Winners of the October 2019 Crank Awards: given on highly sporadic occasions, during perilous times, to people who do or say something that’s either good, or bad, for whatever messes we’re all in at the moment

Best retro photograph of some advertising  guys pretending to rob a
Seattle bank (circa 1966)

Best putdown of Rudolph Giuliani by a newspaper columnist goes to Carl Hiaasen of the Miami Herald for this: “By his own actions, Giuliani has made himself the most visible stooge in the Donald Trump impeachment comedy. Rudy’s worse than a loose cannon. He’s a meandering cluster bomb.”

The Sneaky-Creepy Political Thuggery Award given only to the incredibly rich guy who most ham-handedly tries to interfere in an election: This time it goes to Mark Zuckerberg. The Zuck evidently managed to get his lips close enough to Pete Buttigieg’s ear, via an intermediary, to whisper sweet nothings about potential campaign hires. This act helped insert into the Buttigieg power structure two people likely to help prevent any harm to the Facebook Misinformation Empire, should Buttigieg somehow manage to become president.

The Cheap Piker Guhzillionaire Award. I almost surprised myself by not giving it to Donald Trump, despite his now-abandoned attempt to locate the G7 conference at one of his own failing resorts “at cost.” "At cost" means whatever you want it to mean. In a failing resort, it means, at the very least, some cash flow instead of no cash flow. The offer later got revised to “free” after it became clear to Trump he couldn’t get away with it. I'm guessing Trump figured that if he couldn't win the game he'd at least inflate the lie.
     However, after lengthy and agonized consideration, the Cheap Piker Guhzillionaire Award Committee, which consists of myself, has given the prize to Jeff Bezos. Bezos gets the award for offering Amazon users a $10 coupon to allow him to track those customers all around the web and sell the information for millions to the likes of McDonald’s GM, Danone, and Staples. And if you'll sell your tracking rights to Bezos for a $10 coupon, I'll give you three bucks for your house.

The WTF?! Award to Hillary Clinton, for claiming to be outing Tulsi Gabbard as a “Russian Asset.” Gimme a break! What Gabbard is, quite clearly, is a second-string presidential wannabe, who served honorably in the military but who had zero chance of winning the nomination. She still has no chance, but thanks to Hillary, she now might prove to be the kind of wedge issue that will help to divide Democrats and grease the skids for a second Trump term. And Hillary herself isn’t quite denying that she might — well, maybe, sorta, perhaps — throw her own hat back into the ring. Because she hasn’t done enough damage to the Democratic party. Yet.

The award for best and most grisly human self-immolation in front of the press and news cameras so far this year:

That’s all for today, folks. Come back for more in the near future — assuming there is a near future.

Listen, Mayor de Blasio. In addition to standing up to President Trump, why not stand down from his security?

Donald Trumps's personal security involves littering New York most
fashionable avenue with dump trucks, blocking traffic, creating congestion,
murdering retail businesses and then sticking New York's taxpayers with the
bill. (Photograph: NBC News)

New York was once the only American city that had its own foreign policy, distinct from, and in fact in direct contradiction to, the foreign policy of the United States.

That was under the administration of one of Donald Trump’s political cronies, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who didn’t give a flying fiddlestick what the State Department or the President  of the United States wanted because Giuliani was…well, Giuliani.

Yasser gets the heave-ho

 —a case in point:

On Monday October 23, 1995, Mayor Rudy Giuliani noisily ejected PLO leader Yasser Arafat from a concert at Lincoln Center that had been scheduled to entertain world leaders in town for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. President Clinton condemned Mr. Giuliani’s “embarrassing breach of international diplomacy” and former Mayors Dinkins and Koch joined the chorus of those embarrassed that the mayor, who had personally selected Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, had injected politics into the celebration.

By the way, this account was reported, with another paragraph gushing approval of the ejection, by the New York Observer, a weekly newspaper owned by Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

But that wasn’t the only embarrassment perpetrated by the out-of-control mayor. That same year, Imprudent Rudy declared Fidel Castro  persona non grata during a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.

Relics of Giuliani’s Independent Republic of New York persist to this day. The corner of Lexington Avenue at East 37th Street, was renamed “Hermanos al Rescate,” or “Brothers to the Rescue,” under the Giuliani administration. Last I looked, decades after Giuliani crawled back under his rock, the street signs were still up.

