Ron Paul gives Rudy a reading list; Foreign Policy for Dummies should top it

While I'm in an anti-Rudy mood (when am I not?), I wanted to bring you this footage from CNN's Cafferty File.

As usual, Jack Cafferty takes aim at ignorant, arrogant or ill-informed Republicans; three hats that America's Mayor wears quite well.

In this footage, Cafferty gets viewer reaction to Congressman Ron Paul's assigning Rudy Giuliani a reading list. Paul's press conference really did make for good political theater, because it had the added value of being true.

Whoever wrote in and said that he was "sick and disgusted" and the hoots, hollers and wild applause after arrogantly trying to dismiss Paul's remarks about the root causes of 9-11.

I'm glad that Paul is not withering in the face of criticism from within his own party about the war. Paul represents a dying breed in American politics (much like Joe Lieberman) - minority voices that are not only afraid to speak out and to stand up to the leadership within their own party.

That takes political courage, and I applaud Paul for having something that most do not in contemporary American politics.

Bill Maher on Ron Paul & Jerry Falwell

On Friday night, Bill Maher had plenty to say about Rep. Ron Paul's remarks during Tuesday's GOP "debate."

Maher and his guests were right on the money - lots of interesting points from this discussion.

Paul discusses what other GOP candidates (or DemocratIC ones, for that matter) won't, and that's the root causes of 9-11. As Maher so adeptly points out, Paul is the only current Republican Presidential Candidate who doesn't readily accept the prepackaged pap the the Bush administration has been poisoning our political discourse with since 9-11.

To hear Republicans tell it, and Giuliani was the first to pounce (since he thinks he owns the 9-11 "franchise"), you'd think that Paul lit an American flag on fire while shouting "Hail Osama!"

The fact is, no one has really taken the time to evaluate in any meaningful way why 9-11 happened in the first place. (If any of our politicians have, they haven't discussed it publicly that I've heard.) It's simply easier to say, "They hate us for our freedoms and our way of life. We're good, they're evil."

Giuliani did it first, and now others are trying to spin what Paul said by implying that he meant we invited 9-11 (Giuliani did this right after Paul's remarks during the debate). That's NOT AT ALL what Paul said. What Paul meant by his remarks is that by sticking our noses arrogantly into so many other country's business, we have made ourselves a prime target. Paul was not being unpatriotic. Republicans are now trying to Al Gore Paul with another "I invented the Internet" moment.

What's most outrageous of all is the Republican movement to exclude Paul from future debates. How... American!

The fear and war mongering from this debate is about what I'd expect from a group of Republican Presidential Candidates, but Tuesday's debate took it to a whole new level. Mitt Romney's suggestion that we need to "double the size of Guantanamo [the detention center at our Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where we are holding enemy combatants and prisoners of war]" is the most asinine thing I've heard so far in this young 2008 campaign.

I'm already sick of the line "they'll follow us here," which is being used ad nauseam by this administration to scare the living shit out of people. Bush's cabal has been doing it since 9-11, and to often dramatic success. Actually, this is a toned-down version of what Cheney was saying over and over and over again while campaigning around the country prior to the '04 election - "We are the only party that can keep you safe," or a close variant of that.

If there's any hope for this country at all, then that type of absurd political lying is over. At the very least, I'd like to think that this country is sick and tired of Karl Rove's brand of politics. We'll know soon enough.

Maher also points out one other interesting aspect of Tuesday's debate - health care, education and environment questions were all not surprisingly absent from the debate - not ONE question from any of those categories. Yet, those are three of the most important topics that we must address in aggressive ways in the next administration.

Of course, the WSJ's John Fund points out, "that's [due to] the moderator," and Maher quickly shot back "like a presidential candidate can never answer a question that isn't asked." True enough.

And if you want to stick with Fund's moderator argument, the debate was hosted by Fersatz News, so of course the questions were going to play terrorism and homeland security to the hilt.

