Staying in the game, Jimmy Cannon style.

Darline Graham
… a familiar name

• Maybe it’s just me, but: When you’re running for the United States Senate and you’re debating an opponent, it’s probably not smart or wise or politically astute to say, “I’m not that informed on national security.” Or to say at a subsequent debate on universal healthcare that you don’t support such ”woke” ideas because your parents, “if they were sick, they had to get up and go to work.” Both her parents died relatively young, as her now deceased brother, Lindsey, wrote about in his memoir. Yes, we’re talking about Darline Graham, who apparently dropped her married last name, Nordone, when Donald Trump decided she should get her brother’s vacant seat in the Senate, representing South Carolina. Just because name recognition is more important than job qualifications to him. The governor complied and appointed her. Now, she’s in a runoff with a congressman to decide the Republican candidate in November.

• Maybe it’s just me, but: I can’t decide who’s dumber, Darline or the Republican voters who let an admittedly unqualified Senate candidate get as far as a runoff.

• Maybe it’s just me, but: As long as we’re stuck in South Carolina, I wonder why voters, specifically Republican voters, would cast ballots for an obviously unqualified candidate for the U.S. Senate simply because she’s the sister of the now-deceased senator from their state when, on her brother’s watch, the state recently ranked: 41st out of 50 for the percentage of families living in poverty; 46th in infant and child mortality rates; 42nd in overall life expectancy; 42nd for overall physical health; 46th for overall safety; 41st in violent crimes per capita; 42nd for overall education quality; 35th for general economic opportunity; 36th in average years of school completed; 45th in affordability; 32nd in unemployment rate; 44th in citizenship and democracy; 37th in productivity; 39th in health and safety and, according to one survey, was the ninth worst state in the union in which to raise a family and, in another survey, conducted by Tulane University, ranked 42nd out of 50 states overall? Nice job, Lindsey.

• Maybe it’s just me, but: Lake America? Really? Couldn’t Natalie keep Trump away from his Sharpie when the Canadians told him to buzz off? Where were the orderlies?

• Maybe it’s just me, but: Isn’t Ted Cruz even slightly annoyed or embarrassed at the way Trump is dealing with the country in which the senator from Texas was born? I know Cruz, whose mother is American, renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2014 to prepare for his run for president of the United States in 2016, but still, it’s his father’s homeland and the Canadians were nice enough to accept his renunciation after 44 years of his enjoying it so Trump (who beat him anyway) couldn’t question his birth certificate, a la Obama. Maybe it’s like dumping your husband’s (and until recently your) last name to run for the Senate. Very convenient. And very Republican.

Michael Cohen
… back in the fold

Natalie Harp. Karoline Leavitt. Michael Cohen.

Do you catch my drift?

If you have only a cursory familiarity with current events, those names in the news the past few days will probably cause you to stop and pause to connect the dots. Yeah. You got it. Just one dot.

Trump.

Make it two: A total lack of self-respect. It’s absolutely necessary to get ahead in MAGA World.

Until Sunday, the hands-down winner of the yucky, smarmiest display of “Anything else I can do for you, boss”? was Harp. Nicknamed the human printer. The attractive blonde “human printer” who is always at his side. The attractive, blonde human printer, who refused to submit to a security clearance, oversees all Trump’s social media posts and carries a really big bag full of something or other wherever she and Trump go. Yes, the attractive blonde who resembles his daughter, Ivanka. That one. The blonde who jumped into the trunk of his car when she was told there was no room in the motorcade for her.

Harp had usurped the title from Leavitt, the attractive blonde White House press secretary who has never found a lie too outrageous or too absurd to repeat for Trump, no insult too nasty to hurl at the press. Leavitt is leaving her high profile job at the White House, which she had quickly resumed despite just having given birth to a baby girl. The announcement of her departure came after Trump decided to use her as one of the decoys in the two-plane farce in Turkey, but took Harp with him by his side in the catering cart for the presumably “safe” plane. Leavitt stays on this list because she didn’t dump Trump, she joined some super Pac, MAGA Inc., where she previously served as spokesperson. What’s more, while she wants to “spend more time with family,” she says she plans to serve as a close, outside adviser and to join Trump at the Republican convention next month. Which could mean Trump will have attractive blonde bookends, er aides, on either side of him as he rambles through his speech.

Nonetheless, after last Sunday, neither attractive blonde etc. can lay claim to being the smarmiest of them all. That title once again goes to Michael Cohen, the fixer. Not female or blonde, but a lawyer willing to lie, cheat and steal for Trump, go to prison for him, write a book bad-mouthing him and, after eight years, turn around and invite his “boss” on to his radio show for a full-length interview in which they mend fences and Cohen signs off by singing “Reunited.” Yucky.

This to me confirms that, while Trump clearly appreciates the presence of attractive blonde sycophants, nothing comes closer to his heart, especially when the future looks threatening, than a lawyer without an ounce of self-respect and a whole-hearted willingness to ignore the law. (Think Roy Cohn, Rudy Giuliani and our current attorney general.) Cohen, who served three years in Otisville Correctional Facility, just down the road from where I’m typing this (much of it in solitary confinement at Trump’s order), says he puckered up because he’s concerned for his family’s safety.

Oh yeah, he also resubmitted his bid for a federal pardon and he might be trying to get his law license back. And he surely knows what’s in the Epstein files.

If you catch my drift.

Somewhere in the catering crate is Donald Trump.

He really doesn’t care. Not at all. Not about anyone but himself.

Two examples from last week should make that clear even to the most gullible Trump loyalists: The decoy plane and the aircraft carrier.

— Decoy: Ok, so we all know by now that Trump left Turkey following the NATO conference in fear for his life from Iranians, thanks to a report from Israeli Intelligence. This caused him to get on Air Force One with the press and traveling administration personnel, then sneak out in a catering container and get in a somewhat smaller jet standing by. All this without anyone in the press or the rest of the world, except for those government officials, knowing. The press and some government folks would remain on the decoy plane, window shades down.

Trump, Pete Hegseth and Trump’s “close, personal” White House staff (Natalie Harp for sure, but not Karoline Leavitt), all snuck on to the other plane.

Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State, remained on the decoy plane, apparently not important enough to protect from a perceived threat, but prominent enough to have his presence avoid press suspicion of shady doings. That also applied to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. They stayed. For appearances apparently.

Did Marco have a choice? Scott? Could either man have said, “No, I don’t want to die either?” Did other expendable staff, including Stephen Miller, know that Trump’s key Oval Office protectors weren’t aboard? And why did Trump go through this charade even though his own CIA doubted the Israeli report was credible?

Guess when he thinks his butt is on the line there’s no limit to what must be done to protect it or to who is expendable. It’s actually pretty much how he acts as president every day.

— U.S.S. Lincoln Aircraft Carrier: This is unforgivable. When reports surfaced that the crew of the carrier, deployed in the Middle East because of Trump’s disastrous war with Iran, had been at sea for nearly nine months (a record) without seeing shore, were living on barely edible rations, were using filthy bathrooms and that some members were so depressed they had tried to jump overboard, Trump said the crew and members of their families reporting such conditions were lying. Think about that. Asked by a reporter if the crew and the ship had been deployed at sea too long, he said, “Not nearly long enough.”

The bone spurs draft dodger, never-served-a-day commander-in-chief, embarrassed that Iran had managed to destroy the supply base in Bahrain that served the Lincoln, requiring that supplies be sent from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, chose to talk tough and deny and lie. Visiting the ship to check on conditions firsthand was apparently not an option. Of course, he and Hegseth had never told us about the damage to the Bahrain base. Trump had to protect his fragile ego and that made the crew of the Lincoln expendable.

While all this was going on, Congress was in recess and Republican members were predictably silent even though social media commentary on both topics was plentiful and largely not favorable. Actually, it being primary time across much of the nation, most Republican candidates for any office were also silent or avoidant on the issue of whom Trump regarded as expendable.

But that’s Trump -- a new bottom every day. I do not blame him for being who he is; I simply detest him. In truth, I’m sick of him. I do, however, blame the Republican Party for infecting American society (not just politics) with this utterly despicable human being.

I mean every elected Republican official, from the House Speaker, Senate Majority Leader, the entire cabinet, to every governor, senator, congressperson, state legislator, attorney general, county executive, county legislator, mayor, supervisor, councilman, or candidate who has stood silently by and let Trump make a mockery of our laws, our democratic system of government and lay waste to any sense of decency or decorum befitting the office of president of the most powerful nation on the planet. Ladies and gentlemen, you are him.

