President Giuliani 2008? Wake me when it's over! - why do you guys think?

[Sabin]

However, if it is true that he cheated on his wives, that is something I don't like.

He absolutely did. He cheated on both of his previous wives and had a long-standing mistress during his second marriage. This is proven, admitted, and fact. You are free to not like this now. Also, you should know this.

The difference between the two cases is that Giuliani didn't lie under oath and, as far as I know, his mistress wasn't an intern under his authority.

Nobody brought up Clinton. The fact that you have to bring up Bill Clinton to defend Rudy Guiliani is sad and indicative of a repugnant mindset.

When I think of Rudy Giuliani, as a leader, I think of his work as Mayor of NYC.

When I think of Rudy Giuliani, as a leader, I think about a man whose kids want to vote for Obama, a man whose kids believe that their Daddy would be bad for this country. Daddy is a bad, bad man, we don't talk to him, we don't want to talk to him, he doesn't want to talk to us, and he doesn't have our vote in '08!

DADDY IS A BAD, MEAN MAN! HE CHEATED ON MOMMY FOR A LONG TIME WITH A STRANGE WOMAN! THEN HE DID IT AGAIN WITH ANOTHER STRANGE WOMAN AND CHEATED ON MOMMY FOR A VERY LONG TIME, DECIDED TO LEAVE US AND MOMMY, AND WE FOUND OUT A FUCKING PRESS CONFERENCE BEFORE HE TOLD US! (incidentally, look it up)

Giuliani is the PLEASE DON'T VOTE FOR DADDY! HE MAKES US CRY candidate.

Again: look it up.



Edited By Sabin on 1193173413

[criddic3]

I'd like to preface this post by giving a shout out to Abner Luima, because in my heart of hearts I think that pretty soon the entire country's going to know how it feels.

--[I know what I'm getting into but I'm doing it anyway]--

My boy? Excuse me, but I have said all along that Thompson would NOT be the candidate for Republicans to choose. I said it before he ever got into the race. I have always been rooting for Giuliani. Not Thompson.

What your feelings about Guiliani's personal life? About being twice divorced, estranged from his children, and cheatinig on both of his previous wives? How do you reconsile with that, I'm just curious.

I do not condone his past private behavior, just as I don't condone Bill Clinton's private behavior. Divorce is commonplace and not a sin in my view. People aren't always right for each other. However, if it is true that he cheated on his wives, that is something I don't like. The difference between the two cases is that Giuliani didn't lie under oath and, as far as I know, his mistress wasn't an intern under his authority.

When I think of Rudy Giuliani, as a leader, I think of his work as Mayor of NYC. He lowered crime dramatically, fought for a clean city and did an impressive job. That is the kind of leadership we need in a President. I do not believe Hillary Clinton is capable of that kind of leadership.

[Sonic Youth]

Akash Giuliani, how tall are you?

[Sonic Youth]

Here's another reason I'll be voting for Hillary should it come to that.

This story isn't going to get any traction. It's too complicated and too NY City-oriented. But it emphasizes how frighteningly corrupt Giuliani is.


GIULIANI'S BERNARD KERIK SHIELD

By LARRY CELONA and DAN MANGAN
N.Y. Post

October 22, 2007 -- Rudy Giuliani's law partner has been told to monitor the criminal probe of disgraced ex-NYPD boss Bernard Kerik, which threatens to muddy up the former mayor's bid to become president.

As part of his sensitive assignment, Marc Mukasey [Recognize the name?] has thwarted Kerik's lawyer from interviewing witnesses who might help his defense, sources told The Post yesterday.

Mukasey is the son of former federal Judge Michael Mukasey, a longtime Giuliani friend nominated by President Bush to become the next U.S. attorney general. Michael Mukasey is awaiting Senate confirmation.

Marc Mukasey's task to keep an eye on Kerik's criminal investigation shows Giuliani's concern with how the legal fate of his former NYPD and correction commissioner could affect his presidential campaign, sources said.

A source familiar with the Kerik probe said Mukasey's role in monitoring the Kerik case is "obviously trying to distance Giuliani from all [the allegations about Kerik], although obviously it all occurred on Giuliani's watch."

And the refusal to make witnesses linked to Giuliani and his consulting firm available to Kerik's lawyer underscores the frayed relationship between the once-close friends. Those witnesses are people who have spoken to prosecutors and a grand jury investigating Kerik.

"Once there was this sense [in the Giuliani camp] of 'Bernie's a great guy,' even after he became embroiled in scandal," a source said. "Now, Mukasey's taking a different approach with him."

Marc Mukasey said last night, "I decline to comment."

