Apparently the real heroes of 9/11, the firefighters, have had enough of his lying bullshit. Members of the FDNY along with their union, the IAFF, have created a website and produced a video called Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend.

Here are some quotes from the video:

“He’s not a leader. He is running on 9/11, and it’s all a fallacy,” says Jim Riches, the father of a Sept. 11 victim and a deputy New York fire chief, in the video.

“Rudy has used the horrible events of September 11 to create a persona that is an elaborate fabrication,” says IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger. “He is nothing more than a shameless self-promoter.”

Don’t just watch it to find out the truth about this lying piece of crap, make sure everyone you know watches it.

Click after the jump to watch the video.

(more…)

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She said she had not read clinical reports from the Mount Sinai World Trade Center Screening and Monitoring Program. A preliminary study released last year showed that 70 percent of the first 9,000 workers examined had reported developing some kind of respiratory problem after working on the debris pile.

Does that mean had she never looked at a math book she would be unable to grasp that 2+2=4?

Whitman insists that when she issued her broad statements specifically addressing no one that she was in fact talking to the residents of lower Manhattan and not the Ground Zero workers.

Yeah, Christie was just trying to look out for the residents of Lower Manhattan, can’t we cut her a break?  Except for that time when she made a speech urging residents to have their homes professionally cleaned to remove toxic dust…oh wait, the White House removed that part of the speech.  Scratch that.

You’re doing a heckuva job Whittie, heckuva job.

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In 2002-2003 the EPA led a residential cleanup program for residents whose apartments had been contaminated by the toxic dust.  The only problem is they kept insisting that the air quality in the apartments was safe causing many residents to pass on the cleanup program not wanting to waste government resources.  After all the government was basically telling them they didn’t need the service they were offering.

More than 4,000 apartments in Lower Manhattan were professionally decontaminated in that program, and the agency reported that only a “very small” number of air samples taken in those residences showed unsafe levels of asbestos.

But the agency failed to explain that 80 percent of the air samples were taken after the apartments had already been cleaned.

Oops, did you want us to take the air samples before we professionally cleaned the apartments?

Based on that misleading information only 295 residents and apartment building owners opted to take part in the cleanup program.  A small fraction of the 20,000 apartments that were eligible to participate.

Hillary Clinton who led the subcommittee hearing where the report was made public said, “Residents are understandably reluctant to participate in what they consider to be a waste of time.”  Clinton went on to add that the data in the report painted “a very different picture from what the White House would like us to believe.”

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The headline is priceless.

Wow. Seriously? This actually makes the Hurricane Katrina response look timely. Way to really seize the moment MTA.

Now, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to put more than 25,000 subway motormen, station agents, toll collectors and other employees through a new series of anti-terror sessions run by outside experts. The first classes in the $25 million initiative - featuring such topics as how to spot suicide bombers and identify the newest types of explosives - could start next month, Lewis Schiliro, the MTA’s outgoing director of interagency preparedness, said yesterday.

Lesson one: Listen for people ticking.

Hopefully after they’re finished with this crack resource training they can bring some Iraqis, Israelis and Palestinians over and teach them “how to spot suicide bombers”. No offense, but they don’t seem to be too good at it.

Surely the $25 million will be the key in finally being able to spot those pesky suicide bombers and put an end this once and for all.

In other news, welcome to your new 50% fare hikes.

[Image Source]

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After being called out by Christie Whitman of the EPA, Giuliani tried to cover his ass by admitting that when it came to saftey procedures, “in retrospect, I guess we all should have done it differently.”

Mayor Bloomberg is on record on 9/11 illnesses admitting a direct correlation between the proximity of people working at Ground Zero and their illnesses saying, ” clearly, people who worked on the site . . . the closer they were, the more symptoms they have that are very troublesome.”

More than five years after 9/11 there were still so many toxins at Ground Zero that the continued search for remains had to be called off.

Now for the first time New York City’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, has directly linked a death to exposure to dust from the destruction of the World Trade Center.

In a letter made public yesterday, Dr. Hirsch said that he was certain “beyond a reasonable doubt” that dust from the twin towers contributed to the death of Felicia Dunn-Jones, 42, a civil rights lawyer who was engulfed on Sept. 11 as she ran from her office a block away from the trade center.

She later developed a serious cough and had trouble breathing, and she died five months after the terrorist attack.

Dunn-Jones wasn’t even a first responder or a worker who spent hours, days and weeks exposed to the dust just an innocent woman engulfed in the dust as she ran from her office. Just imagine what those men and women have been going through for the past six years.

Hopefully this will set off a chain of events that will help everyone effected by the toxic dust on 9/11 and at Ground Zero the help they need and deserve.

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At least one person in Giu-Gui’s inner circle is starting to set up and call bullshit on many of his claims. Jerome M. Hauer, New York City’s first emergency management director has said that at least some of Giuliani’s claims about 9/11 and his choices are flat out lies.

One main point of contention is who had the bright idea to put the city’s emergency command center inside WTC7 pre 9/11. The WTC had already been attacked once and many people questioned the decision. Hauer says it wasn’t his first choice for a spot but that Giuliani insisted the command center be in walking distance from City Hall, which he says left him little choice on the matter.