And the mystifying, sad reality of it all to me is that, despite the long trail of supplicants left behind, none of these Republicans apparently realizes that, on any given day for any ego-protecting reason, Donald Trump would consider any one of them expendable.

My glove from 1952.

Having been a sports editor in my career (two years with The Delphian at Adelphi College and a couple of years with The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton), it was common practice for me to start the day with the back pages of the newspaper — the sports pages — especially when I was feeling pressured by the other news of the day.

Like today.

Today, many of those newspaper pages have disappeared, replaced by a hodgepodge of news sources on social media. You have to be careful whom you believe, what’s true and what’s not.

Well, yesterday on Facebook I came across a sports story that made my day. For the first time ever, which is to say the 75 years it has existed, the Bayonne Little League all-star team is going to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa.

Damn!

That’s big!

If you haven’t guessed, I’m a Bayonne native. I played as an 11-year-old in what I believe was the second year of the league’s existence. Center field. We actually won the city championship thanks in large part to a talented 12-year-old, Luke Tansey.

As an adult, I got to coach two sons’ Little League teams in Wallkill, N.Y. in the next century. Even got to make sure my youngest, Zack, got the number of his favorite player: 2. Right, Derek Jeter.

The point I’m taking my time getting to is that, among American institutions, Little League has lasted and managed to stay pretty much the same for a long time. I think that’s because, whatever’s going on in the world, it brings a community together. In Bayonne or Wallkill or wherever.

The response I’ve seen on social media about the Bayonne team is proof of that. The whole city seems to be buoyed and lifted by the accomplishments of their young athletes. Busloads made the trip to Williamsport, just as I’m sure busloads did the same for other teams.

But this is Bayonne, where I once broke up a no-hitter with a triple down the right field line in the new First Street stadium in the shadow of the Bayonne Bridge and made a lucky, home run-robbing catch against the fence in the 11th Street ballpark that actually snared a headline in the next day’s Bayonne Times.

Little League is a collection of moments for everyone who plays or coaches or has a child playing. It is community at its best, at its basic level, whatever else may be going on.

In many ways, Bayonne has already won. The players, coaches, parents, everyone involved in the league, the whole city has been given a healthy dose of hope and pride in accomplishment. You can never have too much of that.

Bayonne is in the Little League World Series! That’s legitimate front page news in the peninsula city. But what the heck, as long as you’re in Williamsport, why not win the whole darn thing? What a 75th birthday present!

Go, Bayonne!

Senator Joseph McCarthy, left, and Donald Trump. Birds of a feather.
Anna Lefkowitz / MS NOW; Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images; Getty Images

“Are you now, or have you ever been …”

It’s come to that already. The sure sign of a desperate man and a desperate party. The “communist” threat.

Give me a break.

Stuck with historically low polling numbers, the result of a lost war of choice, high gas prices, high food prices, failed projects all over D.C., a measles outbreak, a diarrhea outbreak, a bleak jobs report, restlessness among the ranks who must face reelection and the always present specter of the actual release of the Epstein files, Trump has fallen back on the oldest Republican gimmick. Calling Democrats communists. “Godless communists.”

Shades of Joe McCarthy. And shades of Roy Cohn, the Wisconsin senator’s pit bull lawyer during the televised Army-McCarthy congressional hearings in 1954 that pitted neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, no evidence needed. Just the question: Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

Trump learned at Cohn’s side. When in trouble: Accuse, insult, insinuate. Repeat. Take the focus off yourself. With his world and support crumbling around him, clearly more delusional by the day, Trump looked around and saw two popular Democrats with foreign-sounding names, policies at odds with his brand of fascism and identified what he desperately thought were targets of opportunity.

The new mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, and the new Democratic Senate candidate in the state of Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed are both well-accomplished, intelligent, well -spoken native-born Americans, both Social Democrats, both Muslim with Muslim-sounding names.

Communists! Clearly. And the Republican sheep in the Congress picked up the cue. Any popular Democrat with proposals that sound like they might be good for people‘s health, wealth and welfare must be communists.

Head Start, Medicare, Snap. Tax the wealthy. Feed the poor. Communists.

Not really. Not even close. But the sheep figured maybe the MAGA diehards won’t know the difference. (They won’t). So they picked up the call. But first, the Republican cowards approved Trump‘s personal lawyer to be the top law enforcement official in the country, passed a quickie interim budget so the country wouldn’t have to shut down and then they fled town. No, they didn’t pass Trump‘s Save Act designed to save his butt by making it difficult for a lot of people to vote in November. They didn’t have the votes, so they ran away.

That left Trump alone in the White House, posting inane comments and photos on social media all night, selling advance access to his posts, reaping money from Bitcoin and anything else with his name on it, a personal lawyer as U.S. attorney general to protect him from the IRS and “communist” state attorneys general, a war with Iran he started and can’t win even though Pete Hegseth used up all our ballistic missiles, Jeanine Pirro deciding she’s an actual lawyer and refusing to prosecute an innocent person for damaging the Reflecting Pool, ICE still roaming the streets, America’s reputation badly tarnished internationally and the Epstein …

Look! Communists! Over there! Don’t vote for them!

That’s Trump -- a new bottom every day. I do not blame him for being who he is; I simply detest him. In truth, I’m sick of him. I do, however, blame the Republican Party for infecting American society (not just politics) with this utterly despicable human being.

I mean every elected Republican official, from the House Speaker, Senate Majority Leader, the entire cabinet, to every governor, senator, congressperson, state legislator, attorney general, county executive, county legislator, mayor, supervisor, councilman, who has stood silently by and let Trump make a mockery of our laws, our democratic system of government and lay waste to any sense of decency or decorum befitting the most powerful political leader on the planet. Ladies and gentlemen, you are him.

I intend to post that last paragraph as much as possible between now and the November election. It can’t be said too much.

Communist indeed!

At long last, Republicans, have you left no sense of decency?

Take the test

Life sometimes catches up with you even when you’re trying to preserve your sanity and help save your country from fascism. Bills have to be paid, shopping has to be done, bushes pruned, dogs and cats and birds have to be fed. Even in retirement, there are commitments, meetings and friends to draw your attention.

So, just to be sure I didn’t miss anything important last week, I paused to take the Associated Press’s weekly news quiz. I aced it, nine out of ten. Editor level mastery, AP said. OK, but oh my god, if you know the right answers, what a too typically depressing week.

We started with a question on what a Senate committee voted to do about Dr. Anthony Fauci: Subpoena, censure, revoke his license or hold him in contempt? Then we’re asked what the Trump administration announced for Headstart: Raise teachers’ pay, smaller classes, new programs, or eliminate regulations?

Then they wanted to know why Capitol One closed all of Trump’s bank accounts: He asked them to do it, or he was inactive on his accounts. Or maybe there were too many overdraft fees or concern over possible money laundering. Hmmm.

Then, AP wanted to know who jumped in on badmouthing FIFA president Gianni Infantino for basically trying to sell off FIFA. And there was the matter of Trump badmouthing U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro, whom he appointed, in the case over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, wondering why she stopped prosecuting his pet project.

There was also some musing about what prompted the salmonella outbreak that caused Chipotle to remove, yes, jalapeños from some restaurants. (Nothing about lettuce and diarrhea.) Then we had Senator Bernie Marino saying his former son-in-law, Max Miller, should resign from the House because — I’ll give you this one: domestic abuse allegations. Also, Trump was ending a subsidy for a Medicare program. Take your pick: A, B, D or Medigap?

I took a guess on one of them: What did singer Ariana Grande decide to do after wrapping up her Eternal Sunshine tour next month? Looking at the state of the world from just this one week’s worth of questions (and answers), I figured she’d just like to go away and take a break from all of it. I was right.

I’d like to do that too, Ariana, but there’s still a) bills to be paid, b) dogs to be fed, etc. and, as evident from the questions, c) fascism still to be fought.

