I would hope that people who aspire to the presidency value public service more than making money. Maybe James Madison could have made more money by not being helping to write the Constitution, but thankfully men like him answered when the country called. If the ISG was not important, then why was it created? Here Rudy had a chance to serve his country and seek the best course in its most difficult foreign policy matter perhaps in history, and then drops the ball. Perhaps I’m naive, but one quality I look for in a president is putting the nation’s interests ahead of one’s own. In this regard, Rudy comes up short.
Let’s get right to the point.
This is American politics. There are precious few “Ask not what your country can do for you…” or “shining city on the hill…” moments. Most of the time, candidates jostle around and sling charges at each other, much like monkeys flinging shit in their cage.
Any illusions that this has changed for the worse in recent years should be dispelled by reading about the nasty 1960 campaign, or the vicious 1948 one, or the charges that dogged Grover Cleveland. It has always been this way. And what’s more, this is perfectly fair.
My problem with you is that you are standing here with a handful of shit aimed at Giuliani, which as I said before is perfectly fair in this environment we all live in, but in previous threads where your precious furry monkey was getting dirty, you were acting particularly hurt.
When we were discussing the Amanda Marcotte controversy, you seemed offended that people were even critical of her blog postings, and amazed that folks would associate Edwards with them. Yet when the news drops this mound of shit at your feet, you happily reach down and scoop up to throw.
Just be honest about why you are doing this, please. I showed you the courtesy in that same thread when we were discussing Amanda Marcotte to stress that I was discussing how Edwards was conducting his campaign, since I wasn’t going to vote for him in any case. Perhaps you can show similar intellectual honesty here.
I suppose I could support someone who’s not running, but other than that, what do you expect me to do? Other than Obama, it’s really a choice between those whose brains got sucked out and then restored and have learned something from it, those whose brains got sucked out and restored, but don’t seem to have learned much if anything, or those whose brains are still sucked out.
Sometimes a pony is not one of the available choices.
So: how much money have you sent to Obama’s campaign fund?
Ha! 
You really shouldn’t mention ponies when we’re talking about John Edwards.
See the discussion of equivalences below.
Huh? Please quote chapter and verse. I’m tired of your speaking in generalities about what you think I may have once said.
Quote me, or be called a liar.
But by the way, we should talk here about equivalences. What I say and do, I’m responsible for. What you say and do, you’re responsible for. What John Edwards says and does, he’s responsible for. What Rudy Giuliani says and does, he’s responsible for. With me so far?
Now, there’s the people you’re associated with. In what situations, in what ways, are you responsible for what they do? Rudy chose Thomas Ravenel to be his state campaign chairman in South Carolina. Ravenel just got busted for selling cocaine. Edwards chose Marcotte for a technical position in his campaign. She wasn’t going to be a campaign spokesperson; she was going to be running the backroom side of some of their Web outreach stuff.
So: you hire a techie. You’re responsible for their blogging activity? You hire a state chairman. You’re responsible for his cocaine deals?
That’s ‘flinging shit’. In either case, it has nothing to do with the candidate’s fitness for the Presidency. (Unless maintaining a nice pretty veneer is a key element in that fitness.) I’m arguing that this very much does.
I’m not even sure what you’re asking here. If you’re asking me to say I wasn’t going to vote for Rudy in any case, well, duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. If you’re asking me to give some other explanation about why I’m doing this, I’ve given it. If you think I’m not being honest about that, I’m afraid your mind-reading skills have failed you, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
I hope and pray you don’t have to eat those words.
Apparently it’s only bad for people who care about the poor to make a lot of money and spend some of it on themselves.
a) I have no clue what you’re talking about.
b) We’re talking about Rudy Giuliani, not John Edwards.
c) John Edwards is in this conversation, not as a topic, but as an example you are supposedly providing of my supposed inconsistency and hypocrisy. (Get on with it if you’ve got anything, willya?)
Boo hoo hoo. They’re saying baaad things about John Edwards.
I likely wouldn’t have mentioned John Edwards at all if you hadn’t mentioned him first. If he wasn’t a subject to be discussed here, why did you bring him up?
I thought people were supposed to learn to read in elementary school. Which state did you grow up in, again?
This was simply pointing out that only two Dem candidates were getting coverage for anything besides bullshit stories. I wouldn’t have mentioned them at all, but if I’d just said “only Hillary and Obama are getting coverage,” someone would have said “but what about the Edwards haircut story?”
Goddamn, but you are an idiot.
As an example for comparison purposes.
