Rudy Giuliani ran up a lot of debt during his unsuccessful presidential run, according to The New York Times. Sure, that's to be expected, right? I mean, running for president is expensive.

But seems like Rudy had a bit too strong of an appetite for the finer things in life. To wit:

Whether it was $2,010 at the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia, $4,034 at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., or $5,370 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, the former mayor found himself top-notch lodging. (At the Fairmont, The Trail got a glimpse of the candidate's large suite -- it had a fantastic view of the bay, overlooking Alcatraz Island.) Water views seem to be a prized asset for Giuliani -- during an early trip to New Hampshire, the former new york mayor stayed at the Wentworth by the Sea resort, a AAA Four-diamond resort that advertises "postcard-perfect views of the waterfront" in Portsmouth.

Other than his immediate post-9/11 leadership (a myth with which I completely disagree, but it's not worth an argument here), has Rudy ever once done or said anything that has made him a more, rather than a less, sympathetic figure? Anything? Bueller?

(h/t Raw Story) 

Rudy Giuliani has already created an image for himself that even the casual observer could probably identify. He reminds us daily that he was, in fact, the Mayor of New York City during the September 11th terrorist attacks, (a point which I will do my best to remind you of, in case you don't already it have stuck in your head like the lyrics to a bad song). He speaks ad nauseam about his tough stance on terrorism, and his apparent affection for constitution-bending Jack Bauer-style interrogation techniques. Speaking about the torture technique known as waterboarding, Giuliani said:

Well, I'm not sure it is either. It depends on how it's done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it's been defined in the media, it shouldn't be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that's the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn't be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is.

Giuliani, (the Mayor of New York City during the 9/11 terrorist attacks) is right: The "liberal media" must be making it look much worse than it is. When I think about having someone "simulate" the experience of drowning, it sounds like a blast to me. Don't they offer that at Club Med these days right after snorkeling?

The presidential hopeful (and, did I mention, the Mayor of New York City during the 9/11 terrorist attacks) has developed a bit of an odd talent. Odd talents, like a knack for solving Rubik's Cubes or juggling chainsaws, may have a way of attracting voters on the campaign trail. Other odd talents, such as being able to skew statistics to suit a political message, seem to do anything but win the affection of the public. As it turns out, Giuliani has quite the habit of skewing statistics in just such a way.

When discussing the issue of abortion, Giuliani loves to talk about his success in lowering the number of abortions during his tenure as Mayor of New York City, (during which time he dealt with the 9/11 terrorist attacks). His campaign has said on numerous occasions that "Adoptions went up 65 to 70 percent; abortions went down 16 percent." As FactCheck.org points out, while those numbers aren't exactly a flat out lie, they also aren't the most honest statistics. FactCheck points out that:

Adoptions had already increased by 257 percent in the seven years prior to creation of ACS, the agency Giuliani credits with increasing adoptions...[and] adoptions declined in five of the mayor's last six years.

Perhaps more blatantly misleading is how Giuliani, (who bravely walked the streets of New York City with the Firefighters while they saved lives in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center by Islamic extremists), uses deceptive numbers regarding healthcare. His campaign recently released a radio ad in which he denounces "socialized medicine" by explaining that he would likely have died of his prostate cancer, had he lived in a country like England that has a form of "socialized medicine." The campaign proclaims that only 44 percent of men survive similar cases of cancer, but here in the US, the chances are 82 percent. FactCheck discovered that those numbers aren't just misleading, they are just flat out lies:

We tracked down the source of that number, which turns out to be the result of bad math by a Giuliani campaign adviser, who admits to us that his figure isn't "technically" a survival rate at all. Furthermore, the co-author of the study on which Giuliani's man based his calculations tells us his work is being misused, and that the 44 percent figure is both wrong and "misleading." A spokesperson for the lead author also calls the figures "incorrect survival statistics."

In the campaign's defense, the stats were apparently taken from an opinion piece from a conservative think tank. That seems like a good place to get statistics for a political ad.

Jonathan Garro is editor of SkipperStyle, a political blog.

For the first time in 23 years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development presented a report to Congress yesterday documenting the scope of the United States’ homelessness epidemic. The survey used a new approach, collecting data on the number of Americans sleeping on the street or seeking temporary shelter over a three-month period from January to April 2005, instead of just counting street-dwellers on one specific night, as past surveys have done. The results? 754,000 Americans were homeless for at least part of 2005, meaning they slept on the street or sought beds in shelters or transitional housing. One-third of the homeless were families with children. About half were black. (According to the Urban Institute, meanwhile, only 6 percent of the homeless population does not suffer from a mental illness or substance abuse problem.)

In urban America, affordable housing, job training, and public health are all solutions to homelessness. But politicians tend to focus on erasing the evidence of homelessness rather than addressing its causes. As New York mayor, of course, Rudy Giuliani epitomized this approach. Under his leadership, homelessness was seen mainly as a quality of life issue for the rest of us. I’m from New York and hey, I’ll be the first to admit that the sanitized, chain-ified Times Square has been good for the city’s public image. But when you hear talk of Giuliani being a social moderate, it’s worth remembering that this is the mayor who criminalized sleeping on the street and even laying down in public, suggested putting children into the foster care system if their parents lost their jobs and became temporarily homeless, and cut the city’s affordable housing budget in half, all while opposing a hike in the minimum wage that would have raised living standards for the working poor. After building his popularity on the backs of the city’s neediest, he of course claimed credit for “cleaning up the streets.” And sadly, many New Yorkers were just fine with that.

Cross-posted at TAPPED. 

I agree with Ezra and Mike Tomasky that Rudy Giuliani would be a primarily right-wing president. Mike makes a strong case over at TNR today that Giuliani's supposed political moderation during his mayoral tenure was really just a demonstration of his ideological malleability. Mike writes,

This came home to me in early 2000, when Giuliani was running (however half-heartedly) against Hillary Clinton for Senate. I'm sure you remember the incident of the provocative, eight-page, fund-raising letter sent out that February to conservatives on the mayor's behalf by Richard Viguerie, which invoked the left's "relentless thirty-year war" on "America's religious heritage" and scorned "liberal judges" who wouldn't allow the posting of the Ten Commandments in the schools. This was a significant and telling event. Giuliani, as mayor, had never talked about religious values.

Actually, on one infamous occasion Giuliani did play the religion card. That would be when he tried to revoke the Brooklyn Museum's city funding because it had an exhibit that featured a non-traditional depiction of the Virgin Mary. Giuliani demagogued this silly issue to appeal to his outer-borough white Catholic base. I think it supports Mike's point: Giuliani's a panderer on social issues and if he's elected with support from the Republican Party, he'll pander to them in office.

cross-posted on TAPPED.