Take the test yourself if you’re in a positive frame of mind.

https://apnews.com/article/news-quiz-08-07-2026--trump-headstart

I wrote the column below on Oct. 20, 2016. It appeared on zestoforange. It’s still there. It was obviously written out of frustration and anger and I’m reposting it a second time and will probably continue to do so from time to time out of frustration and anger that, nearly 10 years later, there are people in this country who still think the Republican Party has any moral standing as a legitimate political party. Even after that craven display of cowardly behavior at the State of the Union. Despite the continued Epstein coverup. And now, the cravenness of Republican Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis in agreeing to approve the promotion of Trump’s personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, from acting attorney general to actual attorney general because he promised that the $1.8 billion slush fund to pay Jan. 6 rioters, a fund he created as part of a phony settlement for Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, would be eliminated. Forget that Trump’s DOJ regularly ignores its own promises. Forget that the main benefit to Trump from that “settlement” is that Trump and his family will be permanently exempt from IRS audits for past years. Forget that this deal was worked out by the acting attorney general who is also the president’s personal lawyer. A judge may still rule on that. Cornyn and Tillis, who aren’t even returning to the Senate in January, held up Blanche’s nomination over the slush fund, but not the exemption from audits, which is the real reason he wrote the settlement for Trump in the first place. It’s a bait and switch. Yet two senior Republicans who aren’t even going to be around couldn’t stand up, show some courage and moral fiber and say “no” to Blanche’s nomination. It cleared the committee to go to the full Senate, which is run by Republican cowards. With Mitch McConnell brain dead, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski could possibly squelch the nomination by voting no. They’re the only two Republicans who may still have a partial spine left. The rest are all dead, like their party.

Look, Trump is Trump. He’s always been the same. Republicans picked him. He has been the death of them. Millions of Americans voted for him simply because he represented one of our two major political parties. Others believed his lies. Many, sorry to say, agreed with his brand of bigotry. Then they did it again. Even after four years of chaos. And then again. More chaos. Yet people still give Republicans a pass for making this vile, now demented, man their leader. He in turn remade them in his image. Finally, one of those shouting TV commentators actually said the other day that Republicans are letting Trump destroy our country. It started 10 years ago, people, when Trump destroyed them. They are dead. Here’s that column. I apologize for the length.

***

By Bob Gaydos

Mural of Trump and Putin kissing.

That’s all. I’ve had it. I am through with writing about what a sick, repugnant human being Donald Trump is and then watching him reach a new low. Those who know about recovery from addiction, a subject on which I write regularly, say that every bottom has a trapdoor. Trump is living proof of that. Yet, with each new bottom, every poll seems to find 40 percent of those surveyed favoring him for president.

A few days ago, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to give people a reason to vote for Hillary Clinton, rather than against Trump. I stopped writing in mid-column because it seemed to be a waste of time. Who was I going to convince?

Here’s as far as I got …

There I was, having breakfast and rummaging around in my mind to find an angle for this presidential campaign other than don’t vote for Donald Trump because he’s an ignorant, racist, bigoted, misogynistic, cruel, vindictive, vile, narcissistic, xenophobic, quick-tempered, undisciplined, untrustworthy, uninformed, unspeakably crude sexual pervert and birther, who lies as naturally as he breathes.

Somehow, writing that message week after week (me and plenty of others) still hadn’t convinced a lot of people that the only vote that makes sense on Nov. 8 is one for Hillary Clinton. You don’t have to like her, folks, just know that that the future of this nation may well depend on voting for her.

Deaf ears. “Yeah, Trump may be all those things,” comes the unconvincing shrug, “but I can’t vote for her.” I have given up asking for reasons why. You know, reasons based on actual facts that would outweigh the choice at hand.

I set aside a newspaper article about how Trump had managed to actually make insulting comments about Clinton’s body as part of his defense against multiple charges that he is a sexual predator. Instead, I tried to focus on my egg white omelette (Swiss cheese and tomatoes). Then, as fate (or my excellent hearing) would have it, the angle was delivered to me from a nearby table. A reason to vote for Hillary … not that it was presented that way.

“Did you hear that Putin said if Clinton is elected, be prepared for war?”

The point the gentleman was making to his friend was that voting for Clinton would be dangerous because it could mean getting into a war with Russia. This was delivered in all seriousness because Vladimir Putin had said so and, as we know, he always speaks the truth and never has any nefarious plot in mind because that’s the way former heads of the KGB comport themselves when they get elected president of Russia.

The further point would be that voting for Trump would be smart because Putin says nice things about him. And Trump says he’d like to work with Putin.

So there you have it, America, the Republican candidate for president of the United States is now being touted as the better choice because the president of Russia doesn’t like the other candidate. Does this seem backwards to anyone else? When did being pals with Putin all of a sudden become more important than standing up to the Kremlin? When Trump launched his campaign based on lies and fear, that’s when.

Trump, of course, has said that he has met Putin. He has also said that he has not met Putin. You can be sure that Clinton and Putin know each other well. And he apparently does hate her guts. (I’m liking this reason for voting for her even more now.) That’s because, as secretary of state, she publicly called him out on stealing his election, something which Trump has accused Clinton of trying to do. She stood up to Putin. Meanwhile, Trump wants to do business with the man who grabbed Crimea from Ukraine and whose political opponents have a way of ending up dead.

It used to be that Republicans automatically voted for the candidate who was tough on Russia. They wanted someone the Kremlin would have to talk to and would do so with respect. Someone experienced in diplomacy whose word could be counted on by friend and foe alike. That would be Hillary, not Donald. Donald, who doesn’t know Crimea from Korea, wants to sell out NATO and maybe get a hotel deal in the bargain. Putin has played him -- and his followers -- perfectly, from the hacked Clinton e-mails to the threat of war. Trump’s entire campaign is based on fear. That’s no way for America to negotiate with Putin, or any other world leader. …

***

I stopped there, wondering whether to go on. Then Trump said in the last debate that he wouldn’t necessarily accept the results of the election if he lost. That’s when I threw in the towel. For a man who has promoted violence at his rallies and some of whose supporters have openly espoused rebelling against any defeat, this is as unacceptable, unpatriotic, indefensible, possibly treasonous a statement as a candidate for president can make.

But that’s Trump -- a new bottom every day. His fans cheered. I do not blame him for being who he is; I simply detest him. In truth, I’m sick of him. I do, however, blame the Republican Party for infecting American society (not just politics) with this utterly degrading election campaign. I mean every elected Republican official, from Speaker Paul Ryan to every governor, senator, congressperson, state legislator, county executive, county legislator, mayor, supervisor, councilman who has stood silently by and let Trump make a mockery of our democratic system and lay waste to any sense of decency or decorum in selection of the most powerful political leader on the planet.

A lot of these people went to Cleveland to vote for Trump. Then they stayed mute for months as he … okay, I said I’m not doing that anymore. The world knows what he has done. If you know all that and can still support him, words actually fail me. The same goes for those who say Hillary is just as bad. Not even close. You people need to get serious.

Republicans, Trump is not one of you. He is Trump. Period. You created him. Your hypocrisy and cowardice have emboldened him and his ilk. He has sullied us all. And he has destroyed you.

***

There it is. Again. A death notice for a political party. Ten years and counting.

Jeanine Pirro ... headed for the door?

What in the world happened to Jeanine Pirro? Did she sober up? Come out of a blackout and realize she was pimping for Donald Trump and didn’t want the job?

Odds are — literally — that she won’t be U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia much longer. At least those are the betting odds on Kalshi, a prediction platform which is the way many people apparently now react to the news of the day. Not by expressing approval or disapproval of the news, but by betting on the outcome. Orwell was right.

How you feel about the news really doesn’t matter, apparently, if you can make a few bucks guessing on which side of the bed Trump slept on last night. And the odds in Pirro’s case are that he didn’t sleep at all when she contradicted him on his Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool story.

In one of the more surprising challenges to Trump’s view of everything going on around him, Pirro dismissed the case against a former U.S. Olympic athlete who had been charged with carving up the bottom of the no longer reflecting pool with a knife, supposedly causing significant damage. That’s what the court papers filed by Pirro originally said.

But Pirro last week abruptly dismissed the felony vandalism charges against David Hearn, 67, saying that the damage to the newly renovated pool was caused by the contractor, a friend of Trump’s, who got the renovation contract with no bid. A $14.7 million restoration project to be specific.

Pirro conceded in court that the damage had actually been done by a rush job by a contractor trying to get the work done for the Fourth of July celebration, not by vandals.

In response to Pirro’s dropping the charges, Trump posted, “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro. I don’t know what she was thinking?” (Yes, he put a question mark at the end of that declarative statement.)

The reflecting pool, of course, has been one of Trump’s pet projects in his campaign to destroy virtually everything worth seeing in Washington, D.C. Also, of course, Trump does not react well to being contradicted in public, especially by someone who he has appointed to a job, and especially if she is a woman.

