FUTURE THREAD: It's September 2008. Explain to me why I should vote for Hillary instead of Giuliani.

No one has ever said "IT'S RODHAM-CLINTON TIME!" while preparing to anally rape a prisoner with a toilet plunger.

are you kidding? giuliani is clearly the most dangerous of the major contenders at this point

um xp

yeah are u serious man? wtf

Why do people hate Giuliani so much? Serious question. I know almost nothing about him.

because he's batshit insane

kenan are you drunk

closed down all the strip clubs

wishes every day was 9/11

Now that I think about it "Giuliani Time" and toilet plungers are going to loom large in the next 12 months if that dude gets the nom. At least if the Dems ever learn to sling mud at the GOP level.

kenan are you drunk

it is intended as a provocative question. I still haven't seen any real answers to it.

he is literally the song stormtrooper in drag but for some reason also an elected official

I still haven't seen any real answers to it.

i'm sorry, kenan, is "insane sociopath with totalitarian leanings" NOT a good enough "real answer"? i mean it doesn't include the word "vagina" so you might not be paying attention to the posts.

this is not provocative, it's retarded.

You should vote for Ross Perot why because he look intrestin.

you ARE drunk. go back to bed!

I am also wondering what the Big Issue in '08 will be. Can Hillary run on her old, discarded health care ideas?

there is a war

If this is actually how things stack up, the big issue will be WOMAN FOR PRESIDENT Y/N, actually. Which is sad, but true.

NO THE BIG ISSUE WILL BE THAT ELEPHANT THING

http://www.mingthemerciless.com/bloomps.jpg

um ok i don't want to be a big closeminded judgemental liberal and everything and just take this question as a given, but are you really asking for an education on what's wrong with rudy giuliani? or all right about hrc?

its late 2007. you are on the internet. do your own fucking homework.

xp big issue?? jesus christ do you live in a bubble

gff said it

ban this dumb fuck

my favorite political cartoon ever is of Clinton, Perot and Bush standing over a patient in a hospital bed with all these oscilloscopes and ventilators and IVs hanging off of him. The patient is labeled "The Economy."

Clinton says something like "He's in bad shape, he needs surgery," Bush says something like "he's doing just fine, he'll be up and about it no time" and Perot says "He's DEAD! Let's shoot him and see what happens!"

I think anyone who has worried about the expansion of executive prerogatives under Bush (signing statements, secrecy, Cheney, wiretapping, torture memos, etc) should be very worried about the possible conjunction of someone with Giuliani's temperament and record and the power of the White House. More than most politicians, I think Giuliani has an easy time conflating "what's best for increasing my power" and "what's best for everyone".

This profile from the New Yorker of a couple weeks ago gives a detailed recap:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_boyer

Why thank you.

because hillary clinton got her start with marian wright edelman's children's defense fund, civil rights campaigning, and anti-war activism, and parlayed that experience into championing progressive causes like universal health care and abortion rights, whereas guiliani got his start as a new york prosecutor, parlaying that experience into championing causes like arresting squeegee men, enforcing ancient city ordinances against dancing, and screwing the poor?

xpost oh wait i am taking this question seriously derr

xpost it's v. true that giuliani would take the idea of an imperial presidency onto the next level; for a country whose political and media culture is veering so vertiginously towards outright fascism this would not be so great

nevermind the fact that neither of them has the nom nom nomination yet

actually you know what I may just not bother voting at all since they're not going to change the electoral college and my time at the ballot box therefore counts for absolutely nothing. I think I'll probably stay in and play the Wii.

oh wait i am taking this question seriously derr

Yes, that is a serious liability isn't it? I like the way that Kenan knows the right time to just disappear. I'm going to have to learn that skill.

yes

he is literally the song stormtrooper in drag

This makes me so happy. (Also because that's such a brilliant song.)

