Rudy

Contrary to the claims of numerous ageist commentators, Rudy Giuliani is not senile — he's always been incompetent.  His reputed "success" as mayor of New York City was grounded in unconstrained, racist policing.  His "response" to the attack on the World Trade Center consisted of showing up at Ground Zero, mouthing platitudes, and working to divert attention from the fact that he'd insisted that the city's emergency response force be headquartered there, despite an earlier terrorist attack.  Marion Barry, even high on smack, could have done just as well.

It's reported that Giuliani cooked up the current confusion in collusion with his pal, Tr*mp.  Even so, Our President couldn't resist taking a swipe at his loyal ally and brand-new legal mouthpiece while aggravating the ongoing gobsmackedness of the press.  (By the way, Tr*mp too is not senile — even though Dr. Ronny Jackson said he's not.)

Confusion, obfuscation, and chaos have served Our President well over the course of his career, both in business and in government; and the current brouhaha may serve the purpose of making evidence collected in the raids on Michael Cohen's offices appear to be "just another version" of events.  While the truth may be "out there," the "truthiness" is where modern political battle lines are drawn.

Enablers

Christie
Obviously Chris has abandoned all hope of continuing his political career, as signaled by his approval of a 27¢ per gallon gasoline tax increase for New Jersey.  Maybe Tr*mp will allow him to be a talking head on that new news network — albeit neither loyalty nor gratitude seem to figure much into Tr*mp's "temperament."

Giuliani
Rudy was a racist when he served as Mayor of New York City; but these days he's a louder racist.  It's cute how he's out there insisting Tr*mp is a "genius" who can fix the tax code because he's exploited it so well.  (Needless to say, Tr*mp's tax proposal would leave the outrageous breaks for commercial real estate developers intact.)

McConnell & Ryan
Mitch and Paul still seem to have difficulty gagging out support for "their" presidential candidate, but somehow they manage to do so no matter how embarrassing he becomes or how often he contradicts orthodox Republican policy.  Tr*mp may be inconsistent, but he sticks with cutting taxes on the rich — and that's what matters.

Cruz
I guess Ted has come to decide his wife must be ugly and his father really did help plan the assassination of JFK.  How else to explain his endorsement of Tr*mp?  Surely an individual of such high and noble ideals could not have succumbed to political pressure.

Unnecessary Roughness

Governor David Paterson is pissed. Who can blame him?

Okay, he's not especially popular at the moment. He never was. Trying to act responsibly — shutting down underutilized hospitals and nursing homes — was a major political mistake, and the attack ads from 1199 did a lot of damage. Add to that the fact that he was stuck with a totally unfair share of the blame for New York's sleazy and dysfunctional legislative branch, and that he's not exactly a dynamo of charisma, and it was bound to look bad for him.

So it is not surprising that Obama's political staff decided it would be better if he didn't run for governor next time around. Personally, I don't think Giuliani is much of a threat anymore — he kind of has "loser" tattooed on his forehead — but it wouldn't hurt at all to have a stronger Democratic candidate like Andrew Cuomo.

Okay, so the national party sends an emissary to urge Paterson to withdraw. Fine. The problem is in how it was done.

First, it was just plain bad manners not to invite the governor of New York to Obama's speech to Wall Street last week. Second, it was worse that, simultaneously, the President's chief political adviser, Patrick Gaspard, was telling Paterson to pull out of the race. Third, it should not have been Gaspard, the man behind those 1199 attack ads.

Then it gets worse: practically the complete text of the "confidential" conference is leaked to the press, almost immediately, by an "unnamed source" whose name probably is Patrick Gaspard. Obama not only yanked Paterson's legs out from under him, but he pissed on him when he was down. I truly hope the idiots still drooling over our "idealistic young president" are paying attention, but I'm pretty sure they're not.

Paterson could have been persuaded to withdraw gracefully. They could have offered him some ceremonial role at HUD, or made him ambassador to Anguilla, or something. They didn't.

However lacking David Paterson's skills as a chief executive may be, everybody in Albany agrees on one thing about him — he's a nice guy.

He deserved better.

Conventional Republicans

Frankly, I don't get it. The rhetoric hasn't changed -- not even a little bit. Okay, it worked for them in 2000 and 2004, sort of -- if you believe they actually won rather than stole those elections -- but a rational person might ask if using rhetoric associated with eight years of failure is, well, rational.

Mitt Romney took the "liberal as boogieman" rhetoric to what may be a new extreme. It played very well with the convention delegates, of course. The main qualification for representatives to the Republican convention, it seems, is extremism. Mike Huckabee, as we have come to expect, spoke of a choice between good and evil (before rambling off into a story about veterans and school desks.)

Mind you, those were the speeches scheduled before the network coverage began.

Rudy Guiliani, on the other hand, was a lot more effective, and even managed to go close to ten minutes without mentioning 9/11. He was especially effective when attacking Obama's inconsistencies, although the delegates seemed a bit confused when he criticized Obama's change from being against wiretapping to being for wiretapping. Nevertheless, it was one hell of a speech.

Sarah Palin did exactly what she had to do. She read her speech from the teleprompter without stepping on any lines. She and her family are attractive and well-scrubbed, and she delivered the requisite digs against Obama, Washington, and the national media with a brilliant smile. Surprisingly, I heard very little that sounded like a direct appeal to women -- probably a good choice on the part of her speechwriters. Everybody assumes the choice of Palin was a calculated effort to peel away some of the women's vote from the Democrats, so a bit of understatement was in order.