Giuliani's Private Life May Hurt His Run; Firefighters fry Giuliani over 9/11

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Firefighters fry Giuliani over 9/11
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Saturday March 10, 2007 11:46 AM

By MARC HUMBERT

Associated Press Writer

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Ronald Reagan was divorced, had chilly relations with some of his children, and still easily won two terms as president. Rudy Giuliani has been thrice married and twice divorced, has chilly relations with his children, and wants to be elected president.

Twenty-seven years after Reagan became the only divorced candidate to win the presidency, the former New York City mayor is hoping that when it comes to family values, voters will be as accommodating.

They may not be.

Republican strategists say Giuliani's troubled family relationships are likely to hinder his standing among conservatives who already have questions about his positions on social issues. They say the estrangement could raise a question in voters' minds: If Giuliani can't keep his family together, how will he keep the country together?

In fact, Giuliani's support for abortion and gay rights, his backing of gun control measures and his very New Yorkness already had given conservatives pause about his candidacy. He has also marched in gay pride parades, dressed up in drag and lived temporarily with a gay couple and their Shih Tzu.

Then came the stories about his family.

``There's obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife,'' Andrew Giuliani, a 21-year-old student at Duke University, recently told The New York Times.

Standing outside the Los Angeles County sheriff's headquarters on Monday, the former New York mayor faced questions about the estrangement from his son Andrew.

``The more privacy I can have for my family, the better we are going to be able to deal with all these difficulties,'' he said.

America was getting a look at what New York tabloid readers were familiar with from the pre-Sept. 11 world, when Giuliani's planned 2000 Senate campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton fell apart in the face of his prostate cancer and the messy and very public breakup of his marriage to TV personality Donna Hanover.

Judith Nathan was the other woman back then and subsequently became Giuliani's third wife and stepmother to the two Giuliani-Hanover children, Andrew and Christine. Giuliani's first marriage to his second cousin, Regina Peruggi, ended after 14 years in divorce and later an annulment.

That may not wash with today's Republican Party, where religious conservatives hold greater sway than in Reagan's day, said political scientist Gerald Benjamin.

``The mobilization of the Christian right is a movement of contemporary Republican politics,'' said Benjamin, dean of liberal arts and sciences at the State University of New York's New Paltz campus. ``It makes more of a difference now.''

There is another difference.

``Ronald Reagan had a wealth of conservative support based on his record and that made conservative Republicans look beyond any issues with his kids and his divorce,'' said GOP strategist Nelson Warfield. ``Giuliani doesn't bring a wealth of conservative support to the equation.''

Independent pollster Lee Miringoff said Giuliani's request for privacy is unlikely to be heeded given that private lives have become fair game in politics. ``It's become a fact of life,'' said Miringoff, head of Marist College's Institute for Public Opinion.

For Giuliani, the family flap came at a bad time. He had surged to the front of the GOP pack, pulling ahead of Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

``He's probably the most famous, least known candidate for president we've had in a long time,'' said Warfield. ``This exposes a side of Giuliani most voters would have no idea about.''

Southern Baptist Convention leader Richard Land, for example, described Giuliani's breakup with Hanover as ``divorce on steroids.'' Hanover learned her husband was seeking a divorce from television after he announced the decision at a press conference.

``To publicly humiliate your wife in that way, and your children - that's rough,'' said Land. ``I think that's going to be an awfully hard sell, even if he weren't pro-choice and pro-gun control.'' Marital history and family values have been bubbling just below the surface of the Republican campaign for months.

At a GOP dinner in Missouri last month, Ann Romney said the biggest difference between her husband, Mitt, and his rivals was that ``he's had only one wife.''

McCain is divorced and has a second wife. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is considering a presidential run, is twice divorced and on Thursday acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair when he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Miringoff said Ann Romney's comments may also be designed to blunt concerns about her husband's Mormon faith, given the church's past links to polygamy.

And while Andrew Giuliani has said he is too busy pursuing a possible professional golf career to campaign for his dad, one of Romney's five sons is working on his father's campaign full-time. All Romney's sons, their wives and the candidate's 10 grandchildren have been prominently featured by the campaign.

