Republican Convention Condensed

Down to 1 minute 38 seconds:



If they put in all the "John McCain was a POW" stories, it would be 10 minutes longer.

Republicans Obscenely Show 9/11 Victims Dying as Their Convention Backdrop

Monsters.

The Republican Party has reached its basest nadir. The party of George W. Bush, the man who ignored the CIA's warning "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US", the party that let 3,000 people die on 9/11/01 and then used 9/11 to destroy the constitution, that party has reached a yet another low.

That party has now shown footage of the 9/11 attacks including graphic footage of the Twin Towers burning and collapsing.

During the family hour here on the east coast, 8:40 EST.

They are nothing but a bunch of sickos.

Boston Globe:

[A]t approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers' subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.

Here's Keith Olbermann's commentary:


If you have the stomach for it, here's the obscene video the Republicans blew up on the big screen for everyone to see. How must the 9/11 families be reacting to this obscenity?


The Republican Party is a national disgrace. First they kill us; then they put us up on the big screen for entertainment.

In The News

Library of Congress/Flickr: Palmer, Alfred T.,, photographer.
Electric phosphate smelting furnace used to make elemental phosphorus in a TVA chemical plant in the vicinity of Muscle Shoals, Alabama
1942 June

This was done in your name: The United States illegally used white phosphorus and chemical weapons in Fallujah in 2004; now babies are being born with birth defects.

Many of the supposed "terrorists" tortured by the Bush Administration at Guantanamo were actually innocent. Again, this was done in your name. Chilling.

The Taliban -- remember them? -- attacked a prison in Kandahar, Afgahanistan from within and without, and 1100 prisoners escaped. The resurgence of the Taliban is another complete failure for the Bush Administration.

John McCain has a former Texas gubernatorial candidate organizing a $300,000 fundraiser -- a guy who joked rape is like the weather, when it is inevitable you should just lie back and enjoy it, in 1990. At first, McCain announced the fundraiser was cancelled. But there was money for the taking, so they're rescheduling it, with all the same donors -- except now the rape joker is not invited. Just his money and his moneyed friends. Any Hillary Clinton supporter who votes for McCain is a fool.

John McCain doesn't use a computer. Who doesn't use a computer anymore? My 80-year-old friend is on her third. McCain: Too old, too out of touch with modern life.

The odious Rudy Giuliani is back. He's trying to retire his campaign debt -- by selling his appearances at fundraisers to other Republicans. Hey Rudy -- there's no "I" in "Team". But it was always about Rudy.

Read this article on the Bush/Rove response to Katrina. You want to cry, but you have to laugh -- bitterly -- at this:

[Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco] gave Bush a two-page letter detailing everything the state needed to cope with the disaster -- troops, buses, supplies, money, and more. It would not be until several days later, when Blanco's aides released the letter to the press and got frantic phone calls from Rove's aide Maggie Grant, that it became clear that Bush had taken the letter Blanco had personally handed to him -- and lost it.

President Dumber-Than-A-Box-of-Hammers Lost. The. Letter. Heckuva job, Bushie.

Bye Bye Rudy

Rudy Giuliani (noun) is dropping out (verb) despite the broad appeal of his heroic mayoring on 9/11. Now the Republican field is down to the Mittwit, St. John McCain (the "less jobs, more wars" candidate), and Huckleberry Huckabee. Choices, choices.

AP: Giuliani to Exit Presidential Race Today

NYTimes: For Giuliani, a Dizzying Free-Fall

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

Corporate Media Ignoring Global Warming

Glacier National Park, 1925; Library of Congress
San Francisco Chronicle: Media consign global warming to back burner

The League of Conservation Voters has been tracking the number of questions asked of the presidential candidates on the Sunday news shows and the debates televised by the major networks. Of the more than 2,900 questions asked, only four have mentioned the words "global warming."

The article also lays out the positions of the candidates. The Republicans are laughable, especially that whackjob Ron Paul.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

Supports a cap-and-trade system on emissions and a new $50 billion fund for clean energy, which she predicts could help create 5 million new jobs. She says all new coal plants should have to capture their carbon.

BARACK OBAMA

Wants economy-wide limits on emissions and would require big carbon emitters to pay for the right to emit greenhouse gases. Like Clinton and Edwards, he supports increasing automobile fuel economy to at least 40 mpg within 10 years.

JOHN EDWARDS

Opposes expanding nuclear power and backs a moratorium on new coal plants that don't capture their carbon. Like Clinton and Obama, he would require utilities to get 25 percent of their power from renewables by 2020.

