Compare and Contrast

The difference between these two guys...extraordinary.

First, the bullying equivocator:



Second, the even-tempered President:



Looks like our nation dodged more than one bullet in 2008.

Rudy the Liar

Rudy Giuliani on the Today Show says that there were no terrorist attacks on American soil during the Bush Administration vs. the Obama Administration. Uh...Mr. 9/11, I don't think you're going senile yet.

At first the MSM, in the form of George Stephanopoulos, lets him get away with it:



Later George quite appropriately corrected himself for not having challenged Rudy's baldfaced lie. But Rudy can't even admit his mistake without yet another lie favoring the Administration that left Afghanistan dangling and allowed the man behind the 9/11 attack on America, Osama Bin Laden to get away in Tora Bora while heading to Iraq from whence we had not been attacked. Instead, Rudy drops incorrect information about the lame Bush response to the shoe bomber, when criticizing Obama for taking three days before addressing the public regarding the underwear bomber:

But this has been an extraordinarily long time given the magnitude of this kind of attack.

KING: President Bush took six days once in a similar incident.

GIULIANI: Well, six days is less than 10. And the reality is that President Bush was criticized for taking -- what was it, like 20 or 30 minutes in delaying his response to September 11th. And I believe that six days was before the September 11th attack.

No. It was after. And if Rudy doesn't really know that, he's not much of an expert, is he.

Hate Mongers

I'm thinking that the GOP jumped the shark tonight, or maybe they just continued the arc over the shark that McCain's choice of Tracy Flick, I mean Sarah Palin began just five days ago. Even as recently as 2004, the Republicans' 9/11 Convention, there was condescension, yes, belittling and fear-mongering (what is already seen as the hallmark of the Cheney/Bush/Rove Administration), but as they still felt they had a leg to stand on (war) they weren't hateful without any other seasoning.

Aside from Mike Huckabee, who has the graciousness of Obama to praise Obama's achievement in a non-partisan American way, the headliners were full of spite and did little to define themselves or their party as anything other than identity -- no clear vision, no new ideas, nothing constructive enough. Nothing else to sell but hatred.

Mitt Romney opened up by opening fire on the media, hoping that the nation will turn against The New York Times for reporting the truth about both Mayor Palin and Governor Palin's hypocrisies and lies on taxes, earmark, Bridge to Nowhere, child services, loyalty tests, book censorship and Troopergate. Ex-NYC Mayor and adulterer Rudy Giuliani derided citydwellers for being "cosmopolitan". And the star of this Salo-like evening of reality TV, where an entire callow family from unwed couple to passed around infant to unborn child were paraded before the Party like sacrifices on the alter of ambitious partisanship.

For a party that thrives on red meat, the Palin family and the promise of its tabloid-to-White House narrative is divine sustenance. But the family is fed by the candidate, and the candidate may have made the mistake of believing she had already introduced herself, in a single under-attended appearance last Friday, as a gracious-enough public servant that she could turn attack barracuda as quickly as tonight.

The line that I believe will be remembered after the rest of her speech is forgotten:

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

When you denigrate the term "community organizer" you're denigrating not only all the people who don't get to live in a state-owned mansion or squander a small town's pension, you actually sacrifice your own creature comforts in order to improve the lives of others less fortunate. When Gov. Palin smears community organizers, she's dismissing church people as well, those who create the programs that actually give some relief to the little guy and gal.

When you denigate "community organizer" you denigrate service. Paradoxically, considering her claims to be of the people, it valorizes the more institutionally powerful elective office over community service.

In fact, the cold angry core of this convention and campaign is a reliance on the subordination of all other forms of service to military service, particularly military service which entailed actual physical and mental suffering, torture and deprivation, particularly John McCain's military service and incarceration by the enemy, the one we shouldn't have been fighting at the time, in the war we lost. There's not much constructive, not much developed forward thinking. There's just another flowering of the Conservative stabbed-in-the-back mythology.

Sarah Palin may not win this election, but she is clearly the future of the Republican Party. Mitt would do well to cut her legs out from under her now, otherwise he will lose the nomination to her in four years. If she can outrun justice in Alaska.

The gleam in her eye, her fixation on the camera, the obvious pleasure she got from being part of the club, stepped up to the big time by adopting a speech actually prepared for one of the male contenders to read, juiced with the faux defiance of her biographical droppings, it's all so ambitious. There's no sense of a plan for the American people in her speech, no substantive program for change. It's all oppositional, as if her Party hadn't been in power for the past eight years. The lies come hard and fast and the challenge isn't to refute them, it's to even keep up. All the rest is gussied up bile.

I know she's energized the GOP base, but it isn't even close to 50% of the country anymore, and if I were a Romney-style economic Republican, I'd work behind the scenes to get her indicted in Alaska, because the Party is now prisoner of the Religious Right. There's only one national figure, i.e. since last Friday, who has this wing's full emotional investment.

All I want to know is which campaign raised more money off of would-be Miss Congeniality's speech tonight.

I'd lay a bet it's Obama's.

Rude-a-loodle-oo

As John Amato points out:

50 million bucks gets Ghouliani 1 delegate so far. What an amazing story…

Suh-weet! There's talk of Rudy endorsing McCain tomorrow, surely angling for Attorney General (VP?) where he can run his House of Fascism the way he likes. But the pleasure right now is in the fall, i.e. The New York Times:

...Just three months ago, Anthony V. Carbonetti, Mr. Giuliani’s affable senior policy adviser, surveyed that field and told The New York Observer: “I don’t believe this can be taken from us. Now that I have that locked up, I can go do battle elsewhere.”