The Hermanos al Rescate corner commemorates the badly planned and disastrously executed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by some Cuban exiles, a rescue that never rescued anybody. Nothing wrong with commemorating it anyway, I suppose — except that the Cuban mission to the United Nations is right on that street corner.

Imagine if, in a foreign country, right in front of an American embassy, some municipal government renamed a block “U.S.A. Sucks Street.” Get the idea? Now let's shift the subject slightly 

The war of the mayors

Presently, there's an incipient war brewing between the Trump administration and the mayors of several important American cities, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Haven, Syracuse, and Austin, among them. 

These are considered “sanctuary cities,” which essentially means that to the extent possible, the cities will not assist in the rounding up and deportation of undocumented aliens, including those who grew up here and for all intents and purposes are at least as American as Melania Trump.

Rudy Giuliani established the precedent for this kind of defiance, but it now has Donald Trump foaming at the mouth. He declared that if you dare — dare! — not spend your city’s precious resources busting down doors and arresting hard-working immigrants and their essentially-American kids, you “are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes.”

In other words, go along with Trump or he’ll grab you by the p-p-p-purse strings and twist so painfully, your city will fall apart.

New York, at least, has an antidote to that. Trump lives here, almost smack dab in the center of town, in a multi-multi-million dollar skyscraper. He has been coming back to New York — and evidently plans to keep coming back — just about every weekend.

This is a busy street corner in a shopping and business area that is also attractive to tourists, tens of thousands of pedestrians, and many thousands of motor vehicles of all sorts. Consequently, the Secret Service alone can’t possibly provide the President with presidential security. 

Garbage trucks, killed retailers,
and other signs of Donald Trump

The Secret Service has turned to the New York Police Department, which blocks off streets with sand-laden garbage trucks, floods the area with patrolmen and paramilitary equipment, stops pedestrians to inspect their baggage, and constantly disrupts the city, and which by the way is also killing walk-in customer traffic at Tiffany’s and other high-end merchant shops.

All those costs the taxpayers — of New York and not of the rest of the United States — about a million bucks a day in out-of-pocket costs for police salaries, overtime and other charges. So far, the Republican Congress in Washington  has generously offered to compensate the city to the extent of $7 million, or about a week’s worth of security. After that, Congress seems to be saying, the other 51 weeks are on us.

Well, hell no! If the Trump administration is going to shaft us for not letting our cops waste their time running around trying to sort out who’s an undocumented immigrant from who merely has a dark skin, and then busting waiters and nannies instead of hard core thugs — and then Congress shafts us with miserly compensation for presidential security — let’s not provide any presidential security.

The old Giuliani
defiance trick

It’s time for Mayor Bill de Blasio to pull a Giuliani, by pulling every cop in New York off the Trump security detail. If Trump wants to keep coming to New York and upsetting everybody’s life for his own convenience and pleasure, let him pay for it himself. Or let the U.S. Government pay for it.

But with caveats: No blocking off the streets any more. No barricades against pedestrians. Donald Trump can pack his own lobby with all the Secret Service and private gumshoes he wants,  but the police state stops outside the front door of 725 Fifth Avenue. Further, any government vehicles of any kind illegally parked or otherwise impeding traffic at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street will be subject to ticketing and towing.

What can Trump do? Cut off funds that he and Congress have already cut off?

Oh, and one more modest proposal, Mayor de Blasio. Let’s rename the street corner. Instead of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, it should be called Short Fingers Avenue and Really Low Ratings Street. 

Michael Bloomberg attempts to declare himself "Emperor And Beloved Mayor Of New York For Life"

New York:- Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decided to shred the will of the voters and declare himself Emperor.

Oh well, actually just Mayor for a third term (and perhaps a fourth and fifth term after that) which would in effect make him Mayor For Life.

New York City has a term limits law, which limits the Mayor and City Council members to two terms in office. Bloomberg is determined to trash that law, which was approved in two different referendums by the city's voters.

Bloomberg is supported in his decision to usurp the law by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who at the end of his own mayoralty briefly considered seizing power and continuing on as mayor “for an extra three months” on the grounds that after 9-11 he was “indispensable.” Turns out he wasn’t.