JOHN MCCAIN

Has been a chief sponsor of a bill since 2003 to cap greenhouse gas emissions, but his measure would not go as far as some proposals in Congress in cutting emissions. He believes new coal plants should be equipped to store carbon.

RUDY GIULIANI

Says global warming is real, but he prefers voluntary measures by industry to cut emissions, rather than government regulation. He's called for more investment to boost conservation and energy efficiency.

MITT ROMNEY [Of course he has changed his position!]

Backed a state climate action plan when he was governor of Massachusetts but now says Republicans should not "embrace the ideas of Al Gore." Before the Michigan primary, which he won, he criticized "Washington-dictated" increases in fuel economy.

MIKE HUCKABEE

Supports a cap-and-trade system but has not laid out a detailed plan. He favors drilling for oil offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge but only until the United States can wean itself off oil. He supported the recently passed fuel economy increase to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

RON PAUL

Says the jury is still out on whether global warming is human-caused. He advocates markets as the best way to address all environmental problems and has proposed abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency.

Salon.com (watch ad to view): TV news is too cool
Major TV interviewers have asked presidential candidates 3,000 questions -- only six of them have been about global warming.

Jan. 28, 2008 | At the Republican debate Thursday night in Boca Raton, Fla., moderator Tim Russert asked Rudy Giuliani about global warming. "Florida has 1,200 miles of beautiful coast, which can be threatened with climate change, global warming, in a major way, as the world's population goes from 6 billion to 9 billion and the level of greenhouse gases doubles over the next 20 to 30 years," Russert said. "Yet you are against a mandatory cap on greenhouse gases. Why?" Giuliani's jumbled answer included a bevy of buzzwords such as "hybrid vehicles," "biofuels," "carbon sequestration" and "clean coal," before he asserted that U.S. industry would be "crushed" if we curbed our greenhouse gases.

Rudy is such a dope. For a more hopeful view of the future, read former Colorado Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Gary Hart's article, touting the Presidential Climate Action Project in Huffpo, which has many links to climate research and articles. You can sign the Project's statement here.

Republicans Embrace Iraq War and Bush

Only the Republican field for the 2008 election can make batshit Ron Paul look reasonable. From last night's debate, aka Beddy-Bye in Boca:



hat tip to Hullabaloo

Rudy "Petty" Giuliani

Good thing he's imploding.

NYTimes: In Matters Big and Small, Crossing Giuliani Had Price

This sentence, about Richard L. Murphy, a man whose reputation Rudy bludgeoned to take the heat off a scandal in his own administration, could end most of the Rudy-Gets-His-Man-or Woman stories in the article:

But Mr. [fill-in-the blank]’s professional life was wrecked.

Republicans Play Limbo

If the question is: How low can you go? Rudy Giuliani wins every time.

He's using actual video footage of 9/11 in a Florida campaign ad. You can watch his sick campaign video at the link, at Talking Points Memo Election Central. I won't link it here. I gasped when I watched it.

Truly despicable.

Time to repeat this sick Rudy Giuliani joke:

Q: What's the difference between a cow and 9/11?

A: Rudy Giuliani doesn't know how to milk a cow.

Mittwit Wins

BBC: Mitt Romney has won Michigan's Republican presidential primary, relaunching his campaign after second-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Despite being caught in yet another lie (a sham photo-op with an unemployed single mom -- who turned out to be a paid Romney staffer's mother) the Mittwit takes Michigan's primary. With three different winners in the first three primary states, the Republican party's cracks are showing.

Rudy Giuliani continued his slide to oblivion, finishing behind the moribund Fred Thompson and narrowly ahead of "Uncommitted".

Rudy In Freefall

Smell the desperation: Mr. "Immigrants Should Speak English" releases Spanish ad in Florida

Yesterday it was announced that Rudy Giuliani's senior campaign staff ("voluntarily", right) wouldn't be paid for the month of January. Not a good sign. He has also pulled all his paid staff out of Michigan and South Carolina. But it's not helping. In the most recent CNN poll, Rudy is third in Florida with 18%, far behind McCain at 34% and trailing even no money, no organization Mike Huckabee at 21%.

I think it's over for Giuliani, and the writing's been on the wall for some time. However, he still has a few days left to make his signature gaffes. Like this one (from Newsday, via firedoglake):

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - Rudy Giuliani loves baseball, but does he know the game?

