even more disastrous term. He's saying that the Bhutto assassination could have the same effect, but just in case the destabilization of Pakistan isn't enough to assure the most bellicose Republican the nomination, now we have -- you guessed it -- the announcement of another Bin Laden recording:

DUBAI, Dec 28 (Reuters) - An Islamist Web site said on Friday it would carry a new recording from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden about "foiling plots" in Iraq.

The Web site said the 56-minute recording would also be about the Islamic State in Iraq, an al Qaeda-linked group in the country.

It did not say when the video or audio recording, produced by al Qaeda's media arm As-Sahab and entitled "The Path to Foiling Plots in Iraq", would be posted.

Al Qaeda messages have been often released within three days of their announcement on Web sites.

It doesn't matter when it's posted, the important thing is to get it out there at the last possible minute before an important U.S. electoral event, in this case, the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries.

And it happens EVERY FUCKING TIME.

Now, if this were a sane world, Americans would respond to this by thinking that if this group is still out there, and if Osama Bin Laden is still out there, maybe that means the tough-talking Bush Administration doesn't know what the hell it's doing, and maybe it's time to try another approach. But this isn't a sane world, and Americans, like Pavlov's dogs, do tend to go for the tough rhetoric when they feel scared. So just in case the mandatory media meme that the assassination helps Bush's hand-picked successor, Rudy 9iu11iani, doesn't work by itself, here comes Bush's good friend Osama to hammer the point home.

You can't buy friends like that

Labels: Bush Administration, Osama bin Laden, Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani, has a new ad where he once again climbs on top of almost 3000 9/11 corpses, including firefighters who died because he wouldn't give them radios that worked, to toot his own horn and declare himself the terrorism expert because he happened to show up in front of a microphone on 9/11. But the reality is that Giuliani promises policies in the Middle East that are just like those of the Bush Administration, only perhaps even more steroidal and more bellicose. That six years of having the face we present to the world be that of an inarticulat, boorish buffoon who lied to his own people to get us into an unnecessary war and spent his country into near-bankruptcy has turned the U.S. into a paper tiger never occurs to him. But as Robert Parry points out, it is precisely the Bush Administration policies that Giuliani wants to continue -- and escalata -- that are the problem:

The chaos spreading across nuclear-armed Pakistan after the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is part of the price for the Bush administration’s duplicity about al-Qaeda’s priorities, including the old canard that the terrorist group regards Iraq as the “central front” in its global war against the West.

Through repetition of this claim – often accompanied by George W. Bush’s home-spun advice about the need to listen to what the enemy says – millions of Americans believe that Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders consider Iraq the key battlefield.

However, intelligence evidence, gathered from intercepted al-Qaeda communications, indicate that bin Laden’s high command views Iraq as a valuable diversion for U.S. military strength, not the “central front.”

[snip]

So, instead of seeking a quick ouster of U.S. forces from Iraq and using it as a base for launching a global jihad – as Bush and his supporters claim – al-Qaeda actually saw its strategic goals advanced by keeping the United States bogged down in Iraq.

To some U.S. analysts, the logic was obvious: “prolonging” the Iraq War bought al-Qaeda time to rebuild its infrastructure in Pakistan, where the Islamic fundamentalist extremists have long had sympathizers inside the Pakistani intelligence services dating back to the CIA’s war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Charlie Wilson’s Blowback

That CIA war, lionized in the new movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” funneled billions of dollars in U.S. covert money and weapons through Pakistani intelligence to Afghan warlords and to Arab jihadists who had flocked to Afghanistan to drive out the Russian infidels. One of those young jihadists was a wealthy Saudi named Osama bin Laden.

[snip]

Though Bush eventually acknowledged that most of Iraqi resistance was homegrown, he still asserted that al-Qaeda planned to use Iraq as the launching pad for a global “caliphate” from Spain to Indonesia, another alarmist claim that scared some Americans into backing Bush’s war policies.

“This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia,” Bush said in a typical reference to this claim in a Sept. 5, 2006, speech. “We know this because al-Qaeda has told us.”

But many analysts saw Bush’s nightmarish scenario as preposterous, given the deep divisions within the Islamic world and the hostility that many Muslims feel toward al-Qaeda, including its recent much-heralded rejection by more moderate Iraqi Sunnis in Anbar province.

Also, according to a National Intelligence Estimate representing the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community in April 2006, “the global jihadist movement is decentralized, lacks a coherent global strategy, and is becoming more diffuse.” [Emphasis added.]

The NIE also concluded that the Iraq War – rather than weakening the cause of Islamic terrorism – had become a “cause celebre” that was “cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”

The grinding Iraq War – now nearing its fifth year – also prevented the United States from arraying sufficient military and intelligence resources against the reorganized al-Qaeda infrastructure in Pakistan and the rebuilt Taliban army reasserting itself in Afghanistan.

The problem is that those who need most to read articles like this one; those who remember feeling reassured by Rudy 9iu11ani when the President of the United States was fleeing to Nebraska on Air Force One and Cheney was in his bunker planning the Iraq invasion and his apparatus of his fascist state, aren't going to. They're instead going to get their analysis from the mainstream press and from cable news, where even Keith Olbermann, who laudably came back from vacation last night to do a live show on the Bhutto assassination, allowed Dana Milbank to parrot the meme that this assassination helps the hawkish Hillary and the goonish Ghouliani without any kind of rebuttal, and without even mentioning that alone of all the candidates, it was John Edwards who had the history of meeting with Pervez Musharraf to be able to actually talk to him.

