RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Rudy in '08

Rudy Giuliani has named Donald Trump Jr. one of the young stars on his "All-American" fund-raising team

Donald Trump Sr. recently held a fund-raiser for Giuliani at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla.

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Giuliani on the fringes at daughter's graduation
By Heidi Evans
New York Daily News

NEW YORK — Rudy Giuliani was the odd man out at his daughter's graduation, sitting in a last-row balcony seat and slipping out quickly as the rest of the family celebrated.
Caroline Giuliani, the Harvard-bound daughter of Giuliani and his second wife, Donna Hanover, graduated with honors Friday from the prestigious Trinity School in Manhattan.
Family and friends cheered her boisterously. But Dad kept his distance.
The Republican presidential hopeful slid in a balcony door with his third wife, Judith, and security guards as the commencement began and slipped out just as quietly when it ended, without speaking to his daughter and declining to speak with reporters.
Afterward, Caroline Giuliani, 17, beamed with joy but noticeably skipped over her father when asked how she felt about graduating.
"This is a great day," she said. "I am celebrating with my mom, my stepfather [Ed Oster], my brother and other family friends."
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It appears the Gipper has injected himself into the presidential race from the grave. I picked up a copy of the newly released Reagan Diaries and found the following in an entry from Tuesday, June 14, 1988 :
"Jim Kelly NSC came in to report Philippine legis. is giving us trouble on renewing our mil. bases there. And Giuliani (U.S. Attorney) is talking of drawing up an indictment against Marcos. I think he's crazy."

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Matter-eater Man said:

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Giuliani on the fringes at daughter's graduation
By Heidi Evans
New York Daily News

NEW YORK — Rudy Giuliani was the odd man out at his daughter's graduation, sitting in a last-row balcony seat and slipping out quickly as the rest of the family celebrated.
Caroline Giuliani, the Harvard-bound daughter of Giuliani and his second wife, Donna Hanover, graduated with honors Friday from the prestigious Trinity School in Manhattan.
Family and friends cheered her boisterously. But Dad kept his distance.
The Republican presidential hopeful slid in a balcony door with his third wife, Judith, and security guards as the commencement began and slipped out just as quietly when it ended, without speaking to his daughter and declining to speak with reporters.
Afterward, Caroline Giuliani, 17, beamed with joy but noticeably skipped over her father when asked how she felt about graduating.
"This is a great day," she said. "I am celebrating with my mom, my stepfather [Ed Oster], my brother and other family friends."
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Seatle Times

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PJP said:

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PJP said:

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Matter-eater Man said:

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Giuliani on the fringes at daughter's graduation
By Heidi Evans
New York Daily News

NEW YORK — Rudy Giuliani was the odd man out at his daughter's graduation, sitting in a last-row balcony seat and slipping out quickly as the rest of the family celebrated.
Caroline Giuliani, the Harvard-bound daughter of Giuliani and his second wife, Donna Hanover, graduated with honors Friday from the prestigious Trinity School in Manhattan.
Family and friends cheered her boisterously. But Dad kept his distance.
The Republican presidential hopeful slid in a balcony door with his third wife, Judith, and security guards as the commencement began and slipped out just as quietly when it ended, without speaking to his daughter and declining to speak with reporters.
Afterward, Caroline Giuliani, 17, beamed with joy but noticeably skipped over her father when asked how she felt about graduating.
"This is a great day," she said. "I am celebrating with my mom, my stepfather [Ed Oster], my brother and other family friends."
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Seatle Times

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he made an effort to be there....why is that a bad thing?

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PJP said:
I don't think he was trying to be phony. Why is that so hard for you to even possibly acknowledge? Yes, maybe Hanover poisoned the relationship and yes, Rudy is not innocent....but he may still want to be a part of his kids lives even if right now they don't want to be. I hope I never make a mistake with you.....you are one unforgiving SOB.

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PJP said:
That's not true MEM.....you have no idea how vindictive woman

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PJP said:
That's not true MEM.....you have no idea how vindictive woman can be in a divorce .......I hope to God you never have to witness someone close to you go through one.

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Matter-eater Man said:

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PJP said:
That's not true MEM.....you have no idea how vindictive woman can be in a divorce .......I hope to God you never have to witness someone close to you go through one.

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I have. No matter how ugly the divorce most fathers I know still see their kids. Are you saying in your experience it's the other way around?

Rudy's estranged kids & 2nd wife are not acting all revenge filled & poisoned either.No scene was made at the graduation nor have the kids bad mouthed him.