In fact, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign was about to begin a free-fall so precipitous as to be breathtaking. Mr. Giuliani finished third in the Florida primary on Tuesday night; only a few months earlier, he had talked about the state as his leaping-off point to winning the nomination...

...The more that Republican voters saw of him, the less they wanted to vote for him.

It's icing on the cake to see his equally self-entitled wife, Judith Nathan, who surely had pretensions to First Lady in keeping with her reported Queen-like tendencies, accompany him on the fall. Her face has actually fallen, clearly struggling to endure while Rudy is all triggerish bonhomie, with that crazyman laugh of his. She and his habit of charging his adultery with her to city agencies is surely responsible for much of his freefall. Let Tom Brokaw explain it to you as he explains all of Rudy's baggage to the once-fawning Chris Matthews.

Per Joe Biden, all Rudy really campaigned on was "A noun, a verb and 9/11." He was dubbed by the media, "America's Mayor" for his calm demeanor during that fateful day while George Bush ran like a frightened mouse and President Cheney was about to shoot more planes out of the sky. But so many of the casualties in 9/11 might have been escaped had Rudy not made his selfish decision to locate the anti-attack command and control center under the World Trade Center -- the one structure on American soil that had ever previously been attacked by foreign terrorists.

America's Mayor? Maybe if you repeat it enough times:



Toodles, Rudles.

Late Thoughts

So the day after there are a few more plausible explanations of why Sen. Clinton bested the poll numbers and beat Sen. Obama in the only poll that really counts.

There's the Biden/Dodd drop-out theory wherein their supporters went to the next longest-serving Senator on the ballot. Makes sense, particularly with older voters, especially older female voters.

There's an emerging argument that Obama's conciliatory "unity" speech actually hasn't gone far enough in criticizing El Presidente Bush, as (sorry, GOP Barack supporters) we really are angry about what he and President Cheney have done to this country, and the fact that they're still in power more a little more than another year, still time enough to gin up an attack on Iran. (As they've been doing under the cover of Primary fever -- maybe deliberately?) Obama seems to have started correcting that today in speeches. Very important to do -- as all of the Republican candidates, aside from Ron Paul, have in some way fundamentally endorsed or enabled Bush's policies.

There's a very compelling case to be made that the misogyny of the pundits gleefully piling on after her loss in Iowa, specifically Chris Matthews, created a groundswell of sympathy for Clinton. Even Kos found himself half-rooting for her against the onslaught. Matthews seems to single-handedly be trying to get her elected in some sort of self-destructive pathology. And in one instance she actually handled him beautifully, cuddling up when by all rights she should have been clobbering him.

Caryl Rivers wrote a great piece about it in HuffPo today, and it's a pretty stirring argument for Hillary over Obama if you're old enough to have had a working mother who actually experienced sexism when pioneering the workplace, a ceiling that all-too often still exists today (i.e. how many male vs. female CEOs?):

And why was Barack anointed so instantly? To use a sports metaphor, it was like the talented rookie being handed the Cy Young award after his first pouting on the mound. As Gloria Steinem noted in her much-discussed New York Times op-ed, what if Barack Obama had been a woman, with the same resume? She'd have been laughed at if she said she wanted to run for president.

I believe a lot of women thought "This isn't fair. Give her a chance. She's earned that. Maybe she won't win in the end, but if she loses, let it be fair and square. Any why doesn't the media seem very excited about the first woman president. Why isn't that 'change?""

For women of a certain age, there was an air of familiarity about the whole process. Often, women work hard, learn their craft, pay their dues, don't try to step in front of other people, and then, when they are due for the big promotion, something happens. Some young guy is suddenly standing in front of them. He's the hot new commodity, and she is just expected to gracefully step aside.

The real big hidden story of New Hampshire, one that I'm sure Fox News and the GOP establishment desperately wants to keep under wraps until they can fool us in the General Election that the country really is 50% theirs, is the massive disparity between the Parties in number of voters. 60,000 less people voting for any Republican candidate than for Democratic.

That's 44% voting Republican, and 56% Democrat -- a 12-percentage point difference!

In politics, that's called a mandate, and some might cry landslide.

- You've got "frontrunner" McCain ceding President authority to end the war in Iraq to General Petraeus, what Jonathan Zasloff calls disqualifying himself from the Presidency.

- You've got ex-frontrunner Romney now losing his firewall state, Michigan, to McCain.

- You've got Conservative "savior" Fred Thompson at 1% and losing to write-ins.

- You've got loser Giuliani stringing together a noun, a verb, and 911.

It's enough to make one wonder...and you may want to punish me for the thought, at least at first:

If Sen. Clinton does succeed in winning the nomination, and if they keep at least the victory and concession speechifying between now and then as graceful, civil, and mutually respectful as they have so far...

...and if she were to actually turn around and (shades of Reagan/Bush) choose to unite the Party by offering Sen. Obama the Vice Presidential candidacy...

...and if he were to actually think about it, being the first black VP in the history of America, with a chance to not only be President in eight years time but also establish sixteen years of Democratic Executive control (the first since FDR/Truman)...

...would the Hillary haters within the Party come around and...

...would it finally unite the Democrats?

At that point, would there be any way for the Republicans to stop us?

Eve

Finally, the Primary season begins on Thursday with the Iowa Caucus, where (for Dems) second choices matter.

The press seems to be that big turnout = Obama win, what with other candidates reportedly leaning his way, and Hillary's surrogates already lowering expectations. Edwards is the wild card, with what they call "a strong ground game" and tireless campaigning.