City Council members say it’s
easier than finding honest work

Under the the city’s bizarre charter, the City Council can overrule voters by writing a new election law eliminating term limits, then passing it without voter approval. By going along with the mayor, Council members get to save their rear ends when their own terms expire.

With an extra term, they will be able to go back to drawing city pay for what is essentially a do-nothing job in this strong mayoralty city, rather than having to seek work as low-level lobbyists, influence peddlers or ambulance chasers.

The Emperor-To-Be is declaring this a “one time only” deal until, of course, the next time. However, his usurpation of the law theoretically would not extend to future mayors, if there ever are any. 

“Let them spend their own billions to seize power,” somebody close to City Hall — well, anyway, somebody only a few blocks away — declared huffily.

Lauder capitulates and 

saves himself billions

Emperor Napoleon Bloomberg had feared loud opposition to this power grab from fellow billionaire Ronald Lauder, who himself twice tried unsuccessfully to run for mayor. In 1989, Lauder spent $12 million in the Republican mayoralty primary and won 37,000 votes for his money — the equivalent of almost $350 a vote.

Lauder in the past had been a champion of term limits and it was feared at Bloomberg Palace that Lauder might launch an advertising campaign against the Bloombergeonic power grab. This would force both Lauder and His Majesty, Emperor Napoloen Bloomberg into a political advertising war in which they’d have to match each other’s spending, billion for billion.

It is not known  precisely how His Royal Majesty, Emperor Napoleon Bloomberg convinced Lauder suddenly to reverse his own highly principled stand on term limits.

While the word passing from Bloomberg Palace to the press is that it’s only because in a financial crisis, His Royal Majesty, Gracious Emperor Napoleon Bloomberg feels just as indispensable as Giuliani felt after 9-11, Lauder must surely know the maxim coined by the late French general and president Charles DeGaulle: “The cemeteries are full of indispensable men.”

More likely, His Royal Majesty, Most Gracious Emperor-for-Life Napoleon Bloomberg hissed into Lauder’s ear, “Listen Ronnie, if you don’t go along with this I’m going to have Ray Kelly send some cops over to squeeze your nuts between two bricks.”

Up next: public hangings
of weeping 10-year-olds

Kelly is the Emperor’s police commissioner. His cops are already known for such draconian measures as roughing up and arresting cyclists on phony charges when they demonstrate against the mayor, confiscating their bicycles and holding them in jails until some judge has an apoplectic fit over the matter. There's one such example here. 

Now it turns out that the Emperor’s police commissioner is also arresting children and leading them out of school in handcuffs for minor and non-criminal offenses.

A Palace spokesperson who requested anonymity because the Emperor hasn’t officially been crowned yet, confirmed this and added: 

“At His Majesty, Most Beloved Gracious Emperor-for Life Napoleon Bloomberg Dada’s inaugural coronation, there will be a display of imperial power during which any protesters against His Magnificent Imperial Graciousness will be tied to posts and flogged, while approximately 300 ten-year-olds will be executed in a mass simultaneous hanging for grave transgressions — not only smoking pot but also stealing a piece of blackboardchalk or throwing an eraser.”

Carrots, sticks, homicide, love, politics, assault weapons, Michael Bloomberg, Jack Kennedy and Barak Obama

Ignored, overlooked, or feeling unloved, once or twice a year in this country a student grabs a firearm and blows away some of his schoolmates.

Why do I think it isn’t such a huge leap from berserk students to the kind of people who grow up to be politicians?

Love, yearning, bullets and ballot boxes

Think about it. Running for office is a way of trying to make people love you. Or at least of trying to make them support you. Political candidacy often satisfies just the kind of yearning for attention and power you’d feel if you finally got so hungry for it that you grabbed an assault weapon and shot up the school.

What about people who don’t support you for election, or who try to siphon away to other candidates the love you feel you’re owed? You can get even with them if you’re a successful politician.

You can slime them. You can smear them. You can lie about them. Or you can employ a political “operative” (a fancy term for thug) like Karl Rove to do it for you. You can run for prosecutor in New York and then after you’re elected indict people and make them do the perp walk like Rudi Giuliani and Elliott Spitzer did. Just make sure, as former New York Attorney General and then New York Governor Elliott Spitzer didn’t, that if you’re stirring the public pot you don’t also have a little something cooking on the side.

In other words, running for office in the United States is, as often as not, a symbolic way of whacking people over the head with a stick, or blowing their heads off.

