Tag: Rudy Giuliani (page 8)

Matt Taibbi profiles Rudy Giuliani in the current issue of Rolling Stone.

He's cashing in on 9/11, working with Karl Rove's henchmen and in cahoots with a Swift Boat-style attack on Hillary. Will Rudy Giuliani be Bush III?

Wonkette sums up the key points. My favorite:

About the WTC cleanup run by Rudy: “More people will eventually die from the cleanup than from the original accident.”

My answer to the question as to whether Rudy is more dangerous than Bush: Of course he is. He's smarter and more Machiavellian.

A more apt question would be whether he's more dangerous than Dick Cheney. Probably not. But it's also why, happily, he won't be successful in his bid for the Presidency.

More...

Everyone is abuzz today with news that Law & Order star Fred Thompson has jumped into the Republican presidential race.

I'd rather talk about Rudy. David Boaz in the New York Daily News tells Libertarians to beware of him. Finally, someone in big media talks about his abysmal record as U.S. Attorney in New York.

As a U.S. attorney in the 1980s, Giuliani conducted what University of Chicago Law Prof. Daniel Fischel called a "reign of terror" against Wall Street. He pioneered the use of the midday, televised "perp walk" for white-collar defendants who posed no threat to the community - precisely the sort of power play for which conservatives reviled former state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. And Giuliani's use of federal racketeering statutes was so disturbing that the Justice Department changed its guidelines on the law.

Moving on to the present:

Meet the new Rudy -- the silly comb-over is gone. And he's trying out a new personality.

Mr. Giuliani laughs, he gestures expansively, he even pokes fun at his tendency to wax a wee bit authoritarian. (He suggests a touch of the cane was necessary to impose discipline on that liberal asylum known as New York.) He shakes hands with reporters he once viewed as “jerky” and assures them he is fine with tough questions about abortion, where he has settled on a position supporting a woman’s right to choose, and about gun control, where is he at least halfway into a policy back-flip.

Expect the next change to be to his wardrobe.

He dresses in the one-size-too-large suits he has favored since his days as a federal prosecutor, with the top shirt button fastened and tie knotted tight. It is difficult to imagine anyone asking him a “really dopey” (two favorite Giuliani words now in abeyance) question about his favored style in underwear, as someone once did of Bill Clinton.

Thank goodness only Judi has to see him in his underwear.

If Rudy Giuliani can't even manage civil discourse with his children and ex-spouse, how will he manage the various adversarial encounters he will face as President?

Rudy and Judy went to Harvard-bound Caroline's high school graduation today. They sat 30 yards from former Mrs. Giuliani Donna Hanover and son Andrew and never spoke to them.

When the commencement speaker, Sen. Charles Schumer, noted Giuliani's presence and the audience broke into applause, Hanover and her son, Andrew Giuliani, sat stone-faced and didn't clap.

But Hanover and Andrew jumped up and cheered when the Harvard-bound 17-year-old Caroline received her diploma from the tony Trinity School, while Giuliani and his wife, Judith, didn't even crack a smile.

Then Rudy and Judy ducked out early.

Rudy and Judith Giuliani avoided his children and ex-wife by arriving minutes before the ceremony began, entering through a side entrance, and they ducked out 10 minutes before it ended....At the graduation yesterday, Andrew did not acknowledge his father and stepmother and would not say whether the couple would join them later.

Rudy didn't attend Andrew's high-school graduation. Did he attend this one only so the press would report he was there?

The New York Times has the story of former Rudy Giuliani insider and head of New York's Office of Emergency Management Jerry Hauer.

In recent days, Mr. Hauer has challenged Mr. Giuliani’s recollection that he had little role as mayor in placing the city’s emergency command center at the ill-fated World Trade Center.

Mr. Hauer has also disputed the claim by the Giuliani campaign that the mayor’s wife, Judith Giuliani, had coordinated a help center for families after the attack.

And then there's Rudy temperment and retaliatory nature:

The last thing Rudy Giuliani needs is praise from Bernie Kerik. But, that's what he's getting.

With friends like these....

Keep it up Bernie.

Another take: The New Republic on Giuliani.

Giuliani is now pursuing the same strategy of sowing division, only this time on a national level. To hear him tell it, the election will pit weak-kneed Democrats against hard-line Republicans. "I listen a little to the Democrats, and, if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense," he recently told an audience in New Hampshire. "We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation, and we will be back to our preSeptember 11 attitude of defense."