It's weird and unfair, but between the two closing talking head ads, Obama comes across as wayyyy cooler and more pleasing to have on your TV every day for four years than Hillary.

Meanwhile the GOP is Comedy Central, with Romney having spent millions to end up making excuses that he might come in second, although scab candidate Mike Huckabee maybe shot himself in the foot this week by attempting to go negative without getting labelled as such.

To top it off, Fred Thompson's campaign is looking to end by Sunday, and a desperate Rudy Giuliani has made the most frightening campaign ad of all time...to the point of absolutely shameless self-parody (and shameless exploitation of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, her body not even cold a week). It's his Hail Mary pass, and what a way to go out.

All that being said, ours still beats the electoral process in, say, some other country.

Crocodile Mitt

Having previous made a disgrace of himself and his family by equating his five able-bodied sons working to get him elected President to selfless young American soldiers dying in a war he fervently supports, Mitt Romney has once again open that can of bullshit.

Mitt's been getting misty-eyed in Iowa recalling a run-in with the coffin of a dead soldier in Boston's Logan Airport:

"The soldiers that I was with stood at attention and saluted," Romney told employees at Insight Technology Inc., a company that makes infrared optical equipment for U.S. troops. "And I put my hand on my heart, and tears begin to well in your eyes, as you can imagine in a circumstance like that. I have five boys of my own. I imagined what it would be like to lose a son in a situation like that."

But you won't. In fact, Mitt, the really telling part of your little emotimoment is when you say, "This is a nation which is united."

No, Mitt, not when the rich aren't vested in the very war their class seeks to profit from with the lives of other fellow citizens, without any risk of their own. This is John Edwards' Two Americas. Because only a fool or a liar doesn't recognize exactly how un-united we Americans are these days, save those of us united against the current leadership and it's enabling followers.

So with Giuliani sidelining himself with his infidelity and avarice, that leaves Mitt as the resident liar. The GOP Presidential race appears to be coming down to Romney, Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Ron Paul.

Huckabee has the smooth screen presence of a practiced pastor, starting to feel a little snake oily, like here in his confident, Christianist commercial for...Christmas. With emphasis on the Christ.

I give Mike credit for taking the old school, religious, non-materialistic position on Christmas, the one the wingers and their pundits claim we need re-instilled but please don't stop the shopping. On the other hand, this is a seriously chilling signal that Huckabee cannot for a second be trusted to keep church out of state. Is that the message he really wanted to send? And will any more perceptive Christians turn against him for using Christmas as a political tool?

Then there's the old folks club, today featuring John McCain and his latest endorsee, Sen. Joe Lieberdouche. The odious Joe, it turns out, just wanted to be relevant. See, it turns out he didn't endorse a Democratic candidate for President because none of them wanted him.

That leave Ron Paul, who's at about 6% in the national polls, but has a base so fired up by his combination of anti-War Constitutionalism and outright Libertarianism, that he's raising the most impressive stack of money amongst the GOP field. This isn't like Romney propping up his campaign with his own or his family's money. This isn't buying the nomination.

But expect that with such a war chest and such committed supporters, Ron can trail in the early states and still play through to the end.

I was on the Santa Monica Promenade yesterday when a parade of Ron Paul supporters, led by Revolution-drag fife & drum, walked right up the middle, passing out literature, the otherwise normal looking individuals both making me proud to live in a democracy, and scaring me with their with their focus and organization.

It was a signal, once again, that the Ron Paul candidacy could turn out to be the big story of the GOP campaign.

And even if not now, the network going into place will have four more years to position themselves to win it all.

Two Candidates

Here's a fascinating contrast between two candidates on the Republican side of the Presidential nomination ledger. One is Rudy Giuliani, possible frontrunner, the other Ron Paul, bane of their existence.

Ex-Mayor Rudy spent the last week being mauled by his history of using NYC cops to protect his mistress. He went on Meet the Press ostensibly for damage control, but appears to have only dug his hole deeper. Maybe the most damning aspect of the interview was his propensity to giggle in response to Tim Russert's toughest questions, as if channeling Hillary Clinton's round of Sunday talk shows earlier this season. Check out the incredibly odd TPM compilation here.

On the other hand, Rep. Ron Paul gave a rather illuminating ABC News interview where he candidly responded to a range of morality-based questioning with a firm, even rational libertarian (small "l") philosophy. As Paul has said, while he is certainly flawed, the philosophy isn't, and will have its day.

Hard to disbelieve him watching this.

More Fun

Treat yourself to various striking genre writers imagining different solutions for the strike based on their particular practices.

In a similar vein, and I mean that literally, are the horror writers with their "exorcism" held on line last week. The "Out, demons, out!" chant is the highlight.

On another front, there's this fake campaign commercial for how Rudy Giuliani can turn a negative into a positive: it's all about security. Nice coda.

Busted

The walls are starting to cave in on former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's bid for the Republican Presidential nomination.

Back in the day when Rudy was running for reelection, a friend of mine -- the wife of a close buddy -- told me there was no way she was going to vote for "that fascist." Indeed, Rudy did his NYC clean-up with a lot of force, also his opening up to real estate developers, but was absolutely terrible on race relations (eventually alienating even those who had supported him earlier) and even tried to use his office to censor works of art and punish the museum for their noteworthy British "Sensation" show:

Giuliani asserted that he found a portrait of a black Virgin Mary splattered with elephant dung and photographs of genitalia to be the most offensive. Other works that outraged the mayor include a bust of a man made from his own frozen blood, the use of dead pigs and cows sliced from head to tail in a tank of formaldehyde, and a painting depicting the murder of children that took place in England in the 1960s.

