You’re dripping piety on the carpet there, John. Could you stand over there on the Formica, stains come out easier, there’s a good fellow.
Ain’t drippin’ nothing, dude. Just having a conversation. Take it however you wish.
If you see anything to admire in this man, you are certainly free to advise us. So far, you only seem interested in discussing my character flaws, which are too numerous and petty to be of general interest.
Christ, not that again. Just having a conversation, dude. If you see your character flaws in that conversation, good for you. Clinton got a blowjob. Looks like Rudy did, too. Impeach him.
The blogosphere is abuzz over what to call this story. Rudy’s Shag Fund is clear but lacks “oomph”. Fornigate is nice but too non-specific. Sex on the City has potential, but there’s a certain bulky poetry to Rudy-Judy Booty Duty.
Local news and some websites are reporting that Giuliani and Joseph J. Lhota, a formed deputy mayor, are saying this practice was begun long before his affair with Nathan and had to do with being able to reimburse security detail members for expenses more quickly that the Police Department could do so.
They do know admitting they engaged more often that originally reported in this shifty practice that no other mayor, before or since, used or understands the reason for doesn’t help their case, right?
They also have not even attemtped to address the fact that Giuliani provided a city car and security for Nathan while she was still his mistress.
Heres my vote for names:
Fornigate for the New York Times;
Sex on the City for the Daily News; and
Rudy-Judy Booty Duty for the New York Post.
Did Rudy lie under oath? Did he sexually harass women who worked on the government payroll? There you don’t have to wait till the summer. That wasn’t difficult at all.
Why can’t it be both?
I would hope that Martin is aware that Giuliani’s rise to fame was predicated on his prosecutions of Mafia figures (always, of course, of ample supply in New York) and thus the comment refers to his New Yorkishness, a stance with which all Americans (including New Yorkers) to the west of the Hudson River and east of the East River and north of the Harlem River and south of Wall Street will readily agree.
I don’t know. Let’s elect him, and then have an extensive investigation (at taxpayer expense). It may not have happened yet. Keep the faith.
See above.
You missed a comma after “there”. Don’t get me started about technicalities.
Well, there was the overwhelmingly persistent rumor that Giuliani had a long-term affair with his press secretary Cristyne Lategano, whom, around the time he took up with Judith Nathan, he moved from his office to the presidency of the New York City Convention and Visitors Bureau, and whom his prior wife Donna Hanover blamed for breaking up their marriage.
Like everything else, it’s the cover up that is the greater sin. They billed other departments because the press scrutinizes the police budget much more so than more obscure ones. When the comptroller started to question the accounting, they were stonewalled by the mayor’s office because of “security concerns”. This smells to high heaven and I think the beginning of the end of the run for this vile and disgusting man.
HUH??
How, exactly, does this cast Rudy into a bad light in any way, shape, or form? And how is it an unreasonable assumption?
Look, when Rudy was mayor, and was in NYC, presumably the same four cops didn’t follow him around 24/7, but would instead go on and off duty just like everyone else. He’d normally have a different set of four cops guarding him at 2am than he did at 2pm on a given day. Is this an unreasonable assumption?
And if not, is it unreasonable to assume that while the 2am crew was on duty, the 2pm crew would be off duty, free to sleep in their own beds? And that the 2am crew would actually be awake at 2am, guarding Rudy’s residence rather than in a hotel room that they wouldn’t need, because when they went off shift, they’d be free to go home and sleep, just like any other worker on the night shift?
And how does the assumption that that would have been the normal workings of Rudy’s security detail when in NYC cast Rudy in to a bad light? I’m totally flummoxed by this, John. Totally and completely.
Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer, whose columns I was reading back when he was writing for alternative weeklies in Connecticut, has a great cataloguing of Rudy’s shifting defenses on this story. All six of them to date.
My favorite:
A while back I read a story about the net worth of the various candidates. While it’s certainly true to say that everyone in the race is wealthy to one degree or another, Mitt Romney’s personal fortune is quite a bit larger than that of all the candidates on both sides of the race. Combined.