It's September 2008. Explain to me why I should play Wii Tennis instead of Wii Boxing.

supports racial profiling

supports waterboarding/torture

book-burner/hates art

created indentured servant/slave class with 'workfare' program

“Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”

i would be truly shocked if giuliani won the nomination

if he makes nice with the texas oilboys though, anything's possible

my favorite thing about the giuliani candidacy so far is how quickly the hard christian right has said they wouldn't mind it if he was their guy; they will throw away ANY scruple or principle to get next to power

http://www.silt3.com/photos/giuliani_in_drag.jpg
^^^ this photo is the only good thing about rudy giuliani

Romney on Enemy Combatants [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Crane says he was disappointed with Romney's answer to his question the other night. Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind. Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently.

its late 2007. you are on the internet. do your own fucking homework.

/\ ILX main slogan

sub-heading: shut up unless you already agree with how we do

OK ITS CAUSE HE HAS A LISP THERE I SAID IT OK THE MAN SHOULD NOT BE PRESIDENT BECAUSE HE LISPS THE WORLD IS NOT READY

haha, you are all gabbneb now

fake kenan?

did you get that elephant thing i sent you

Clinton - lived in the White House for 8 years
Giuliani - has been to dinner at the White House

giving speeches right now linking iran to 9/11

steve, do you have anything to contribute besides snarking on everyone else's contributions?

because i'd love to hear your opinions on american politicians!

my favorite thing about the giuliani candidacy so far is how quickly the hard christian right has said they wouldn't mind it if he was their guy; they will throw away ANY scruple or principle to get next to power

polls are showing that they really just dont know anything abt his homo-lovin gun-stealin baby-killin ways

yet!

It's September 2008. Explain to me why I should vote for Hillary instead of Giuliani.

Please.

-- kenan, Wednesday, August 29, 2007 12:03 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

haha, you are all gabbneb now

-- gabbneb, Wednesday, August 29, 2007 12:26 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

steve, do you have anything to contribute besides snarking on everyone else's contributions?

-- the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, August 29, 2007 12:27 PM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

ilx gone insane

Rudy Giuliani is a true American hero, and we know this because he does all the things we expect of heroes these days -- like make $16 million a year, and lobby for Hugo Chávez and Rupert Murdoch, and promote wars without ever having served in the military, and hire a lawyer to call his second wife a "stuck pig," and organize absurd, grandstanding pogroms against minor foreign artists, and generally drift through life being a shameless opportunist with an outsize ego who doesn't even bother to conceal the fact that he's had a hard-on for the presidency since he was in diapers. In the media age, we can't have a hero humble enough to actually be one; what is needed is a tireless scoundrel, a cad willing to pose all day long for photos, who'll accept $100,000 to talk about heroism for an hour, who has the balls to take a $2.7 million advance to write a book about himself called Leadership. That's Rudy Giuliani. Our hero. And a perfect choice to uphold the legacy of George W. Bush.

that's not ilx gone insane, i have a track record of ribbing on steve for how much he seems to hate ilx, for a moderator.

for the same reason the French voted for that shitty centrist a couple years ago rather than the Fascist.

(I'm still convinced this race will never occur tho)

jhøshea, the christian right leadership definitely knows all about that; the rank and file will do whatever the leadership says (partly because of the ignorance presumably documented by these polls you're referring to)

the answer only gabbneb will supply...

Clinton - BA, Wellesley
Giuliani - BA, Manhattan College

Not to mention that Giuliani is assembling an ultra-hawkish foreign policy team. From that New Yorker profile:

In June, I asked Giuliani what he was reading as he campaigned this summer. He answered, “Right now, I’m on the last chapter of Norman Podhoretz’s book ‘World War IV.’ ” Podhoretz (John Podhoretz’s father) is a totemic neoconservative, one of the early group of liberal American political thinkers who broke with the left during the Cold War. Having awakened to the Soviet danger abroad, and to the excesses of the counterculture at home, Podhoretz could now see, with hyper-clarity, the world’s array of malevolent forces, against which stood America, faced always with a Manichean choice between all-out victory and total catastrophe. After the attacks of September 11th, Podhoretz, the editor-at-large of Commentary, was among those who cast the event as part of a life-or-death global war. The construct was adopted by President Bush and given the name Global War on Terror, with implications that soon became manifest. Podhoretz sees Iraq as but one front in the larger conflict. In an essay published this spring in Commentary, he made the case for a unilateral American air assault on Iran as the only way to prevent its otherwise inexorable drive to nuclear status and regional hegemony.

