"Out of control New York University protesters swarmed and berated an NYPD chief and his officers – calling them 'f–king fascists'..."

"... after they cuffed one of the demonstrators at an anti-Israel rally, wild new video shows. The viral video... shows NYPD Assistant Chief James McCarthy and his officers being chased and surrounded by protestors on Monday night while trying to get inside the NYU Catholic Center after arresting one of them. 'F–k you! F–k you, pigs,' the crowd could be heard shouting as they harassed the officers and demanded they release the woman in custody."

From "NYPD chief swarmed by anti-Israel protesters and berated while seeking shelter in NYU building" (NY Post)(video at link).

NYPD Assistant Chief James Mccarthy and a few officers are chased by protestors after making an arrest at NYU last night.

Mccarthy is seen attempting to get inside the NYU Catholic Center, but couldn't open the door. He eventually finds an unlocked door around the corner.… pic.twitter.com/WVVriOBbMP

— Peter H (@peterhvideo) April 24, 2024

From the top comment at the Post: "I don't believe this ever would have been allowed to take place when Giuliani and Bratton were in charge. There was law and order in those days. Sadly, not sure we will ever see anything like that again."

Meanwhile, Giuliani just got indicted, for something that happened back in 2020.

"Donald J. Trump might one day have to pay E. Jean Carroll the $83.3 million she was awarded, but that day is not today...."

"Mr. Trump can pay the $83.3 million to the court, which will hold the money while the appeal is pending. This is what he did last year when a jury ordered him to pay Ms. Carroll $5.5 million in a related case. Or, Mr. Trump can try to secure a bond.... It would... require Mr. Trump to find a financial institution willing to lend him a large sum of money at a time when he is in significant legal jeopardy.... He has enough cash to cover the verdict in various accounts, a person close to him said. In recent years, Mr. Trump has unloaded several assets, including his Washington hotel, which sold for $375 million.... The New York attorney general is seeking a $370 million penalty from the former president and his family business as part of a civil fraud trial that wrapped up this month...."

The NYT reports.

Meanwhile: "Rudy Giuliani targets Donald Trump for ‘unpaid legal fees’ in new bankruptcy filing/Mr Giuliani filed for bankruptcy last month after he was ordered to pay $148m to Georgia election workers he defamed" (Independent). The filing lists a "possible claim for unpaid legal fees against Donald J Trump" in an amount that is "undetermined."

You've got the order of order all out of order.

I imagined saying to myself if I were to make a list of the characters who've appeared on the blog so far this morning and put them in order of order — from order to chaos.

The blog — of its own accord — had a theme of "Order and Chaos," I'd realized, as I was walking toward the sunrise this morning. 

Only one post had that "Order and Chaos" tag — possibly my favorite tag (the other contenders being "Light and Shade" and "Big and Small") — "The man just loves chaos." But was "that man," Matt Gaetz, the greatest agent of chaos on the blog so far? What about Rudy Giuliani? Michael Zack? The man who killed Ryan Carson? Bataa Mishigish?

I knew if I put the characters in order of order, it would be all out of order, but I wanted to make the list anyway, just to see how easy it would be to argue that the order is wrong, and that some of the characters that seem to represent order could be said to represent chaos:

"On some nights when Mr. Giuliani was overserved, an associate discreetly signaled the rest of the club, tipping back his empty hand in a drinking motion..."

"... out of the former mayor’s line of sight, in case others preferred to keep their distance. Some allies, watching Mr. Giuliani down Scotch before leaving for Fox News interviews, would slip away to find a television, clenching through his rickety defenses of Mr. Trump.... In interviews with friends, associates and former aides, the consensus was that, more than wholly transforming Mr. Giuliani, his drinking had accelerated a change in his existing alchemy, amplifying qualities that had long burbled within him: conspiracism, gullibility, a weakness for grandeur...."

Write Matt Flegenheimer and Maggie Haberman, in "Giuliani’s Drinking, Long a Fraught Subject, Has Trump Prosecutors’ Attention/The former mayor’s drinking has become an investigative subplot in Donald Trump’s federal case over 2020 election interference. But long before that, friends had grown deeply concerned" (NYT).

