ferritsie_career_firefighter2.jpg [Firefighter Ferret ornament available here. Too bad Giuliani's birthday was just this past Monday...just in case Swopa hasn't gotten Rudy a gift yet.]

Oh dear. Looks like Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani is starting to get a little sweaty under his collar of self-serving braggadocio. The "little" people are pushing back.

From New York Newsday:

The day started at 8 a.m. on City Island, then moved to Douglaston and Bay Ridge before going to Staten Island. It was in Brooklyn that Giuliani ran into some families and firefighters who have pledged to protest outside his New York appearances to challenge his handling of Sept. 11. They accuse Giuliani of failing to fix radio problems and create an adequate emergency plan before the attacks.

"My only hope is that people know the truth," said Peter Gorman, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.

Rudy had better get used to hearing the sound of angry, disillusioned firefighters who are tired of being used for his personal gain. And they'll be damned if they let him continue to snooker the American people with his "Hero of 9/11" horseshit. We can only hope for a showdown drawing near to determine who in America is actually more popular — our nation's firefighters, represented by the FDNY, or the man who had eight years' warning and still let them down and who has has said or done nothing to show that he'll protect them or anyone else in the future (unless he can profit from it and/or abrogate citizens' civil rights, of course).

In the Bronx, Giuliani also was confronted by a woman who identified herself as a relative of someone who died in attacks, who asked why people in the towers didn't get out before the collapse. "How do you sleep at night?" she said. Giuliani said nobody knew the towers would implode the way they did.

Oh, really? Well, you know what they say about "foolish" consistencies, hobgoblins, and small minds.  Giuliani was  a lot more certain on September 12, 2001, wasn't he. I mean, how else do you explain this statement, then?

That response contradicts remarks the former New York City mayor made about being warned about the collapse during a phone interview with onetime ABC anchor Peter Jennings on September 11, 2001, as shown in a transcript WNBC obtained from the Giuliani 2008 campaign.

Giuliani told Jennings, "I–I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the police commissioner, the fire commissioner, the head of emergency management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse.

(That is not an invitation to contemplate the myriad WTC conspiracy theories, btw.)

Yes, it's fairly obvious that social conservatives are willing to overlook Giuliani's shiftiness because he's a bully, and the only thing social conservatives love more than trashing human rights is a bully. I wonder, perhaps, if one of the reasons that Giuliani's slippery eel act hasn't gotten more traction with the general populace is that the voices coming out against his campaign have been issuing from the usual suspects — civil rights advocates, free speech proponents, New Yorkers — you know, crazy people.  But now that the NYC firefighters are organizing to protest his campaign, perhaps all those people in "the heartland" who hold their cops and firemen so dear to their hearts may actually prick up an ear or two.  

P.S. And really, when you've lost the Daily News sports page …

Rudy (I, Me) Giuliani takes credit for everything good that happened in New York while he was mayor, but now we're supposed to believe that he only had his big command center at 7 World Trade Center on Sept. 11 because he listened to other people.

Right.

P.P.S. Oh, now that's what I call a "quality endorsement"! Still trying to burnish his "tough on terrorism" tiara, Rudy got out the Bedazzler™ and jammed another Kerik-style rhinestone into the damned thing, getting the hearty thumbs-up from former F.B.I. Director Louis Freeh.  Yes, the same Louis Freeh who was criticized by the 9/11 Commission for his rather . . . lackluster . . . approach to combatting terrorism after the 1993 bombing and who left the FBI in the summer of 2001.  Well, I guess you go with the endorsements you have, not the endorsements you want.