Explain to me again what purpose that thing on the top of your neck serves?
And you should be the only one doing the comparing?
Let’s face it, you take Giuliani to task for not being a particularly serious candidate on foreign relations, based on his resume, his actions, his speeches, and his website. Yet your preferred candidate, John Edwards, faces the same problems. His speeches do not go into tremendous detail on foreign relations, and are full of trite and trivial statements, his website is thin on the subject with the exception of antiwar sentiment, and that not especially detailed, and his experience is limited. He has one Senate term, during which his focus wasn’t foreign relations. He did serve on the Intelligence Committee, but his attendance at meetings wasn’t stellar.
Maybe he should have used that opportunity to learn more about the subject. 
Edwards is no Joe Biden. Much as I disagree with Biden at times, that man has made a serious effort over the years to understand foreign policy. Edwards, not so much. Perhaps not Giuliani either. But it blows my mind when you come in here guns blazing about how Giuliani is so awful because he isn’t serious about foreign policy, yet have the gall to tout Edwards mere posts later, completely blinded by your partisan loyalty to him that you can’t see his vulnerability on this score as well.
Like I said before, this might be fair if you could state that you support Edwards for other reasons. I frankly can’t understand why you don’t just do this, instead of attacking me for choosing to support people that you don’t prefer.
Actually, I do understand this. And it doesn’t reflect well upon you.
You use the term “full support” very differently than I do. I don’t use it mean “went along kicking a screaming and then threw the final report in the trash can”.
I guess I just see Obama standing head and shoulders above an empty suit like Edwards. Of the 3 front runners in the Democratic party, Edwards is the guy I’d least like to see as president.
Exactly the same amount of money I’ve given every other candidate that I voted for.
No - he’s using it the way Bush did.
Many are called to serve but some just can’t turn down a bunch of quick bucks.
Honestly - I don’t know how some people here can subscribe to the ‘ISG was a bullshit group’ meme with a straight face.
The Bush administration welcomed it, and provided access to people, documents, and travel to Iraq. President Bush met with the ISG members on June 14, 2006, and again on November 13, 2006, and met further with the two co-chairs.
But of course it came up with the ‘wrong’ answers for some people and so has to be retrospectively denigrated even to the extent of arguing that the fact a presidential candidate accepted membership and then bailed like, as has been said, a deadbeat teen skipping out of a job to hang with his homies, has no bearing on his suitability for the highest office.
There are some new lows being sunk to here.
So, which recommendations from the group has Bush implemented?
It was a creation of Congress that Bush went along with because he had to, not because he wanted to. Nothing in your cite provides any evidence of “full support”. Rather, it’s just platitudes from Bush thanking them for being on the committee.
In that case you provide the cite for your Bush-mind-reading opinion. As it stands his words and actions say differently.
That he did not like the outcome has no bearing whatsoever on his initial support for it.
Alas, if only my Google-fu were stronger! I could unearth comments made by Barzini…er, Giuliani… upon his nomination to serve on this august panel. Which of the two points of view do you imagine they reflect?
“Yeah, sure, whatever, I’ll dick around with this for a while, unless it gets in the way of shit, ya know, then fuggedaboutit…”
Or:
"I am honored and humbled to be included in (9/11!)such an esteemed group to consider a matter (9/11!) that is of such grave importance (America’s Mayor! 9/11!) to our country’s future (Did I mention 9/11!? Well, 9/11!)…
Now, I haven’t such a quote at hand, but we can be pretty sure he said something. Dollars to duck biscuits it was the latter.
Of course not. I’m still waiting for you to do a comparison, remember? (And waiting, and waiting, and waiting…) It’s just that the subject of discussion here is the behavior of Rudy Giuliani, and comparisons may be made to shed light on the significance (or lack thereof) of that behavior.
How so? Did he also pass up good opportunities to educate himself in his areas of weakness?
What’s more, I think it’s pretty clear that those speeches aren’t just canned speeches that someone else wrote and Edwards gave. Edwards’ responses to questions in various fora shows a guy who can give nuanced answers on foreign policy questions on his feet.
Maybe he learned more than you think he did from his service on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and maybe he’s provided himself with further opportunities to learn since. At any rate, he’s got a clear worldview that he’s fleshed out in some detail in those speeches and in others. Feel free to show me where Rudy’s advanced beyond the cartoon stage of foreign policy analysis, despite having been in between jobs for even longer than Edwards.
Ta Da!: “The Mayor looks forward to working with the group.”
OK, not really earth-shattering, but…
Wow. You could link to two whole speeches.