You see where this is going: 

Now, prosecutors in the federal election case against Mr. Trump have shown an interest in the drinking habits of Mr. Giuliani — and whether the former president ignored what his aides described as the plain inebriation of the former mayor referred to in court documents as 'Co-Conspirator 1.'... 

What Flegenheimer and Haberman are strongly suggesting: Trump should not be able to argue that he relied on the advice of his attorney, when that attorney was Giuliani, a notorious, conspicuous drunk.

"[After conceding] in two stipulations... that he had made false statements when he accused the election workers... Mr. Giuliani later sought to explain..."

"... that his stipulations were solely meant to get past a dispute with Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss about discovery evidence in the case and move toward dismissing the allegations outright. But Judge [Beryl A.] Howell, complaining that Mr. Giuliani’s stipulations 'hold more holes than Swiss cheese,' took the proactive step of declaring him liable for 'defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy and punitive damage claims.'"

From "Giuliani Is Liable for Defaming Georgia Election Workers, Judge Says/The ruling means that a defamation case against Rudolph W. Giuliani, stemming from his role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election, can proceed to a trial where damages will be set" (NYT).

Let's look at the complaint in Noelle Dunphy v. Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Filed in yesterday in state court in Manhattan. I'm just going to extract some things that stood out to me, so I encourage you to do your own independent reading. My selections are entirely biased, as is this entire blog, toward what catches my attention: 

Giuliani worked aggressively to hire Ms. Dunphy, offering her what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work as his Director of Business Development with a salary of $1 million per year.... He made clear that satisfying his sexual demands—which came virtually anytime, anywhere—was an absolute requirement of her employment and of his legal representation. Giuliani began requiring Ms. Dunphy to work at his home and out of hotel room, so that she would be at his beck and call. He drank morning, noon, and night, and was frequently intoxicated, and therefore his behavior was always unpredictable. Giuliani also took Viagra constantly.

"Riders on the subway deserve to have a ride where they don’t feel threatened. And the mentally ill deserve to have the treatment and the protection..."

"... that would allow them to work out their struggles in the protected space. We can’t have a subway system that’s both a system of transportation and housing for the homeless. Those are incompatible goals."

 Said Gregory Umbach, associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, quoted in "After homeless man choked on subway, NYC grapples with treatment of mentally ill" (WaPo).

The incident makes me think of Bernhard Goetz, and reading on, I see he's briefly mentioned in the article:

One of the most famous incidents occurred in 1984, when Bernhard Goetz, a White man, shot four Black teenagers he said he believed were going to rob him. Goetz became a folk hero in a city dealing with sky-high crime. The media called him the “Subway Vigilante.”... 

It would be good to say more about why he became a folk hero. It is, I think, evidence of how oppressed ordinary people felt about what they had been forced to endure on the subway — or felt forced to endure. Goetz represented the idea of somehow fighting for your right to be left alone in this public space. 

But the Goetz case was different. The young men he shot were simply criminals, robbers, on the subway to find victims. Neely was, it seems, mentally ill and on the subway for shelter. 

It's come to this.

Rudy Giuliani sings "Bad to the Bone" on Masked Singer as host @kenjeong leaves saying, "I'm done." pic.twitter.com/nPmcTBye4m

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) April 21, 2022

"Rudy Giuliani says driving Cuomo out of office would be 'unjust, dangerous and entirely un-American.' People, do you think this is because..."

".... A) Giuliani just wants to see Cuomo suffer through a long, painful impeachment. B) Giuliani made the remark at a party after several tumblers of scotch. C) Giuliani thinks it’ll help his son Andrew’s chances to be governor. Yeah, yeah, it’s A. Well, very possibly all three. But short of Rudy, Cuomo does seem to need all the help he can get. He’s been trying to defend himself by showing pictures where he’s kissing and hugging lots of people who seem perfectly happy with the attention. Of course, some are elderly fans who were standing in line waiting for it. Others, like, say, Al Gore, seem … not transported."

Writes NYT columnist Gail Collins, in "What Makes Cuomo So Grabby?" 

