ANOTHER GIULIANI ASSOCIATE IN TROUBLE WITH THE LAW-- AND GIULIANI'S TROUBLING VISION OF HIS MISSION AS PRESIDENT

from Jesus General's Rudy Series

James Ortenzio, formerly Giuliani's head of New York County's Republican Party and one of his most important financial backers and fundraisers pleaded guilty to tax evasion. He and his wife have contributed over $130,000 to the GOP and to Republican candidates, mostly to right-wing thugs like Jesse Helms, James Inhofe, George Allen, Elizabeth Dole, Gordon Smith, Conrad Burns, and to the Ted Stevens/Frank Murkowski Alaska crime syndicate. And, of course, to Giuliani. None have agreed to return the tainted money.

Ortenzio who, like many in Giuliani's inner circle, was reputedly tied in with organized crime. He had been forced to resign from the Manhattan Republican Party when the investigation became public last year. He has now admitted multiple violations in return for probation instead of prison, something that commonly happens for wealthy Republican criminals. And, make no mistake about it, if we are to judge a likely Giuliani administration of the future, wealthy Republican criminals is what we are looking at. The man seems incapable of associating with anyone who isn't a ticking time crime bomb-- from Bernie Kerik, David Diapers Vitter, Tom Ravenel (the South Carolina coke pusher) to Alan Placa (that child molesting priest he's harboring) and goons and creeps on every single level of his campaign and his business.

And this morning Glenn Greenwald points out the potential long range consequences of another kind of criminal Giuliani gravitates to-- the war criminal.

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.

...Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and John McCain are all horrific in their own right. But Giuliani is in a different league in terms of messianic extremism. There really hasn't been someone like Rudy Giuliani -- someone so drenched in plainly authoritarian impulses, merged with such wild-eyed militarism -- anywhere near the White House in modern American history, if ever. It's not some coincidence or political ploy that he chose the most bloodthirsty neoconservative militants to serve him; that is who Giuliani is and has been for a long time.

Each of the pathetic pygmies™ wants to personify a third George Bush term, but Giuliani is the one who's got all the hallmarks of combining criminal greed with an authoritarian and even fascist outlook on governance and this psychotic vision based on extreme paranoia and severe mental instability. The 25% of Americans who think George Bush is doing a good job have found their man.