According to a clip played by sports reporter Jared Max on WCBS-AM Thursday morning, Giuliani spoke about the impact of the steroids scandal on the pursuit of the record for all-time most home runs by Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez.

"Is Bobby Bonds' record a legitimate record that A-Rod should be shooting for," Giuliani asked, "or should A-Rod be judged by the Babe Ruth standard, assuming A-Rod did not take steroids?"

A good question, except Bobby Bonds, long retired from baseball, is the late father of the current homerun record holder, Barry Bonds. It's Barry who is accused of using steroids, though he denies it.

And if Barry Bonds is stripped of his record, it reverts not to Babe Ruth, who had 714 home runs, but Hank Aaron, the former Atlanta player who hit 755 before retiring years ago.

He should have stuck to his usual "Noun, verb, 9/11" script.

Here are some of the headlines in the media about Rudy's flailing campaign:

LATimes: Giuliani is feeling the squeeze
Some staffers forgo their pay as the GOP presidential hopeful bets heavily on a victory in Florida.

Miami Herald: Salary cuts dull Giuliani message

The Weekly Standard: The Giuliani Implosion
From frontrunner to also-ran in eight short weeks.

Melbourne (AUS) Sun:
Rudy Giuliani's nomination snub gamble backfires
ONE-time Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani's high-stakes gamble of bypassing the early presidential nominating contests has stamped a "big L" for loser on his forehead.

Later that day; edited to spell "desperation" correctly, I hope.

Disgraceful: WaPo Runs Reviews of Presidential Candidates' Clothes. Really.

Robin Givhan, How I Think She Looks:
Wears glasses in vain attempt to look intelligent
The Washington Post is running a series on the leading Presidential candidates. They call it The Front-runners: A revealing look at each of the leading presidential candidates

Good luck to you in finding any actual substance in this series. It is a vehicle for the most puerile and vapid information to be dispatched to the American voter. For example, WaPo Style writer Robin Givhans has a daily article. Originally headlined "How He Looks", now each piece is given an individual title and listed as "[Candidate's] Style".

But the pieces are still completely superficial discourses on the candidate's look and how that reinforces Robin Givhan's belief in the conventional wisdom about that candidate. So far, she's riffed on Hillary Clinton's pantsuits (damn feminist! Robin wants you to wear a dress, or at least show cleavage so she can vamp about that); Romney's perfect hair (too perfect; manufactured); Edwards down-home clothes (fake); Fred Thompson's boring clothes (doesn't really care) and McCain's too young clothes (too old). We breathlessly await her discourses on Obama (too young, inexperienced), Huckabee (hanging off him; not ready for primetime, or bariatric surgery?), and Giuliani (ambition, ambition, ambition).

There are also "tag clouds" called Free Association for each candidate (really), a summary of the candidate's stump speech, 4 things you might not know about the candidate, and a five-page story outlining the candidate's life.

Markedly, there is no special section for each candidate on anything of substance, like "Policy Positions", or "Record on Issues" or anything serious like that. It's all horserace and no soul.

How Robin Givhan looks for writing these empty pieces: Stupid. How the Washington Post looks for running them: Sad.

Journalism is dead. Long live the corporate media!

Rudy Giggliani

Rudy Giuliani laughs off many questions about his questionable clients and ethics on Meet the Press this weekend. He really is creepy. Ghouliani is more like it.

Republican Candidate Scandal Updates

Upper Left
Rudy Giuliani let taxpayers pay for security for his lover Judith Nathan even earlier than first reported -- for months before their affair was public.

Mike Huckabee's former senior aide contradicts Huckabee, says Huckabee did indeed tell the Arkansas Parole Board that he supported the release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond.

The painting company that painted rabid-anti-immigrant-crusader Mitt Romney's Belmont mansion last year is under investigation by the state for labor law violations including using illegal immigrants. Mittwit.

If You Lived In Iowa or New Hampshire: The Rethugs

A compilation of snippets (actually, pretty funny) of the TV ads being run by the Republican candidates. Hat tip to Talking Points Memo.

Vanity Fair Nails Giuliani On Federal Election Law Violations

Hmmmm....just today, Rudy Giuliani has "stepped down" from his position as head of Giuliani Partners. Weird, isn't it, that he would do this just one month before the Iowa caucuses? Why now? Why not six months ago, or two years ago when he began campaigning in earnest?

