Tag Archives: Donald Trump

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SEEKING LAWLERLESSNESS

When the midterm election rolls around, midway through a presidency, most Americans ignore the 434 House seat elections that don’t affect them directly.

But a handful of races garner national attention. Maybe because they’re seen as bellwethers for the electorate as a whole. Maybe they’re a reflection of closely watched demographics. Or they’re seats that always seem to be battlegrounds.

Which brings me home.

I live in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Its southern boundary is less than 10 miles north of New York City, but it reaches all the way up the Hudson, on both sides, for about an hour’s drive north.

Two of the counties in the district – Rockland, where I live, and Westchester – are among the most affluent in the nation. Bill and Hillary Clinton – the 42nd and should-have-been 45th Presidents of the United States – live in Chappaqua, in the heart of the district.

This year, the race is a donnybrook. The Republican incumbent is Mike Lawler, a former political operative seeking a third term. The challenger is Cait Conley, a 16-year military veteran and the former counterterrorism director on the National Security Council.

Polls go both ways in this one. Some show Lawler ahead, although there is some skepticism about the tilt of the polltakers. Others show Conley in the lead. Five points either way would be a landslide here.

The economic issues causing Republicans to cower across the country hit this middle-to-upper class district hard. The price of gasoline is well over $4 a gallon, with some $5 readings in isolated parts. Utility bills surged in the wake of the COVID outbreak and never really came down. Food prices in the New York area rank among the highest in the country – and these parts are no exception.

So that would make you think that this district is ripe for a flip. But there’s a catch.

That catch is the Bloc.

Western Rockland has one of the largest Hasidic and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in the United States. Hebrew is as common as English, if not more so.

The area’s voting patterns are so bizarre that national Democrats thought they had proof of voter fraud in 2024. They didn’t. One precinct in the town of Ramapo, where these folks live, came in Trump 512, Harris 0. For Congress, it was Lawler 505, Democrat Mondaire Jones 1.

Those are Mayor Daley/Boss Tweed type margins. And the thing is they’re not fake news. People in these precincts vote in a monolith.

Which is why Lawler, unlike other embattled Republicans this year, brought Trump to the district. His audience was in the Hasidic area and they got to hear what they wanted – a ringing endorsement of Trump’s buddy Benjamin Netanyahu and support for Israeli actions in Gaza.

The war in Gaza and Trump’s support of Netanyahu is the wild card in New York-17. It’s why Lawler and local Republicans try to spread an image on their New York bogeyman, Zohran Mamdani, as an anti-Semite who endangers Israel and Jews everywhere.

For the rest of the district, Lawler tries to present himself as a reasonable moderate. Hell, he’s got a beard, how could be MAGA?

One of the things he’s trying to sell is the idea that he fought to raise the property tax limit that homeowners can deduct from their federal income taxes. One of Trump’s first punitive moves against states that didn’t vote for him came when his Republican buddies enacted the SALT (state and local taxes) cap at $10,000 a year. The states where property taxes are that high are reliably blue: New York, Massachusetts, California.

Lawler claims he got the cap raised to $40,000, which would alleviate the tax bill for the lower  income end of the population. What he doesn’t advertise is that the boost is limited to three years – it’ll go back to $10,000 about the time Lawler gets interested in trying to unseat Chuck Schumer in the Senate.

What’s hilarious is the signs that say “Thank you Mike Lawler for SALT.” That ignores the fact that SALT itself is a bad thing, that his Republican colleagues are hoping to get back to draining blue states as soon as they can.

Conley wasn’t my first choice to run against Lawler. She’s a little too conservative. For example, she supports restoring much of what was cut from the Affordable Care Act, but she does not support Medicare for All.

But I liked the way she handled herself in the Democratic primary debates. The early favorite came across as mealy-mouthed and a traditional local hack. This race needed a fighter – and despite my vote for a more progressive candidate, Conley won.

She’s rewarded Democrats with a social media-worthy debate performance against Lawler. When the issue of violence against women – in the wake of the Cornell gang rape allegations – came up, Lawler tried to talk over Conley as she advocated strong sexual consent laws.

“I do not need you to mansplain to me what domestic abuse and sexual assault against women is and the appropriate response,” Conley warned Lawler. “Don’t start. Sit over there.”

I think she fights pretty well.

Since I moved here in 1987, most of the House races haven’t been close. For the first 14 years, Republican Ben Gilman dominated. He was what we in New York call a Rockefeller Republican – somewhat moderate. In 2026, assuming he didn’t bend the knee to Donald Trump, he’d be called a RINO – Republican in name only.