That’s why the odds on Kalshi of Pirro announcing her resignation or being fired before Sept. 1 were at 97 percent Monday morning. The odds spiked 21 percentage points over 24 hours. There was a 94 percent chance, the site said, that Pirro is gone before January 1, 2027.

None of this is surprising to me. What I am literally stunned about is that Pirro did it. That she dared to contradict Trump publicly in such a high-profile case. She tried to blame the Interior Department for her change of mind, saying they gave her incomplete information when she first filed the charges against Hearn. They stuck to the Trump story (and probably kept their jobs) and said she got all the information available.

Maybe Pirro actually read all the news stories saying experts doubted that vandals could’ve done the extensive damage to the pool, but that the contractor rushed the job and used the wrong kind of paint. Maybe she knew from experience that the judge wasn’t going to buy her vandalism argument. Or maybe she didn’t like the bar scene in Washington anymore or she just found it too difficult to keep lying so publicly on a daily basis.

Or, maybe she’s been offered a seat along with Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, in a cabal of former Trumpers sensing an opportunity to get out before the you-know-what hits the you-know-what. The onetime loyal MAGA trio is trying to form a populist third-party, breaking away from Trump, accusing him of “betraying“ his base.

Where have I heard that before?

I still like my coming out of a blackout theory.

Dr. Anthony Fauci at Senate hearing.

“Did Fauci help himself?“

That was the question. It could just as easily have been, “Did Fauci hurt himself?” Actually, I think that really was the question.

The short answer was and still is, “I don’t know.”

But we’ll soon find out.

To me, it seemed obvious that the decision by Dr. Anthony Fauci to respond to every question from the Senate Homeland Security Committee by invoking the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was simply Fauci following the advice of counsel. No one looks good repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment, but no one gets indicted following that procedure either.

With Senate Republicans, especially committee chairman Rand Paul, looking to make good on Donald Trump‘s desire to get revenge on all his perceived enemies, the hearing was clearly intended as a trap before it began. The big question was where the land mines were planted.

Fauci having been preemptively pardoned by Joe Biden in 2023 for any and all actions taken while Fauci was in charge of the government’s response to the Covid pandemic, Republicans needed something new with which to charge Fauci.

That could be contempt of Congress by not showing up at a hearing or lying to Congress about something that happened after the date of the Biden pardon. That’s probably what Paul was looking for and he was aided with a copy of Fauci‘s personal diary which he kept while in office. That was given to the committee, unredacted, by Health Secretary Bobby Kennedy Jr., a notorious anti-Vaxer who disagreed with Fauci’s approach to Covid, which included vaccines.

Not knowing what material the committee might have and concerned that Fauci might not accurately remember what he wrote in his diary or said to someone at some point, the lawyer said, simply, take the Fifth.

And Fauci did so, even when other Republican committee members ventured into the absurd by asking about the time of day, what color tie he was wearing and other nonsense in an effort to make Fauci look, well, guilty. One congressman even got obscene. In the process, they just looked petty. Routine for Republicans these days.

As for the wisdom of Fauci deciding to invoke the Fifth, one might look to an expert, Fauci’s primary protagonist, Donald Trump. The man who once said you should never trust anyone who invokes the Fifth Amendment, actually followed his counsel’s advice and invoked it more than 400 times in his Stormy Daniels trial in Manhattan. (It didn’t help.) Trump has also invoked the Fifth many times in depositions in a variety of cases over the years. He undoubtedly learned that lesson from his early counsel, Roy Cohn, who also taught it to Mafia goons. Looking guilty to the public doesn’t put you behind bars, Cohn counseled. Saying something stupid (contrary to verifiable facts) to the police, Congress or in court can. There’s a reason for the amendment.

So, did Fauci help himself? It depends on what you mean by “help.” Some of the heroic bloom is obviously off the rose with Fauci, but that’s life. I still don’t know if he has anything to hide. I don’t think Republican committee members came off looking great and I don’t think Paul gained any points except with the hard core MAGAs. He’s been out to get Fauci ever since the doctor tossed the “liar” charge back at Paul, an ophthalmologist, at a hearing in 2023. He’s now threatening to hold a contempt vote on Fauci for his “refusal to answer questions.”

Life is full of choices. We all have to live with them. Help or hurt, Fauci made his.

Trump and Mohammad bin Salman in happier days before Abraham came up.

I can just see Marco Rubio running into the Oval Office waving a bunch of papers in his hand and screaming, “Steven, we forgot about Abraham!”

Miller looks up from the Resolute Desk he likes to sit at when Trump is not in the building and says in bewilderment, “Marco, there’s no way we have anyone named Abe in this office. Get real!”

“No, no, the Abraham Accords! The Abraham Accords! We forgot to put them in the deal we signed yesterday with Saudi Arabia for nuclear reactors! Trump is on social media saying the deal ‘is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.’ ”

Or, as The New York Times bluntly put it in the headline on their lead story July 24: “Trump Demands Saudis Establish Ties With Israel.”

The art of the deal strikes again.

I’ve got to admit, I was more than mildly surprised when Trump announced the nuclear agreement with the Saudis since he was still stuck in a war with Iran. A war he started in concert with Israel, allegedly over Iranian nuclear power. Iran, of course, is the Saudis’ chief Islamic rival in the Middle East. The timing seemed a bit off.

Be that as it may, we are told that Energy Secretary Chris Wright, an energy nerd and entrepreneur, did indeed sign a deal with Saudi Arabia’s energy minister. Whether or not it includes Saudi Arabia eventually enriching its own nuclear material for non-civil purpose is also apparently up for debate. That’s because no one outside the White House has apparently seen this agreement, which, fortunately, must go to Congress for review. Even rubber stamp Republicans will want to see the details.

So, to review, Trump works out a nuclear energy deal with the Saudis, a favorite business partner of son-in-law Jared Kushner, and apparently doesn’t realize that Israel, his ally in the “nuclear energy” war with Iran, might object to the Saudis having access to nuclear material given the history of the region and the fact that Saudi Arabia doesn’t even recognize Israel. The Saudis say it’s because Israel won’t accept the concept of a Palestinian state.

Details, details.

Trump was obviously alerted to these oversights by news reports after the deal was signed and quickly jumped in to say there will be no enrichment of nuclear material allowed (although some officials say the deal allows for debate about it) and that the Saudis have to recognize Israel. Sign the Abraham Accords. Period.

Slight problem. Or two. Saudis in general are not happy with Israel’s waging of the war in Gaza or its refusal to recognize a Palestinian state. That puts Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince, in a difficult position. Do the deal, sign Abraham, ignore your subjects and risk losing their support, or no deal.

This diplomacy thing can be pretty complicated when you ignore history and stuff like that and you also ignore people who know about that stuff and you’re only interested in distracting headlines and making a quick buck. One might have thought that Trump would have learned at least that much by now. More’s the pity.

Stay tuned.

***

Note: The following Arab nations have signed the Abraham Accords, negotiated in 2020 in the first Trump administration, which recognizes normalization of relations with Israel: United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco.

The make believe was wonderfully real.

Took a break from the daily grind recently to visit the make-believe world of Gilbert and Sullivan in a thoroughly entertaining production of The Mikado presented by the Delaware Valley Opera. They were all there and in fine voice: KoKo, the Lord High Executioner, with an aversion to, among other things, executions; Poo-bah, the malleable Lord High Everything Else; Yum-Yum, the lovely desired one; handsome Nanki-Poo, the root of all the trouble, and, of course, The Mikado of Japan..

The comic opera, a satire on 18th century British government set for no good reason in Japan, adapted easily to modern day institutions and situations. It played to an enthusiastic full house of other music lovers also apparently seeking to escape the daily grind. Everyone left apparently satisfied, including the winner of the drawing for the fifty-fifty, and we exited the music hall to gaze upon beautiful Lake Huntington.

It was all make believe, but it was also reality. Two wonderful hours worth. But now we were back in reality, which was, it soon reminded us, totally make believe.

Yes, we’re living in a land of make-believe. Mitch McConnell’s staff is making believe the senator is alive and, if not well, certainly recovering from whatever mysterious ailment has caused him to be absent from the Senate for more than a month. Republicans in the Senate are making believe they believe that story.