A disgusting headline by the way. Are we supposed to care about the internal workings of his mind? Ah, I guess they did that with Trump, diagnosing him with narcissism and whatever, though that never seemed like an honest exploration of human psychology. It was always political attack and therefore a perversion of the field of psychology. Is it any different with Cuomo?

Oh! Now I've read the column, and I don't think it answers or even asks that question in the headline! Looking for what could possibly justify the headline, I'm at a loss. "His private life seems to be a little — wanting" — that is, he's divorced and his girlfriend left town. Albany is "a somewhat isolated world." And there's a gender imbalance "in the power structure." It's almost like saying boys will be boys. What the hell? Who wrote that headline?

But, yeah, forget that. Let's all kick Giuliani. That's how you pad this column. But what I'd like to know is not why Cuomo would commit so many acts of sexual harassment for so long, but who knew and who protected him? Presumably, there are a lot of New York Democrats who've protected Cuomo over the years, probably people who made sanctimonious pro-woman statements in the heyday of the "Me Too" movement. Tell me about them. Instead you wheel out a convenient Republican.

And by the way, the phrase "so grabby" — in "What Makes Cuomo So Grabby?" — trivializes sexual harassment in the workplace. It makes it sound like Cuomo is just childishly uncontrolled in the hands. But sexual harassment is a mechanism of power, structuring the workplace for the benefit of men and relegating women to a separate track, where success and failure depend on things other than work. Start taking it seriously.

"I am more than willing to go to jail if they want to put me in jail. And if they do, they’re going to suffer the consequences in heaven. I’m not, I didn’t do anything wrong."

Said Rudy Giuliani, quoted in "Rudy Giuliani Says He’s ‘More Than Willing To Go To Jail’ But Did Nothing Wrong in Amazing Interview with NBC New York" by Caleb Howe at Mediaite. 

Giuliani's interviewer, NBC's Melissa Russo, follows up, asking, "Why are you willing to go to jail if you feel that you’re innocent?" 

His answer "Because they lie and they cheat" doesn't really answer the question, but it ought to prod us toward an answer. The Mediaite writer doesn't seem to have a clue or is choosing to act as though he hasn't a clue, but I think Giuliani — who'd just mentioned "consequences in heaven" — is playing the role of the martyr, unjustly persecuted, bowing to the impositions of worldly government, and deeply believing that his reward is in Heaven. 

Whether this is self-serving rhetoric or sincere religion is another matter. I wrote the preceding sentence after reading the text and realized I need to watch the video. Hang on a sec. No. I don't know. But I will confess to editing that "self-serving rhetoric." Before I watched the video, I'd written "self-serving bullshit." Be clear: I never called it bullshit. I just viewed it as an alternative to sincere religion. But after watching the video, I toned down the alternative. Here's what I thought: He's accused of a crime, and if he's going to speak on camera, he's got to defend himself staunchly. That's not bullshit.

Here's the Bible verse Giuliani's willingness to go to jail reminded me of, Matthew 5:10-12:

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Be glad to be persecuted.

"Corporate News Outlets Again 'Confirm' the Same False Story, While Many Refuse to Correct it/Journalists with major outlets know they spread a false, retracted story..."

"... about the FBI and Giuliani but refuse to remove it, because their real job is spreading disinformation."  

Writes Glenn Greenwald at Substack. 

When one large news outlet publishes a false story based on whispers from anonymous security state agents with the CIA or FBI, other news outlets quickly purport that they have “independently confirmed” the false story, in order to bolster its credibility (oh, it must be true since other outlets have also confirmed it). 

This is an obvious scam — they have not “independently confirmed” anything but rather merely acted as servants to the same lying security state agents who planted the original false story — but they do it over and over, creating the deceitful perception that a fake story has been "confirmed” by multiple outlets, thus bolstering its credibility in the public mind. It was the favored tactic for spreading debunked Russiagate frauds and is still used....

(To comment, you can email me here.)

"The president was very displeased by the black rivulets of sweat running down Giuliani's face at the press conference."