Then, after the 2000 census, the redistricting left us with a Democratic stalwart, Nita Lowey. She won relatively easily until she retired in 2020.

Mondaire Jones won in 2020. But in 2022, another census redistricting caused a shift that put Jones in the same district as another Democrat, Sean Patrick Maloney. That caused Jones, a promising Democrat, to shift to an ill-fated New York City race, and left us with Maloney, who represented the Democratic establishment. Lawler beat him by less than 3,000 votes.

So those are all the reasons why this race is the center of attention. Conley and Lawler both make national TV appearances – Lawler is unlike a lot of other Republicans in that he embraces the non-right wing networks because he thinks he can seem like a reasonable member of his party.

I’d love to be confident that Lawler is going down. I’m not. Not at all. I could see a scenario where Democrats take a big majority in the House, capture the Senate – and we’re still stuck with Smarmy Mike.

Early voting starts Saturday. The only way I, the other democracy savers in New York-17 and the other democracy savers from Maine to Alaska can make what we want happen is to vote. As soon as we can. In numbers that can’t be denied.

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I WANNA BE THE GOOD GUYS AGAIN

Superman fought for truth, justice and the American Way.

He’d be really confused now.

Not the truth and justice part. But the American Way has skewed off the highway and into a swamp.

That’s the grin-and-bear-it way to look at a tragedy – the betrayal of Ukraine by Trump and his henchmen. 

In his desperation to avoid a midterm election whomping, Trump reached a deal with the Devil – um, sorry, Vladimir Putin. He says the U.S. will lift its oil embargo against Russia, imposed since it invaded Ukraine four years ago. That comes with a deal to purchase enough diesel fuel to supply the United States for 12 hours.

Not months, weeks or even days. Hours.

Trump believes driving the price of diesel fuel lower will help mitigate the impact its surge has on inflation. Not that what he’s doing would actually help, but even if it did, the damage is done.

Most Americans don’t drive diesel-powered vehicles, so it’s not immediately obvious why diesel is such a big deal. Unfortunately, diesel powers those big honkin’ trucks cluttering your commute home and your leaf-peeping trip.

Imagine how big the tank is in one of those monsters. Now imagine paying $7 a gallon to fill it.

That money has got to come from somewhere. And if you’ve been to the supermarket in the last few weeks, you know where.

Four weeks ago, I bought cream cheese for my low-carb bagels. It was about $6.50 for a half-pound, which is about $1.50 more than I paid in 2024.

Two weeks ago, I bought some more. That half-pound cost me $9.

The same was true of my butter substitute and my fruit juice. $2 and $2 and $3 begin to add up – and although I’m not wealthy by any means, I’m in a slightly better position to pay that increase than a family of four struggling to get by.

So, yeah, Trump is desperate to get the price of diesel down. But he’s also desperate to bail out his old buddy, Vlad.

Trump bet on Russia. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, but neither does talking about the late, great Hannibal Lecter as if he’s a real human being. Or saying Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eat dogs and cats.

Russia is a failed state. It had a chance to become a center of European commerce, like Warsaw, or a center of Asian commerce, like Seoul and Shanghai. 

But Russia’s gonna be Russia – paranoid, belligerent, parochial, hateful. Putin has pulled those strings for most of the 21st century.

So bailing Putin out of an oil embargo bought into by the rest of the free world – an embargo sparked by a wide awake Joe Biden – is what Trump needs to do to protect his investment and satisfy his patron.

And, of course, in this scenario, we don’t matter.

Not just the fact that Americans overwhelmingly support Ukraine, that we overwhelmingly support President Zelenskyy, that we don’t think Russia under Putin is a potential friend and partner.

But our own freedom and pride matter not at all to Trump. Because if Ukraine, four years into a courageous fight against a bigger foe, can’t make it, it bodes ill for the rest of Europe and the West. We become shameful bystanders to the end of order.

Not just in Ukraine. Trump’s ridiculous demands in Greenland and Canada were meant to weaken the greatest military alliance in history and ease Putin’s path to dominance. The stupid war against Iran is meant to tie up American resources in the Middle East, an area where Obama and Biden wisely thought it best to disengage. The nonsense with Cuba and Venezuela is meant to underline the “zones of influence” theory that totalitarians promote.

We have always thought of ourselves as the good guys. Being respected means being admired, not being feared. When we lose the world’s respect, we’re just a bunch of spoiled brats on this side of the Atlantic and this side of the Pacific.

