Why Giuliani and Romney Make Couches Happy

Because they lie a lot. From the Caucus at the New York Times:

Truth squadding the most contentious point of the debate last night, Michael Cooper, the Times’s City Hall budget reporter during the end of the Giuliani administration, notes:

In defending his fiscal record, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said that during his tenure as mayor of New York City, spending declined. But he said that it declined on a “per capita” basis, meaning that the city’s population grew faster than its spending. But an analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission, an independent group, found that during his two terms, Mr. Giuliani increased city expenditures by 13.7 percent, when adjusted for inflation.

And Mr. Giuliani boasted, as he often does on the campaign trail, that he cut taxes 23 times as mayor. But fiscal monitors have noted that in doing so, Mr. Giuliani takes credit for some tax cuts that he did not initiate – including cuts made by the state.

And Michael Luo, the Times’s reporter covering Mitt Romney, notes that Mr. Romney’s claims are subject to debate, too.

Fiscal conservatives offer mixed reviews of Mr. Romney’s record as governor of Massachusetts. He contends that he kept a campaign promise not to raise taxes, even as he successfully closed a $3 billion budget gap.

But even though he did not make any broad-based tax increases, Mr. Romney increased fees by $500 million and closed corporate tax loopholes, which critics argue amounted to tax increases on corporations.

Mr. Romney also touts the fact that he sought to reduce the state’s income-tax rate from 5.3 percent to 5.0 percent, but he was stymied twice by the state legislature.

And, for those of you who are sports fans, here is why Mo Vaughn left the Angels (hint, it's 9/11).

Judy Giulaini - Puppy Killer

Interesting Story: Judith Giuliani, Rudy's wife, worked for a firm that kills puppies:

The New York Post:

April 2, 2007 -- Judith Giuliani once demonstrated surgical products for a controversial medical-supply company that used dogs - which were later killed - in operations whose only purpose was to sell equipment to doctors, The Post has learned.

"It was a horribly cruel, outrageous program," Friends of Animals President Priscilla Feral said about the demonstrations of medical staplers on dogs conducted by U.S. Surgical Corp. employees during Giuliani's tenure there in the late 1970s.

Feral said U.S. Surgical's demonstrations on hundreds of dogs each year through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s were done to boost sales, not for medical research or testing.

The dogs were "either put to death following the sales demonstrations because they can't re cover from them, or they die during them," Feral said.

"I'm not going to characterize her, but I hope she regrets it for what it was - a money-grubbing effort," said Feral, whose Darien, Conn.-based activist group waged a heated public-relations battle with the Norwalk-based company for more than a decade.

"I guess the question would be, how does she justify this now? What is her conscience at this stage?" Feral asked about Giuliani's association with U.S. Surgical.

"There's no ethical justification for this."

In Sunday's Post, Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign spokesman, Michael McKeon, said of Judi Giuliani's work with U.S. Surgical, "She was in the operating room hundreds of times, using her nursing skills and training doctors in the stapling technique."

Asked yesterday about the procedure being performed on dogs, McKeon said, "I've never heard any of this before."

Then McKeon said he would have to ask Judi.

Finally, he said only that Judi had not been involved in procuring dogs for sales demonstrations - but did not comment on whether she participated in demonstrations involving dogs.

Judi Giuliani joined the company as a saleswoman in North Carolina in 1975 after spending a year working as a nurse.

At age 19, she married fellow U.S. Surgical salesman Jeffrey Ross, who she only recently disclosed was the first of her three husbands.

Giuliani spent four years at U.S. Surgical.

The company, now part of Tyco Healthcare, has long acknowledged its salespeople routinely demonstrated staples on anesthetized dogs as part of sales pitches to doctors.

Then-CEO Leon Hirsch defended the practice in the 1980s, saying there was no other way to properly show how the staplers worked.

"A dead dog doesn't bleed," Hirsch said in a 1988 issue of Time magazine. "You need to have real blood-flow conditions, or you get a false sense of security."

Giuliani’s Ex-wives March on Washington

(Political Satire - Photos Added)
From the Borowitz Report:

In a dramatic display of political strength in numbers, an organization comprising the ex-wives of Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani marched on Washington today, demanding that their thousands of voices be heard.

The organization, which calls itself Focus on the Ex-Family and which claims as its members all 300,000 former wives of the former New York City mayor, marched from the Capitol building to the White House in one of the largest political demonstrations in recent memory.

By organizing the massive demonstration in the nation’s capital, the exes of New York’s former mayor were hoping to prove that they are the Republican Party’s largest single voting bloc and thus deserve a prominent role in choosing the G.O.P. nominee.

Carol Foyler, executive director of Focus on the Ex-Family, said that over 250,000 ex-wives of Mr. Giuliani had turned out for the march, although police estimated the crowd at closer to 200,000.

Still, according to Washington mayor Adrian M. Fenty, the turnout was impressive: “It’s amazing that Rudy has so many wives, and he isn’t even the Mormon guy in this race.”

By standing up and demanding that they be counted, Mr. Giuliani’s hundreds of thousands of ex-wives may have a profound impact on the way the nation perceives the former New York City mayor, according to Davis Logsdon, head of the political science department at the University of Minnesota.

“For some time, Rudolph Giuliani has been thought of as ‘America’s Mayor,’” Dr. Logsdon said. “This march on Washington shows that he is ‘America’s Ex-husband,’ too.”

Elsewhere, in recognition of Daylight Savings Time, President Bush set the country back fifty years.