EVERYBODY'S FLIPPIN'; EVERYBODY'S FLOPPIN'-- ESPECIALLY GIULIANI. I GUESS NOW HE HATES HISPANICS TOO? OR IS HE JUST MAKING BELIEVE? DOES IT MATTER?

Rudy's taken a ratings beating lately because he's stuck to his long-standing pro-abortion/pro-gay policies. He has a record that is hard to hide and hard to run away from-- although it's taking low-information Republican voters quite some time to get beyond the fantasy heroism that's been drilled into their skulls about how he single-handedly met the Arab hordes when they invaded NYC on 9/11 and turned them away at Ellis Island.

But he's starting to get the idea that he'd better start putting some distance between himself and his record. George Marlin ran for mayor of NYC in 1993 as the nominee of the  Conservative Party. He says he's observed Giuliani for many years and "I can say categorically that he is not now, nor has he ever been, a conservative. In my judgment, his record leaves no doubt that he's a lifelong liberal." Giuliani, "like Hillary, is campaigning" for the presidency "in order to implement lifelong leftist beliefs." Sounds like a kook, right? Guess who votes in Republican primaries... especially in South Carolina and Iowa.

Today's NY Times has a story datelined Des Moines, "a long way from Ellis Island."

A decade ago, as mayor of New York, Mr. Giuliani used that historic backdrop to champion the cause of immigrants, calling attacks on people who came here legally a blow to “the heart and soul of America.” And from City Hall he often defended illegal immigrants, ordering city workers not to deny them benefits and advocating measures to ease their path to citizenship.

But now he is running for president, and the politics of immigration in the post-9/11 world is vastly different, with the issue splitting the Republican Party and voters peppering Mr. Giuliani on the campaign trail with questions about his current thinking. Perhaps more than any other candidate, Mr. Giuliani has a record on immigration with the potential to complicate his bid for the nomination.

His spin is tailor-made for the nativist haters and xenophobes who dominate the Republican Party's nomination process. He's not Tancredo-- but he's not the old Rudy Giuliani either. These days he talking about "penalties for people here illegally and requirements for them to wait at the back of the line. And while he once pushed policies like providing schooling for the children of illegal immigrants by saying, 'The reality is that they are here, and they’re going to remain here,' now he emphasizes denying amnesty."

He's doing his best to hide behind Bush's skirts. But hard corp xenophobes know Bush wants to fill the country with cheap labor for his corporate pals and Giuliani is getting the old fisheye when he addresses the subject. He's been changing his emphasis and swerving further and further to the right-- and further and further from the role he once cherished of "becoming a national leader for the cause of welcoming immigrants." Once he wanted to spend millions of dollars to help immigrants seek citizenship and it was known that "he vigorously defended the city’s policy of forbidding city employees, including police and hospital workers, from asking a person’s immigration status." In the 90's he called the Republican hicks whose votes he is soliciting these days "Know Nothings."

He's dancing around the issue and trying to weave it into his fantasy meme about being the big bad terrorist fighter. But his fighter image has been taking some hits-- first from the fire fighters who claim he's full of hooey and last week from an interesting article in New York Magazine that asks the uncomfortable question if he was as much a draft dodger as Cheney.

After receiving several deferments as a student, Giuliani applied for an occupational deferment as a law clerk, but his application was rejected. Giuliani appealed their decision, and asked the federal judge he was clerking for to petition the draft board for him. Which the judge did. When his deferment expired in 1970, Giuliani became susceptible to the draft. He received a high number and was never called. Giuliani “has made it clear that if he had been called up, he would have served,” says Katie Levinson, Giuliani’s spokesperson. He was opposed to the war in Vietnam on “strategic and tactical” grounds, she says. Asked to clarify what tactics Giuliani opposed, Levinson declined to offer specifics. “Voters will choose the next commander-in-chief based on their whole record, and we believe the mayor’s record speaks for itself.”