As Herman Kahn used to say, you can't uninvent nuclear weapons. And we can't go back and undo the horrific damage done by the Bush Administration in making the world a far more dangerous place. What we can do, however, as voters, is prevent the next president from pouring gasoline on the flames.

Labels: Pakistan, Rudy Giuliani

Mayor 9/11 continues to display flashes of the arrogance that made people in New York glad to see him go:

Asked if he would disclose all his health records after Christmas, Mr. Giuliani said, “He’s going to put out everything that’s appropriate to show that I’m in good health.”

Speaking to reporters after holding a town-hall-style meeting here, Mr. Giuliani said that he had had a bad headache, and that he did not know why his campaign told reporters that he had “flulike symptoms.”

“You’re going to have to ask them,” he said, when asked about their statement. “I’m telling you what actually happened. I had a very, very bad headache. It got worse on the plane. I then got checked out. Went through a lot of tests. All the tests came back 100 percent normal. That’s the bottom line.”

And what about things that may be problematic, Rudy? He's not going to disclose those?

The fact of the matter is that a president's health IS an issue, and if a presidential candidate has cancer, he's going to be subject to more scrutiny. It
s true that the public didn't know about FDR's cancer or JFK's Addison's Disease, but a secretive White House that puts out a story about a president with a history of drinking problems choking on a pretzel and passing out is not a standard that should be acceptable, particularly with Giuliani demonstrating clearly that he shares George W. Bush's notion that nothing a president does is the public's business.

When women are released from the hospital within hours of giving birth or having mastectomy surgery, a headache that requires a jet to turn around and land and an overnight hospital stay isn't something for which you just take an Aleve and carry on. If this was simply setting up a health-related excuse for Giuliani to drop out after a poor showing in Iowa and New Hampshire, then he's wasted a lot of medical practitioners' time and presumably his insurance policy's money. If he does have a health problem, he owes it to the American people to have his doctor tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Labels: Rudy Giuliani

Today is the first day in a week and a half that I've felt almost like a human being. I usually get a very bad cold about once every two years, but that's about it. This one was a bad one, and had me pretty miserable for most of the last twelve days. Of course well-meaning people have been all over me to go to a doctor, get antibiotics (for a viral cold??), get antivirals, maybe it's asthma, maybe it's the flu, whatever.

I know it's not the flu because I haven't had fever since the first day. I do know one thing: "flu-like symptoms" don't put you in the hospital unless you're pretty damned sick, and if you're that damned sick, you're not out the next day "feeling great".

But then, I'm not Rudy Giuliani:

A day after “flu-like symptoms” led him to turn his airplane in mid-air and seek medical attention, Rudolph W. Giuliani smiled and said he felt “great” as he walked out of a hospital here Thursday afternoon. But his campaign provided few details of what had caused the problem that led him to spend more than 14 hours in the hospital.

Mr. Giuliani was admitted to Barnes-Jewish Hospital here on Wednesday night after he fell ill on a campaign swing through Missouri. His aides said that he had felt increasingly ill as the day went on, and that after his plane left for New York he experienced such a severe headache and flu-like symptoms that the plane returned to Missouri.

After spending the night in the hospital, and being given a series of tests, Mr. Giuliani walked out shortly before 3 p.m. “I’m feeling fine, thanks to the hospital,” Mr. Giuliani, clad in a dark suit and a blue necktie but no overcoat, told reporters.

Just what had ailed Mr. Giuliani was unclear. His communications director, Katie Levinson, said he had been given “a clean bill of health” before he left the hospital. “Doctors performed a series of precautionary tests and the results of all the tests were normal,” Ms. Levinson said in a statement.

The campaign declined to elaborate on what his symptoms were or to specify which tests were performed. Hospital officials said the campaign had asked them not to provide any information about Mr. Giuliani’s health and to refer questions to the campaign.

Jake Tapper similarly wonders about how one can be so sick as to be hospitalized one day and just fine the next:

What was wrong? What tests did he get? What was causing such severe pains? Giuliani gave no details.

His campaign will not release any concrete medical information to the press -- raising questions about the former New York mayor's health and the transparency of his campaign.

Giuliani was experiencing headache pain so severe Wednesday night he had his charter plane turn around and go back to St. Louis and was rushed to the emergency room.

His campaign shared no concrete medical information about which tests the mayor undertook and what the exact results were, also refraining from allowing the media to see his medical records or speak to his doctors.

A senior Giuliani campaign official told ABC News, "He's fine. He campaigns very vigorously. He did 77 events in 53 cities this month. He just got sick."

The former mayor was all smiles for the cameras as he left Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis Thursday afternoon after spending the night and the better part of a day in a Missouri hospital.

"I feel great. Take care. Merry Christmas, I'm feeling fine, thanks to the hospital. They did a great job," Giuliani said, refusing to answer any reporters' questions as he left the hospital.

Now this bug that I've been battling had as part of its early stages a constant band of headache around the back of my head, which at its peak had me awakening in the middle of the night with pounding head pain. But I wasn't hospitalized.

I know that Saint Rudy of 9/11 believes that everything about him is his own personal business -- his marital and extramarital affairs, his client list, his business dealings, and now his health. But if he wants to be president, he'd better get used to the fact that the health of the guy who may have to make split-second decisions IS the people's business, not just his own. And if he can't deal with that, then let him withdraw from the race and go back to private life where no one will care about his health.