Few of us can leap tall buildings or bend steel in our bare hands. But we aspire to be like Superman, standing for truth, justice and the American Way.

When the American Way is the right way. Right now, with Trump blubbering around the White House like a malevolent blimp, it’s not.

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IT MIGHT NOT BE TOO LATE, IF YOU HURRY

I never worry about whether my voter registration is active.

That’s because I vote in any election I can get to. Not just every four years for President. But midterm elections for Congress, governorships and state legislatures. Off-year local elections for town offices. Judges for whatever jurisdiction. The local school board and budget. 

Even the local library board and budget – that election is usually some weird day in December and I’m sure that, out of my town of 80,000 , maybe 200 people vote.

So I’m ready for November 3. In fact, I’m ready for before November 3, because early voting starts October 24 in New York. 

All I need to do is coordinate with the other members of my family on when we’re going to the special early voting site. I need to do this because I’ve promised every Democrat who has rung our doorbell that I would bring everyone in my family to the polls.

That’s how deeply I care about this election. About just about any election.

You should care, too. Sorry to preach, but the people who don’t vote are as much to blame for the crisis we endure. If you can’t be bothered to be a functioning citizen, don’t complain when Trump cheers the wiping out of the San Diego Zoo or gets THANKS TO DONALD J. TRUMP carved into the chair at the Lincoln Memorial.

Among other obscenities.

Unfortunately, if Trump’s BS makes you angry or scared, you’re out of luck in many states.

That’s because, for a supposed democracy, we do a crappy job of letting people vote. You have to register. It’s something you actively have to do. By mail, online or in person. 

And every state has a different deadline. Sometimes, it’s hard to know when that deadline is – it’s not like a holiday whose date everyone remembers. 

For instance, if you live in Florida and want to rid the state of the taint left by Ron DeSantis and his goons, you time passed. The voting registration deadline in Florida, according to vote.org, was October 5, three days before this was posted. 

If you live in Texas and get nauseous of the thought of Ken Paxton as a U.S. senator and Greg Abbott getting another chance to further his police state, you missed your opportunity. The deadline was October 3.

That said, there are still states – some of which have tight races that will determine whether Trumpism flourishes or flails – where you can still register to vote.

Several states have voter registration up to and including Election Day. If that’s the case, no worries. Just go to the polls on November 3 – or earlier if there’s early voting. Vermont, Minnesota and Washington State are among the states where you can do that.

And other states still have registration open. A short drive to town hall can make you an American hero.

For example, here in New York, the registration deadline is October 24. In the 17th Congressional District, where I live, it could make all the difference in whether Smarmy Mike Lawler can continue his worshipful kissing of Trump’s ass.

In Michigan, you can support one of those most thoughtful candidates in recent memory, Abdul el-Sayed, keep a Democratic Senate seat from another Trump sycophant. You can register in person until the polls close at 8 p.m. EST on Election Day, or by October 19 online or by mail.

To register on Election Day in Michigan, you need either a driver’s license, or a combination of a photo ID and proof of residence like a utility bill or government check.

You need to check the rules for your state. It’s not that hard. Vote.org is a good place to start. Or you can look up your state’s Secretary of State website or the site of your local elections board.

The MAGAmuffins who claim that any election Trump and his followers lose is rigged are trying to make it seem as though it’s way too easy to vote. Or it’s way too easy to manipulate vote totals through fake registrations and noncitizen voting.

That’s crap. And there’s an easy solution that I guarantee these people wouldn’t like.

Automatic registration.

Allow everyone 18 and older to vote. They can either be registered through Social Security. Or just have them show up with a government-issued ID on Election Day – there would be no need for registration.

But you can’t have voter ID AND registration, the way MAGA is trying to intimidate states into thinking. If you’ve registered, you’ve proven your identity. Your signature should be enough.

That’s what we’ve done in New York since at least the first time I went to the polls, as an 8-year-old in 1962 voting with my parents (a great tradition that every family should extend). It works fine. Only sore losers squawk about fairness.

But you can’t complain about the situation in this country – you can’t even say stuff like “it’s politics as usual” or “there’s no difference between the political parties” – if you don’t participate. Throwing up your hands is not responsible.

Voting is.

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ISSUE DRIVEN

In less than five weeks, Americans will know if they’ve shaken off the shackles of stupidity that have plagued our country for almost two years.