Kerik, 52, pleaded guilty in 2006 to state conflict-of-interest charges for accepting $165,000 in gifts from an allegedly mob-linked construction firm, Interstate Industrial Corp.

He now faces a threatened indictment out of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office for tax and other crimes related to receiving renovations to his Bronx apartment from Interstate while he was Correction Department commissioner under then-Mayor Giuliani.

Kerik's lawyer, Kenneth Breen, declined to comment. Sources said Breen today will meet with Manhattan federal prosecutors in an effort to dissuade them from charging Kerik, and will make the same pitch Oct. 29 with the Justice Department.

Marc Mukasey, 40, served as a prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office for eight years before joining law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani in 2005.

A source said Mukasey has "made it impossible" for Breen "to interview witnesses" who work at Giuliani Partners, the consulting firm founded in 2002 by the former mayor after he left office. Kerik had been a key player in Giuliani Partners before his fall from grace.

Mukasey is "basically shutting them down," the source said.

Among the witnesses that Kerik's lawyer would want to interview is Chris Rising, a former NYPD inspector who was Kerik's special adviser and counsel when the two men were at the Police Department, sources said.

[Damien]

From Bill Maher's New Rules this past week:

New Rule: If the choice in '08 is between Rudy and Hillary, "values voters" must do the Christian thing and choose Hillary. Of course, I think all religion is nuts, but at least she practices it the way Jesus suggested: privately. Like a Dick Cheney energy meeting.

Plus, she's raised an admirable daughter, while Rudy's kids couldn't hate him more if they were New York City firefighters.

And let's not forget, Hillary didn't commit adultery. Her husband did. And afterwards, she did the Christian thing and forgave him. And then she had a GPS unit implanted in his penis. But the important thing is, she forgave him!

Now, I bring all this up because this weekend in Washington is the "Values Voters Convention." Three days of peace, love and hypocrisy. Where the Republican frontrunners will spend the week kissing the asses of 2,000 social conservatives who despise liberals, homosexuals, Muslims, Mexicans and Nobel Prize winners. And who believe the sound of a condom wrapper being opened makes angels die.

It's kind of like a "Star Trek" convention, only the virgins are angry--and they think outer space is just a theory. So, Ann Coulter, if you've got any more "faggot" jokes, this is the room for you.

But - but, here's something I learned while indulging one of my traditional values, reading. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the states with the most conservative Christians have the highest rates of divorce, the highest teen pregnancy rates and the highest obesity levels. Yes, they're fat, knocked up and not talking to each other--but, at least they put homosexuality back where it belongs: in the airport men's room.

Now, I know what you "values voters" are saying right now: "Why would we listen to you, Bill Maher? You're a bachelor from heathen California. What do you know about family values?" Well, I know enough not to get married and live in Kansas.

And I know that if you can look at the war in Iraq, the melting environments and the descent of America into "idiocracy," and still think our biggest problems are boobies during the Super Bowl and the "war on Christmas," then you don't have values, you have issues.

If you had "values," you'd draw the line at torture. But a startling number of people who call themselves Christians don't. And I'm pretty sure if you asked, "What would Jesus veto," it wouldn't be health care for sick kids.

Why, it's almost like "values voters" don't really believe Jesus was right about anything. [in mock attack ad voice] "Jesus Christ: wrong on gays, wrong on taxes, wrong on torture, and wrong for America."



Edited By Damien on 1193121335

[Akash]

Akash Giuliani, could you clarify your position on the sub-prime market crisis and how you as president would handle it?

September (pause) eleven.

[Sonic Youth]

Akash Giuliani, could you clarify your position on the sub-prime market crisis and how you as president would handle it?

[OscarGuy]

What your feelings about Guiliani's personal life? About being twice divorced, estranged from his children, and cheatinig on both of his previous wives? How do you reconsile with that, I'm just curious.

Nine. Eleven.

Cheer! Whoop! Whoop! Cheer!

[Akash]

What your feelings about Guiliani's personal life? About being twice divorced, estranged from his children, and cheatinig on both of his previous wives? How do you reconsile with that, I'm just curious.

Nine. Eleven.

[Sabin]

I'd like to preface this post by giving a shout out to Abner Luima, because in my heart of hearts I think that pretty soon the entire country's going to know how it feels.

--[I know what I'm getting into but I'm doing it anyway]--

My boy? Excuse me, but I have said all along that Thompson would NOT be the candidate for Republicans to choose. I said it before he ever got into the race. I have always been rooting for Giuliani. Not Thompson.

What your feelings about Guiliani's personal life? About being twice divorced, estranged from his children, and cheatinig on both of his previous wives? How do you reconsile with that, I'm just curious.

[Akash]

Another reason for me to hate Giuliani...and to be genuinely afraid that he might actually go on to win this whole damn thing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007....d=print
October 17, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Rudy Roughs Up Arabs
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Now comes “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.”