That's what John McCain is counting on too-- as is Hillary. (Oh-- and that picture up top? Not photoshopped; it's the real thing-- just like all the pictures of him in drag.)


UPDATE: GIULIANI BESTS McCAIN IN SOUTH CAROLINA STRAW POLL-- BUT COMES IN FOURTH

Straw poll season among the South Carolina GOP base-- and base well describes this crew. Anyway, CNN is reporting a big upset on the lunatic fringe. "Romney finished first with 132 votes, followed closely by Huckabee with 111. California Rep. Duncan Hunter got 87, Giuliani had 35 and Brownback received 19. McCain received 17 votes. Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo had five votes, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson got three, and Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore each got one."

MITT ROMNEY-- THOSE WHO KNOW HIM BEST... (AND GIULIANI & McCAIN TOO)

The Arizona GOP has had it with McCain. New York is not exactly Giuliani's strong point. And Mitt and Massachusetts? Well, he announced his intention to run for president, not on the steps of the Statehouse in Boston but from some shrine to anti-Semitism in Michigan. Rudy McRomney goes unappreciated in their home states.

But no one is as disdained by his home staters as much as Flip Flop Mitt is in Massachusetts. And I'm not even talking about progressives and Democrats! Massachusetts Republicans are out to warn their brethren around the country that Romney would make a terrible nominee for the GOP. Mass Republicans For Truth-- a classic right-wing swiftboat operation, normally reserved for Democrats-- is being turned on one of their own. They'll be operating a website and running TV and radio ads to undermine Romney.

One of the founders, a right-winger named Holly Robichaud, makes the point that for Republicans outside of Massachusetts (where he was a terrible disappointment as governor), he's "an unknown quantity... He’s running for the highest office in the nation and voters need to know the entire record." For Robichaud and the others involved in Mass Republicans For Truth the "entire record" is a disgraceful career of self-serving flip flops-- on everything from gay rights and abortions to taxes and the minimum wage. A major right-wing complaint about Romney is that he has "no core values" and that he'll do or say anything to get elected. They're a 527 committee, devoted to "education," which in GOP parlance means "smears." Their website will go live on Monday, the beginning, they hope, of the end of the political life of one third of Rudy McRomney.


This can't offer much comfort to GOP front-runner Giuliani who has troubles of his own. The other Republicans are finally out there exposing his very un-GOP views on gays, guns and gynecology. And to make matters worse-- much worse-- the New York Fire Department is finally speaking out about what really happened on 9/11. Low information Republicans in South Carolina may think Giuliani was a hero-- or even fought off the invading Arab armies in hand to hand combat-- but the New York firefighters who were at Ground Zero have a very different version, a more reality-based one. Jeff Zack, a spokesperson for International Association of Fire Fighters said, "The events of November 2001, we think, showed the true character of Rudy Giuliani and we are going to make sure the firefighters of this country know that story."

A GOP strategist for another candidate, speaking off the record, told us that "in the end, Republicans in the primary states are going to understand that a vote for Rudy Giuliani is a vote for Big Government, cross-dressing, Tax and Spend, liberal-judge-appointing, philanderer who is untrustworthy on every issue and every value that is important to us-- even if he does have a great personality." And on top of all that, Julia of Sisypus Shrugged, is examining the non-wingnut version of the real Rudy as well. He's going to have a lot of 'splaining to do.


UPDATE; YEAH, YEAH, YEAH... WINGNUTS ARE ATTACKING McCAIN TOO

The worst of the swifboat kings, the ones who slimed Kerry in 2004, are about to launch an expose on McCain. Their new 527, Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, see McCain as an apologist for Vietnam's Communist government who sold out fellow POWs and servicemen missing in action from America's lengthy war in Southeast Asia. One of the right wing nuts explains that "We will expose how McCain has supported the brutal and repressive Communist regime in Vietnam." OK, you do that.