Although threatening to withhold public funds for the Brooklyn Museum, he only succeeded in making British artists Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili et al the most famous contemporary artists.

So inside of the authoritarian, that one trait which most endears him to the average Republican voter, does it necessarily go hand-in-hand that he would cheat on his wife, and let her and her kids learn that he was divorcing her from the television set in Gracie Mansion?

It's a man who's only in it for himself, of course. His own ego. His sexual gratification. His yearning for power.

Hence no surprise that, while still married to second wife Donna Hanover and engaging in an affair with eventual third wife Dr. Judith Nathan, he had people on the city tab squiring around his mistress like it was his own kingly taxi service, all on the public dime.

It's the same thing that took down NY State Comptroller and mayorial hopeful Alan Hevesi. It's a felony.

None of it any surprise. Rudy's fatal flaw is actual more about his legal background, and how he lies like the bad lawyers that make people hate all of 'em. He just says whatever he wants to bolster his rhetoric, like it's the College Republican club, a vicious advocate who cheats on the facts. Anything to win.

I'm guessing that since he was coming off a "rumored" longterm affair with his press secretary, Cristyne Lategano, imagining that much of their erotic time would have been spent alone in workplace settings, it was probably second nature to integrate his new affairlette into his official life and quarters. After all, he was a very busy man.

So what if maybe he made them build the terrorism command center, against expert recommendations, close enough to City Hall that he could go down there and shag with Dr. Nathan. Busy men have to be efficient with their time.

Giuliani isn't the first executive politician who thinks he's popular enough that he owns the city or the state enough to take liberties for personal pleasure. But what's been so dissonant during this run up to the GOP primaries is how flagrant he was with his amorality, yet it's gotten virtually no play among the party faithful. Media blackout, maybe. Narrative interference (Mr. 9/11), maybe. Willful self-delusion, certainly.

The key indicator to watch during this scandal is Fox News, run by Giuliani's very own ex-campaign manager, Roger Ailes. If they show people in the heartland giving up on Giuliani based on what they're learning about the real Rudy during these next few news cycles, his goose is cooked. But they'll be his staunchest hagiographers to the end.

Watch Rudy sink like a rock in the upcoming GOP polls. He was wearing badly last night in the Florida debate, and the party faithful are breathing a sigh of relief that Mike Huckabee appears ready for primetime.

All that's left is face-saving so he can duck back into the private sector and keep the brand intact enough to get clients. Expect him to drop out by March. New affair twelve months hence.

America's Mayor.

Yes, Torture

Men of amelioration of torture like Rudy Giuliani would like to blur the discussion of how the Cheney/Bush Administration has lowered our country into international barbarism by instituting, for the first time in U.S. history, the notorious practices of the Spanish Inquisition.

Waterboarding. Is that like snowboarding?

Or waterskiing?

It turns out, it isn't. In fact, it's proper name is either "Controlled Drowning" or, most accurately, "Induced Drowning."

If you don't think the embrace or even consideration of Induced Drowning as an interrogative technique isn't grounds for Presidential candidate disqualification, then read this thorough description of the vile practice by Hunter at DailyKos.

WARNING: This post sickened me. It delineates something that happens to an accidentally drowning human only once but, in the hands of torture operatives like ours, can be prolonged in such a way that it happens to the torture subject, the (yes) victim, over and over and over again for hours:

Compare this with the crude techniques of torturers: cutting off a thumb or finger is repeatable, at most, ten times. Drowning can be repeated indefinitely, or at least until the information is obtained, the interrogator deems the sessions worthless, or the prisoner accidentally dies.

I read it like watching a blood-freezing, clinical description of a butchering car accident, mainly to know exactly what it is that I thought I was against.

Now I'm sure.

And remember, these techniques were originally used to bring about false confessions, because they were the confessions the brutal ruling powers needed. Hence the whole section on how torture subjects give false information, and the need for additional violent punishment (not specified) due to that common result.

Hell, I'd lie to stop the assault. Wouldn't you?

After reading the post it became clear to me that there was only one fair answer to the likes of Giuliani, "Double Guantanamo" Romney, Richard Bruce Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush and all those who would seek to enlist the darkest and most sadistic among us to perform this perverse and godless act.

They must voluntarily submit to 24 hours of Induced Drowning interrogation themselves.

C'mon, Blackwater.

The Devil and Rudy Giuliani

Far rightwing Christianist Pat Robertson just endorsed an overjoyed Rudy Giuliani. What exactly is the common appeal?

Blaming liberals for 9/11.

Pro-torture. (Read: Crusade.)

Fascist capitalism.

"Southern" Strategy.

Ed Kilgore puts Robertson's waiving of all supposed "principles" (in light of Giuliani's previous support of abortion rights, gay tolerance, infidelity and divorce record) in a perspective that folks on my side of the line can understand:

I've tried to think of a Democratic analog for the unlikeliness of this particular endorsement, and the best I can come up with is Cindy Sheehan joining Hillary Clinton's campaign out of admiration for her energy proposals.

I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

Rudy and the Molester

Is Rudy Giuliani simply morally unfit for higher office?

Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani hired a Catholic priest to work in his consulting firm months after the priest was accused of sexually molesting two former students and an altar boy and told by the church to stop performing his priestly duties.

An accusation:

"This man did unjust things, and he's being protected and employed and taken care of. It's not a good thing," said one of the accusers, Richard Tollner, who says Placa molested him repeatedly when he was a student at a Long Island, N.Y. Catholic boys high school in 1975.