No midterm election in my 72-1/2 years has carried the weight of this one. All that’s at stake is the fate of democracy in the United States, the stability of the world order and the lives of millions of people here and around the world.

No pressure.

Elections should always be about issues. This election is – and isn’t. Because the one overriding issue is our survival as a free country.

That freedom has eroded drastically since January 20, 2025. People are being picked up on the street or dragged from homes because – or despite – their immigration status. Journalists are harassed, insulted and barred by the government they’re supposed to hold accountable. Science has given way to superstition and nonsense, leading to unthinkable disease outbreaks. 

Commerce is stymied and traditional allies shunned on the whim of a super-sensitive buffoon.

So there’s no question that we need to vote out the pond scum occupying the U.S. Congress, the state houses and even our town halls. 

A message needs to be sent to the Republican Party that it has committed a mortal sin against the Constitution and the moral foundation of this country. And, as I learned when I was a good Catholic boy studying the catechism, mortal sins lead to hell.

But all this sturm und drang fomented by Trump and his sycophants have distracted us from real problems. The kinds of problems naturally occurring in a society in which humanity, technology and even the atmosphere evolve.

For example, we have wasted decades letting climate deniers believe they’re an alternative point of view. But they’re as much an alternative as the sun rising in the west. Climate change is affecting us more and more each year, and we can’t afford to let Trump and the special interests who enrich him.

We’ve seen disastrous storms plague Hawaii, wildfires spread across California and the Rockies. A weakened atmosphere allows smoke from Canadian forests to befoul the skies over New York. Superstorms roll up the East Coast – and the ability of scientists to track them has been thwarted by uncertain conditions above us.

Our government should be doing two things. One is to set standards that minimize further damage to the climate – encouraging electric vehicles and alternative energy generation. The other is to lessen the impact of weather disasters.

In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to end the rampant flooding that occurs every time it rains hard is to plant more trees. Those trees are intended to absorb the increase in water output that’s occurring in storms.

It’s a small thing, and its success might be marginal. But that kind of thinking is better than doing nothing and shrugging it all off to bad luck.

We need to fix our transportation systems. Rail travel isn’t much faster than it was at the turn of the century – the 19th into the 20th, not the most recent one. Our air traffic system is one thunderstorm at O’Hare from chaos. While technology innovation has grown exponentially, innovation in how people and goods move across the country has barely budged.

Healthcare needs to be fixed once and for all. The Affordable Care Act accomplished a lot – it’s probably the most valuable piece of legislation passed in the contentious 21st century. But instead of building on it, Republicans have been eroding it. There’s debate in the Democratic Party about whether Medicare for All is the right solution, but everyone in the party wants expansion – not contraction – of healthcare coverage.

The intrusion of technology in our lives is scaring the hell out of people. Instead of looking at artificial intelligence as a way to improve our lives, a lot of us worry that it’s going to end up killing us instead. And the data centers that process all the technology that rules our lives is desecrating our environment and draining our resources, producing little benefit to people who live nearby.

We need to work with our neighbors – Canada, Mexico and the islands in the Caribbean – to solve these problems. Not create new ones with insults, disrespect and petty grievance. 

Maybe you have other things that you believe are important. Fighting crime. Protecting the vulnerable in our society. Showing respect to everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identification, physical capacity or any other arbitrary criteria you can name.

But instead, the election that takes place on November 3 is about one issue. How do we take the steering wheel away from people who drive our nation like they’re drunk? How do we combat narcissism and the worship of a false god? How do we get back to the idea that there are three separate and equal branches of government in the United States?

It will start by throwing out the Republican fools. In the Senate. In the House. In the governors’ mansions. In the legislatures. In town halls and city halls. Hell, even in the town highway department.

There needs to be an overwhelming rejection of what has transpired over the past 20 months. Because if we don’t, I shudder at what life will be like starting in early January 2027.

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KAOS

This week’s convening of the United Nations General Assembly spotlights the warped state of our world in 2026.

You used to know the good guys and bad guys. You used to think that we, here in the United States of America, fell into the good guys category.

Now, it’s hard to say.

American presidents served as the guide in the fights against fascism, Soviet communism and terrorism. Their legacy is the Marshall Plan, the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the capture of Osama bin Laden.

This month alone, an American president said he might annihilate Iran, started a trade war with Canada and said of seizing Venezuela’s oil “to the victor goes the spoils.” He said Ukraine’s retaliation for the wanton murder of civilians “unfortunately” resulted in the depletion of Russia’s oil and diesel supplies.

