Buh. Bye.
Rarely do we here at Toasted Joe veer over into that bottomless chasm of corruption and fear-mongering that some call "politics." But big news today. I managed to swing an interview with one Rudolph Giuliani, fresh off his recent abandonment of his Presidential campaign. Unfortunately, the tapes have already been confiscated by the McCain campaign, so a written transcript will have to do:TJ: Rudy, were you disappointed by the results in Florida?
RG: Well, a little bit, but you know what -- and this is something I learned after 9/11 -- you're going to face some rough times. You've just got to bounce back. Like I bounced back after 9/11.
TJ: What are your plans for the future?
RG: Well, I have a few things planned. I've scheduled a few lectures about 9/11. I've started work on a 9/11 cookbook. I'll also be auctioning off the underwear I wore on 9/11.
TJ: Do you think your personal life affected your campaign?
RG: No, the whole thing with Judi was 9/11. And my kids may not speak to me any longer, but 9/11.
TJ: OK, well thank you very much for your time, Rudy.
RG: 9/11.
posted by Toasty Joe at 5:18 PM
33 Comments:
I have no use for someone who sleeps under the blanket of safety and prosperity afforded this City by Rudi Giuliani and then questions the manner in which he provided it. I'd rather you just said "Thank You." and went back to blogging about the Mets. Seriously, maybe, before they sip their cocktails and talk about how rough we all had it when Rudi was here, these now-smug New Yorkers should all spend just one week re-living the Dinkins Experience, so we can all remember when walking down the City streets necessitated an expectation of being mugged, assalted or worse. Maybe then I can stop listening to ingrates rewrite history and pretend that New York City isn't 1000% better off because Rudi was the mayor. How many people can say their lives have been improved because of something Hillary Clinton did? Other than some select campagin donors, union leaders (and, evidently, Canadian uranium speculators), not many.
5:55 PM
Where were YOU when they built that ladder to heaven?
6:13 PM
I am voting for McCain. He is a 70year bridge to 2012 when JEB Bush will be elected by a landslide. We are all dead if Hillary is elected.
6:27 PM
This reminds Rickey of a recent funny article he read:
"Giuliani To Retire From Election To Spend More Time With 9-11"
Can anyone explain what that fascist prick brought to the table other than his mob ties and a severe hatred for civil liberties?
Rickey hopes we've seen the last of him...
9:52 PM
Those who would sacrifice essential liberties to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I just like that quotation.
Obama '08!
11:07 PM
As a non-supporter of the two-party system, I'm happy to see someone who couldn't properly apply himself to any party, yet not really be an independent either, get the hell out of the way. Sure, I'll agree he held the city together in a time of great tragedy, and through his special brand of "shoot first" policing made it safe for me to live between Avenues C and D without fear of, well, living there (actually, they put a new precinct there, which I thought was nice). But all that can't overcome one's inconsistencies to make one a President.
That being said, this November may possibly see me vote Democrat, so long as it that disingenuous hag doesn't get the nomination. Our position as world power is tenuous enough without a leader who cries in public.
1:53 AM
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6:59 AM
Toasty, you've got me going, I have been ranting about my tax situation for weeks now....All I want in a candidate is someone who will tax the poor and feed the rich (there I said it), simply by the virtue of living in the New York Metropolitan area and having a real job, the tax codes are written as though you are wealthy (...I'm so not wealthy) I am so sick of candidates claiming how we have to tax the poor less, how about they pay their fucking fair share. Naturally my vote is going to the candidate who will either a) tax me (and by me, I mean the collective me) less and tax you (and by you I mean everyone else) more or b) fix the economic fuckups of one Premier Warlord George Walter Bush so everybody is doing all right, or simply how about the 200,000 people who live in Whyoming pony up a few bucks for my big tax bucks they get...I am very irritated with how the tax code is written in this country, the short story long is that it's extrememly broken.
7:08 AM
I've started work on a 9/11 cookbook
That's hilarious.
Almost as hilarious as Bookied's bizarre comment.
The David Dinkins Experience
You referring to the mayor who hired Bratton and oversaw the beginning of the massive reduction in crime for which Rudy took credit?
Maybe then I can stop listening to ingrates rewrite history and pretend that New York City isn't 1000% better off because Rudi was the mayor. How many people can say their lives have been improved because of something Hillary Clinton did?
1000%. "Ingrates"? Hillary Clinton? What the HELL are you talking about???