It's probably because of this article from the January issue of Vanity Fair, now on the web, which calls him out on the fact that he's flouting Federal election law by being paid for a no-show job:

Vanity Fair: Risky Business
A Tale of Two Giulianis

These days Giuliani’s office sits mostly empty as he canvasses the country for money and votes in his bid to become the Republican nominee for president in 2008. Is he even still working for Giuliani Partners? It’s a relevant question, because if he isn’t—and, really, how could he be in these busy weeks of campaigning before the first Republican presidential primaries?—then he shouldn’t be drawing a salary from the firm. According to a former top Federal Election Commission official, that would be a breach of election law: the firm would in effect be making undeclared campaign contributions.

(The bold is mine.)

So, it's not a sudden resignation. It's oops, the media noticed that I am violating Federal Election Law resignation.

Jeez, when the media does its job, good stuff happens. It just doesn't happen very often anymore.

Rudy Giuliani's Tryst Fund

I'm a little late to this story, but did you know that the loathesome Rudy Giuliani starred in "Sex On the City", with supporting players Judith Nathan, the NYPD, and various obscure NYC agencies?

How'd he do it? Giuliani spent New York City tax dollars for "security" (NYPD cops) for himself and Judith Nathan his mistress while they were having their affair. Giuliani began traveling to Nathan's home in the Hamptons (while still married to his wife Donna Hanover, who was living in Gracie Mansion with their children) in 1999. He took NYC security with him, and mysteriously those expenses got dumped into the coffers of obscure city agencies like the New York City Loft Board (and a not so obscure agency, but certainly marginal in a Republican administration,

So New York's finest, the police who should have been protecting the city, were pulling double duty -- guarding Rudy's family, and guarding Rudy's love nest.

And they went wherever his love nest, and wherever his lover, went. Judith Nathan got NYPD escorts for trips to her parent's house in Hazelton, Pennsylvania (a house which Rudy & Judi bought last week, coincidence?).

Here's how Talking Points Memo summarizes the sleaze:

The Shag Fund not only paid for the 11 tryst visits to Hamptons.

-- It paid for hotel and other expenses for mayoral aides -- in addition to the security detail -- who also went with the mayor to the Hamptons on the tryst weekends.

-- Nathan's NYPD-chauffeured trips (without Rudy) to visit her parents in Pennsylvania, 130 miles outside the city.

-- NYPD detectives and city-owned undercover Dodge to drive Nathan around the city.

-- NYPD detectives and city-owned undercover Dodge to drive Nathan's friends and family around the city even when she wasn't in the car.

-- NYPD security detail for Nathan, personally approved by Bernard Kerik.

-- NYPD cops to walk Nathan's dog.

Lowest of all -- NYPD walked Judi Nathan's dog.

Maybe even lower: Rudy Giuliani is trying to capitalize on the story! Watch this video for the awful truthL

Stop Crazier-Than-Cheney Rudy Giuliani: An Ongoing Series

Rudy Giuliani is batshit crazy, and he's leading the Republican field to be their 2008 candidate. This scares the shit out of me, because George W. Bush was dumb as a stump and he lead the Republican field in 2000 -- and look where that got us. So we'll be collecting the stories about the nutjob in the race, so our readers can get the word out: Rudy is crazy, and he must be stopped.

Glenn Greenwald, salon.com: Rudy Giuliani's messianic paranoia

[F]ar more significant [is] Giuliani's expressed view of what he thinks his mission will be as President. After proclaiming that "America has a special, even a divinely inspired role in the world," Giuliani vowed:

It was this nation that saved the world from the two great tyrannies of the 20th century, Nazism and Communism. It's this country that's going to save civilization from Islamic terrorism.

So Islamic Terrorism is no longer merely "a threat to our freedoms." It isn't even just an existential threat to our country any more. It's been upgraded rather severely in Giuliani's mind: it's now a threat to civilization itself. And Rudy Giuliani is running for President because he is "going to save civilization" -- his words -- from the Terrorists.

In one sense, this isn't surprising. After all, Giuliani -- with barely any attention from the press -- has assembled a foreign policy team led by someone who just wrote a book declaring "World War IV" and whose "prayers" consist of the deranged plea that bombs be dropped now on Iran.

Boston Herald: Jakes to rip Rudy over 9/11 legacy
Converge on Granite State

A group of New York City firefighters who lost brother jakes in the 9/11 attacks is taking its anti-Rudy Giuliani message to New Hampshire this weekend, blasting the Big Apple’s ex-mayor for “exploiting” the catastrophe for political gain.