Labels: Rudy Giuliani, secrecy

This essay in American Conservative comes to us via Cernig at Newshoggers, whom I really need to make a point of reading every day. Michael C. Desch makes the point that if you like George W. Bush's doctrine of Endless War, you are going to just LOVE Rudy Giuliani:

The core of senior advisors includes former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, Martin Kramer (Middle East), Stephen Rosen (defense), S. Enders Wimbush (diplomacy), Peter Berkowitz (statecraft, human rights, and freedom), Kim Holmes (foreign policy), and perhaps Daniel Pipes. Giuliani’s chief foreign-policy advisor is retired diplomat and Yale instructor Charles Hill. In the face of controversy about how many neoconservatives were playing prominent roles, Podhoretz bragged to the New York Observer,“Giuliani doesn’t think that this is a liability.”

Podhoretz is the person whose presence has done the most to set in concrete the notion that Team Rudy is all neocon all the time. Famous for arguing that we are in the midst of “World War IV,” Podhoretz is scathing in his criticism of those he suspects of not waging the war with enough vigor. He even charges that many senior military officers show insufficient stomach for the fight, singling out former CENTCOM commander John Abizaid and his successor, Adm. William Fallon. Podhoretz is also an assiduous peddler of the new neocon myth that the antiwar camp stabbed President Bush in the back.

And he doesn’t stop at Iraq: Podhoretz constantly beats the drum for bombing Iran to halt its nascent nuclear program. Air Marshal Podhoretz assured The Telegraph that the air campaign “would take five minutes.” His optimism that attacking Iran would be another cakewalk combines with pessimism about the prospects of multilateral sanctions preventing Iran from getting the bomb. “Yet for all their retrospective remorse over the wholesale slaughter of the Jews back then,” Podhoretz sneers, “the Europeans seem no readier to lift a finger to prevent a second Holocaust than they were the first time around.”

There are areas where Podhoretz is out of synch with the rest of the Giuliani team. One is his steadfast commitment to the Bush administration’s efforts to spread democracy in the Middle East, which he applies equally to American enemies like Iran and Syria and friends like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Other Giuliani advisors are more restrained about democracy promotion. Another point of departure is Podhoretz’s long-standing critique of the Clinton administration for treating terrorism as simply a “crime problem,” a charge somewhat discordant with the mayor’s claim that his successful campaign against crime in New York City justifies electing him global sheriff.

The biggest problem Podhoretz poses for the Giuliani campaign is that he has some particularly far-fetched beliefs that even in these fevered times most Americans do not share. As Ian Buruma noted in a recent review of World War IV, Podhoretz “expresses a weird longing for the state of war, for the clarity it brings, and for the chance to divide one’s fellow citizens, or indeed the whole world, neatly into friends and foes, comrades and traitors, warriors and appeasers, those who are with us and those who are against.”

[snip]

Giuliani’s tendency to conflate all terrorist groups—whether Islamist or not and whether they attack the United States or just allies like Israel—led Fred Kaplan of Slate to dub him the “anti-statesman.” Sending him and his team to the White House might actually ignite World War IV.

Anyone actually considering voting for this authoritarian proto-fascist lunatic ought to read this article before deciding. Because even the most ardent supporter of Israel must admit that having the entire world erupt into global conflagration is NOT "good for Israel."

Labels: Rudy Giuliani

Godspeed to John Edwards. With the Iowa Caucuses offering probably the most fair picture of middle Americans (albeit, jaded by this rather heady process that allows most of them to meet and talk with the candidates,) barreling towards us, and Barack and Hillary neck and neck, with only one mistake possible between the two of them, John is well within the margin of error, with a good network already in place in New Hampshire. I really believe that Edwards is the only electable candidate that isn't under the sway of the powers of the ego/career trap or the big power of the ruling corporations that quake at the idea of Edwards raining on their parade. For God's sake, when are Americans going to look at the hard facts and cast a vote that serves them and their fortunes, instead of voting on a vague impression taken from media bytes being thrown about by the M$M.


I would be very interested in seeing Barack Obama win this thing too; as opposed to Hillary....BUT...I don't know if he has enough political experience to get things done in the office, and whoever gets this one has to hit the ground running. At the same time, I like the idea of ideals being tossed about; I liked the West Wing and I can easily see Obama starring in the next generation. But I get this red flag warning, strobing G-R-I-D-L-O-C-K. Maybe it will be that way to an extent anyway, considering that the war will become ours on inauguration day, and we are doing nothing to make it clear that there is a laundry list of criminals here, and their crimes are being glaringly ignored. If we don't go after the criminals now, we deserve what we get.
Can Obama handle the fallout of 8 years of the Bush crime syndicate?

To me, Edwards holds the key to the undoing of the insane policies that have been sliding into place since Reagan. He also doesn't care anymore what they say about him and what they do to him. He has been through it all and acts with the air of someone who is just concentrating on being himself, and screw the handlers and bullshit. Edwards still has a chance and I hope to god that he has the support in Iowa among people who are weighing the actual policies of the candidates.
And to be absolutely sure of this, it looks to me in hi-def, like Edwards has recently freshened up his botox, as has Chris Matthews. Whatever it takes, I'm for it!

On the other side, its clown-time all the time...its never over.
Rudy cackled through Timmeuh Russert's, "tough as they get..." according to Chris Matthews, questioning (NOT!) on Meet the Press. Every time he was asked about his scandalous ongoing rip-off of NYC during his tenure, he cackled hysterically, like a crazy man. But then, Matthews talking about cackling, is a bit of pot-kettle-black, and his ranking of who is a tough interviewer....well, these guys are so involved with each other's asses that its not worth getting angry anymore. Oh, and by the way, Matthews thought that Romney's not-Mormon, religion speech, was the best speech of the campaign! Huh? Hasn't he heard Edwards? Obama?...hell, even Oprah reading off cards, in her MLK-black voice, was better than that. He made no sense and he came off as disingenuous.