The American president thinks Russia, Saudi Arabia and North Korea are allies. He thinks Canada, Mexico, Denmark and South Korea are not.

This topsy-turvy world reminds me somewhat of the secret agent shows of the 1960s.

Because it seems as though the world’s alliances aren’t formed around national interest. They seem based on the self-interest of individual oligarchs.

The most famous of these is the James Bond series, which continues today (BTW: Jack Lowden from “Slow Horses” would be a great 007!). Bond and British Intelligence joined forces with other nations to combat SPECTRE – which stood for SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.

Does that sound like the alliance of Trump, Mohammed Bin Salman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Khalil al-Hayya, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-Il to you?

It’s an alliance that based on the enrichment and personal powerlust of each of them. The idea that everything is zero-sum – that it’s either their way or no way.

Notice one name is missing.

It’s not. Vladimir Putin is the Ernst Blofeld of the modern-day coalition of the wicked. He’s the mastermind. He’s the won with the cat, who will open the trap door for the piranha tank to punish someone for incompetence or insufficient loyalty.

There are days when it seems as though there’s a supervillain plot to take our money and render us beholden. In the process, the world’s real problems – hunger, disease, climate change, technological encroachment – get shunted.

Who is our James Bond?

Actually, I think there are three.

One is the military guy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He’s the one with the creative bent that has given a smaller defender the upper hand against a dark, relentless foe. Watching video of drone attacks on Moscow and St. Petersburg is stunning and a sign the good guys have a shot of winning this.

The economic guy is Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Trump has tried to cripple the greatest neighbor any nation ever had. He insulted its sovereignty and belittled its enterprise and culture.

Carney’s not having any of it. He knows he’s the one with the actual business acumen. And he pressing that knowledge, forming alliances with other nations and selling Canada’s abundance to nations not stupid enough to tariff it.

The third James Bond is us.

We are the agents of change if we want to be. We can lash out against Trump, against the would-be feudal lords of the Middle East, against the hegemonists of Asia and against Putin’s connivance.

The 2026 midterm elections are 40 days away. Early voting has started in four states and will soon be available in all but a handful. Yes, you can vote by mail, but Trump will do what he can to invalidate that, so a convenient early time is the best solution.

When the James Bond movies came out, there was other spy entertainment. 

“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” teamed an American and a Russian as good guys against a world dominance organization named Thrush – which actually didn’t stand for anything.

And, on “Get Smart,” Maxwell Smart was Agent 86 in the comedy about the American espionage group CONTROL’s battle against an evil enterprise. It was appropriately named by the hilarious do of Buck Henry and Mel Brooks.

KAOS.

That’s what it seems like we’re living through. Villains who’d be comical if they weren’t so goddamn dangerous. 

It’s time to take control.

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ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE

Osama bin Laden’s capture in May 2010, 8-1/2 years after he perpetrated the atrocities of 9/11,, united the United States.

If you remember, there were spontaneous celebrations in Washington and other cities. After President Obama announced the special forces team’s success, he went to New York for a solemn wreath laying at the World Trade Center site. Then he visited city firefighters at a station particularly hard hit, sharing lunch with the crew.

It might have been the last time this country was united.

Otherwise, we’ve pretty given bin Laden what he wanted.

He wanted to destroy us. He wanted to knock off our pedestal as the world’s indispensable nation. 

bin Laden saw our diversity as weakness. That’s what he has in common with history’s autocratic scum, like Hitler and Stalin – and now Putin. He wanted a rule based on his warped idea of Islam, just like the warped Christianity of totalitarians. 

There was no place in it for infidels – people who practice other faiths. There was no place in it for Muslims who didn’t share his view; bin Laden supported the deaths of thousands from Afghanistan to Africa to the Twin Towers.

But after a couple of days of celebration and relief, we went back to doing bin Laden’s work of tearing ourselves apart.

The forces that saw diversity, equity and inclusion as weakness gained the upper hand in our politics. They were fueled by oodles of money from people who profited from the old way of doing things.

And they were led by a huckster who would say what it took to appeal to their prejudices as long as he profited from him. Donald Trump would be the most liberal Democrat in America if he thought he’d get more money and power that way.

In the process, he divided us in a way bin Laden could have only dreamed of. Trump is bin Laden’s victory.

But the seeds of thwarting bin Laden are still in the ground.

In New York, while bigots and political opportunists squawk about his attendance at the 9/11 memorial, a Muslim mayor leads an effort to unite his city and restore its greatness. He revels in the diversity and culture of the town.