"But the president has a very long relationship with Rudy Giuliani; he's never going to cut ties with him. He's really not. And Giuliani has convinced the president that it's activist judges or it's this one or it's that one who are thwarting them — and not that it's at all Giuliani's fault. Giuliani is saying to the president what the president wants to hear, which is that the president was robbed."

Said Maggie Haberman, quoted in "'It Is Roiling Him': Reporter Maggie Haberman Unpacks Trump's Refusal To Admit He Lost" (NPR)(from an episode if "Fresh Air").

"Democrats aways talked about things getting better. Republicans did whatever they could to make them better."

This romantic moonlit scene in RUDY: THE RUDY GIULIANI STORY absolutely murdered me. I am dead. pic.twitter.com/eRZuxM0iMI

— Marie Bardi (@mariebardi) November 24, 2020

That's trending on Twitter. 

The quoted line has a powerful sexual effect on the woman that is truly hilarious — whatever your political predilections. The movie is from 2003 and the female character, played by Penelope Ann Miller, is Donna Hanover, who was married to Giuliani from 1984 to 2001.

"Important News Conference today by lawyers on a very clear and viable path to victory. Pieces are very nicely falling into place."

Important News Conference today by lawyers on a very clear and viable path to victory. Pieces are very nicely falling into place. RNC at 12:00 P.M.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2020

UPDATE: Rudy Giuliani holds a press conference, explaining the lawsuits and citing the evidence.

"The call for Joe Biden isn’t… Who was it called by? All the, Oh my goodness. All the networks. Wow. All the networks."

"We have to forget about the law. Judges don’t count. All the networks, all the networks, all the networks... thought Biden was going to win by 10%. Gee, what happened? Come on. Don’t be ridiculous. Networks don’t get to decide elections. Courts do.... Of course courts set aside elections when they’re illegal. In this particular case, I don’t know if there’s enough evidence to set aside the entire election. Certainly not around the country, maybe in Pennsylvania...."

Giuliani struggles to inspire hope in a coming barrage of litigation. (Transcript.)

Denmark will kill its 15 million caged minks — and not save the furs — because it's found a mutated version of the coronavirus.

AP reports. 

The coronavirus evolves constantly and, to date, there is no evidence that any of the mutations pose an increased danger to people. But Danish authorities were not taking any chances. “Instead of waiting for evidence, it is better to act quickly,” said Tyra Grove Krause, head department at Statens Serum Institut, a government agency that maps the spread of the coronavirus in Denmark....

Instead of waiting for evidence, it is better to act quickly. A scary adage, but probably the right attitude for this specific problem. You can't individually test 15 million Danish minks and wait for the results. By the way, there are 5.8 human beings in Denmark, so there are nearly 3 minks per person. 

The pelts of the mink will be destroyed and Danish fur farmers have said the cull, which is estimated to cost up to 5 billion kroner ($785 million), may spell the end of the industry in the country. 

Speaking of weasels, the NYT reports: "A nasal spray that blocks the absorption of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has completely protected ferrets it was tested on, according to a small study released on Thursday by an international team of scientists." It's the animals that might infect us that are useful for tests. 

The nasal spray science is interesting:

"The New York Post articles based on the contents of the mysterious hard drive delivered by Mr. Giuliani failed to drive a broader narrative about Mr. Biden in the way that WikiLeaks did with the Clinton materials."

The NYT covers the Hunter-Biden-laptop story in "Their First Try Backfired, but Giuliani and Allies Keep Aiming at Biden The former New York mayor’s dirt-digging effort on Hunter Biden in 2019 ended with President Trump’s impeachment. Now he is back with new associates. So far it is not going exactly as planned." Written by Kenneth P. Vogel, Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman. 

While highlighting questions about the business activities of Hunter Biden and the former vice president’s brother James Biden, Mr. Giuliani and his allies have failed to prove that Joe Biden was involved in or a beneficiary of them. And they have distracted from the documents about which there are fewer questions related to the chain of custody by making unsubstantiated claims and publishing salacious pictures and videos that have no apparent relevance to Mr. Biden’s candidacy.... 