Earlier this month, Giuliani named Podhoretz a senior adviser on his foreign-policy team. (“Yep. It’s official,” the Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote. “The bombing begins in five minutes.”) The addition of Podhoretz to the team was a dramatic political gesture by Giuliani, coming at a moment when the neoconservative agenda has been broadly discredited, and blamed for a misbegotten war. Podhoretz is so untempered a neocon that he makes Paul Wolfowitz, Bush’s former Deputy Defense Secretary, and a key architect of the Iraq invasion, seem almost a moderate realist. Podhoretz knows that he carries a certain political radioactivity. While he believes that Giuliani would follow his advice to bomb Iran before it gets nuclear weapons—Giuliani, like other candidates, has said that Iran must be kept out of the nuclear club—Podhoretz hasn’t asked him directly, because he doesn’t want to damage Giuliani’s candidacy with the inevitable controversy that an affirmative answer might arouse. Podhoretz, who is spending the summer in East Hampton, and communicates with the campaign by e-mail, has made his view clear to the candidate. When, recently, John McCain said that the only thing worse than bombing Iran is allowing Iran to get the bomb, Podhoretz told Giuliani, “I wish you had been the first to say that.”

In any case, Podhoretz said to me, he believes that George W. Bush will settle the matter himself, by bombing Iran before he leaves office. “I’m probably the only person on the face of the earth who thinks that Bush will order air strikes,” Podhoretz says. “But we’ll find out. If Bush doesn’t kick the can down the road, then the issue becomes moot, obviously. But if he fails to do what I think he will do, Rudy seems to me to be the best bet for doing what is necessary.”

gabbneb, you are reprehensible

yah i dunno i think he could win the nomination but only cause the other candidates have their own liabilities. but theres no way evangelicals are bothering to leave their homes to vote for that guy in the general election. xp to tracer

i am too paralysed with rage to respond to ally's ribbing

where did Lincoln get his BA anyway

anyway, the real answer here is you shouldn't. you want to vote for giuliani because you feel comfortable with a shiny-domed, tough-image authority figure, and are secretly scared of a woman runnings things. giuliani's ambiguous abortion position and big city roots and love for teh gays give you the cover you need in a cosmopolitan environment to support this kind of dude without seeming like a hick or a knuckle-dragger. so a few New Yorkers think the dude is secretly Mussolini; who cares what New Yorkers think anyway?

awesome, xp

jhøshea, if they are told to vote for him by their leadership, all giuliani needs to do is drop a few code words into his convention speech ("culture of life" "stewardship" etc) and it'll be a done deal

"they" are a smaller and smaller part of the electorate every day

I am beginning to really appreciate how the distrust of the MSM that the right wing has been endeavouring to instill in the center for so long has started to come back and bite them in the ass now that they run all the shit

tracer, nah i dont think so, they need to be psyched, it's their thing.

Earlier this month, Giuliani named Podhoretz a senior adviser on his foreign-policy team. (“Yep. It’s official,” the Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote. “The bombing begins in five minutes.”)

lolz

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/03/06/roadblocks_ahead_for_giuliani.html

OH WAIT

In 1951, when Rudy Giuliani was seven, his family moved from Brooklyn to Garden City South on Long Island. There he attended a local Catholic school, St. Anne's.[15] Later, he commuted back to Brooklyn to attend Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, graduating in 1961. He had an 85 average there, graduated 130th out of 378 students in his class, and received SAT scores of 569 verbal and 504 math.[16]

yeah but who psyches them up? their leaders! who talk to god personally! it's like a gigantic version of the guy who owns the general store in nowheresville arkansas, pop. 300 - whoever he's for, 200 people are going to be for, too. the campaigner's job is to visit that guy. that's all campaigns are about, and have ever been about. well, that and not making dumbfuck mistakes. oh, and negative television ads, that's the other big thing.

tom that's true. i've read a lot of arguments that the old rove electoral math is starting to break - the slicing and dicing of congressional districts and constituencies, to cobble together a 51% majority in each state - changing demographics and an incredibly unpopular war may have put the boot into that whole scheme once and for all. the real kicker of it is that to achieve that sliced n diced 51% majority, rove has had to assemble constituencies that share no real common purpose, interests, or platform - so where do they go from here?