There are other leaders in other cities and states with similar agendas. They see the mosaic as being stronger than the single sheet of material. They fulfill the promise of this country to form a more perfect union, to govern and not to rule.

bin Laden would have written a flattering letter to Trump and won him over. The rest of us know better. It takes all kinds of people to make America great – and that won’t happen until we run this country again.

On this 25th anniversary, may the loved ones of those killed on 9/11 and those killed because of its aftermath find peace.

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THE NAME GAME

Here’s how you can tell the summer went by fast:

When it began, the Mets still had a chance to make the playoffs and the Great Lake north of Rochester was Lake Ontario. 

A lot of folks probably thought the Mets were done around Memorial Day. But nobody, not even the cetriolo behind the move, imagined renaming a lake that’s had the same name for almost 400 years.

But then again, Trump is the moron who thought picking a fight with the greatest ally in the history of the world was a good idea.

Trump got the idea for his attempted renaming of the lake after Canada stood up to his mishegas trade negotiations. He was also bothered by the fact that the Canadians have no intention of bailing him out of his war with Iran or dignifying his attempt to take away their sovereignty.

But Trump got away with it because the two most popular map software providers – Google and Apple – gave the toddler his wish. 

It is stunning to see that stupid name on the map, just as it’s stunning to see the name he wants for the Gulf of Mexico. The guy is obsessed with names, gold-plating, money, low-flow showers, Rosie O’Donnell and orange makeup. Not necessarily in that order.

The name itself is bad enough. But, supposedly, these tech companies are all about freedom for the individual. Watch any Tim Cook presentation over the years and that’s all you hear about it – “the way you want it” kinda stuff.

And yet, I spent the whole morning trying to do something that map software used to allow routinely – give places the name that you want.

Usually, I imagine a lot of jilted lovers changing an ex’s address from whatever it is to “Shithead’s Place.” Or a bad restaurant from its name de cuisine to “Cyclospora Unlimited.”

But trying to change the lake back to Ontario just isn’t doable – or at least it isn’t doable for a septuagenerian with low patience disorder.

Nevertheless, I would not stop on changing the lake or the gulf back to its proper name. There are lots of locations that could nomenclature transitions.

— Given his obsession with genitalia and supposed masculinity, I think every bank of urinals in a turnpike service area should be called a Hegseth. As in, “I drank too many beers, I need to go to the Hegseth at the next rest stop.”

— On the West Side Highway in New York is a massive waste treatment plant. I’d like to rename that Laura Loomer Center. How about it, Google?

— There’s a courtyard outside Fox News headquarters of Avenue of the Americas and West 46th Street in Manhattan. It’s where they put up a fake holiday tree every year (notice I didn’t say the C word that they would insist on calling it; it’s my naming convention. Maybe that could be Benedict Arnold or Quisling Plaza in honor of Fox’s contribution to the destruction of American freedom.

— I have two name changes that I’d like to take up with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the New York City Council. I would rename West 56th Street as Joseph R. Biden Jr. Way. And then Fifth Avenue between 57th and 55th Streets could be Barack Obama Boulevard.

— That would lead to the final name change. There’s a building near the corner of 56th Street and Fifth Avenue. The address is 725 Fifth Avenue. I believe I speak for about three-quarters of the city’s residents in saying the building’s current name is unacceptable. 

To start the process of healing the unnecessary rift with Canada, I would change the name of the building from Trump Tower to Maple Leaf Centre..

Or, to honor the people seeking freedom from around the world, Immigrants’ Haven.

Or, to show compassion for some of those persecuted by this administration, the LGBTQIArium. 

Actually, that’s the only problem with this plan. There’s so many people and places that deserve a landmark name other than what it is now that it would be hard to agree on who would bug Trump the most.

The compromise might be what we say the day he disappears from American life. It’s an odd name for a structure, but everybody will understand.

The Good Riddance.

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WHEN THE RAIN COMES

If you were anywhere between the Bronx and Saratoga Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, you’re still drying out.

Parts of a band that runs along Interstate 87 in New York got as much as 9-1/2 inches of rain in the overnight period. Massive flooding. Buildings washed away. 

Get used to it.

Climate change is no longer in the warning stage. It’s here, and the deluge New Yorkers felt and heard is just one more indication that we might passed the point that this is fixable.

And if you’re of a certain age – say, mine – you know that this is very real. I’ve been saying for years that I’ve noticed storms are getting more dynamic as time passes. The lightning is brighter. The thunder is louder. The rain falls in sheets. The wind blows harder.