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PJP said:

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Matter-eater Man said:

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PJP said:
That's not true MEM.....you have no idea how vindictive woman can be in a divorce .......I hope to God you never have to witness someone close to you go through one.

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I have. No matter how ugly the divorce most fathers I know still see their kids. Are you saying in your experience it's the other way around?

Rudy's estranged kids & 2nd wife are not acting all revenge filled & poisoned either.No scene was made at the graduation nor have the kids bad mouthed him.

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exactly....they haven't bad mouthed him....just people like you. You don't know what happened behind closed doors. The fact that no one is really talking about it shows me that they may be trying to work on things behind the scenes. I am not defending Rudy, I am simply saying there is probably alot more to this than you are willing to admit. You want to make it black and white that he is the villain and that may not be the case.


At the end of the day I don't really give a fuck whether he talks to his kids or not. That is their business not mine.

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Matter-eater Man said:
I think barring some hidden extra-ordinary circumstances Rudy is what he appears to be. Republican frontrunner=loser. IThat's says more about someones character than for example who their dad was IMHO.

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"I'd establish a border stat program to measure our effectiveness in stopping people from coming over the border," (Giuliani) said. "We have the technology to do it now. But we don't have the accountability tools to measure it, the tools that tell us how many people are we apprehending, how many are getting over, where are they coming over, how do we deploy our resources to stop that. I could accomplish the same results on the border that I did in New York City."

A similar effort aimed at combating terrorists and a bloated federal government would do the same thing, Giuliani said.

"I'd start a terrorist stat program to make sure we are collecting the right information about terrorist threats and make sure it's being disseminated from top to bottom," he said.

"I've promised I will not rehire 50 percent of the positions in the federal government that retire over the next 10 years," Giuliani said. "It would save $23 billion if we did that. But, to do that, you need a program that measures what you are doing and what you're accomplishing. We don't have that now, and because we do not, we don't have accountability in Washington."

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The Man Who Stole 9/11

GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani is hoping to ride his 9/11 experience straight into the White House. But while "America's Mayor" is playing well in New Hampshire, New Yorkers directly impacted by the World Trade Center tragedy are less convinced.

In a recent New York Daily News poll, New Yorkers said they favor current mayor Michael Bloomberg, who hasn't declared his candidacy, over "America's Mayor" by almost 2 to 1.

Howard Lutnick, the CEO of money management firm Cantor Fitzgerald who lost 658 of his employees on 9/11 and whose brother died in the attack, has given Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign $4,600 of his own money over the last two months and has not given the Giuliani campaign a dime. Diny Ajamian, who as Cantor's human resources director worked with families of deceased employees and helped rebuild the company's staff, says she's disgusted by Giuliani's use of 9/11 as a political prop, adding that while Giuliani made plenty of public overtures to Cantor families in the immediate aftermath, he was virtually invisible two weeks later when she went to work for the firm. "It's absolutely disgraceful. He's just a sleazebag," Ajamian says. "I think now the families feel like he left them high and dry."

A rep for a group that aids families of those injured or killed in the WTC seconds that. "Rudy thinks our grief and the hurt we experienced somehow makes us stupid," says Monica Gabrielle, co-chair of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, an organization which assists families affected by 9/11. "Rudy just can't control himself.... He can't acknowledge his failures.... He just can't stop creating his own myth about himself and about that day. The man is in love with his own legend."

But Giuliani's most potent critics are those who became a symbol of bravery after the 9/11 attacks—America's fire fighters. The 280,000 member International Association of Fire Fighter's fund has been at odds with the former mayor since shortly after 9/11, claiming the man now worth as much as $70 million "gave up" on dead firefighters and devoted Ground Zero cleanup efforts to, of all things, recovering gold and silver. Removal of victims' remains amounted, they say, to a "scoop and dump." Tensions heated up again in March, when a draft of a letter explaining the union's decision to snub Giuliani from their 2008 presidential forum was leaked to the press. The union eventually decided to invite him, but the candidate turned down the half-hearted invitation. That was the last straw for the group's president, Harold Schaitberger, who says Giuliani's actions since 9/11 show "disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen."

Of course, none of this has done much to damage Giuliani's long-term national prospects. He retains a healthy lead on his rivals. And the New York Times has even wryly speculated [sub. req.] about the former mayor trademarking "9/11" itself, the idea being that he could then legally prohibit his rivals from drawing on the event in their own terror talk.

Plus, think of the bumper stickers!

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He envisions a system where neither state regulations nor federal tax law push people into expensive plans rich in benefits. Rather, health insurance should be more like car insurance, he said, where people pay out of pocket for minor repairs and maintenance....