The New Republic piece cautions not to count Rudy out of the race. It says his sowing of dissent among Republicans is a planned strategy. One can only hope it's a strategy doomed to fail.

Rudy Giuliani disclosed on his federal tax returns that he considers his wife an employee and paid her $125k a year for speechwriting help, an arrangement that pre-dated their marriage. The money was included as income on their joint tax return and they paid taxes on it.

Rudy Giuliani's haul for the 126 speeches he gave from January 2006 to March 2007 was $11.4 million, records filed this week show, which means he kicked back something less than 2% to his wife over that period.

That's a pretty insignificant figure given his entire speech income. Because she was an employee, I assume he also got to deduct her airline and other individual travel expenses that the paying company may not have picked up. Their suite would be covered since they shared it, but what about the meals and other related items?

My take: I don't believe for a second the pay was for her speechwriting help. It sounds like a clothing, hair and makeup allowance, and the only way to deduct it was to make her an employee.

The Washington Post investigates Rudy and Giuliani Partners financial wheelings and dealings from the get-go. An interesting read.

It left me wondering, why is Rudy really running for President? Aside from his arrogance and sense of self-importance, I think the answer is because he can afford to.

Adding to Big Tent's post last night....

He's flipped and he's flopped on abortion, but now he's ready to take a stand. Rudy Giuliani will be coming out strongly for abortion rights.

Why? Because his campaign has figured out that with the changes to state primaries, he doesn't need the traditionally coveted states.

....they would focus on the so-called mega-primary of Feb. 5, in which voters in states like California, New York and New Jersey are likely to be more receptive to Mr. Giuliani’s social views than voters in Iowa and South Carolina. That approach, they said, became more appealing after the Legislature in Florida, another state they said would be receptive to Mr. Giuliani, voted last week to move the primary forward to the end of January.

....His aides said that in focusing on the Feb. 5 and Florida primaries, they were not writing off Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, acknowledging the historic importance of those states and arguing that Mr. Giuliani could do well in South Carolina and New Hampshire. But they said the events of the past week had reinforced the notion that later states were more promising for a moderate Republican, particularly one who was a political celebrity with a big campaign bank account.

Giuliani, ever the opportunist.

Another flip-flop for Rudy. First, when addressing an audience in Florida, he was for the congressional attempt to intervene and save Terri Schiavo's life.

In the debate this week, he switched positions, and said it's an appropriate matter for the courts.

The flip:

In April, Giuliani had explained his position this way: Noting that the controversy had been through the court system for years, he said the 2005 congressional intervention, "was appropriate to make every effort to give her a chance to stay alive. ... My general view is, you should do everything you can to keep somebody alive unless they have expressed a strong interest in not having very, very special things done, extraordinary things done."

The flop:

"The family was in dispute. That's what we have courts for. And the better place to decide that in a much more, I think in a much fairer and even in a deeper way, is in front of a court, " he said at the first GOP presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan library in California.

His campaign manager's attempt to reconcile the two:

The June issue of Vanity Fair has an article by Michael Wolff (free link) on "Crazy for Rudy." Shorter version: He may be nuts.

Wolff writes that almost anyone who’s ever worked for Rudy Giuliani expects his presidential campaign to implode at any moment, thanks to his propensity for periods of mania, outbursts, and frequent forms of behavior that generally don’t win elections.

Bernard Kerik, his frosty relationship with his children, his famous smackdown of a listener (and ferret owner) who called in during his radio show, Judith Giuliani’s stint at a medical company that experimented on live dogs (killing them in the process), the list goes on—there are plenty of past deeds that may block his path to the White House.

But what is it about Rudy that makes him so compelling? Wolff opines that the consensus among people who know him best is that, “He is nuts, actually mad.” And Wolff argues that maybe that’s just what he needs to win. After all, he writes, “You can better trust a crazy man, lacking normal artifice and equivocations, not to sh*t you.”

I'd rather see his campaign implode. I don't think you can trust a crazy man, I think you need to beware of him and watch him like a hawk, which I have no doubt, the liberal blogs will do.

Former Senator Gary Hart lays into Rudy Giuliani in his new post at HuffPo.

He asks Rudy, "Where were you on terrorism between January 31, 2001, and September 11th?"

Hart then writes,

Before you qualify to criticize Democrats, Mr. Giuliani, you must account for your preparation of your city for these clearly predicted attacks. Tell us, please, what steps you took to make your city safer.

Until you do, then I strongly suggest you should keep your mouth shut about Democrats and terrorism. You have not qualified to criticize others, let alone be president of the United States.