The New York City Firefighters & Families will be spreading its “Rudy’s No Hero” campaign at firehouses and diners in the Granite State tomorrow and will host a town hall forum at Dartmouth College on Monday.

“We want them to know about him. He’s saying he’s the big 9/11 hero. It’s a big fabrication,” said New York Fire Deputy Lt. Jim Riches, whose firefighter son Jimmy died at Ground Zero. “He failed to prepare us for 9/11.”

[]

“America’s mayor” has been dogged by New York firefighters who claim he misrepresented his leadership before and after the attacks. Chief among the group’s complaints are that the New York Fire Department had the same malfunctioning radios on Sept. 11, 2001, that failed during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

“Why did they give radios to my son that didn’t work?” Riches asked. “I want him to answer all the questions and admit the mistakes that were made.”

The group also says Giuliani cut the recovery effort short, allowed human remains to be shipped to a Staten Island dump, falsely declared the Ground Zero air safe and didn’t provide rescue workers adequate respirators.

Here's a link to the video about how Giuliani's failure to get the FDNY new radios after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing contributed to 343 firemen dying on 9/11.

The Village Voice: Runnin' Scared
Crisis-Mode Rudy
Just wait till the rest of the country sees Giuliani unhinged


But what about Rudy's maxims? After all, a president has to have some moral touchstones for political action. Here's one of Rudy's: "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 and how you do it."

Joke of the Day

Q: What's the difference between a cow and 9/11?

A: Rudy Giuliani doesn't know how to milk a cow.

Judi, Judi, Judi

Apparently it annoys Judith Nathan, Rudy Giuliani's social-climbing wife, when people call her Judi. Judi, Judi, Judi. From the article, it sounds like she's just perfect for crazy Rudy.

Vanity Fair: The 2008 Election
Giuliani's Princess Bride

A dramatic transformation has occurred, one she does not care to discuss, despite repeated requests by Vanity Fair. She had always been known as "Judi." "Judi is what she was born. I don't think we called her Judith ever," says her father, Donald Stish, 78, seated on his porch one sultry June day in the shade of a gray metal awning. He is a calm, thick-set man who marvels at his daughter's makeover. After her second divorce, she upgraded herself to "Judith" with such vehemence that, one former Giuliani aide confides, "at City Hall we were prohibited from calling her Judi. She would bawl us out if we did."

For years she appeared, in the public record, to have had only one failed marriage, but as it turned out she'd had two. It seemed that she had gone to Pennsylvania State nursing school, as The New York Times once reported, but she had not. She completed two years of nursing school, but left hospital work before a year was up. Nonetheless, Giuliani has publicly referred to her "expertise" in "biological and chemical" disasters, and believes she would be a help in the event of an anthrax attack.

The fact that Rudy Giuliani is being seriously considered as a Presidential candidate is one of the great mysteries of life.

Running Republican Chickenhawks

Excellent article in Salon about Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney and how they avoided service in Vietnam. Typical Republican chickenhawks, they talk big, but they and their children are never the ones to go fight their big, important wars.

salon.com: Rudy and Romney: Artful dodgers
When the most belligerent Republicans start to beat the war drums, it's important to look at what they're trying to hide.

As the great tabloid columnist Jimmy Breslin noted 20 years later, during the former prosecutor's first campaign for mayor: "Giuliani did not attend the war in Vietnam because federal Judge Lloyd MacMahon [sic] wrote a letter to the draft board in 1969 and got him out. Giuliani was a law clerk for MacMahon, who at the time was hearing Selective Service cases. MacMahon's letter to Giuliani's draft board stated that Giuliani was so necessary as a law clerk that he could not be allowed to get shot at in Vietnam."

[]

Like Giuliani and millions of other young American men at the time, Romney started out with student deferments. But he left Stanford after only two semesters in 1966 and would have become eligible for the draft -- except that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Michigan, his home state, provided him with a fresh deferment as a missionary. According to an excellent investigative series that appeared last month in the Boston Globe, that deferment, which described Romney as a "minister of religion or divinity student," protected him from the draft between July 1966 and February 1969, when he enrolled in Brigham Young University to complete his undergraduate degree. Mormons in each state could select a limited number of young men upon whom to confer missionary status during the Vietnam years, and Romney was fortunate enough to be chosen. (Coincidentally, or possibly not, Mitt's father, George W. Romney, was governor of Michigan at the time.)

No wonder they both supported Bush's pardon of Scooter Libby. They don't believe Republicans are subject to the same rules as the rest of us.