RUDY GIULIANI: AS UNFIT TO BE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF AS HIS HERO, GEORGE BUSH, WAS

If 9/11 stops working for him, he can always say "Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, Hillary"

As we've mentioned once or twice before, no one has been able to cash in-- financially-- on the 9/11 tragedy the way Rudy Giuliani has. With a gaggle of crooked cronies-- including a child molesting priest he protects-- he sells "expertise" to companies looking to cover their asses. If something goes wrong, they can always say "But we hired Giuliani Partners as consultants and everyone knows they're the best." Well, "everyone" may say that but, truth be told, a thorough examination of Giuliani's 9/11 experience would cause any rational person to come to the very opposite conclusion.

Today BraveNewFilms released a video at the behest of the International Association of Fire Fighters, Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York, IAFF Local 94. This union doesn't seem too impressed with the guy who never gets shy (or embarrassed) of portraying himself as the Man Who Saved NY From the Arab Hordes. South Carolina Republican primary voters may buy that. In NYC they don't-- and especially not among the front line troops that did all the work.

Short version: Giuliani bungled preparations for years after the 1993 attack on World Trade Center; he was as Pollyanna and incompetent as Bush. And critical failures of leadership-- his self-proclaimed strong card-- before, during and after the attacks on 9/11 "raise serious questions about his ability to be commander-in-chief."



And if the judgment of the firefighters doesn't make you want to gag when you see consider the possibility of Giuliani becoming president, keep in mind that he just appointed another in a long line of doozies, right up their with Ravenel, Kerik, the child molesting priest, Vitter. This morning he announced, with a straight face, that Norman Podhoretz, one of the founders and leading lights of the Neocon movement, will be on his Senior Foreign Policy Board. Like Lieberman, Podhoretz doesn't think the war in Iraq is nearly enough war and he advocates bombing Iran. Is every single person Giuliani appoints to anything a disaster?

The Republican Party And The Dangerous Cult Of Gun Worshippers

Should this convicted murdered have had a gun to use against fire fighters?

By now you've probably read that the NRA's spokesloon, Wayne LaPierre, made an embarrassing and crazy statement about gun violence on Meet the Press that helped further turn the tide away from his group's advocacy of the gun manufacturers' agenda. Even before the senseless murder of firefighters in Rochester, New York, by another insane gun nut on Christmas Eve, libertarian icon Ron Paul turned against the NRA's demand that schools become armed camps, calling government security "just another kind of violence."

Let’s not forget that our own government policies often undermine civil society, cheapen life, and encourage immorality.  The president and other government officials denounce school violence, yet still advocate for endless undeclared wars abroad and easy abortion at home.  U.S. drone strikes kill thousands, but nobody in America holds vigils or devotes much news coverage to those victims, many of which are children, albeit, of a different color.

Obviously I don’t want to conflate complex issues of foreign policy and war with the Sandy Hook shooting, but it is important to make the broader point that our federal government has zero moral authority to legislate against violence.

Furthermore, do we really want to live in a world of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras, metal detectors, X-ray scanners, and warrantless physical searches?  We see this culture in our airports: witness the shabby spectacle of once proud, happy Americans shuffling through long lines while uniformed TSA agents bark orders.  This is the world of government provided "security," a world far too many Americans now seem to accept or even endorse.  School shootings, no matter how horrific, do not justify creating an Orwellian surveillance state in America.

Do we really believe government can provide total security?  Do we want to involuntarily commit every disaffected, disturbed, or alienated person who fantasizes about violence?  Or can we accept that liberty is more important than the illusion of state-provided security? Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place.  Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives.  We shouldn’t settle for substituting one type of violence for another. Government role is to protect liberty, not to pursue unobtainable safety.