The same is true of Rudy and sleaze.
If nothing else, this proves that Rudy is willing to go around the rules when there’s something in it for him. Haven’t we had enough of that shit?
BTW, the explanation of why Judi had a security detail leaves something to be desired, IMHO. Here’s the explanation (per the first link in my last post):
OK, but Judi had no official status. Just because someone’s a friend of the mayor and receives some sort of threat, the mayor can expand his security detail to include his friend?
Excuse me, but that’s bullshit.
Not to mention, Rudy’s crony, Bernie Kerik, was the one who got to decide whether the undisclosed threat to Rudy’s ex-mistress merited protection.
Oh, and NYPD’s best…best dog-walkers, that is. Yep, they walked the mayor’s mistress’ dog.
“All right, men, listen up! Issuing new ordnance today, this is your Glock .989 semi-automatic pooper scooper, for dogs of medium-to-large rectal circumfrence…”
To answer your question right above this, it’s entirely possible I just wouldn’t vote for President. I’ve never done that before, but I’m not obligated to make a choice. I would still vote, but I’d just go in to vote for the local and State candidates. I was very close to not selecting a candidate for President in 2000 because I felt that, at the time, Gore and Bush were both weak candidates and I wasn’t really sold on either of them as being my next President.
If Bill Richardson somehow won the Democratic nomination, I’d vote for him over Rudy in a heart beat–not that I don’t have some serious disagreements with Richardson’s platform, but when it all boils down to it I think he’s a good man, has some good ideas (and some bad ones) and would make a fine President.
(For the record Richardson’s biggest turn off to me is his stance on the Iraq war.)
To be honest, I don’t entirely disagree with the idea that none of the current crop of candidates is worth a vote, either Republican or Dem. While I say I’d vote for Richardson, I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance in hell of actually being nominated.
Just going through the short list:
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Hillary Clinton – I find her to be highly off-putting personally. I’m okay with some of her political stances (she has a reasonable view towards our commitment in Iraq) others, not so much (gun control, health care.) But she sort of strikes me as being very similar to Giuliani and Romney in that she just seems to be an empty-suit politician who just wants to be President for being President’s sake.
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Barack Obama - I differ with him politically more than I do with Hillary, but on a personal level I like him a lot. If his ideas weren’t so far from my own, I’d enjoy voting for him. He’s an idealist and from all that I have seen, a man of principle.
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John Edwards - To be honest I consider him the least serious of the “major” democratic candidates. This guy just isn’t qualified to be President, period.
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Bill Richardson - As I said, he’s one of the Dems I might vote for, maybe. I do have some reservations about him though on a few big-issues (Iraq being the biggest.)
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Fred Thompson - He was more attractive as a potential candidate than he was as an actual candidate. I’m just not sure I “buy him” taken as a whole.
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Mitt Romney - His positions seem to change based on what is most likely to get him elected. He somehow magically shifted from being a fairly moderate or even liberal Republican when he was a Massachusetts politician to becoming a fairly right-wing politician now that he’s running for President. I don’t buy him, at all.
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Giuliani - I’ve already laid out my problems with him.
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McCain - I would’ve voted for McCain in 2000, McCain of 2008 is much more questionable to me. I think he’s relatively dead as a candidate in any case.
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Mike Huckabee - He’s sort of like the Dem’s Richardson, I could vote for Huckabee. Although his last name is a bit goofy for a President (although in truth we shouldn’t factor such things in.) I actually like a lot of his ideas.
So, for the record, you think it is definitely proven that Clinton used state troopers to help cover up his sexual indiscretions? And that it is really relevant to whether or not to vote for him?
Regards,
Shodan
For the record:
I remember the 1994 allegations about Clinton’s using the Arkansas State Police to get him girls and cover it up. I don’t know enough to assert how certain the evidence was, but I remember not talking to my oldest and closest friend (a life long Republican) for a year because we disagreed over how big a deal this was.
Unsolicited, but still on record: I will probably be voting for RG for president.
F. U. Shakespeare presumably now a ‘usual suspect’