Dude, take a tranquilizer; it's gonna be ok. Rudy can still live in NY, appear with Koch, D'Amato & Dominick Carter on NY1, and talk about 9-11 all the time.
Maenwhile . . . back to important topics:
JOHAN SANTANA!!!
7:12 AM
And don't even get me going on Social Security, it should be Social Security, not Social Entitlement.
7:29 AM
You know the decrease in crime that Giuliani took credit for can actually be attributed to Roe vs Wade. People who previously had no choice were aborting the criminals.
7:31 AM
Sassdawg - I would vote for you in a second. You speak words of wisdom, my friend. Let's not go back to the days of Dinkins when law abiding citizens were being shot down in the street by hooligans and forced to pay ridiculous taxes to feed crackbabies in the Bronx. Guiliani was a great mayor, but I agree that he would be a scary president - you can't shoot first and ask questions later when you are in the oval office.
While McCain is clearly the best choice right now, I would also vote for Gore or Lieberman (both quasi-Republicans who call themselves Democrats).
Iran, Syria, Palestine, North Korea and Yemen are all praying that Obama gets elected, and I'm moving back to Venezuela if Hillary becomes our President. Maybe I can depose Chavez.
9:07 AM
God bless you and the United States of America, Toastito. There hasn't been a Giuliani flare on this site since you were on vacation and Bookie and I went at it. His posts were nonsense when Rudy was the frontrunner and they're just comical now.
Believe it or not, it's perfect possible to believe that Rudy was an effective mayor, both pre- and post- 9/11, yet think that having him as the leader of the free world would make the Bush years seem like Xanadu. I rejoiced when he got his ass handed to him in Florida, because the chance of there being a planet for my grandchildren to inherit increased by 143%.
2000 McCain was by far my favorite candidate, and I was ready to vote for him. Sadly, the radical right wing controlling the GOP decided that independence and refusing to pander to Pat Robertson was an unforgivable crime and handed the party and our country to W. Now, you have 2008 McCain who pretends that he never supported campaign finance or real immigration reform because that makes him a "liberal". Sad.
9:47 AM
I find the comparison drawn between Rudy and Hillary to be completely and utterly useless, since they're not even running against each other. Shouldn't you be trying to figure out why Rudy couldn't even come close to beating a freaky Mormon from Massachusetts?
10:13 AM
I'll take the slings and arrows of the usual suspects around here with pride. But to suggest that David Dinkins somehow "oversaw" the reduction in crime in the City and is in any way responsible for the turnaround here deomonstrates such a divorce from reality, that the argument is impossible to take seriously. Bratton can't accomplish anything without a City Hall who takes off the shackles and lets the "broken windows" policing do its thing. Dinkins was a disaster, and other than possibly John Lindsey, the City's worst mayor of the last 75 years.
I'm not writing about Giuliani's virtues as a presidential candidate. I'm just saying that we as New Yorkers should spend a little less time laughing at his failure as a presidential candidate and a little more time appreciating how much better we all are for his having been mayor.
And for all this talk of trampling civil liberties, can anyone please deomonstrate how their liberties were negatively impacted as the result of Rudi's tenor as mayor? Was anyone here a squigi man? Did you deal dimebags in Washington Square Park? Do you consider turnstile jumping to be a civil liberty? Is anyone here Al Sharpton using a different handle? Give Rudi his due as mayor and let his campaign die in peace.
Oh, and Lurker. Let's agree that when the Democrats stop pandering to Al Sharpton, you can start criticizing Republicans for pandering to Pat Robertson. Robertson is a douchebag (as is Faldwell), but to my knowledge neither has started race riots which resulted in multiple deaths.
10:35 AM
Short story long kids is that we like opportunities like these to vent our political frustrations. Sojo, I've got big issues with who to vote for this election cycle.
I like Romney because he strikes me as pro business, but I don't like Romney because he also strikes me as being Coo Coo for Cocoa Puffs.
Like McCain's Fiscal leanings don't like his war stance.
Like Hillary's wanting to address the Healthcare issues in the country, don't know if she has the backbone to take on all of the other broken institutions.
Don't know enough about Obama to make an informed decision one way or another.
10:44 AM
I like my civil liberties and I'm not going to give them up for anything.
10:45 AM
I don't pretend to be from NYC (just work here and am close enough to it)...but can't we see that the balancing of the NY budget and reduction of crime was started by Ed Koch and took a MAJOR step backwards under Dinkins...only to be revived by Giuliani. I will back Books to a certain extent but it was totally not all his doing.
