A Message To You, Rudy

I have to admit to having been utterly gobsmacked at the sheer brass neck of former NY mayor Rudy Giuliani’s having announced his attempt at a run for the Presidency of the US last week, given his very public history of adultery, humiliating his wife and his children, his numerous affairs, his sleazy close personal and professional relationships with the corrupt Bernie Kerik, his blatant nepotism and rampant authoritarianism, not to mention his dodgy political backstory,going right back to Ollie North and Iran/Contra:

Giuliani’s political malfeasance dates back to his days as US Attorney for the Southern District of NY, when he approved a US Customs sting operation ordered by White House shill Oliver North to catch Israel’s Joint Committee middlemen of the Iran-Contra scandal. North wanted the sting because he considered the Joint Committee not criminals but competition, since they supplied our supposed enemy Iran with more weapons of mass destruction then he illegally could trade. As a result of the sting arrests, Joint Committee leader Ari Ben-Monashe leaked Iran-Contra to Beirut newspaper Al Shiraa. This prompted Giuliani to quickly release the arms dealers on virtually no bail, and drop all charges against them once they were out. (Though North and George Bush Sr. testified before Congress that they never worked together on Iran-Contra, North’s now declassified diaries of that time prove otherwise.

Oh yes, and then there’s the extra-judicial killings on his mayoral watch.

You’d think a documented history like that might give him some pause for thought wouldn’t you? But no, Rudy’s monstrous ego knows no bounds – anything and everything he does is fine, because he’s, he’s BIG RUDY GIULIANI, AMERICA’S MAYOR, GODDAMMIT!

Worse still, he’s currently the Republican frontrunner.

So what can you do, except to, like Crooks & Liars do with this videoclip, keep telling the world what an asshole he actually is and how he’s potentially more dangerous even than Bush is now?

The video comes from the movie ” Giuliani Time.” John Bynes, who called in and complained to Giuliani because he needed food stamps and medication to live at a time when Rudy’s policies were having dire consequences to people like John. Rudy just laughs him off…UP: Did Rudy know about John’s condition? Probaby not, but he knew what was happening to people just like John who got caught up in the cross-hairs of his policies…

Washington Post:

“When “Giuliani Time” gives a glimpse of this Giuliani, it’s mesmerizing. So, the smiling mayor fields a phone call during his weekly radio show. The caller is angry about city cuts to food stamps and Medicare aid for the disabled. Hizzoner is a pit bull to the chase.
“Hey, John,” Giuliani tells his caller, “what kind of hole are you in? There’s something that’s really wrong with you. . . . We’ll send you psychiatric help because you really need it.”

As it happens, the caller, John Hynes, needs real help. A disabled lawyer, he suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and he’s had his benefits cut off and he’s running out of medicine.

Nothing chills the blood so thoroughly as the sight of a powerful man turned gleeful bully.”

(Unless its this….)

Funny, though, it didn’t chill CBS’ or the US media’s blood when Bush did it.

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“Republicans? Terrorists? Same Difference.” Bush Donor Bankrolls Al-Qaeda And Republicans

Emptywheel at Firedoglake on the Republican nexus of money and corruption:

It really is getting to the point where we ought to start going down the list of Pioneers and Rangers and asking how each has advanced the criminal plots of the GOP, because it’s sure beginning to look like the Pioneers and Rangers program is just a brilliant front for old-style Dirty Tricks.

It’s even worse than that:

WASHINGTON: A man charged with trying to help terrorists in Afghanistan has donated some $15,000 (€11,410) to the campaign committee of Republicans in the House of Representatives, and a resume in his name indicates various other links to the party.

Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari pleaded not guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in New York City to charges that include terror financing, material support of terrorism and money laundering.

From April 2002 until August 2004, the man, also known as “Michael Mixon,” gave donations ranging from $500 (€380) to $5,000 (€3,805) to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to Federal Election Commission reports and two campaign donor tracking Web sites, http://www.politicalmoneyline.com and http://www.opensecrets.org.