[Tony] Bobulinski says he met twice with the former vice president after he left office. The [Wall Street] Journal dug into Mr. Bobulinski’s account, and in the end reported that corporate records showed “no role for Joe Biden” in the deal and that the documents provided by Mr. Bobulinski “don’t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture.”....

Is that "Borat" sequence with Giuliani "revenge porn"?

I didn't get around to the Giuliani story yesterday. I'd put a lid on my blogging at 12:56 PM when I finished my podcast and got to work painting my closet. I hadn't even thought about the display of video, recorded with hidden cameras in a private hotel room, edited into movie, and presented as out-of-context clips/stills to stun/shock/outrage/delight the people of the entire world. But sitting down to blog this morning, I thought: revenge porn. 

Do we accept that the rules of life in American society today include video recording private behavior and selecting the most revealing moment to put on the internet for everyone to see? If what Sacha Baron Cohen did is accepted, then why can't everyone set up a little camera in their hotel/bedroom and lure someone into that space and see if they get something that they're interested in putting on the internet? This could be used to hurt any person.

Quite aside from the ethics of treating other people this way, the trick — which the clever man Sacha Baron Cohen did not invent — has been enough of a problem over the years that laws — criminal laws — have been passed. Googling "giuliani" and "revenge porn," I found these tweets:

Congrats to everyone posting those Giuliani pictures, you just broke the New York State revenge porn lawhttps://t.co/L28VsRKCkt

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 21, 2020

Revenge porn is an ex boyfriend releasing intimate pictures of his ex girlfriend, not a comedian filming a creepy old man that represents a major oppressor and enemy of US democracy, willingly masturbating to a woman who was interviewing him. Stop twisting laws to save a monster

— 𝑀𝒶𝓇𝒾𝒶 𝒹𝑒 𝓁𝒶 𝒯𝑜𝓇𝓇𝑒, 𝒫𝒽.𝒟. 😷 (@Caidadelatorre) October 21, 2020

I contemplated whether Maria de la Torre might be a pseudonymous comedian (like Titania McGrath), but no, I think she's this college professor. A professor can still use humor, but I think she's at least partly serious. The idea that criminal law protects only the victims you view as good people is legally wrong and blatantly unethical. And by the way, it's an idea that was used to allow rapists to escape conviction! 

Giuliani might not want to argue that what was done to him was revenge porn. It's inconsistent with his assertion that nothing happened — he was just tucking in his shirt. 

I have not research the revenge-porn issue in any depth, and I assume Sacha Baron Cohen has his legal advisers and the scene was planned with an interruption that occurred exactly where it needed to end to preserve the argument that it was not a violation of criminal statutes. But I do think it is a violation of social norms to lure a person into an intimate encounter for the purpose of recording compromising video. And yet, it's a practice as old as photography, and there's a long list of political figures who've been tricked and disempowered this way.

Oh! That reminds me! Today's the day the Ghislaine Maxwell deposition is coming out. So much sexual exposure this week. 

How the NYT and the Washington Post have caught up on the New York Post Hunter Biden story.

The NYT has this story, which, it says, went up 11 hours ago: "Allegation on Biden Prompts Pushback From Social Media Companies/Joe Biden’s campaign rejected assertions made in a published report that were based on unverified material from Trump allies. Facebook and Twitter found the story dubious enough to limit access to it on their platform." 

The reaction of the social media companies — censorship — is most prominent, followed by Biden's reaction — rejection of the assertions and questioning of the material. The social media reaction is presented as reinforcing the Biden campaign rejection and — it is implied — justified by the "dubious" quality of the report. That the NY Post put the material in a news article isn't mentioned in the headline.

The Washington Post story, which went up at 10:45 CDT, has a much shorter headline, stressing the aggression of Trump supporters and the lateness of the attack: "Three weeks before Election Day, Trump allies go after Hunter — and Joe — Biden." 

From the NYT article: 

"This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit. It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top."

"It looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive. This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shake-down, so I reported it to the police. He then ran away... I only later realized it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me."

Said Rudy Giuliani, explaining himself, in "Rudy Giuliani called the NYPD on Sacha Baron Cohen over prank interview" (Page Six).