Lets get real about the church of Mormon and Mitt Romney's bullshit speech that has already gotten too much airtime by now. Mormon: There is a self appointed leader to whom,it is purported, Jesus himself appeared in 1820, and subsequently an angel dictated the Book of Mormon to him. Thus began a cult of Jesus-freakishness, in which Jesus is considered the creator of everything, replacing God, except to get a little help or direction from him here and there. There is some sort of planetary influence a la Scientology, a disgusting amount of sexism and racism, and the belief that those who don't practice this particular form of Christianity will not go to heaven. The notion that the followers were sent from heaven where they previously resided with god, and that they are following a predestined path in order to gain experience for their return to heaven, removes basic responsibility from them of having to question their assumed authority about all things Jesus; the rest of us be damned...unless we want to get baptized into the cult...then I guess we're saved, only to be explained away as some wandering sheep that have found their way back to the fold; as part of the grand predestined design, of course...like, to teach the rest a lesson...?

Mitt says that America's founders didn't mean to separate church from state THAT much, but at the same time he says that he will do his best to keep the two separate, except that...he is a devout Mormon, and so he must have believed the particularly disgusting teachings that he no doubt followed in his early 20's, such as the belief that blacks are from Mars, while Mormons are from Venus! yup....This group has a dirty history worth looking into, and old Mitt, by proclaiming his devotion throughout the years, particularly naming times of his life that he was still a Mormon, has made it clear who he is...exactly clear.

Larry O'Donnell hit this straight on yesterday on McLaughlin. I was so relieved to see someone able to express the disgust that I have been feeling about the fundamentalism coming from sectors of the republican party, that I started to count the minutes until this showed up on the YouTubes. Larry O'Donnell has the first comment, and its really the only thing you need to hear on this joke of a debate on religion and what the candidates intend to do with it.


I'm not a religious person, but I respect the urge in others, if it gives some comfort. Its certainly nice to have some belief and community in this world; something that I personally lack. I just cant see anyone with the devout belief that a certain group of people are going to heaven (coming from heaven, even,) and the rest of us are going to hell, (or are from hell,) as capable of being a leader to us all. Can one just set those sorts of beliefs aside? I didn't get the feeling from old Mitt's speech that he is able to separate anything from his religion.

...Oh and, he is no JFK...nope, not at all....


Bill Maher on Mormonism


Next: Huckabee is a freak!

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Maher, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Obama, religion, Rudy Giuliani

First, get your mind out of the gutter. I'm referring to Little Duce's nasty tendency, like that of the current president, to spout lies without batting an eye.

Rudy would have you believe that the Iranians were so frightened by looking at the Manly Gown of Ronald Reagan in 1980, that they immediately decided to release the American hostages they'd been holding.

Even if you don't believe in the October Surprise, the fact is that it wasn't Iranian boot-quaking at the prospect of the Gipper that caused them to release the hostages; it was wimpy ol' Jimmy Carter's people (sic) who engineered the release:

According to a comprehensive New York Times account from the time, the Iranians reached out to the United States in September of 1980, nearly two months before Reagan won the White House. "Washington received a secret message from the West German Government that [the Iranian negotiator] Tabatabai wanted to meet urgently in Bonn with a senior American official to discuss possible terms for releasing the hostages," the Times reported. At the first meeting in Bonn, "Mr. Tabatabai said that Iran wanted to resolve the problem quickly and that if an agreement could be achieved, the Americans would be free in a relatively short time."

In short, Reagan had nothing to do with it. All that was left was haggling over the details. Then Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher hoped, according to the article, that the release would come hours before Reagan took office, but there was some last-minute confusion over the details of an escrow agreement. Then, Christopher said, there was an apparent problem rounding up the hostages. "Mr. Christopher believes that the Iranians, at the last moment, had problems rounding up the hostages and this, rather than an effort to embarrass Mr. Carter, delayed their freedom until a half hour after Ronald Reagan was President," the story reports.

So why would Giuliani release an ad that is so patently misleading? The answer is simple: He is not trying to get the historian vote. He is trying to get the Daddy Party vote. He is trying to show that he is to Hillary Clinton (if not George W. Bush) what Reagan was to Carter: a tougher guy. And as anyone knows who has ever been in a bar fight, the facts don't matter much when manhood is on the line. Look tomorrow for a bunch of newspaper stories pointing out that Giuliani is misrepresenting history. Then look for Giuliani's response. It will be something like, "What did you say, pencil neck? You wanna step outside with me?"

Of course the facts won't matter one iota to Republican voters, who need their illusion of a Big Tough Man in the White House keeping them safe from the monsters lurking under the bed. Even if that tough guy is the kind of authoritarian who would beat anyone to death who dared look at him crosswise. He isn't Bernie Kerik's BFF for nothing.

Labels: Rudy Giuliani, utter horseshit

I guess it took a sex scandal for the media to take a look at the more unsavory aspects of Saint Rudy of 9/11's business dealings. This month's Vanity Fair has a fairly comprehensive compendium of them:

In the businesses that Giuliani built and bought these last six years, more deals have yet to be examined, more dots connected in the picture of his great financial success. But enough are there already, with lines between them, for a shape to have clearly emerged. It’s a picture of a politician leading a parade, as Mayor Giuliani so often did. Only the marchers behind him aren’t drum majorettes or wartime veterans or firefighters or police. They’re a ragtag band of Texas lawyers and energy lobbyists, penny-stock sharpies and security-industry entrepreneurs, agog with visions of the ultimate pay-to-play presidency.