One other quick clip from Maher's show - his tribute to Jerry Falwell...

Line of the night (by Maher): Jerry Falwell found out that you could launder your hate through the cover of God's will.

A-men.

America's Mayor Millionaire knows preciously little about foreign policy

I really got a kick out of this one last night - it's Rudy Giuliani showing the world that he knows next to nothing about foreign policy.

Rep. Ron Paul sounded as good as anyone on the stage when it came to the War in Iraq, terrorism and 9-11. There is a fundamental difference (and flaw) about what people like President Bush, Giuliani and John McCain think about Iraq and Al-Qaeda. They think we were attacked because "they hate our freedom; they hate our way of life." Certainly that no doubt plays a part in it, but the real decision to attack America came following Desert Storm. Remember that war? That was the war that was over in a few months, resulting in less than 400 American combat deaths. It was a war we had a lot more legitimate reason for fighting. (And even that could be argued, looking back on it.)

Osama bin Laden has said so - the reason to attack America was because American troops were based in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden, right or wrong, considered this a violation of the Muslim holy land. (A footnote to that - in 2005, President Bush removed U.S. troops from Saudi soil. I wonder why?)

Anyway, what really surprised me, at least a little, was how quickly Rudy pounced on Paul's answer. Really, I shouldn't have been surprised - 9-11 is Rudy's sacred cow, his baby. No one could possibly know more about 9-11 and the reasons behind it than America's Mayor. He arrogantly intoned that "having lived through 9-11" he was offended at Paul's remarks.

Too bad Paul's points come directly from the bi-partisan (but flawed) 9-11 Commission Report.

Paul's campaign manager wasted no time jumping on the mayor.

"Rudy Giuliani has tip-toed around the issues of abortion, guns and marriage. The only issue he has left is security, and he doesn't even get that right," said campaign chairman Kent Snyder. "It is clear from his interruption that former Mayor Giuliani has not read the 9-11 Commission Report and has no clue on how to keep America safe."

I can guarantee you one thing - Giuliani was no more offended last night at Paul's remarks than I was when Rudy attempted to postpone the New York City mayoral election in 2001 so there could be a "transition period," to which all of the candidates for mayor suggested he was off his rocker. He was.

I don't question the fact that 9-11 is Giuliani's strength, and that he did a good job managing the crisis. But, there are a whole lot of warts concerning the mayor's behavior before, during and after 9-11 that had better come up during the campaign. Why? Because, just like when Kerry ran as a Vietnam Vet during '04, Giuliani is going to run on 9-11, 9-11, 9-11 and 9-11 with a little salad dressing of other issues to go with the appetizer, first course, second course, salad and dessert, which will all be 9-11. If Rudy chooses to do that, so be it, but he'd better be prepared to answer some questions about 9-11 then.

I'll go on record right now as saying I don't think the press will do it, though. Thus far, the press coverage of Giuliani has been identical to that of President Bush's in his first term: "He took us through 9-11, and he's doing a good job. Let's move on."

America ill-afford to suffer through such piss-poor press coverage. Stay tuned on that one, and we'll see how it plays out.

Rudy has historically told some whoppers since 9-11, and it gets virtually ignored in the "liberal" press. My favorite one was during his keynote speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention, when he was describing what he told then-NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik: "I said, 'thank God George Bush is our president.'" Too bad, as Al Franken points out, there's not one mention of it in his autobiography. In fairness, I'm yet to read that book (it's pretty far down on my reading list), but Franken's books are researched pretty thoroughly, and I've no reason to doubt him.

We'll see how far the Bush cheerleading goes into this campaign.

I for one won't let Rudy's already outrageous quotes be forgotten, most notably how if a Democrat is elected to the White House in 2008 we'll "be on defense" in the War on Terrorism, but if a Republican is elected, "We'll remain on offense." No word on what he calls invading Iraq in the wake of 9-11, a country that had nothing to do with the attacks.

We might as well have invaded Antarctica.