A defense:

"I know the man; I know who he is, so I support him," Giuliani said. "We give some of the worst people in our society the presumption of innocence and benefit of the doubt," he said. "And, of course, I'm going to give that to one of my closest friends."

The law:

The grand jury report concluded that a Priest F, who Tollner says is Placa, abused the boys sexually "again and again and again."

"Priest F was cautious, but relentless in his pursuit of victims. He fondled boys over their clothes, usually in his office," the report said.

The report concluded that Priest F, and several other priests under investigation from the same Long Island, N.Y. diocese, could not be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired.

And he was part of the critical hierarchy protecting...himself:

In addition to the allegations that Priest F was personally involved in the sexual abuse, the grand jury also said that Priest F became instrumental in a church policy that used "deception and intimidation" to keep the church scandal quiet.

How close is "Priest F" a.k.a. Place to Rudy?

Since going to work for Giuliani Partners, the former mayor and the priest have continued to be close.

Placa accompanied Giuliani and his wife Judith on a trip to Rome earlier this year.

Good luck, GOP.

Bullshit and Idgits

With a hat-tip to a reader who sent me a link, the Onion News Network is on a tear. First it's the most determinant Presidential election issue. Then it's all about the voters themselves.

The latter kinda reminds me of this.

Rude Friend?

So Mister Bush has nominated as Attorney General a retired jurist pre-approved by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and obviously qualified for the job in a way that Alberto Gonzales never even approached. In other words, not for Bush’s inner coven.

There’s even been some grumbling by far-right conservatives. Hey, if Chuck Schumer likes the guy, there has to be something wrong with him. Perhaps in an attempt to mollify that nutbag contingent, the Wall Street Journal has published “Seven Things to Know About Michael Mukasey” but the effect on the rest of us may not be so reassuring.

For example, he’s so close to Rudy Giuliani that Marc Mukasey, works for the firm of Bracewell & Giuliani.

As for Rudy himself, MoveOn has his number.

Repuglicans

How screwed up is the GOP right now? I mean, more than I've already covered this week?

This was a banner day.

It turns out Rudolph Gall-iani will literally say anything he thinks will get him elected, especially if it involves climbing on the corpses of 9/11 victims or the shoulders of those who cleaned up afterwards:

Speaking to reporters in Cincinnati, Giuliani said, "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

Do those workers agree with him?

Fire Captain and Giuliani foe James Riches, whose firefighter son died on 9/11:

"That's insulting and disgraceful. He's a liar. I was down there on my hands and knees looking for my son."

Queens paramedic Marvin Bethea:

"I personally find that very, very insulting," he said..."Standing there doing a photo-op and telling the men, 'You're doing a good job,' I don't consider that to be working."

Ironworker Jonathan Sferazo who spent a month at ground zero:

"He's not one of us. He never has been and he never will be. He never served in a capacity where he was a responder," Sferazo said.

Oh, he's tried to backtrack. So sad, so lame.

An isolated incident of exaggeration? Not so, per Wayne Barrett in The Village Voice:

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11:

1. 'I think the thing that distinguishes me on terrorism is, I have more experience dealing with it.'

Turns out he lies about the minimal, unsuccessful terrorism prosecutions he even touched when he was a U.S. Attorney.

2. 'I don't think there was anyplace in the country, including the federal government, that was as well prepared for that attack as New York City was in 2001.'

No, turns out NYC was much worse than the Pentagon, no unified command, no high-rise plan, bad communications killed firefighters, lackadaisical response to 1993 WTC bombing.

3. Don't blame me for 7 WTC, Rudy says.

(Do.)

4. 'Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.'

The worst kind of typical GOP scummy smearjob.

Clinton was the President who ordered daily briefings on Al Queda and other terrorist threats. Bush cut them down, missed "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States." 9/11 happened on Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld's watch. Then they blew our lead in Afghanistan by attacking Iraq, with Rudy's full and continued support. This after Rudy blew the preparations in NYC.

Meanwhile the Dems consider terrorists criminals rather than soldiers, meaning you don't do asymmetrical warfare and get your ass handed to you by an enemy you often can't see, who can disappear into a population...like a criminal.

Rudy understands...nothing.

5. 'Every effort was made by Mayor Giuliani and his staff to ensure the safety of all workers at Ground Zero.'

Ask them.

Will this cave in on Rudy? Who the heck else do the GOP have to go with? McCain is polling below Obama amongst Iowa Republicans. Mitt's fundraiser are johns or crooks. In fact, "None of the Above" is leading the GOP field in Iowa:

None of the Above has polled higher than Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and all the other Republican presidential candidates, reflecting a lackluster field that isn’t catching on with the American people.

What else is there to loathe about the GOP?

- David Brooks reveals that no one likes the current President -- even Republicans.

- Bush and Giuliani want to regress our tax system further.

- They are traitors who leak secrets when politically advantageous for them.

- They will have to bring back the Draft.

Oh, and their President Cheney is desperately trying to plunge us into WWIII.

Prediction:

Newt Gingrich will enter the race, solely on the basis that he has the smarts, nerve and ego to run against the current President. He will wipe out at least two of the three supposed contenders now, maybe even go head-to-head with Rudy. Whichever one wins will not win the General Election, unless there is some act of violence which tips the equation.

Newt will, however, unleash a huge Republican rank & file rage against the current Administration, and he may be able to ride that wave to a nomination.

The trick will be to blame the officeholders and not the overall Republican ideology, but GOP faithful will want to be fooled into that, and are probably laying the groundwork already. Bifurcate the leadership away from Karl Rove. Scoop 'em up.

It's the only strategy that can take on and beat None of the Above.

I'm for: Rudy!