But, of course, we live in a country run by deniers. Starting with the orange gasbag at the top. What happened in upstate New York isn’t even on his radar. He could care less.

He’s too busy losing a war for oil, whose persistent use triggered this climate crisis. He sent American forces, the pride of our nation, to battle over a commodity that we should be finding ways to avoid using.

It’s killing us and he’s killing them.

I’m not knowledgeable in climatology. Frankly, I don’t know a whole lot about science in general.

But I do know that the evidence points to a problem. A big one. Despite what Trump, his tame cabinet and the sycophant Republican politicians say.

If I’m a Democrat candidate, I’m saving the videos of ravaging weather for my campaign ads. I suspect every congressional and state legislature candidate has at least one instance of recent ridiculous weather in her or his district.

And then say that while it’s an uphill battle, we can still do things to fight.

We can commit to more electric vehicles on the road. We can commit to bolstering mass transit and getting creative with the options to get people from place to place.

We can commit to boost alternative energy sources – solar and wind. 

We can commit to improving infrastructure – in particular, we can figure out what it takes to stop roads from flooding in extreme wet weather. It’s hard to stop it when there’s 10 inches of rain in 24 hours, but two inches in a day shouldn’t instantly mean you can get from here to there.

The weather is going to become more extreme, at least for the rest of my lifetime. Big rain. Big heat. Big cold – climate change also means clippers from the Arctic have an easier path to sweep into the middle of the United States. Which also means big snow.

It feels like banging your head against a wall when you hear dopes chant “Drill, baby, drill” or “Trump digs coal.” But it beats the alternative – just watching the climate get worse and giving up.

Our children and grandchildren will never forgive us for letting this happen. They shouldn’t. When it comes to climate change, we’re all wet.

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HE DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH, METHINKS?

They waited until the next morning. But both Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024 conceded defeat when they ran for President against Donald Trump.

This is brought up because in between those two elections, Trump himself graciously conceded the 2020 election to Joe Biden. He called the President-elect and wished him, Vice President-elect Harris and the incoming administration well, offering whatever cooperation he could.

Just checking to see if you were awake.

Of course, Trump didn’t do that on November 7, 2020, when the networks declared Biden the winner.. Even as his limo tried to navigate Washington streets clogged with celebrants, Trump stewed like the orange prune he is. And within hours, he was claiming that there was something fraudulent about Biden’s win.

And he has continued to more than 5-1/2 years.

In fact, last week, he asked the networks for time to address the nation on a crucial subject. The logical potential topics for this address included::

1. The ongoing war with Iran,  which he have decimated multiple times  – a problem because it’s hard to decimate anyplace more than one unless they’re really fast rebuilders.

2. The cyclosporiasis outbreak that has sickened thousands around the nation. A little presidential reassurance about the nation’s food supply would have been nice. But as long as McDonald’s can make Big Macs – even if they’re san s lettuce – the food chain won’t be much concern to Trump.

3. The Epstein Files. Finally, the truth!

Again just checking to see if you’re awake.

No, Trump addressed the nation about his obsession with the 2020 election. In this particular instance, he claimed that China hacked into the voter records of 18 states in an effort to influence the election in favor of Biden.

He released documents he claims prove the point, all of them heavily redacted and nothing anyone hasn’t seen before. That anyone includes the nation’s security agencies, who continue to deny that any foreign government influenced the 2020 vote.

This is Trump’s scratched record – that despite all evidence that nearly 8 million more Americans voted for Joe Biden than voted for him. That a nation reeling from the ravages of Trump’s mishandling of COVID-19 – wonder if anyone actually drank bleach as he recommended – wasn’t prone to turn to someone to end the. mess.

You would think that his victory in 2024 would get him to shut up about 2020, to put whatever embarrassment he felt behind him. The American people gave him a plurality of its votes this time, unlike in 2016, as he swept back into the Oval Office,

Supposedly.

I’ve never bought into what a lot of my fellow liberals and Democrats believe – that Trump somehow cheated to win two years ago. I don’t see how any entity could do that – I don’t care how sophisticated the Russians, the Saudis and anyone else who would want Trump in office could be.

Except that Trump keeps bringing up this idea that someone stole the 2020 election. By an even bigger Electoral College margin than Trump won four years earlier .

I’m reminded of the line from Hamlet that’s paraphrased in the title of this. It’s a variation of what I learned in my high school psychology class – projection, the idea of attributing to someone else behavior that you practice.