BTW, Dawg, what planet are you on...tax the poor? You're kidding right. I mean, I say tax everyone. If I'm gonna be taxed anyway, at least let me reap the benefits in better social programs. You know, the ones that were f'ed over by Reaganomics
11:03 AM
I can't wait to get involved in this discussion. More later. I agree Rudy would have been a horrible president, and I never would have voted for him, and that Joe Biden's line that Rudy only says 3 things in every sentence, a noun a verb and 9.11 is an all time great line, but to suggest Rudy wasn't a great mayor for New York is downright offensive. You live in this City right now, as we speak, because Rudy was able to fix it, and fix it good.
11:04 AM
Ya see that's the great thing about the way the tax codes are written....By virtue of basically being college educated and where we live and work the tax code treats us as though we are wealthy, like hot sweaty money wealthy...Part of the reason why I think that the tax codes should be indexed to the cost of living.....you want to live down in North Carolina or Florida where the cost of living is "so much lower" then guess what you're going to have to get taxed for it....You see that's the big thing of it, let's pretend you work in North Carolina make 45k a year, under the way the tax codes are written, you are treated as though you're middle class where as you're rollin in it down there, now 45k a year in NYC and you're living off of Chef Boyardee and in a subsidized apartment...That's all's I saying, level out the playing field. There's so much broken with the way DC works. Seriously F the poor.
Just to give some idea of the disparity I pull down just shy of 6 figures paid 18k in Federal Income Taxes, the wifey pulls down about 1/2 of that paid 6k in Federal Income tax...
...That's fucked up
11:22 AM
Seriously around here, we're conditioned to believe we're poor so we don't bitch about how seriously fucked the tax system is. Seriously I'll say it again, if the tax code is written so that 100k in NYC is wealthy then tax the poor. Of every tax dollar the United States government collects, what percentage of that do you think comes from this area? 10%? 20%, I'd be willing to bet it's probably around 45-50% between personal income taxes and corporate income taxes. How much of that comes back?????
11:28 AM
Sass, I couldn't agree more (I also applaud your open-mindedness on candidates). We all get nailed by the AMT because of our inflated salaries and high cost of living and will most certainly bear the brunt of all these programs Hillary and Obama are proposing to fix the economy and health care system. What's especially troubling is that our Senators, Schoumer and Hillary should know this and consider it whenever they discuss these tax increases for the so-called wealthy, but that never seems to bother them. Of course, Hillary has really only been "from here" since 2000, so maybe she hasn't figured that out yet.
11:37 AM
While I do get hit pretty hard with the AMT, I think we ought to give credit where it is due to the 1970s...and tax the people who do deserve it and get away with more...um, yes you guessed it - the 1/10th of the 1/10th percentile. or whatever it is. I get killed just as much on that tax code as anyone, but if it were being put to good use, instead of being pissed away by stupid white men who run this country into the ground, then I am all for it. Kind of like NY Waterway raising ticket prices AGAIN and refusing to improve service. I can't believe I am arguing politics on a Mets board. But I digress.
12:10 PM
Just to clarify by my rants some of you may be mistaking me with being in with the George Bush is the greatest crowd which is as far from the truth as you can get. How's this, I'm a fiscal conservative and a social moderate.
12:48 PM
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12:48 PM
I can't believe that i have to chime in on this, but I gotsta mister!
I will give Rudy all of credit in the world for helping the city's economy, but he gets far too much credit for ridding the city of crime. Yes, when he took over the murder rate dropped over 70%. But murders also dropped 73% in San Diego, 70% in Austin, 60% in Honolulu, and 56% in Boston. The mayors of those cities didn't end up taking all of the credit for the substantial drop in crime.
There have been numerous studies that state that crime would have shriveled even if Rudy was not mayor because of the end of the crack epidemic nationwide. In fact the murder rate had actually begun declining in 1991, under Lee Brown, and continued to fall under Ray Kelly. Giuliani was smart enough to take credit for it... something that Dinkins was not. Thats the true mark of a politician, and thats what he is... a politician that presided over the city during an economic boom and a terrible tragedy. He did great jobs with both of those, but the reports of him being a superman that singlehandedly cleaned up this city are greatly exaggerated.
I am sad that he is out of the race because it was amusing to watch him slowly and ridiculously implode over the past few weeks. He ran the worst campaign that I can recall.