Getting slammed on the internet doesn't exactly give me a chubby in the morning, but the things mentioned in Giuliani's piece are some of the things I like about Giuliani. I really hate the Republicans who are against civil unions and what not, so that's a step forward to me. I'd really hate to see Romney as president, since he seems to change his positions constantly just to get into position to be elected into whatever office he's angling for.

that's gabneb's piece should read.

extra b in there.

There ought to be a site that posts the SAT scores of all major political candidates.

Not as useful information, mind you, but for laffs.

humansuit WHY DO YOU THINK GIULIANI ADOPTED THOSE POSITIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE

SO HE COULD GET ELECTED MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY

OK. I'm happy to leave you all to your thread :)

no he genuinely luvz fagz

At one point, not too long ago, a viable conservative candidate who even tacitly supported gay and women's rights would have seemed impossibly wonderful to me. (Not that I'd have been inclined to actually vote for such a candidate, but the wonderful no less so for that.)

But the stakes have changed. Post-Bush, I still care about the social issues, but I'm more immediately concerned with militarism, authoritarianism, foreign policy, candidates' vision of political power, respect for constitutional checks & balances, etc.

xp

and opera.

At one point, not too long ago, a viable conservative candidate who even tacitly supported gay and women's rights would have seemed impossibly wonderful to me. (Not that I'd have been inclined to actually vote for such a candidate, but the wonderful no less so for that.)

But the stakes have changed. Post-Bush, I still care about the social issues, but I'm more immediately concerned with militarism, authoritarianism, foreign policy, candidates' vision of political power, respect for constitutional checks & balances, etc.

this is kinda exactly the response I was looking for. Not that you care anymore. ;)

But the stakes have changed. Post-Bush, I still care about the social issues, but I'm more immediately concerned with militarism, authoritarianism, foreign policy, candidates' vision of political power, respect for constitutional checks & balances, etc and opera.

Well, yeah. Opera too. Guiliani totally fails all the important tests, including opera. So his superficial endorsement of socially liberal positions counts for shit, makes me laff.

P.S. Tracer is way overstating the stupid-fucking-sheepness of evangelicals. They won't be so easily led. There is no way on earth that Guiliani could ever appeal to the hardcore red state Christian demographic the way Bush did.

I am not convinced that elections are won or lost based on evangelical cracker retards, and I wish everyone at once would totally forget about them and see what happens.

Which is why we should pray that more Larry Craigs get caught playing footsie in stalls while shitting Taco Bell.

gop needs them to turn out to win. but thats true of other demographic groups for both parties.

Well, the fact that most of the campaigns (Dem and Rep) have "Faith Advisers" placed in high positions makes me think that isn't going to happen any time soon.

xpost

P.S. Tracer is way overstating the stupid-fucking-sheepness of evangelicals. They won't be so easily led. There is no way on earth that Guiliani could ever appeal to the hardcore red state Christian demographic the way Bush did.

But they hate Clinton much more then Kerry/Gore.

Alfred, he was taking a wide stance. Have you ever had the Chalupas at Taco Bell?

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0707/a_wcross_0723.jpg

The Mod Squad: Autumn Years

Not to mention that Giuliani's answer to just about any economic problem is "More tax cuts".

sexy

xp:
worked for Raygun

RIP

I mean, peace be upon him

ok bob. i think it's true that "the god bloc" has NEVER had the pull that has been claimed for it, even lately. i'm not trying to make it seem like they're the big issue for the republicans, or even for giuliani in particular. the war, healthcare and the economy are all higher on most people's lists than abortion or prayer in schools. i was just trying to get at the dynamics of how those hard right christian blocs vote, and how totally hypocritical their leaders can be once they whiff access to power.

what makes me really leery of all this gleeful talk about how giuliani's socially progressive positions re: gay rights, etc will sink him with conservatives is this: it's not exactly a stick that democrats can beat him with! so i think you're right on, that the democrats' focus needs to be on "militarism, authoritarianism, foreign policy, candidates' vision of political power, respect for constitutional checks & balances, etc" to which i'd add a raft of direly neglected domestic issues like education, health care, etc - all issues in which democrats have real plans, vision and ideas for, and which the republicans don't

Rudy is VERY likely to be 'YouTubed' a la Geo Allen or otherwise have some sort of meltdown on the trail.