David Horowitz’s conservative Freedom Center has designated next week the time to “break through the barrier of politically correct doublespeak that prevails on American campuses, if you want to help our brave troops, who are fighting the Islamo-Fascists abroad.”

The Freedom Center’s terrorism awareness program is urging college students to stage sit-ins outside the offices of women’s studies departments to protest “the silence of feminists over the oppression of women in Islam” and to distribute pamphlets on Islamo-Fascism. Their titles include “The Islamic Mein Kampf,” “Why Israel is the Victim” and “Jimmy Carter’s War Against the Jews.”

Even before Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, the Republican presidential candidates were pitching in yesterday at the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory 2008 Forum here.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about the Democratic debates,” Rudy Giuliani said, “but they never use the word ‘Islamic terrorist.’ Ever.”

“They have a very hard time getting those words out of their mouth,” he continued, to the delight of his listeners. “I think it’s quite clear to me now, having listened to seven or eight of their debates, that they think it’s politically incorrect to say the words. I don’t know exactly who they think they’re offending. I don’t know what kind of view of the world they have. I understand when I say ‘Islamic terrorism,’ I’m not offending all of Islam. I’m not offending all of the Arab world. I’m offending exactly who I want to offend and making it clear to them that we stand against them.”

As the phlegmatic Fred Thompson plummeted in the polls and made a lackluster appearance at the forum, a juiced Mr. Giuliani preened in front of an audience that loved him.

He went through his greatest hits: The time he yanked Yasir Arafat out of Lincoln Center during a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth. “The thing that really bothered me was, he didn’t have a ticket,” Rudy recalled. “He was a freeloader!”

The time he tossed back a $10 million check for 9/11 families from the Saudi prince who urged America to “adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.”

“You know, Israel’s not perfect, and America’s not perfect, but we’re not terrorist states,” he said.

There has been much discussion about liberal Rudy stances on guns, gays, abortion, divorce and comic cross-dressing that are well-suited to Manhattan but not to G.O.P. primary voters. But there’s also his bearhug with Israel, so hearty that even W.’s embrace seems tepid in comparison.

But Rudy seems out of the Republican mainstream on even giving lip-service to Palestinian aspirations. He has no patience for buttering up the Arabs, or the Republican men’s club attitude represented by Saudi-loving Bush senior and James Baker that has always favored a more “even-handed” policy in the Middle East.

Mr. Baker once reportedly justified the tough policy of the Bush 41 administration toward Israel with the notorious comment to a colleague: “[Expletive] the Jews. They didn’t vote for us anyway.”

W. blew off the Baker-Hamilton panel suggestions on Iraq that urged the administration to aggressively referee the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, to begin negotiations with Iran and Syria and called for Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria. Imagine what Rudy would do.

Even though he has been closer to Israel than his dad, at least W. held the Saudi crown prince’s hand in Crawford. (Bush senior and Dick Cheney were very tight with Saudi Prince Bandar. At a party at the vice president’s mansion once, I watched Bandar greet waiters like old friends.)

Rudy would probably only take the hand of an Arab leader to throw him down a ravine, or a wadi.

“We need to isolate the terror-funding theocrats in every way possible,” he told the Jewish hawks, during a rant on Iran. “And we must end direct and indirect investment until they change their course.”

Rudy lambasted Hillary and Obama for their “strong Democratic desire to negotiate, negotiate, negotiate and negotiate,” and suggested again that he would be tougher on Iran than Hillary, and would never let it get a nuclear weapon.

Last night, when he and Judi were interviewed by Fox’s Sean Hannity, Rudy ratcheted it up, saying that Hillary’s “ambiguity” and “shifting of position” on Iran was “a dangerous tendency, I think, in somebody that aspires to take on a position where you have got to be pretty darn decisive.”

He also bored in where Obama has been skittish about going: her experience. “Honestly, in most respects, I don’t know Hillary’s experience. She’s never run a city. She’s never run a state. She’s never run a business. She has never met a payroll. She has never been responsible for the safety and security of millions of people, much less even hundreds of people.”

He assured everyone he’d learned how to put his cellphone on vibrate. But he left himself at full volume.

[Sabin]

Granted, this would have possibly made Bill Clinton a three-term President, although alternative history might not have included him if Reagan had three before that.

Not for nothin'. You mean revisionist history. Like a revisionist Western, wherein the good guy dies, the lesser good guy becomes a part of the corrupt system, and said corrupt system flourishes. See, it's easy to remember.

As funny as this scenario is, you know I don't agree with any of what you said about Bush.

There is nothing funny about what I just said.