Giuliani's campaign spokeswoman, Maria Comella, declined to discuss how the former mayor's private life might play out in the campaign other than to say, ``This election is about leadership'' and Americans appear to have embraced Giuliani's ``optimistic vision and reputation as a problem solver.''

The last New York Republican to make a serious run for the White House, Nelson Rockefeller, lost the GOP nomination in 1964 to Barry Goldwater - in part because of the then-New York governor's divorce and subsequent remarriage.

``'We need a leader, not a lover,' was the slogan used against him,'' recalled Benjamin, a Rockefeller biographer.

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On the Net:

Rudy Giuliani: http://www.joinrudy2008.com/

John McCain: http://www.johnmccain.com/

Mitt Romney: http://www.mittromney.com/

GOP House Minority Whip To Aid Group Seeking Nuclear War, Holocaust

Bruce Wilson: "Christians United For Israel" leader gets promise of red carpet visit in DC from Roy Blunt.

By Bruce Wilson
Posted on March 1, 2007

US House minority whip Roy Blunt flew to San Antonio, last week, to pay tribute to Texas Pastor and apocalyptic nuclear war advocate John Hagee. In a "Christians United For Israel" [CUFI] mailing sent February 26th, Hagee wrote:

I am delighted to announce that Roy Blunt is a strong supporter of Israel and following our conversation about CUFI has offered to gather groups of Congressmen in his office any time I come to Washington D.C. in the future.

Blunt is not the only politician to have courted Hagee, who had a private meeting with Senator John McCain in late January to discuss Israel and "other matters." McCain has recently said, of US tensions with Iran, that the situation could be "armageddon"

John Hagee, one of several alleged religious influences on George W. Bush, has characterized liberal Jews who do not agree with his political views as "poisoned" and is a strong proponent for a "preemptive" ( or unprovoked ) US and Israeli nuclear attack against Iran. In "Jerusalem Countdown," Hagee's latest book that has so far sold over 1.1 million copies, Hagee says the Holocaust and historical persecution of the Jews is a divine punishment for the "disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, as is antisemitism... Their own rebellion [against God] had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come." ( Jerusalem Countdown, pages 92 and 93, paperback edition ).

[image: The Holocaust, part of divine plan ?]
The Holocaust also served as a divine mechanism, suggests Hagee in the book, to scare Jews into moving to Israel where he seems to feel they properly belong, as a necessary, magical human precondition that must be in place before the Rapture, that will grant Christians physical immortality in Heaven, can occur. In Hagee's view, after Christians are "Raptured" to Heaven, Israeli Jews will be mostly killed in the End-Time apocalyptic conflict the Texas pastor has also formed a lobbying group to -- apparently -- encourage.

In a recent Charisma Magazine issue John Hagee, in a piece entitled "The Coming Holy War," wrote : "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons."

On July 19, 2006, at a CUFI sponsored Washington DC event called "A Night to Honor Israel," with GOP Party head Ken Mehlman and US GOP Senators Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, John Cornyn, and Kay Bailey-Hutchinson ( President George W. Bush sent recorded greetings to the event ) , Pastor John Hagee declared:

"The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West... a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation [...] and [the] Second Coming of Christ."

As recounted by Terje Langeland, reporting for the Colorado Springs Independent in 2003, one of Pastor John Hagee's CUFI board members, George Morrison, expresses his sense of how Israeli and Israeli Jews will fare in the apocalytpic scenario Hagee and others long for:

"Morrison, whose casual, folksy manner belies his apocalyptic beliefs, already sees signs that the End is approaching. The European Union, he says, might be the alliance of nations that according to prophecy will join the Arabs to wage war against Israel during the final days.

"Great wars will begin to take place" Morrison says in a matter-of-fact voice. "Those wars are going to involve nukes."

The extent of the destruction will prompt Jesus to return in order to stop it, Morrison believes. Unfortunately, he says, many Jews will be killed.