I wonder if it's any indication of the relative importance of these issues to heartland voters that Giuliani has seen fit to finesse his positions on abortion and gay rights but he felt the need to flip-flop immediately on gun control.

For reals, if anyone wants a good, relatively short answer to this question, find a copy of last month's Harpers. The man is a McCarthy-style demagogue, except smarter and thus better at what he does.

And from the info gabbneb posted above, maybe not *that much* smarter

heres that harpers for all you ignorant motherfuckers http://www.sendspace.com/file/injlqb

wow thank u

I was just coming here to mention the Harper's that all but pegs him as a fascist.

http://library.syr.edu/digital/exhibits/g/Gropper/LargeImage/ItCan

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/1998/agosto/29/fotos/fotos/hillary.jpg

I'd like to know what the Pinefox thinks.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/21/giuliani_israel/index.html

literal blogger is literal

So, a month later all these damn candidates have still been stomping around my state like crazy and I'm still not convinced that either of them will get their party's nomination. I picked the last two correctly before the primaries but this still seems pretty up in the air.

i don't read greenwald - does he think ahmedinejad means it when he calls for the destruction of israel?

here's matthew yglesias on the same subject:

Obviously, expressing willingness to hold diplomatic discussions with Iran's leaders is a political blunder whereas running around the world threatening to attack them like Rudy Giuliani is politically savvy toughness. That everybody knows. So I suppose that by the same token, promising to expand NATO to include Israel -- thus committing the United States to the armed defense of the borders of a country that lacks internationally recognized borders -- also reflects the politically savvy toughness rather than, say, a dangerous ignorance of what NATO is or how it works or international relations more broadly.

guys i just found out that I only have to wait 3 years, not 5, to become a US citizen with voting rights etc. The 3 year anniversary? 11/01/2008!!!

Hearing excerpts of Giuliani in front of the NRA this morning and then hearing bits of statements about gun control he made while mayor (or running for mayor) of NYC made me crack a smile.

gabbneb, RTFA, and I'll give you a little context since you don't read him - lately he's been writing a lot about they constant hyperbole and innuendo employed by neocon warmongers and how they're consistently allowed to get away with it in the press, so this seems to be an extension of that - giuliani can basically act tough like he would be all PEW PEW PEW with the nukes on Iran but nobody actually bothers to ask these fuckwits if they really mean "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb iran" because y'know that's AGAINST THE RULES or something - god forbid you make Rudy look like a looney psychopath the way McCain did, because we all know acting tough and saying tough-guy shit is really the important part, not having any kind of policy statements that make a lick of sense

and yeah we could use a little fucking literalism once in a while when world war iv is on the line, I think so anyway

the thing is, Giuliani actually said, very recently, that he was going to talk a lot of shit as a strategy

point taken, but I didn't see any reference to that in Greenwald's article

wtf gabnebz not reading greenwald - iam shocked... SHOCKED!

all things to all people, then. whatta statesman.

xps

FUCK GIULIANI. END OF STORY.

gabbneb I think you should read greenwald

Rudy Giuliani will not be nominated by his party for the Presidency. It's a moot issue.

also, i know greenwald isn't writing a speech or anything, but it's saying something to say he could learn something about strategic language from matthew yglesias

i think giuliani has a very good chance of being nominated

why do his kids hate him?

i don't think the gop race is moot issue for anyone at this point

if I had been in NY on 9/11 and days afterwards I would be demanding Giuliani's head on a fucking stick

yeah but you like it when people die

Giuliani should be banned from public office for what he did

ok shakey you do realize that according to you and morbius nobody who has worked in govt for the past two and half decades should be allowed to work in govt, right

has Rudy ever 'explained' why he put the new NYC Emergency Command Center at the World Trade Center? after the '93 bombing?

why do his kids hate him?

because he carried on (multiple times, apparently) while being married to mom?

xp

cmon Tom, when did I say that? I'm not Paul Bremer.

first of all - I was quoting somebody. Second of all, that is in reference to some very specific actions on Giuliani's part - actions that are indicative of his utterly shit leadership abilities and ethical priorities.

x-post

yeah but he looks good in a hard hat

Weird things ILX thinks about me:
1) I wish everyone was dead
2) I hate all elected officials

Rudy went on TV and said (relatively) soothing things from about 9/11-9/20. Post-Reagan, that's all that generally gets noticed.

