If Rudy Giuliani is Ras Al Ghul, is John Edwards Batman?

Ezra Klein suggests that Rudy Giuliani is really Ras Al Ghul:

Our society has reached its peak of decadence, imperialism, and corruption. By appealing to those worst excesses of the American psyche, Giuliani will get elected, and blow up the world, thus wiping our unsalvageable civilization from the map, and bringing the global order into balance. In other words, Rudy Giuliani is really Ra's Al Ghul. Discuss.

Over at Making Light, Teresa Hayden writes a long post about Giuliani. If you thought he was the hero of September 11, "America's Mayor", you couldn't be more wrong: Giuliani is the classic example of the incompetent, selfish, arrogant politician gaining political rewards for dealing -- badly -- with the problems that he himself caused in part.

Most people don't realise just how much of the disaster that was 9/11 was caused by Giuliani's decisions, starting with his decision -- against the advice of anti-terrorism experts -- to site the Emergency Command Centre in the World Trade Building, in a building that had already been attacked, so it would be convenient to City Hall. A nice short walk for Rudy.

There's more, much more. No wonder the New York firemen blame Giuliani personally for the deaths of so many of their fellows:

On 9/11 New York was left without an emergency command center because Giuliani, going against the advice of both the police and fire departments, decided to locate the center conveniently near City Hall in World Trade Center building 7, along with tanks containing tens of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel—in direct violation of New York City fire laws. This was despite the 1993 WTC bombing that proved it to be the number one terrorism target. It was this decision that put him on the street on 9/11 instead of inside a command center coordinating operations. Ironically, this also put him in front of hundreds of media cameras, sparking his image transformation into a “hero.”

While our “hero” was posing for the cameras, however, there was no communication possible between the police department and the fire department, whose REAL heroes were rushing to their deaths inside the towers. And there was likewise no communication between the police officers who identified an open stairway for escape from above the fire zone and the 911 phone operators who were telling soon-to-be-dead office workers to stay put and wait for the firefighters. Giuliani had been aware of the inadequacy of the emergency services’ communications equipment for many years, but did absolutely nothing about it. This criminal negligence also doomed hundreds of firefighters that were unable to hear orders to evacuate the north tower prior to collapse.

Whatever possibility existed for communication between the police and fire departments, whose radios operated on different frequencies, evaporated when Giuliani visited a makeshift fire/police command center that had formed in his absence. There he ORDERED THE POLICE BRASS TO LEAVE and accompany him uptown. This “heroic leadership” effectively put the fire department and police department commanders in different physical locations with no communication possible between them.

Present Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stated that he doesn’t have any idea who was in charge on 9/11 because Bernie Kerik and all the top chiefs in the police department basically acted as bodyguards to Giuliani and no one was running the shop.

[Source: The Myth of Giuliani and 9/11]