Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

Can we all share a moment of silence for Mr. 9/11, otherwise known as Rudy Giuliani, please?

Okay, yeah, I couldn't make it through that moment without laughing either.

Yes, it's sadly time to say a very sad goodbye... okay, it's time to just say goodbye... to America's Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani. It seems that the Republican primary in Florida today didn't go so well for ol' Rudy. And in the wake of the ass-kicking he received in the sunshine state, he's reportedly dropping out of the presidential race.

Can I just take a minute here to say... nice freaking strategy, dude. Rudy put all his eggs in one basket... Florida. He bet his entire bid for the presidency on winning Florida and having that catapult him to the Republican nomination. Yeah... that went well for the guy. Ol' Rudy finished a distant third to primary winner John McCain and Runner-up Mitt Romney.

With 95% of the precincts reporting in, the count is:

McCain 677,865 (36%)
Romney 582,806 (31%)
Giuliani 275,676 (15%)
Huckabee 253,886 (14%)
Paul 60,583 (3%)
Thompson 21,868 (1%)

I just have to laugh and consider this to be a case of Lady Karma coming around and kicking Rudy in the ass. Giuliani, who mentions 9/11 more often than even Dubya, built his reputation and launched his White House run (such as it was) on his... ahem... "leadership" in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Giuliani cultivated an image of himself as being a hero, being right there in the trenches alongside the workers at Ground Zero, trying to single-handedly rebuild New York.

"I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers ... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

Yeah, not so much actually. While many of the Ground Zero workers have become incredibly sick and others have died, Giuliani seems to be in perfect health. Why is that? Oh yeah, because despite what Rudy says, he was actually very seldomly at Ground Zero. According to a report by the New York Times, between September 17 and December 16 2001, Mr. 9/11 spent a grand total of 29 hours at Ground Zero while workers labored through 12-hour shifts with improper breathing equipment that has lead to the illnesses many of them face today. For Rudy to say that he is "one of them" is demeaning to those that actually were there and is offensive to those who are ill and those who have died because of their exposure to the toxins in the air at Ground Zero.

And as for Rudy's leadership? Another well-cultivated myth. Ignoring the advice of many experts in the wake of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Rudy never properly updated the communications equipment used by the police and fire departments. The lack of functioning communications equipment led to the deaths of more than 100 firefighters that had been trapped in the building when it collapsed. And despite the warnings of the experts, Giuliani insisted on locating the Office of Emergency Management on the 23rd floor of the World Trade Center... because it was within walking distance of City Hall. Great planning. Great leadership. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I think Rudy's failure as a presidential candidate, who pretty much campaigned exclusively on the fact that he was the mayor of New York when the 9/11 attacks went down, is entirely laughable. He ran is campaign like he ran the Mayor's office... kind of half-assed, never doing anything very well.

So goodbye Rudy... I'm so not going to miss you. And judging by the election results, not many other people will either.

And as a bonus, here are Keith Olbermann's thoughts on Rudy Giuliani. This is a bit of an older clip, but still very worth the view.



~Kevin S.