But more importantly, the Qatar Qonnection (sic) has finally hit the major media, via Newsweek:

When Giuliani signed the contract with Qatar, he was acting as an international businessman—a role drawing increased scrutiny as he runs for president. After leaving office as New York mayor in 2002, Giuliani and close associates formed Giuliani Partners, a privately owned management-consulting firm that has proven lucrative: Giuliani earned $4.1 million from his firm between January 2006 and May of this year. He has insisted his business dealings are "totally legal, totally ethical." But he has never disclosed all of his clients, raising inevitable questions about financial ties that face all presidential candidates. Some campaign-finance experts say Giuliani's current posture—maintaining a major interest in a privately held international firm while seeking the presidency—is potentially unprecedented. "I can't think of another situation like this," says Kenneth Gross, a Washington lawyer who specializes in campaign finance and ethical issues (and who is not affiliated with a campaign).

So far, most attention has swirled around the Qatar contract. Although the country is now viewed by the White House as a strong ally in the War on Terror, that was not always the case. In 1996, FBI agents tried to arrest a top terror suspect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (later mastermind of the 9/11 attacks) who at the time was being employed by the Qatari Water Department. But the bureau's plans fell apart when he suddenly fled; FBI agents were convinced that a member of the royal family tipped him off. The contract between Giuliani Security, a division of Giuliani Partners, and Qatar "is a huge conflict of interest," says Bob Baer, a former CIA officer who tracked Mohammed. "He is metaphorically taking money from the same accounts that paid KSM." Giuliani Security officials involved in the Qatari business say the minister suspected of protecting Mohammed no longer has an active role in running the country.

And yesterday's New York Times revealed how he lobbied for a bill that even the Bush Administration regarded as a threat to antiterrorism efforts.

Given how intransigent Giuliani wants people to believe he is about anything even remotely connected with terrorism, his willingness to overlook even past terrorist connections -- or buy the Qatari royal family's assurance that its members no longer support terrorists -- indicates that his "tough on terrorism" wide stance becomes highly fungible when there's money finding its way into his pocket.

Labels: corruption, greed, Rudy Giuliani

If you think Bush gets testy, and you think the Bush Administration regards itself as not to be questioned, wait till you get a load of Rudy Giuliani.

This is from a Staten Island town meeting in June 2001, attended by union bus drivers:


(thanks to jara, for the e-mail to this)

Labels: fascism, insanity, Rudy Giuliani

Via TPM comes these insane ravings of the lunatic Norman Podhoretz:

A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), entitled “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” has just dealt a serious blow to the argument some of us have been making that Iran is intent on building nuclear weapons and that neither diplomacy nor sanctions can prevent it from succeeding. Thus, this latest NIE “judges with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program”; it “judges with high confidence that the halt was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work”; it “assesses with moderate confidence that Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007”; it assesses, also with only “moderate confidence that the halt to those activities represents a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”; but even if not, it judges “with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.”

[snip]

I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, is now bending over backward to counter what has up to now been a similarly universal view (including as is evident from the 2005 NIE, within the intelligence community itself) that Iran is hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons. I also suspect that, having been excoriated as well for minimizing the time it would take Saddam to add nuclear weapons to his arsenal, the intelligence community is now bending over backward to maximize the time it will take Iran to reach the same goal.

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

Yes! That's it! The CIA is plotting against poor widdwe Georgie to keep him from having the war he wants. Because their plotting against him has been so effective in keeping him from dropping bombs all over the Middle East for the last seven years.

And this is the guy Rudy Giuliani is relying on as a foreign policy expert? Yeesh. If Little Duce and his Queen take the White House, we may look as nostalgically back at the Bush years as we do now when thinking of Nixon.

That is if we haven't all been incinerated by then.

Labels: insanity, Norman Podhoretz, Rudy Giuliani

I love New York Magazine. The new one came today with our Rudy on the cover, and Chris Smith unraveling the myth that is 9-11 hero, Rudy. And though it seems like its fish-barrel time, this stuff bears repeating to anyone out there who doesn't know this all by heart already. I can't imagine how many more people that old Rudy can piss off, but he seems to have nailed down every single last one of the 8-10 million New Yorkers and ex-New Yorkers out here, creating more and more material all the time,and Leaving New York Magazine's editorial board no choice but to put him on the cover every other month in terms only as damning as his actions. But then, its really not hard to damn Rudy when you know him like we do.

And really, how much better can it get than: "Rudy has Seen the Enemy and He...is Us," "Rudy Vs. NY," and "Rudy is Running Against the City he Claims to have Saved. He Knows better. So do We." The banner headlines of the piece, quite truthfully, say that the only way for Rudy to fully be the hero that he needs to be in order to win the republican nomination, is to demonize the NYC that was before he became mayor. It was one thing, living through what we lived through after he came to power, to hear his laughable claims, and imagine how fun it would be when the tape started to roll on a tearful Donna Hanover out front of Gracie Mansion, having just found out that he was leaving her on TV, but its quite another when he needs to paint our city and us, as some sort of depraved animals hanging out in sex shops and smoking our crack pipes in alleys. Remember, it was Rudy who was schtupping his Goomah on our dime, the All Spin Zone has the details here....and it must be nice to have a police escort out to the Hamptons, for Christ' sake...that is the most expensive and public place around and he boldly put the tab on revolving city agencies, including an agency for the disabled; has he no shame? No...the answer is NO!

