Bada & Bing: A Love Story

A number of people have pointed to the Crazy Ferret Rant in Micahael Wolff's Vanity Fair profile of Crazy Rudy. Well, I finally got around to reading the thing and there was another passage that I think it's far more important to keep in mind. Wolff:

[Bernie] Kerik is from Paterson, New Jersey, where I'm from. He came to live in a house in the suburb just down the road from where my parents lived. I knew or had heard the same stories everyone else—my parents and my parents' friends—had heard. Which it seems impossible Rudy would not have heard, too. And if, somehow, he hadn't heard them, we know now from Rudy's own grand-jury testimony that he was, in fact, officially told—though, he says, it didn't quite register. In other words, one of the most experienced prosecutors of organized-crime figures has spelled out for him what is widely rumored—that his corrections chief and prospective police commissioner might be Mobbed up—and he doesn't get it. Yup. And then goes on to become business partners with the guy. And then becomes his sponsor for high federal office.

Let's not even get into the nature of Rudy's tolerance for whatever Kerik was into, and just focus on Rudy's sense of impunity—he's got no sense of caution. (A likely implosion point for the Rudy campaign is Kerik's anticipated trial for tax fraud and providing false information to federal authorities when he was vetted for the job of homeland-security chief, which Rudy sponsored him for.) It's about getting away with it. It's waving the red flag. It's his assumption that everybody is a pantywaist, except him.

Does this remind you of anyone? And no, I'm not talking only Bush. I'm talking Cheney, too. Especially Cheney. I doubt I have to ask anyone here if they want another four years of this crap. I wish I was as sure that the rest of America had had enough of it.

Will Democrats be smart enough to call it like it is: Four years of Rudy Giuliani equals four more years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.