And I'm completely bored since the fun in-fighting has left the democrats. I mean that debate last night was like each candidate trying to "out nice" each other. I thought they should have given each other kittens as gifts and let them play with yarn on the desk while Obama and Clinton sipped tea. thats how "cute" it was. I likes my politics with a bit of a fight!
Now all I have to look forward to is Ron Paul's rantings that are making more and more sense to me.
1:39 PM
You guys make me smile.
Rudy was a clod to run for President. As NY Mayor, I am glad he was involved with 9/11 because it was such a tragedy and needed a strong peron to be able to calmly and collectively bring everyone to the table.
As far as taxes go, start a corporation, chew up expenses and liabilities, get taxed on what is left, repeat. Start a comic book commodities invenstment firm, that takes up a percentage of your house (write off some mortgage payments), uses a company car, (ie your car), employs a book keeper (the wifey), and necessitates long trips for fun places to look for comics (show expenses, travel and food) and appreciates the value of the comic books. Whatever is left over gets taxed. Just an idea. Can't beat the tax system, join'em.
Those who would sacrifice essential liberties to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Nice Quote from Flitgirl, I just happen to disagree. Temorary is a subjective term and safety is paramount for a functional society. I dont like getting punched in the face and I am willing to let someone listen to my phone conversations to make sure that I am not punching others in the face. All they will find out is that I talk dirty to my wife on the phone.
Go Mets! Hugs and Kisses! Peace in the Middle East and the horn of Africa!
Anyone in '08, especially the Metropolitans!
2:01 PM
So how about that Johan? Huh?
2:34 PM
By the way, for you Sports Guy enthusiests, this week's podcast features him talking to a friend of his, a coordinating producer for Baseball Tonight and a rabid Mets fan, about the Santana deal. He throws out a reference to the "Fan Confidence Rating" on Metsblog.com and makes some other amusing comments (one in particular about Tom "I'm Not Devastated" Glavine's final pitching performance as a Met. There's also some talk from his buddy Jack-O the Yankees fan who is pissed the Yankees didn't pull the trigger and is waiting for Phil Hughes to go ahead and win 21 games this year.
2:40 PM
Hey all you McCain lovers out there, listen up. I hope you don't have kids because one day they will be of military age and McCain (Mr. Conservative in Moderate Clothing) has pledged to remain in Iraq for 100 years if necessary ... and believe me, there will never be peace there...those people have been feuding since the dawn of time. We had no business going there in the first place. At a cost to the U.S. of a billion or so a year,it sucks! You could clean up a lot of cities here and cure a lot of problems with that money. (How about stem cell research, global warming, alternative energy, healthcare, to name just a few.) We're no safer and the economy's headed for the crapper so let's just elect someone who's just as stubborn and mean tempered as our current administration and wants to keep us in Iraq into the next millenium...then we can all move out of the country...so if that's what you want, vote McCain. As for me, I'll be casting my ballot for anyone other than the Republican nominee.
Signed,
A concerned Mets fan
5:04 PM
Rudi had to spend 49 million dollars to get one delegate..need I say more....
5:32 PM
rudy is a prick. there is an article in this month's GQ which lays out in great detail the many reasons why. he is a vindictive, race-baiting, constitution-ass-wiping dickhole. he had about a popsicle's chance in hell of being president, so that didn't scare me. however, the fact that there are those who actually like this thundercunt, well that keeps me up a night. i guess it doesn't matter how he got the desired results (or even if it was he who got them), just that he took credit.
10:59 PM
But to suggest that David Dinkins somehow "oversaw" the reduction in crime in the City and is in any way responsible for the turnaround here deomonstrates such a divorce from reality, that the argument is impossible to take seriously.
Hmmmmm. So facts and statistics don't do it for you, huh?
Bratton can't accomplish anything without a City Hall who takes off the shackles and lets the "broken windows" policing do its thing.
Except that he "accomplished" the initial reductions in crime rates before Mr. Broken Windows moved into Gracie Mansion.
The size of the police force increased under Dinkins (of whom I'm no fan, by the way). It increased more under Rudy, to be sure, but this popular notion that Rudy reduced crime is unsubstantiated by fact, statistics, or even my own memories of living here from 1991 to the present.
Fewer squeegie guys & panhandlers on the subway in '96 than there were in '93? True. But if that's your "crime reduction" I call bullshit.
10:44 AM
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