We haven't had Rudy Giuliani to kick around for a while. But Rudy seems intent on throwing us a bone.

The Times reports that with the GOP for once running seriously behind Democrats in campaign fundraising, Giuliani is offering to hold fundraisers for down-ticket Republicans. But with an important catch -- he gets to keep part of the haul for himself.

Rudy has $3.6 million in campaign debt from his historically catastrophic campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. And while the precise modalities aren't completely clear, Giuliani is telling Republicans candidates that for him to come to headline a fundraiser to raise money for them -- some of the cash has to be set aside to help him retire his campaign debt.

The article contains quotes from various Republicans operatives who seem to think Giuliani is a self-serving schmuck. But the kicker comes in this passage toward the end of the piece ...

The fact that Mr. Giuliani -- who had an estimated net worth of at least $30 million in 2006, according to financial disclosure forms filed last year -- has loaned his campaign money gives the fund-raising a particular urgency. Candidates generally have unlimited time to pay off campaign debt. But if any portion of a personal loan to a campaign is unpaid by the end of an election cycle, the maximum amount that can be repaid with money raised after that is $250,000, according to Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission.

That means that Mr. Giuliani could have to forgive all or part of his $500,000 loan if he does not raise the funds to pay it back before September, when Senator John McCain is formally chosen as the Republican presidential nominee, officially ending the primary elections

That is tough, isn't it? $30 million Rudy is faced with the prospect of having to take a loss of as much as $250,000 unless he can find local Republican givers who'll give him a chunk of the money they've set aside for funding the party's candidates.

Following up on my post below, here is video of an an interview NBC's Andrea Mitchell conducted with Russert's doctor, Michael Newman. Newman notes that Russert's doctors also wondered about the possibility of a pulmonary embolism because his death came so soon after a long plane flight. But an autopsy, which Newman relates, determined it was a heart attack.

Jo-Ann Mort remembers Tim Russert from his days in politics.

When death strikes suddenly, the clinical why of it all becomes as terribly pressing as it is ultimately irrelevant. At TPM we first heard news of Tim Russert's death from colleagues and sources in the news and political world at about 3:20 PM eastern. We scrambled to find out more information -- particularly, some sort of confirmation. And we first published news of Russert's death about 8 minutes later when his passing was confirmed by The New York Times.

From the first reports it seemed clear that Russert had died of a heart attack. But there was some uncertainty in the original reporting, which I guess makes sense since I'm not sure a heart attack, or what is in clinical terms called a 'myocardial infarction', can be definitively distinguished from other causes of cardiac arrest without an autopsy.

Since Russert had flown across the Atlantic just yesterday it had occurred to me and a few of our readers this afternoon that he might have suffered a pulmonary embolism -- something that can strike people who have been on long plane flights or extended bed rest. But this was not the case.

This may seem like a coolly clinical response to this very sad news. But that's not the case. My own curiosity, which is much to dispassionate a word to convey my need to know, must have stemmed from the fact that my own father died just short of two years ago in more or less exactly the same way.

When I heard the first sketchy descriptions of my father's death I thought the people who were telling me he had had a heart attack must be wrong because there was, apparently, no violent grasping of the chest or look of pressure or pain on his face. In layman's terms, he had a few moments of feeling flush. And then he fainted. To me, in my happy ignorance, that sounded more like a stroke.

This evening when I checked back on the news after spending time with my family, I read this story in the New York Times which now confirms that a sudden heart attack was the cause of death.

His internist, Dr. Michael A. Newman, told MSNBC that "an autopsy had found that Mr. Russert had an enlarged heart and significant coronary artery disease." According to the Associated Press, Russert had been "diagnosed with asymptomatic coronary artery disease, which he was controlling with medication and exercise."

Since heart attack is such a common cause of death (the most common in the United States) I know many, many of you have experienced something very similar in your own lives. My fingers on the keyboard want to say that I can only imagine the shock and grief his wife and son are feeling right now. But I don't have to imagine. I remember. And my heart and prayers go out to them. Even more I wish them loved ones who can support and contain their agony and sorrow.

Russert was 58 years old.

Very sad news. Tim Russert has died of a heart attack, at 58. News started spreading within the last half hour through media and political circles. It's now been confirmed by The New York Times.

Our deepest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.

Late Update: Video of Tom Brokaw announcing Russert's death on MSNBC this afternoon. Brian Williams was on location in Afghanistan and joined the newscast later.

Later Update: Russert's final online chat at MSNBC.com, from earlier today.

Later Still: NBC's Chuck Todd reminisces about Russert:

The House government oversight committee will vote June 20 on whether to hold EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and a White House OMB official in contempt for their failure to comply with congressional subpoenas.

In the post below I noted how John McCain is now going in for the same Social Security 'privatization' bamboozlement that President Bush did, claiming that calling his policy 'privatization' is some sort of lie or spin.

Here's video of McCain using the word himself in 2004 and then claiming it's all a bum rap just this morning. For more ins and outs of the policy and terminology issues, see the post below. To take the McCain flimflam straight up, no chaser, watch the vid ...

M.J. Rosenberg hopes against hope that McCain makes Iraq the centerpiece of his campaign, as Krauthammer recommends.