Last month I posted the first in what I promised would be a series of Republican Presidential candidate endorsements. In that one I endorsed former Governor Willard Mitt Romney. I wrote that I would endorse lots of the Republican candidates, because none of them scared me. In response, one of Nettertainment's valued readers wrote:

Given the American voters' uncanny knack for electing Republican candidates regardless of how awful they seem, I really think you should only endorse someone you could live with being in the White House for the next eight years.

I couldn't live with Nixon, I couldn't live with Reagan, I couldn't live with Cheney & Bush Puppet. But I did.

The fact is, people live through all types of regimes. The only question is how much they damage you during their rule. Is it an abstract abridgment of civil rights -- i.e. someone else takes the hit, but my family skates through those years? Or do they come after me, maybe for speaking my mind right here?

I believe that, in a democracy, you get the government you deserve. Maybe the past two Presidential elections were stolen by Mr. Rove and company. It doesn't matter. America needs to vote decidedly if not overwhelmingly against these villains, otherwise we're not really evolved, are we?

The scariest of the chest-thumping, after-shave touting, chickenhawk GOP Presidential candidates is former NYC Mayor Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani. Rudy appears tougher than salesmen like Mitt because (a) as a U.S. Attorney he won some tough convictions, (b) New York City, (c) he stood a lot taller than Mister Bush on 9/11 -- even though he made the single worst terrorism protection decision prior to that day, in essence beefing up his travails through bullheaded, egotistical executive judgment.

After the failed 1991 attack on the World Trade Center, Rudy rejected the expert recommendation to put the Emergency Command Center across the East River in Brooklyn, away from the target. Instead, Rudy mandated that it be built right under the World Trade Center itself -- the site of the only attack to date by terrorists on American soil.

Well, at least it made him look more courageous when he escaped the predicted attack there on 9/11/2001.

Rudy's image takes a continuous beating from the very public servants he claimed to be behind, the rescue heroes of the post-9/11 effort. These firemen very credibly claim that Rudy's image build-up after the attack is just a pile of lies:

What Giuliani showed following 9/11 is a disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen and those brothers still searching for them. He valued the money and gold and wanted the [World Trade Center] site cleared before he left office at the end of 2001 more than he valued the lives and memories of those lost."

-- IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger

But what makes Rudy so appealing for a blanket GOP Nettertainment endorsement? Is it his brilliant grasp of the domestic agenda Americans are clamoring to have addressed?

Rudy Giuliani seems to know next to nothing about virtually every national policy issue -- ironically, given his campaign presentation, though not so odd if you consider his actual career in office, he knows more about domestic policy than foreign policy.

Including his tone-deaf healthcare plan?

But Mr. Romney took aim at Mr. Giuliani’s recent proposal to offer people $15,000 in tax deductions to help them buy health insurance. “We have to have our citizens insured, and we’re not going to do that by tax exemptions, because the people that don’t have insurance aren’t paying taxes,” he said.

Mr. Giuliani countered, arguing that the best way to increase the number of people with private insurance was to give them the deduction to encourage them to buy policies. “They’ll have an incentive to own their own health insurance,” he said.

Is it his lack of understanding of crucial current foreign affairs issues?

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) Thursday repeated his challenge to debate foreign policy with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and offered Giuliani a "reading assignment" of books examining U.S. policy toward the Middle East...

...He recommended that Giuliani read four books that outline causes for al Qaeda's hatred of the United States, including the 9/11 Commission Report and Chalmers Johnson's 2000 book, "Blowback."

Is it his platform of four more years of nerve-rattling fear-mongering?

Rather than a reasoned discussion — rather than a political campaign advocating your own causes and extolling your own qualifications — you have bypassed all the intermediate steps and moved directly to trying to terrorize the electorate into viewing a vote for a Democrat, not as a reasonable alternative and an inalienable right … but as an act of suicide.

This is not the mere politicizing of Iraq, nor the vague mumbled epithets about Democratic “softness” from a delusional vice president.

This is casualties on a partisan basis — of the naked assertion that Mr. Giuliani’s party knows all and will save those who have voted for it — and to hell with everybody else.

And that he, with no foreign policy experience whatsoever, is somehow the messiah-of-the-moment.

Or is it the company he keeps?

Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping.

Kerik's indictment could set the stage for a courtroom battle that would draw attention to Kerik's extensive business and political dealings with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who personally recommended him to President Bush for the Cabinet.

Or those he's choosing to help get him elected?

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) was Capitol Hill’s invisible man yesterday, lying low even as his ties to the notorious “D.C. Madam” threatened to become a political crisis for the conservative lawmaker...

...The most immediate campaign consequences came not for Vitter, who is up for reelection in 2010, but for GOP presidential front-runner Rudy Giuliani. Vitter’s endorsement of the ex-New York City mayor was intended to lend Giuliani conservative heft, but the Louisianan forced his candidate to dodge scandal yesterday in New Hampshire.

Or maybe it's his personal character. You know, that issue Republicans claim to own, putting Family Values in capital letters.

Giuliani married his second cousin, Regina Perrugi. After 14 years, he divorced her, but got an official "annulment" -- a decree from the Catholic Church that the marriage never really happened (for 14 years!!), thus allowing remarriage in the Church.

Ah, the magic of annulment. Almost a decade and a half...begone!

Then there's his second marriage, with children, where his wife, Donna Hanover, and kids found out in an unexpected way that, after flagrantly cheating on her for years with a staffer among others, he was leaving their family:

Southern Baptist Convention leader Richard Land, for example, described Giuliani's breakup with Hanover as "divorce on steroids." Hanover learned her husband was seeking a divorce from television after he announced the decision at a press conference.