Andy Beshear is making believe he’s Kentucky’s governor by yammering about McConnell’s absence and refusal of his staff to make the senator available in person to at least prove he’s not brain dead, if not totally dead. Beshear is making believe he doesn’t have an entire National Guard — never mind various laws — at his disposal to either force McConnell to come out of hiding or rise from the dead or to kick down the senator’s front door to see whatever is going on behind it because the people of Kentucky are entitled to two living working senators. And the governor is entitled to appoint a temporary replacement for McConnell and set a special election for the post, even though Fox News personalities and some Republicans in Congress have told make-believe stories that they had 10-minute conversations with the AWOL McConnell.

Then there’s the secretary of health making believe Americans aren’t suffering from measles and diarrhea in frightening numbers. There’s the drunken “war” secretary making believe America is winning a war that he and his Mikado started but can’t figure out how to get out of as they make up lower American casualty numbers. And, of course, there’s the daily make believe, fed by make-believe journalists, that the American Mikado, who goes by the name of Trump, is actually capable of anything at this point (when he can stay awake) other than belittling women, insulting our allies, thinking of new ways to scam true believers out of their money and finding new Poo-Bahs to try to keep him out of jail.

It’s all make believe, but without the booming baritones and soaring sopranos. No lively chorus either and no funny Lord High Executioner. No lovely lake. Sorry, no fifty-fifty.

It’s funny how make-believe can sometimes seem so real.

***

Note: The Delaware Valley Opera is a not-for-profit (they love what they do) professional local organization located in Sullivan County in upstate New York. It draws its members and performers locally and from the New York Metropolitan area. I am in no way qualified as a music or theater critic, however, I would like to give special recognition in the recent production to Andrew Wannigmann as Pooh-Bah, Margaux Frohlich as Yum-Yum and Nicholas Wuehrmann, as a hilarious Ko-Ko, Lord High Executioner. And a special nod to the one-man orchestra, Martin Yadzik, pianist and music director. Again, it was all wonderful and all for real.

Darline Nordone is looking to fill her late brother Lindsey’s seat in the Senate.

Some lessons last longer than others. My first job with a daily newspaper was with The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y. I was the police reporter.

David Bernstein was editor, publisher and owner. He wrote the editorials, too. A terrific writer. People loved or hated his editorials.

One of the rules he had in writing about people’s deaths, in stories or obituaries, was never to use the word “suddenly” in describing the person’s death. Everyone dies “suddenly,” he explained. You’re here one minute and poof, you’re gone the next. He didn’t use the word “poof.”

However, people do die “unexpectedly,” went the logic. Seemingly healthy people with no major health issues often die unexpectedly. Others react with surprise, sadness or other emotions.

Such was the case when Lindsey Graham died at 71 on Saturday, July 11. The Sunday morning social media sites were awash in reports of his “sudden” death. The New York Times followed Bernstein’s rule. Graham died “unexpectedly” in their stories.

Suddenly, Donald Trump had lost one of his primary fan boys in Congress and Republicans, with Mitch McConnell still somewhere between sudden death and who knows, were close to losing their slight edge in the Senate.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster announced, two days after Graham’s death, that a special Republican primary election would be held Aug. 11, to take Graham’s place on the November ballot. He also said, unexpectedly, that he would temporarily appoint Lindsey’s younger sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to finish her brother’s term.

A day later, Ms. Nordone, who has no apparent political experience, unexpectedly announced that she would run in that special election in an effort to keep her brother’s name and work alive in the Senate.

Suddenly, South Carolinians are faced with the prospect of a novice politician replacing a four-term senator in Congress and Trump, who encouraged Ms. Nordone to run for the office in her late brother’s place, sees an unexpected opportunity to try to groom yet another woman from a conservative family in a conservative state in the Deep South to come to Washington to carry his laundry.

Suddenly, Graham’s unexpected demise doesn’t have the same resonance.

***

I expect David Bernstein, as liberal as they came, would have approved of this column. I also suspect that Mr. Bernstein borrowed his rule from The New York Times.

Gov. Kathy Hochul (left) and running mate Adrienne Adams. A historic moment.

Not all the news is coming out of D.C. today. New Yorkers have a chance to make history this year and I’m willing to bet most of them don’t even know it.

Kathy Hochul does. In fact, she’s going for the trifecta.

The first female governor of New York (she moved up from lieutenant governor in August of 2021 when Andrew Cuomo resigned as governor), Hochul also became the first female to be elected governor on Nov. 9, 2022. Now, she is running for re-election with a female lieutenant governor partner — the first all-female top of ticket in state history.

Hochul’s pick for lieutenant governor is Adrienne Adams, former speaker of the New York City Council. In addition to balancing the ticket geographically with Buffalo native Hochul, Adams would make history herself, being the first black woman to hold the number two spot in state government if elected. Adams was an unsuccessful candidate for city mayor in the Democratic primary.

The Republican candidate for governor is Bruce Blakeman, a Trump-loving, card-carrying MAGA who is Nassau County executive. His running mate for lieutenant governor is Todd Hood, sheriff of Madison County. Right. Who?

To refresh your memory, Blakeman only became the Republican choice for governor because Rep. Elise Stefanik, a born-again Trumper, dropped out, thus depriving New Yorkers of making a historic choice between two female candidates for governor.

Stefanik is a classic example of how Trump treats female allies. A true converted loyalist, she was head of the GOP conference in the House of Representatives. Then Trump said she’d be his United Nations ambassador. A reward. Then he changed his mind because he needed her vote in the House. But she had already resigned her leadership position, so she used her Harvard education and decided to resign from the House and run for governor of New York instead. And then Trump endorsed Blakeman. Thanks for everything, Elise.

At this point, all the polls say the Democratic women are likely to win. A lot of New Yorkers, not just women, think it’s about time.

While the lieutenant governor position has always been kind of like a scaled down version of U.S. Vice President, the all-female leadership symbolism is inescapable. Start with the fact that Hochul became governor because Cuomo was under investigation by State Attorney General Letitia James, another strong woman, for several claims of inappropriate sexual advances to women at the State Capitol. Cuomo also tried to run for mayor of New York City, but fared poorly in the Democratic Primary.

James, of course, took the Trump family to court and won a massive fraud conviction against them. They are banned from doing business in New York. James is running for re-election on a ticket with Hochul and Adams.

So, in a country with a misogynistic president who hates and fears strong women, is an adjudicated sex offender and is tied to a religion-based group of supporters dedicated to minimizing the role of women in society, it appears that the president’s home state is giving him the proverbial finger.

Well, it is New York.

Senator Lindsey Graham
... helped improve our vocabulary

The Sunday morning news that South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham had died unexpectedly at 71 set my mind flashing back to a column I had written in 2019, in which Graham was featured prominently. It’s one of my favorite columns and, if anything, it’s even more relevant than it was seven years ago. So I offer it here again in memory of Graham, one time maverick sidekick of John McCain in the Senate, as a welcome refresher course for those of us who have been living through it and a quick study vocabulary lesson for a younger generation wondering what the heck the older folks have done. Enjoy.

***

In the category of nothing is ever all good or all bad (I keep trying), have you noticed a marked improvement in your vocabulary since the man with “all the best words” moved in to the White House?

Seriously. It struck me the other day as I was reading the daily disaster report that people — not just reporters or TV and radio commentators — regular people were reading, hearing, using and even understanding words, many of which have never been routine in American conversation. It started with “narcissist” and “misogynist,” but the vocabulary lesson has expanded exponentially (see what I mean?) since the news cycle has become all Trump all the time. I mean, “quisling,” really?

I started compiling a list of words that were previously not your normal fare in your daily paper, including some words I had to look up (using Wikipedia and various legitimate online dictionaries), and decided I might as well share them. Who knows, maybe an English teacher will see it and want to help some students better understand what the grownups have done to the world. If you feel daring, test your partner. Here’s my list (including examples), starting with the two aforementioned words, which are now household staples:

— Misogynist. From Wikipedia: “Misogyny is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. Misogyny manifests in numerous ways, including social exclusion, sex discrimination, hostility, androcentrism, patriarchy, male privilege, belittling of women, disenfranchisement of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification.” It’s Trump’s middle name and now the whole world is aware of what misogyny looks like in practice. That’s a good thing if steps are taken to combat it, which appears to be happening (#metoo).

— Narcissist. From Psychology Today: ”The hallmarks of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are grandiosity, a lack of empathy for other people, and a need for admiration. People with this condition are frequently described as arrogant, self-centered, manipulative, and demanding. They may also have grandiose fantasies and may be convinced that they deserve special treatment. These characteristics typically begin in early adulthood and must be consistently evident in multiple contexts, such as at work and in relationships. People with NPD … tend to seek excessive admiration and attention and have difficulty tolerating criticism or defeat.” Mussolini comes to mind or, well, you know.