...but the condescending attitude is completely familiar to any New Yorker. The city in the nineties was far from perfect. But were we really living in the hellhole of depravity and despair that Giuliani describes without ever realizing it? And was he the man who single-handedly tamed 8 million misbehaving New Yorkers, delivering us from an economic and physical nightmare?

snip

fitting snugly between the invocation of his September 11 heroism and his mocking of Hillary Clinton: Rudy Giuliani is the man who saved New York. His campaign TV ads are a perfect distillation of the strategy. Before Mayor Rudy, the city was a black-and-white jungle-land of sex shops, violence, and crushing taxes. After Rudy, New York is Oz: sunshine, happy young couples, and shiny gold-plated statues. The message, which Giuliani hammers in his appearances outside the city, is that he made big bad New York safe for the rest of the country. For the pitch to work, Giuliani has to demonize the city he inherited and claim all the credit for the improvements he left behind. The city itself is his original enemy.

snip

So far on the campaign trail, the genial Rudy has been showing his face. The city saw plenty of that other guy—the nasty, credit-hogging, conflict-addicted, wife-humiliating Rudy. The man who tried to put himself above the law and stay mayor after September 11. And we know he’s still in there.

The thing is that Rudy did clean up certain aspects of New York City that probably stayed in place due more to our firmly entrenched knee-jerk liberalism, than to what was best for regular New Yorkers. But Rudy took those problems of laxity and a need to tighten up the ship, and parlayed them into an excuse to expunge all texture and individuality, along with most of the middle class, from Manhattan, and to drive the regular folks further and further out, making the island one of rare wealth and wimpy sameness. He made the city safe for the rest of the country, as a tourist destination and an eastern arm of Disney; safe enough for just about anyone to visit without the classic fear of getting mugged on every street corner. But it was his methods that were a little more than questionable, not to mention his cronyism and his not-so-private private life.

As Mayor, Dave Dinkins, was probably not tough enough, and alot of what was going on needed some healthy adjustment. For instance, in Washington Square park, at the height of the crack epidemic, the police were instructed to only give bench warrants to the hundreds of drug dealers who boldly approached passersby. The warrants led to not much, because people didn't show up for their dates and the paperwork was out of control. The police would drive their squad cars into the park and sit there, moving the loitering crowds from one side to another, and the whole thing had a rather gauntlet-like feeling if one were, say, walking the dog or pushing the baby in the stroller. There were also cars parked every night along 8th st (where I lived on the 18th floor,) with huge speakers that, when cranked up, rattled the windows all the way up there. this went on, with the percussive bass going boom-boom-boom, until all hours of the morning, when upon going down to walk the dogs there would be stragglers urinating here and there, and every car window along Mercer street would often be broken...in a row...as the crack addicts who had little care for anything rifled through cars for anything that could be sold. I remember going round to Green street one morning and a strung out guy breaking the window of a car right in front of me. I went into the copy store and the car alarm was blaring...and no one came.

If your car got hit down there in those days, the best course of action was not to call the police, but to run east and look for your stuff laid out on blankets by the junk sellers that lined the streets of the east village in what we used to call the Real Reaganomics. It only took around 10 minutes for bikes and other goodies to end up laid out for sale. Important papers were dumped in garbage cans or dark doorways around the corner, and just running round fast enough one could probably recover the draft of the doctorate or whatever else had been stupidly left in the car. It was usually just replacing the side window that was a drag. I seem to remember that insurers wouldn't write windows into policies for cars that lived in the city, but I cant remember exactly.
Who hasn't bought a video camera box with a brick in it? I haven't, personally, but my ex-brother-in-law did when he first came to live in NYC. If you don't know what I'm talking about then you missed a tiny cultural phenomena that flickered through cities in the days before laptops and cell phones on every hip.

The crack epidemic was a huge problem and how to handle it was not to trust criminals to show up for a court date. The thing to do would have been to arrest truckloads of people over and over until they took it underground, as they tend to do in more controlled situations. The response was bound to be good, and it would look good, and I don't know why Dinkins didn't do more; were his hands tied by bureaucracy? Knowing the answers to my questions would take more time than is warranted, because it was all washed away in the flood of Rudy, who empowered the police to not only arrest the culprits, but also to bend probable cause into an art of gestures and glances, so that just about anyone could be thrown down and basically strip searched right there in Washington Square Park, (which I use as an example only because I can report first hand, having been there.) Throw in a little police brutality, of which we have heard the tales, and the drug dealers got alot more careful. They sort of moved back into the recesses and back to the project neighborhoods.

I met David Dinkins a couple of years ago at the Waldorf at a lunch for Brooklyn Law School, which alma mater he shares with my grandfather. he was quite older than I had realized he would be, and he was very soft spoken and sweet. He talked to the kids, and told us about his kids and grandkids, and how he still played tennis. I realized how much I respected him for his pure liberal vision, but that he just wasn't cut out to play the heavy, and the climate at the time in NYC was one of great frustration. Still, crime had already begun to come down by the time Dinkins was finished and he did beef up the police force. It took Rudy to take the force to another level and give them the power to enforce his ideal of the police state that he envisioned.

At the same time, Rudy was cutting welfare in whatever ways he could. The thing that worked then, and what is working now where I'm living in CT, is to make the forms and process really difficult, and as harrowing as possible. How anyone can take credit for the dropping enrollment numbers, when we all know how he did it, is beyond me. In other words, they made it so hard to get into the system that people left for other towns. With them, left some of the most interesting facets of city life, and possibly those who would be the great city artists or politicians or city workers...we sent away our greatest resource, which used to be our young people raised in a city with public education and diversity...and access to culture and experience like no other place in the world. We sent them away because Rudy thought they were unsightly in how it all looked back then. That was a choice that he made for us; as he cruelly had the cops jostle the homeless off of the heat grates all night until they went away too.