Apparently Giuliani’s campaign attempt to depict his wife (and former mistress) as some sort of modern day Florence Nightingale is a flat out lie.

Mr. Giuliani’s wife, Judith, who was then his companion, also had a role in setting up the center. But last week Mr. Hauer told New York magazine that the campaign’s depiction of her role was “simply a lie.”

The campaign’s Web site said that Mrs. Giuliani had “coordinated the efforts at the Family Assistance Center on Pier 94.”

Indeed, others were at least equally involved in that effort. Rosemary O’Keefe, who was then director of the Community Assistance Unit, said Mrs. Giuliani had helped during the first two days at the pier.

“Judith was a very important part in the very beginning,” Ms. O’Keefe said in an interview. “I ran it 20 hours a day from that point forward.”

As many others have pointed out before on Sept. 10, 2001 Giuliani wouldn’t have been elected class secretary, let alone a real political office. I think we should all be leery of a man who is, in essence, building his entire legacy on what amounts to one incredibly tragic day for the United States.

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Giuliani’s angry rebuke last night was aimed at Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who said the U.S. bombing of Iraq over 10 years contributed to Islamic anger that led to the suicide bombings of the twin towers and the Pentagon.

“That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq,” Giuliani said, his face tense as he stared at Paul. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.”

After the debate Paul said that bombing runs over Iraq to keep Saddam Hussein at bay, sanctions on Iraq, and putting U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia to defend Kuwait “caused hatred” of the U.S. by Muslims.

Paul doesn’t seem to be saying that the 9/11 attacks were in anyway justified, but according to Giuliani apparently it’s abhorrently un-American to even suggest that the actions and decisions of our leaders may have consequences.

Dammit Ron Paul, why do you hate freedom so? Giuliani should have just clipped him right there on stage. Don’t take that shit Rudy. Grab a piece of rubble from 9/11 and bludgeon that freedom hating terrorist lover.  Show him how we really win over hearts and minds.  You can do it Rudy.

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In the days immediately following 9/11 Giuliani was repeatedly warned by the EPA that the air at Ground Zero was unsafe to breathe.  Giuliani repeatedly ignored the warnings.

An examination of Mr. Giuliani’s handling of the extraordinary recovery operation during his last months in office shows that he seized control and largely limited the influence of experienced federal agencies. In doing that, according to some experts and many of those who worked in the trade center’s ruins, Mr. Giuliani might have allowed his sense of purpose to trump caution in the rush to prove that his city was not crippled by the attack.

Administration documents and thousands of pages of legal testimony filed in a lawsuit against New York City, along with more than two dozen interviews with people involved in the events of the last four months of Mr. Giuliani’s administration, show that while the city had a safety plan for workers, it never meaningfully enforced federal requirements that those at the site wear respirators.

At the same time, the administration warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed. And according to public hearing transcripts and unpublished administration records, officials also on some occasions gave flawed public representations of the nature of the health threat, even as they privately worried about exposure to lawsuits by sickened workers.

Well I’m convinced.  Bush and Giuliani are willing to ignore warnings, subvert facts and throw your ass in harms way if they feel like it somehow adds to their legacy.  Somehow it’s not surprising that despite all that we know about his decisions after 9/11 and the suffering that is a direct result of his decisions, he is somehow still the leading candidate the republicans have to offer up in ‘08 so far.

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Well Spitzer is having none of it and through a spokeswoman made it clear that Ferer’s appointment would not be renewed when it ended on July 1.

Other family members of victims of 9/11 also did not take kindly to the story of Ferer’s security skipping, line cutting fiasco.

“She lost her husband on 9/11, and one of the biggest problems that day was lack of security at the airports. You had 19 hijackers with 60-odd driver’s licenses, which allowed them to get on airlines. What good is a badge [if] anyone can get a badge?” said Bill Doyle, head of the Coalition of 9/11 Families.

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Christy Ferer not only doesn’t grasp that concept she also doesn’t understand the concept that people get pissed off when you go all cutsies in any line, not to mention an airport security line.

When the screeners informed her that they made exceptions only for passengers escorted by law-enforcement officers, Ferer set off the metal detector.

She screamed at the TSA officers, the supervisor, her PA guide and, before that, the clerk at the ticket counter, TSA officials said.

A TSA checkpoint supervi sor arrived to “defuse the situation” by letting Ferer cut to the front, Davis said.

“Given her level of agitation, she was ultimately allowed to proceed through the checkpoint,” Davis said. “We weren’t doing her a favor - we were doing everyone else a favor.”

What is Ferer’s response to these allegations? “There’s no way I tried to circumvent that security process,” Ferer said. “I, above anybody, appreciate the security process. If I had known passengers were upset my guide took me to the front of the line, I would have apologized.”

The older I get the more I realize politicians and apparently commissioners of any sort are just as dumb as the guy pumping your gas (no offense to any gas station attendants who read this site) they just happen to be well connected dumb schnooks.

I remember when I was young my father telling me I should go into politics, make my mark and so on. Now that I have some perspective on the situation I wonder if it wasn’t his backhanded way of telling me I was a fucking idiot.

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