Anna Nicole Smith thread:

good riddance
-- Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, February 8, 2007 9:01 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Link

its true the world is better off without her

also there was this thread the other day, the Lazy Zing thread, maybe you should check it out

I'm not really disagreeing with you guys on anything here btw
I am the dude who yesterday postulated that selecting the next 1000 resumes to be posted on monster.com would result in a better federal government than what we have now

i meant it to be a lazy zing

i guess my point is, demanding people's heads on a stick is so not gonna happen.

Yeah, but Giuliani's asking for them in Iran!

can public officials be sued (like a civil suit?) for criminal negligence resulting in deaths, illnesses, etc.?

This should shake up the Heritage Foundation's dreams of Tehran in rubble

i think giuliani has a very good chance of being nominated

-- gabbneb, Friday, September 21, 2007 10:37 AM (Friday, September 21, 2007 10:37 AM) Bookmark Link

Gabbneb, you're crazy. We're talking about a party that put a cross on its podium during their last convention. They're not going to go for a New York pro-choice, pro-gay, thrice divorced bald man.

I know it's cliche to say that, but it's the doggone truth.

lol nyc v arkansas pov

xp

I would only be skeptical of that because, then, they have to nominate one of the other guys.

and JOHN KERRY might beat any of them.

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/poll_rasmussen_biden_clinton_m.php
^^^^
Clinton destroys Giuliani in Arkansas, still loses to him nationally

I'm not saying that's not a possibility. However, Rudy has to wade through the born-agin's in the primaries before he even comes close to that point. He's more liberal than most Southern Democrats, and the Republican primary voters are going to recognize that.

^poll readers believe ppl know who the candidates are 13 months before they actually do^

RealClearPolitics primary state poll averages
Iowa - Giuliani tied for second (1 pt ahead of Thompson; everyone thinks Romney's gonna win, 2nd place may have strong significance)
New Hampshire - Giuliani strong second (5 pts behind Romney)
South Carolina - Giuliani tied for first (0.3% behind Thompson)
Florida - Giuliani 1st (almost 6 pts over Thompson)
California - Giuliani strong 1st (10 pts over Thompson)
Michigan - Giuliani 2nd to favorite son Romney
New Jersey - Giuliani way ahead of the field
Pennsylvania - Giuliani strong 1st

don't make me post all your oh-so-accurate-polling data from the '04 election gabbneb

Catholic Population
New Mexico - 41%
New Jersey - 39%
New York - 38%
New Hampshire - 35%
California - 34%
Wisconsin - 29%
Pennsylvania - 27%
Florida - 26%
Minnesota - 25%
Nevada - 24%
Iowa - 23%
Ohio - 19%
Arkansas - 7%

dude, i changed my mind a lot subsequently, but i called kerry as the no-question winner at least a year before the primaries started

what is the BAD CATHOLIC population of those states? (Rudy's spiritual base)

i'm not saying giuliani will be the candidate - if pressed, i think i'd give romney a very slight edge, and can still see mccain pulling it off against all odds - but i think it's silly to write him off

Frmo the question, I will have to assume kenan has no firm position on Giuliani vs. Clinton II. If that is true, then my major argument would be that giuliani would inevitably have to please the uber-right wing shitheads in the US Congress, most of whom are in his party, if he expects to form a governing coalition. This means he will have to toss them a variety of sops on issues such as judicial appointments, fundamentalist-informed government social policy, and not a prayer for meaningful reform of the health care system.