A resume listed in his name and posted on an MSN group Web site on Jan. 8, 2007, identifies him as being an “industrialist and philanthropist” and references previous connections to the Republican Party.

The Republicans are the party of President George W. Bush and until last month was the majority party in the House and Senate.

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Cheney – The Stormtrooper Tour

What a cheery welcome Dick Cheney’s been getting on his vice-imperial progress around the antipodes.

WSW has a report about Cheny’s visit you won’t see in the US media – how Sydney, a city in a friendly sovereign nation and the US’ military ally, was overwhelmed and locked down by US security operatives and .au government goons in full-on, strap-on, gung-ho, military paraphernalia :

[…]

Several blocks around Cheney’s hotel are being been shut for the four days, and city streets are being closed whenever Cheney’s convoy passes through, causing traffic chaos. Police and traffic authorities have urged motorists to stay out of the Sydney CBD, warning that “significant delays” will be caused by Cheney’s itinerary, which is being kept a tight secret.

For three days and nights before Cheney arrived, army Black Hawk helicopters buzzed the Sydney CBD, ostensibly for counter-terrorism training. Several residents contacted newspapers to complain of unbearable noise. One reader told the Sydney Morning Herald: “We are … being buzzed by huge noisy helicopters flying probably only about 20 storeys up. [Five] times in an hour—we can’t hear TV, we can’t talk on the phone.”

Last night, the airspace over Sydney was closed for US Air Force Two to land, and sections of the airport were virtually “locked down”. No members of the public were permitted to enter the vicinity. Dozens of police, security officers and snipers were on the tarmac, as well as inside and outside the airport. A grey Air Force plane arrived first, carrying Cheney’s cavalcade of bulletproof black limousines and an armoured van, while at least three state police helicopters hovered above.

Cue the Palpatine theme…. dum dum DUM, dum-da-dum, dum-DA-dum…

After perfunctory greetings by a handful of politicians, Cheney was swiftly taken away in his armour-plated limousine. As his 32-vehicle convoy—1.5 kilometres long—swept through the city to the Shangri-la Hotel on Sydney Harbour, traffic lights were turned red for all other vehicles, causing major disruptions.

This is the largest security operation in Australia since parts of Canberra, the capital, were shut down for US President George Bush’s one-day visit in October 2003. On that occasion, military planes and helicopters hovered overhead, the army’s elite SAS units were on standby and Bush’s secret service personnel were given unprecedented permission to carry weapons in the parliamentary precinct.

On the eve of Cheney’s arrival, the media reported that his security detachment had also been secretly granted special permission to carry guns. According to one Murdoch media report, there had been a threat to cancel the stay unless the NSW Labor government acceded to the federal government’s request to change the state’s Firearms Regulations to permit the security detail to carry sidearms.

NSW Police Minister John Watkins agreed to amend the regulations to allow possession and use of firearms “for personal protection or for the protection of another person” if the NSW Police Commissioner were satisfied that the circumstances warranted it. Defending the decision, Watkins said the federal government had “made very clear that this was critically important to the visit by the Vice President”.

[..]
[My emphasis]

How nice, they changed the law just for him too. Cheney was so touched by this warm welcome down under that he gave his hosts the ultimate gift – the refusal to refuse to rule out any options, even nuclear strikes, against those icky nasty Iranians. Really, the ultimate houseguest.

The Sins Of The Father

I meant to mention this post of Martin’s from Wisse Words in the week but it slipped my mind, sorry.

But he points out one of the big unspokens about wingnuts, and wingnut pundits in particular, though it’s not a phenomenon that’s exclusive to the US right:that it’s all about Daddy.