Ya gotta be nuts!

There’s an increasingly popular notion that you have to be slightly twisted to want to be President of the United States. My own theory, to state it in another way, is that most politicians – there are exceptions, as you’ll see – are a heartbeat away from being serial killers and that elective office is mass murder by other means.

For all I know some politicians like George Bush who so far has gotten over 4,000 Americans plus who-knows-how-many Iraqis killed during his Presidency may be even further along than that.

Which brings me to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. No, I don’t think he’s as ham-handed a gunslinger or stick swinger as George Bush. But for a while the people around Mayor Bloomberg seemed to be mumbling something about a Bloomberg third party candidacy for President. More lately he seems to be flirting with a McCain endorsement, which – who knows? – might lead to the vice-presidential nomination on the Republican ticket.

However, right now, the Bloomberg approach to problem solving – a kind of business executive top-down management style – seems to have hit a concrete wall at racetrack speed.

Congestion pricing gets all jammed up

The legacy item of Bloomberg’s administration was supposed to be congestion pricing – a rule that would have charged motorists $8 each time then drove in and out of mid-to-lower Manhattan on weekdays.

Bloomberg promised a bunch of carrots to New York Citizens in return. New York would get some money from the Federal government. Traffic would move more smoothly.

The problem is, the representatives of most New Yorkers didn’t buy it. First of all, precious few of us drive to work in this town. You’d have to be crazy. Forget the stick of $8 congestion pricing. A garage for the day can easily set you back over $30. Park your car on the street and it’s likely to get hauled away, while you get stuck not only with a fine, but also commercial towing and garaging charges until you rescue your vehicle.

The secret tax

Congestion pricing was really a hidden tax that probably would have raised the cost of everything from a plumbing repair bill to real carrots, since plumbers have to bring their trucks to the job, and carrots don’t make the trek from rural America to midtown Manhattan on roller skates.

So Manhattan residents would have been doubly screwed. They’d pay to use their own cars (if they have them) to get out of town on weekends and home on Sunday nights. And they’d pay even if they don’t drive every time the sink leaked or they got a yearning for carrot soup (or anything else edible.)

Meanwhile, city employees get thousands of free parking permits and the mayor, who says he uses the subway, admits taking a chauffeured limousine to get to the subway from his Upper East Side townhouse. So why support anti-congestion measures that he doesn’t support himself?

What real leadership means

Mayor Bloomberg, like Elliott Spitzer, like most politicians, forgot what real leadership is all about. You don’t get people to follow by dangling a carrot in front of them and threatening a stick if they don’t follow you.

In fact, here in New York, a good many of us feel most of the time as if we’re chewing on a stick while the Mayor beats us over the head with a bunch of carrots.

What is real leadership?

You lead as a few exceptional people have. In my lifetime there have been two of those. One was the late President Jack Kennedy, whom I’ve missed since some frustrated politician named Lee Harvey Osald blew him away from a perch in a Dallas schoolbook warehouse.

The other is Barack Obama.

Watch (in early 1960s film clips or the evening television reports today) how they do it. They do not dangle carrots and tell us about shining cities on hills. They do not brandish sticks and tell us Al Quaida is coming, so we’d better be good, we’d better not pout. Instead, they inspire us to join them in great and urgent work.

John McCain waves a stick at me, warning that I’d better agree with him or Osama Bin Laden will magically emerge from under my bed and destroy me. Hillary Clinton keeps warning me with her waving stick that if the phone rings at 3 AM in the White House (for what? A man at the door with a late night pizza delivery?) she’ll know what to do. Or maybe she’ll just have a $2 tip handy for the delivery man.

Leading by inspiration

It’s time for our politicians to act like the leaders they’re supposed to be. No carrots. No sticks. Just inspiration – inspiring all of us to pull together for the common good, and then giving us programs we can pull for.

So far as I can see, the only political candidate for anything in the United States who leads by inspiration is Barack Obama.

Political, partisan, petty, censorship-championing Rudy.

Hey, do you think Rudy Giuliani would make a the White House anything other than a truth-be-damned propaganda organ of the Republican party?

Think again.

