Perhaps the most annoying part of Rudy Giuliani's Presidential campaign is the candidate's insistent flogging of 9/11, of the dead of that day and of the heroism of others. Giuliani has managed, with remarkably little public questioning, to clutch at the heartstrings of the nation, and to channel grief and horror into a narrative that places his aspirations to advancement squarely in the center of the national consciousness.

If you think you've seen this before, you have: Giuliani's maneuvering recalls nothing so much as George Bush's 2000 positioning as 'a uniter, not a divider', a branding effort born out of a deliberate misrepresentation of his record in Texas. Of course, then as now, the press disseminated the glowing falsehoods and drowned out any facts that might sow discord with the comfortable storyline. Then as now, the actual record of a republican candidate is one of cronyism and incompetence.

This time around, however, there are some uncomfortable questions occasioned by a pile of corpses sitting squarely on the former mayor's doorstep. These are, of course, the firefighters that rushed into the burning towers on 9/11 with malfunctioning radios, to be killed in their hundreds.

The Real Rudy is taking on the history and asking some questions that the former mayor's speechifying and truthiness have failed to address.

The Albany Project sums up:

It's not exactly a secret that Rudy Giuliani is whoring the 9/11 attacks in his quest for a promotion to the White House. And I suppose you have to feel for the man - it's difficult to hawk mass death in an uplifting and tasteful way.

Too bad he and his supporters aren't even trying. Atrios calls it humping the corpse.

A supporter of Rudy Giuliani's is throwing a party that aims to raise $9.11 per person for the Republican's presidential campaign.

Abraham Sofaer is having a fundraiser at his Palo Alto, Calif., home on Wednesday, when Giuliani backers across the country are participating in the campaign's national house party night.

But Sofaer said he had nothing to do with the "$9.11 for Rudy" theme.

"There are some young people who came up with it," Sofaer said when reached by telephone Monday evening. He referred other questions to Giuliani's campaign.

Nice. That's one way to monetize the death of civilians under your watch. Now, I had always thought that Rudy had reached his personal taste abyss by telling his then-wife about his wish to divorce her via a press conference.

But Rudy, obviously, can dig deeper than that.

Six years ago, terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, killing almost 3,000 New Yorkers in the process, and ripping a hole in our skyline that has yet to be healed. That day, the global normalcy that London, Jerusalem, Madrid, Rome, Tokyo and Berlin are familiar with visited these shores, and is now here to stay.

The question before us today is this: what's the meaning of this event, and how do we best memorialize and commemorate it? Is it like this?

What is appropriate? Is it appropriate for Rudy Giuliani to pimp the dead of 9/11 in a bid for the White House? Is it, for that matter, appropriate for the young republicans to scream terrorism when they're accosted at a bar, more or less (no, it's not)?

What is appropriate, frankly, is to point out one stark fact: the man who ordered, by his own admission, the attack on New York is still free. Osama bin Laden remains beyond the reach of American justice.

Via TheRealRudy.org comes documented, audiovisual evidence of Rudy Giuliani's most recent lie about 9/11.

In an interview, Giuliani made the following claim about the siting of the City's Emergency Command Center in TWC 7:

My Director of Emergency Management recommended 7 World Trade Center.

The response of that unlikely scapegoat, Jerry Bauer:

I have no idea what he's talking about.

Watch the video after the flip.

Susan Milligan of the Boston Globe reports on the danger that Rudy Giuliani's candidacy will end up being defined by a single issue (9/11, of course) and why such an approach could falter down the road, as voters ask for something more -- for instance, an Iraq war policy.

Particular credit to Milligan for mentioning the fact that here in New York there are a lot of people who consider his claim to 9/11 heroism totally fraudulent. The article actually features a nice juxtaposition, citing out-of-state sentiments like this:

"He took control," said Carolyn Mercadante , 70, a Delaware voter who came to see Giuliani speak. "Just the fact that he was such a presence there" in New York the day of the attacks, said 67-year-old Bill Uranko of Middleton, Del., when asked to explain what impressed him about Giuliani's Sept.11 performance. "You could see he was visibly moved by what happened.

...and contrasting them with the far different things you'll hear from New Yorkers, for instance:

Liza's Note:
Please welcome to our humble blogdobe the fierce Ms. Debra Cooper, NYSDems Comittee Chairwoman for the Upper East Side.

She attended yesterday's now infamous "insult to truth" testimony on how she didn't for a minute mislead the public in believing that there was no potential harm in the toxic dust spread about New York City by the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Debra does and amazing job at capturing more than just the soundbites. As she said to me in the email that came with this post, not only did Todd Whitman dance "around her statements about the City government's responsibility for the safety of the first responders, especially in terms of their use of respirators. Unlike her prior statements, today in the hearing she did not make any direct accusations that the City and Guiliani did not do the right thing."

An observation that, as Debra noted later and asked me to share with you, points to Whitman's further coverup in an attempt to help Giuliani's bid for President.