"To publicly humiliate your wife in that way, and your children _ that's rough," said Land. "I think that's going to be an awfully hard sell, even if he weren't pro-choice and pro-gun control." Marital history and family values have been bubbling just below the surface of the Republican campaign for months.

Class all the way!

Then there's the woman he broke up his home for, his third and current wife, Dr. Judith "Don't call me Judi!" Nathan. America currently has an openly prevaricating Chief Executive. Are they ready for a First Lady who lies for her own convenience as well?

Judith Nathan had been married twice, and not once as generally believed, before she wed Rudolph W. Giuliani in 2003, aides on the Giuliani presidential campaign said last night.

She's got a strong sense of direction:

The train of her pale Vera Wang dress was studded with Swarovski crystals; on her dark-red hair perched a Fred Leighton diamond-and-pearl-encrusted tiara.

"There is a reason why she wore that tiara at her wedding: she really does see herself as a princess," says another former Giuliani aide. "Not as a queen. Queen is her goal. Queen is who she wants to be."

It's good that she wants to be Queen. After all, she's good with the help:

If Giuliani's third wife became less popular as time went on, it was in part due to the feeling that she had a private list of Rudy loyalists she wanted fired. "The atmosphere is slippery, but not always venomous," says one. "You just realize there's an agenda there: she's worming her way in so she can push you out." Papir, for instance, was fired five years ago after word got around that he had called Judith a "princess" behind her back. But there are others, two sources say, of whom she patently disapproves. "Kate Anson, his scheduler, and this was the person who was so nice to her—everyone likes her!" says one Giuliani friend, holding up fingers to enumerate those of whom Judith disapproves. "Matt Mahoney [now deputy senior political adviser]—he loves Rudy. And Tony Carbonetti too, that's the other person Judith hates.… He would never be confrontational. His job is Rudy." A shrug. "Anyone supportive of him, close to him—Judith wants them fired. A lot of the senior staff … She just gets furiously jealous and treats them like shit!"

But the best reason for me to back Rudy to win the GOP nomination comes from another member of his family:

Even his daughter is voting against him.

ENDORSED.

Republicans are Insane

What kind of sane jurist, let alone U.S. Supreme Court jurist, argues out their side of the case by basing their arguments entirely upon fictional TV show characters?

That would be Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:

Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge's passing remark - "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'What would Jack Bauer do?' " - got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.

"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.

I know Republicans love 24, but are they all this fucking crazy?

Are they all so charming about due process?

"I don't care about holding people. I really don't," Judge Scalia said.

Even if a real terrorist who suffered mistreatment is released because of complaints of abuse, Judge Scalia said, the interruption to the terrorist's plot would have ensured "in Los Angeles everyone is safe." During a break from the panel, Judge Scalia specifically mentioned the segment in Season 2 when Jack Bauer finally figures out how to break the die-hard terrorist intent on nuking L.A. The real genius, the judge said, is that this is primarily done with mental leverage. "There's a great scene where he told a guy that he was going to have his family killed," Judge Scalia said. "They had it on closed circuit television - and it was all staged. ... They really didn't kill the family."

Hey, I've loved Alice in Wonderland ever since I was a kid. But I also know I'm not going to pass into my shaving mirror.

Okay, maybe that's just one guy. Now we're back in the real world. The one where Rudy Giuliani pretends to be an actual expert on terrorism:

Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

He cited "previous time commitments" in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why - the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani's lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.

Look, I don't begrudge the guy for hitting the bank while the hitting is good. Just don't do something like this and then pretend that you're a viable Presidential candidate, ever.

You really are going to put the peoples' needs before your own? You expect me to believe that?

You must be crazy!

Oh, there is one Republican who I know is not insane.

Was.

Taibbi

Matt Taibbi, the most dead-on gonzo reporter working today, hits another homer in this week's Rolling Stone with, "Giuliani: Worse Than Bush". You can read to the end to get the whole "worse" part, but it's a damning portrait of an amoral political opportunist who cashes an an accelerated World Trade Center clean-up by flouting OSHA rules to get it done faster and ruining the health of the workers to do it:

For starters, Rudy tried to use the tragedy to shred election rules, pushing to postpone the inauguration of his successor so he could hog the limelight for a few more months. Then, with the dust from the World Trade Center barely settled, he went on the road as the Man With the Bullhorn, pocketing as much as $200,000 for a single speaking engagement. In 2002 he reported $8 million in speaking income; this past year it was more than $11 million. He's traveled in style, at one stop last year requesting a $47,000 flight on a private jet, five hotel rooms and a private suite with a balcony view and a king-size bed.

While the mayor himself flew out of New York on a magic carpet, thousands of cash-strapped cops, firemen and city workers involved with the cleanup at the World Trade Center were developing cancers and infections and mysterious respiratory ailments like the "WTC cough." This is the dirty little secret lurking underneath Rudy's 9/11 hero image -- the most egregious example of his willingness to shape public policy to suit his donors. While the cleanup effort at the Pentagon was turned over to federal agencies like OSHA, which quickly sealed off the site and required relief workers to wear hazmat suits, the World Trade Center cleanup was handed over to Giuliani. The city's Department of Design and Construction (DDC) promptly farmed out the waste-clearing effort to a smattering of politically connected companies, including Bechtel, Bovis and AMEC construction.

The article begins with a very odd and revealing moment on the campaign trail and also covers Rudy's dunce-hatting of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) at the first Republican Presidential debate. Not to be missed, if you really want to know why New Yorkers were glad when Mayor Giuliani finally -- after suspending the election of his successor on his own edict -- left the job.