There was no problem solving in that equation. In some cases, more real than urban legend, and confirmed to me by city workers, bus tickets were bought to help in the relocation of the poor. And at the time of the great do-over of Grand Central Station, I used to go on about how the homeless who used to line the walls there with palms outstretched like some old Calcutta film, were actually ground up and put into the concrete of the new walls and tiles and floors. Who wouldn't want to have the station be as nice as it is now? But what did they do with those people in that richest of rich cities? One wonders...and I'm sure there are many answers and alot of legends. My tin foil hat theory was that unused tunnels below the subways became a teeming city of under-dwellers with full, rich lives, who only surfaced from time to time to take in some light or to get supplies. I still study the dark recesses when the train slows to rumble through an old abandoned station, thinking that I will see a family slip into the shadows.

Rudy didn't fix us in the terms that he claims. He just applied a sort of marshal law as the crack epidemic was dying a natural death, and he made it really, really hard for the poor and the lower middle class to survive in the city. He rode a wave of numbers that began in the previous administration and made it his own. He played the heavy full tilt, but what he really did was to put the city into debt while pouring money into superficial and cosmetic fixes, without doing much for the infrastructure in human or mechanical terms. He basically kicked out those that he didn't want to deal with, all the while treating us all like we were some sort of rabble, and acting himself like he was the arbiter of what was acceptable as art, culture, religion, and values. And just like the hypocrite that he is, he held himself to a completely different standard than the rest of us.

So, this is what Rudy did; and meanwhile he was busy making glaring mistakes about security and communications. How rich of a concept it is, that Rudy is a security specialist, telling large corporations and Arab governments how to stay safe. Don't they even realize the nuts and bolts of his mistakes and how bad he was at the design of the security for the people of NYC? Hell, he almost got himself killed!



The truth is that Rudy is all bluster and bullshit. He comes off like a tough guy from the neighborhood, but I know that neighborhood, I grew up there, and most of those boys get dragged off by the ear when their mother found out what they've been up to. This guy is not qualified to be president. A few months ago I wouldn't have given it a second thought but then the ugly swift-boaters slithered out to test the air and see if it was time yet, and I realized that a Hillary Clinton or pretty much anyone (if it could be done to a decorated war hero, then anyone is in danger,)could be swift-boated before the dems could even turn around to fight back, and someone like Rudy could end up as president. I can't state strongly enough how dangerous I think that would be....and I know that a huge portion of the country knows this; but its the others who are just against Hillary or who just don't think that worry me.

...from New York but not of New York....a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic town, a prosecutor not a career politician, an outer-borough Roman Catholic in a Manhattan-centric, agnostic world. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a New Yorker. In fact, many of his character traits—his anger, his blind loyalty—come straight out of the tribal culture of New York’s old neighborhoods. On the presidential-campaign trail, Giuliani defines every issue and problem facing the country—not to mention his political competitors—as “enemies.” He sees an America besieged—by illegal aliens, by liberals, but most of all by Islamic terrorists....

snip

If I’m president of the United States, it will be crystal clear we will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power. We will take whatever action is necessary to stop them! We will not take the military option off the table. We will not beg to negotiate with them. We’re gonna make them beg to negotiate with us!

snip

Giuliani is suggesting he’d clean up Islamic terrorists like so many South Bronx crack dealers. He’s repeating one of his favorite phrases, that a President Giuliani would “keep us on offense” against terrorism. But it’s the way he says it that rings suddenly loud and clear. This was the man who told President Bush he wanted to personally push the button to execute Osama bin Laden.

And that's it, right there. This man cannot go further than Iowa or maybe New Hampshire. If the American people allow this to go on much beyond that, then we will have to just realize that this isn't really America anymore; the fringe has taken over and maybe its time to make other plans....maybe Stockholm or Denmark or Canada...But, I am going to try to hold onto Chris Smith and New York Magazine for one more cycle. He says that we, especially us New Yorkers, are wise to old Rudy. But how much sway do we have when the terra talk start in earnest and people want to hear the swagger and brag.

I was looking at my Bush Countdown key chain today. The battery went out a month or so ago and I was afraid that it might mean something. I felt so much better watching the days, minutes, and seconds tick away. It flashes back on from time to time but its set itself back in the 700 +/- range, so I'm just not putting stock in it anymore....but the thing I was thinking was: And then what? Whats next for us? The field is so strange on both sides, and I cant fathom what anyone can do besides start to unravel what amounts to a nightmare of chaos. I've put alot of my fear and anger into despising Bush and his people, but soon, everyone will say that we have to move forward and forget the past.

My fear is that in forgetting the past, we are condemned to repeat it. And if anyone is Bush-lite, its Rudy. So, keep those exposes coming boys! Something has to stick on this guy...or maybe just the mass of a million smaller things will take him down....but, as I say...and then what?

Cross Posted on RIPCoco

Labels: lies, NYC, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani

I would excerpt this even if John Cole hadn't joined our side:

If ever you were under the illusion that Greater Wingnuttia was anything other than a bunch of partisan goobers wholly uninterested in the truth and wedded only to the needs of the Republican party, surely the last week has shed you of that illusion. As I write this, only one fringe nutter has even mentioned the emerging Rudy Giuliani financial scandal. None of them has mentioned the fabulist at NRO. How can this be? Where are our brave truth detectors?

Let’s compare:

– When a 12 year old kid had the nerve to state that he benefited from a government program and thinks other kids should too, a massive orgy of ‘Truth detecting’ took place. Counters were examined. Houses were visited. Property records were scrutinized. Statements were parsed.

– When a private in the army wrote some tales with a few anecdotes about what he had experienced in the war in Iraq, and a few disagreed, no grain of sand was left unturned. Scale models of armored vehicles were built. Experts were called, emailed, and interrogated. Myspace accounts were looked up. Entire fields of Cray Supercomputers had to be brought online just to handle all the “debunking” and commentary from the wingnuts.