— Quisling. Turns out we’ve got a bunch of them in the USA. Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling was a Norwegian military officer and politician who was head of the government of Norway during Nazi Germany’s occupation of the country during World War II. Actually, he was a figurehead who collaborated with the Nazis in every way, including the killing of Jews and others. After the war, he was tried and convicted of murder and treason and was executed. His name became synonymous for collaborator and traitor. Until recently, there hasn’t been much call for “quisling,” but Trump, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and the guy Trump wanted to run the CIA, among others, have given new life to it. I could have lived my life without wanting to get the history of this word.

— Sycophant. While we have Lindsey Graham available as a perfect example, why not give a dictionary description of a sycophant: “A person who acts obsequiously (I’ll get to that) toward someone important in order to gain advantage. Synonyms: toady, creep, crawler, fawner, flatterer, flunkey, truckler, groveller, doormat, lickspittle, kowtower, obsequious person, minion, hanger-on, leech, puppet, spaniel …” Add the entire Trump cabinet and staff and many Republicans in Congress.

— Obsequious. Again, just dictionaries here: “Obsequious people are usually not being genuine; they resort to flattery and other fawning ways to stay in the good graces of authority figures. An obsequious person can be called a bootlicker, a brownnoser or a toady.” Our man Lindsay again and let’s add Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff and bootlicker par excellence.

— Nativist. “Relating to or supporting the policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants. Example. ‘He has made his nativist beliefs known through his divisive comments about immigrants.’” The Republican Party and MAGA hat wearers who are still waiting for the wall are perfect examples.

— Xenophobe. “A person who fears or hates foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers. A person who fears or dislikes the customs, dress, etc., of people who are culturally different.” The same folks as above. Stephen Miller to be sure.

— Asylum. Here’s one every American should learn. “The right of asylum is an ancient juridical concept, under which a person persecuted by one’s own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, such as another country or church official, who in medieval times could offer sanctuary.

“The United States recognizes the right of asylum of individuals as specified by international and federal law. A specified number of legally defined refugees who apply for refugee status overseas, as well as those applying for asylum after arriving in the U.S., are admitted annually. Since World War II, more refugees have found homes in the U.S. than any other nation and more than two million refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1980.”

— Oligarchy. “A small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution. … Oligarchy is from the Greek word oligarkhes, and it means ‘few governing.’ Three of the most well-known countries with oligarchies are Russia, China, and Iran. Other examples are Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and apartheid South Africa. Trump leans to the Russian and Saudi versions, although he admires certain things about the others. He would probably have been comfortable with apartheid South Africa.

— Plutocracy. “Government by the rich or the wealthy class. Oligarchy is not necessarily just the wealthy. If a system of plutocracy and oligarchy occurred at the same time (government by a few wealthy people), it would be termed a …

— Plutarchy. Again, I refer you to Trump’s cabinet, the Koch brothers, and various wealthy interests who have been able to buy power thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.

— Nepotism. “The practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs.” Especially for which they are unqualified. Trump is a master at keeping it in the family (his own and Fox News) in the White House. Ivanka, Jared, Larry Kudlow.

— Emoluments. (Tell me you knew what this meant before Trump.) “The emoluments clause, also called the foreign emoluments clause, is a provision of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8) that generally prohibits federal officeholders from receiving any gift, payment, or other thing of value from a foreign state or its rulers, officers, or representatives. It prohibits those holding offices of profit or trust under the United States from accepting ‘any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever’ from ‘any . . foreign State’ unless Congress consents.” Every stay at a Trump hotel, round of golf at a Trump golf course by the Saudis, the Russians, the Turks, the Chinese … goes into his bank account and he won’t share his income tax returns.

— Exculpable. To exculpate is “to clear from a charge of guilt or fault; free from blame; vindicate.” The person is thus exculpable, something Trump claims Robert Mueller found him. Not true.

— Propaganda. “Information that is intended to persuade an audience to accept a particular idea or cause, often by using biased material or by stirring up emotions — one of the most powerful tools the Nazis used to consolidate their power and cultivate an ‘Aryan national community’ in the mid-1930s. … the manipulation of the recipient’s emotions in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual evidence.” Fox News and Trump and rightwing radio hosts spew it. Trump has even talked about setting up a government broadcast agency to counter the “fake news” of mainstream media.

— Brainwash. More commonly known, but worth putting in context. “To make people believe only what you want them to believe by continually telling them that it is true and preventing any other information from reaching them: Could it be that we’re brainwashed to accept these things?”

Again, Fox News — 24 hours a day of fake news right out of George Orwell. Also, Trump’s pathological lying. Second definition: “A method for systematically changing attitudes or altering beliefs, originated in totalitarian countries, especially through the use of torture, drugs, or psychological-stress techniques.” The Manchurian Candidate, or, perhaps, Putin’s Puppet. Once a far-fetched idea.

— Hypocrite. “1: a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion. 2: a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.” Trump of course, but here we’re referring to evangelical Christian leaders who kiss Trump’s ring and conservative, family values-spouting Republicans who do likewise.

— Penultimate. Nothing to do with Trump, just a word I like. “As both an adjective and a noun, penultimate means next to the last. (Penultimate is not more ultimate than ultimate.)” In other words, this lesson is almost over. Just one more paragraph and thanks for staying with me.

— Dotard. Kim Jong-un’s name for Trump. “The insult is centuries old, appearing in medieval literature from the ninth century.” Searches for the term have spiked since Kim resurrected it. Merriam-Webster: “A state or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise.” Side note: Kim didn’t say the word. The North Korean state news agency, KCNA, offered it as the English translation of Kim’s spoken Korean insult, which literally is “old lunatic.” Works for me in any language.

***

Note: This column was researched and written before Google made AI a part of the daily operation.The most important thing about the book is

Syracuse Post-Dispatch

By Bob Gaydos

With the death of local newspapers, the co-opting of major media, the widespread fake news on social media, and the daily torrent of lies emanating from the White House and the Republican Party, it is often impossible these days to know what is actually going on in this country and the rest of the world. Therefore, I present here a list of 20 questions for our times. Honest answers would be welcome.

The Questions

1. Where in the world is Mitch McConnell?

2. Is he dead or alive?

3. Why did his wife go to China?

4. When and why did Marco Rubio turn in to Lindsay Graham?

5. Could Trump pass even a basic cognitive test today?

6. Will legal gambling and “probability betting” eventually destroy sports at all levels in this country?

7. Who killed Jeffrey Epstein?

8. How badly has Netanyahu fractured the America/Israel connection?

9. Are there aliens (non-earthlings) living among us?

10. What is the biggest threat from Artificial Intelligence?

11. Should the president be elected by popular vote?

12. Why does anyone care how fast a baseball leaves a major league stadium?

13. What religion will J.D. Vance convert to next?

14. Where in the world is Chuck Schumer?

15. Why are so many Americans, all the descendants of immigrants, so afraid of immigrants?

16. Has Putin already lost the war in Ukraine?

17. What will eventually replace the soulless Republican Party?

18. Should Supreme Court justices have term limits rather than lifetime appointments?

19. Should cursive writing still be taught in school?

20. How could anyone vote for Donald Trump TWICE?

Feel free to respond to any question and to suggest any of your own. The list can grow. Remember, we’re all in this together.

The red card call.

So we lost. Of course. Trump was involved.

The United States Men’s Soccer Team lost to Belgium, 4-1, Monday in a World Cup knockout match. That’s the equivalent of losing by 20 runs in a baseball game.

By all accounts, Belgium was good, but not that much better than a refreshingly talented USA team whose top scorer had just the day before been ruled eligible to play even though he had received a red card, one-game suspension in the previous game.

To the world, the cards seemed to be stacked in the U.S.’s favor.

Not really. Not when Trump is involved. Just as happened with the New York Knicks, a team playing very well and seemingly immune to pressure in highly competitive competition, the men’s soccer team seemed to be off its game Monday. A bit disorganized. Not loose. Possibly feeling pressure to somehow win a game without the rest of the world thinking it was fixed in your favor?

The loss solved that problem. The loss and Belgium playing well. No asterisk, real or imagined, will be needed next to a U.S. win. Somehow, that doesn’t feel comforting.