Many health policy experts say the individual market will only work well if Americans are forced to buy insurance, thus injecting into the system younger, healthier people who are now uninsured and balancing out sicker, more expensive patients. That was the approach taken by Massachusetts under former Gov. Mitt Romney, one of Mr. Giuliani's rivals for the party nomination. Democratic candidate John Edwards has called for a similar mandate for individuals buying insurance, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, also in the running, is expected to as well.

But Mr. Giuliani rejects a government mandate that all individuals purchase coverage. To do that, he said, the government would have to subsidize the bill for those who can't afford coverage, which would drive up the overall cost. In Massachusetts, the state is subsidizing coverage for poor and low-income families. For example, a family of three earning as much as $51,510 a year could receive a subsidy.

More important, Mr. Giuliani says, is to give consumers more choice. He would supplant state regulations, which require that insurance companies offer benefits ranging from chiropractic care to fertility treatments. Instead, people across the country could buy insurance from any company in any state, meaning they could find cheaper, more basic plans than those now available in their particular state....

"What I would do is change the whole model that we have for health insurance in this country," Mr. Giuliani said. "The problem with our health insurance is it's government- and employer dominated. People don't make individual choices."

in Mr. Giuliani's view, the U.S. health-care system's major problem is a lack of consumer choice. "It's your health; you should own your own insurance," he said in Tuesday's debate. "The reality is that we need a free market."

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Famously loyal, Giuliani chose as his partners longtime associates, including a former police commissioner later convicted of corruption, a former FBI executive who admitted taking artifacts from Ground Zero and a former Roman Catholic priest accused of covering up sexual abuse in the church.
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Giuliani Testified He Was Briefed on Kerik in ’00
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By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Published: March 30, 2007
Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik’s relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik’s appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records.

Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Mr. Giuliani’s testimony amounts to a significantly new version of what information was probably before him in the summer of 2000 as he was debating Mr. Kerik’s appointment as the city’s top law enforcement officer. Mr. Giuliani had previously said that he had never been told of Mr. Kerik’s entanglement with the company before promoting him to the police job or later supporting his failed bid to be the nation’s homeland security secretary.

In his testimony, given in April 2006, Mr. Giuliani indicated that he must have simply forgotten that he had been briefed on one or more occasions as part of the background investigation of Mr. Kerik before his appointment to the police post.
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CNN: Giuliani campaigning on record as 'Mr. 9/11'
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Monday June 11, 2007

CNN's John Roberts announced a new political series on Monday, saying that each week "we'll tell you about a defining moment for one of the presidential candidates." The first installment in the series concerned Rudy Giuliani and 9/11.

After playing a clip of Giuliani insisting, "this war is not a bumper sticker," and pointing out that he has based his entire campaign on his ability to fight terrorism, CNN turned to political reporter Dominic Carter, who covered Giuliani when he was mayor. "Terrorism was not so much on his radar screen," said Carter of Giuliani. "He was more of a law and order mayor."

Carter praised Giuliani's leadership after the 9/11 attack, but questioned his judgment leading up to it, mentioning the controversial siting of Giuliani's emergency management center at World Trade Center Building 7 and "the issue of the radios between the police and fire department," which was a factor leading to the deaths of 342 firefighters when the towers collapsed. The country's largest firefighter union is now leading an anti-Giuliani campaign.

Giuliani has also recently come under heated criticism for ignoring toxic air pollutants in pressing for a rapid cleanup of the World Trade Center site after 9/11,

CNN concluded with former FBI director Louis Freeh -- who worked as a prosecutor in the 80's under then-US Attorney Giuliani and is now a member of Giuliani's campaign team -- calling Giuliani "the best and the brightest."

That phrase, which Freeh used with no apparent sense of irony, comes from the title of a 1972 book by David Halberstam, which detailed the disastrous decisions by seemingly brilliant advisers to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that led the US into a quagmire in Vietnam.
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• Rudy Giuliani raised $17 million in campaign funds in the second quarter, putting the ex-New York Mayor in the lead amongst GOP presidential primary candidates.
  
  Two million of the campaign funds Giuliani raised in the second quarter are for the general campaign and $15 million is for his primary Republican campaign. General funds must be given back to the donors if the candidate does not win the primary election.
  
  Giuliani managed to raise $1 more in than in the first quarter, though he doubled the amount of campaign contributions for the general election. Romney's campaign funds were all for the primary Republican presidential election, suggesting that more candidates view Romney's chances of winning if he can manage to stay ahead of other GOP candidates in the primary race and to do that he needs cash.