Back in May I reminded you of Rudy’s “you have to take a bullet for me” mentality and tendency to pass the buck for his own mistakes. http://thenewyorkcrank.blogspot.com/search/label/Rudolph%20Giuliani

Now this in an e-mail sent to me by Richard Rosenthal, a New York journalist and advertising copywriter who specializes in bicycle-related subjects and found himself justifiably teed off last week when Giuliani pretended to take offense at the “General Betray-us” ad run by moveon.org. It's enough to make you think Rudy studied politics on the lap of Karl Rove:

Today's Times has an article, "Angered by an Antiwar Ad, Giuliani Seeks Equal Space". In 1998 I was hired by the NYC Department of Transportation to create ads promoting bicycling in the city in conjunction with Bike Month. Cycling is a non-partisan activity. The DoT is a non-partisan agency. Funding for the ads was paid by a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, a non-partisan agency.

After the NYC DoT turned down ads that said cycling was better for the city than driving because bicycles were non-polluting, quiet, and reduced congestion--they wouldn't permit me to say that--I submitted an ad with the headline, "We Bike Here." Around it were the names of hundreds and hundreds of New York cyclists, possibly with their professions: doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists, laborers of all stripes, even a subway repairman and a bus maintenance man--all in small, 6 pt. type.

The DoT pored through the names and pulled out the names of Ruth Messenger (Manhattan borough president), Fernando Ferrer (Bronx borough president), and John Kennedy, Jr., all of whom rode bikes in the city, and said I would have to remove them, then asked me if Robin Williams was a Democrat and, if so, I would have to remove his name, too.

Why, I asked? Answer: Because we can't have anyone identifiably a Democrat in the list. The names have to be vetted at City Hall.

The DoT was not amused by my asking could they vouch that young Andrew Giuliani, the son of the mayor, rode a bike here. If so, I would be glad to add his name. (I quit rather than comply.)

While Rosenthal had the backbone to tell Giuliani’s little hatchet men to take a flying leap, I wonder how many Republicans will follow in his footsteps?

A bum gets burned on a bum rap. And then burns himself passing the buck. It’s his usual sleazy behavior.

I don’t like Rudolph Giuliani, the former Republican Mayor of New York who’s now a potential Republican Presidential candidate.

Yes, he put on a great and admirable display of leadership immediately after the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster. He actually came off – at least for a few days – as sympathetic and likeable. And yes, under his administration the crime rate began to fall, policing got better, quality of life crimes lessened significantly, and prosperity grew here in New York grew. All good things.

But generally, Giuliani’s behavior was sometimes irascible, sometimes sleazy, occasionally in defiance of law, and largely focused around what was good for Rudy Giuliani. More about that later. First, an issue for which Giuliani is taking a rap he doesn’t deserve – and then reverting to his weasely form in dealing with the issue.

THE CASE OF THE MISPLACED
"WAR ROOM." OR WAS IT?

This has to do with the location of the mayor’s Emergency Operations Center – a radiation protected, supposedly blast-resistant, communications equipment-bristling, semi-secret “war room.” It was here that Mayor Giuliani was supposed to have been able to take charge of New York in case of atomic blast, citywide rioting, unprecedented flooding, or invasion by – I dunno, Martians, maybe.

As it happens, it was located at 7 World Trade Center, one of the neighboring buildings that were flattened and burned out by the falling debris from the 1 and 2 World Trade Center twin towers.

Hey, it’s easy to Monday morning quarterback this decision. On the negative side, it’s true as critics point out, that the World Trade Center had already been the target of an Al Quaida attack – a truck bomb that went off in a garage under one of the two towers. So maybe the Command Center should have been someplace else.

Brooklyn has been mentioned as a rejected location for a command center in the "he said/she said/they said/you said” accusations that have been flying around.

But there were also valid reasons for using 7 World Trade Center. It was close to City Hall and other municipal offices such as the Police and Fire Departments – a very quick drive or relatively short jog away. 7 World Trade Center itself was home to the New York offices of various Federal law enforcement agencies – you know, the ones that as it turned out weren’t speaking to one another, enabling the 9/11 plot to hatch, free from Federal interference.

Also, 7 World Trade Center was not one of the twin towers. To rule it out you’d have to posit that A) Al Quaida would try all over again to bring the towers down by a different means B) the Federal Government under George Bush would be completely asleep at the switch C) that this time they’d hijack a bunch of planes and fly them into the towers D) these “fireproof” buildings would then collapse, their structures virtually melted by the flames and E) that falling debris from the first two structures would completely destroy neighboring structures.