Thanks Deb for covering this for our readers.

Albany's Times-Union has a really good article on how Verizon is trying to get away with defrauding the state of million dollars in emergency government subsidies it should not have collected from the government after 9/11.

The article outlines it's 'double-dipping' accounting:

Auditors found that Verizon failed to tell the federal government just how much a private insurance settlement paid the company for its emergency 9/11 repairs.

Claims already covered by insurance and non-emergency repairs that didn't qualify for full reimbursement weren't all that state auditors questioned. They also disallowed almost $21 million in expensed straight time pay for employees and about $35 million for other costs that did not meet audit evidence standards.

In all, Verizon claimed more than $230 million more than the plan allowed and, as a result, collected almost $39 million more than it was entitled for emergency repairs, auditors concluded.

The auditors' report also said Verizon delayed or tried to obstruct the audit team's effort to document Verizon's claims. "As the audit progressed, we encountered serious difficulties in obtaining information from Verizon on such key items as labor and insurance proceeds. During the course of the audit, the latter issue developed into the single most significant topic," the auditors wrote in their report.

It would take over a year for the auditors to obtain documentation of Verizon's $825 million insurance settlement for all its 9/11 damages, according to the audit report.

Schumer, who worked to bring federal aid to New York City after 9/11, had no immediate comment on the audit.

The audit report comes at a time when Verizon Chief Executive Ivan G. Seidenberg is being scrutinized by shareholder activists focusing on excessive payments to executives.

I guess Verizon needs all that extra money to pay it's lobbyists so they can give it back to their favorite porkers on Capitol Hill.

A quick look throughout both FollowTheMoney.org and OpenSecrets.org gives us a clue as to how Verizon spent some of that money in Washington and Albany.

(FDNY on 9/11/02)

Just stumbled across a completely infuriating blog post on Room Eight; it appears that the President of tomorrow's Saint Paddy's Day parade, John Dunleavy, has ordered that the FDNY contingent be moved further to the back of the parade, from the very front, for reasons of drunkenness. A sure sign that this is a bad move is that New York's stupidest blogger agrees with it.

Firehouse.com summarizes:

John Dunleavy, president of the parade's organizing committee, ignited this year's brouhaha by moving the FDNY from its traditional spot at the front of the parade to the middle of the pack.

Dunleavy then created a separate brew-haha by complaining that firefighters show up drunk for the parade - and continue drinking all day while in uniform.

Nice going there; first, Dunleavy indicates his gross stupidity by excluding gays and lesbians (because, I guess, no Irish fit that description) and then removes any lingering doubts about his stupidity by literally pushing the FDNY to the back of the bus. Because, and how unheard of that would be for Saint Patrick's Day, some members of the FDNY have a drink or two at the parade, unlike other New Yorkers who watch the events in cool sobriety.

What better way to start the day than with a good Rudy-bashing?

Jacob Weisberg has written for Financial Times a rather brutal assessment of Rudy Guiliani's legacy :

Over time, however, Mr Giuliani’s personal limitations became increasingly evident. Instead of taking on new challenges after his re-election in 1997, he dedicated his second term to vanquishing his remaining enemies. Fran Reiter, who served as a deputy mayor under Mr Giuliani, describes him as depressed and directionless after being sworn in for the second time. “He can get mired in the petty stuff,” Ms Reiter says. “He doesn’t suffer political opponents well and there are times when he doesn’t compromise well.”

In his second term, Mr Giuliani showed himself to be a classic micro-manager, unable to delegate and unwilling to share the spotlight. He had already driven out William Bratton, his triumphant chief of police, in a battle over credit. Mr Bratton’s fate was sealed when he appeared on the cover of Time. Nor could Mr Giuliani abide ridicule. He went to court to try to stop New York Magazine from advertising itself on the sides of buses as “possibly the only good thing in New York Rudy hasn’t taken credit for”.

Now, this article is not what it seems. Read closely and you'll notice this is not so much about Rudy but about who is not Rudy.

The answer? Michael Bloomberg.

I just caught this. On Urban Elephants' thread officially announcing the Giuliani candidacy, 'GOPNY' left a comment that included this remark:

The adoration he's received from 9/11 -- mostly because he gave voice to our city's collective grief -- will disappear quickly in a general election campaign, when people will start questioning why he had a command center at the most vulnerable target in NY; why he never unified command between the NYPD and FDNY on that day (police choppers could not tell firefighters the towers were in danger of collapse); why he took no action to improve the repeaters on the firemen's radios (something that had been warned about well, well, before 9/11); why Bernie Kerik was essentially AWOL from One Police Plaza and basically acting as Rudy's "bodyguard" that day; why he changed command centers at least three times on 9/11; why he exposed nearly every city official under him to attack by leading the parade of them up from lower Manhattan...

Now where have I heard that exact same litany of Rudy's 9/11 failings before?

Kidding, actually - much of that comes from Wayne Barrett's excellent work...and even Republicans are forced to notice.