Rudy, I don't care if you're America's Mayor, you ain't my mayor no more

... and no matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there.  Did they search carefully enough?  Didn't they search carefully enough?

This election season has angered me to no ends, as my loyal readers already know, but no one person pisses me off more than Hizzoner Rudy. Yes, even more than Bush, Dick and the evil, evil Kar Rove.

(click here to continue)

"But why Giuliani?", you might ask. Dubs is the one who got us in the Iraq mess without a plan to win the peace, let Osama and Zarqawi get away, built up a massive deficit and has rounded up support using fear and distortion? Why not Cheney for, well, being Dick Cheney, and for using his daughter for political purposed then feign outrage when Kerry happened to mention her? Why not Kar Rove for masterminding devisive, underhanded campaigns and leading American political discourse to the crapper?

Why Rudy? Because he knows better. Because it isn't him. Because he is allowing himself to be used by Rove & Co.

Now, I don't feel the same outrage, sincere or otherwise, expressed by the Kerry/Edwards camp over the above quote. He was just doing his best to spin and it's just indicative of how ridiculous he has become. It's classic Rove - let his surrogates do the smearing (just ask Ann Richards, Max Cleland and John McCain) and take the fall for any negative publicity. Rudy takes all the blame, Bush comes out clean.

Back in September 2001, like most other New Yorkers, I loved Rudy. He was there, he went down to Ground Zero, he helped bring the City together. He gave the New York exactly what it needed after 9/11. And it didn't hurt that he left New York a much safer city than before he came into office.

Now though, he's flying around, spin doctoring on cable news networks and parroting Bush talking points. Why? Because the GOP has allowed the neocons to take over, and Rudy has a consulting firm to look after. If he has any further political ambitions, or he wants his consulting firms to get cushy contracts, he has to do the dirty work for Bush and Rove.

Of course, Ah-nuld and McCain are doing the same. Ah-nuld's politics are much, much closer to Kerry than Bush and I can't imagine McCain could ever forgive Bush for the Republican primaries. Yet both men are actively campaigning for Bush. Such is party politics, I suppose. I guess it's more sadness than anger. I, along with many New Yorkers, thought Rudy was one of us. I thought he stood for New York. I thought he was a uniter. But now he's reduced to spouting the predictable anti-Kerry rhetoric. In the same Today Show broadcast in which he blamed the troops for not securing the 380 tons of explosives, he slammed Kerry for exploiting the Bin Laden video for his own politics, then went on to do exactly that. Rudy, just shut up. Shut up and go away, please.

I don't know which is the real Rudy, the one we looked to for leadership 3 years ago, or the one who's making the rounds on cable news shows but I sure do miss the 2001 Rudy.