Paul is retiring from Congress in a few weeks, as is Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who agrees with him, and neither is afraid the get in the NRA's face. The rest of the GOP congressional delegation is... terrified, in fact. None of them have followed public opinion enough to distance themselves from the NRA's self-serving support of violence and mayhem. With Obama urging Congress to take action and progressives coming right out and roundly condemning the NRA call for armed guards in schools, the Republican Party is sort of stuck in the middle holding its pecker and looking foolish and frightened. Believe me there are no Republicans-- not even one-- in Congress who would think of buying into a sensible statement like this one from Jerry Nadler (D-NY):

“The NRA’s response to the Newtown massacre is both ludicrous and insulting, and they are fundamentally out of step with the American people on the issue of gun violence.  Instead of making a sincere and good faith concession toward gun control reform-- like enhanced, universal background checks, which the vast majority of its members support-- the NRA has offered a fantasy suggestion for congressional action on a massive federal spending increase, backed by a disingenuous offer of NRA-funded training premised on that fantasy being actualized.

“What happened to their promise for a ‘meaningful contribution?’  To argue that kids are not safe because too few ‘good guys’ have guns is to ignore every fact on the ground.  The armed personnel at Columbine and Fort Hood, tragically, could not prevent the shooters from committing mass murder.

“And, beyond the cost of providing armed guards for each school-- $5.4 billion a year just for salaries, in some estimates-- this remedy does nothing to provide checks on ‘bad guys’ gaining access to guns or to remove the most dangerous and unnecessary types of firearms from circulation.  What we need is NOT more guns but sensible gun control legislation, including a ban on assault weapons and a comprehensive buyback program, a robust and centralized system of background checks, and a reassessment of our mental health services.”

Republicans are paralyzed with fear-- too scared to get behind LaPierre's demands for guns in schools and too scared to go up against the NRA. Silly little closet case, Lindsey Graham, desperate to appeal to the worst elements of the Know-Nothing GOP base in South Carolina, ran to the TV cameras to brag how he owns a semi-automatic weapon. “I own an AR-15. I've got it at my house. The question is, if you deny me the right to buy another one, have you made America safer? My belief is that this is a problem where you try to get mass murderers off the street before they act, by better mental-health detection. You try to find ways to understand what makes them who they are. But I don't suggest we ban every movie with a gun in it, and every video that's violent. And I don't suggest you take my right to buy an AR-15 away from me, because I don't think it will work. And I do believe better security in schools is a good place to start."

Graham is very used to standing around holding his pecker and looking foolish; he's made a whole career out of it. And when he reads polls that says Americans support banning assault weapons outright, he knows that means actual Americans, not unreconstructed wingnuts in South Carolina, the GOP base. But Republicans haven't always been so completely under the control of the NRA and the gun manufacturers they front. A few years ago Richard Poe did a post for the pro-gun, right-wing website, Newsmax, Don't Blame Liberals For Gun Control, which looks at how Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Nixon tried to solve the problem of gun violence in America. "Republicans, in recent years," he asserts, "have managed to do nearly as much damage to the Second Amendment as Democrats." Poe wrote because he was worried that Bush II might be another anti-gun Republican or that "the monolithic commitment America’s 'ruling classes' have shown toward gun control makes one wonder whether even a president is free to buck the current."

In 1969, journalist William Safire asked Richard Nixon what he thought about gun control. "Guns are an abomination," Nixon replied. According to Safire, Nixon went on to confess that, "Free from fear of gun owners' retaliation at the polls, he favored making handguns illegal and requiring licenses for hunting rifles."

It was President George Bush, Sr. who banned the import of "assault weapons" in 1989, and promoted the view that Americans should only be allowed to own weapons suitable for "sporting purposes."

It was Governor Ronald Reagan of California who signed the Mulford Act in 1967, "prohibiting the carrying of firearms on one's person or in a vehicle, in any public place or on any public street." The law was aimed at stopping the Black Panthers, but affected all gun owners.

Twenty-four years later, Reagan was still pushing gun control. "I support the Brady Bill," he said in a March 28, 1991 speech, "and I urge the Congress to enact it without further delay."

One of the most aggressive gun control advocates today is Republican mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City, whose administration sued 26 gun manufacturers in June 2000, and whose police commissioner, Howard Safir, proposed a nationwide plan for gun licensing, complete with yearly "safety" inspections.