To review, Trump, who knows little about soccer and cares less, had intervened in that red card suspension of U.S. star Folarin Balogun by calling FIFA President Gianni Infantino and asking the organization to review the penalty. Infantino is a friend of Trump’s. He also apparently has no shame. The call was reversed, Balogun got to play, Belgium got to show what it had and the U.S. team had to deal with worldwide criticism of favoritism with the president of the host country personally getting its team’s star player reinstated in an elimination game.

Which is how all the world except Trump saw it. He saw it as he always does — a way to make a deal, regardless of how smarmy it looks, if he can get a win. He doesn’t care about the pettiness. Maybe he doesn’t even understand or care why people might be upset. So he made a call and the guy got to play, so what?

So the rest of the team was put in a high pressure situation of having to somehow win without worrying about the political fallout. Just like the seemingly unflappable Knicks, on an 11-game winning streak in NBA championship play, having to win at home in a Madison Square Garden filled with tension and animosity because Trump decided to attend and was roundly booed by the crowd. That could upset the temperament of even talented young athletes.

The Knicks had to go back to San Antonio to win their championship for the city. They did. New York celebrated. The U.S. men’s soccer team, on the other hand, got to go home, wondering forever how well they might have done without their star player against Belgium if Trump had just minded his owning business and let sports be sports, rather than just another way to try to steal something.

He’s a national embarrassment. No asterisk needed.

The red card call.

This will be short and not so sweet. The match is tonight.

He just couldn’t help himself. He had to meddle in a much beloved worldwide sporting event and leave a taint that will further stain America’s reputation regardless of how the match plays out.

Yeah, Trump. He got on the phone to call FIFA President Gianni Infantino to ask the soccer organization to review a red-card suspension given to U.S. star player Folarin Balogun for an illegal tackle in a game Wednesday against Bosnia-Herzegovina. The red card carries a mandatory one-game suspension. That meant Balogun would be unavailable for tonight’s (Monday night) match against Belgium.

Trump says he heard about the suspension and that there were complaints the red card call was unfair, so he called his buddy Infantino (he gave Trump a phony FIFA Peace Prize, remember?) Sunday to ask him to please review that call again.

Presto! Comes news Sunday that the suspension has been suspended and Balogun, leading scorer for the U.S. team, is eligible to play in the knockout game.

Belgium was outraged. Indeed, most of the World Cup community was outraged. Why is the president of a host country, the U.S. no less, interfering with the prestigious soccer event? Trump said he thought the call and red card wasn’t fair. So what? FIFA has rules and procedures to deal with penalties. Bad calls happen all the time in sports. It’s the sporting body’s responsibility to deal with them, not some wannabe poobah’s place to get involved.

Belgium said it was appealing, although it didn’t have much time or clear direction from FIFA on how to proceed. By 5 p.m. game time in Seattle no less. I have no idea what will happen as I write this. I’m just disgusted that Trump has to stain this event. And Infantino has damaged FIFA with his obsequiousness. I’d love to see the U.S. team win, but if it does with Balogun playing, the victory will be forever tainted. Meanwhile, the whole world is rooting against us now. It’s unfair to the team and Balogun, who handled the questionable call and suspension with class.

Not so Trump. Clueless. It’s always about him and he messes up everything he touches.

The option was still there for the U.S. team to not play Balogun in the match. But how do you sit your star player when the bosses of the tournament say he can play?

More will be revealed, I guess. Talk after the match.

Pope Leo XIV sees unchecked AI as a threat to humanity.

Meet Generation Duh, the high school Class of 2026. They can’t read (only 35 percent are at or above proficiency standards), they can’t add (22 percent are at math standards), don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology, don’t know much about a science book, don’t know much about the French they took .,,

But they do know all about A.I., and one and one still makes two. You still have to write papers to pass classes and it seems that high school and college students are more and more using A.I. programs to write their papers. But their instructors, paid to teach students how to actually use their language properly, are flagging the A.I. “creations” because the writing can be predictably formulaic and trite. (I can usually spot it 20 seconds into most YouTube offerings and that doesn’t count the mispronunciations.)

But fear not all who resist putting pen to paper, the latest development in A.I. technology are programs — “tools” they’re called by their developers — to make A.I. “more human.”

Think about that for a moment, fellow humans. Sit with it. A “tool” to make something artificial, something which, in fact, is based on the perhaps illegal thefts of lifetimes of creations by humans, read more like something humans created than something, well, artificial.

Intelligence …?

This is where we are.

The creators, and some of them are young influencers on social media platforms, have come up with programs to make it harder to track the A.I. writing by making it seem more like humans did it. Put in typos. “Write” the paper over an extended period of time rather than dropping 1,000 words all at once to avoid programs that can detect the progress of a creation. Add a few extra words. Make it not quite so perfectly mediocre. Human.

This of course is happening in conjunction with a social media revolution that is producing a generation of young people who not only do not write their own papers, but do not read anything but commentary on their phones, much of which is A.I. or human creation badly in need of editing. And yes, current reading scores reflect a significant decline in the reading levels of students that started with the pandemic and has worsened with the growth of social media and A.I.

It is not a promising development in human evolution.

This also is happening at a time when those in positions of power to put some guardrails on A.I., for example, the Congress of the United States, are so in awe of or financially indebted to huge tech corporations for campaign contributions that any mere suggestion of limits on Artificial Intelligence is met with blank stares. Also, Republicans, who have control of Congress, have spent most of this year in recess to avoid dealing with other issues (Jeffrey Epstein) that are embarrassing to their leader, Donald Trump.

This avoidance of the A.I. issue also helps Trump because the remaining base of his dwindling support consists of the poorly educated and those currying to them for votes or profit.

On the positive side, perhaps the most prominent voice to speak out for some need to protect and encourage human intelligence, indeed humanity as a species, is not a minor one — Pope Leo XIV.

The pope wrote a 42,300-word encyclical on the need to place limits on A.I. In essence, he warned that AI must serve humanity rather than concentrate power or automate human dignity out of existence. Yes, I am willing to believe he didn’t have A.I. write his paper for him.

The Chicago native read his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, at the Vatican in May. He was standing next to Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, one of the pioneer A.I.companies.

Olah responded to the pope’s remarks with a request. He said, “We need more of the world — religious communities, civil society, scholars, governments, and indeed all people of good will — to do what His Holiness has done here: to take this seriously, to look closely, and to push events in a better direction.”

Briefly, according to both men, that means addressing what to do about all the people who will lose their jobs because of AI, how to prevent governments from using A.I. to make military decisions of life and death and how to avoid looking at the tech companies who develop A.I. as too rich and too powerful to be held accountable to the law and basic morality.

To keep them, as well as their creation, more human.

***

(With apologies to Sam Cooke for stealing the words to his big hit, “Wonderful World,” and thanks to Google AI for quickly finding the pope’s and Olah’s comments on the future of AI.)

RJ Photography

(Not being in much of a celebratory mood for America’s 250th birthday party, I went searching for my mood on the Fourth of July 2021, America’s 245th birthday. It’s not quite the same, but I think what I wrote then helps explain my mood this year. I offer it again and I feel exactly the same. Hang in there, America. Happy birthday. )

By Bob Gaydos

There’s something about Donald Trump that has always puzzled me. It’s not the fact that millions of Americans could and still do bow at the feet of this inveterate grifter. For a long time I’ve been of the opinion that there are a lot of people shuffling through life in this country unknowing, uncaring and unapologetic for their behavior. Also racists.

They are here, they listen to Fox “news” and I don’t expect most of them to change or go away. It’s a free country, even for bigots.

No, what has had me stumped for five years is that so many Americans have carried on as if Trump is just a little anomaly in the history of this nation. No big deal. When can we go to the movies again?

For me, Trump has been a major threat ever since he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. It wasn’t just that I knew how slimy he was; it felt just so wrong for him to even be involved in this democratic process. We’re talking about president of the United States of America, for Pete’s sake, I said to myself over and over. What is Trump doing in this? It’s almost a physical reaction for me. It lasted through his whole presidency. Why are all those people on Wall Street behaving as if this is just another 9 to 5 interlude? This man is an insult to the presidency.

That’s how I felt. Still do, although the election of Joe Biden has eased my concerns considerably. More to the point, for the purposes of this column, I think I know why I’ve had such a strong reaction to Trump. Why I never used the word, “president” with his name attached to it. Why I took it so personally.

I was lucky.