I'm not sure what it will take to dislodge the current lazy mainstream media story that Rudy was the hero of 9/11 (read the article to learn more reasons why not), but meanwhile former Vice President Al Gore has a new book out about the fundamental cracks in our democratic discourse, The Assault on Reason, and the old lazy mainstream media story about him being, uh, too smart has again reared it's Medusa-like head. Per Paul McLeary at the Columbia Journalism Review:

Milbank gives us an account of a recent speech by Gore that reads almost like a parody of everything we read about the candidate back in '00.

Milbank said that during the speech, Gore "waxed esoteric," "waxed erudite," and "waxed informed," as if these might be bad things to have happen during a speech. Milbank then quotes several audience members who gush over how smart Gore is, concluding that "therein lies a problem for the Gore '08 bubble." Can't be too smart, now, or else you'll look like an egghead, right?

G*ddamn America and its anti-intellectualism.

Remember what happened when we didn't go for smart?

The Torture Party

Thanks to President Cheney and Co-Presidente Bush, and the emasculating lock-step loyalty the Republican Party leaders feel they have to maintain with their crime-ridden Administration, every GOP candidate on stage at Tuesday night's South Carolina debate except for John McCain came out proudly for torture as an American military interrogation policy, reversing two hundred thirty years of U.S. policy, reinforcing our newly minted image as villains to the world, and laying bare the willful self-bankrupting of morality in hysterical pursuit of desperate political advantage.

Check out this terrifying segment, commencing with a hypothetical concoction that plays like a plug for Fox's own 24 series, how odd considering they were co-sponsors broadcasting the debate. The undead Brit Hume intones that "the questions in this round with be predicated on a fictional but we think plausible" multiple shopping mall bombed terrorism on U.S. soil scenario.

That's right; this supposedly serious GOP debate descends into a network consumer products spin-off product -- 24: The Party Game.

McCain leads off the question of how hard much you'll unleash your thug class in Guantanamo, like that prison has always been a standard institution of our country, like the question isn't how you get the information, it's just how quickly and completely you are willing to shed your scruples. As a criteria for President, no less. As criteria for manliness, in some berserk Sin City America 2007.

McCain, to his credit and an absolutely silent response in the hall, lays out a simple and moral opposition to torture:

"When I was in Vietnam one of the things that sustained us as we underwent torture ourselves was the knowledge that if we had our positions reversed and we were the captors, we would not impose that kind of treatment on them.

How odd that suddenly no soldier can be sure of this from his government. To hear these commandantettes speak, no soldier could doubt that somewhere else we are torturing a suspected enemy. Think of our three soldiers still held in an unknown location by Al Queda. Now that we're a torturing country, what's to hold any of these three together when their thumbs are shoved under the screws?

Giuliani, Tancredo and Romney all handle their Dantesque embrace of fascism with different flavors. Former mayor Rudy goes for repressing the thought, giving carte blanche to whatever thugs and turning back to the dinner party as if nothing is happen, ignore the screams in the cellar:

In the hypothetical that you gave me, which assumes that we know there is going to be another attack and these people know about it, I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they can think of. Shouldn’t be torture, but every method they can think of.

Nicely equivocated, revealing an empty vessel of a man. At least Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) goes for the crazy:

You say that nuclear devices have gone off in the United States, more are planned, and we are wondering about whether waterboarding would a bad thing to do? I’m looking for Jack Bauer at that time, let me tell you.

Fox must love this. Another plug! Unsolicited!

But the medal for most brazenly hollow, a man who's sole driving ambition appears to be the picture in Webster's when you look up the word "pandering," is moral midget former Governor Mitt Romney:

Now you said the person's going to be at Guantanamo. I'm glad they're at Guantanamo. I don't want them on our soil, I want them on Guantanamo where they don't get the access to lawyers they get when they're on our soil. I don't want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we oughtta double Guantanamo.

Double Guantanamo. To the most wildly enthusiastic applause of the night. It even sounds rehearsed, his poor, doomed soul.

And here Mitt is explaining why we have a gulag of ex-Soviet republics we have sent prisoners through in hiding. Because to him and his kind Guantanamo isn't America, it's a kind of way station America. It's a protectorate, a Guam, a place that we don't have to behave morally because he's demarcating it as a twilight zone of American moral principle. Oh, it's the American military operating on American-owned soil. But you don't get your right to legal representation there, you don't get treated like a citizen even if you are one. You are in Bush's, Cheney's and, he can almost taste it, Romney-directed thugland.

Double Guantanamo. Did he intend for that moniker to stick? Is it a badge he hopes to ride to the election?

Judging by the response of the GOP stalwarts and elites in the room, they want to be the Torture Party. They've already sold their soles, a Tony Soprano breaking out in every one of them. Their sense of their own rightness is their new religion, and it justifies inflicting anything on another human, guilty upon capture, if they're just dropped in the twilight zone and the fiction is allowed to usurp true reality.

Here's the scoop: the ends don't automatically justify the means. They didn't for Nixon with Watergate and don't for George Bush or Dick Cheney when they willfully deceived America into their misbegotten war. The means themselves quickly metastasize into Original Sin, the shit you can't wipe off your shoe, no matter how hard you try to mask the stink with misleading, self-hypnotizing rhetoric.

McCain is right. Only when you actually have the moral high ground through your actions, not your exceptionalism, can you ever find peace, no matter what you might be forced to endure. America won't be at peace with itself until these men and their medieval ways are banished to the dustbin of history.

The alternative can only be the decline and fall of our very own civilization.