"It's another Holocaust, if you will" Morrison says. "

[image, above : Hiroshima survivor's drawing of the bombing's aftermath, from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum]

Many Christian Premillenial Dispensationalists -- the theological persuasion Pastor John Hagee belongs to -- believe that the majority of the Jews currently living in Israel will be killed in the period of warfare that follows the "Rapture," when "believing" Christians ( fundamentalist Christians, that is ) are bodily transported up to safety in heaven. The standard interpretation is that 2/3 or more of Israeli Jews will be slaughtered during this period but that a righteous "remnant", who have realized the error of their ways and converted to Christianity, will survive what Christian Zionists often call the "final Holocaust" or the "second Holocaust." Writings and statements made by CUFI board member Jerry Falwell, made in 1984, sum up such views:

Falwell said, in a December 2, 1984 sermon: "Millions of Jews will be slaughtered at this time but a remnant will escape and God will supernaturally hide them for Himself for the last three and a half years of the Tribulation, some feel in the rose-red city of Petra. I don't know how, but God will keep them because the Jews and the Chosen People of God." (December 2, 1984 sermon)"

From a pamphlet by Jerry Falwell entitled “Armageddon and the Coming War with Russia." :"the stage is rapidly being set, even today in the Middle East, for the final conflict. Russia will invade Israel, communism will be defeated, the antichrist will appear and the 'final holocaust' at Armageddon will consume the Earth." ( as quote by the The Oakland Tribune, October 23, 1984 )

In "Jerusalem Countdown", Pastor Hagee writes, in reference to passages from the Bibles Book Of Isaiah 10:22, 22:

"Who is this remnant [those who will survive] ?

First, it's obvious that all of that remnant is Jewish.....

God promises that by his sovereign grace a "remnant" would be saved by the grace of God, a group of survivors who have the opportunity to receive Messiah, who is a rabbi known to the world as Jesus Christ." ( Jerusalem Countdown, paperback edition, pages 192 and 194 )

This is a continuation of a running series on Pastor John Hagee and his new "apocalypse lobby," CUFI. For the last installment, see:

What Secret "Other Matters" Did McCain Discuss With "Apocalypse Now" Hagee ?

and also these stories:

footnote: What is CUFI ?

Max Blumenthal : Israel, the US, and the Christian Right: The Menage a Trois From Hell

Bill Berkowitz : Holy Warriors Set Sights

on Iran

Esther Kaplan : Christian Zionism all juiced up

Richard Bartholomew : Armey: Bush Believes in Tribulation, but not Trying to Make it Happen

Bruce Wilson : Dick Armey Denies Bush Administration Trying To Provoke "End Times"

Sarah Posner: Lobbying For Armageddon

"As Bush's War Strategy Shifts to Iran, Christian Zionists Gear Up for the Apocalypse"

"Apocalyptic preacher John Hagee says McCain is 'on target'"

"Can Giuliani Be the Armageddon Candidate?"

Bruce Wilson writes for Talk To Action, a blog specializing in faith and politics.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online

Ousted Republican Senator Criticizes Bush on Israel

February 12, 2007 - 10:46PM

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Former Senator Lincoln Chafee criticizes President Bush's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The ousted Republican senator spoke tonight at Brown University, where he landed a job at an institute for international studies after losing his seat to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in November.

Chafee suggested the president was bowing to a faction of evangelical Christians who oppose a Palestinian state. He said he has wondered why the United States has not been a leader in the
process even though Bush has said several times that he supports the peace process.

Chafee cited comments by evangelical Christians who have said they don't think Israel should give up any land to the Palestinians.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Coming GOP war … over the war!

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Posted: December 12, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Patrick J. Buchanan

© 2006

"I believe this is a recipe that will lead to our defeat ... in Iraq," said John McCain. He has a point.

For what does the Iraq Study Group say?

We are not winning this war. Our situation is "grave and deteriorating." Yet we may succeed if only we will withdraw all U.S. combat brigades in 15 months and bring Syria and Iran to the table to resolve the political crisis. This is simply not credible.

Nowhere in this report are there any "disincentives" to cause al-Qaida, the Sunni insurgents, the militias, the Mahdi Army or sectarian death squads to call off their campaigns to inflict a historic defeat on the United States and expel us from Mesopotamia.

The closer one studies the report, the more the truth emerges. These "realists" think Iraq is a lost cause, that Americans will not pay the price in blood, treasure and years to win it. And in this conviction the Baker Commission, too, may be right.