That’s what history tells me. Or rather, a bunch of historians. Some 142 noted historians were surveyed by CNN for the cable news network’s latest rating of American presidents. It does this whenever there’s a change in administration. Trump somehow managed to not finish last. More on that in a bit. What struck me most, personally I guess, is that the historians rated an era that included my first 28 years alive as the best stretch of presidents in the history of America.

Wow.

It started with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 (I was born in 1941) and continued through Harry S Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1969. FDR was Number 3 on the list, behind Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Ike was fifth, Harry was sixth, JFK was number 8 and LBJ ranked 11th.

Richard M Nixon (number 31) ended my personal winning streak of presidents and it was mediocrity or worse, in my opinion, until Barack Obama in 2008. But boy, those first 28 years! No wonder I resented Donald Trump in the Oval Office. I was spoiled and didn’t know it. I grew up with mature, responsible men as presidents, men who put their country ahead of their party and certainly ahead of themselves. Men who surely had their faults, but who each in his own way inspired confidence that he was always trying to do the best for all Americans. That’s what president did, I thought. Made us feel we had the right person making difficult decisions. Made us feel confident about the future. Made us proud to be Americans.

FDR created the social fabric we take for granted today. Truman steered us steadily through the end of one war and into another while maintaining his touch with average Americans. Everybody seemed to like Ike, the war hero who warned us of the military/industrial complex. JFK, the orator, had his photo hung in virtually every Catholic family’s kitchen, alongside The Last Supper. He dreamed of going to the moon and gave us the Peace Corps. When he was assassinated, LBJ took up the tough fight for the Equal Rights Act and wrestled it through the resistance of southern senators. He knew how Washington worked.

Nixon lowered the bar before resigning. Ford didn’t do much as a fill-in. Carter was sincere but disappointing. Reagan got rated 10th by the historians, but I think he should trickle down several spots despite his affable communications skills. Bush senior was unimpressive, Bill Clinton was sporadically effective (he balanced the budget!) and George W. Bush, installed by the Supreme Court, was a disaster. I actually wept with pride when Barack Obama, the first black American president, addressed the crowd in a park in Chicago on his election night. We’re back, I thought.

And then came Trump.

An insult to the American psyche. A symbol of the decay of one of our two main political parties. And the fourth(!) worst president in American history. Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson James Buchanan — they rated worse than Trump. All I can say is I’m glad I didn’t live through their presidencies if they were worse than Trump. But history evolves over time and it is not too much to hope that he will ultimately bottom out.

In the meantime, though, I am glad to know that I am not in some way weird for regarding the Trump administration as more than an anomaly in politics. I grew up with presidents who could read and speak with intelligence, who respected science, who had the respect of other world leaders, who did not lie with every waking breath, who did not divide Americans with angry insults and threats, who understood the Constitution and the obligation of presidents to serve the people, not vice versa.

I grew up with real presidents. Trump dishonored the office. History is on my side.

***

(I am glad to report that Trump has now fallen to the bottom of the list of American presidents.)

If you flatten it, you replace it. That oughta be the rule of the road.

By Bob Gaydos

As I suspected, this article, which I first published three years ago, has become a piece that bears repeating every year. because (1) there are (hopefully) new readers and new neighbors who will not have seen it and (2) I keep noticing things to add to it and (3) some people don’t seem to get one of the messages.

The original need to repeat was prompted by what I saw as a disturbingly increasing problem on narrow country roads: getting out of your own driveway. Specifically, backing out. This should not be a hazardous duty of mission. Unfortunately, it often is. As I see it, it boils down to a lack of consideration or understanding. So, the annual summer reminder.

***

For most of my life, I’ve lived in small cities (Bayonne, Binghamton, Annapolis, Middletown) and one large town (Wallkill), which is really a mall-dotted highway surrounded by housing complexes. Throw in a few years living on college campuses. Basically, it’s been city or community living.

When you live with a lot of other people close by and you want to be relatively content, you learn the rules of the road, the do’s and don’ts of getting along. Mostly, it’s mind your own business and don’t make a lot of noise.

A few years ago, I moved to the country, a bit of upstate New York between the Hudson River and the Catskills that is often protected from major weather issues by the imposing Shawangunk Ridge.

Country living means owls, woodpeckers, chickens, coyotes and starry skies, oh my.

It’s nice. Well, usually. It’s quiet. Usually. In any case, it most definitely has its own rules of the road. Things a transplanted city boy ought to know. Something I call country etiquette.

The notion (see how I used the word “notion“ instead of “idea“?) that there was such a thing as country etiquette grew out of a recent conversation about a not uncommon country experience.

A few years ago, our quiet summer evening at home was disrupted by a loud squealing of tires and a loud thud. Right in front of our house.

We rushed out to find a car sitting in a culvert in front of our house, a distraught young woman sitting behind the wheel and our mailbox on the ground, post and all. I don’t recall who called 911, but state police arrived quickly, talked with the driver (who was shaken but not hurt), someone called a tow truck, we went back in the house and eventually everything was back to normal, except for the mailbox. Its career was over.

In short order, we replaced the mailbox and occasionally wondered what happened to the young driver. I suspected alcohol may have been involved.

A couple of weeks later, the whole scene repeated itself. Nighttime. Squeal. Thud. Car. Culvert. Young woman driver. Unhurt. Mailbox kaput.

Deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra once said. Same follow up. Police. Tow truck. Mailbox flattened.

Again, we replaced it and the new one has survived ever since, although it’s leaning. But here’s the thing. Neither driver offered to pay to replace the mailbox (they both got out of their cars and talked to us) or to have it repaired. Now, it seems to me that a basic rule of country etiquette ought to be that if you wipe out someone’s mailbox (and get caught at it), the decent thing to do is to make it right again. Pay for a new one.

And that’s what got me thinking about other rules of country etiquette. What are some things to help someone new get along with neighbors who may not live right next door? Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

— Having a handy supply of eggs is nice, but keep your chickens in your own yard as much as possible. Free range doesn’t mean the whole neighborhood, or, especially, the busy road. And chickens don’t move that fast.

— Don’t shovel your driveway snow into the road. It’s only extra work for the highway crews and it’s dangerous.

— When driving, wave at people walking along country roads. It’s downright neighborly.

— Walkers, please wear reflective clothing at night. It’s awfully dark out there sometimes and the roads are often winding and have no shoulder. We’d like to get to know you.

— Don’t let your dog walk on the road side. Preferably, don’t walk your dog on the road at all. Some drivers are less attentive than others. (See reference to mailboxes above.) And yes, clean up after Snoopy.

— Slow down and maybe swing wide for people at their mailbox. (A personal peeve of mine.) You can even wave.

— In fact, slow down in general. Posted speed limits are not merely suggestions and police will ticket.

— In special fact (and this is the issue that needs to be readdressed, which I mentioned at the top ), if you see someone backing out of their driveway or road to get on the typical narrow, no-shoulder, two-lane road in the country and you are a good quarter mile away, slow the heck down. Please. Let them get out in peace in one piece. It’s hard enough to back into a narrow country road with trees often blocking your vision without worrying whether that driver whizzing down the road is texting or talking on the phone or so totally engrossed in something on the radio that they don’t see you, even though you see them.

— In further fact, if you’re not going to back up a lot of traffic, just be nice and let people back out of their driveways even if they haven’t gotten their rear end out yet. It’s common courtesy. Yelling through your closed window at the person backing out is not. Being foreign to the area and in oh such a hurry to get to the state highway 5 miles away is not an excuse either. I suspect this may at least partially be the result of more city folk moving to the area, in which case this column should be all the more valuable to them. If you know someone who fits the bill, share it with them.

— Be patient with a farm tractor on the road. He’ll be out of your way shortly, or he’ll pull over as soon as he can. He’s working. Wave.

— Be honest at roadside food honor stands. Act like there are cameras in the trees.

— Free stuff at the foot of a driveway is really free. Don’t be embarrassed. If you want it, take it. Someone always does.

That’s what I came up with so far. If you have other suggestions, please leave them in the comment section.

While I’m at it, I figure I might as well add another feature of country living — a potpourri of handmade road signs. Here are a few I noticed:

— Corn maze, hay ride, pumpkins, pickles, sweet corn

— Beef sale

— Fresh garlic

— Sunflower patch, mums

— Hay

— Honey

— Farm fresh eggs

— U pick pumpkins

— Horse crossing

— Fresh key lime pie,

— We buy ATVs dead or alive

Like I said, nice.

‘Til next time at pet-friendly, open-carry Tractor Supply.