Todays Must-Reads

Here are the two most important articles I have read today but it is still early.

Rolling Stone on Rudy Giuliani:

This is the dirty little secret lurking underneath Rudy's 9/11 hero image -- the most egregious example of his willingness to shape public policy to suit his donors. While the cleanup effort at the Pentagon was turned over to federal agencies like OSHA, which quickly sealed off the site and required relief workers to wear hazmat suits, the World Trade Center cleanup was handed over to Giuliani. The city's Department of Design and Construction (DDC) promptly farmed out the waste-clearing effort to a smattering of politically connected companies, including Bechtel, Bovis and AMEC construction.

The mayor pledged to reopen downtown in no time, and internal DDC memos indicate that the cleanup was directed at a breakneck pace.

Although respiratory-mask use was mandatory, the city allowed a macho culture to develop on the site: Even the mayor himself showed up without a mask. By October, it was estimated, masks were being worn on site as little as twenty-nine percent of the time. Rudy proclaimed that there were "no significant problems" with the air at the World Trade Center. But there was something wrong with the air: It was one of the most dangerous toxic-waste sites in human history, full of everything from benzene to asbestos and PCBs to dioxin (the active ingredient in Agent Orange). Since the cleanup ended, police and firefighters have reported a host of serious illnesses -- respiratory ailments like sarcoidosis; leukemia and lymphoma and other cancers; and immune-system problems.

"The likelihood is that more people will eventually die from the cleanup than from the original accident," says David Worby, an attorney representing thousands of cleanup workers in a class-action lawsuit against the city.

Indeed, Rudy has had little at all to say about the issue. About the only move he's made to address the problem was to write a letter urging Congress to pass a law capping the city's liability at $350 million.

Did Giuliani know the air at the World Trade Center was poison? Who knows -- but we do know he took over the cleanup, refusing to let more experienced federal agencies run the show. He stood on a few brick piles on the day of the bombing, then spent the next ten months making damn sure everyone worked the night shift on-site while he bonked his mistress and negotiated his gazillion-dollar move to the private sector. Meanwhile, the people who actually cleaned up the rubble got used to checking their stool for blood every morning.

Now Giuliani is running for president -- as the hero of 9/11. George Bush has balls, too, but even he has to bow to this motherfucker.

(by) Matt Taibbi Posted May 31, 2007 8:59 AM

Note: I am so sorry about the use of "m---------er", the "Magic Word", so-named because it will get you run from any Major Leauge League game you happen to be playing in or managing if you call an umpire one 'cause, so it seems, ain't nobody loves his mama like an umpire but he could be jivin' too (Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970 http://www.amazon.com/Ball-Four-Jim-Bouton/dp/0020306652) but it's Rolling Stone (for f's sake)so what are can you do? Here's the link to the full article:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/14952564/giuliani_worse_than_bush/4

This, meanwhile from the Sunday NY Times, lays out just what it is we are up against in Iraq as well as anything I've ever read, ever:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/weekinreview/03wong.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

At church yesterday the Second Reading yesterday was excerpted from Paul's Letter to the Romans. It made me think. Who do you address that envelope to, exactly? Of course, if he'd been doing his evangelical works today, our scripture lesson would have been in reference to "Paul's Blog Post to the Romans."

I love being Lutheran. I was telling a friend at church yesterday that I've heard us described as "Catholic lite." "We're almost Catholic," I declared to him. "Of course, to our Catholic friends all this means is that we are almost going to go to Heaven."