This deepening fissure in the GOP presages a civil war inside the party by 2008, over whether to stay in Iraq – or, if the war has ended in a debacle or defeat, over "who lost Iraq?"

In urging intensified training of the Iraqi army and an expedited withdrawal, the Baker Commission is laying down the predicate for the case that America did not lose this war, Iraqis lost their own war.

This ISG report is less about saving Iraq than about saving the U.S. establishment from being held responsible for the worst strategic blunder in U.S. history. It is about giving Bush and Congress a "decent interval" before Iraq goes down and a Saigon ending ensues.

The neocons are also preparing their defense before the bar of history. Realizing the Baker Commission recommendations point to slow-motion defeat, they are savaging Baker and calling for tens of thousands more U.S. troops to be sent to Baghdad and a new strategy of victory, no matter how much it costs or how long it takes.

If Bush fails to follow their counsel, they will then say: "It was not our fault. It was Bush's rejection of our advice that lost the war."

Neoconservative Ken Adelman, on Sunday's "Meet the Press," was calling for 20,000 to 30,000 more U.S. troops, saying Iraq had been a wise and winnable war, but the administration mucked up what should have been a "cakewalk."

The Democratic establishment, which gave Bush a blank check to take us to war, "to get the issue out of the way" before the midterms in 2002, is also preparing its defense of the role it played in plunging us into Mesopotamia, the "if-only-we-had-known" defense.

"If only we had known then what we know now – that there was no hard evidence of WMD, no hard evidence of al-Qaida ties to Saddam Hussein – we would never have voted for the war." "If only we had known how incompetent Rumsfeld's Pentagon would be in managing the war, we would never have given Bush a green light."

This Kerry-Edwards defense is a version of the 1967 defense advanced by Michigan Gov. George Romney to explain his earlier support of Vietnam. Said Romney, "I was brainwashed" during a trip to Vietnam, prompting the cruel retort of Sen. Eugene McCarthy, "In Romney's case, a light rinse would have sufficed."

The Democrats' defense begs these questions: Why didn't you know? Why didn't you find out? Why didn't you do your constitutional duty and refuse the president the power to go to war until he had convinced you that only war could spare the republic worse horrors?

What the Baker Commission is ultimately all about is providing political cover for a bipartisan retreat from Iraq.

For what was the one issue the Iraq Study Group would not and will not address? The crucial question: Was the Iraq war a blunder to begin with? The commission seeks at all costs to avoid the judgment of the nation that today's establishment that took us into Iraq served America as badly as the Best and Brightest who marched an earlier generation into Vietnam, then cut and ran and called it "Nixon's War."

The media are celebrating the ISG for its "bipartisanship" and the "consensus" achieved. But was it not a bipartisan consensus that produced the war: a Democratic Senate failing in its duty to ascertain the necessity of a war to be launched by a Republican president, because Democrats feared that telling a popular president "no" would reinforce the party's reputation as being soft on national security?

The people who were right about Iraq were those who rejected bipartisanship to warn that invading Iraq was an unnecessary, unwise and, yes, even an unjust war that would inflame the Arab and Islamic world against us. Unsurprisingly, this group had no representative on the Baker-Hamilton Commission.


Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Now a political analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of seven books.

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) wandering the halls of Senate office buildings in his jammies

Pajama Party ... or Not.
By Mary Ann Akers
Roll Call Staff
December 4, 2006

We had a number of reports Friday that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) was wandering the halls of Senate office buildings in his jammies.

Why is an elite accused serial child molester still free and awaiting trial after nearly four years?

A christianist is political designation for someone on the far right and not to be confused with a real Christian.
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Yet another Republican Christianist pedophile (though not yet in rehab)
Submitted by lambert on Wed, 2006-11-29 22:07.

pedophiles | Republicans

OC Weekly:

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office claims that sex-crime prosecutions are a top priority. So why is one accused serial child molester still free and awaiting trial after nearly four years? One answer might be connections. Jeffrey Ray Nielsen is not merely a former intern in the DA’s office. He’s a prominent Republican activist in a county controlled by the Republican Party, a man with close ties to the former and current heads of that party; Huntington Beach Congressman Dana Rohrabacher; and Michael Schroeder, adviser to the county’s top law enforcement officials, DA Tony Rackauckas and Sheriff Mike Carona. Nielsen preached the Bible, and berated liberals and homosexuals alike.