Another Republican, New York State Governor George Pataki, on August 10, 2000, signed into law what the New York Times called "the nation’s strictest gun controls," a radical program mandating trigger locks, background checks at gun shows and "ballistic fingerprinting" of guns sold in the state. It also raised the legal age to buy a handgun to 21 and banned "assault weapons," the sale or possession of which would now be punishable by seven years in prison.

I have no faith whatsoever that Obama has the ability to stand up to Republican opposition and I'm guessing his attempt to get Congress to ban the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition will turn into some kind of pathetic compromise with the dedicated enemies of civil society and that any change will be more change for the worse, the only change Obama ever brings.

When Will Pardons Come For Trump's Convicted Cronies? When It Serves Trump's Own Interests... And Not A Day Sooner (Or Later)

FORE! by Nancy Ohanian

I think it's inevitable that Trump will pardon all his convicted criminal cronies who are in-- or soon ti be in-- prison. If the question is just when, count on hearing "demands" for a blanket pardon all over Fox News for a week or so "forcing Trump's hand." The White House will give Fox the signal when to begin the operation. Politico reporters Darren Samuelsohn and Meredith McGraw signaled the beginning of the build up on Monday morning, although no one thinks he will really get going until after Giuliani's trial-- or at least not until after the 2020 elections. "Roger Stone’s supporters are making a pardon pitch everywhere President Donald Trump looks: Fox News, InfoWars, Twitter, even the White House driveway. Michael Flynn abruptly hired a bombastic lawyer who spouts Trump-friendly theories about FBI duplicity that are widely seen as a pardon play. Paul Manafort has kept himself on Trump’s radar from behind bars in a federal penitentiary by feeding the president’s personal attorney a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, and not Russia, interfered in the 2016 campaign."

In any other administration, and in any other time, it’d be shocking to consider that three men with such deep personal ties to the president might get their legal troubles expunged in an election year-- not to mention from a president facing impeachment proceedings.

But this is not any other administration.

The clemency calculations come because Stone, Flynn and Manafort-- all former Trump campaign aides-- know the president has repeatedly proven willing to trample over his own advisers despite warnings of political consequences. Most recently, Trump cleared the records of three armed services members accused or convicted of war crimes over the objections of several of his top military brass.

“Like everything else with this president, you can’t look to history for precedent,” said a person who previously worked for President Trump. “If he felt Manafort and Flynn and others were deserving of pardons, he’d just do it.”

Best People by Chip Proser

Trump got involved in the military cases after being lobbied not only by lawmakers but Fox News personalities who spotlighted their stories. It’s a tactic employed repeatedly by people seeking pardons or prison-sentence commutations. Earlier in the Trump administration, Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and George W. Bush White House aide Scooter Libby saw their prospects for presidential mercy take off thanks to well-connected allies and conservative cable TV segments highlighting complaints about how they’d been mistreated inside the federal justice system.

In Trump’s White House, few of his top aides see pardons for the likes of Stone, Flynn or Manafort as a good idea, at least not until after Election Day 2020. There are still scars from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which concluded with a 448-page report that featured an obstruction of justice section detailing several conversations and public statements about pardons for former Trump aides involving the president and his personal lawyers.

While Trump himself has been coy in recent months about any post-Mueller pardon plans, he’s been anything but shy when registering his disdain for the Russia probe and how it landed him, members of his family and so many other current and former staffers in considerable legal jeopardy.

Back in August 2018, the president wrote on Twitter that he felt “very badly” for Manafort on the morning after a Virginia jury convicted the former Trump campaign chairman on a series of financial fraud charges. This June, Trump praised Flynn when the former national security adviser who had already pleaded guilty and cooperated with Mueller’s investigators made a U-turn and hired Sidney Powell, an outspoken Mueller critic, as his new lawyer. “Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!” the president tweeted. And Trump complained, just minutes after Stone’s conviction last month on charges of lying to Congress and witness tampering, because several of his own longtime adversaries-- he named Hillary Clinton, James Comey and Adam Schiff, among others-- weren’t facing the same kinds of criminal prosecutions.