Wed 21 Feb 2007
More Reynolds

Scruggs over at UFO Breakfast Recipients has read my post on Glenn Reynolds and points out something I missed: that Reynolds’ dad was a moderately famous antiwar protestor himself and much of his behaviour may just be because of unresolved daddy issues:

Now let’s be clear that many young, rebellious kids say awful things. I made my parents wince more times than I care to contemplate when I was in the throes of puberty. And some parents really are pretty dreadful. Growing up and individuating is not always easy, especially in an authoritarian state. So one can understand why some apsects of the angry, frustrated, spiteful child persist into physical adulthood.

They certainly do: witness the angry frustrated, spitefuilly childish rightwing bloggers and commenters in full flow this week post- Reynolds’ call for the assassination of nuclear scientists and clerics who have had the misfortune not to be born white and American. The uber-angry, frustrated, spitefuilly childish Instapundit is right in the vanguard of the Daddy-issues wingers.

There’s certainly past evidence for Scruggs’ thesis that Reynolds (and by extension, his fellow wingnut pundits) has unresolved paternal issues and it comes from a unexpected, hawkish source:

Listen to Yourself, Instaman
by Gene Healy | Jan 9, 2003 | 4 comments

So here’s Glenn Reynolds on the US (the Daddy Country) and its relationship with other countries (sniveling, spoiled teenage brats with no respect for authority):

LAST NIGHT there was a Cosby show rerun on Nickelodeon. Theo defies his parents, and they leave him with nowhere to live in order to teach him that actions have consequences, and forgiveness isn’t to be taken for granted.

This morning Howard Kurtz is writing about the surprising degree of support, even among conservatives, for the idea of hanging South Korea out to dry. I wonder if there’s a parallel to be drawn here?

… long-term, there’s a lot to be gained by reminding our triangulating allies that American love, and American forgiveness, are not to be taken for granted either. That’s a lesson we keep ramming home to the Germans. And the Koreans need to learn it too.

We live in a world where most of our allies are Theo Huxtables: self-centered, unrealistic, and overconfident in their assorted schemes because they know Heathcliff will always bail them out in the end. But this isn’t a situation comedy.

[…]

Reynolds is like one of those spoiled, crying, snot-nosed children you see shrieking and grabbing their parents’ sleeve in the supermarket. “Daddy! Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!, DADDY!! Notice meeeeee!”

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Sense or Sensibilities

Today is the centenary of WH Auden and in rereading some of his poems this morning, I came across this, which it seems to me bears directly on the Democrats’ dilemma – whether in a time of increasing religious fanaticism they should attempt to reach out to the religious or whether here and now is where they should draw a bright line, on this side reason and the enlightenment ideals that the writers of the US constitution stood for, on the other theocracy, oppression and regression.

Digby is hopeful reason will out – but I’m with Auden on this, and not so sure about that at all.

Law, Say The Gardeners, Is The Sun

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,
Law is the one
All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.

Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers shrilly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young.

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,
Expounding to an unpriestly people,
Law is the words in my priestly book,
Law is my pulpit and my steeple.

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,
Speaking clearly and most severely,
Law is as I’ve told you before,
Law is as you know I suppose,
Law is but let me explain it once more,
Law is The Law.

Yet law-abiding scholars write:
Law is neither wrong nor right,
Law is only crimes
Punished by places and by times,
Law is the clothes men wear
Anytime, anywhere,
Law is Good morning and Good night.

Others say, Law is our Fate;
Others say, Law is our State;
Others say, others say
Law is no more,
Law has gone away.

And always the loud angry crowd,
Very angry and very loud,
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.

If we, dear, know we know no more
Than they about the Law,
If I no more than you
Know what we should and should not do
Except that all agree
Gladly or miserably
That the Law is
And that all know this
If therefore thinking it absurd
To identify Law with some other word,
Unlike so many men
I cannot say Law is again,

No more than they can we suppress
The universal wish to guess
Or slip out of our own position
Into an unconcerned condition.
Although I can at least confine
Your vanity and mine
To stating timidly
A timid similarity,
We shall boast anyway:
Like love I say.

Like love we don’t know where or why,
Like love we can’t compel or fly,
Like love we often weep,
Like love we seldom keep.

W.H. Auden