Maybe the constant harping on the past is Trump’s way of saying he’s done it before. Maybe even twice. Maybe Kamala Harris really was 4 percentage points ahead of Trump when all the votes were counted, as she was in the. final polls before the election.

I mean I still it hard to believe that anyone could have watched the debate between Trump and Harris and not seen how much more suitable she was for the presidency than the guy who spouted “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats.”

Did his buddy Elon Musk spend enough money to rig the voting somehow? Was he joined by some of his other tech pals,, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiell? These men have a lot of influence in social media. Maybe they found a way to turn that into raw electoral power.

I don’t believe that. But I might not be a bad idea for Democrats to say it a little more loudly.

Trump’s election lies and his lack of grace have poisoned the American political atmosphere for far too long. Accusing him of stealing the 2024 election might make his head spin a la Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.”

IN any event, I think claiming the 2024 election was stolen has as much validity as claiming the 2020 election was stolen. And putting Trump and his minions on notice is one of the many ways to fight back as a crucial 2026 midterm election draws closer.

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

I’m surprised Trump and his cult want all of the nation to celebrate the 250th anniversary of independence.

The key word in the above sentence is celebrate.

It’s hard to think of people more miserable than Donald Trump, the kakistocracy that comprises the U.S. government and his mean-spirited MAGA supporters. If you told me they all suffer from chronic constipation, I would believe it.

Two prime examples of recent Trumpgrump:

— Apparently, Trump thinks you don’t work enough. The guy who put a cage match on the White House lawn for his birthday said that there are too many non-working holidays and they’re bad for the nation’s economy. 

He said this, of course, on Juneteenth, a recently created holiday to mark the anniversary of when slaves in Galveston, Texas, finally found out they weren’t slaves anymore. Yeah, why would Trump want to celebrate that?

But he couldn’t mention Juneteenth specifically because that would mean he’s a racist – although, note to Donald, that’s not particularly well-hidden. Instead, he said that there are too many holidays in general, and we need to get rid of some of them to make our economy great again.

Ha! No workers in the developed world take as little time off as Americans. There are countries that shut down for entire months in the summer. There are countries that give parents six months or a year of time off for a newborn or adoption.

Trump thinks 10 paid holidays a year is too much. He’s on board with not taking all your vacation time at work. You have to make him and his friends more money. That’s your purpose in life.

— One of the biggest reasons that young people don’t want to start a family is that they can’t afford a home for kids to have the same quality of life they did.

In a lightning bolt of bipartisanship, Congress passed a measure aimed at making homes more affordable. Among its provisions, limits on investment firms purchasing residential housing, one of the things driving the tight market.

It’s a win for Republicans in a time when wins are hard to get. You would think Trump would just take the gift of a chance to look like a leader that the Democrats helped give him.

Nah.

Trump canceled a ceremony to sign the bill because he wants to push his divisive bill on voter ID that would, among other things, disenfranchise married women.

So a happy moment of accomplishment turns into another head-butting stupor.

The funny thing is that the only way Trump can stop this bill from going into effect is vetoing it and forcing the bill’s advocates to come up with a two-thirds majority to override. And somebody would be embarrassed by that – either Trump, because for once Republicans would stand up to him, or the Republicans, because they would capitulate to Trump once again, helping Democratic campaign writers again.

————–

Joy is not lost.

In New York, a million people turned out to celebrate the New York Knicks’ NBA championship. In Chicago, the opening of the Obama Presidential Center was marked with amazing musical performances and a wonderful tribute to the former president from the former First Lady.

Throughout the country, visitors from around the world attending the World Cup are discovering that most Americans are not as miserable as Donald Trump. The joyous celebrations of the Scots in Boston, the Norwegians here in New York, among others, are giving the lie to the notion that American cities – especially those in blue states -are hellholes.

It’s also Pride Month. And despite no official recognition from their president and the sour pusses of people like the San Francisco Giant pitchers who are trying to use the Bible to “reclaim the rainbow,” the celebration of love for whoever you want to love continues full bore.

You know, it’s fun to be happy. It makes you feel better. It makes you like the people around you more.

Maybe that’s why Jefferson threw in that line about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” when he wrote the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. It’s in our national DNA to seek good times. To try to smile.

Trump and his ilk should try it sometime. Instead of complaining about a nation of immigrants and differing ways of looking at the world. Instead of aspiring to some ridiculous notion of warriorism.

You know, instead of being jerks.

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