But now, a Republican front-runner FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT has clearly played fast and loose with the public’s money to hide/finance his extramarital dalliances, and the truth detectors on the right are silent. When an NRO columnist admits straight-up to making shit up to radically overstate a military threat to a key ally, perhaps to agitate for American military involvement, our fact-checkers snooze. The sum total of the response can be summed up as a giant yawn.

Crickets. Not even a “heh, indeed” can be found on these topics from our brave and intrepid citizen journalists. Hell, they are lagging FAR behind all the traditional media, who are cranking out tons of stories about Giuliani. Greater Wingnuttia should change their motto from “We’ll fact check your ass” to “We’ll fact check your ass, if you aren’t a Republican.” At least that would be honest.

There's more. Go read it.

Labels: bloggers, Rudy Giuliani

Imagine Judith "Evita" Nathan Giuliani as First Lady of the entire country, with a whole White House staff and Secret Service at her beck and call, if this is what she got as the New York city mayor's goumah:

The revelations continue in the case of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the security detail for Judith Nathan, his one-time mistress who is now his wife.

Did Nathan misuse the city police detail that Giuliani assigned to protect her?

At the dawn of 2001, Nathan was Giuliani's good friend and was receiving a blanket of police protection.

It was an unusual circumstance. His wife, first lady Donna Hanover, was still living at Gracie Mansion with their children.

But the mayor was unapologetic, citing security concerns.

"If you had any concern for people's safety, you'd have the decency to leave it alone. You should be ashamed of yourselves," the former mayor said back in 2001.

Six years later, presidential candidate Giuliani is facing questions about that security. A source involved with the mayor's operations at the time tells CBS 2 HD that Nathan took flagrant advantage of that police car and driver.

The source says Nathan forced police to chauffeur her friends and family around the city -- even when she wasn't in the car.

That set off alarms with ethics watchdogs.

"The rules are clear, you can't use city resources for private reasons," said Gene Russianoff of the New York Public Interest Research Group. "And if you're using a city car, a police driven car to chauffeur around relatives, unless they're explicitly protected and their deemed to be the subject of potential security threats, it's just wrong."

Nathan's detail was approved by the NYPD after a stranger made an unspecified threat to her. The commissioner at the time was Bernard Kerik, who was recently indicted on tax fraud charges in an unrelated matter.

"It wasn't about her being the mayor's girlfriend," Kerik said. "The person spoke to her by name and made comments to her."

On Friday, Giuliani avoided reporters' questions about the security for Nathan back then. He told reporters off camera "we've explained it."

Giuliani's press secretary, Maria Comella, angrily denounced the use of an unnamed source in this story.

But she did not deny the assertion that Nathan used her police detail to ferry around friends and family.

Meanwhile, outside of the Land of IOKIYAR, former New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi was forced to resign last year after it came out that he was using a state employee to provide security detail for his mentally ill wife and drive her to doctors' appointments -- without reimbursing the state. But that was different. He was a Democrat. And after all, getting a sick woman to doctors isn't anywhere near as important as getting the would-be Queen Judith I of America to her shopping and lunch dates with her friends.

Labels: IOKIYAR, Rudy Giuliani

But because he's a Republican, it's "backtracking":

Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor in Giuliani's City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that the administration's practice of allocating security expenses to small city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani."

When told budget officials from the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such thing, Lhota caved Thursday, "I'm going to reverse myself on that. I'm just going to talk about the Giuliani era," Lhota said. "I should only talk about what I know about."

The embarrassing backtrack comes as Giuliani rushed to network airwaves to defend himself against allegations his administration deliberately attempted to conceal the taxpayer cost of his NYPD protection while he engaged in secret Hamptons liaisons with Nathan, his then-mistress and current wife.

In interviews on CBS, ABC and CNN, Giuliani portrayed the allegations as a political "hit job" and "dirty trick" unleashed hours before a big Republican debate. The story was first reported Wednesday on the Politico.com Web site.

Frankly, I really don't much care about this particular scandal where Giuliani is concerned. That Giuliani is a scumbag who spent taxpayer money to go visit his goumah out in the Hamptons shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who saw him announce his separation from Donna Hanover via press conference. Those self-righteous Republicans who have already managed to twist themselves into pretzels to justify supporting Giuliani even if/though his behavior flies in the face of what they fancy to be their own personal morality are probably not going to care much about this. In fact, Giuliani ought to be grateful that the furor over this scandal is obscuring what in a sane world would be the far more damaging one, and that's the fact that he'll associate with anyone -- even those who harbor people we know are terrorists -- if it means cold hard cash in his pocket.

In case you haven't read the Village Voice article yet or don't want to plow through it, Keith Olbermann spoke with the piece's author, Wayne Barrett, the other night:



Giuliani's entire national campaign is based on his so-called toughness on terror. Even when asked a question about how we can heal our image in the Muslim world at the debate Wednesday night, his answer was essentially that we do this by continuing to bomb the hell out of them.

It's both appalling -- and indicative of the level of American idiocy and shallowness that the only scandals the populace seems to understand, and the only ones to which they respond, are of the sexual kind. This is how we had a president nearly brought down by a lie about a sexual liaison, while a president who took the nation to war on lies remains to wreak havoc for another fourteen months.

(UPDATE: What, were Nagourney and Bumiller off today? How else can we explain the fact that the New York Times actually does its job today and quietly and factually eviscerates the entire Giuliani lying-ass mythos?)

Labels: Rudy Giuliani