If you want to strengthen the hand of people like Orrin Hatch, then vote Giuliani. Clinton, otoh, will have to keep her own party happy, and will spend a lot of time wrenching them rightward on sensitive issues. This seems better to me than starting at the moderate right and moving still further right, as Giuliani would do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/nyregion/25nyc.html?ei=5090&en=0bdd4506958e23ac&ex=1348372800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/398614427.html

"Rudy is the GOP's crazy aunt. Every family has a crazy aunt in the basement. So what do you do with her? Don't give her the family checkbook; don't give her the keys to the car; and by all means, keep her in the basement."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/opinion/04dobson.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

"After two hours of deliberation, we voted on a resolution that can be summarized as follows: If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate. Those agreeing with the proposition were invited to stand. The result was almost unanimous."

purely from an entertainment standpoint a nutso fundy candidate w/a large following would be so so great (obv great from a gop ass reaming standpoint too)

that's who we elected last time!

nutsy fun dough

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/65435/

As I noted earlier, Rudy isn't denying that he had the city pay for his trips out to the Hamptons to weekend with his then-mistress Judi Nathan, along with picking up the tab for his security detail. That point actually isn't even news. It was reported at the time in the NY Post and more recently in Vanity Fair.

The key is whether he hid the costs he was billing the city, putting them off as costs for people with disabilities (not sure if Rudy wants to go there in this case) or indigent defense.

But why didn't they just have their trysts in the city.

Well, you must not have been paying close enough attention. Before 9/11, the city of New York set up an emergency command center in the World Trade Center complex, actually in building 7. After 9/11 this was a matter of some controversy since it obviously wasn't usable on the day of the attacks. (Building 7 eventually collapsed late in the day on 9/11.) And while no one could have predicted 9/11 precisely, there was a certain gap in logic in building the command center in what had already proven to be a top terrorist target.

However that might be, earlier this year it emerged that Rudy actually spent a lot of time in his personal quarters in the command center pre-9/11 because that's where he took Judi for their snogfests while their relationship was still a secret.

In fact, it gets better. While it's difficult to prove, there was a decent amount of circumstantial evidence -- and some city officials believed -- that Rudy's reason for wanting the center in building 7 was so that he could walk there easily from city hall for his trysts with Judy.

So just how do we judge the price NYC paid for the Judi affair?

was n0rman p0dh0retz mentioned on this thread? because giulian's foreign policy advisor was on the brian lehrer show this morning repeating his "bomb iran immediately" mantra and claiming that the most recent intelligence estimate was an attempt by the (presumably liberal, muslim-loving) cia to discredit bush.

there will be worldwide good vibes if the democrats win, everyone'll be more relaxed smiling, etc for a few weeks at least. lots of "positive" pop, like after the berlin wall fell. even if nothing really changes.

giuliani's dropping like a rock

lol

http://www.researchdivers.org/images/Giuliani_leadership.jpg

man fuck p0dh0retz

like really really

Holy christ, he's rocking the Uncle Duke haircut in that cover shot there

double lol?

hold off

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1152633.html

he definitely got his good looks from his father

that was so mean

http://qz.com/535318/hillary-clinton-binge-watches-tv-shows-that-are-basically-about-her/

lol

House of Cards is an exaggerated look at the duplicitous nature of Washington politics (“Another murder, I mean really,” Clinton joked)—but the other two shows are essentially based on Clinton’s political career. She’s like an ER doctor who comes home after work to watch ER.

Madam Secretary, which follows a female Secretary of State, was partly inspired by the first Benghazi hearings in 2013. The show’s creators were trying to figure out their main character when they watched Clinton testify before US Congress about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, and Madam Secretary was born.

The Good Wife is similarly Clinton-inspired. The legal-political drama about a litigator and her disgraced politician husband took cues directly from scandals like former US president Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair.

While the premise of The Good Wife draws on Clinton’s life, the current season of the show is literally about her. The aforementioned disgraced politician husband is now the governor of Illinois and running for president against real-life Hillary Clinton. Not a Hillary-like character—the actual Hillary Clinton. “It’s so much more interesting to us if we could make it as real a race as possible,” Michelle King, one of the showrunners, told Vulture.

c'mon guys a reason plz