Despite the presidential airing of grievances, people who regularly speak with Trump say the looming impeachment proceedings have dominated conversations-- not pardons. “I think the president is probably focused on other things at the moment,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and outspoken Trump defender.

But Trump’s pardon calculations could very well change as a rapid-fire series of events unfold.

Stone is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 6 before U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, where he faces up to 50 years in prison. As a first-time offender, Stone’s punishment is expected to be significantly lighter. Still, prison is prison, and attempts to get the president’s attention have been coming from all directions to keep Stone-- a longtime political adviser dating back to the early 1980s-- a free man.

InfoWars host Alex Jones said he was relaying a direct message from Stone to Trump on his show the day before the jury reached its guilty verdicts. “He said to me, ‘Alex, barring a miracle, I appeal to God and I appeal to your listeners for prayer, and I appeal to the president to pardon me because to do so would be an action that would show these corrupt courts that they’re not going to get away with persecuting people for their free speech or for the crime of getting the president elected,’” Jones said.

Just hours after Stone’s conviction, reporters filmed an unidentified man just outside the White House’s West Wing entrance blowing a giant horn and urging the president to give Stone “immunity.” That same night, Stone’s daughter Adria pleaded for the president’s intervention during a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson. “Donald Trump, if you can hear me, please save our family,” she said.

...While it might not be seen as politically savvy in the middle of an election year for Trump to pardon people like Stone, Flynn or Manafort, he has seen an advantage when getting involved in other high-profile cases that have been featured on Fox News and brought to his attention by allies.

Pete Hegseth, a Fox contributor, helped draw Trump’s interest to the latest military case, which culminated last month with full pardons for former Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who were convicted of war crimes, and allowed for chief petty officer Edward Gallagher, who was stripped of military honors during his prosecution on murder charges, to have his promotion reinstated.

Bernie Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner and himself a convicted felon, advocated for Gallagher. Tim Parlatore, Gallagher’s attorney, said Fox News and Hegseth should also be credited with presenting the case on Trump’s preferred cable channel. “Whether you believe Fox News or not, the president took the time to hear the other side of the story rather than just believing the Navy,” Parlatore said.

Over the weekend, Trump welcomed two of the pardoned men to the stage at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida.

Several other possible pardons that Trump hasn’t touched still remain on the president’s radar. Parlatore recently submitted Kerik’s name for a pardon that would wipe clean a criminal record from a 2009 guilty plea for tax fraud and false statement charges and a since-completed four-year prison sentence.

Then there’s the so-called “Blackwater Four,” a group of four security contractors who were convicted and jailed for a 2007 shooting in Baghdad in which 17 Iraqis died, as well as the case of a Marine sniper group photographed urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in 2011.

Trump himself has maintained interest in two convicted cast members from his reality TV show Celebrity Apprentice-- Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor convicted in 2011 for trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, and businesswoman Martha Stewart, who served five months in jail in the mid-2000s for obstructing justice and lying to investigators about a stock sale.

Beyond the Mueller probe, Trump’s pardon powers have drawn scrutiny from Democrats. The House Judiciary Committee sent a subpoena this fall to the Homeland Security Department seeking documents about the president allegedly offering pardons to government officials who break the law while implementing his immigration agenda. Before abandoning his 2020 presidential bid, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke proposed a constitutional amendment banning presidents from pardoning anyone tied to an investigation involving the president, or for family members.

Democrats in the middle of the current impeachment probe said Trump would only make matters worse for himself if he pardoned any of the former aides ensnared in the Mueller probe.

In the end-- as with everything Trump-involved-- he'll make his decision based on what serves his own purposes. It's his crude animal instincts to do it that way... and that can be counted on, absolutely. There is no consideration of right or wrong or anyone "deserving" anything. Just Trumpian self-serving.