[Damien]

You can sign this petition at

http://therealrudy.org/radios

Giuliani's failure to provide FDNY with adequate radios must be
We, The Undersigned, demand an investigation into the Giuliani administration's failure between 1994 and 2001 to equip firefighters with the radio equipment they needed to perform their duties on 9/11 with the highest likelihood of their own survival. We ask for an investigation to find answers to the following, unresolved questions:

Why was nothing done to improve FDNY radio performance for seven years after a clear need was demonstrated in the 1993 World Trade Center attack?

When new radios were finally ordered, why did the city block other companies besides Motorola from bidding on the contract?

Once Motorola was given the contract, why did its cost jump from $1.4 million to $14 million?
Why were these new radios never tested?

The families of the firefighters who lost their lives on 9/11 deserve answers to these questions. We call on a full, public investigation to uncover the facts behind the Giuliani administration’s pre-9/11 emergency preparation

[Akash]

Granted, this would have possibly made Bill Clinton a three-term President, although alternative history might not have included him if Reagan had three before that. Since his diagnoses of Alzheimer's did not occur until 1994, he could have finished a third term. Still, Eisenhower might have made that disappear. Hmm. Maybe it wouldn't be better if they had left it alone.

lol. Criddic I almost always disagree with everything you say but I do give you credit for at least acknowledging that Clinton could have had a more decisive victory in 2000, were he allowed to run again, much more so than Gore's and thereby making it more difficult for the Supreme Court to hijack the election that year (ok you didn't quite put it that way but the spirit remains)

This is one of those things that you have to say you believe in whether or not the outcome works in your favor. In "The Contender" Joan Allen says, "Principles only mean something if you stick by them when they're inconvenient" and I think that's absolutely correct. If you feel strongly that the two term rule is limiting and uncalled for, then you have to accept the Clinton 2000 it might have allowed for and not just the Bush 2008 it could allow for (never mind that one might preclude the other - that's crazy time-travel talk).

A lesson in this might be the Independent Counsel which arose during the Nixon scandal and Scalia was one of the harshest critics of it. He wrote the dissenting opinion criticizing the I.C. an unnecessary fourth branch of government. The irony? Had Scalia's opinion prevailed, there would have been no independent counsel to go after Clinton. Scalia eventually got the last laugh as the I.C. expired in 1999 and has not been reauthorized. But the fact remains, if you're Scalia - a staunch conservative, you have to be willing to say this is wrong even if it would benefit a Democratic President down the line.



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[criddic3]

Seriously though, George W. Bush needs to run again in '08. He was technically appointed so he could totally do it.

I say this because I need to know if I live in a nation of 12 year olds. I really do. George W. Bush should run on the platform of "What are you gonna do?" And voters will ask themselves the following: "Let's see...9/11 happened on his watch despite all the fairly clear evidence to predict it...horrible economy...the world hates us...a failed invasion of Afganistan...illegal war in Iraq...he's stupid and unaccountable...his inner circle are a bunch of gangsters...he's appointed some of the worst people to ever hold any office in this government...but, y'know, there's something I just don't like about Hilary!"

Like an alcoholic, we as a nation need to hit bottom before we can start to heal. We're not there yet, and I think George W. Bush is the man to help us out. Come on everybody!

FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! (come on, criddic) FOUR MORE YEARS!

As funny as this scenario is, you know I don't agree with any of what you said about Bush.

I would totally vote for him again if I could, but even an idiot would know I'm in the minority on that one. Yes, it's true that most Republicans would probably still support him because they still agree with his decision on Iraq and agree with him on the tax cuts and the abortion issue. But at the same time, they disagree with him on how to solve the problem of illegal immigration and think he let the party spend itself into a losing election last year.

So even if he could, I wonder how such an event would play out. I think you might have the right conclusion, however, that Bush quite possibly could have squeaked out another victory similar to Tony Blair's in 2005 if the opponent was Hillary Clinton. Say what you will about President Bush, but he's a heck of a campaigner.

Personally I hate the amendment that Congress passed during Truman's tenure to limit terms to two. It took well over 100 years for any President to be elected three times, not for lack of trying either. To me the Republicans acted hastily in their efforts to prevent another Roosevelt-like victory. They assumed that Truman would remain popular enough to win his own second term, which would have meant a total of 24 years of Democratic rule. But they miscalculated, since Truman became hugely unpopular by 1952 and would never have beaten Eisenhower.

Granted, this would have possibly made Bill Clinton a three-term President, although alternative history might not have included him if Reagan had three before that. Since his diagnoses of Alzheimer's did not occur until 1994, he could have finished a third term. Still, Eisenhower might have made that disappear. Hmm. Maybe it wouldn't be better if they had left it alone.