GIULIANI SAYS SOME HAPLESS
SCHNOOK MADE HIM DO IT.

If you could posit A, B, C,D and E, you’d be the world’s greatest seer and medium. That’s really all Rudy Giuliani had to say in his defense of the choice of 7 World Trade Center. But no.

Instead, he whines that in effect, an underling working for him sort of, well, uh – made him do it. That was the recommendation, and how was he supposed to know better, Giuliani snivels.

Baloney, says the former underling, Jerome Hauer, who was Giuliani’s first director of emergency management. Others are weighing in on one side or another.

You’ll find URLs referring you to some of the details of finger-pointing at the end of this article. What’s important to note here is that finger pointing – passing the blame for bad things that happened on his watch to somebody else – is a hallmark of the Giuliani modus operandi. And for that matter, getting rid of underlings who are getting too much praise for doing good work is also part of his style.

“EVERYBODY SAYS YOU’RE DOING
A GREAT JOB. SO YOU’RE FIRED!”

Take the case of William Bratton, the first police commissioner under Giuliani (now chief honcho of the LAPD.) It was Bratton, recruited here from Boston, who dreamed up a new style of policing, patrolling and arresting quality-of-life criminals. That's one of the things that helped bring on a quick and wonderful reduction of the crime rate.

Almost everybody liked Bratton. Almost everyone praised him. And that really got Giuliani’s goat. Clearly Rudy wanted all the praise for himself.

Poof! Bratton was fired. Pretty soon, top NYPD administration was peopled with a number of hacks, one of them, Bernie Kerik, said to have Mafia ties and certainly problems with corruption and his own income taxes.

Hey, no matter. By following Bratton patrol policies, the cops were able to keep the crime rate down, and now Rudy Giuliani could get all the credit.

COMMISSIONERS WHO’D BETTER
“TAKE A BULLET” FOR THE MAYOR

Giuliani wanted to make sure that nothing bad got blamed on him. The word was going around that interviews for various senior appointive jobs in his administration began with the question, “Would you take a bullet for the mayor?”

The meaning of that question was, “If something gets screwed up in your department, even if it happens because the mayor ordered it to happen, will you take all the blame and not mention you were doing this on the Mayor's orders?”

Rudy’s philosophy of life (“It’s all about me”) even extended to his own family. During Rudy’s inaugural, his seven year old son – remember, only seven years old – stole the show by mimicking his father’s gestures. Guess what? Rudy deported his own son. Well, only to a boarding school, but that was it. The poor kid was never seen in public again until his adulthood, when he proclaimed a rift with his father. Gee, no kidding.

The message was clear. Don't poke fun at Rudy Giuliani. Even if you're a little kid. Even if you're his own little kid.

ATTEMPTED MUNICIPAL
COUP D’ETAT

There was also the little matter of trying to overthrow the city constitution. We have term limits here. At the end of his second term, Rudy suddenly went looking for a way to stay on as mayor after his elected term ended. In effect, he was feeling out the reaction to what might have been a municipal coup d’etat.

Imagine if the President of the United States did that. If it ever happens, this country stops being a democratically-elected republic and becomes a dictatorship.

So I’m horrified by Rudy Giuliani’s attempt at candidacy for President. He’s a potential dictator. He deserves to remain in private life with his third wife, enjoying icy relations with his kids.

But he doesn’t deserve flak on his choice of an emergency command post. As some wag said about the behavior of prosecutors and police during the OJ Simpson trial, “They’re trying to frame a guilty man.”




More on the potential national and international disaster that is Rudy Giuliani here:

On the World Trade Center command post flap:
http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/giuliani-911-and-the-emergency-command-center-continued/#more-1999

On Giuliani’s mayoral temperament
http://www.cercles.com/review/r27/siegel5.htm

Why lots of New York cops hate Giuliani
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/nyregion/14giuliani.html?ref=nyregion

On Giuliani trying to feel out a municipal coup d’etat
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/terror/aftermath/1062396.html

Picture of Giuliani’s 7 year old son upstaging his dad, for which he was deported to boarding school:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/us/politics/03rudy.html?ex=1179460800&en=42ddb6d7cf8e2100&ei=5070