For those of you who remember President Bush's 2005 crusade to phase out Social Security by privatizing the program and converting it into a system of private investment accounts, you know that one of the biggest lines of bamboozlement was the White House's attempt to take the word for Social Security privatization -- i.e., 'privatization' -- and pretend that it was a word Democrats had come up with and one that was unfair for any members of the press to use.

Needless to say, not only is 'privatization' an accurate description of the policy but it's also the one Republicans came up with and the one they used until polls showed definitively that the American people want to preserve Social Security and weren't for privatizing it. So 'privatization' was consigned to the memory hole and Republican spinmeisters tried to find as many ignorant or gullible journalists as they could to allow them to keep changing the name of their policy in order to trick the public into accepting a policy they didn't like.

After they dropped 'privatization' they called it 'private accounts'. And when 'private accounts' tanked too, they said that 'private accounts' wasn't fair either. They were really 'personal accounts.' The whole thing just got silly and sad.

It didn't work in 2005. But now McCain -- he of the straight talk -- is trotting it out again.

This video is from a townhall meeting in New Jersey just this morning ...

VIPs -- including a couple of U.S. senators -- got special loan deals not available to the general public at subprime giant Countrywide.

With an era of good feelings breaking out among Democrats nationwide, I hesitate to delve back into the acrimony and angst of the Obama-Clinton duel and all the anger it sowed between Democrats across the country. But I do it with a suggestion that may surprise some of you and one that questions my own earlier take.

I was never someone who thought Hillary was under any obligation to get out of the race until the end or even necessarily that she should have done so. What got me was her campaign's harsh and strident attacks on Obama -- one that often mimicked Republican attacks and which escalated in intensity as her hopes of beating him approached the vanishing point.

Hillary supporters claimed that there was nothing that Hillary was throwing at Obama that McCain and Co. wouldn't be thrown at him later. So at a minimum she was helping him get the stuff behind him and perhaps even making him a stronger candidate.

This always struck me as what I can only very generously term a deeply disingenuous argument. And I still find it deeply disingenuous. But I'm coming around to the belief that it may have been an accurate one -- much more than I realized or was willing to credit.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think Hillary was trying to do Barack any favors. (see Matthew 18:7) But looking forward, it seems far better to me that all the Reverend Wright, Rezko, Bitter and and all the rest are out there and run through and basically old news. Better they were run through in the spring than the summer or the fall.

What's more, in these first few days of the general election, in addition to McCain's and Obama's fundamental qualities as candidates, I think it is increasingly evident that both campaigns are hitting the ground at very, very different speeds. Clinton gave Obama one hell of a run for his money. He's been campaigning and fighting at a fever pitch -- as has his whole campaign -- for months. And it shows.

On the contrary, McCain's operation is simply a wreck. Flabby. Disorganized. Sometimes comical. And one big reason for that is that McCain hardly won the nomination. It defaulted to him. Looked at with some distance and perspective the Republican race fell out as follows: Rudy imploded because of the combustible force of his own militant ridiculousness. Then Huckabee gutted Romney. And since Huckabee was too out there (ironically, simultaneously too sane and too looney to pass Republican muster) that left McCain. With the rest of the field flopping around like fish on dry land, McCain was able to sew the nomination quickly with pluralities in the GOP's winner-take-all contests.

No discussion of this race would be complete without reference to the many damaging factors that are beyond McCain's control -- the collapse of public support for the Republican party, the Iraq War, the deep unpopularity of President Bush, etc. But when you see trainwrecks like the McCain camp's lame effort to upstage Obama on his victory night with that lime green speech clunker, it becomes evident that this campaign just hasn't had a chance to go head to head with a real competitor. And it shows.

I'm a little disappointed we weren't given at least a somewhat more scurrilous rating. I mean, how many sex scandals do we have to give wall-to-wall coverage to be even a little scurrilous?

National Press Club goes where the National Enquirer won't.

Dean Baker, feeling a little left out, says Obama's new economics team is more Wall Street than Main Street.

Fox News VP concedes "Obama's baby mama" chyron was "poor judgment."

We take another look at Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R) exorcism in today's episode of TPMtv ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

Besides Godzilla deciding to move behind the camera and go into directing, the idea of Lou Dobbs running for Governor of New Jersey strikes me as one of developments that either heralds the coming of the apocalypse or would be good grist for reality tv.

For those of you in the New York City area, I'll be the moderator tonight for a discussion of Matt Yglesias's book Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats at The Strand Bookstore. It starts at 7 PM and of course it's open to the public. More details here.

The Tax Policy Center has released a report comparing the Obama and McCain tax plans. You can read the report, "A Preliminary Analysis of the 2008 Presidential Candidates' Tax Plans," here (.pdf). A sampling:

If enacted, the Obama and McCain tax plans would have radically different effects on the distribution of tax burdens in the United States. The Obama tax plan would make the tax system significantly more progressive by providing large tax breaks to those at the bottom of the income scale and raising taxes significantly on upper-income earners. The McCain tax plan would make the tax system more regressive, even compared with a system in which the 2001-06 tax cuts are made permanent. It would do so by providing relatively little tax relief to those at the bottom of the income scale while providing huge tax cuts to households at the very top of the income distribution.

At his TaxProf Blog, Paul L. Caron hits the highlights of the report and rounds up early reaction, some of which centers on the fact that both plans would dramatically increase the national debt.

To its credit, CNN also had a decent rundown on the tax relief numbers this morning: