Matt Taibbi takes an awfully dim view of Rudy Giuliani in a recent Rolling Stone article entitled Rolling Stone : Giuliani: Worse Than Bush

Taibbi is an amusing and insightful writer, so the whole thing is worth reading, but here is one of the better paragraphs:

Yes, Rudy is smarter than Bush. But his political strength — and he knows it — comes from America’s unrelenting passion for never bothering to take that extra step to figure shit out. If you think you know it all already, Rudy agrees with you. And if anyone tries to tell you differently, they’re probably traitors, and Rudy, well, he’ll keep an eye on ’em for you. Just like Bush, Rudy appeals to the couch-bound bully in all of us, and part of the allure of his campaign is the promise to put the Pentagon and the power of the White House at that bully’s disposal.

And another one:

In his years as mayor — and his subsequent career as a lobbyist — Rudy jumped into bed with anyone who could afford a rubber. Saudi Arabia, Rupert Murdoch, tobacco interests, pharmaceutical companies, private prisons, Bechtel, ChevronTexaco — Giuliani took money from them all. You could change Rudy’s mind literally in the time it took to write a check. A former prosecutor, Giuliani used to call drug dealers “murderers.” But as a lobbyist he agreed to represent Seisint, a security firm run by former cocaine smuggler Hank Asher. “I have a great admiration for what he’s doing,” Rudy gushed after taking $2 million of Asher’s money.

The Republicans look like they have another old white guy running for their nomination. But, in a twist that might require the GOP to do some acrobatics with their standard rhetoric, the new candidate is Hollywood actor and lawyer, Fred Thompson.

(Note: I was doing a little rummaging around the Internet to check some background and have to say, I appreciated this piece of Thompson’s on Red State with respect to allegations that he is too friendly to trial lawyers and hostile to “tort reform.”)

It’s irrelevant fluff, but I’m a sucker for it. The AP has an article entitled Music tastes of the candidates. The responses, in order of my personal preferences as to their musical responses:

1. Barack Obama – Soundtrack to “Ray” (Ray Charles music)
2. John Edwards – U2
3. Mike Huckabee – Evanescence
4. Mitt Romney – Roy Orbison
5. John McCain – “Sounds of Summer – The Very Best of the Beach Boys.”
6. Dennis Kucinich – Willie Nelson
7. Chris Dodd – Soundtrack to “Jersey Boys.” (Early 60s pop/rock I believe.)
8. Tom Tancredo – Frank Sinatra
9. Bill Richardson – George Strait “50 Number Ones”
10. Hillary Clinton – “Into White” by Carly Simon
11. Rudy Giuliani – Verdi’s “Macbeth”
12. Duncan Hunter – “country and gospel”
13. Sam Brownback – Michael W. Smith
14. Joe Biden – “My sister’s playlist”

And, might I add, Biden is a tool for responding with the most blatant non-answer.

Update Dirty Laundry digs a little deeper into the relevance of the choices by candidates Obama, Clinton, and Edwards.

In the Agora has a post entitled Where do you stand on evolution? The post notes that three of the Republican hopefuls don’t believe in evolution — Sen. Sam Brownback, Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Rep. Tom Tancredo. Anyone who is so anti-science as to not believe in evolution just flat out can’t be trusted with the Presidency.

I had MSNBC on as I was getting changed after work, thinking I was going to hear about the upcoming GOP debates. Instead, a couple of conservatives were having a man-crush over Fred Thompson — he has great communication skills, they said. It occurs to me that John Edwards could really benefit from Fred Thompson gaining momentum in the GOP primary. That would have the potential to short circuit a lot of the talk about Edwards’ lack of experience. In a couple of essential ways, they would resemble one another — at least in terms of the horse race. They are both one-term Senators whose primary asset seems to be an ability to communicate well. Thompson used his skills to entertain us in the movies while Edwards used his skills to represent those who had been hurt or killed. Both made a lot of money at what they did.

Just a thought.

For some reason — and maybe it’s just the media I end up consuming — I’ve heard a lot more about the Democratic Presidential nomination race than that of the Republicans. Gallup has conducted a national poll and Frank Newport wrote an article entitled Inside the Republican Vote for President.

Republican candidates will hold their first debate in California on Thursday. The poll is comprised of 1,252 Republicans and Republican leaning independents in March and April. The results for those scoring above 2% are:

Rudy “Thrice Married” Giuliani – 35% (3 wives)
John “Weathervane” McCain – 20 (2 wives)
Fred “Hollywood” Thompson – 11 (2 wives)
Newt “Cheated on More Wives than Clinton” Gingrich – 8 (3 wives)
Mitt “Varmint Hunter” Romney – 6 (1 wife).

I kid because I love. But, it is a bit ironic that the Mormon candidate in the Party of Family Values is the only one who has had only one wife.

I was rooting for McCain back in the 2000 primaries and would have voted for him over Gore in the generals. But, knowing him better now and really disliking his Iraq war policy and his kissing up to the Dominionist Christians in his party, he is probably the person on that list I would choose last. I still hold Gingrich’s role in the Clinton impeachment against him and suspect he started the ball rolling as far as the DeLay style corruption in Congress that has been exposed over the last couple of years. I like Fred Thompson’s TV characters, but otherwise don’t know anything about him. (And, to tell you the truth, I always get Fred Thompson confused with another actor — the guy in War Games who said, “Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good.”) I hear Giuliani is something of a hot head and has a Napoleon complex, but I’m willing to give him a listen. And, I don’t know much about Romney other than the fact that he’s backpedaling quickly from the positions that made him electable in Massachusetts. Looking at his Wikipedia entry, he is apparently scary-smart — which would be a nice change of pace from the past 6 years.

Barack Obama gave his speech announcing his candidacy for the Presidency of these United States from Springfield, Illinois. I have something of a man crush on Abraham Lincoln, so Mr. Obama gets bonus points from me for that. And, the man gives a good speech. If you want gear, my wife is selling Obama paraphernalia at Cafe Press. Personally, I’m not yet entirely sold on Obama, but I am certainly listening.