Naturally. I can't quote the letters to "Billy." Twisted, sad, pathetic, manipulative, and, also naturally, very authoritarian.

“He tried to brainwash me,” says Billy, who is now married. “He was very controlling.”

As authoritarians do tend to be. Another case of Winger Projection Syndrome. NOTE Say, how's that Ethics Committee report on the Foley Affair coming? Or is that another Republican mess the Dems are going to have to clean up?

» Corrente front page | lambert's blog

http://www.correntewire.com/yet_another_republican_christianist_pedophile_though_not_yet_in_rehab

A Republican Takes the Lead on Iraq

BLOG | Posted 11/27/2006 @ 01:30am

John Nichols

In radio and television interviews since the election, I have argued repeatedly that the November 7 vote did not just empower Democrats to do the right thing with regard to the Iraq debacle. It also freed up Republicans -- particularly Senate Republicans who have long been ill at ease with the neoconservative nonsense peddled by the Bush administration.

Now that the votes have been counted, the American people are ready for swift steps to extract U.S. forces from a no-win situation.

Yet, while Democratic leaders talk of "going slow," smart Republicans are recognizing the political opening and seizing it.

Case in point: Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel's opinion piece in Sunday's Washington Post.

Hagel has long been blunter than his Democratic colleagues about the disaster that the Iraq occupation has become for the U.S. The Nebraska Republican was making comparisons between the Vietnam War, in which he served, and the Iraq imbroglio months ago -- at a point when most Senate Democrats were holding their tongues.

Hagel has now taken the mightly leap of declaring that it is time to "form a bipartisan consensus to get out of Iraq."

"We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam," Hagel writes in the Post. "Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.

While I might disagree with Hagel about the "honorable intentions" of the invasion and occupation, he gets no challenge from this quarter on his observations that the war has been "misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged" and that the Bush administration's approach has been characterized by "arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam."

Hagel is making precisely the case for withdrawal that Congressional Democrats should be offering at this point:

"The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and world standing has been devastating. We've already spent more than $300 billion there to prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still spending $8 billion per month. The United States has spent more than $500 billion on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our effort in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, partly because we took our focus off the real terrorist threat, which was there, and not in Iraq," the Nebraskan argues. "We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years."

Now, with a new Congress about to charge, Hagel writes, "It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq."

Democrats should be asking themselves: Why is a Republican taking the lead on the issue that played such a pivotal role in putting Democrats in charge of the House and Senate?

The honest answer is an unsettling one.

Right now, Hagel is sounding more realistic and responsible than most if not all of the Democrats who are positioning themselves for 2OO8 presidential runs. Indeed, with Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, the first senator to call for an withdrawal timeline, out of the running, Democrats could use a candidate who speaks as directly as does Hagel about the need to get out of Iraq. While it is true that Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who may or may not be running, is a Democrat who has started to make some of the right noises, Obama has not begun to equal the directness of Hagel's declaration that: "The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose."

This is not to say that Hagel, who entertains presidential ambitions of his own, should switch parties. He's still a domestic-policy conservative, and something of a hawk on foreign policy. Yet, he is the one saying that: "If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder -- one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead."

If they are outflanked by Republicans like Hagel on the central issue of our time, Democrats will also pay a high price. They will lose the popular support and the moral authority that their November 7 successes gave them. And Americans, who polls show are ready for rapid withdrawal, will give their support to the leaders who are willing to say not just that it is time to bring the troops home but also, as Hagel does, that it is time for the U.S. to radically alter its approach to the Middle East.

Would that the Democratic leadership would say, as Hagel admit, that, "America finds itself in a dangerous and isolated position in the world. We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. Unfortunately, that perception is gaining credibility in the Muslim world and for many years will complicate America's global credibility, purpose and leadership. This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed as the world seeks a new geopolitical, trade and economic center that will accommodate the interests of billions of people over the next 25 years. The world will continue to require realistic, clear-headed American leadership -- not an American divine mission."